The Standard American Diet 2

This is part 3 of my research on global food movements, entitled
GLOBALIZATION: It's what's for dinner.
(Please note: This week's photo may be disturbing, yet for some, it is dinner.)

A SAD STORY:
The Standard American Diet and Farming

The rise of the global fast food empire has not only changed dietary patterns and increased health risk, it has also led to fundamental changes in the farming industry. What came first - the new technologies or the demand for cheap standardized quality-controlled food - is hard to say, but the two were wed in the fast food industry, which has transformed global food production over the past 50 years.

In his book, Schlosser describes the "advances" in potato production, as well as the beef and poultry industries during the initial rise of the fast food giants. Though more efficient and cost effective, the changes resulted in major abuses, which continue to impact people and the environment. Prompted by the needs of these growing corporations, large farms have now replaced small farms; the harvest of a single product has replaced a variety of rotated crops; pesticides and synthetic fertilizers are now required necessities; antibiotics and growth hormones in meat are standard practices; assembly line meat-packing abuses, slaughter house wastewater "lagoons," meat contamination, food borne pathogens, chemicals, preservatives and additives in processed foods, genetically modified crops (GMO), intense competition, multinational corporations - all are the realities of contemporary food production due in large part to profit on the side of the producer and increased demand on the side of the consumer.

"Agricide" is how Michael W. Fox describes the quiet holocaust taking place worldwide in the animal kingdom and in the environment as human beings, often as unknowing perpetrators, participate in the inhumane treatment of animals by purchasing certain foods, which lead to the production of deadly environmental pollution. [8] It is the dietary demand for a Western diet of meat, represented in fast food, which has changed farming practices worldwide and is having a negative impact on the environment.

According to Vital Signs 2007-2008 by The Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization, meat production increased 2.5% to an estimated 276 million tons in 2006, with an expected rise in 2007 to 285 million tons. [9] The increase in meat production has been on a steady rise since studies began in 1961, with the current surge coming from Asia. It is estimated that in the developing world, people eat about 32 kilograms of meat per year, compared with almost 85 kilograms per person in the industrial world. With the ever-expanding advance of the fast food industry, this figure is expected to continue its rise as dietary preferences shift worldwide as is currently occurring in Asia. "The developing nations are copying us," writes John Robbins. "They associate meat eating with economic status of the developed nations, and continue to strive to emulate it." [10]

Though worldwide livestock production is up, livestock is "the single largest anthropogenic user of land," as meat production accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet. [11] In addition, they are responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is higher than the share contributed by cars and sport utility vehicles. Of GHG, livestock account for 37% of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming capacity of carbon dioxide, and 65% of nitrous oxide, which comes from the "lagoons" of manure at slaughterhouses. Schlosser explains these lagoons as such, "Each steer deposits about fifty pounds of manure every day. Unlike human waste, this manure is not sent to a treatment plant. It is dumped into pits, huge pools of excrement. . . . The amount of waste left . . . is staggering." [12]

With GHG rising through animal farming and poisonous chemical fertilizers being injected into the soil for crop production, the globalization of the American diet really is an agricide, but food movements across the world are taking notice and taking action.

Next week:
Global Food Movements making a difference

[8] Michael W. Fox, Eating with Conscience: The Bioethics of Food (Troutdale, OR: New Sage Press, 1997), 11.
[9] Danielle Nierenberg, "Meat Output and Consumption Grow," in Vital Signs 2007-2008: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future, ed. Linda Starke (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 24.
[10] John Robbins, Diet For A New America, (Tiburon: H.J. Kramer Book and New World Library, 1987), 351.
[11] Nierenberg, 24.
[12] Schlosser, 150.