After more than a decade of food scares and scandals, is it surprising that we trust neither government nor industry? That we're suspicious of the genetic manipulation of food and we want the Government to act? That we want to know what is really going on and we want to make our own choices? .
But we are deluding ourselves if we think that choice will solve all the problems. As the food chain grows ever longer we're increasingly dependent upon others to provide us with safe food. .
As Americans we browse the supermarket shelves, how can we be sure that the food is healthy and isn't contaminated? The more we know about how our food is produced, the less reassured we are likely to be. How many of us will feel comfortable about eating chicken after samonela outbreaks every week across the world.
We can't measure the amount of tin leaking into tinned tomatoes, or the amount of pesticides contaminating our fresh fruit and vegetables, or the presence of GMOs in many processed foods. Most of us can't even make sense of the information which is "supposed help us" - on food labels. With words so weasel and so tiny, the average food label gives little away. So, increasingly, we have to trust industry and government and hope someone out there is looking out for us. But as I have found, and am now going to share with you, The government and the FDA arent looking out for anyone. They are looking out for the us dollar and the us budget. .
In the past ten years there has been a significant rise in food poisoning, this has convinced us that something, somewhere has gone seriously wrong. Despite this fact, the food industry has an unshakeable belief in whizz-bang techniques to think the impossible - food that is safe and nutritious but also cheap enough to beat the global competition (*which really means we can make half of the food healthy, and fill the rest with chemicals and poisons). We remain to be convinced that technical solutions are the answer.
