The following
are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health,
Disease, and the Environment.
The Fatal Harvest – Industrial
Agriculture Will Feed the World
Around 800 million people go hungry daily, and even in the
United States where we export more food than we consume 33 million people go
without food. The industrial agriculture
corporations want the public believe that this hunger is due to the fact that there
is not enough food produced in the world to supply all its populace. They purport the lies that increased chemical
agriculture will provide for an adequate increase in food surpluses so that
there will no longer be any starving people.
However, in reality, the rate of food production has actually been
adequate for the population and in the last 35 years has actually outpaced the
growth of the worlds population by 16 percent per capita. There is enough food produced throughout the
world to provide for 4.3 pounds of food per person daily: many times more than
necessary. The true cause of starvation
and world hunger is poverty. After large
conglomerates began buying up farm land the people who once depended on this
land for their sustenance no longer had a source of preservation. Many of these people then moved towards the
industrialized cities to fight amongst the masses for low paying wages in
dangerous factories. “If you don’t have
land on which to grow food or the money to buy it, you go hungry no matter how
dramatically technology pushes up food production.” Those who are still able to farm the land
must pay greater costs for the technologically infused seeds and machinery and
end up getting less for their crop than they once would. This price is not however reflected in the
base cost of the consumer due to the large mark-up from the middle man. The large corporations could help the
situation in their local communities by growing staple crops but choose instead
to grow luxury high-profit crops which will fetch a greater amount of money
when exported to the rich.
Industrial Food is
Safe, Healthy, and Nutritious
As the agriculture business becomes more and more
industrialized it seems that the trend is towards food which is less nutritious
and more likely to carry or cause disease.
Much of this change can be directly attributed to the application of
industrial toxic chemicals in agriculture.
The great increase over recent decades of the number of cancer cases,
the cancer epidemic, especially among children, has been directly attributed by
many top scientists to the mass use of pesticides in agriculture. On top of this the meat crop has begun, since
the 1970s, to become greatly tainted.
The use of CAFOs, Confined Animal Feeding Operations, where livestock
are kept in extremely close quarters to one another living in their own and
others filth and having antibiotics pumped into them daily. These antibiotics are only necessary because
of the close proximity to one another and the great amount of waste. These CAFOs quickly spread disease to the
stock and the people who consume the final product. On top of this most of the food which we
consume today is not actually a part of what nature intended for our body. Our supermarkets are stocked with items made
almost entirely of corn, starches, and sugars.
This has cause the Surgeon General of the United States to proclaim that
two in three early deaths is affiliated with this poor modern diet. To attempt to eliminate the disease and toxin
which soak the foods we consume the industry has begun irradiating them before
they reach our shelves. This irradiation
can cause DNA damage thereby causing mutations and deformities in ones
offspring. It also, while temporarily
ridding foods of disease, completely destroys the essential vitamins and
minerals which our foods natural contain and make the food taste and smell
abnormal.
Industrial Food is
Cheap
The industrialists want us to believe that their method of
agriculture is the cheaper for the consumer in the end, while displaying the
proponents of organics as elitists who spend more money than is necessary and
pass the buck on to the consumer. It is
not possible to really see how much industrial food is costing future
generations when one factors in the health, environmental, and social
destruction involved. The health
concerns arise from the health costs which are in the hundreds of billions of
dollars yearly and the more than 300,000 farm hands suffering from pesticide
poisoning yearly. Environmentally the
pesticides and fertilizers and manure from CAFOs pollute the air, water, and
ground. Monocroping and chemical
spraying has destroyed 75 percent of the genetic diversity in agriculture over
just the last century. The end crops are
generally much less apt to resist pests, disease, and bad weather than the
previously diversified fields. Socially
the corporate middlemen profit from what local farmers remain by screwing them
“when selling them seed and when purchasing their crops for processing.” Its been found that as farm size increases,
due to the industrial giants, so does poverty and social conditions
suffer. Mom and pops shut up shop and
the crime rate rises. The dislocation of
farmers and farm towns since World War II is estimated to have cost in the tens
of billions of dollars. The myth that
industrialized food is cheaper than the safer, better, organic alternative is
only due to the fact that these incalculable environmental, health, and social
costs are not included in the price tag.
Industrial Agriculture
is Efficient
The public is led to believe that for farming to be efficient
it must merge with technology as demand increases. When, in actuality, farmers increase in size
the cost of production too increases due to the fact that more area means a
greater amount of machinery, usually larger more expensive machinery, more
chemicals and in larger doses, and more farm hands. Alternative farms and on less acreage often
use less chemicals, cheaper machinery, and antibiotics than the industrial
farms and usually with a similar or greater over crop yield and crop quality.
The productivity claims of the industry have been falsely boosted due to the
fact that they do not take in to account the most beneficial part of small
farms: intercropping. Industry uses the
term yield in their productivity studies which is only the output of a single
crop, and the most efficient method for achieving a high yield is to plant that
single crop throughout the entire farm leaving no stone unturned. Small farms tend toward the planting of
mixtures of crops, intercropping. On
these small scale farms the yield for an individual crop may be much lower per
unit area than that of a large industrial operation, the overall yield when all
crops and livestock are combined will be much greater than that of the
industrial operations. Small farms also
often have a much lower operational cost than that of the large-scale farms and
this figure is often not accounted for in productivity statements.
Industrial Food Offers
More Choices
According to industry reps modern agriculture has reduced the
limitations on choice of food previously encountered due to growing seasons,
plants’ potential growth geography and failed crops. But in reality most of what we consume is
merely the same things well packaged to promote the idea of diversity. Most of the diverse plant life that had been
available for human consumption since the beginning of agriculture have been
eradicated in the last century. There
once were thousands of varieties of apples which we could have enjoyed but now
we are pretty much left with only a choice of two. Nearly every major food crop has been reduced
in diversity in varieties color, size, and flavor due to the monoculture nature
of industrial agriculture. More than 75
percent of agricultural diversity has been lost in the last century alone. The modern food labels which are required by
federal mandate usually do not provide consumers with the information they need
to know: what is in the food and where
it was produced. The government has
never required the use of labels informing consumers of what chemicals have
been used on the foods they purchase or the chemical residues which still may
reside on said food. Almost 60 percent
of today’s processed foods, most of what one can find in the supermarket
contain genetically altered ingredients.
According to the FAO almost 95 percent of the calories we take in on a
daily basis come from only 30 different varieties of plants. This is greatly due to the exclusive deals
massive distributors make with the food producers and then pass on to the
consumers. The only way to avoid this
great injustice in ecological diversity is to purchase from known local, small
scale farms, though these may often require much work in finding.
Industrial Agriculture
Benefits the Environment and Wildlife
The industry continues to report that their studies show
great ecological risks with the use of organic and other environmentally
sustainable practices. They continue to
say that the greatest challenge to agriculture is to continue the increased
production of food stuffs using genetic engineering of crops. They continue the lie by stating that
hundreds of thousands of species will suffer from the organic methodology. In reality, alternative farming keeps the
effects on the ecosystem’s plants and animals at a minimum as well as reduced
effect on the air, water, and ground without the need for additional
capital. According to Kimbrell,
industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth’s
biodiversity. This he says is due to the devastation of wild species from
pesticides and fertilizers and the destruction of their natural habitats due to
the industry’s inefficient farming methods.
There are at least fifty different studies which indicate pesticides as
having a great detrimental affect on bird, mammal, and amphibian species across
North America. The chemical fertilizers
which make their way down the streams to the major estuaries cause aquatic and
marine life to suffer greatly. And the
high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus which these fertilizers contain offset
the balance of the waters allowing for a few species to push all the rest out
of the area, while also reducing the diversity of plant species surrounding the
farmlands. The industry has also greatly
reduced the diversity of wildlife populations by changing their natural
habitats for farming, thereby displacing them and often replacing them with
non-native species. The solution is
diversified farming techniques. The use
of varieties of plants, flowers, and weeds allows for many different species to
continue to live in harmony with one another.
Biotechnology will
Solve the Problems of Industrial Agriculture
Industry wants us to believe that progress can only be made
through the proliferation of technology.
Though we can see the mistakes of the past: nuclear technology, applied
to our food during the irradiation process, creates much waste, costs of
clean-up, and constant threat to human and environmental safety. They believe that the solution to these
problems created by past technological advances is the proliferation of more
technology. The industry backs up these
statements with claims that new technology can help solve the problem of world
hunger. However, people are not hungry
because there is not enough food and there are no signs that genetically
engineered foods actually increase crop outputs. People are not hungry because there is a
shortage of food, they are hungry because the surplus of food is being
distributed to the more wealthy populations instead of the more needy
ones. There are currently two main types
of biotechnology created seeds: the type that are resistant to much greater
amounts of herbicide use and those that are supposedly more resistant to
pests. Research has shown though that
these seeds do not actually increase the yields of these crops in comparison
with a non genetically engineered crop.
So really farmers are being forced to purchase a more expensive seed
which will not produce in benefits for the price. Some of these seeds are even designed to
become sterile after one or two generations meaning that the farmer cannot
merely reuse the seeds put off by the first crop like has been the practice for
thousands of years. These GE seeds have
the potential to cross with non-GE seeds thereby rendering entire populaces
without the ability to grow crop without the purchase of new seeds. There has
also been no visible sign of the reduction of pesticide use in GE crops and
pests could actually become resistant to the current ones rendering them
useless.
The following
are responses and summaries of various readings related to Human Health,
Disease, and the Environment.
Industrial animal
agriculture – the next global health crisis?
Copious amounts of animals often find themselves locked into
small areas sharing the space with theirs and others own waste. These types of systems are being eradicated
in some parts of the world, specifically nations a part of the European Union,
but are also at the same time becoming dominant in other developing parts of
the world. These animals could however
be kept inside in a more humane manner without the potential of damaging the
environment. These industrial farming methods
are similar to the production line of many factories. They are meant to maximize the amount of
animal product produced while keeping the costs to the industry at a
minimum. These farms are often located
near or within some of the world’s fastest growing and densely populated
cities. This makes great danger of the
many potential consequences on the health of its communities. With the advent and widespread use of
automated slaughter practices and industrial feedlots as a means for raising
cattle the amount of contaminated beef in the world continues to rise. The speed of these slaughter lines can often
produce the spillage of fecal matter and when this fecal matter comes in to
contact with the meat product it is thereafter contaminated, often times with
E. Coli 157, a dangerous food borne illness. Poultry growers on occasion reuse
the litter of their large chicken grow houses in order to save money, the
result being the greater spread of the Camplyobacter. These farms also can easily contaminate
nearby waters and ground with the Salmonella bacteria which causes fever and
diarrhea in humans. Alternative methods to these systems include the use of
free-range growth: anywhere that the animals have more space and less
antibiotics. Indoor systems are also
possible as long as we stray from the prisons which are currently the popular
method.
E Coli Loophole
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors,
speaking anonymously, there is a greatly dangerous loophole in the USDA’s
policy on infected beef. Beef infected
with the E Coli bacteria is allowed to still be processed and sold as long as
it is labeled “cook only” because the E Coli bacteria is destroyed at
temperatures of 160 degrees F and higher making it safe to eat according to the
USDA. Any plant found to contain infected
meat must have its entire line thereafter classified as cook only until it is
found to be clean. According to the
inspectors this loophole affects millions of pounds of beef every year. Companies try their best to avoid using the
cook only sticker because it greatly reduces the amount of money they will
receive compared to a shipment of non tagged beef. Over 3 million pounds of
this cook only beef arrives as a part of the national school lunch program
though often times the personnel preparing the meals for children are
completely unaware that they are very likely dealing with infected meat. The majority of the meat labeled as cook only
is found in processed foods, often frozen pre-cooked foods because these companies
make much more money on the sale of the premade foods than on the sale of the
potentially contaminated meat. The
result of this loophole is an increase in human infections and oftentimes huge
recalls of beef shipments sometimes costing the companies their existence in
the market.
Mercury in Tuna Fish
Mercury put off by industry finds its way in to the
atmosphere and eventually into the oceans.
Marine bacteria then feasts on these mercury laden particles, which are
then devoured by plankton and similar species, then little fish, tuna and the
like. Most canned tuna has safe amounts
of mercury contained within but on occasion a high level of mercury does sneak
in. The consumption of tuna steak or
other large game such as shark contains much greater amounts of mercury. Mercury poisoning can lead to decreased
intelligence and deformities. Unborn
fetuses are at most risk for poisoning via their mother’s consumption of fish
life. Mercury experts have attempted to
get legislation passed on multiple occasions which would inform the consumer of
the dangers of mercury poisoning, especially in pregnant women, however the
tuna lobbyists have continually stopped the bills in congress.
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