The modern, industrial system endangers the health of those who participate in it. Unless you are currently and actively trying to avoid this system, you are being impacted every time you eat. We are mostly affected by the chemicals and additives placed in our foods. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this can happen either directly or indirectly. They refer to additives as "any substance the intended use of which results or may reasonably be expected to result--directly or indirectly--in its becoming a component or otherwise affecting the characteristics of any food." They key phrase here being "may reasonably expected to result." Even the wax lining of a food wrapper could ultimately be an additional substance added to your food; however, that's one of the least troubling additives. Food companies, like other capitalistic endeavors, require marketing to sell their products. As a result, many food additives are purely cosmetic. Take the coloring Sunset Yellow (also known as color E110). There have been instances in which this substance "[damaged] kidneys and adrenals when fed to laboratory rats." Additional research has even found it to be "carcinogenic when fed to animals" (Tuormaa). Many of these additives provide no benefits outside of looking good in packaging photography. Although the ideal scenario would be one in which no dangerous additives are placed in our food, at least a small first step to getting there could be removing chemicals that have no effect on taste or product longevity.
Industrialized food systems exploit the land and exist at the expense of our environment. Food, of the plant or animal variety, requires a significant amount of
What are we doing? (C)
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What is the effect?
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Prof Patel, of the University of Texas at Austin, said: “The footprint of global agriculture is vast. Industrial agriculture is absolutely responsible for driving deforestation, absolutely responsible for pushing industrial monoculture, and that means it is responsible for species loss.
“We’re losing species we have never heard of, those we’ve yet to put a name to and industrial agriculture is very much at the spear-tip of that.”
Speaking to The Independent, he pointed to a “dead zone” – an area of water where there is too little oxygen for most marine life – in the Gulf of Mexico that has grown to the same size as Wales because of vast amounts of fertiliser that has washed from farms in mainland US, into the Mississippi River and then into the ocean.
“That dead zone isn’t an accident. It’s a requirement of industrial agriculture to get rid of the sh*t and the run-off elsewhere because you cannot make industrial agriculture workable unless you kick the costs somewhere else,” he said.
The current, industrial system does not place much value on the health or well-being of animals.
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What is the impact of this poor treatment?
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