Diet For A Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us

Click here to read Ken Setter's interview with the author, Christopher D. Cook.

American and western supermarkets display an abundance of packaged and canned, ready to eat food, meat cuts, fish fingers, bite sized, cooked and uncooked, cheeses and chocolate, chips and coke.

Robot like, the shopper navigates the laneways, mechanically filling a trolley with the products most advertised on TV, each item loaded with sugar, fat and salt.

You name it they have it. The west is awash with food, a global cornucopia from all over the world, western supermarkets know no season. There are no limits; all you can buy and eat is yours.

But is it safe to eat?

And what are we doing to the planet?

This is an American book filled with facts and figures, yet it is as applicable to Australia as it is to any developed western country. It is detailed and precise, its finding are damming and a warning to us all. If this book fails to get people off the lounge and onto the streets then nothing will. This is a book to make us angry; it brings under scrutiny the American food industry and it is killing us, that's the message loud and clear. It does not make light reading, neither should it, the book is designed to rouse us into action.

Diet For A Dead Planet, is a worthy addition to the growing number of books reaching the market warning us of the dangers to our planet, dangers we can no longer overlook, or ignore. It is not an easy read, the facts are disturbing, this is as it should be, these are troubled times.

We are taken through the agricultural apocalypse that is America's food industry, food the author reminds us is ‘our most basic necessity, has become a force behind a staggering array of social, economic, and environmental epidemics---a toxic cornucopia of poison-laminated harvests, extreme labour abuse, and treacherous and secretive science”.

The slaughterhouses and chicken disassembly factories represent ‘old food,' to plagiarise Mr Rumsfeld's remarks on Europe , they are the brutal part, a hang over from the torturous dark ages. The cutting edge of the food industry is innovation, value adding and extending market penetration. Today the food industry is as much an arm of government as an instrument of private profit. It is an integral part of America's foreign policy through a system of corporate welfare, export dumping, food aid programs, farm subsidies and protection of farmers, America has used to food industry as a weapon in the fight against communism, a lever in the war on drugs, and there is evidence that the American government used food aid in the 19 th century as a means of influencing the outcome of a Venezuelan insurrection. Government subsidies are a proven method of redistributing public funds to private pockets as well as an effective method of soaking up food surpluses. Where there is corporate welfare the food industry will be first in line, its hand at the ready, and waiting in anticipation of more to come.

This is a system where the costs are held to a minimum, they are deferred and passed on to the public, if not in cost per item, then in the hidden costs to health both human and animal, pollution, all increasing the tax dollar. Then there are the costs of maintaining a strong military presence in the worldwide trouble spots to ensure the smooth passage of American goods and its oil supplies.

An examination of the food industry shows the military-industrial complex to be alive and well. The military establishment has long appreciated the wisdom that an army marching on its stomach, they regally conduct joint experiments with the food industry, some go horribly wrong, such as the attempts to extend the self life of bacon using nuclear irradiation, however when the data was proved to have been falsified both military and company CEO's quickly ran for cover. More recently the alliance has developed ready-made sandwiches that remain edible for six months.

We see how small farms are taken over by giant corporations, one every ½ hour, how the food factories contaminate, decimate and destroy local communities. We have detailed accounts of high powered corporate lawyers employing ‘bully boy' tactics on elderly grandmothers who complain of the disruptive effects of pollution spillages.

We are taken into America's supermarkets, that meeting place of western capitalism where cheerful consumers freely select from an array of choices, here they encounter an abundance of foodstuffs each displayed to best advantage, our attention is drawn to the best, most eye catching positions on the shelves, this is the most expensive real estate in America, where producers pay ‘slotting fees,' and sums of $20,000 are not uncommon for the best positions.

As we walk along the shelves our guide points to the erosion of topsoil, and the water required for the production of products on offer, we learn of the vast quantities of pesticides and how the run off pollutes the streams and rivers, all present dangers to human heath and well being.

The importance of oil comes to mind as we realise that each item on the supermarket shelf has, on average, travelled over 1,400 miles; requiring 100 billion gallons of oil a year, or put another way that's 400 gallons of oil to feed each American. The nations food industry could not survive without the highway system originally designed for the speedy movement of military equipment, and built with Federal funds.

And where would the food industry be without the chemical industry, also a large recipient of federal funds, above all industry is supported by a legal system that protects property and inhibits opposition to corporate, intellectual property rights and patent law, without property laws the system would collapse.

We are told of the social implications of supermarket locations; we learn how ‘white flight' drew the supermarkets from the inner city to new suburbs. The move from inner city areas accelerated the decline of shopping facilities in the poor inner city resulting less access to nutritious foods, and the high fat fast foods can be from 10% to 64% higher in price.

We step from the supermarket to Main Street USA to be immediately confronted by hordes of belly wobbling fat people puffing and blowing their way through traffic that is as clogged as their arteries. We notice the bulk of the food in our shopping trolley is produced by a handful of big corporations. In recent years leading firms like Tyson Foods, Safeway, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill have gobbled up competitors and consolidated their near monopoly control over the entire food chain. In just 3 years, between 1997 and 2000, the top five food retailers in America (Kroger, Albertson's, WalMart, Safeway, and Ahold (USA) nearly doubled their market share.

An immigrant in the 1930's could be excused for thinking California 's Central Valley was a paradise, and land of plenty, a promised land where fruit and vegetables, nuts and grapes grew in abundance. And as they felt the warm California sun on their back, they reasoned it was a fine place where children could be happy, safe from war ravaged Europe . The immigrant, unknowing that behind the bountiful harvest were men in white coats devising quicker, cheaper and more efficient ways of killing insects and moles, moulds, rusts and blights, who experimented in vivisection laboratories, chemical plants and universities. To these men were ascribed wisdom, understanding and knowledge, they were deemed to be skilful men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater, more profitable crops, together they sprayed the trees against pests, sulphurated the grapes, they cut out disease and rots, mildew and food grew in abundance. Today their labours have transformed the once beautiful Central Valley of California into the most dangerous place in America to breathe.

Today California 's factory farms with over 2.6 million cows produce more waste matter than they can safely dispose. Algae blooms poison the streams and rivers as millions of tons of pesticides saturate the environment killing wild birds and fish. Topsoil is being lost at 30 times the rate it can be replaced, and the aquifers that were created over millions of years are being drained so fast experts estimate that they will be exhausted within 30 to 40 years. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, livestock waste has polluted more than 27,000 miles of rivers and contaminated ground water in dozens of states. Factory farms generate more than 130 times the amount of waste that people.

We meet Mexican farm labours; they travel north seeking stable employment and steady wages, not knowing what awaits them. Upon arrival they will be met by a system that treats them little better than the chickens they are to dismantle, they will encounter line speed ups, injuries and disinterested supervisors, minimum on the job training, they will be exploited at work, they will live in trailer parks and the women pressured for sex.

Some will work in Roger Arkansas, home of a Tyson Foods chicken process factory, Roger, like many a small town USA it has a ‘zero tolerance' policy against ‘illegal' immigrants as a means of fighting crime, the local mayor, a National Guard officer, regularly passes painted slogans on his way to work, they read; ‘Remember the Alamo'; ‘Hispanics Causing Panic'; ‘Niggers and Mexicans Need to Leave My Country, Our Girls, Our Women Alone or Die' sprayed on walls, along with nazi and KKK insignia.

Our journey north takes us past huge land holdings, seemingly never ending corporate farms. In America 's agribusiness size matters. The top four beef producers' account for 80% of the US market, as family farms are being taken over 20,000 a year. The powerful American farm lobby has secured a system of subsidies that protect and support American farmers, at the cost of the overseas poor. A study by the UK based Oxfam calculated that Africa lost $US301 million in 2001-2 because of American cotton subsidies alone. The beneficiaries are mostly the wealthiest producers. While the worlds poorest people starve corporations grow fat. Agribusiness occupies a privileged position in America's economic system, its tentacles reach out to small farming communities and into the offices of big government, and it is planned, organised and managed for maximum profits, and it is stacked against consumer and worker alike.

America 's food inspection system is calculated to pacify political concerns not to establish an effective control on food safety. It operates with a mixture of skill and incompetence, it is designed to confuse rather than protect. Shared responsibility between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has produced such confusion as, the USDA being responsible for beef broth, while the FDA supervises dehydrated beef soup, the USDA has responsibility for dehydrated chicken soup while the FDA is responsible for chicken broth. Further examples abound, if the hot dog is in a roll (FDA) or in pastry (USDA), if you order pepperoni pizza (USDA) or cheese (FDA), spaghetti sauce with meat stock (USDA) without meat stock (FDA). To my mind this is a system doomed to fail, possibly deliberately so.

Even with the terrifying complexities the system is woefully under staffed and under funded. In the late 1990's the FDA employed just 113 inspectors to examine 3 million food shipments flowing through 309 entry points, however given the confusion inherent in the system there are concerns for the safety of the inspectors 40% have been threatened with physical violence and 10% have been assaulted with guns or knives, recently the owner of a sausage factory in San Leandro Cal. killed three meat inspectors, execution style, in front of his own CCTV cameras.

Much of the story has been told before, it has been a part of American folk culture for decades, the plight of illegal immigrants immortalised by Woody Guthrie They Were Just Deportees , blues singers have long reflected the injustices of ‘Jim Crow' laws, they have sung of being sentenced to work on ‘prison farms' where white farmers benefit from free labour, and sharecropping. Billy Holiday told of the ultimate punishment for just being different, when she sung ‘strange fruit hanging on the popular trees'

Upton Sinclar exposed the vile conditions in the meat industry in his book the Jungle a hundred years ago, today little has changed. The New York Times of January 25, 2005 reported on Human Rights Watch research, it found ‘that jobs in many beef, pork and poultry plants were so dangerous that the industry violated international agreements promising a safe workplace. Noting that the industry's injury rate was three times that of private industry over all, the report describes plants where exhausted employees slice into carcasses at a frenzied pace hour after hour, often suffering injuries from a slip of the knife or from repeating the same motion more than 10,000 times a day. The report describes workers being asphyxiated by fumes and having their legs cut off and hands crushed.'

So how much has changed in America ?

After reading Diet For A Dead Planet I was left questioning the morality of this question; Is the food company that loads its products with sugar then aggressively markets its products to children any different from the tobacco companies? Is the alcohol industry that markets pretty looking, highly coloured and sweetened alcoholic drinks to enlarge its teenage market any more ethical than the street corner heroin dealer?

If the truth were known, the system is stuffed. A new start is required. We need a whole new rethink of our food system.

Policy change that would bring about

1. A return the the anti trust laws of the late 19 th century to end the near total control of food corps.

2. Federal legislation that food be local grown on organic farms under ecologically sustainable conditions and give economic and cultural support to the local community.

3. Federal laws are needed to protect workers and animals on farm and factory.

4. Strong and enforceable laws are required to protect the environment, with a vigorous enforcement structures in place.

5. Committees to ensure that tax dollars are not wasted but directed to local communities, schools and encouragement of small businesses.

6. Human rights protection for whistle blowers.

7. There also needs a radical rethink on scientific advice given to government, the democratisation of such bodies as the UK Royal Society & The American Academy of Sciences.

8. There also needs to be strict control of election funding with enforceable laws to avoid undue influence by corporations and vested interests, consideration to public funding of election campaigns.

9. There needs to be an end to patenting of GMO and genes.

10. A ban supermarket sale of fruit and vegetables to promote local production.

A tall order, well maybe, but we must remember that in the past decade over sixty million American's have given up smoking, so change is possible.

This is a valuable book, a must read for all who care for our planet.