Chemical Chicken

September 28, 2009 at 8:32 am | In environment, free market economy, human rights | 1 Comment
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‘If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.’ Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

The suing of KFC by an Australian family in New South Wales for causing serious injury to their 7 year old daughter opens the whole bucket of chicken for industrial agriculture once again. This is not a localized issue of whether something nasty got into the food because of poor hygiene standards of the local store but goes to the issue of how food is manufactured in our world today.

In October 2005, Monika Samaan, now 11, collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital after eating part of a Twister from Villawood KFC. Her salmonella poisoning developed into acquired spastic quadriplegia, acquired profound intellectual disability and liver dysfunction. She is now confined to a wheel chair.

We all know that eating junk food is bad for us but the fast food chains seem to like to add an extra bullet in the game of dining roulette. In 2003, the Food Safety Information Council estimated that a whopping 5 million Australians are affected by food-poisoning every year and a 2005 report found that approximately 120 people die from food-borne illnesses in Australia every year.

KFC only stopped using partially-hydrogenated oils, one of the worst sources of trans fats which massively increases the risk of heart disease, to fry their chicken when the Centre for Science in the Public Interest took them to court in 2006. Health authorities worldwide recommend that consumption of trans fats be reduced to trace amounts. Baskin and Robbins makes a large Fudge Brownie (‘vanilla soft serve blended with brownie chunks and hot fudge’) which packs two days’ worth of saturated fat (39 grams) and almost a day’s worth of recommended calorie intake (1,900 calories) into a snack.

If that doesn’t put you off, listen to this. In the United States in 1994, health investigators found that contamination of icecream pre-mix occurred because it was transported in tanker trailers that had previously been used to haul liquid eggs contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis. The contamination was not detected until the icecream had been distributed across the nation. Researchers estimated that 224,000 people in many different states contracted gastroenteritis as a result of eating the contaminated icecream. The practice of mass-distribution and transporting food long distances contains extensive risks as well.

The principles of the fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society and everyday life. Producing things in similar, standardized ways embodies four principal processes: ‘efficiency’, ‘calculability’ based on quantitative indicators, such as profit, ‘predictability’ as standard products are delivered in predictable ways, and ‘control’ through technology.

These principles seem to be applied so that even routines to ensure food safety and hygiene operate at their most economical and efficient rather than their most effective. KFC’s own internal hygiene review found the Villawood outlet, the subject of the legal action, regularly failed to comply with standards around food cooking, storage temperature and shelf life. In March, the NSW Food Authority dished out a $73,000 fine to two KFC restaurants in Sydney for poor hygiene and QSR Pty Ltd, which operates the outlets, was convicted of 11 charges of breaching food hygiene laws.

Such principles become especially problematic when applied to large-scale agricultural production from which KFC and other fast food chains source their never-ending demand for chicken and beef. The connection between flu viruses, now a source of global epidemics, and the practices of agribusiness have been strengthened by the findings of a report by Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (2009) produced in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

‘Industrial farm animal production is characterized by confining large numbers of animals of the same species in relatively small areas, generally in enclosed facilities that restrict movement. In many cases, the waste produced by the animals is eliminated through liquid systems and stored in open pit lagoons.’ This image of farms surrounded by lakes of excrement is almost enough to put you off your 2-Piece Feed.

One of the report’s damning findings is that the ‘intensive confinement production system’ or factory farming increases antibiotic resistance because of their misuse in the industry. OK we all want clean, healthy animals killed for our gastronomic pleasure. But antibiotics are administered in huge quantities, not just for disease prevention, but also for growth promotion. Tender, juicy breasts of chicken so big that the poor chicken cannot stand up and lies face down in its own excrement.

Reports show that between 17.8 to 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics per year are pumped into these animals. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70% of the antibiotics dispensed in the United States annually are used in farm animals. The practice of adding low levels of antibiotics and growth hormones has become common practice among battery farm operations.

Disease experts are investigating the links between this widespread use of antibiotics in animals and the role of antimicrobial resistance in epidemics. Benign or beneficial bacteria, which normally live in the human digestive tract or on human skin, such as Golden Staph, may pass antimicrobial resistance to harmful bacteria. Golden Staph is an enduring problem in many large Australian hospitals, attacking intravenous lines, catheters and wounds after operations.

The Pew report states ‘While it is difficult to measure what percent of resistant infections in humans are caused by antimicrobial use in agriculture as opposed to other settings, it can be assumed that the wider the use of antimicrobials, the greater the chance for the development of resistance.’

The essentially unregulated use of antibiotics in US industrial farming has serious implications for the incubation of epidemics. Public health experts are studying the correlation between conditions in industrial food animal production and the spread of the influenza virus. Dr. Ann Marie Kimball, at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health says influenza surveillance may be missing the key bridging populations, such as farmers, veterinarians and meat packers. Just as avian influenza (H5N1) and SARS had connections to human contact with animals, reports point to a swine flu epicenter around a huge hog farm in Veracruz.

Industrial food animal production and fast food consumption are intimately linked. These production centres are no longer farms. We must relinquish our bucolic dreams of cows peacefully chewing in lush fields and chickens clucking contently in the farm yard. They have now been replaced by the clamour and bustle of something more like the cross between a science lab and a factory but with more shit, blood and pain. Surprisingly, these images are produced by dispassionate scientists not by animal activists in the street. Monika Samaan is a symbol for everybody on the planet. We are all at risk from this dehumanised factory system.

Environmental Frankensteins

January 14, 2009 at 10:39 pm | In environment | Leave a Comment
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Written on 8 Jul 2008

. . . the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

By ignoring two key features of the Garnaut Report (exempting petrol from the carbon trading scheme and compensating electricity generators), it is clear that the Federal Government, under the thrall of free market economics, is incapable of divesting itself of corporate control. The Frankenstein-list of solutions proposed by corporations to global warming include nuclear power and genetically-modified food. These are simply the same commodity-focussed, profit-driven solutions that have led the global economy (and now the environment) to the brink of collapse, having increased poverty and the wealth gap.

In May, the National Australia Bank cut its 2008-09 winter crop forecast by 5% to 37 million tonnes. A large proportion of Australia’s grain growing areas failed to achieve average spring rain. The market answer to a bad harvest: drive up the price so rich speculators can make more money on futures contracts. Meanwhile farmers cannot make a living and agribusiness descends to take over the farm.

After 30 years of market-driven poverty alleviation programs, developing countries are a social and environmental disaster. The Gross Domestic Product of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s seven richest people combined. Almost 1 billion people suffer from hunger, yet 1.2 billion suffer from obesity.

The market answer to the food crisis and climate change is Genetically Modified Food. Biotech companies are asserting that farmers cannot prevail against climate change without genetic engineering. The world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations, Monsanto, BASF, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, and Dow, along with biotech partners such as Mendel, Ceres, and Evogene, have acquired patents and patent applications for climate-proof genetic traits, especially related to drought and extreme temperatures. Globally, the top 10 seed corporations already control 57% of commercial seed sales. It is a proprietary approach that seeks to expand an industrial model of agriculture, one which will concentrate corporate control, further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds and divert resources from affordable, farmer-based strategies for climate change adaptation.

Sales strategy disguised as philanthropy is spreading this technology to developing countries. Monsanto and BASF are working with national agricultural research programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa to develop drought-tolerant corn, which will open African markets for high-tech seeds accompanied by intellectual property laws, seed regulations, and other products and practices amenable to agribusiness. Governments in developing countries are so desperate to earn foreign exchange that they are selling their countries’ agricultural productivity to corporations.

In a genuinely democratic system, the needs of the poor would never be excluded. However, corporations constantly maneuver to avoid the consequences of democratic demands. The reaction by corporations to calls to clean up polluting industries is to move them to developing countries while still producing for profit for developed countries. Researchers found that US imports of goods from China cause a greater production of carbon dioxide than if the goods were made in the US. Factories in developing nations tend to use more energy than in the West. Thus in order for rich countries to ‘reduce’ their green house gas emissions they move the emissions to another country.

Corporate-controlled institutions, such as the WTO, fail to understand or respond to democratic processes. The decision-making processes of such bodies have led to the exclusion of the interests of most of the Earth’s people. Trade negotiations are structured in such a way to obstruct genuine participation by citizens and organisations acting on their behalf. Any mechanisms for participation reproduce the WTO logic that only groups with a ‘legitimate’ interest in the organisation’s work, defined as having a ‘direct interest in issues of production, distribution and consumption’, are entitled to a say. It seems that even when corporations attempt to institute inclusive processes they fail. At heart there is no motivation and no understanding. Corporations are blind to the legitimate demands of ordinary people.

Unless there is a move towards including the valid concerns of developing countries and ordinary citizens, our capacity to deal with climate change will be extremely limited. Tom Athanasiou, director of EcoEquity, a green think tank, argues that the only way developing countries are going to make significant reductions in emissions, without compromising their development prospects, is if the wealthy countries provide them with the technology and development assistance necessary to do so.

Under the influence of corporate globalization, the decision-making structures of democratic countries have been reduced to technocratic management of large, unresponsive, bureaucratic, and unaccountable institutions. The demands of the people are dismissed as ‘populism’ but populism began as a farmer’s movement demanding rights to land. Now it is typically associated with ‘the pathologies of the masses’: nationalism, xenophobia and calls for moral and racial purity.


René Cuperus of the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, think tank of the Dutch Labor Party, argues that the rise of populism could be a legitimate warning against technocratic policy making, against new inequalities, and the failures of representative democracy. In this sense of the word, populism must never be demonized and underestimated. He suggest that it may be an alarm indicating a crisis of representation or a communication breakdown between elites and ordinary people resulting in popular revolts, such as the recent food riots in Haiti.

Dr Janette Hartz-Karp, Associate Professor at the Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy (ISTP) Murdoch University, argues that to deal with the complexity of climate change and oil dependency, much of the adaptation needed will take place at a local level. However, local level adaptation can run into problems from individualistic attitudes and behaviours, such as the ‘not in my backyard’ (‘NIMBY’) syndrome; the tragedy of the commons (‘I don’t want a new freeway outside my house either but I’m still going to buy a second car that will contribute to the need for more freeways’); and the difficulty of reducing ‘ecological footprints’ when the full impact of that footprint is not felt locally (when environmental impacts such as waste are shifted large distances into someone else’s ‘backyard’). These attitudes work against the common good.

Dr Hartz-Karp pioneered a system of deliberative democracy. Deliberative Democracy envisions that a representative group of ordinary citizens selected by random sampling (as opposed to the 2020 Summit), comes together to deliberate on issues important to society. Disparate people have the opportunity to engage in egalitarian discourse on a public issue. The hope is that through respectful, informed dialogue, participants will solve problems creatively and find common ground that reflects the universal good. This system requires a reversion back to democratic basics, heeding the informed will of the people, in an environment that seeks to discover aggregate, communitarian viewpoints.

The need for urgent action on climate change has prompted calls for an oligarchy of scientists and technocrats to take over and declarations that democracy has failed. These calls come in response to the domination and failure by corporations and free market fundamentalists. A system of true democracy would involve people in meaningful decision-making and would ensure that all voices are attended to as we tackle climate change.

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