Posted on 09/29/2002 6:09:37 PM PDT by gcruse
The Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- I don't care where my food comes from -- and neither should you.
By Ronald Bailey
"People should know where their food comes from," an organic farmer from Montana declared at a conference on agriculture and the environment I attended this past weekend, sponsored by the Political Economy Research Center. This notion is increasingly popular among political environmentalists. It is usually a shorthand way to express opposition to genetically enhanced crops and to convey approval for their organic equivalents.
From a nutritional and ecological point of view, the idea is bunk.
First, a bit of background. It is not at all surprising that most Americans think that chickens come plastic-wrapped without bones, that milk pours from gallon jugs, or that fresh fruit can be picked year around. After all, less than two percent of the country lives on farms today.
But when I was growing up in the 1960s I knew exactly where at least 90 percent of the food I ate came from: my family's crops. Every tomato, bean, squash, cucumber, pea, potato, ear of corn, turnip, mustard green, carrot, and cabbage I ate came from our huge garden. We picked wild blackberries and grew gallons of strawberries. We had cherry, apple, peach, walnut, and European chestnut trees. We canned nearly everything and had a root cellar. Our honey came from more than 20 beehives.
As for meat, we raised and slaughtered all the beef, pork, chicken, goat, lamb, and turkey we ate. Our milk came from our dairy herd, and we spent many hours churning butter. The domesticated meat was occasionally supplemented with squirrel, groundhog, opossum, and mud turtle. Although I didn't much care for them, our fish consisted of crappies and catfish taken from the farm ponds.
My father's standing orders for butchering the beef was to make as many steaks as possible and turn everything else into hamburger. The meat was wrapped in waxed butcher paper and stored in giant freezer chests. We had a smokehouse in which we salted our own hams. I even knew the names of the cows and pigs we ate. You can't know much more about where your food comes from than that.
It is precisely this personal food history that makes me cherish modern grocery stores and restaurants. American grocers can choose what they offer their customers from among more than 320,000 different packaged foods. As a kid, it was an enormous treat to go to the local Piggly Wiggly to buy tasty exotic prepackaged items like hot dogs, spaghetti, and Velveeta. (Incidentally, it was Piggly Wiggly that invented the novel concept that customers should be allowed to roam a store's aisles and pick out their own groceries.) And the proliferation of fine restaurants in the last two decades has been amazing.
Which brings me back to the absurd assertion that everybody should know where his or her food comes from. I knew where my food came from because it took my family a huge percentage of our time just to do the mind-numbing and back-breaking labor of raising it. Of course, we sold our surplus cows, milk, and wool for money so that we could buy incidentals like clothing, medicines, books, refrigerators, televisions, tractors, trucks, and cars. And no one hectored us about knowing where those items came from.
One of the great glories of modern life is the enormous elaboration of the division of labor and how the efficiencies gained from that division makes people much wealthier than they could otherwise be. Since we all don't have to stitch our own clothes, bake our own bread, compound our own medicines, or even cook our own meals, we are all much better off. This is why as a society we can afford to have economic niches like pet dentists and manufacturers of elastomolds for pastry chefs who specialize in baking madeleines.
And why should they care? Food today is cheap, nutritious, and safe. The last century has seen a vast improvement in food quality and safety. In millennia past, food and water were the chief sources of many deadly diseases. Consider that as recently as 1933-35, a U.S Public Health Service survey found that 5,458 children between the ages of 1 and 15 died from diarrhea and enteritis, most caused by food-borne pathogens.
By contrast, a recent survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that just 29 Americans died of food-borne illnesses between 1993 and 1997. Meanwhile, stomach cancer rates are down by 75 percent since 1950 because old-fashioned food preservation techniques like salting, pickling, and smoking have been replaced by refrigeration.
That doesn't mean people are or should be prevented from learning about where their food comes from, if that's the way they want to spend their time. Among life's greatest pleasures are fine dining and food connoisseurship. The expanding division of labor and our growing technological prowess is nurturing more and more differentiation among foods, permitting the creation and appreciation of thousands of wines, cheeses, chocolates, coffees, teas, and so forth.
I might prefer parmigiano-reggiano versus your inexplicable fondness for boursin. Or I might think that Rombauer Napa Valley Zinfandel is nectar and sniff at that swill from Australia that you quaff. Today, you can choose "slow food" (though it has some unsavory ideological baggage) over fast food, or choose both when that suits you.
Nor is there anything wrong with waking up on Saturday mornings to rush out to the local farmers market. I, too, cannot resist organic heirloom tomatoes. I buy organic not because such foods are ecologically or nutritionally superior -- they aren't -- but simply because the local lady who grows the Brandywines, Mortgage Lifters, and Yellow Pears I crave chooses that method of production. I'm glad she grows them, not least because that means that I don't have to anymore.
For those who are deluded enough to think that organic foods are nutritionally superior, the market makes the opportunity to buy them widely available, generally at a 30-percent price premium. (Ideologically motivated organic aficionados should keep in mind that organic production typically yields a third less food than other means. That means that more land is being plowed down, leaving less for forests and other wildlands.)
But there is something wrong with the puritanical notion that it's a sin to live in blithe ignorance of the ultimate sources of your nourishment. Life is too short for most people to learn how to fix their computers and cars, and too short for most to learn about food production. And that's just fine. Eating shouldn't be a moral duty; it should be a pleasure.
(Ronald Bailey, Reason's science correspondent, is the editor of "Global Warming and Other Eco Myths" and "Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet.")
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
You are so full of used food (junk or organic is immaterial).
I'm thinking about this argument of yours--which I grant you is a powerful one.....
What a load of BS. I never had a McDonald's, Burger King, or KFC .. or anything remotely resembling any of that .. until I moved away to college. I've worn glasses since I was about six .. very strong prescription (my eyesight then was about 20/200; it's now about 20/400) .. and I have been, for all intents and purposes bald since I was about 17. All four grandparents and my parents had relatively poor eyesight and extremely thin hair, and none of them EVER had anything like what we would call "junk food". I ended up with all of the bad genes as far as eyesight and hair growth went ...
... although I must admit that, of all my brothers and cousins, I ended up with all of the brains.
And both were ........(surprise)........ atheists.
Marx's offspring tried to make the "new man". Their attitude was that man can be molded along communist lines since in their view he is tabla rasa when caught early enough.
My point is this, hormones in milk--are in such minute quantities, that science (that is measurable, verifiable, evidence) can not make a link between it and health problems. With all the young people who believe the "frankenfood" scares though, don't you think their'd be some ambitious person who could become the new Ralph Nader out there--IF it could be proven (like the health food people claim) our milk (or any food) is poisoned?
Remember the Alar scare over apple juice a few years ago? The claim was made this horrible eeeevil chemical tainted apple products... Hundreds of farmers were ruined...orchards abandoned, by the damage to the apple market of this (irrational) fright. ONE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP put out a "report" which scared mothers out of their socks..."No more apple-juice for this family!" I have a friend who's research was used by that group (which greatly increased its visibilty and $$$ funding by that event...). He tells me it was ENTIRELY trumped up junk science....his research indicated the OPPOSITE of what the Enviro's claimed.... but hey, they raised money, lots, and it helped "the cause"....so who cares if a few dumb farmers got hurt, right?
Such a scenario is repeated over and over by the enviros....the rest of us--who are in no position either to refute or accept what they tell us, invariably err on what we think is the side of caution--because we're paranoid that the institutions our parents' generation established--are corrupt and won't protect us.
Bottled water is another example. I like the taste...and people are free to buy it, fine. However, enviromentally its a disaster. Tons and tons of water is hauled around all over the country--needlessly spewing diesel fumes--mainly because people don't trust their municiple water supplies (which overwelmingly are VERY safe. When was the last time you heard of a Typhoid case in the USA??). But because people are convinced they are drinking healthier (even though bottled water meets funtionally a lesser standard of contaminants than tap water) its a HUGE market. A little filter on the tap would fix the taste and reduce even minute health risks...but somehow if its shipped from France, it's got to be good for you, eh?
Bottom line: We should appreciate what is concretely good, and not be so concerned for the imagined bad...
I like to be optimistically skeptical, not pessimistically gullible.
We see this strange phenomenon among feminists who are wholly obsessed with the lives and achevements of men.
I want to avoid that, but at the same time I think conservatives and reactionaries need to re-examine the role of capitalism in undermining traditional values and destroying the best things about conservative culture.
The money system is currently the most dynamic and successful enemy of conservative culture. It has to be. That is its nature.
It doesn't mean that I believe Marx was a "good" guy when I point out that he correctly perceived the incredible dynamic power of capital to undermine the Old Orders and enthusiastically embraced that dynamic. (Rand and Marx were siamese twins in this respect.)
We cannot fail to notice that all the old commies are moving back into positions of bureaucratic power in the places we supposedly liberated a few short years ago. The reason for that is obvious. They understand how corporate economies and governance work. And further, they share the global aspirations of corporations. A coincidence? No. An inevitability.
I worked for several years studying the dairy industry. Hormones are used freely. Sometimes dairymen use more than they need not because they need to but in order to insure their production levels. They have to milk their cows until their udders practically collaps in order to get the value out of them. The reason is basically because of milk price supports and the fact that consumers are spoiled by cheap food.
How do you know that hormones are used judiciously? YOu make the claim but you don't verify it. Where do you get your information?
I do not believe that producers are ignorant. I know that they are constrained by a government controlled marketing scheme that does not allow producers to charge what it costs to produce a gallon of milk. That's not a radical liberal notion, cowboy. That's an indictment of government interference in ag production. Folks have been conditioned to low dairy prices. BTW, alot of dairymen don't drink the milk that comes from their herds.
The source of my information is not what you claim. Your argument is specious at best. I for one do not believe that big ag corporations necessarily have a vested interest in providing the best quality product. They do have a vested interest in turning a profit. I have no problem with that. However, striving for lower cost almost always results in lower quality. If you believe that the milk from a Holstein that is bred, injected, kept on a concrete slab its whole life and sold for dog food after two years is comparable to a little brown swiss pastured on exclusively on grass, you are gullible.
If you believe that what passes for eggs is comparable nutritionally with farm eggs, you are uneducated. Many studies are showing that free range eggs are higher in vitamins and lower in cholesterol. Unfortunately, producers have to house their hens in the houses they use because we as a rule are unwilling to pay more for our eggs.
I do not believe that this situation is entirely due to a consipracy of agribusinesses. The federal government is largely to blame for its intervention in agriculture in support of these businesses. For example, there is no credible evidence that raw milk is bad or unhealthy. But the dairy industry in California has fought the sale of raw milk for decades. What is the problem with allowing more choices on the part of consumers? But the nanny state listens to big business usually respond.
You say that you trust farmers and businesses. Why? Because you want to? Because it feels good? Agribusiness is huge. The profit motive can cause many good people to do things that they otherwise would avoid. But don't accuse me of wacko-ism or stupidity.
"Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment and okay for you."
So nothing in our food or our environment is causing any of the modern day health problems?
Now I don't cringe when the government or news media puts out warnings, such as the Alar. I truly feel that if it is bad for us, they wouldn't tell us. I am cycnical that way. etc.
There is no way the government is going to tell us the truth about any of the stuff in our foods, for goodness sakes. They are going to make the large agribusiness guys give those fat checks to someone else - I don't think so. They are bought and paid for by these guys -
You and I probably won't know the detrimental effects of hormones in milk or in beef cattle - but our grandchildren very well may.
As far as "anecdotal evidence", 'unquantifiable', 'unverifiable', 'unrepeatable', I pay little attention to what our government or the news media tells us. I pay attention to my own 'anecdotal evidence'. If my family is healthier when we eat a certain way - that is 100% 'quantifiable', 'verifiable', 'repeatable', etc.
As for the bottled water, I agree. I really consider bottled water less desirable than the water I filter at my kitchen sink. At least it hasn't set in a plastic bottle for who knows how long. Now the last case of typhoid I knew of was actually 30 years ago - but it isn't typhoid I worry about in water.
Am I appreciative of the abundance of food in this country - you bet. Do I believe it is all safe and healthy - absolutely not. Do I wish I didn't have to buy my food in the grocery store - absolutely.
Bottom line - you believe it is safe and healthy. I believe some is and some isn't. We all have to follow our own instincts. If you feel comfortable eating it - go for it. I will eat it and not feel comfortable until I can once again raise my own.
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