Green Options

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Excuse me while I step up on the soapbox. Ahem. I’ve been chided before about being too political on my food blog. More recipes, Woman! But the thing is, food is all tied up with politics, and there are a few things we eaters need to understand about this. For our own safety. So we can make better choices. This is a pretty short primer on the basics, but there are a lot of great links in here that can help you get the full picture of our food system.

How does food policy impact the safety of what we eat?
I mean, it’s just legislation, right? Laws that are supposed to keep the food supply safe. The basis for these laws was established in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt in response to the publication of Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle. Ironically, one of these laws, the Meat Inspection Act, was supposed to eradicate the use of “4-D” cattle in meats, meaning dead, diseased, decaying and downed. Over 100 years later we are still facing the same issues.

The other act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, was designed to insure the safety of drugs and non-meat food items. However, the two agencies overlap. A raw egg, in the shell, is the responsibility of the FDA. Once the shell is broken, the USDA is in charge. If a processed sandwich is to be inspected, the USDA would have jurisdiction over the meat, the FDA over the bread. Makes all kind of sense, right?

Learn what you need to know about food safety, policy and what you can do as a consumer after the jump.

If you’ve been paying attention to food news over the past month, you have surely heard of the downer cow debacle between the Humane Society and the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company. In shocking, secret footage recorded by Humane Society activists at the Chino, California livestock farm, handlers are shown using electric prods, high-pressure hoses and forklifts to rouse “downer” cows to their feet so that they can pass USDA inspection.

A downer cow is an animal that is too ill to stand up on its own. After the Mad Cow Disease scares of the late 1990s, Congress passed legislation that prohibited these animals from entering the food supply because of a slightly increased risk of spreading disease into the human population. But in September of 2007, Congress added a loophole to the measure, allowing downer cows into the food supply if a veterinarian deemed it safe. This measure was included to allow otherwise healthy animals with broken legs or torn ligaments into the food supply, but in fact opened the floodgates to profit-minded decisions in bovine health.

Much has been made of the fact that 30% of the shipment that included these particular downer cows filmed was destined for federally-run nutrition program, including the plates of low-income school children who take advantage of free lunch programs. For an in depth look at the socio-economic and children’s rights implications of this scandal, have a look at this excellent article over at The Ethicurean.

But beyond the incredibly important issue of the socio-economic food division, there are two major but separate complaints leveled against the USDA and their complicity in this incident: the issues of food safety and of animal welfare.