Do you know what you’re putting into your mouth?
By HARISH MEHTA
DIRECTOR Robert Kenner and co-producer and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser have collaborated to produce a film, Food Inc. The film lifts the veil on the US food industry to reveal a number of alarming facts.
Most of the 10 billion chickens, cattle, pigs, ducks, turkeys, sheep and lamb slaughtered every year in the United States are raised on factory farms in inhumane conditions. The film shows chickens kept in so-called battery cages where they have no room to move. They are fed a diet that makes them full-grown in a month, and as a result the chickens’ legs cannot support their body weight. In the film, chickens are seen lying on the ground and unable to stand because they have grown too quickly. Food giant Tyson declined to be interviewed for the film, and a Tyson farmer refused to show the film crew his chicken farm after Tyson executives paid the farmer a visit.
Bowing to animal welfare concerns, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria have banned battery cages. In America, only the state of California has banned them.
Then there is the problem of pesticides. Even blueberries produced in most American farms contain seven known carcinogens, broccoli contains five, apple juice and bananas have four, and asparagus has three.
There is a related problem: food-borne disease. Cattle is shown standing knee-deep in their own excrement as they are slaughtered still caked in filth, which gets into the meat. This is how E. coli enters the food system. Not surprisingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate 76 million Americans fall ill, 325,000 are hospitalised and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses.
One of the most frequently occurring causes of diarrhoea in the US is camplyobacter, which causes about 2.5 million illnesses and 1,000 deaths each year. Moreover, E. coli O157:H7 and other toxin-producing pathogens cause an estimated 73,000 illnesses and 61 deaths each year. Between 2 and 7 per cent of all such illnesses result in Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), that results in cascading organ failure that can cause its victims to have seizures, strokes and heart attacks.
Ready-to-eat products contain listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium that causes about 2,500 illnesses and 500 deaths each year. Salmonella causes approximately 1.5 million illness and 600 deaths each year.
Instead of improving sanitary conditions at American farms that produce beef, grain and other foods, US food companies prefer to irradiate the food. Meat, grain and other food are exposed to high-energy Gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays that are millions of times more powerful than standard medical X-rays in order to destroy the bacteria (and insects) that reside in the food.
But radiation of food creates substances called ‘unique radiolytic products’ that can cause gene mutations that carry the risk of cancer. At present, irradiated food must be labelled ‘Treated with irradiation’. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed a new rule that would allow irradiated food to be marketed in some cases without any labelling. In some instances, the food could be labelled ‘electronically pasteurised’ or ‘cold pasteurised’, instead of the more accurate ‘irradiated’ label. Many Americans cannot understand why the FDA is taking these measures.
Unconcerned about the risks to human health and with an eye on maximising profits, the American beef industry pumps growth hormones into more than 80 per cent of beef raised in the US each year in order to boost growth rates and increase body weight. Inexplicably, although the US Department of Agriculture does not allow producers to treat chickens or pigs with hormones, the agency does permit cattle and sheep to be given growth hormones. The agency has approved six hormones for use in beef cattle. Two of them, estradiol and zeranol, are known to cause cancer.
A principal argument of Food Inc is that over the past 100 years, the way Americans have produced and processed food has undergone tremendous change. Food production has shifted from family-run farms to large agricultural corporations. The film argues that these problems exist because a handful of companies control the entire American food system, and the top four companies control 80 per cent of the beef market. The film is critical of the lack of regulation of the food producers by the government, and the worrisome prospect that the top regulating agencies are often headed by members of the American food industry, or their associates.
Those who watch it and anyone generally concerned about food products would do well to also ask about their own food sources.
The writer, based in Toronto, specialises in environmental and intellectual property rights issues