Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Capital Times (Madison, WI) - Oct. 2, 2006

Spinach crisis reflects need for smaller farms
                                                                            
        
By John E. Peck
                                                     

When Tommy Thompson gave his farewell speech as outgoing secretary of the
Department of Health and Human Services under President Bush in December
2004, he shocked many by admitting he couldn't understand why terrorists
had not attacked our food supply yet, since it would be so easy to do.
Little did he realize that the worst threat to U.S. agriculture is
homegrown.

After a decade of repeated outbreaks and warnings, vegetable growers in the
Salinas Valley of California are now reaping a deadly harvest. More than
183 people nationwide have fallen victim to the deadly O157:H7 strain of E.
coli bacteria, with one death confirmed in Wisconsin, and a voluntary
recall of bagged spinach is now under way.

While distant D.C. officials say it is still OK to eat suspect spinach
after cooking it at 160 degrees for 15 seconds, those California health
experts on the ground are telling consumers to throw it all out. Recent
budget and staff cuts at the federal level have left the majority of food
safety inspection and enforcement in the hands of city, county and state
agencies. Ironically enough, the Bush administration is now trying to
railroad through Congress the National Uniformity for Food Act, which would
take away this local control over food safety and labeling.

Infectious disease specialists such as Professor Lee Riley at the
University of California-Berkeley are right on target when they remark that
such food-borne outbreaks do not occur in Africa or Asia, since this type
of disaster was basically created by corporate agribusiness practices.
                                                    
Academic studies have shown time and again that livestock force-fed grain
in confinement have up to 300 times more pathogenic bacteria in their
system as compared to cows allowed to freely graze on grass outdoors. And
one of the dirty little secrets behind California's new-found status as the
No. 1 dairy state is that it is literally awash in factory farm manure,
which enters as runoff into channels designed to irrigate vegetables and
blows as clouds of dust onto nearby produce fields.

It was actually under President Clinton that food safety began to take a
real nosedive in the United States, as genuine public oversight shifted to
ineffectual feel-good self-policing programs. Demoralized federal
inspectors derided the new Hazardous Analysis and Critical Control Points
(HACCP) proposal as "Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray."

Under Bush, this dangerous deregulation of our food/farm system has only
accelerated. Attempts by agribusiness lobbyists and government insiders to
downgrade federal organic standards to allow the application of sewage
sludge were only narrowly driven back by a massive grass-roots outcry.

Unfortunately, proper manure disposal rarely occurs in large-scale
livestock confinement operations. The upshot is a nightmarish landscape of
leaking lagoons, tainted wells, fish kills, debilitated farm workers and
poisoned food all too reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," written
a century ago.

Whether it is bacteria lurking in the salad greens, genetically
contaminated long-grain rice or a T-bone steak with mad cow disease,
sitting down to dinner in the 21st century should not be such a gauntlet.
When consumers in more than 20 states get sick from spinach grown in just
one California county, it should serve as a wake-up call that we all need
to reclaim and re-localize our food dollar by investing in sustainable
small-scale agriculture instead.

Both the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture deserve a reminder that their public mandate is to safeguard
our nation's farming system and natural heritage not to guarantee
agribusiness profit.

Our entire agricultural system deserves a thorough democratic cleansing
with consumer right-to-know labeling, tough antitrust action, corporate
liability measures, and serious incentives for viable alternatives.

Consumers and farmers should be able to know, trust and support one another
again, rather than having to dwell in fear of just what reckless free trade
and filthy factory farming will bring next.

John E. Peck is executive director of Family Farm Defenders, a national
grass-roots organization based in Madison.