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Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - December 8 2003
Fresh isn't best as far as Uncle Sam is
concerned
An anonymous web poet describes fear as tasting like oil mixed
with steel wool and topped with nails and tacks. But for increasing
numbers of Americans fear tastes like fresh fruit and vegetables.
Three weeks ago, the country was taken up with a media frenzy over
an outbreak of hepatitis A contracted from fresh scallions imported
from a small farm in Mexico.
Experts stepped in to say that fresh produce caused more illness
than beef, fish, eggs and poultry combined. Others talked of the
vulnerability of the fresh-food chain to terrorist attack.
In response, restaurants across the country say their customers
are now asking for dishes that contain only processed, canned or
frozen vegetables. Sales of fruit have also been affected.
As an outsider it is fascinating to watch the development of this
trend. It's almost as if the American people are being subtly conditioned
not only to fear things foreign but also natural, fresh foods.
But then with the 2002 Bioterrorism Act taking effect on Friday,
it seems strangely timely. The act will restrict or even end the
import of all manner of fresh foods from a range of countries, including
New Zealand.
After the scallion outbreak, the sanitation of foreign farms, was
called into question. "I think it's coming from overseas," said
a Dr Morris, from the University of Maryland, in the New York Times.
A Dr Doyle, a microbiologist, said there was greater potential for
contamination of foods grown in developing countries.
Certainly, the sanitation cry is an old one. It's been the justification
for the destruction of small sustainable farming in favour of the
large-scale corporate model of food production.
In his 1996 book The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry describes
in his usual eloquent manner how germs that used to be in our food
have been replaced by poisons.
Take the industrialised pork industry. Half a century of selective
breeding and chemical enhancing has created a biochemical chain
reaction that turns more than 15 per cent of US pork into sweating
pale cuts that ooze liquid in the packaging, becoming lethal when
cooked.
Or the belief that the factory-farmed cows, growing big on chemical
cocktails in record time without ever seeing a blade of grass, let
alone sunlight, are harbouring mad cow disease.
Activist group Farm Sanctuary says the reason the disease has not
been found in cows is because Americans are eating the evidence.
A report prepared by the Government Accountability Project would
seem to concur. Shielding the Giant: US Department of Agriculture's
Don't Look, Don't Know Policy for Beef Inspection reveals how grossly
contaminated meat is routinely passed fit for human consumption.
The report goes on to reveal how laws are being twisted to shield
food giants while bullying small, family-run farms.
Not that you will find any scallion-style coverage of this in the
mainstream media. But when you have to protect a huge industry based
around agribusiness, with its 4.5 million kilograms of excrement
discharged into unprotected waterways each year, billions of kilograms
of agricultural pesticides, drugs, and chemicals contaminating food
and water, it's no wonder that industry wants to shift media attention
on to the evils of scallions and other fresh, sustainably grown
fruit and vegetables.
In his book, Berry describes the ecological and agriculture crisis
in America in great detail. He argues that this kind of agriculture
grows out of the worst of human history and the worst of human nature
and calls it a crisis of character and culture.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Many successful small farming
models exist across the US, including farmers' markets, community-supported
agriculture systems and local U-Pick-It farm programmes.
There are organisations setting up local and regional food-supply
systems and groups pushing local governments to set aside food security
zones, where small-scale, community-based farmers will grow or raise
food that can be directly marketed to the nearby suburbs and city
centres.
The sad thing is these are all fringe activities. In the seven
years since Berry's book, things have become even worse.
Factory farms, supported by legislation, continue to wipe out small
sustainable farms. Mechanised oil-dependent agriculture and food
production is almost exclusively centralised in the hands of a few
companies. In this environment, animals have become no more than
units of consumable food, people are losing the knowledge of where
and how their food came to be, the idea of a food chain is becoming
obsolete, and the disconnection between what we eat and who we are
continues to grow.
Ultimately, with that age-old mix of sun, soil, rain, grass and
husbandry supplanted with pharmaceutically controlled factory-farming,
the natural increasingly comes to represent the unknowable and,
therefore, the uncontrollable.
It is this that is the true taste of fear. Fresh, American or
otherwise.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
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