Elizabeth Quezada

WRT 205

Professor Phillips

February 22nd 2016

Conversation on Food Politics & Safety: Choices

You can very easily go onto today’s favorite search engine and type in, “Are GMOs harmful?” or “Is organic food really that much better?” into the search bar and pull up some quick and dirty answers to those questions. Really though, you are just a concerned consumer being tossed into the large, messy bowl of food politics and safety. You’ll find a mesh of articles telling you what the author thinks and a healthy dose of statistics thrown your way if you’re lucky. Believe it or not,  food safety and politics does not just pertain to the consumers health based needs! Money, the environment are a huge portion of food safety and the political sphere represents delicious three course meal you can’t pull your eyes from. When it comes to food safety, I belong to the team that’s pro-labeling. I believe that despite the benefits of either side, consumers deserve the right to know what they choose to put in their system.

What do people have to say about this discourse?

Some individuals argue between the efficiency and benefits of either organic or conventional farming while others argues that consumers should have a choice within the food system. Food Inc., a documentary that argues against GMOs, questions the food system attacks the opaqueness of the system. “Do you know where your food comes from?” This documentary attempts to bring forth information for their audience to process while ultimately trying to get you on their side of the argument. The director of the film, Robert Kenner does a fantastic job at distributing information and using the medium of film to their advantage and he also really stretches out the conversation that finds its way to our dinner tables every night. While the film does give their viewers a mouthful of information, it is heavily biased in arguing more for one side instead of bringing out the facts and letting you decide what side you want to eat grass from. One of my favorite pieces to read in regards to the issues around food safety and politics,  “Organic Illusions,” written by a farmer, Blake Hurst, suggests that though the government cannot afford a form of organic agriculture, they can afford to provide a system with choices. However, he does not present his claim in a helpful or resourceful manner. Carrying a heavily sarcastic tone and providing a much more entertaining read that can be read throughout the masses, Hurst maintains a “Who cares about organic or conventional farming?” attitude and suggests without any real traceable sources, that what really matters in this complex food system is not a romanticized “version of agriculture”(Hurst) but “a food system that provides lots of choices,” (Hurst). Unfortunately, as entertaining as he may be, he does not provide enough credible information to really let his audience decide the importance of conventional agriculture versus organic agriculture. He attacks organic farming more than he complains about farming in general.

 

Although I do understand the benefits of either side, I think the two styles of agriculture can exist together but the government could afford to be a little more transparent, less sketchy when it came to interviews (Food Inc.) Truthfully, labeling the food at your local grocery store is more about allowing the consumer to be more aware and informed of their decisions. Nearly 50 nations worldwide require that all GE foods be labeled as such (Dahl), so what’s the big deal? California tried to pass the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act back in November of 2012 (Dahl) and had it been passed, California would have been the first state to require the labeling of food products. The bill sounds pretty until you know what it really does and then you wonder, what’s the point? The bill would have exempted “meat, dairy, and other products from animals that were themselves genetically engineered. It would have also exempted food sold in restaurants and alcohol,” (Dahl). Though it wouldn’t have proved as effective as it could have been, this was considered a step forwards in the food revolution. Consumers are getting more fed up as “food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal,” (Nestle). Only 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 manufacturers and processors, 20,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations (Nestle). That number seems incredibly low for a population as large as the American population. The statistics speak for themselves here, how safe do you really think your food really is? Go ahead, type in E Coli and Salmonella outbreaks in your search bar and determine just how frequent they are. Consumer safety should always be the government’s priority but money allows illness and corruption to really slip through the cracks,  just ask your local farmer.

 

While many like Hurst believe that a romanticized version of farming would be too costly, I do agree that labeling for consumer health reasons proves to be a solution everyone could be happier with. There’s evidence according to Dahl and his source, Hansen,  to suggest a connection between GE Crops and allergenicity, which provides more than enough reason to label foods. Data from the Centers of Disease control and Prevention show an 18% increase in reported food allergy cases among children between 1997 and 2007 (Dahl), that alone proves to be alarming as a consumer myself. Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, suggests a theoretical example of how tracking health risks would work: “If you take a gene from the kiwifruit, put it into a tomato and the tomato gets turned into sauce for your pizza, and there’s an allergic reaction…this is not like [allergy concerns associated with] conventional foods because the problem is going to for one particular [bio-engineered modification]. How are you going to figure out unless it’s labeled? You can’t and that’s why so many countries have labeling,” (Hansen), except us of course. There should always be a choice presented for consumers, for health–for ethical reasons, our government after all is supposed to be for the people and we made that choice, didn’t we?

Sources:

• “You are what they eat,” Consumer Reports, 2005

• Hurst, Blake. “Organic Illusions – AEI.” AEI. The American, 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.

• Nestle, Marion. Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety. Berkeley: U of California, 2010. Print.

• Food, Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Movie One, 2008.

• Dahl, Richard. “To Label or Not to Label: California Prepares to Vote on Genetically Engineered Foods.” Environ Health Perspect Environmental Health Perspectives 120.9 (2012). Jstor. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.