A Killer Diet Rebuttal: Chicken Little Tale Sings A Familiar Tune
December 16, 2004
This article appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, December 12, 2004
Is a fiery new book on the food industry dead right, or is it just rattling the flatware?
When has a dead horse been beaten long enough? When five books with nearly identical titles, all saying the same things have been published. That’s when! This is the case with Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry is Killing Us, by Christopher Cook.
The first book was Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Lappe, published 22 years ago. Small Planet was followed by Diet for a Healthy Planet, by John Robbins, then Diet for a Poisoned Planet, by David Steinman, and finally, The Next Diet for a Small Planet, by Ms. Lappe and her daughter Anna.
All five of these books have the same gloomy message: that our food supply is pumped up on unsustainable petroleum-based fertilizer, crammed full of antibiotics and hormones, drenched in pesticides, genetically manipulated, then harvested and processed on the backs of exploited and abused workers under the jackboot of multinational, monopolistic corporations. Our food is then shipped round the world, burning insane amounts of fossil fuel simply to fill the culinary whims of spoiled Westerners (us!). All of this, we are told, makes us exceedingly ill and takes a horrific toll on the environment, threatening the very existence of mankind.
As Mr. Cook writes, “the food we eat is the product of a whole system that is in the process of destroying itself—poisoning our air and water, turning topsoil into useless dust, and putting farmers out to pasture.” Who would’ve known that we were each responsible for so much destruction and social injustice simply by picking up milk and eggs at the Piggly Wiggly?
The solution prescribed by all of these authors is to buy organically grown food from small, local farmers.
Of course the whole thing is really about anti-corporate politics, not food safety or the environment. For example, Cook decries the “near-monopoly control” of “Big Food,” noting that the top four beef producers earn 80 percent of the U.S. meat market. When 20 percent of a market is labeled a “near-monopoly,” you know there is a credibility problem.
The depth of misunderstanding in this book is staggering to agriculturists like myself, but it doesn’t take an expert to poke serious holes in the arguments.
For example, if our food is so unhealthy and toxic, how come we’re all living longer? Mr. Cook focuses heavily on foodborne illnesses, estimated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control at 76 million cases and 5,000 deaths each year (an upset stomach counts). Cook claims that this is “a plague exacerbated by the way animals are ‘farmed’ and processed in enormous warehouses and lightning-speed assembly lines.”
But Mr. Cook’s preferred organic farming would make the problem far worse, not better. For example, a recent Danish study found that organic chicken was three times more likely to be contaminated by illness-causing Campylobacter bacteria than conventionally raised chicken. The UK’s Food Standards Agency found organic chicken was twice as likely to be contaminated with Campylobacter. A University of Minnesota study published this year found that organic produce was six times more likely to be contaminated with E. coli than conventional and had a higher likelihood of Salmonella contamination, too.
But don’t they have lower levels of pesticide residues? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. A recent study by the Organic Materials Research Institute found that 24 percent of all organic produce had detectable residues of synthetic pesticides, and 8 percent had residues higher than the average on non-organic produce. However, none of the produce—organic or conventional—had anywhere near worrying pesticide levels. Most residues were found at parts per billion levels (one part per billion is equal to one inch in 16,000 miles!). We can literally detect the chemical needle in a haystack, but that doesn’t mean danger.
What about diminishing topsoil? Like so many others, Cook gets this one completely wrong. He mistakes estimates of soil moved each year as soil lost. In fact, we lose a tiny fraction of the amount claimed by Cook, and far too little to get worked up over. The newest conservation farming methods—made possible by biotechnology and ultra-low toxicity herbicides opposed by Cook—reduce tillage and have cut soil erosion by 65 to 95 percent. We’re now actually building topsoil on our best farmland. Organic farmers are left scratching the ground to kill weeds, worsening erosion.
Petroleum-based fertilizers? Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is created by compressing air (78% nitrogen) using heat and pressure from natural gas. The process could be powered by wind, solar, geothermal, or even urban elites riding stationary bikes. It’s completely sustainable. The organic manure alternative is to convert huge areas of wildlife habitat into organic fertilizer factories. Vaclav Smil at the University of Manitoba estimates it would take a 500 percent increase in the world’s cattle population to produce enough manure to replace synthetic fertilizers. Where would we even park 6 billion extra cattle?
The bottom line is that these books are really about reshaping society around a mythical agrarian past. As Cook’s own website states, the book “[argues] for a whole new way of looking at what we eat—one that places . . . food at the top of the menu for political change.”
My advice? Give this political dead horse a rest and simply enjoy a good meal this holiday.
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