As the movement for healthier and safer (organic) food has recently gained recognition with the millennials many people have started to question the extent of the safety and regulation of produce in the United States. There are no doubt many individual improvements that can be made regarding the regulation of produce in the food industry in the United States but the extent of the safety the public now demands from the government to have a ‘perfect’ regulation system would be economically irrational and feasibly unreasonable.
As the population continues to increase with higher life expectancies thanks to newer technology and better medication there is an ever growing demand for an increased produce yield. In result many large food corporations have quickly expanded making regulating each and every factory, slaughter house, and barn even more feasibly impossible for the government to regulate just due to the pure number of investigations they are responsible for. In Nestle’s Resisting Food Safety, Nestle starts to explore how the government has to break down and take on the task of regulating the food industry in the United States. Nestle argues that as the produce industry continues to expand the expectations from the public for the government to regulate all produce becomes more and more un-realist. The majority of the food regulated by the government is overseen by 2 agencies; the USDA and the FDA. Each is responsible for different parts of the regulation process where the FDA is in charge of regulation up until the slaughter house and inspects all foods except meat, poultry and eggs where the USDA is then in charge of the rest of the regulation process beginning at the slaughter house and inspects meat, poultry, processed meat and eggs. Because of the recent expansion in the food industry both agencies are extremely over worked and as stated by Nestle are tasked with an impossible task of regulating the food industry, “By the early 1980’s, for example the poultry industry had already expanded far beyond any reasonable inspection capacity.” Already by the 80’s Nestle explains that the poultry industry has reached a size beyond reasonable inspection capacity. Then Nestle goes into further detail and provides the overwhelming statistic of the amount of establishments each agency is each responsible for, “In 1975, USDA officials examined 14 billion pounds of birds at 154 plants; just six years later they had to inspect 29 billion pounds at 371 plants. The USDA has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they oversee 6,000 meat, poultry, and egg establishments – and 130 importers- that slaughter and process 89 million pigs, 37 million cattle and 7 billion chickens and turkeys not to mention the 25 billion pounds of beef and 7 billion pounds of ground beef produced each year.” Those statistics are unfathomable and the FDA doesn’t get it any easier, “If anything, the demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable. About 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 20,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery stores, and 1.5 million vending operations. The agency also must deal with food imports, which comprised 40% of the country’s supply of fresh fruits and vegetables and 68% of the seafood in 2000.” Not only are both agencies significantly understaffed but they are also greatly underfunded, “The FDA’s budget allocation for inspection purposes was just $283 million in 2000, miniscule by any standard of federal expenditure.” As proven by Nestle the demand on the government to regulate the entire food industry is physically impossible, and even if it was are the benefits of having an all organic produce system that significant?
Many people have come to believe the narrative that organic food is a safer and healthier option than traditionally grown produce but as argued by Blake Hurst in Organic Illusions the advantages of having a theoretically all organic system does not outweigh the disadvantages. Even with a major increase in the demand for organic produce the size of the industry is still relatively insignificant, “Despite the growth in organic food sales, they only constitute 4 percent of the dollar value of all foods sold; and since organic foods often cost twice of what conventionally grown foods do, the quantity of organic sales constitutes considerably less than 4 percent of the total market.” The margin of income when growing all organic food is radically less than that of traditionally grown produce. Another disadvantage argued by Hurst is that the extra production steps required to grow ‘organic’ food would require an unrealistic number of increased employment in the food industry, “Millions of additional hands would be needed to produce food on America’s farms without modern technology. In many places around the world where organic farming is the norm, a large proportion of the population is involved in farming. Not because they chose to but because they must.” Not only does Nestle explain the many inefficiencies with organic farming he also explains the lack of significant health benefits that the organic narrative claims to provide, “The Stanford study found that organic foods were considerably less likely than conventional foods to have pesticide residues, although organic foods were higher in E. coli.” This document starts to uncover the truth of organic food and the lack of significant health benefits that the public have been repeatedly led to believe. After looking at two texts it is already clear that one; the process of regulating the entire food industry in the United States is an unfathomable task for the government (by itself) to accomplish and two; that even if it was feasibly possible to have an entirely organic food industry the health benefits and relative safety of the food would not be significantly impacted. After reading a snippet of a headline talking about the seriousness about foodborne illnesses and the poor safety regulation job the government does many consumers jump to the conclusion that the food they eat is substantially less safe than organic food when in fact most of the public does not understand the extreme testing and research done on the traditionally grown produce.
The amount of research and testing done regarding the safety of our food is overwhelming. Many organic consumers claim that the traditional animal feed is unsanitary and contains harmful bacteria and pathogens but as put forth in You Are What They Eat, from consumer reports, the opposite is actually true, “The waste is processed until it bears no resemblance to its former self. Thomas Cook, president of the National Renderers Assoctiation, told us that after the rendering process thoroughly heats, presses and grinds animal tissue, it “looks like a pile of brown sugar.”” Not only is the procedure highly regulated but there are also multiple health benefits not spoken of, “Phillip Petry, president of AAFCO, speaks of the merits of chicken waste. “There is a yuck factor because it doesn’t sound at all appetizing he says, but the nitrogen level in poultry litter is real high, so they get a real good protein jump out of that.”” The animal feed that traditional farmers use not only save a large amount of resources but it has also been found to boost the nutritional factors of the produce.
Conclusion
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