>The Way We Live Now >Our Decrepit Food Factories >By MICHAEL POLLAN > >The word "sustainability" has gotten such a workout lately that the >whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of >inoffensiveness. Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever "it" means. >On a recent visit to a land-grant university's spanking-new >sustainability institute, I asked my host how many of the school's >faculty members were involved. She beamed: When letters went out >asking who on campus was doing research that might fit under that >rubric, virtually everyone replied in the affirmative. What a nice >surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul working in >agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other field of >endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against sustainability? >When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak themselves in the >term, you have to wonder if we haven't succeeded in defining >sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, and if >it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like >"natural" or "green" or "nice." > >Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the >world, we had best start with the "rectification of the names." The >corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their >proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the >reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what >about this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable? > >To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an >objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of >environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or >process can't go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very >conditions on which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used >to say, there are internal contradictions that sooner or later will >lead to a breakdown. > >For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial >agriculture as "unsustainable" in precisely these terms, though what >form the "breakdown" might take or when it might happen has never >been certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop >working? The soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been >predicted and they may yet come to pass. But if a system is >unsustainable - if its workings offend the rules of nature - the >cracks and signs of breakdown may show up in the most unexpected >times and places. Two stories in the news this year, stories that on >their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let >alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way >we're growing food today. > >The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant >strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans >each year than AIDS - 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in >2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical >Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been >a problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create >resistant strains of bacteria. It's Evolution 101: the drugs kill off >all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance >mutation, possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; >these hardy survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant >superrace. The methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in >hospitals as early as the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly >patients. But a new and even more virulent strain - called >"community-acquired MRSA" - is now killing young and otherwise >healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. No one is yet >sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is sufficiently >different from the hospital-bred strains to have some researchers >looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment where the >heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a lethal >new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. > >The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent >of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on >factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in >close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the >routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of >infectious diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals' >growth also commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the >crucial fact is that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production >practiced on the scale and with the intensity we practice it could >not be sustained for months, let alone decades. > >Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this >situation is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or >later, the profligate use of these antibiotics - in many cases the >very same ones we depend on when we're sick - would lead to the >evolution of bacteria that could shake them off like a spring shower. >It appears that "sooner or later" may be now. Recent studies in >Europe and Canada found that confinement pig operations have become >reservoirs of MRSA. A European study found that 60 percent of pig >farms that routinely used antibiotics had MRSA-positive pigs >(compared with 5 percent of farms that did not feed pigs >antibiotics). This month, the Centers for Disease Control and >Prevention published a study showing that a strain of "MRSA from an >animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now >responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the >Netherlands." Is this strictly a European problem? Evidently not. >According to a study in Veterinary Microbiology, MRSA was found on 45 >percent of the 20 pig farms sampled in Ontario, and in 20 percent of >the pig farmers. (People can harbor the bacteria without being >infected by it.) Thanks to Nafta, pigs move freely between Canada and >the United States. So MRSA may be present on American pig farms; we >just haven't looked yet. > >Scientists have not established that any of the strains of MRSA >presently killing Americans originated on factory farms. But given >the rising public alarm about MRSA and the widespread use on these >farms of precisely the class of antibiotics to which these microbes >have acquired resistance, you would think our public-health >authorities would be all over it. Apparently not. When, in August, >the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition asked the Food and Drug >Administration what the agency was doing about the problem of MRSA in >livestock, the agency had little to say. Earlier this month, though, >the F.D.A. indicated that it may begin a pilot screening program with >the C.D.C. > >As for independent public-health researchers, they say they can't >study the problem without the cooperation of the livestock industry, >which, not surprisingly, has not been forthcoming. For what if these >researchers should find proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap >meat is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people? >There would be calls to revolutionize the way we produce meat in this >country. This is not something that the meat and the pharmaceutical >industries or their respective regulatory "watchdogs" - the >Department of Agriculture and F.D.A. - are in any rush to see happen. > >he second story is about honeybees, which have endured their own >mysterious epidemic this past year. Colony Collapse Disorder was >first identified in 2006, when a Pennsylvanian beekeeper noticed that >his bees were disappearing - going out on foraging expeditions in the >morning never to return. Within months, beekeepers in 24 states were >reporting losses of between 20 percent and 80 percent of their bees, >in some cases virtually overnight. Entomologists have yet to identify >the culprit, but suspects include a virus, agricultural pesticides >and a parasitic mite. (Media reports that genetically modified crops >or cellphone towers might be responsible have been discounted.) But >whatever turns out to be the immediate cause of colony collapse, many >entomologists believe some such disaster was waiting to happen: the >lifestyle of the modern honeybee leaves the insects so stressed out >and their immune systems so compromised that, much like livestock on >factory farms, they've become vulnerable to whatever new infectious >agent happens to come along. > >You need look no farther than a California almond orchard to >understand how these bees, which have become indispensable workers in >the vast fields of industrial agriculture, could have gotten into >such trouble. Like a great many other food crops, like an estimated >one out of every three bites you eat, the almond depends on bees for >pollination. No bees, no almonds. The problem is that almonds today >are grown in such vast monocultures - 80 percent of the world's crop >comes from a 600,000-acre swath of orchard in California's Central >Valley - that, when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every >February, there are simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate >all those flowers. For what bee would hang around an orchard where >there's absolutely nothing to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that >the almond trees aren't in bloom? So every February the almond >growers must import an army of migrant honeybees to the Central >Valley - more than a million hives housing as many as 40 billion bees >in all. > >They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New >England. These days, more than half of all the beehives in America >are on the move to California every February, for what has been >called the world's greatest "pollination event." (Be there!) Bees >that have been dormant in the depths of a Minnesota winter are woken >up to go to work in the California spring; to get them in shape to >travel cross-country and wade into the vast orgy of almond bloom, >their keepers ply them with "pollen patties" - which often include >ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and flower pollen imported >from China. Because the pollination is so critical and the bee >population so depleted, almond growers will pay up to $150 to rent a >box of bees for three weeks, creating a multimillion-dollar industry >of migrant beekeeping that barely existed a few decades ago. >Thirty-five years ago you could rent a box of bees for $10. (Pimping >bees is the whole of the almond business for these beekeepers since >almond honey is so bitter as to be worthless.) > >In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped >supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from >Australia. These bees get off a 747 at SFO and travel by truck to the >Central Valley, where they get to work pollinating almond flowers - >and mingling with bees arriving from every corner of America. As one >beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle, >California's almond orchards have become "one big brothel" - a place >where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over >the country and the world before returning home bearing whatever >pathogens they may have picked up. Add to this their routine exposure >to agricultural pesticides and you have a bee population ripe for an >epidemic national in scope. In October, the journal Science published >a study that implicated a virus (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus) in >Colony Collapse Disorder - a virus that was found in some of the bees >from Australia. (The following month, the U.S.D.A. questioned the >study, pointing out that the virus was present in North America as >early as 2002.) > >"We're placing so many demands on bees we're forgetting that they're >a living organism and that they have a seasonal life cycle," Marla >Spivak, a honeybee entomologist at the University of Minnesota, told >The Chronicle. "We're wanting them to function as a machine. . . . >We're expecting them to get off the truck and be fine." > >We're asking a lot of our bees. We're asking a lot of our pigs too. >That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize >production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural >systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as >efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up - when >bees or pigs remind us they are not machines - the system can be >ingenious in finding "solutions," whether in the form of antibiotics >to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. >But this year's solutions have a way of becoming next year's >problems. That is to say, they aren't "sustainable." > > From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the >story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables >about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to >rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, >whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond >trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in >biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this >brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, >we'll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as >something more than a nice word. > >Michael Pollan is a contributing writer. His new book, "In Defense of >Food: An Eater's Manifesto," will be published next month.
-- May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers! Albert Einstein _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
