Our food industry has grown to be so large and complex that government agencies cannot enforce safety regulations and prevent consumers from becoming sick.

The FDA has 700 inspectors on staff for a nation of people who consume 137 pounds of meat per person, per year. An understaffed agency that doesn’t see, touch or smell the food cannot decide if it is safe for you to eat.

“We a eat a lot; an average of 137 pounds of beef, chicken, fish and shellfish per American in 2002.” (Consumer Reports You Are What They Eat)

With the increased amount of food demanded, more food must be farmed in less time, so new farming practices are adopted, and the USDA and FDA simply cannot regulate them.

Because of this, as Food, Inc. stipulates, our food is no longer farmed or grown, it is produced.

100 years ago a farmer could produce 20 bushels of corn in an acre. Today, 200 bushels can be produced in one acre (due to pesticides).

The image of a farmer in a straw hat harvesting corn is no longer the reality. The reality is that our food production process is an industrial one.

In The Government’s Role in Food Safety, U.S. Senator Jon Tester discusses his choice to pass an amendment to the Food Safety Modernization Act.

His goal is to explain the amendment that excludes small farmers from the same regulations as big corporations. In the process, he highlights an important point

“Four companies own more than 80 percent of the beef market, and one company, Monsanto, controls 85 percent of the corn and 91 percent of the soybeans”.

“These types of complex production chains have created consumers who have no idea where their food comes from and government regulations tailored to multi-billion-dollar corporations.”

These companies have changed the way food is produced and control the market as well as the governing bodies. The side effect is consumer sickness outbreaks.

The question, therefore, is not longer only ‘what are we eating?’ It is also ‘what are they eating?’

“In the U.S. alone, 14,000-plus companies sell as many as 200 basic feeds”.

“Companies produce more than 308 billion pounds of animal feed annually.” (Consumer Reports, You Are What They Eat, 26)

One may think that there are not enough natural ingredients in the world to feed our annual food supply, which is correct. Other ingredients then must be substituted, ingredients that these animals do not eat naturally and do not process naturally.

According to Food, Inc., cows are fed corn, instead of naturally grazing and eating grass. The corn in their stomach is known to accelerate the growth and spread of e. coli, yet it is still common practice.

“Processed feathers are an acceptable source of protein in cattle feed, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as is poultry litter – floor wastes from coops, including feces.”

The amount of meat demanded by the consumers is so great that our nation is no longer able to feed our cattle the way they are naturally meant to eat. The USDA was not intended to regulate hundreds of billions of pounds of animal feed annually.

As a result chickens are genetically enhanced to develop larger breasts and as a result cannot walk more than a few steps on there own two feet. They fall to the dirty ground of a chicken coop.

It comes as a shock to most people that the USDA allows poultry litter, including feces, to be fed to the cattle raised for human consumption. However, it is just another example of how the food industry has grown to become so big that government agencies are unable to regulate the production companies.

The USDA and FDA were intended to work as filters to ensure that only safe and healthy products make it from the farms to each table in the United States. Well clearly we need to increase the number of filters, or increase the size of the existing ones because according to Marion Nestle in “Resisting Food Safety,” 76 million people within the Unites States develop a case of foodborne disease or illness every year.

Increasing the amount of food taken in over time leads to more contaminants passing through the food we eat to us. This presents a larger amount of people with the risk of foodborne illness and disease. The government is simply not able to uphold safety standards for the increased amount of production.

Outdated laws and red tape hinder governing agencies from making the changes necessary to ensure consumer safety.

Marion Nestle writes in Resisting Food Safety that food regulation laws are outdated.  “Federal oversight of food safety remains unshakably rooted in policies established almost a century ago, in 1906.”

“Congress designed those policies to ensure the health of animals, in an era long before most of the current microbial causes of foodborne illness were even suspected, let alone recognized.” (Nestle, Resisting Food Safety, 26)

Laws designed for smaller scale true farming applied to current situations do not allow agencies enough power to maintain safety.

Hurst, in his article Organic Illusions, asserts that food demand and supply has grown at such large rates that there is no clear solution.

“If food demand nearly doubles over the next 50 years, as it’s predicted to do, there just isn’t enough arable land available to support a wholesale adoption of organic methods.” (Hurst, Organic Illusions, 7)

Now there is the issue of what do we do; the situation is not black and white, there is no simple solution because the problem has become so complex. The food industry has become a different animal it is now a matter of risk management, nobody wants to take the blame for foodborne illness.

“Producers blame processors for foodborne illness, and processors blame producers; government regulators blame both, and everyone blames consumers.” (Nestle, Resisting Food Safety, 28)

“Because federal policies cannot ensure that food is safe before people bring it home, government agencies shift the burden of responsibility to consumers.”

It has become the job of the consumer to ensure our safety because the government is no longer able to enforce regulations that do so themselves.

The structure of the federal food regulatory agencies contributes to the lack of ability to properly govern the industry. Nestle describes the system, “25 separate laws administered by 12 agencies housed in six cabinet-level departments”.

“At best, a structure as fragmented as this one would require extraordinary efforts to achieve communication let alone coordination, and more than 50 interagency agreements govern such efforts.”

When it comes to the issue of food safety, regulation should be prompt, organized and efficient, because food borne illness is a true threat. Preventing consumer risk requires agencies that can stand up to the corporations of the food industry and ensure safety for the people.

The growth of the agencies must also match the growth of the food system itself. If, according to Hurst, food demand doubles over the course of the next 50 years, the agencies should in size double as well.

Recently, especially with the current public relations and public image issues for Chipotle, food borne illness is becoming more a part of public conversation.

It is not the first major outbreak in the United States. Numerous outbreaks of Salmonella, Listeria and e. coli O26 have occurred from produce contaminations. Whatever the source of the Chipotle contamination, it should have been caught earlier before the food got to the table.

The government agencies such as the FDA and USDA should delegate their responsibilities to a larger number of employees or other separate agencies so that they can ensure that the food industry will be properly regulated.

Ideally, the consumer should not bear the brunt of ensuring their own safety. The issue should be controlled while the food is being produced, so that the chance of any food borne illness or disease reaching the consumer is minimized.

The USDA and FDA should have more power, and be able to administer legislature promptly to allow consumers to feel safe when buying produce.

We must remember that at the end of the day, the concern is the safety of the public consumers, and it should be taken as seriously as possible.

 

Reflection Questions

1. The “writer’s project” is essentially the goal of the writer. I was able to identify the texts’ project by looking for the major claim in the beginning of the texts. By reading through the rest of the body paragraphs and conclusion of the text I was able to narrow in further on the project.
2. The “Sorting it Out” workshop helped me in general to identify the project of each text and to find the paths through which the texts connect. Finding quotes from the texts that relate to each other helped me get into the specific arguments supporting the claim of my article.
3. Synthesis was important when bringing together the content of multiple texts to build a larger claim. By synthesizing five texts in my article, I was able to make a claim about our food industry and the agencies that regulate it.
4. I learned how to understand the project of each piece and synthesize the information to form a claim. During this unit I learned how to write an article style-piece properly, including how to write an engaging lede.
5. The main idea was there there was some major flaw with our food system if food borne illness is such a prevalent issue. I expanded on this and argued that the source of the issue is that the demand for food has become so large that it cannot be regulated by current methods.
6. I organized my writing by generally building up my argument of my claim. I started by giving useful background information on the topic, and identifying the issues with it. I then moved on to how the regulating agencies play a role, their shortcomings, and a general solution.
7. In the final draft I use a quote from Consumer Reports “You are What They Eat” to explain how large the food demand has become. I then use “The Government’s Role in Food Safety” to show the size of the corporations that control the industry.  The quote also mentions how the government is controlled by the food industry, not vice-versa. Lastly, by looking to Marion Nestle in Resisting Food Safety, I use a quote from her on the number of consumers suffering from food borne illness each year.
8. The lede in my earliest draft attempted to use humor in a metaphor by saying “the chicken has grown to be larger than the coop” in an attempt to portray my message. I felt that this didn’t have any sustenance and did not make the claim clear, so I moved on to “Our food industry has grown to be so large and complex that government agencies cannot enforce safety regulations and prevent consumers from becoming sick.”
9. I would like to work on developing better structure of my next piece by defining a strong claim which I can build from.

 

After a long, busy day the only thing that could be on your mind is dinner. Starving from hours of not eating, your mouth waters at the smell of food. The last thing on your mind is where this food is coming from, how its prepared and if you will get sick. Our minds are trained not to think about what’s behind this large cheeseburger with a basket of salty fries. We trust what we are putting in our body because anything unhealthy, sanitized or even deathly would obviously be against the rules in the food industry and would be stopped by the government right? There are regulations that protect what we are eating and how it was produced? Nope. The Government and Food Industry aren’t as trust worthy as we hope to believe. The food industry has changed tremendously in the last 60 years. From farms, local and small companies to large, corrupt corporations that mass produces chemically enhanced foods. Our country has no clue what is happening behind the yummy looking meats, vegetables even sometimes “organic foods” and may never even try to find out.

Each year, over 70 million people are effected by a food borne illness, and this number is just rising. Even children, Food Inc. introduces the story of Kevin Kowalcyk, a young boy who died after eating only one hamburger coming back from vacation. For years, Kevin’s mother and family has shared their story and fought the food industry’s to pass important regulation laws but it continues to be a constant battle. that In one of the strongest industry’s, shouldn’t the government, medical world and corporations being stopping these food borne illness’s? Food companies don’t have to have a recall on something they know is causing sickness, but many do just for the image. Its very uncommon that the government and even doctors step in unless hundreds get ill or multiple die mostly because its too much effort to have evidence that a certain food caused a death. Marion Nestle states “USDA has 7,000 inspectors or so, and they over see 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 been and 7 billion pounds of ground beef each year… The demands on the FDA are even more unreasonable. About 700 FDA inspectors must oversee 30,000 food manufacturers and processors, 10,000 warehouses, 785,000 commercial and institutional food establishments, 128,000 grocery and convenience stores, and 1.5 million vending operations.” We hope that professionals, like food inspectors are making sure these companies aren’t getting away with unhealthy and harmful practices of food processing, but we can’t when we don’t even have enough of them to go around.

Food Inc., an extremely effective way of opening the world to the corrupt and unhealthy food industry, Shows the conditions these animals are living in. They are packed into small, tight, feces ridden dark shacks, eating pounds of chemically packed foods, which lead straight to our bodies. Cows, are being fed corn which creates a fatter cow and more beef but packs the animals with bacteria that is extremely harmful to not only their bodies but then to us. The bacteria is found in their feces that are often mixed in to our meat supply because of the busy and over packed slaughter houses. It isn’t only the animals being treated poorly but the workers as well. Carole, a farmer who stated, “Having no say in your business is degrading, its like you are a slave to the company.”, in the film. These large corporations break many labor and job laws as well, overworking their employees in harmful and unhealthy conditions. Robert Kenner and his film Food Inc, opens our eyes to way the food industry takes over everything, Michael Pollen states, “It looks like there is diversity in supermarkets but its really just a few companies”. Even what we thought of as small, local and healthy brands are owned by huge corporations like Kellogg, Tyson, and Pepsi. Michael Pollen also speaks about the harmful and genetically modified foods we are eating “There is no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, its kind of a notional tomato. I mean it’s the idea of a tomato.” Yes, maybe it is nice to be able to eat your favorite fruit or vegetable all year round, but it is everything but natural.

Organic Illusions, written by Blake Hurst shines a light on organic food industry as well. Although Organic foods are the better path to take, its still hard to trust a company that we don’t know much about. “Organic foods are labeled as organic because producers certify that they’ve followed organic procedures. No testing is done to check the veracity of these claims.” Although Hurst does not provide much evidence about these problems and the studies included had numbers, dates, it still gets the job done of questioning what we are putting inside our bodies.

The corrupt food industry and ginormous corporations put the money over the customers everyday. The only reason they don’t want someone to get sick from a food borne illness is not because they made someone sick but because it just makes the company look bad and lose money. They do everything they can do produce fast and cheap, breaking and bending around many regulations and laws. We cannot continue to pretend that these companies and government are trying to keep us safe. We cannot trust everything we are putting into our own bodies and have to stop letting these companies run our country and lives.

 

When we think of food what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it how well it’ll taste once we cook it? Maybe if you sauté it the juices will be more vibrant and ready to be served for dinner? Or are you more concerned with the quality and nutrition of your food? Whether an experienced foodie or a newcomer to the ways of the food world these are all question’s you’ll most likely have at some point while dining. Yet do we as consumers of all of these delicacies ever truly wonder what it is that we’re eating, where did it come from, who do we have to thank for the steak or lettuce on our plate? The food industry has been on the burn for many years but it was only but until the past 10 years that we’ve seen a cry for awareness. There is a silent battle going on behind the supermarket lines and it’s time for the rest of America to know what’s going on. Documentaries such as Food Inc. have been filmed to show us the “nitty gritty” of the food industry, its ups and downs but mainly its downs. Whether it is the sky rocketing increase in diabetes within this country or how our economic status influences the quality of our food. The documentary never shy’s away at showing us the grotesque and the stats behind conventional farming. There is also the abuse towards animals and the conditions in which they are thrown. Of course this is just one of many outlets that have reported about the food industry and it’s tricks of the trade. From an article about food safety and government regulation by Nestle to Consumer Reports tackling the meat industry in their article titled “You are what they eat”. There is a plethora of information and arguments when it comes to the double-edged sword that is our food industry. So where should you as a consumer stand amongst all of this chaos? Where do you begin your journey to educate yourself on what goes into your food and what expectations are reasonable and which one’s aren’t? The bigger companies that claim they run the food business in the best manner to the local farmers who would have you boycott these systems in lieu to their suffering and their animals suffering, there is no real right or wrong. There is only change. Our system needs to change but maybe not in the way farmers and big bill industries would like, nor how the FDA would have it regulated. The same way we value teaching history to our children and value debating in college settings is the same way we should value educating ourselves in what goes on with the food we eat. What’s meant to go in our bodies and what doesn’t as the title of consumer reports article suggests “You are what they eat” but can’t we also say “We are what we think?” Knowledge is power; it can build something up or tearing something down. So maybe it’s time to stop believing everyone has your best interests in hand and to start taking action on what you believe is best for you. You are not just an average citizen but the person who buys the meat, the vegetables, the person who keeps the system afloat, the consumer and one of the  billions of decision makers of how our world works.

 

 

John Carino

Writing 205

Food Politics

2/21/15

 

Food plays a vital role in our daily lives. Without it we cannot survive, so shouldn’t it be a priority to make sure that what we eat is safe? Food in America has become industrialized to able to meet the mass needs of consumers across the country. However, as a result of this industrialization emphasis has begun to lean more towards the “industry” than “food” in the food industry. Companies have begun cutting corners to maximize production and profits. As a result of this the quality of the food being produced has changed drastically and many other problems have been caused. While promoting public awareness about issues in the industrial food system is important, beyond just spreading awareness there needs to be a more significant movement to instigate change in the industrial food system and improvements in government regulation of this industry. These changes would include more transparency of food production to consumers and fewer “shortcuts” being taken to save money, for example feeding animals what nature intended for them. These operations would result in a safer public well-being from issues such as food borne illnesses and diseases.

 

One reason that there has not been significant change in the problems caused b the food industry is because of the government’s lack of involvement in making sure these industries are not taking shortcuts. In “You are what they eat” the writer shares “our investigation raises concerns that the federal government isn’t doing enough to protect the feed supply and that as a result, the food we eat may not be as safe as it could be.” (26) Understandably the government is not capable of regulating all food manufacturers at all times because “the FDA can’t blanket the country with inspectors, so it delegates much enforcement responsibility to the states, which conduct 70 percent of feed-company and renderer inspections.” (27) As a result of delegating regulation, the government has lost significant control over the industry. And states are often less likely to take a stand against these industries because of the importance of profits these companies makes and the control these powerful companies may have over the more local governments. These companies have simple goals, “to fatten animals as fast and cheaply as possible.” (26) The problem with this goal and finding loopholes is it compromises the quality and safety of the products they are producing, which therefore puts consumers as risk. These “regulatory loop-holes could allow mad cow infection, if present, to make its way into cattle feed; drugs used in chickens could raise human exposure to arsenic or antibiotic-resistant bacteria; farmed fish could harbor PCBs and dioxins.” (26) The federal government needs to take a stand and instigate more firm regulation, even if it compromises the profits of these companies. The more powerful these companies become the less ability the government will have to make sure the food consumers buy is safe.

Not only is the food consumers buy not always safe, these companies also deceive consumers into thinking what they are buying is often healthier and more nutritious than it actually is. Blake Hurst in “Organic Illusions” shares how two contrasting studies present contradicting results to how nutrious “organic food” really is. Hurst writes “a recent study by a group of scientists at Stanford University found that the nutritional benefits of organic food have, to say the least, been oversold.” (2) The food industry heavily relies on misleading consumers, as a result of this they are able to sell many products at escalated prices. Hurst argues “the organic farming narrative depends upon the belief that conventional farming sacrifices the present for the future, that the chemicals and fertilizers applied by conventional farmers poison the soil, and that this careless use of the unnatural will infect the things we eat and the productivity of our farms and ranches.” (3) However, this argument for the organic food industry is compromised by the studies that find no differences in nutritional value of foods after over half a century of hybrid seeds and 2 decades of genetically modified seeds. This does not necessarily mean there is no difference at all between conventional foods and organic, “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.” (3) It seems one bad quality has been traded for another, yet the food industry has been able to turn our higher profits from organic foods by misleading consumers with lies. Hurst shares “even if a naturally produced pesticide is less toxins than its synthetic counterpart, it may be applied at much higher rates than the comparable manmade chemical.” (7) One way to combat this and other deceptions by the food industry is to make sure industries are not able to hide or mislead consumers. This can be achieved by regulating complete transparencies to the food industry about how the food was produced and what products have been added to the product and the process. This will also require government intervention but also consumers to take a stand.

 

Consumers blindly accept the lies fed to them by the food industry. Marion Nestle writes

“they accept at face value the endlessly intoned mantra of industry and government: the United States has the safest food supply in the world. Whether this assertion is true is a matter of some debate.” (27) The food industry has become more and more powerful and continues to fight and beat the government in every attempt to regulate their processes. Nestle presents that “food producers resist the attempts of government agencies to institute control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures, and major food industries oppose pathogen control measures by every means at their disposal. They lobby Congress and federal agencies, challenge regulations in court, and encourage local obstruction of safety enforcement.” (27-28) It seems difficult that there is any way to overcome such a powerful industry, but it has been done in the past. Look at the decline of the tobacco industry as a precedent. With the joint forces of consumers and the government problems because acknowledged and actions were taken to protect consumers.

In conclusion by creating a more transparent food industry and instigating stricter regulation, the food industry could return to being an industry with the primary purpose of serving the needs and safety of consumers, not just to churn our profits and mass produce products. It will take time effort from much of the population, but it is not an impossible goal.

 

 

 

What goes into a $1 MacDonald’s Big Mac? Well, according to McDonalds’ website, it includes two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a sesame-seed bun. Now let’s look a little closer and focus on just the cheese. Its main ingredients are milk, cream, water, cheese cultures and cheese enzymes. Looks good. The list doesn’t stop there. For creamy, even melting, there is sodium citrate and sodium phosphate in the cheese. For texture and flavor, there’s salt, citric acid, lactic acid, acetic acid, sodium pyrophosphate and natural flavor. For consistent color, there is “color added”. For slice separation, there is soy lecithin and to prevent spoilage, there is sorbic acid. This is all that goes into one tiny slice of American cheese. Let us put aside how over-processed our food has become. The bigger question is, how can all that work culminate in a burger that cost a mere dollar? Is the system actually so streamlined and efficient or are there a multitude of costs that are deliberately hidden from us?

In 2008, the documentary Food Inc shocked the public by revealing what goes into their food. It also exposed the laws and regulations that allow for such horrors to happen. While it seems like food policies are drafted with our interests in mind, it is actually the opposite. Many of the policies protect the food industry instead, placing blinkers on the consumer by deliberately withholding information and creating the illusion of cheap, safe food. Food industries fight almost desperately against any sort of transparency. They fought against calorie information, trans fat, country-of-origin labelling for meats and GMO labelling. Veggie Libel Laws make it against the law to criticize the food industry’s foods. In Colorado, you can actually go to prison for it. The Cheeseburger bills makes it incredibly hard for consumers to sue food producers for enabling obesity. The FDA and the USDA have such a convoluted division of responsibilities yet does not actually have the power to recall food products. The list goes on, but flies under the radar.

All this is enabled by the practice of regulatory capture. Many FDA and USDA officials were former employees of these big food companies that the organization regulates. Monsanto’s former executive Michael R. Taylor is Commissioner of the FDA. Margaret Miller was a chemical laboratory supervisor at Monsanto but her job in the FDA now involves approving reports like those she wrote. This conflict of interest has resulted in heavy subsidies on the fast food industries that feed the big meat and corn industries. A meal at MacDonald’s isn’t actually cheaper than a healthy, home cooked meal. It is heavily subsidized to make it appear so. Policies subsidize the ingredients, the factories and even the workers who put together these cheap burgers. Over half of all fast food workers are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, getting 7 billion dollars of aid. This enables fast food companies to pay minimum wage and further subsidizes their costs. As these atrocities pile up, it creates the illusion that unhealthy fast food is cheaper, tastier and by far more desirable than healthy food and creates a conundrum for the poor whose financial strains denies them the power of choice.

The individual consumer can, of course, influence this. This is where the business oriented system works in the customer’s favor. If there is a demand, there will be a supply. But governmental policies are making it very hard to choose, for those who have a choice. It is not enough to educate the public if we are barraged by attempts to un-educate enabled by the very organizations that are supposed to protect us. Eating better needs to start from the policies, or even by ensuring that food safety laws are really ensuring only that.

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

–

–

–