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The Root of our Food Contamination Problems
The following is an op-ed from Mark A. Kastel and Will Fantle, co-directors of The Cornucopia Institute. The Cornucopia Institute a farm policy research group based in Cornucopia, Wis.
What isn?t being discussed in Congress, during the ongoing debate on the broken federal food safety system, is the root cause of the most serious food contamination outbreaks ? the elephant (poop) in the room.
The relatively new phenomena of nationwide pathogenic outbreaks, be they from salmonella or E. coli variants, are intimately tied to the fecal contamination of our food supply and the intermingling of millions of unhealthy animals. It?s one of the best-kept secrets in the modern livestock industry.
Mountains of manure are piling up at our nation?s mammoth, industrial-scale ?factory farms.? Thousands of dairy cows and tens of thousands of beef cattle are concentrated on feedlots; hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of chickens are confined in henhouses at one location for the production of eggs and meat. Livestock producing manure is nothing new. But the epic scale of animal numbers at single locations and the incredible volumes of animal waste is a recipe for disaster. It eclipses anything that was happening on old McDonald?s farm.
Feces carrying infectious bacteria transfer to the environment and into our food supply. Feeding heavily subsidized corn and soybeans to cattle, instead of grazing the ruminants on grass, as they were genetically designed to do, changes the pH in their digestive tracts, creating a hospitable environment for pathogenic E. coli to breed. The new phenomenon of feeding ?distillers grains? (a byproduct of the ethanol refining industry) is making this risk even more grave.
The current contamination in the egg supply can be directly linked to industrial producers that confine millions of birds, a product of massive, centralized breeding, in manure-rich henhouses, and feeding the birds a ration spiked with antibiotics. These are chickens that the McDonald family would likely have slaughtered on the farm because they were ?sickly.?
Thirteen corporations each have more than 5 million laying hens, and 192 companies have flocks of more than 75,000 birds. According to the industry lobby group, United Egg Producers (UEP), this represents 95 percent of all the laying hens in the United States. UEP also says that ?eggs on commercial egg-laying farms are never touched until they are handled by the food service operator or consumer.? Obviously, their approach been ineffective and their smokescreen is not the straight poop.
In addition to our national dependence on factory farms, the meatpacking industry, like egg production, has consolidated as well to more easily service the vast numbers of animals sent to slaughter from fewer locations. Just four companies now control over 80 percent of the country?s beef slaughter. Production line speed-ups have made it even harder to keep intestinal contents from landing in hamburger and meat on cutting tables.
All of these problems are further amplified by the scope of the industrial-scale food system. Now, a single food contamination problem at a single national processing facility, be it meat, eggs, spinach or peanut butter, can virtually infect the entire country through their national distribution model.
As an antidote, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks by purchasing food they can trust. They are encouraging a shift back towards a more decentralized, local and organic livestock production model. Witnessing the exponential growth of farmers markets, community supported farms, direct marketing and supermarket organics, a percentage of our population is not waiting for government regulation to protect their families.
The irony of the current debate on improving our federal food safety regulatory infrastructure, now centered in the Senate, is that at the same time the erosion of FDA/USDA oversight justifies aggressive legislation, the safest farmers in this country, local and organic, might be snared in the dragnet ? the proposed rules could disproportionally escalate their costs and drive some out of business.
While many in the good food movement have voiced strong concerns about the pending legislation ? it?s sorely needed ? corporate agribusiness, in pursuit of profit, is poisoning our children!
When Congress returns to Washington, we have no doubt that food safety legislation, which has languished for months, will get fast-tracked. In an election year our politicians don?t want to be left with egg on their face.
We only hope that Senators will seriously consider not just passing comprehensive reform but incorporating an amendment sponsored by John Tester (D-MT), a certified organic farmer himself, that will exempt the safest farms in our country ? small, local direct marketers. We need to allocate our scarce, limited resources based on greatest risk.
Farmers and ranchers milking 60 cows, raising a few hundred head of beef, or free ranging laying hens (many times these animals have names not numbers), offer the only true competition to corporate agribusinesses that dominate our food production system.
Re: The Root of our Food Contamination Problems
Gosh I want to highlight, underline and say --- this!! yes!! -- to so much of this.
In the last 5 years we've had a ton of food contamination issues, wide-spread ones, and yet, because I use small scale and often local producers, I've never had to eliminate something in my diet or switch to another producer.
I heard that 'they' were talking about more regulations and it made me think of Joel Salatin's 'Everything I Want to Do is Illegal'. These are just going to be more regulations along the same line that are in place right now.
The scale of these operations and the way they are allowed to handle waste, or rather, not, is gross, scary, and IMO a complete scam on the American public (much nastier terms came to mind actually). Its OUR land they pollute, its OUR food they contaminate, and we pay for it. WTF.
And once again, when this egg 'crisis' is over (are there like empty egg shelves? I have no idea), most people will go back to the same old ways and not think about anything differently at all.
*sigh*
Thanks for this article SuperGreen--always informative. I
t sort of gives new meaning to the phrase "That Sh!t is SCARY!" Because in this instance, it REALLY is what's causing so many problems. I mean, most people wouldn't think it sanitary to eat dinner in their bathrooms, yet the food (cow, chicken, eggs) on their plate is often standing not just in the bathroom, but INSIDE the toilet bowl their entire lives. Yikes.
Alisha--damned straight!! It's OUR land, OUR food, so when the heck are "they" going to listen!
Its really not going to change until WE stop being obsessed with cheap food, and equating sustainable foods with being something 'snooty' and only for the rich.
The runoff from the chicken industries is one of the biggest culprits in creating deadzones in the Eastern waterways, raising prices on what seafood is left, and taking jobs away from the blue-collar fishing families. And yet these same fishing families buy the eggs and cheap chicken that come from the very industry that's screwing them. People think its uppity and yuppy to buy better sourced foods, but don't stop to think about who is really paying the biggest price.
And our obsession with cheap food is ridiculous. I buy organic, cage-free, humane-certified, local eggs that are available at multiple local, large chain stores for $3-$3.50 a dozen ($3.50, not on sale). That's .29 an egg! But people want to keep buying eggs for what, $1.99 a dozen?
There's just no way that reasonably-sized, conscientious companies can produce food products at the cheap prices that factory-level companies can, companies that are subsidized by our own government -- our tax dollars -- to produce heavily processed foods filled with cheap soy and corn, in massive-scale operations that almost inevitably negatively affect our land and our health.
This is one of the main reasons I'm so obsessed with better products. I feel totally screwed over by this system, and everyone should. Big companies get big breaks, and MY tax dollars -- while I'm struggling financially, as so many people are -- and pollute land that again, my tax dollars go to cleaning up (if at all). WTF?
I don't trust the FDA anyway -- no, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but if you really look at the people in charge, there are way too many ties to companies like Monsanto -- but even were they a completely unbiased agency, I just don't think there's any way to regulate mass-scale production to true safety, and that's what they are trying to 'promise' us. In the wake of yet another major contamination issue, they propose more regulation, and sadly I think the general population thinks that's where the solution is. But really, is there any level of regulation and oversight that would make people feel comfortable if they actually SAW these operations? I think most people would be horrified to see these places. Thirteen corporations have FIVE MILLION laying hens, and 192 companies have more than 75,000. Can you even imagine the smell, the noise, much less the logistics of ensuring that all was handled cleanly??
Really I think the only answer is for consumers to wise up, and buy products that are produced in better ways. Maybe I'm an idealist, but if so, fine. I'm glad that the dollars I control go to companies I am glad to support, and that I hope grow to take an ever-increasing share of the market.
Well said Alisha as always! I completely agree. DH and I work very hard to know where our food comes from. The vast majority of our food now is either (A) we grew it or (B) from the Farmer's Market where I've asked each and every farmer how they grow their produce and raise their meat, and in most instances I've been to their farms. Yes it's more expensive to buy, but as Alisha said regular food is artificially cheap. Commodity crops like corn and soy are heavily subsidized by the government (your tax dollars) and are then fed to animals in CAFOs with eight food tall piles of chicken poop. The huge companies can afford to sell their meat cheaply because they have tens of thousands of animals, and cut every single animal rights, human health, and environmental corners they can. Am I the only person who always thought 0.99 hamburgers was a little off, even before I knew about how industrial food is produced? I always thought "how do they pay all those people and feed the animals on $1 cheeseburgers?" The answer is minimum wage, uneducated staff and millions of animals crammed into tiny poop-filled facilities. Of course you can't get sustainably raised chicken for $1.99 a pound when the farmer only has a 100 birds, or probably less.
I am also obsessed with eating better quality food. People always ask me how I can afford the time and money to do that. I reply that we moved a lot of things around in our budget to be able to afford healthy, sustainble, and humanely raised food. As Americans, we spend the lowest percentage (Michael Pollan says 10%) on food than any nation in the world. The truth is most people could afford to spend more on food, but we choose not to. We choose to have tiny portable music devices instead of the radio, super-fast internet for leisure use, and new clothes every year instead of wearing last year's clothes again. I'm lucky enough that the lowest price doesn't have to be my highest food shopping priority. My highest priority is that the animals lived a real life and were slaughtered humanely, and the produce was raised by a real person and harvested just before we bought it. It's a real shame that most people see buying food like that as elitest or yuppie or snobby. They choose to spend their money elsewear, but their health and the environment pays the price. Our national food system isn't going to get better until people stop making the lowest price their highest food shopping priority.
Well said Alisha! YES YES! I wish people would stop thinking about price before the quality of their food. Yeah, that 24 piece package of chicken at BJ's is cheap...buuut I doubt you want to see where that chicken came from.