Farm fresh, organic, anti-GMO. All are key words that pop out to any consumer when they are shopping in the grocery store. But how natural and safe is the food we eat? For some, it is shocking that here in the US, with all of our regulations and restrictions that food is produced the way it is. Think the government has control over the food industry? Wrong. Follow the money. It will lead right to multinational corporations who are the ones controlling food production. Several authors have articulated their own views on food production in their own publications, with arguments varying from whether organic or conventional farming is better and food borne illnesses, but all noting somewhere that these problems come from a lack of government control.

One of the biggest issues with food production in the US is where the power lies, and it does not lie in the government’s hands. Marion Nestle, an author and NYU professor argues in her publication, “Resisting Food Safety”, that the government needs to intervene more in the food production process.

 

Change is attempted in the 1970’s when the CDC begins conducting studies about food borne illnesses to find out how big of a problem they really are. “Nearly half the participating states were reporting no outbreaks or very few, suggesting considerable underreporting” (Nestle 38). One of the biggest reasons for their results is many people do not report when they get food poisoning, they think it is just something that happens from time to time. Are you kidding me? The fact that people accept that is why the food industry continues to have problems with quality control. The CDC attempted to expand what they thought be signs of food borne illnesses, such as a person experiencing diarrhea. Granted an episode of diarrhea does not necessarily mean someone has a food borne illness, but the CDC is just trying to get their numbers up and if that happens, then maybe policies will change.

People seem to be assuming that they were the only one who got sick from eating that food whereas in reality thousands of others could have gotten sick too, because an entire line of food that was produced could have been infected with a food borne illness. Like hello, there are other people that exist outside of you. One example of a food borne illness is E. coli. What is E. coli? Oh it is just a potentially fatal food borne illness that is transmitted via fecal matter. Now if someone gets a food borne illness from E. coli, it will be reported, as Nestle points out in her article, because of how potent the bacteria is. But for smaller cases that are not, there still could have been an entire line of food that affected thousands. Now granted, this study was done 40 years ago, more people today realize how big of an issue food borne illnesses are.

Reporting food borne illnesses however should not be solely up to consumers to make reports, the FDA should be cracking down on food producers. But as Nestle states, this is another area where problems lie. The FDA only has about 700 food inspectors nation wide and are tasked with overseeing 30,000 food producers, 128,000 grocery stores, 785,000 commercial and industrial food establishments, 1.5 million vending machines, and oh yeah, all the food imported into the US. What lamebrain in Washington said, yeah that’s humanly possible.

All of these places are supposed to be inspected annually, and with the nearly nonexistent number of inspectors, the FDA is only able to check about 2% of these places annually. Fantastic! In fact, in another article, “You Are What they Eat”, by Consumer Reports “loopholes still allowed certain risky feedstuffs to be fed to cattle and their ruminants…‘the FDA does not know the full extent of industry compliance’” (CR 29). This proves that the FDA does not have a handle on what goes on in the food industry and neither does the government because food manufacturers are able to get away with giving potentially disease infested feed to animals and if the FDA is not able to inspect producers, people will continue to get sick and the government still will not be able to do much without sufficient evidence.

These articles and statistics are dated so when looking at an article written in 2009, the picture of control in the food industry looks a little nicer. A 2009 article written by Common Dreams, claims the Obama administration is in the process of investigating Monsanto, a seed company that provides seed to nearly all farmers in the US, for anticompetitive activity. Common Dreams states at the beginning that Monsanto is not an entirely evil corporation responsible for issues in the food industry, but they are a big problem. Basically, Monsanto has become a monopoly in the seed market, which is illegal. However, Monsanto cleverly gets around this by spending big money lobbying to get their people jobs within the government. This is a classic case of a company exploiting its power to get what it wants. By putting its people on the inside, they now gain even more control and power over the food production industry and protect themselves. So this raises an important question, if the Obama administration is trying to sue Monsanto, will it even be possible with Monsanto’s people on the inside?

In addition to the government not having a firm grasp on the activities of multinational food companies, they are also lacking in the organic foods section. In an article written by Blake Hurst, he claims that no testing is done on foods with organic labels to see if they are in fact organic and the producer followed all the guidelines. Now, Hurst’s article, “Organic Illusions”, needs to be taken with a grain of salt because the man has no sources, he just sort of rambles on about his own beliefs about the food industry, while once or twice mentioning some Stanford study, but never giving real data. However, if Hurst’s claim is true, then lack of testing is a major issue. Hurst claims the reason for organic food’s success is due to marketing and people view organic food as healthier for them. The major issue here is if people think that what they are buying is better for them, but no testing is being done, then consumers are being misled. If government testing is required on organic foods, not all because that would be impossible, but testing of certain batches of food produced, then food companies will not be able to get away with selling something misleading.

While some argue that organic food offers no real health benefits, farmer Joel Salatin from the documentary Food Inc. says otherwise. The food Salatin produces contains considerably less bacteria and chemicals than food produced by major companies. And he was almost shut down because all of his food production takes place in the open air, instead of the much healthier disease infested factory. Salatin states during his interview that the government wants to shut him down because they think there are more bacteria and pathogens flying around in the open air that can contaminate his food. In Salatin’s case, the government is actually trying to shut down the wrong person because of his methods. This is just another prime example of the government believing the way major food companies produce is the safest and best way. If the government does its job and starts taking control over the food industry rather than just seemingly letting companies do what they want and not really having consequences, then food may actually become safer for consumers.

Ultimately, government control is necessary for safer and better food. As shown by the authors and documentary, the government does not have the control over the food industry that it needs to. The US food industry contains many problems from lack of FDA employment to allowing producers to give potentially bacteria infested feed to their animals and not testing organic foods. This lack of involvement means more consumers could get sick and food producers can continue to do what they do without consequence. Government involvement is just the first step in producing safer food.

Reflection:

For the writer’s project, my understanding was using the readings and film to find common arguments between all the sources and analyze and synthesize those arguments. In the sorting it out assignment, the most helpful section for me was finding the passages that connected and shared the same type of idea. That section definitely made things easier for me when I started writing the article and was trying to make connections. The connection section in sorting it out also helped me to figure out which ideas and arguments I should lead with, in order to make my article flow and also be compelling. To me synthesis is being able to make connections between articles and arguments. It’s important to do this because if you’re working with many different texts but never connect them the entire article feels disconnected. My accomplishment during this unit was definitely formatting my article to flow and sound the way I wanted it. When I started writing at the beginning I had 3 long paragraphs and once I was able to break them down more, the article seemed to come together well. For the main idea I looked at all the articles and tried to find common points they shared. This way it’d be much easier for me to connect the articles together by finding common ground between them. At the beginning my organization was pretty horrendous. My paragraphs were too long and had multiple arguments woven into them. I went to the writing center in order to work with someone to figure out how I could reorganize my article so the paragraphs were shorter, but I wasn’t compromising the writing. I successfully synthesized 3 texts in the beginning of my article when I’m talking about government control and food borne illnesses. The food borne illness part of my argument on government intervention had a lot of good information behind it, so the biggest thing for me was to make sure that the reader wouldn’t get lost in all the information, that I explain along with giving data. As the process went on, I found that my writing seemed to technical, lots of data, not enough analysis, so once I fixed that it flowed much better. For me the lede actually wasn’t too challenging. What I try to do when I’m working on an opener for a writing assignment is to just write whatever comes to mind and then work from there. When we did peer editing I was told my lede was too long, so I tried to make it as concise as possible, in order to grab the reader, but not bore them with a long sentence. One goal I have to work on for the next assignment is to keep my lede concise and to really try and get as much analysis out of the sources as possible.

Work Cited:

Hurst, Blake.  “Organic Illusions”.  American Enterprise institute.  1 Oct. 2012.  Online article.

Kenner, Robert, dir, Food Inc.  Magnolia Pictures.  2008.

Nestle, Marion.  “Resisting Food Safety”.  Online article.

Richardson, Jill.  “Sick of Corporate Control Over Your Food?”.  Common Dreams.  28 Dec. 2009.  Online article.

“You Are What they Eat”.  Consumer Reports.  Online article.

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