Super Eco

Photo credit: tlindenbaum, flickr

The U.S. food system is broken. Contaminated spinach, tomatoes, and peanut butter across the country speak volumes about food processing safety and food inspection standards. The huge USDA budget is packed with subsidies for corporate agriculture but too little is allocated for support of small farms that feed the "eat local" movement. To compete with the big-agriculture industrial food operations, small farmers and ranchers need a level planting field. The Ethicurean has a list of milestones—short term reasonable goals for measuring progress at the USDA.

They urge that funding be redirected to support organic farming research instead of pumping all of the research money into genetic engineering. And they suggest, "Start supporting diversified, decentralized food systems right now, and stop risking American lives by encouraging all our eggs to be put in one basket (or hamburger in one plant, peanuts in one processor)."

It's time to bring some order back into food production and distribution. The FDA is doing "a heckuva job" playing catch-up on the peanut butter recall, but it's the Department of Agriculture that needs to be tightened up. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service has seen its inspection budget cut over the years, while hi-tech solutions like food irradiation have been encouraged. Irradiation is meant to kill germs that shouldn't be in the food in the first place, but sanitary standards in the food factories have slipped big-time in the absence of inspection and regulation.

The pendulum of politics seems to be returning to governance and proper regulation. The banks are getting a bail-out. The auto makers are getting a bail-out. Big agriculture is used to getting billions and billions every year and they don't even call it a bail-out. For them, it's more like a hand-out. And it's time to change that.