Wake up, America, your food may kill you!

I rented "Food Inc." from Netflix and watched it last night. Every American should view this film! Or at least look at the trailer: www.foodincmovie.com/ and read the info on their website, in order to understand the travesty of industrial farming. The material covered by the film is supported by information from my Food Safety class and from our guest lecturer--a Santa Barbara Health Inspector. A brief list of some things I've learned between class and the film:

1. feed lot cattle are fed corn because it is cheap, but their stomachs are designed for grass; corn feed causes ecoli to proliferate leading to 71,000 illness and around 60 deaths per year, mostly of children under 15
2. feed lot cattle stand in fecal material and are coated with it when they go to the slaughterhouse where they are butchered without being cleansed, meaning the fecal matter is mixed with the meat
3.  scrap pieces of flesh are ground up and soaked in ammonia to kill pathogens, then pressed into meat filler called "pink slime" which goes into 75% of ground beef (read the NY Times article, including how the USDA allows 15% of this sludge in school lunch meat)
4. agricultural and chicken farmers have become serfs to the multinational corporations who can put out of business any farmers that don't want to use the inhumane livestock practices or use the pesticide and fertilizer dependent seed
5. there is no such thing as a "24 hour flu" or "48 hour flu", influenza is a 7-10 day illness, the others are due to food borne illness--what we used to call food poisoning. The Center for Disease Control says 76 million illness a year are due to food contamination with 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths
6. the FDA, which is supposed to safeguard our health, has been populated by former Monsanto executives and lobbyists--in both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Monsanto has created a monopoly in seed where the farmer cannot save seed from one year to the next without facing a lawsuit. Plus genetically modified crops are fertilizing nearby acreage, meaning we are all facing eating genetically modified food without knowing what the long term effects will be.
7. We can change things! I think the answer is to eat organic, eat local, eat humanely raised meat (Fox News video on difference between corn fed and grass fed), poultry (website on chicken farming) and eggs--or even better--eat vegetarian food. But, make up your own mind--just be informed in your choice by taking a look at what's happening to our food supply. Ignorance might be bliss in some instances, but not when ignorance can kill you or your kids.

(View Anderson Cooper's interview on CNN with the director of Food Inc.)

In case you think that I'm being unduly harsh with US food production practices, I want to point out that in general the US is far safer than many other countries, including China. You have probably read the headlines about thousands of US pets dying from contamination in pet food imported from China, thousands of babies and children in China poisoned by melamine in milk products and dangerous antibiotics and pesticide in seafood and farmed fish imported from China. If you haven't read the headlines and haven't avoided Chinese food products, you might want to read what the Washington Post article by Rick Weiss has to say, including: "For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry. Juices and fruits rejected as 'filthy.' Prunes tinted with chemical dyes not approved for human consumption. Frozen breaded shrimp preserved with nitrofuran, an antibacterial that can cause cancer. Swordfish rejected as 'poisonous.'" or the summary of the FDA report from 2009 which includes:"[problems with Chinese imports] 'filth', unsafe additives, inadequate labeling, and lack of proper manufacturer registrations—are typically introduced during food processing and handling. Another of the most common problems—potentially harmful veterinary drug residues in farm-raised fish and shrimp—is introduced at the farm." or from the full version of the FDA report: "Chinese authorities seek to control the safety of food exports by certifying exporters and the farms that supply them. [but] Certified exporters constitute a small fraction of China’s food industry. Most of China’s 200 million farms and food companies are, in theory, excluded from export supply chains." (Full version and summary found at this FDA link) Another informative article is a report on the last 10 years of problems from CNN and from WorldWatch on environmental pollution in China. For the opposing viewpoint, read the rebuttal to the New York Time's article on ammonia-treated beef by the producer Beef Products Inc.