food for thought

"About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States were routinely fed livestock wastes--the rendered remains of dead sheep and dead cattle--until August of 1997. They were also fed millions of dead cats and dead dogs every year, purchased from animal shelters. The FDA banned such practices after evidence from Great Britain suggested that they were responsible for a widespread outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as "mad cow disease." Nevertheless, current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and dead horses to be rendered in cattle feed, along with dead poultry. The regulations not only allow cattle to be fed dead poultry, they allow poultry to be fed dead cattle...[and] cattle blood is still put into the feed given to American cattle... The waste products from poultry plants, including the sawdust and old newspapers used as litter, are also being fed to cattle. A study published in Preventive Medicine notes that in Arkansas alone, about 3 millions pounds of chicken manure were fed to cattle in 1994."

"A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with coccus aureus, and 53.3 percent were contaminated with Clostridium perfringens. All of these pathogens can make people sick; food poisoning caused by Listeria generally requires hospitalization and proves fatal in about one out of every five cases. In the USDA study 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms...behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat."

That's Eric Schlosser discussing industrial cattle farming and processing practices in his book Fast Food Nation. Having just finished Schlosser's exposition, I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts on the last thematic portion of my summer reading: the contemporary industrial agriculture and food systems. After reading Jane Goodall's introductory, yet illuminating Harvest for Hope and seeing the film Food Inc, I wanted to spend some of my free time this summer investigating the subject further. So, to look deeper, I read Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and finally, this week, Fast Food Nation. To compliment my reading, I watched some documentaries, which I highly recommend viewing (perhaps before your next meal), including: The Future of Food, The World According to Monsanto, and Flow. (check netflix, blockbuster.com, or amazon.com) Together, these analyses broach a range of important ethical, environmental, political, and health questions that should not be neglected.

I've decided to finish this post with a couple of suggestive statistics proffered by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser:

"A hallmark of the Western diet is food that is fast, cheap, and easy. Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food; they also spend less than a half hour a day preparing meals and little more than an hour enjoying them."

"About 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food."

"Obesity is now second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in the United States. The annual health care costs in the United States stemming from obesity now approach $240 billion; on top of that Americans spend more than $33 billion on various weight-loss schemes and diet products."

"Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income."

With these in mind, Pollan's asseveration that "food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize" demands consideration.

(thanks for the great title suggestion Danie)