in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Contents
Part One: Caring for All Creatures
1 The Metamorphosis of a Pig Farmer
2 Eggs and the Chickens Who Lay Them
Part Two: What Are We Putting into Our Bodies?
4 Health Food or Harm Food? The Truth about Soy
6 It's Not about Size, It's about Health: Obesity and Food Choices
7 The Skinny on Grass-fed Beef
8 Are Factory Farms Becoming Biological Weapons Factories?
9 Greed and Salmonella: A Deadly Duo
10 Infants Growing Breasts: The Trouble with Hormones in Our Milk
11 Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made with Monsanto's Artificial Hormones?
12 The Startling Health Benefits of Dark Chocolate
Part Three: Industrial Food Production—and Other Dirty Dealings
13 No Sweetness Here: Chocolate and 21st-Century Slavery
14 Bitter Beans: Why Fair Trade Coffee Matters So Much
17 The Battle for Our Children
Part Four: Being Human in This Troubled World
19 Remembering How Much Relationships Matter
20 Do Friends Let Friends Eat Junk Food?
23 Stronger at the Broken Places
Further Reading and Other Resources
Introduction
IT CAN FEEL LIKE A WAR OUT THERE. Who would have guessed that First Lady Michelle Obama was doing anything offensive when, shortly after her husband became president, she planted an organic garden on the White House lawn? It seemed innocuous, much like Lady Bird Johnson's campaign to beautify the nation's cities and highways by planting wildflowers, or Laura Bush's support for childhood literacy.
But CropLife America, a trade association representing Monsanto and other makers of pesticides and genetically modified (GMO) food, was outraged. They angrily wrote the First Lady and widely broadcast their view that her organic garden was unfairly maligning chemical agriculture. They demanded that she use “crop-protection technologies,” otherwise known as pesticides.
From the degree of umbrage they took, you'd have thought the Obama administration was nursing major plans to do something to challenge agribusiness as usual. But that was far from the case. In fact, the president had already appointed an ardent ally of industrial agriculture, Tom Vilsack, to head the Department of Agriculture. Vilsack's support for agrichemicals, large industrial farms, and GMO foods was so steadfast that, as the governor of Iowa, he had been the recipient of Monsanto's Governor of the Year award.
As if to make it copiously clear that he was not intending to confront the agrichemical and factory-farm conglomerates, Obama had even appointed the man most responsible for the advancement of GMO food in the history of the U.S., Michael R. Taylor, as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner. And in case that wasn't enough, Obama then promoted Taylor to an even more powerful position as Deputy Commissioner of Foods.
This was the same Michael R. Taylor who had made it possible for Monsanto to get GMO foods approved in the U.S. without even remotely adequate testing for possible health dangers. In a classic example of the “revolving door” between agribusiness and government, Taylor was first an attorney at Monsanto, then became policy chief at the FDA, then became Monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist, and then was appointed by Obama as America's food-safety czar.
But CropLife America, whose members include such bastions of corporate virtue as Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, and Dow, was still not satisfied. In what may have been the political equivalent of make-up sex, the president subsequently appointed CropLife America vice president Islam A. Siddiqui to become the nation's Chief Agricultural Negotiator. Siddiqui is not exactly what you would call a hero to the organic food movement. Nor has he made it his mission to defend future generations and the biological carrying capacity of the planet. When he oversaw the release of the National Organic Program's standards for organic food labeling, it was his bright idea to permit both irradiated and GMO foods to be labeled as organic.
This is the kind of thing, frankly, that makes me upset. It's not a pretty sight to see our nation's food policies in the hands of shills for industrial food production and agrichemical companies