ecoyear

On vacation this last week I picked up two books on food. The first was "Food, Inc". Reading it (I have not seen the movie) I discovered that another dimension of food I had not really been paying attention to, is the question of labor issues. Too much food is picked by hand by overworked undocumented people, some of whom die of overheating because they are not allowed to have water to drink in the fields during the daylong picking in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. There is a law of course, but up to 30% of farms this law applies to were found in violation.

The second book is Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newman's "A Nation of Farmers". I have only started reading it, but already I am confronted by issues I had never considered. Slavery, for example. Though it has  been abolished in the US, supposedly (though cases turn up every year, and over 100 reported cases are investigated every year!!), the United Nations estimates that worldwide, 100's of millions are either outright slaves, child laborers or prostitutes. Then there's the people who work under very bad conditions, the children forced to go to war, and so on and so forth. How does this connect to us? It's a long supply chain, to be sure, but we use oil from Nigeria, coltan from the Congo, palm oil from Indonesia, knick knacks from all over, and rarely wonder why things are just so affordable at Wal-Mart.

I find myself very sobered. Really. I had weeds for lunch. There, I thought. Vitamins and minerals have not been bred out of them. I picked them myself. They volunteered in my community garden plot. So much else is just so objectionable, I thought I would make a list:

Fish - can't eat that, as ocean fisheries are depleted, and farmed fish is full of chemicals. I don't know where to get politically correct and chemically safe fish, and I'm not even trying anymore.

Meat - you know the problems of course, factory farms, methane, water overuse. Can't eat that.

Milk products - sort of go along with meat. If you can find pastured, grass-fed cows, you will be stuck either drinking the pasteurized homogenized version, probably safe but who knows, or the raw version which may have germs. I use raw milk and figure that each week that we don't get sick from it, we are ahead, racking up omega-3's without further destroying ocean life.

Eggs - my favorite protein. Most people (including me) do not have access to eggs from free-range chickens that actually eat a normal chicken diet. Normal chickens should be eating a variety of greens and bugs in addition to grain, and should also not be bred for those enormous breasts. Animals bred for our modern convenience have lost much of their nutritious value in favor of sheer bulk. We really should not eat eggs from chickens fed cow parts. Not the way cows are these days anyways.

Beans - that's good protein, but which ones will you eat? Who picked them? Are they organic? What did they mean by organic? The chemicals used in much farming are not safe. Food safety unfortunately has been delegated to the FDA, which operates by cost-benefit analysis. Any pesticide that benefits farmers more than it costs consumers is a go. If pesticides and fertilizers had been the province of OSHA (occupational health and safety), then there would be no analysis. Any adverse health effect at all would cause a ban. Well I am glad to report that my beans are doing well. I should have a meal out of them (planted two three foot rows) - more next year!

Vegetables - so dear to my heart. A report in Mother Earth News revealed that 21st century varieties actually contain much fewer vitamins and minerals. I plant open-pollinated heirloom varieties of course, but I am far from feeding my family! I try to buy the rest local. I could find out what the work conditions are at the farms around here. I remember the CSA I had in California used to boast that a family from Latin America lived at the farm and had been working for them for a decade. They made a point to tell us how important the year round CSA was providing employment for this family, who therefore could school their children properly, and feel a sense of stability and caring for the farm they worked on. Ultimately, there are products for which price indicates what you pay for. Does that supermarket organic tomato seem cheaper than what you get at the market? Maybe it's not economy of scale. Maybe it's not that the market farmers are trying to get away with prices no normal person should have to pay. Maybe it's the opposite. It's the supermarket and their supplier trying to get away with mistreating their labor and taking shortcuts with the land. Not only that, but supermarkets are not your mother. They don't care what sort of health you are (or will be) in. They are simply there to maximize profit from selling stuff you ingest. Buyer beware!!

Maybe people who care about what impact they have should pay a lot more for food. We need to know who suffered and what died in order for us to live the way we are living. And we must demand that our food be safe. Germ-free is only one small part of safe. The vast majority of food should be health-enhancing. What's the point, otherwise?

As a family physician, for 20 years, I frequently thought about the Hippocratic principle "do NO harm". Maybe that is why this issue riles me up so much. Granted, much has to die for me to eat. But I resent the 99% on top of that reality - destruction of the land, extinction of species, poisoning my own body, and cruel working conditions for the fellow humans who personally picked my strawberries.

Read "Food, Inc" at least. It's an easy read. They have gone to great pains to make sure every single one of their statements was based in fact. Then you can add your rant to mine.