Posts filed under 'SPECIAL SERIES'
May 13th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The United States has seen the chickens coming home to roost regarding the consequences of a globalized and industrialized food supply. The issue arose in relationship to animal feed. It started with a recall of dog and cat food because it contained a toxic mix of additives (melamine and cyanuric acid) which resulted in the illness and death of thousands of family pets across the country. It then spread to contamination of hog and chicken food as (apparently) both the recalled pet food, and the same adulterants in other feed, was shipped across the country. Then it spread to feed for farmed and nursery fish.
Along the way, we have discovered several alarming facts:
- that the FDA only inspects 1% of the food and food ingredients that enter the United States;
- that there is no way of tracking imported food ingredients;
- that there is no centralized reporting system for illness and disease in “pets.”
We have also “discovered” a problem with is also making its way from China to the U.S.
It seems like once one starts pulling on a loose thread that the entire garment starts to unravel.
When it comes to the food supply, we have already seen the beginning of the breakdown. Industrializing and corporatizing does not work well with food. What is efficient and profitable may introduce long term risks leading to collapse. We have seen this with “mad cow” disease which is linked to the industrial feeding practices where cattle (herbivores) being fed like pigs (omnivores). While regulations have been put in place, “downed” cattle are still regularly slaughtered, and very few are tested.
We have seen it with the mass centralization of food processing and distribution which has brought repeated nation-wide e-coli and salmonella outbreaks. We saw it with the StarLink corn fiasco. We are likely to see massive crop failures from our cloned crop approach to food production. We have had multiple warnings, but have continued as if these issues are “flukes.”
The most recent issue that resulted in the massive recall of pet food has uncovered both the problems of industrialized food supply, and a globalized one. Terry Allen, had a nice detailing of the industrialization issues in his article “Poisoning Pets with Industrial Food.” He discusses the issue of pet food as the last repository of food stuffs that have failed human consumption; the inclusion of deceased pets within the “mix;” the lack of controls; and the concentration of production into a handful of facilities. However, what became clear as the toxic food spread from dog and cat food, to pigs and then chickens, was that pet food was not the final destination of the toxic garbage of an industrialized food system - livestock was. Yes, recalled and outdated pet food is directly channeled into the livestock food supply.
Some might say “So what? They don’t live long enough to get hurt.” Perhaps and perhaps not. If the adulterated, “efficient,” “cost effective,” “food” we give these creatures then poisons humans (and other animals for which these may become “food”) then whether they suffer or not is a separate - though not unimportant- issue. (I know that the majority of these creatures are already suffering from the conditions of industrialized agriculture, but that is another issue for another day.) What this points to is the circle of life, and ultimately that circle has been concentrated to an obscene level in the United States.
The other issue that has come glaringly to light is the problem of a globalized food supply. The controls on global agriculture are (deliberately) woefully lacking. There are innumerable issues with globalization, and globalized agriculture, but I am not going to take in that wide sweep. An excellent discussion of the global agricultural issue is the International Forum on Globalization’s 2007 sixty-eight page (pdf) report “The Rise and Predictable Fall of Globalized Industrial Agriculture.” At the heart of the failure seen in the pet food recall is the World Trade Organization and the international agreements that it governs and enforces. [Namely, GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), The AoA (Agreement on Agriculture), Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS), and to some extent the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS).]
As it came to light that the FDA seemed woefully under staffed to address the massive amount of food and food ingredients imported into the country, one had to ask “Why?” Was this just another case of gutting the government protections by corporate interests? Was this another example of corporate cronyism within a critical government agency? In part, the answer to these questions is “yes.” But the bigger issue is the impacts of the agreements that form the infrastructure of globalization.
Under these agreements, the global food supply is under the control of industry-set standards which makes up the Codex. These standards are low to say the least. However, also at issue are “equal treatment” clauses in various agreements which state that international products (and companies) must be treated as equal to national products. Therefore, imported food stuffs - whether grain products from China or sheep with chemical contamination from New Zealand - cannot be inspected for contamination that would not be monitored in the U.S.
I know this sounds crazy, but (as I understand it) melamine is banned from food production in the US, and so it is not generally monitored by inspectors. Therefore, grains from China (or anywhere else) would not be checked. Further, imported products are subject to the SPS agreement and standards set by industry - not by nations. Therefore national food safety standards are trumped by international standards set by industry and enforced through the World Trade Organization.
As the cries of “food security” are now raised, it is years too late to address the issue. Just as it was years too late to address “national security” issues related to ownership of the ports of the United States - ports whose ownership had long since passed from US to corporate and international hands - facilitated by the same agreements run through the WTO.
At the heart of the issue in the United States is the worms that were seeded into the agreements and the WTO. Worms that politicians knew they were there. However, the public was not informed, and as issues arose they would never effect the U.S. In other words, it is yet another example of greed combined with U.S. exceptionalism. The global issues, from the exploitation of global resources and people, to the overthrow of governments, to the “free trade” agreements has been one drum beat - U.S. interests. Over the decades those interests have been increasingly a hegemonic capitalism, in corporatized control. Meanwhile, the people of the United States have been drugged into complacency, and sometimes mobilized to actively support those interests (i.e. the “war on terrorism”).
The problems are the problems of “other” nations, just as the issues associated with the failures of people in poverty in the 1960s, have crept up the economic ladder as the draining of the national reserve and will nears empty. Well, “we” are not immune to the agreements we have let be signed in our name - nor the processes that continue to steam roll towards destruction.
Other Documents of Interest
World Trade Organization - UNDERSTANDING THE WTO: THE AGREEMENTS - Agriculture
World Trade Organization - Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods
World Trade Organization - Links to Legal Texts of WTO agreements
World Trade Organization - Final Uruguay Round Agreements - the Agriculture part is mid-way down the “page”
Gerald Greenfield, The WTO, World Food System, and the Politics of Harmonised Destruction
May 8th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
[Originally published 5/01/07]
The food contamination issues, and the lack of oversight by the FDA has now been solved. The FDA has named a Food Safety Czar. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to sleep. David Acheson, MD will be responsible for advising FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach on “food safety and defense strategies.”
Just as a side note, I think it is interesting that the United States, a democratic country, has a penchant for naming “czars” of things. It is after all a title that implies emperor, or king, and has imperial connotations. It certainly doesn’t connote any expertise, and generally does not connote much in the way of actual power. Our new food safety czar will advise - not make decisions or actually organize anything. Given the apparent lack of funding for the FDA in the area of food safety, he is not likely to have much of a staff either.
Meanwhile, more and more questionable things are coming to light. Personally, I wish that someone would ask some questions that are just bugging me.
Various reports have said that livestock feed is contaminated, or that livestock was fed contaminated pet food (Millions of Chickens Fed Contaminated Pet Food. Given that these two are interposed and used synonymously, one is led to assume that rejected, and discarded pet food is a regular livestock feed. I don’t know about you, but I think that is a pretty questionable practice. It also means that pet food that was recalled because it was sickening and killing dogs and cats was sent into the livestock feed system. Now that seems criminally dumb (or greedy) to me. Would you take poison and put it deliberately into the human food supply?
I have read several statements over the last week that have essentially said that the levels of contaminants in the ingredients would not harm humans even if they are directly in the food supply (wheat gluten added to bread for example), because humans are bigger than dogs and cats. There are a number of issues with this. First is that not all humans are, and infants and children definitely are comparable size with “pets.” Add to this that concentrated protein - particularly soy and rice, are a fairly common ingredient in infant foods. Seems like that might be an issue. However, no one (except Kelly and I) are even talking about this little “over sight.”
The other big issue is that they (the FDA) has not yet determined exactly what the “contaminants” are, nor why they are causing problems. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Guelph University researchers feel that it is a chemical reaction involving melamine, cyanuric acid and the environment of the digestive system. I have seen nothing regarding the levels of these chemical necessary to cause the formation of the crystals that are apparently implicated in the resultant kidney damage.
According to Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council:
“The dilution factor is enormous. You have a relatively small amount of pet food byproducts used,” in poultry feed manufacturing, Lobb said.
In fact, “it’s a safe and wholesome product to use,” he added.
If they don’t know what, and how this is happening, then how can they determine what is harmful or not? The pigs and chicken that have eaten the contaminated feed (and my guess that both the pet food used as feed and other feed have the same issue) are also forming the same crystals found in the urine of effected pets, that the “dilution factor” doesn’t matter. Or perhaps, that traces of these elements when ingested still cause the same results.
The other question not being asked or answered is “If pigs and chickens have been fed contaminated feed, does it then show up in the animal or eggs?” Further, since most vaccines are grown in eggs, “Does it make a difference that the eggs used may come from chickens who ate contaminated feed?”
Both the appointment of a “czar,” and the assurances about the safety of our food, sound like a lot of smoke and mirrors, and false assurances to me.
May 8th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
[Originally published 4/25/07]
Just as the Dubai Ports World fiasco (1, 2, 3) brought to public attention that the US has ceded control of our ports to international corporate control, the pet food contamination has brought to the fore problems with globalization, our food supply, and the ineffectiveness of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Those of you who have been following my coverage of this story know that I predicted this was going to be a very big story. Well it is growing by leaps and bounds.
After the story essentially went dark for four days in the US press, it has reemerged with a flurry of articles on the inadequacies of the FDA (CBS, CNN, AP and many others).
As this story emerges in all of its various renditions, not so subtle variations also emerge. For example, the hogs that ate contaminated feed may (or may not) have made it into the food the human food supply. The US press is either being nonspecific about what food the hogs ate (CNN) or stating the hogs ate recalled pet food (AP, and Atlanta Journal). Meanwhile the Toronto Star reports that the hogs were fed tainted livestock feed. One might argue that perhaps tainted feed of any sort is “disposed of” by feeding it to livestock. That is a frightening thought.
If tainted pet food somehow was disposed of (sold dirt cheap) to hog farmers, it was not isolated. Hogs in six or seven (or more) states have been found to have ingested melamine. Now poultry are also under question. Whether it was poultry feed, or poultry farmers are also on the dirt cheap pet food deal, is another question.
There is a theory that the melamine in the Chinese grains was a deliberate addition to artificially increase the protein content of the grain products. The motivation for this is purportedly that they were able to get a higher price for their products by doing this. As the presence of melamine has been found in wheat, rice, and corn products from China, then this practice could be said to be “standard.” Now Soy has been added to the list of products from China to be inspected. Increasingly India is cropping up in stories - implying that India may be using a similar “competitive advantage.”
On the other hand, tons of pet food have been recalled - the biggest company hit was Menu Foods. Were companies with recalled product looking for a way to cut their losses by moving the toxin containing pet food into the livestock (and poultry) feed market? Or is this too “standard practice?” According to the Atlanta Journal article:
“Ten pet food manufacturers sent unusable dog and cat food containing the toxic chemical melamine to hog producers in California, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and possibly Ohio, FDA officials announced during a late afternoon press conference. Contaminated pet food was also sent to one chicken farm in Missouri, the officials added.“
Based on this, one might pose the theory (assuming the hog farmers and who knows who else fed contaminated pet food) that this too is a “standard practice” among US producers - equally driven on all sides by profit. Perhaps bolstered as a (legally safe) practice as pet (and one presumes livestock) feed is under the FDA, but pork, poultry, beef (etc.) and byproducts are under the USDA. This might decrease the likelihood that such a practice would be discovered.
So the problem grows along the lines that the FDA really has no teeth and does virtually no monitoring (probably part of the same “corporation as customer model” that has resulted in various pharmaceutical disasters). For example, we now know that the FDA can’t issue a recall on dangerous foods, and that they do virtually no monitoring of either domestic food supply, nor of food and ingredients coming into the country from around the world. Further, they apparently have no way of tracking where ingredients come from or go to.
We now know that in the globalized food market there are virtually no effective safety standards. While there are sanitary and phyto-sanitary agreements through the World Trade Organization, apparently there is no monitoring to see that even those minimal, industry set, standards are met.
“Free market” globalized capitalism meets the food supply. “Free market” wins all the way around, and how many die? Given that at least a number of hog producers (and perhaps poultry) now have on their hands “contaminated” livestock, where will they end up? Likely in feed for cattle, sheep, chicken and pigs.
From Dictionary.com
Sham:
noun
1. something that is not what it purports to be; a spurious imitation; fraud or hoax.
2. a person who shams; shammer.
3. a cover or the like for giving a thing a different outward appearance: a pillow sham.
-adjective
4. pretended; counterfeit; feigned: sham attacks; a sham Gothic façade.
5. designed, made, or used as a sham.
-verb (used with object)
6. to produce an imitation of.
7. to assume the appearance of; pretend to have: to sham illness.
-verb (used without object)
8. to make a false show of something; pretend.
[Origin: 1670-80; orig. uncert.]
–Synonyms 1. pretense. 4. spurious, make-believe, simulated, mock. See false. 6. imitate. 7. feign, fake.
–Antonyms 4. genuine.
There is something fundamentally wrong, and that wrongness is not simply in the FDA, or the USDA, or FEMA, or pick your system that seems to be failing when needed most. The basic institutions have been hollowed while billions of dollars flowed through their accounts. Meanwhile, citizens have been turned into consumers with voracious appetites to fill a void of meaning. The country we thought we had, the government we thought our tax dollars supported, is repeatedly being shown as a sham.
Apparently, what the sham is hiding is an elaborate Ponzi scheme - “a swindle in which a quick return, made up of money from new investors, on an initial investment lures the victim into much bigger risks.” We are the victims, as are our pets, our environment, and even our planet.
This story is likely to fade from the news, as Dubai Ports did, and FEMA, and Mad Cow. It will not fade because it is resolved. It won’t fade because the food supply is safe, or China (and whoever else) stops using toxins in the food supply. People will assume that such a huge problem, and such a catastrophic failure, must have been fixed. It won’t have been, but more funds will go into FDA, or perhaps the FDA will be yet another agency rolled into the sham of Homeland Security. But the hollowing will continue. Finally, the sham will no longer be needed. Ultimately, the facade will crumble. By then all the power will be where it is already directed - the hands of the very few. The wealth and health of a nation will be gone, and the people will wonder “How could this have happened?”
Back to the issue at hand - “tainted” food
To make the whole issue even more complicated, it now appears that cyanuric acid has also been found in the tainted ingredients. It is now being speculated that this is the chemical which may be causing the damage and death in cats and dogs. Apparently, the most common use of cyanuric acid is in pools and hot tubs, but it is apparently also used as a fertilizer. This lends credence to my hypothesis, that this was a systemic food production issue. I speculated in that article that the application of cyromazine (a pesticide) might be ending up in grains from China. That a toxic fertilizer might also be involved only brings us back to the process of Chinese agriculture.
Agricultural practices in China are certainly under a cloud as was reported by the BBC - Pollution ‘hits China’s farmland’. As stated in the article:
More than 10% of China’s farm land is polluted, posing a “severe threat” to the nation’s food production, state media reports.
…
Excessive fertiliser use, polluted water, heavy metals and solid wastes are to blame, the reports said.
And this is where the United States is getting millions of tonnes of food products.
It should not come as a surprise that the FDA is starting to test human food products. Of the “ingredients” now in question we have wheat, corn, and rice glutens, concentrated rice protein, and soy. Take a look at the ingredient lists of the food on your shelf - or the grocery store’s. These are common ingredients in thousands of products. The frightening thing is that for some unknown reason this was not on the FDA’s “to do list” as a common practice. However, as noted earlier, the FDA is being shown as another sham.
May 8th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
[Originally published 4/22/07]
As predicted, corn gluten has joined wheat and rice in the pet food recall. Also, it is now believed that the contaminant has entered the human food chain via pigs out of Sacramento, California - they ate contaminated food.
Since tons of pet food is now under recall, or questionable, it is critical that people not dump their contaminated food. That could cause an even larger environmental issue. Melamine is a significant danger in water supplies.
The possibility is being floated that the gluten was intentionally contaminated. Apparently, melamine can artificially increase the protein readings and so there is an economic benefit in adding it. If this is the case, then it has become a standard process in China as we are dealing with multiple manufacturers and multiple grains (wheat, rice, and corn). By this logic, it would make sense that the same thing be done with foods destined for human consumption.
Corn is also a big feed for poultry and beef. One assumes that if it ended up in pig feed, it is likely to also show up in other animal feed. Since those animals are slaughtered, especially if they seem to be possibly failing, then these animals may enter the food stream before they are diagnosed. [To the best of my knowledge, there are still downed cattle entering the food chain.] If those meat and meat products pose a threat to human food, then that is yet another problem.
This is a story that is going to continue to grow. I am dumbfounded that it is not being better covered by the corporate press. One assumes that it is ti avoid a “panic,” but given the risks involved, lack of information could quite literally be deadly.
No cases of contaminated gluten or concentrated vegetable protein has yet been reported in human foods directly.
