Obama administration was nursing major plans to do something to challenge agribusiness as usual. But that was far from the case. In fact, the president had already appointed an ardent ally of industrial agriculture, Tom Vilsack, to head the Department of Agriculture. Vilsack's support for agrichemicals, large industrial farms, and GMO foods was so steadfast that, as the governor of Iowa, he had been the recipient of Monsanto's Governor of the Year award.
As if to make it copiously clear that he was not intending to confront the agrichemical and factory-farm conglomerates, Obama had even appointed the man most responsible for the advancement of GMO food in the history of the U.S., Michael R. Taylor, as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner. And in case that wasn't enough, Obama then promoted Taylor to an even more powerful position as Deputy Commissioner of Foods.
This was the same Michael R. Taylor who had made it possible for Monsanto to get GMO foods approved in the U.S. without even remotely adequate testing for possible health dangers. In a classic example of the “revolving door” between agribusiness and government, Taylor was first an attorney at Monsanto, then became policy chief at the FDA, then became Monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist, and then was appointed by Obama as America's food-safety czar.
But CropLife America, whose members include such bastions of corporate virtue as Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, and Dow, was still not satisfied. In what may have been the political equivalent of make-up sex, the president subsequently appointed CropLife America vice president Islam A. Siddiqui to become the nation's Chief Agricultural Negotiator. Siddiqui is not exactly what you would call a hero to the organic food movement. Nor has he made it his mission to defend future generations and the biological carrying capacity of the planet. When he oversaw the release of the National Organic Program's standards for organic food labeling, it was his bright idea to permit both irradiated and GMO foods to be labeled as organic.
This is the kind of thing, frankly, that makes me upset. It's not a pretty sight to see our nation's food policies in the hands of shills for industrial food production and agrichemical companies like Monsanto. Pesticides in the food chain and in the environment are known to cause cancer, birth defects, autism, and many other ailments. The health effects of GMO foods are largely unknown because there has never been sufficient testing, but what there has been is more frightening than reassuring. A diet based on industrial fast food is contributing mightily to escalating rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. And factory farms are contributing massively to global warming, deforestation, and species extinction.
Would it be such a terrible idea if, instead of agribusiness as usual, we were to promote sustainable local food systems as a way to rebuild rural economies and improve access to healthy food? Would it be so awful if we were to support family farms rather than factory farms?
Factory farms, also called “confined animal-feeding operations” (CAFOs), now produce almost all of the nation's beef, pork, chicken, dairy, and eggs, but they haven't achieved this level of prominence through rational planning, or efficiencies of scale, or market forces. The factory meat industry has come to dominate the marketplace as the result of federal farm policies that have shifted billions of dollars in environmental, health, and economic costs onto taxpayers and communities. For example, taxpayer-subsidized grain prices save feedlot operations billions of dollars a year in animal feed, while grass-fed beef operations do not benefit at all from this subsidy. The USDA similarly provides billions of our dollars to address factory-farm pollution problems, which wouldn't exist if these operations didn't confine tens of thousands of animals in small areas—a practice that causes great suffering to the animals involved, as well as massive pollution and well-documented health hazards to humans.
What would happen if we had food and agriculture policies that sought to benefit the environment, public health, and rural communities rather than serve industrial agribusiness? What if we made factory farms, rather than taxpayers, pay to prevent or clean up the pollution they create? What if we subsidized healthy foods rather than unhealthy ones?
The health consequences of current policies are now a matter of record. We have the distinction of having become the fattest major nation in the history of the world and, with each passing year, we are becoming noticeably fatter. In 1996, the U.S. already had the highest rate of obesity in the world, but not a single state had an obesity rate higher than 20 percent. By 2011, there was not a single state with an obesity rate lower than 20 percent.
The U.S. now spends far more on healthcare than any other nation. No one else even comes close. Per capita, we spend close to double the amount spent in countries that—other than us—spend the most (Germany, Canada, Denmark, and France).
The annual health insurance premiums paid by the average American family now exceed the gross yearly income of a full-time minimum-wage worker. Every thirty seconds, someone in the U.S. files for bankruptcy due to the costs of treating a health problem.
Healthcare spending is so far out of control that, not only individuals and families, but the entire economy is buckling under the strain. The chairman of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, says his company spends more money on insurance for its employees than it spends on coffee.
And the situation is not improving. A 2011 report found healthcare costs for a typical American family of four had doubled in fewer than nine years.
Have you noticed that in all the heated debate about healthcare reform, one basic fact is rarely discussed—the one thing that could dramatically bring down the costs of healthcare while improving the health of our people? Studies have shown that the single most effective step most people can take to improve their health is to eat a healthier diet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 75 percent of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to the food we eat. This includes heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, and possibly a third of all cancers.
But isn't this an issue of personal responsibility, you may ask? Isn't it true that what people eat is their own choice? This is true, and it is important. Each of us needs to be accountable for the foods we choose to buy and consume. The government has no business dictating what people should eat. But that is only half of the story. We also have to limit the power that corporations have to influence government policy, for all too often they use that power to maximize their short-term interests and to diminish or eliminate regulations that would protect workers, animals, the environment, and consumers. These same corporations, it should be noted, with all their complaints about government interference in their activities, rarely display any reluctance to benefit from subsidies and taxpayer money.
Americans today spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any people in the history of the world, and also a smaller amount of time preparing it. We think of that as an achievement and a blessing. But it's not widely recognized that, thanks to misguided farm bills, it's primarily unhealthy foods like feedlot meat, sweetened beverages, and processed foods with added sweeteners and fats that are cheap. The price of fresh fruits and vegetables has been rising steadily for years. It's the food products that are the least healthy that are readily available and inexpensive, because these are the ones that our food policies have been subsidizing rather than healthy foods.
We need to ask what is the real cost of this seemingly cheap fast food. The agricultural systems producing them are destroying rural communities, polluting our water, eroding our topsoil, causing incredible suffering to animals, emitting greenhouse gases at egregious rates, and giving most of us toxic levels of nutritional stress. The CDC estimates that more than one out of every three children born in the U.S. today will develop diabetes as a result of the food they eat. We are paying a terrible price for our seemingly cheap food.
Fast-food companies and other advocates for industrial food production and factory farming say that they are only responding to what people want. Their products are full of sugar and unhealthy fats, they say, because that's what consumers desire. It's not industry's role, they protest,
