9 Nasty Truths About The Meals You Eat [View all]

[marmar]

from Civil Eats:



9 Nasty Truths About The Meals You Eat

May 11th, 2012
By Martha Rosenberg


Thanks to factory farming’s massive economies of scale, a lot of food today is either disgusting or cruel or disgusting and cruel. Just when people stopped talking about cantaloupes with deadly listeria, “pink slime” hit the news. And just when people stopped talking about pink slime, ground beef treated with ammonia to kill germs, mad cow hit the news. Does anyone even remember the arsenic in the fruit juice?

Food scandals are so costly to Big Food, it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act. In the 1990s it pushed through “food disparagement” laws under which Oprah Winfrey herself was sued by cattlemen in 1997 (Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again upon learning that cows were being fed to cows). Winfrey was acquitted and cow cannibalism was made illegal but the US still lost $3 billion in beef exports when a first mad cow was discovered in 2003. April’s new mad cow will not help foreign trade.

Last year, Big Food introduced Animal Facility Interference laws in several states which make it a crime to “produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility.” The bills also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility “with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the Owner”–in an effort to stop the flow of grisly undercover videos. The first facility interference offense would be an aggravated misdemeanor but subsequent offenses could be felonies.

Of course, the Ag-Gag bills, as they were quickly dubbed, are anti-free-speech and would chill both whistle-blowers and news media (who couldn’t legally even receive non-approved farm images). The bills were scorified by CNN, the New York Times, Time magazine and First Amendment and food safety activists and, luckily, were defeated in 2011. But they are creeping back. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/05/11/9-nasty-truths-about-the-meals-you-eat/