- Was Your Chicken Nugget Made in China? It Will Soon be Hard to Know (NPR, 9/5/13)
- Chickens raised and processed in the U.S. are being sent to China to be transformed into manufactured chicken products to be sold back to the U.S. market. (!)
- Rodale C.E.O.: U.S. Agricultural Companies 'No Better' than Syria (Discover Magazine, 9/6/13)
- An open letter from Maria Rodale ("the C.E.O of the world’s leading health-and-wellness publisher and the granddaughter of the founder of the organic movement in America") to President Obama, cautioning against the dangers of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
- GMO Foes Blast Scientific American Editorial Decrying Labeling Laws (NY Daily News, 9/6/13)
- In a recent editorial, the editors of Scientific American Magazine claimed that laws requiring labeling of genetically-modified foods are "unscientific." This piece covers the debate that ensued.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Recent Food in the News
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After reading these articles I was disturbed by the implications of such things as the processing of our chicken in China. As the globalized food system continues to grow ever more complex, so does the inability to trace origins of products.
ReplyDeleteThe first article raised a disturbing point by noting that a country of origin label would not be required since the product was merely processed out of country.
After a little research, I was discomposed to find that American caught salmon and Dungeness crab have already been taking this quick processing rendezvous across the waters for some time now. In order for this procedure to work, the sea food is first frozen after being caught, then shipped over, unfrozen, de-shelled or filleted, then refrozen to be shipped back. Hardly "fresh caught".
The NPR article hints at a slippery slope to outright chicken import from China, as well as issues of labeling manipulations used to hide the country of origin.
This made me wonder if this could also be a future issue with the growing number of other US products that are shipped off for cheap Chinese processing. Even if labeling laws of such ingredients such as GMOs becomes stricter, it may become even harder to flag such products as containing them if they have been processed oversees or even combined with Chinese ingredients which may or may not contain GMOs or other controversial ingredients.
By the way, it also came to my attention that many of the very vitamins I consume to regain some nutrients lost from today's nutrient-lacking agriculture have also been produced in China.
It is worrisome to me that Scientific American would even take this side in the debate when the very name of its journal implies that its stance should be on the side of redundantly tested, non-biased, theorized EMPIRICAL data. It is my understanding that much of the GMO research was done internally by Monsanto connected scientists in an erroneous non-longitudinal manner. One commenter asked whose pocket this journal was now in..
The Discover Magazine article presented a more radical perspective (one that instantly made me think of some of the themes from the recent movie I saw at Cine, "The East", a movie about a radical environmental group exacts retaliation against big pharmaceutical and chemical companies with their "own medicine").
I found an ironic fact from the comments that Syria had recently agreed on some sort of GMO labeling, but followed by a possible less discrete application of foreign chemicals. Sends kind of a mixed message...
I was quiet shocked with regard to the article about chicken production and the replacing of USDA inspectors to grade the cleanliness and quality of processing facilities. I believe that this will create very negative incentives to companies in the chicken production market - and while they'll be benefits to keeping their processing within USDA guidelines, I can't see them being quiet as strict or careful as they would be if someone was on site monitoring them from an outside organization. I also feel that allowing China to import chicken and turkey into the US without country of origin labels would be a gross disservice to the US public as a whole. As Americans I feel that we should be able to know where are food comes from, and should not have to look to hard to find out.
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