Natural Home : What's on Your Table

'We now eat food grown by unnatural processes which make use of a host of chemical substances: hormones, antibiotics, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides - of which residues are to be found in nearly all the food commercially available today.' Edward Goldsmith, The Ecologist, Vol 30 No 7, October 2000

What's for Dinner?

A question asked by over 30 million people in Canada every day. As consumers in the "global market", we often look for the best buys in food, with little thought to true nutrition, environmental or social costs of what we purchase.

Agriculture is business - BIG Business! Agribusiness, the global food and fiber system, accounts for nearly twenty percent of the U.S. economy and employs nearly one-fifth of the work force. The rapid expansion of international trade in food has lower food costs and provided a great variety of foods to choose from, but it also has an adverse affect on the quality of our food, our environment and our farming communities.

 

Factory Farms:

Livestock farming has changed dramatically in recent years. The industrialization of livestock farming - the growth of large-scale producers at the expense of small family farms - is reducing the diversity of our plants and animals, endangering wildlife and causing untold animal suffering. The toll on humans is a story which is still unfolding.

Liquid Manure Lagoons

Canadian livestock produced approximately 164 billion kilograms of manure in 2001. This amount of manure would fill Toronto's SkyDome stadium 103 times per year, almost twice per week; 5,000 sow produce as much liquid manure as a city of 40,000 people, without the sewage treatment systems required of municipalities; The Veterinary Drugs Directorate of Health Canada is researching the use of antibiotics in Canadian factory farms. We don't know how much is being prescribed for disease treatment versus for growth promotion or disease prevention. Antibiotic residues in meat can cause allergic reactions and may lead to antibiotic resistant bacteria in the human gut.

It is difficult to determine the actual number of animals being reared in intensive livestock operations (ILO) because there is no unifying federal definitions and there are few directly comparable definitions of ILOs in Canadian provinces. Each province defines its own legislation and regulations. And while the permit and siting processes for livestock operations and manure storage are regulated by the provinces, they are enforced by the municipalities. Canadian provinces have legislation that requires building permits for large farms, but these permits rarely require environmental studies (excluding Alberta and Quebec).

The Canadian Medical Association has asked governments for a moratorium on the expansion of industrial hog production until scientific data on the attendant health risks are known. Air pollution from hog mega-barns contains more than 150 chemicals which can effect human health, causing nausea, headaches, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, and respiratory problems.

Farms Disappearing

Since 1941, two thirds of Canada's farms have disappeared through consolidation. While the number of farms continues to drop, the scale of production is rising - the production of cattle and pigs in Canada has doubled since 1941. In the US, since 1969, more than 800,000 farms have disappeared from the American landscape, as large corporate operations consumed smaller family-owned farms.

Control over how our food is produced is in the hands of a handful of multinational corporations. Corporations that own factory farms are increasingly powerful, politically connected and globalized. They often own or control the entire process - from the raising of animals to processing and distribution.

Moreover, the industry is becoming more consolidated with biotech companies owning seed and chemical businesses and a handful of companies controlling a majority of seeds and food brands.

Agribusiness Myth

When these corporations and policy makers are questioned on the dubious practices surrounding monocultural practices the answers are carefully crafted soundbits about modern food production, efficiency, cheap food and combating world hunger.

Any claim that world hunger is caused by a lack of food is simply a self-serving agribusiness myth. 1.2 billion people in the world live on less than 1 dollar a day. The truth is world hunger is not created by lack of food but rather by abject poverty.

Nearly 800 million people go hungry each day. 200 million of them are children. In the United States, the world's number one exporter of food, 33 million people are among the world's hungry. And who is hungry in Canada? Close to 800,000 people turn to a food bank for emergency food supplies every month. Seniors account for 6.4% of food bank users, children 40%, and lone mothers 31%. The problem is not food production, it's poverty.

If we care about our health, our family's well being, the environment and our farming communities, then we need to become better consumers and choose our groceries with more care.

 

Sustainable Agriculture

In a society where three per cent of the population produces food and 97 percent are consumers, many decisions and actions which ultimately affect the sustainablility of agriculture are made external to farms. Even the continuation of the next generation of the family in farming is affected by economics, political and social forces beyond the line fences.

Farmers must be assured of a standard of living and security comparable to other sectors of society or food will be increasingly produced by corporate farms for the global marketplace. Consumers will have less control over and knowledge about quality standards, environmental impacts and labour practices involved in food production as witnessed in many communities where factory farms have already been established.

It is vital we develop local food systems where producers can move toward providing local needs and consumers choose local products.

Farmers must also develop sustainable alternatives and work together to develop a collective vision - a vision based on farming practices that respect the environment, other farmers, communities, consumers and future generations. However, agriculture can only become truly sustainable, within the context of a sustainable society.

Government is both a facilitator and a barrier to the development of sustainable agriculture. Accountable government agencies are essential to protect production and marketing standards and must stop providing incentives for unsustainable practices which discourage the development of alternatives.

 

OP