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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm Media Watching
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire 03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium High Crimes?
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda 03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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ISSUES ANALYSIS:Fixing Our Broken Food SystemLast year, the United States imported about $10 billion more in food, feed and beverages than it exported.
The recent discovery of an industrial chemical in animal feed and pet food imported from China has added to the mounting criticism of U.S. food safety agencies. But this case represents much more than simply governmental incompetence. It exposes the inherent weaknesses of an industrial global food system designed to benefit multinational agribusiness companies at the expense of public health.
Our food system's increasing dependence on imports is no accident. Import dependency is a defining characteristic of an industrial food model driven by U.S. farm and trade policies over the last half century on behalf of agribusiness. U.S. farm policy has encouraged the mass production of only a few cheap crops largely used as food ingredients, animal feed and exports. U.S. trade policy has aggressively pushed for the removal of trade barriers, paving the way for the global food trade.
Some chicken grown in the United States actually is sent to China to be processed and then re-exported back the United States.
Missing from this industrial model is a national priority to produce healthy food to feed Americans. For example, most rural Midwest supermarkets, surrounded by farms, import nearly all their food from elsewhere in the country and around the world. Taken to an extreme, some chicken grown in the United States actually is sent to China to be processed and then re-exported back the United States!We have built a system of production and trade that treats food the same as computer parts. Cracks in this system manifest themselves in different ways, including the loss of family farms in the United States and worldwide, declining soil and water quality, and a rise in food-related health problems including obesity. But food safety dangers get most of the headlines, because these can be quickly fatal. The tainted animal feed case is a stark example of these vulnerabilities. Feed contamination in China found its way to the United States food supply through hogs in at least six states and at least 2.5 million chickens. Within the United States, food contamination incidents on one farm or processing plant have hit large parts of the country. E. coli-tainted spinach from a California farm affected people coast to coast, killing three and sickening nearly 200. Salmonella-contaminated peanut butter from a Georgia ConAgra plant sickened at least 329 people in 41 states. These breakdowns were accidental, but what about intentional contamination of food? As Tommy Thompson, former director of the Department of Health and Human Services, said in 2004, "I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do."
A more decentralized food system that supports local production and consumption would greatly limit the impact of broad-scale contamination. In the near term, we must boost the number of food safety inspectors, employ cutting-edge inspection technology, and strengthen oversight to rely less on industry self-regulation. But systemic changes are just as badly needed. A more decentralized food system that supports local production and consumption would greatly limit the impact of broad-scale contamination. Quite simply, we should set policy priorities to produce more of our own food, both nationally and regionally.Consumers already endorse this approach. Locally grown products can be found on more and more store shelves. The number of farmers' markets around the country has skyrocketed. And many mainstream supermarkets are taking steps on their own to give consumers more information about where their food comes from. Congress is writing a new Farm Bill. It's an opportunity to accelerate the transition toward a more locally based food system by funding greater crop diversification, incentives for local purchasing in schools and other government institutions, and full implementation of country-of-origin labeling in 2008. It's time to put the public's interest ahead of agribusiness in setting our nation's food policy. Jim Harkness is the president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. IATP, based in Minneapolis, is a policy research center committed to creating environmentally and economically sustainable rural communities and regions through sound agriculture and trade policy.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on June 1, 2007. |
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