The real food scare
Most of us seem to care about what we stuff into our gobs.
Fast-food joints offer nutrition analysis on their Web sites, or
even on posters and brochures in the restaurants. Supermarkets
routinely post where produce comes from. Health Departments often
post results of restaurant inspections. Kosher, organic,
natural
– it’s all on the label.
The real food scare
Most of us seem to care about what we stuff into our gobs.
Fast-food joints offer nutrition analysis on their Web sites, or even on posters and brochures in the restaurants. Supermarkets routinely post where produce comes from. Health Departments often post results of restaurant inspections. Kosher, organic, natural – it’s all on the label.
Our food has never been studied more, never been safer to eat. And that’s probably the reason for the recent panic over a relative handful of people getting sick from eating spinach. Go ahead. Eat your spinach. It’s good for you.
But clearly, people want to know their food is safe, where it came from, how it was grown. They want the whole pedigree. Most of the time, they get it. But there’s one area in which the industry remains mum: genetically modified food.
A group called Project Censored earlier this week released its list of the top 25 stories of the year that you probably never read. Calling the stories censored is a little hyperbolic. For one reason or another – sometimes competing news events – these stories did not get news editors’ attention. Thus, you did not get the story.
But in Europe, where GMO foods are looked at with a considerably more jaundiced eye, two leading dailies – Le Monde of Paris and the British Independent newspaper – earlier this year carried stories indicating that genetically modified foods may damage human health. The studies that led to the news stories were released as the World Trade Organization moved toward upholding a ruling that held that the European Union violated international trade rules by stopping importation of frankenfoods into the EU. Ultimately, the WTO did rule in May that the European ban did represent a breech of international trade rules.
The stories reported that Monsanto, a major player in the rush to create new food characteristics in laboratories, conducted a study showing “statistically significant” differences in kidneys and blood in rats fed GM corn as opposed to control groups eating good, old fashioned corn.
The Russian Academy of Sciences reported last December that more than half the offspring of rats on GM diets died within the first three weeks of life, a mortality rate six times that of rats eating conventional foods.
But hit the aisles of your local supermarket and look for a label that reads, “Golden Corn Oil – new and improved with genetically manipulated corn!” It’s not there. While many in the industry have come to believe that GM foods are the way of the future, consumers have not bought the same program. Given the choice, consumers would shun the product.
Do we really need crops that grow under black light when they need water? What happens to the bugs we want more of when we breed crops that are toxic to those we don’t like to have around?
I had a conversation about food production this week with a local cattleman who manages a large feeding operation.
His guiding principle is simple enough: don’t produce what you didn’t eat, and be honest with people about how their food reached the plate.
That’s an approach I can sink my teeth into.
