Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth About a Food Chain Gone Haywire. - book reviews

Progressive, The, Dec, 1997 by John Buell

by Nicols Fox Basic Books. 434 pages. $25.00.

The E. coli outbreak in Colorado this past August was only the beginning. Pathogens, including E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Lysteria, are responsible for somewhere between eighty and 260 million cases of food poisoning a year, Nicols Fox reports in Spoiled. At least 9,000 of those cases are fatal. Many involve young children.

The prevalence of food-borne diseases is symptomatic of a deeper pathology. "Something has changed in the degree to which fresh poultry, eggs, and meat are contaminated today, and those changes are at least partly the result of an arrogant and duplicitous meat and poultry industry that is banking on keeping consumers ignorant and complacent," writes Fox.

After years of encouraging consumers to enjoy rare hamburgers, the food industry and the media have now started--albeit belatedly--to issue warnings about safe meat-preparation techniques. These campaigns suggest that we must be conscious not only of the minimum cooking temperature, but also of every step from grocery store to dinner plate.

These warnings beg a question: Why are many of the foods we long safely brought into our homes now hazardous? Fox explains that many of the animals arriving at slaughterhouses today have become contaminated with pathogens. This happens, in large measure, because of the way factory farms raise animals. Housed in cramped, unsanitary environments, many factory animals develop diseases. The farmers, in turn, routinely administer antibiotics, leading to antibiotic-resistant and especially pathogenic bacterial strains.

The animal waste these animal cities produce is an enormous problem for the safety of our fruits and vegetables--as is the pervasive overuse of pesticides.

The guts and hides of many animals are contaminated when they arrive for processing. During the journey to factory, the tightly packed and frightened animals may discharge dangerous waste on each other. Once within the factory walls, the speed of the process contributes to the disease. Chicken producers soak the birds in a liquid bath in order to add weight and thus increase their profits. Unfortunately, these chill baths also spread bacteria.

Ground beef comes from many sources, which increases the likelihood of tainted meat. A few sick cattle in one herd can eventually spread pathogens through millions of pounds of hamburger across the country.

If we don't cook the meat properly at home, we won't kill all the germs. And if we eat at a restaurant or a fast-food place, we risk putting ourselves in the hands of food-service workers who are poorly paid and poorly trained. Nor do most restaurant workers get sick days, which encourages them to work when ill.

Food-borne illness is a major public-health problem, but the food conglomerates not only fight broad surveillance of food-borne illnesses, they also work to chill public discussion of the topic. At the behest of corporate agricultural interests, thirteen states have enacted agricultural-disparagement laws that prohibit criticism of food based on "bad science."

The legal definitions of bad science are so sweeping that they could squelch many discussions of scientific controversies over food safety. Though such laws will most likely not withstand court challenge, they deter critics from speaking up.

Fox's powerful book invites comparison to earlier works of American progressive thought, such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Like Sinclair, Fox writes of unregulated markets, an obsession with profits, the mistreatment of workers, and a shameful disregard for broader ecological concerns--all interacting to create a major social crisis.

Fox lives in a climate ostensibly more conservative than that of Sinclair's time. But appearances can be deceiving.

Americans express a lot of disenchantment with corporations. A work that shows how the corporate chickens have come home to roost in our kitchens and on our dinner tables may help motivate political action.

John Buell is a political economist who writes on labor and environmental issues. His most recent book, co-authored with Tom De Luca, is "Sustainable Democracy: Individuality and the Politics of the Environment" (Sage, 1996).