I recently had the opportunity to watch the documentary “Food, Inc.” for one of my classes, and I was horrified by what I learned. The documentary explains how our food comes to our stores, our restaurants, and onto forks and into our mouths. I recommend the film to everyone so they can make informed decisions about how and what they eat. I came away from it completely disgusted. There was the obvious, visual gut wrenching that comes from seeing how our food is raised, produced, slaughtered, and cultivated, but that wasn’t the most unsettling thing.
The most frightening information I learned was the politics of our food.
The power of interest groups in the food industry is enormous. The documentary makes a case for how our entire food system is based on our ability to produce corn cheaper than the cost of production. That is, farmers actually sell the corn they grow for less than it costs to grow it. They are able to do this because of generous subsidies the government allocates to corn farmers. They do it because the cattle industry requires vast amounts of corn to feed our nation’s cattle, and cheaper corn means cheaper beef, which means less cost to us, the consumers.
Great, right?
Wrong.
I watched the film and saw a scientist with his hand in a live cow’s stomach, pulling out digesting material. I listened as the scientist explained that cows did not evolve to eat corn, that they are grass eaters, and their stomachs have a hard time digesting the corn-based feed they are given. I learned that the stomachs of cows become festering grounds for the E. coli virus, which feasts upon the starch in corn and is immune to the acid lining in cattle’s stomachs. I listened as a mother explained that her 2-year-old son had died from eating a burger infected with the virus.
The point of this article is not to delve into the disgusting aspects of our nation’s food industry; you can watch the film for that. Rather, the point is to explain why it is allowed to continue as it currently is.
And the answer is politics.
When you think of food regulation, two names probably come to mind: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Within the FDA, the branch that oversees food safety is the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
“Food, Inc.” explores how high-level employees of the food industry (specifically Monsanto Food Company) have seats of power on these regulatory commissions. Justification for this trend is that these individuals are experts in their fields, and thus they have the know-how to best deal with regulating their respective industries. This practice is not only seen in the food industry. The energy industry is perhaps the most notorious, with oil executives helping the government define our nation’s energy goals.
This is akin to giving prisoners the ability to guard themselves. After all, they have the best expertise in the field, right? What do you think would happen if prisoners were given this ability? I’ll give you three guesses. If you said they would let themselves go on the first guess, you answered correctly. This is what our food regulatory agencies do.
Take, for example, the amount of inspections the FDA performs. In 1972, it performed more than 50,000 inspections. In 2006, it conducted 9,164. The drop in inspections can be directly correlated with the rise of food industry executives into positions of power within the regulatory agencies.
The current secretary of the USDA is Tom Vilsack, the former governor of the state of Iowa, or the “tall corn state.” Iowa is the nation’s leading producer of corn. How likely do you think it would be for the USDA to examine the negative side effects of corn diets for cattle when its leader hails from the largest corn-producing state in the union? I’ll only give you one guess this time.
It is important for citizens to be concerned with interest and lobbying groups, especially when they influence the food we eat. These groups have overwhelming amounts of power that impact every aspect of our lives, and they are un-elected officials whom we have little direct control over. They elect politicians to power by donating massive amounts of money. They pester members of government with demands every day in Washington, D.C. The only way to change the policies of our food industry is to become informed and make better decisions about what we stick in our mouths. We can put pressure on politicians with votes, but people in charge of regulatory industries and lobbying groups for big food industries will only respond to a decline in sales. This is the difficult part, because their food is cheaper, often times better tasting, and easier to consume. But there are alternatives out there for people who are concerned. Purely grass-fed cattle, organic produce; they are all well-labeled in stores. But big change will only occur when enough people switch over to these safer types of food.
Just think about it.
[email protected]