• U.S.

Environment: Nader on Food

4 minute read
TIME

When Abraham Lincoln established the U.S Department of Agriculture in 1862, he hoped it would be “the people’s department.” But has it turned out that way? Ralph Nader thinks not. In a 491-page report by one of his indefatigable groups of “Raiders,” Nader charges that the department favors big “agribusiness” and fails to protect otherwise defenseless Americans from bad meat, contaminated poultry and toxic pesticides.

On the average, each American eats 116 lbs. of beef and 50 lbs. of poultry every year; Nader charges that all too often it is contaminated or diseased. In addition farm crops from citrus to cereals are annually dusted with about 1 billion pounds of pesticides. Such massive spraying, says Nader, is cause to fear for the environment and human health.

Horror Stories. Nader’s group concedes that federal inspectors do a good job in checking 75% of the meat processed in the U S. But state inspection standards, which legally should be certified by the Agriculture Department, are in a jurisdictional limbo. In most states, according to the report, nearly un-monitored inspectors tend to be subject both to intimidation (one poultry inspector was pushed into a plucking machine) and to bribes (money, girls, or all the meat they can eat). As a result, the report charges, they routinely approve “4D” animals—dead, dying, diseased or disabled—for processing. In Massachusetts, a state-inspected processor was permitted to salvage cancerous tumors cut from sick cattle and sell them as “brains” or “sweetbreads” to Boston supermarkets. What makes such horror stories worth chronicling, the Raiders say, is the Agriculture Department’s plans to turn its inspection duties over to state agencies.

Even worse are the problems posed by hidden contaminants in meat. Stuffed with chemicals that make them fatten fast, animals end their lives in overpacked feed lots. Four chickens, for example, are jammed into a 12-in. by 18-in. cage. Since overcrowding promotes stress and enhances the spread of disease, the lot operators pour tranquilizers and antibiotics into feed troughs.

The problem is that residues of many invisible chemicals remain in the meat, endangering the final consumer, man. Some, like nitrite and nitrate preservatives, can be poisonous under certain conditions. Others, like the artificial hormone diethylstilbestrol, are suspected of causing cancer when consumed in large doses (see MEDICINE). To safeguard the public, the report urges that alt meat inspection be removed from the Agriculture Department and put under a tough new public-health agency.

“The American consumer has never been better protected,” the Agriculture Department retorted last week. In addition, Agriculture spokesmen say, Nader’s study “purposely deals in certain specific problem areas which are not typical either of the conditions that exist in the department or the food industry.”

Pesticide Treadmill. The Raiders’ report also discusses pesticide abuse, a subject now mainly under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency. They believe that pesticide makers urge more poisons on farmers than they need. Since 1960, in fact, pesticide sales have tripled, causing environmental problems and more chemical residues in foodstuffs. By overspraying crops, farmers wipe out beneficial insects. The bad bugs often develop immunities to the chemicals, forcing farmers to use stronger and more costly poisons. The process is, the report says, “a pesticide treadmill.”

The danger is in the pressure to manufacture and sell chemicals with greater and greater toxicity. Parathion, Thimet, Paraquat, TEPP and Temik have killed not only bugs but on occasion people as well. In total, an estimated 75,000 acute pesticide poisonings occur each year. But the resistant bugs seem to win in the end. As a result, pest problems have increased in recent years, a development that the report blames on pesticide makers—not on the farmers who use them.

The Raiders point to better options that are advocated by most entomologists and generally accepted by pesticide manufacturers as well. Judicious spraying at the proper time would cut use of pesticides by an estimated 60%. New biological controls—insect sex lures, natural predators and viruses —would reduce it even further. The study also recommends reform of the easily delayed procedure of taking chemical poisons off the market.

Like all of Nader’s reports, this one is carefully researched but tendentious. Still, if it is too oblivious of short-term economic realities and hopes for too much in uniting rural and urban interests in a “new populism,” its intentions are hard to fault.

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