Factory food: to encourage students into the chemistry laboratory, teachers used to say the subject was like cooking. These days, it is truer to say cooking is like chemistry; just look at the list of ingredients on the labels of most prepared foods. (Food - Industrialized).

A recent check of "beef cubes" found that four out of five brands listed salt as the first, that is the largest, ingredient, but "salt cubes" wouldn't grab consumers the way "beef cubes" do. Sugar, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, preservatives, and colourants all add to a brew that can strip food of much of its nutrition, but it sells. (That's not to say that eating was always a picnic for our ancestors: they regularly suffered famines, food-borne illness, diseases of malnutrition, and cancers caused by food pickling and smoking food. The fact that we're living longer, healthier lives is at least partly due to an abundant and relatively safe food supply.)

In a cut-throat market, food companies are unwilling to leave anything to chance. They must constantly formulate new flavours, ingredients, and processing methods if they want to avoid falling behind their competitors.

In the 1950s, meal preparation took an average of two hours, and frozen dinners were a new invention; now prepared food is called home-meal replacement, HMR for short. People don't want to replace homemade meals with poor quality fast food, but they don't have a lot of time for cooking. They want restaurant-quality fare, which is why supermarkets are looking more and more like restaurants with a steady increase in prepared foods, right down to washed, bagged, ready-to-eat lettuce. According to one American survey, 22% of U.S. consumers bought ready-made food from supermarkets in 1997, nearly double the 12% who did so a year earlier.

And, modern processing and marketing of food has totally changed the face of farming.

As Reed Karaim wrote in The Washington Post in April 1999: "The little-known truth about [North] American farming, indeed modern agriculture everywhere, is that it's a never-ending race to stay ahead of disaster." This is because only a few major crops (including rice, wheat, and corn) supply most of the world's food, and their production has been concentrated on a relatively small number of varieties. "It takes about five to nine years, on average, before a widely planted variety of crop becomes particularly susceptible to disease, and researchers must have a new variety waiting in the wings before that ... Where do the new strains come from? In part, from places that haven't been `saved' by modern agriculture."

According to Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney in Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, fewer than 30 species of plants supply 95% of the world's food. Industrialized farming and food production, along with bio-technology, has sent small-scale food production into a state of collapse and left consumers with fewer choices at the supermarket.

A century ago there were 7,098 varieties of apples grown in North America; now there are 977. There used to be 2,683 types of pears; now there are 329. India used to have 30,000 varieties of rice; now there are only 3,500.

The same applies to the meat we eat: 90% to 95% of all domestic turkeys raised for sale come from only three lines of breeding stock; 90% of egg-producing chickens are white leghorns. And, broiler chickens are sent to market after 38 days instead of the former 90 days. According to one report, if they are not slaughtered and live to 60 or 80 days, they can't walk because their muscles can't sustain the weight. A similar narrowing of the gene pool has occurred with dairy cattle, with 95% of our milk coming from Holstein cows. And, 60% of these cows come from only four breeding lines. All these animals are bred for fast growth, high production, and low selling prices. But, the lack of genetic diversity could be disastrous: when disease strikes, an entire species can be wiped out. And, as farm animals become resistant to antibiotics, their defences against disease are being lost. The result could be devastating.

Rare Breeds of Canada is a charitable organization trying to maintain livestock diversity. Butchers in England have taken it a step further: they have organized under a program called the Rare Breeds Survival Trust to offer customers choices from a list of rare cattle.

Many feel that agriculture will continue much as it is with large, industrialized operations producing commodities in bulk quantifies and shipping them around the world, and small growers serving local and niche markets. One American dairy farmer thinks another possibility is emerging which involves entrepreneurial, ecological, regional food systems, with large companies providing out-of-season and exotic foods. Maybe even cattle and sheep will be weaned from grain diets and put back to pasture, where they'll eat the grasses their bodies were designed to digest, suggests Hal Hamilton. As agriculture director of the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont in 2000, Mr. Hamilton wrote: "... As fossil fuel energy becomes more scarce, we recreate local and regional food systems, which help us to reinvigorate a sense of local community and grassroots democracy. We enact policies to restrict the power of larger companies to control our food supply. We ensure that farmers receive adequate compensation not only for their production of food but also for their stewardship of the countless ecological, cultural, and historical features of the ... countryside."

However, when a Toronto writer tried to buy an organically grown turkey - one that hadn't been given growth hormones, antibiotics, or grains grown with pesticides - for Christmas 2001, from his favourite butcher, he was out of luck. No free-range turkeys either. The butcher told him all the birds came from big corporate farms in Manitoba and the United States, and that local farmers couldn't compete.

Investigators from the health and consumer protection directorate of the European Commission found in November 2000 that drug use is so rampant in Canada that even meat certified as hormone-free is probably contaminated, and recommended that imports be discontinued. In 1999, Canada exported about 4,000 tonnes of horsemeat and 500 tonnes each of beef and pork to Europe (most Canadian exports go to the U.S.). The inspectors concluded that the health of consumers is at risk from a wide range of meat and dairy products, and questioned the competency of Canada's regulators. Their report stated that Canadian laboratories have "considerable gaps' in their ability to detect drug residues in food, and staff "lack sufficient analytical experience" to conduct proper testing.

Kathleen Connors, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and chairwoman of the Canadian Health Coalition, said it was time the federal government returned "to its proper role as the guardian of public health." It's up to the government to prevent the harm from happening, instead of trying to manage the damage after it's been done.

The dispute over the use of hormones in meat production goes back to the 1980s. That's when European countries banned imports of meat from Canada and the United States because of health concerns. Growth hormones speed up weight gain in beef cattle by between 6% and 18% and make meat more tender and less fatty. North American producers maintain that meat from cattle treated with hormones, antibiotics, and other veterinary drugs is safe. But, regulators in Europe have banned growth hormones, saying they cause cancer. One drug, estradiol-17 beta, has been labelled an endocrine disruptor, meaning it could interfere with the immune system development of children.

Cattle raising and meat packing have been industrialized to the point that assembly-line operations are cranking out meat that can kill us.

Since it was identified in the mid-1980s in Britain, Mad Cow disease, or BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), has resulted in the slaughter of millions of cattle. Also, dozens of people have died from the related brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

BSE spread in the U.K. as a result of feeding livestock ground up bits of other animals infected with the sheep disease, scrapie. Cattle feed had been produced from animal remains since 1930, but in the 1970s and 1980s it was made differently. Solvents thought to be a health risk to rendering workers were banned and lower temperatures were used in processing the feed. Experts think the new manufacturing techniques allowed a resilient strain of scrapie to enter the feed and for it to re-emerge in cattle as BSE. Cattle carcasses infected with BSE were then used in manufactured feed, recycling the disease and rapidly worsening the epidemic.

According to one report, as many as 500,000 contaminated beef carcasses are thought to have entered the human food chain. By the mid-1980s, large numbers of people in Britain were eating infected ground meat. The World Health Organization says more than 168,000 cases of BSE have been reported in Britain and relatively small numbers of cases have also been reported in native cattle in France, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland.

Small numbers of cases have also been reported in Canada, Denmark, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Italy, and Oman, but solely in animals imported from the United Kingdom.

In 1997, Canada banned the feeding of animal-based protein feeds to cattle, but Michael McBane, national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition lobby group says it still occurs. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency believes the chances of a BSE outbreak here are comparatively low.

One of the problems with CJD in humans is that no one knows how long the incubation period is. Some experts think it could be as long as 30 or 40 years, leading us to a massive epidemic in the next generation.

According to a 2001 poll, three in five Canadians believe Mad Cow disease will eventually spread to Canada: the poll found that 68% of Canadians are "concerned about the safety of the food they eat."

They might want to take a look at Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation. Mr. Schlosser explains that the vast scale of meat production now favours the spread of infections, not the least of which is the potentially fatal E-coli strain of bacteria. He writes that a U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that 78.6% of ground-beef samples from processing plants "contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In the modern industrialized food industry (three huge plants supply 65% of Canada's slaughterhouse beef product), products are shipped vast distances: as a result, outbreaks of foodborne illness are widespread. Salmonella poisoning, which originated in a single plant in Guelph, Ontario, in 1998 affected people in all 10 provinces. David Waltner-Toews, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Guelph, thinks the potential for very large outbreaks of food poisoning is increasing. Report on any local cases of food poisoning and how they happened.

2. If there's a factory farm in your area, see if you can arrange to take a tour with the class.

3. Prepare a shopping list for a week's groceries. Compare the cost of regular supermarket prices with the cost of organically produced goods.

FACT FILE

A single fast food hamburger now contains meat from dozens or even hundreds of different cattle.

Commercial hogs, kept eight or more to a pen, grow an average rate of 1.6 pounds a day; if only two or three pigs are kept in a pen there's less crowding and aggression from dominant hogs and the pigs grow at a rate of 2.3 pounds a day.

Websites

Canadian Cattlemen's Association http://www.cattle.ca/

Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council http://www.cpepc.ca/

Factory Farming and Slaughterhouse Resources http://www.students.yorku.ca/~laurenc/resources.htm

The Fauna Foundation http://www. faunafoundation.org/sanct/farm/factory.html

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - http://www.peta-online.org/

Slow Food Convivium of Halifax - http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rhand/slowfood.html

SLOW COOKERS

Most movements have a counter-movement and fast food is no exception: it is up against Slow Food, an international lobby devoted to, well, subduing the frenzy - taking more time to cook nutritious meals with food bought from local growers, and preserving regional food traditions. The movement started in Italy in 1989, where fast food never had a strong foothold, accounting for only 5% of the food eaten away from home, compared to 25% in the rest of Europe, and 50% in the United States.

By 2000, there were 60,000 members in 42 countries, including Canada. Supporters of the movement see it as a boost to community health: farmers, food processors, the regional landscape, and the local economy all benefit, and it improves the personal health of fellow customers who live and work in the community as well. An added bonus is a healthier environment: local consumption means fewer fossil-fuel-burning vehicles are needed to transport food over long distances.

Ann Cooper, author of Bitter Harvest couldn't agree more. She says, as well as ensuring fresher and better tasting food, supporting local farmers whose livelihoods are often threatened by mass food production means greater income security, which could lead to more sustainable farming techniques: fewer pesticides, fertilizers, and preservatives.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

Industrial-scale production of food has drawn criticism from the animal rights folk who say that chickens, pigs, and cattle are often raised in cruel conditions.

In 2000, McDonald's Restaurants came to an agreement with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to treat its hens better: the hens lay two billion eggs a year for the chain, and after two years of negotiations, the fast-food giant agreed to increase the hens' living space, ban forced molting, and phase out debeaking. The agreement put a halt to PETA's "McCruelty to Go" campaign.

Industrial production, or factory farming, is threatening the environment too. Huron and Bruce Counties in Ontario are centres of intensive livestock operations. Huron County alone has 10 times more pigs than people, and critics say such intensive farming is at least partly to blame for pollution along the shores of Lake Huron. Some operations hold 5,000 pigs in one barn. Five thousand pigs can create as much manure as a town of 20,000 people. Another new hog operation plans to have 6,000 animals, producing 10 million litres of untreated manure each year to be spread on fields, some of which are only a kilometre away from the shoreline. According to one report, animal manure is virtually unregulated in Ontario, and it's seeping into the tiling systems that drain fields near Lake Huron. Once that happens it heads into creeks and eventually into the lake.