Compromising the Fundamentals: The True Root of Problems in the Industrialized Food Industry
August 5th 2009 12:45
All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.
~ Mohandas Gandhi
~ Mohandas Gandhi
As a human race we all share the need for basic fundamentals to ensure survival as a species.
The fundamentals of having clean air to breathe, unpolluted water to drink and clean food to eat are essential for any society’s survival and has been the basis for every great society’s structure from the beginning of time.
Great societies that were willing to lay there lives on the line over things as simple as having access to water or land to cultivate crops are after thoughts in an industrial society that has taken it’s gifts for granted.
Gifts that are the life blood of survival have been transformed into fiscal commodities and bottom lines with out oversight and any real regulation as to the process of getting them from the industrial farm to the dinner plate.
The urgency of understanding the dangers that exist in our food supply has reached the highest levels of our government but any search for real solutions has fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes.
For decades the call has come from the American people in a loud and clear voice to fix the problems that are happening in meat packing plants and agricultural farms across the nation.
The problems that occur when the local farmer is passed over for the multi billion dollar corporation that has the ability to lobby government and fuel political campaigns to continue practices that are destroying our food supply.
Practices that include the industrialization of one of our basic commodities for survival and has forced changes in our culture instead of changes in the way they do business.
Shortcuts in preparing meat and vegetables at the plant have put mandates on the American people to cook meat longer and pre wash vegetables instead of turning the questions back on the corporations as to what they’re not doing to ensure product safety.
What’s happened in the decades between the time of yesteryear when the local farmer would supply all the meat for the town and the rise of corporations like Tyson chicken who can produce meat from sea to shining sea is a loss of accountability.
Accountability for the action of hiring the cheapest unqualified workers to prepare food for the consumer and the resulting consequence of people getting sick from the companies negligence.
Accountability for a system that would rather save money by crowding animals into pens instead of having them live in social groups and the resulting consequence of these companies being forced to use antibiotics to ensure the animals survival which are passed on to the consumer in meat consumption.
Accountability for a system that allows these very same companies to pump animals with growth hormones and steroids as well as the feeding of meat products and other items outside of their natural diet and the consequence of an unbalanced society with new diseases and genetic disorders.
All of these problems are on the table for discussion but our society is only ready to talk about the end result well after the original problem has already occurred.
Just last week Congress passed a measure to give the Food and Drug Administration more teeth to combat some of these issues in ensuring that things like the peanut salmonella scare do not occur again on American soil.
Congress taking action to ensure the safety of the American people is always a good thing but it will take more than the beefing up of an already over bloated government agency to fix the problems that exist with the food we put on our dinner plates.
When it comes to issues that concern animal rights or changing the way we live our personal lives the conversation often times hits a brick wall of impracticality or deaf ears when it comes time to listen to solutions.
The problem that comes with this logic is that we sit and wait for our government officials to fix the problem through legislation instead of asking questions to find the true root of the problem.
The true root of the problem doesn’t exist in any radical idea of ending the practice of eating animals nor does it exist in making the Food and Drug Administration and even bigger agency.
The true root of the problem exists in the moment we decided that food was no longer an essential fundamental for human survival and we allowed our health to become a corporation’s bottom line.
The only way to find our way back to a system of accountability to ensure the safety of our food supply is for us to change our thought process and to support the farms across the nation that are doing the right thing for the consumer.
The right thing in going above and beyond government regulation to ensure that the problems in the industrial food industry are eradicated.
The right thing to ensure that the animals and vegetables that supply our society with nourishment are grown and raised with proper care that translates into the health and safety of our world society.
The right thing to ensure stability for future generations before the problem gets worse with the creation of new viruses, exposure to pesticides and antibiotics along with an expansion of salmonella and ecoli viruses on the human population from exposure to fecal matter.
The time to pressure our government officials to understand the gravity of the situation beyond animal rights protests is now but until they “get it” every world citizen must do what they can by becoming knowledgeable on the situation and supporting the people who are doing the right thing for their fellow world citizen.
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