What's for dinner? The food industry displays the best and worst of corporate activity.

Family farmers started to get elbowed out of the food business in the 1950s. Large corporations bought up land and brought efficiency, planning, and mechanization on a grand scale to food production. Corporate agriculture--agribusiness as it's known--increased crop yields and dramatically lowered the price of food. It has radically changed the way we feed ourselves.

Just look at what's happened to Zea mays; that's a giant tropical grass better known as corn. It's been a staple of the diets of many people, including Canada's Native people. More recent newcomers to our continent didn't take to corn at first.

In North America, we eat about ten times more wheat flour than corn flour; that's our European cultural heritage at work--bread, pasta, and pastry was always made from wheat flour because corn was an unknown plant until Europeans stumbled on the Americas. Yet, when scientists examine our bodies at the molecular level, they see a different picture. They see bodies constructed and fuelled by large quantities of corn. Todd Dawson is a University of California biologist who's done research in this area. He says, "We North Americans look like corn chips with legs." That's because corn, pummeled and processed, finds its way into much of the food we eat. Sometimes, it turns up in quite surprising places.

It took the inventive wizardry of corporations to turn corn into the ever-present product it is today. Who else would have thought of feeding it to fish? In its natural habitat salmon never came across fields of corn, so they did not adapt to make it part of their diet. But, scientists tweaked salmon genetically to make them able to digest corn and started raising them in huge shoreline pens.

Livestock that once grazed on grass are now fed on corn. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, and turkeys all turn corn into meat. Eggs, cheese, yogurt, and milk often start out with corn as a raw material.

The central aisles of the supermarket are a corn-rich zone. Turned into corn starch, corn flour, corn syrup, and many other ingredients derived from corn it's hard to find a food product that doesn't have corn in it. Corn flakes (duh!) and just about every other boxed cereal. Virtually all pop and most fruit drinks are sweetened with corn syrup. In his 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma (ISBN: 1594200823), Michael Pollan lists of few of the other products that contain corn: "Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings, and the relishes and even the vitamins ...

"Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn."

Even vegetables that aren't corn come with corn attached: that cucumber gets its shiny gleam from a sprayed-on vegetable wax made from corn. The fast-food industry is heavily into corn. There are 38 ingredients in Chicken McNuggets and 13 of them come from corn. Hamburgers, fries, pizzas, and tacos are all loaded with corn.

(Besides food for human and livestock consumption, corn is used in textiles, paint, fuel, paper products, cosmetics, tires, plastics, explosives, and wallboard--among other things.)

Corn has become such a huge part of our diet because of the work of corporations. Chief among these corporations is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), which controls about 35 percent of the high fructose corn syrup market (see sidebar on page 30).

ADM is a much-criticized company for the way it operates. The Cato Institute (a right-wing U.S. think tank) says the company "has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties (Republican and Democrat) with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers." Those handouts come in the form of massive government subsidies to corn producers.

Richard Manning documents this in his 2004 book Against the Grain (ISBN: 0865476225). In the early 1980s, Archer Daniels Midland paid for a huge lobbying effort in Washington. The goal was to persuade the U.S. government to limit the imports of sugar. The campaign was successful. Cutting the amount of sugar imported into the country had the effect of forcing up its price; exactly what ADM wanted.

The price of sugar was now higher than high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) causing a wholesale switch to the ADM product. Today, HFCS is the dominant sweetener in North America; 42 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. goes into making it. If it weren't for ADM's lobbying efforts, no market for it would exist.

The blocking of sugar imports and subsidies have encouraged the planting of more and more corn. Vastly increased corn production sparked the search for new ways to use it. So, we get millions of litres of high fructose corn syrup replacing sugar in soft drinks and a host of other products. We also get cattle fed on corn. But, the digestive systems of cattle are not designed to handle corn, so the animals have to be loaded up with antibiotics to prevent them from getting sick. Bacteria exposed to the antibiotics develop resistance to them. These antibiotic-resistant bacteria are showing up in humans so that standard treatments for some infections no longer work.

The ones that gain the most from the corn subsidies and protection from competition are the processors--companies such as Archer Daniels Midland. They get a low-cost raw material to which they can add value and make decent profits. But decent profits don't seem to be enough for some.

In 1999, three top ADM officials got prison sentences for getting together with producers and agreeing not to compete with each other over price. Apparently, going to jail didn't get the message across. In 2005, the company had to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by some of its customers. ADM paid $400 million, without admitting guilt, for fixing the price of high fructose corn syrup. That case has been explored in Kurt Eichenwald's book The Informant (ISBN: 0767903277).

Meanwhile, back at the farm, other unpleasant things are going on. The relentless corporate pressure to produce cheaper and cheaper food has given rise to the intensive rearing of animals. According to animal rights activists, pigs, chickens, sheep, turkeys, and cattle are often treated with brutality.

Chickens raised for their meat are killed within six to seven weeks of hatching. They are kept in tiny cages and are fed a diet of concentrated nutrients laced with antibiotics and other drugs. The animals fatten up so fast that sometimes their legs can't support them; some become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of water and food.

The biggest player in this business is Tyson Foods, which is also a huge beef and pork processing company. Based in Arkansas, Tyson has annual revenue of more than $26 billion, and it plays hardball with its workers.

In the fall of 2005, there was a bitter, and sometimes violent, strike at Lakeside Packers (owned by Tyson) in Brooks, Alberta. The company fought long and hard to keep the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union Out of the plant that processes 40 percent of Canada's beef. Eventually, the UFCW won a first contract with the company. The Brooks experience is not unusual. Tyson Foods has a history of slashing the wages and benefits of its workers and opposing union attempts to organize its plants.

In 2003, Tyson was found guilty of pumping untreated wastewater from a poultry plant into a tributary that empties into the Lamine River in Missouri. In 2001, the company was indicted for conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America to work in 15 of its U.S. poultry processing plants; three employees pied guilty and were fired. Tyson has also been found guilty of discrimination against minorities in hiring, of serious safety and health violations, and of bribing government officials.

In 2000, Multinational Monitor named Tyson one of the "Ten Worst Corporations of 1999" citing seven worker deaths at its facilities in just seven months. Tyson also made the Corporate Crime Reporter's list of the ten worst corporations in 1999 in the U.S. In 2002 Tyson Foods earned a place on one of the Sierra Club's "Ten Least Wanted" lists.

Tyson makes annual profits in the range of $400 million, a fact noted by other corporations in the food business.

Joseph Luter III, decided to do to pigs what Tyson was doing to chickens. At Smithfield Foods, based in Virginia, Mr. Luter created a system of intensively raising pigs. Smithfield now slaughters and processes 27 million pigs a year. The result has been an enormous increase in the amount of meat available to consumers at modest prices. There is a downside--particularly if you are a pig.

The Smithfield production methods involve crowding pigs into tiny pens and feeding them a scientifically designed diet so they put on weight fast. The animals suffer stress under these conditions, and this causes them to bite each other. Because of this, their tails and some of their teeth are cut off without the benefit of pain killers. The males are castrated, again without anesthetic.

When the end comes it isn't pleasant either. Pigs are intelligent animals: more intelligent than dogs. At the slaughterhouse they seem to sense their fate and start squealing. Some drop dead on the spot, apparently of terror.

If life for a factory-farmed pig is horrible, it's not great for the people who kill and process the animals. In 2005, Human Rights Watch documented the abuse of workers in its report Blood Sweat, and Fear--Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants. The group cited Smithfield Foods as a violator of international human rights agreements. Smithfield denied compensation to injured workers, it prevented them from joining unions, and punished workers who reported injuries. Workers claim they are intimidated by Smithfield's own private, armed police force.

Smithfield Foods has joined Tyson and Archer Daniels Midland on the Multinational Monitor's list of the "Ten Worst Corporations."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In his 2006 book The Omnivore's Dilemma (ISBN: 1594200823), Michael Pollan suggests that corn's adaptability might be its greatest asset: "It had to adapt itself not just to humans but to their machines, which it did by learning to grow as upright, stiff-stalked, and uniform as soldiers. It had to multiply its yield by an order of magnitude, which it did by learning to grow shoulder to shoulder with other corn plants, as many as thirty thousand to the acre. It had to develop an appetite for fossil fuel (in the form of petrochemical fertilizer) and a tolerance for various synthetic chemicals." Discuss this idea of a plant adapting itself to human needs.

2. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson writes in his 2003 book The Pig Who Sang for the Moon (ISBN: 034545281X), 'The suffering of almost all farm animals is unique, particular, mostly beyond language to describe or explain. If we give it no thought, and yet eat them for our meals, are we not morally blind ethically dumb, and humanly remiss?" Discuss.

3. Have teams of students visit a supermarket and a farmers' market. Compare the price and quality of produce, interaction with vendors, and convenience. Have them buy a couple of identical foods (apples, strawberries, tomatoes, etc) from the supermarket and from an organic farmer, and then conduct a blindfold taste test to see if there is any difference between the two sources.

Websites

Corn Bibliography--http:// www.biobasics.gc.ca/english/ View.asp?pmiid=817&x=820

Eat Wild--http://www. eatwild.com/

Human Rights Watch (Food Industry Report)--http:// www.hrw.org/reports/2005/ usa0105/

Iowa Corn--http://www. iowacom.org/index.html

FACT FILE

Today's cows are bred and fed to produce 20 times more milk than a cow needs to sustain a healthy calf.

FACT FILE

Worldwide annual production of corn is roughly 600 million tonnes. That makes corn the most-produced grain, ahead of rice and wheat. The total production value of the crop is more than $25 billion and almost half of it is grown in the United States.

FACT FILE

In Manitoba, there are five times more pigs than humans.

FACT FILE

According to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, 7 February is the day on which the average Canadian will have earned enough money to pay for his or her food for a year.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nutrition light.

Agribusiness has made food plentiful and cheap in Canada: but, what about the quality of the food? An egg from a chicken that scratches around in the barnyard for its food is more nutritious than an egg from a caged hen in a factory farm. According to Mother Earth News the free-range egg has up to 30 per cent more vitamin E, 50 percent more folic acid, and 30 percent more vitamin B-12 than factory eggs.

Thomas Pawlick in his 2006 book The End of Food (ISBN: 1553651693) recounts other declines in food qualify, Since 1950, all the vitamin A has gone from supermarket potatoes and they have lost 57 percent of their iron. The calcium in tomatoes has declined by 61.5% while their iron and vitamin A content has dropped dramatically. (They also now have tough skins and taste like damp cardboard). Beef from cattle raised in feedlots on growth hormones and high-grain diets has lower levels of vitamins E, A, D, and carotene, and twice as much fat, as grass-fed beef.

A University of Texas study confirms that our food is becoming less nutritious, Researchers found that between 1950 and 1999, the quantity of many nutrients in food, such as protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and ascorbic acid, has gone down. The declines ranged from six percent for protein to 38 percent for riboflavin.

Study author Dr. Donald Davis believes corporate farming is the reason: "There have been intensive efforts to breed new varieties that have greater yield, or resistance to pests, or adaptability to different climates. But, the dominant effort is for higher yields. Emerging evidence suggests that when you select for yield, crops grow bigger and faster, but they don't necessarily have the ability to make or uptake nutrients at the same, faster rate."

And, there's also been a drive to improve eye-appeal. The corporate food industry has bred characteristics into vegetables and animals that give them a longer shelf life. The food still looks appetizing on a supermarket shelf many days or even weeks after harvest or slaughter. However, some of those good looks are achieved by cheating. The pate centres of factory-produced eggs are made bright orange (to indicate high levels of nutritious carotenes that aren't actually present) by feeding hens marigold flowers, which dye the yokes. Most supermarket tomatoes are picked unripe and exposed to ethylene gas to turn them bright red: they are still not ripe though and lack many of the nutrients acquired when ripened on the vine.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nitrogen farming.

Crop rotation is an old farming technique. By planting different crops in a field each year farmers aimed to restore nutrients to the soil. Every so often a field would be left uncropped for a year to let it rest and recover.

Agribusiness sees this as an inefficient use of land. On many large farms corn is now grown in the same fields year after year. And, as corn is now being used as the source of ethanol fuel to power cars and trucks more and more is going to be planted.

But, corn is a heavy feeder, particularly of nitrogen, Somehow, the nitrogen has to be replaced or the soil will become exhausted. The old method of growing nitrogen-fixing plants such as peas and beans has been discarded, Today, the fields are given doses of nitrogen in the form of synthetic fertilizer.

However, the nitrogen fertilizer destroys the complex soil chemistry. Here's how Jason McKenney describes it in the 2002 book The Fatal Harvest Reader (ISBN: 155963944X)

"Fertilizer application begins the destruction of soil biodiversity by diminishing the rote of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and amplifying the role of everything that feeds on nitrogen. These feeders then speed up the decomposition of organic matter and humus. As organic matter decreases, the physical structure of soil changes. With less pore space and less of their sponge-like qualities, soils are less efficient at storing water and air. More irrigation is needed. Water leeches through soils, draining away nutrients that no longer have an effective substrate on which to cling. With less available oxygen the growth of soil microbiology slows, and the intricate ecosystem of biological exchanges breaks down.

"How do you grow anything in such abused soil? Simple: add more fertilizer."

RELATED ARTICLE: Feeding the sweet tooth.

Humans are hard-wired to seek out sweet flavours; that's why we gulp down so much HFCS. Never heard of it? It stands for high fructose corn syrup and you'd be hard pressed to get through a day without ingesting some of it. HFCS came on the market in the 1980s and has become wildly successful. It is a low-cost sweetener used in most fast foods and in a very wide variety of prepared grocery items.

Dr. George Bray is an obesity researcher. He says that HFCS is at least partly responsible for the obesity epidemic that is sweeping much of the Western world. More specifically, it's the fructose around which the debate swirls. Some health experts say fructose tricks our bodies in several ways. It doesn't trigger our brains to tell us we're full up, so we tend to keep stuffing ourselves. It also forces our livers to kick more fat out into the bloodstream.

Other researchers disagree that high fructose corn syrup is somehow reprogramming our bodies toward obesity. They say we're just eating too much of it and not burning it off through physical activity.

And, we are consuming a lot of this stuff. A 340 ml can of pop has as much as 13 teaspoons of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Nutritionists say that's about the daily maximum for one person--in a single can of pop. But, we're getting HFCS from many other processed foods: a dollop of ketchup equals one teaspoon of sugar; a serving of low-fat fruit-flavoured yogurt has 10 teaspoons of sugar; a helping of applesauce yields five teaspoons of sugar; English muffins, hot dog buns, granola bars, it's everywhere. We eat so much of it without knowing it that an average person now consumes more than 30 teaspoons of sugar a day most of it in the form of HFCS.

The food industry loves this. HFCS keeps foods "fresher" for longer and is about 20 percent cheaper than other sources of sugar. It gives consumers the sugar-hit they crave so they'll keep coming back for more.

Journalist Greg Critser lays out a compelling case against high fructose corn syrup in his 2003 book, Fat Land: How Americans Be, came the Fattest People in the World (ISBN: 0618380604).