Media Clipping — Sept.4-11th, 2008, The Coast

Editorial

The president of Maple Leaf Foods sat in front of a TV camera a couple of weeks ago to deliver a sombre apology. “To Canadians who are ill and to the families who have lost loved ones, I offer my deepest sympathies,” he said. “Words cannot begin to express our sadness for your pain.” Michael McCain’s carefully crafted message was designed to minimize the PR damage after tainted meats from Maple Leaf’s Toronto processing plant spread illness and death across Canada. The mainstream media hailed McCain’s video as a PR triumph even as angry consumers threatened class action lawsuits and politicians argued over whether food safety regulations were strict enough. The uproar illustrated the grim state of a food system so centralized that any breakdown in safety can put tens of thousands at risk. It is also a system in which a few industrial giants reap handsome profits, while local food producers struggle to survive. Last year, Maple Leaf sold $5.2 billion worth of food and earned $207 million in profits.

Compare that with the results of a recently-released study showing that in four of the last six years, Nova Scotia farmers failed to earn enough to cover their expenses. The GPI Atlantic study found that NS farm incomes have dropped an average of 91 percent since 1971 while farm debt has soared. No wonder. Farmers are victims of the price-setting powers of huge food processors and supermarket chains. GPI points out that farmers would be a lot better off if we all bought more local food and insisted that public institutions such as universities, schools and hospitals did the same.

However, a second GPI study says we’ll lose our ability to buy local food unless governments take steps to prevent Nova Scotia’s farmland from falling into the hands of developers. The study points out that since 1921, the provincial land area devoted to farming has dropped by nearly 80 percent. It concludes that Nova Scotia still has enough farmland to feed itself but can’t afford to lose any more. The study recommends that governments and non-profit groups compensate farmers for the commercial value of their land in return for restrictions on developing it. Adopting the GPI recommendations however, would require a major shift in the way we produce and think about food. In his book *From Land to Mouth,* former Nova Scotia sheep farmer Brewster Kneen points out that the industrial food system is based on the economics of distance. The average Canadian food item travels thousands of kilometres. Tomatoes grown in California or Mexico yield profits for big growers, long-distance truckers, wholesalers and supermarket chains. Because governments subsidize transportation costs by building highways or giving big tax breaks to oil companies, imported food is often cheaper than local stuff and those “fresh,” foreign tomatoes are available in the depths of winter.

The logic of distance is also at work when food is processed at some faraway factory. As consumers, we’ve learned to pour breakfast from a brightly-coloured cereal box or wolf down a cheap quarter-pound lunch at a fast-food joint. But our industrial food system is hellishly inefficient. It takes 35 times more energy for example, to raise the beef in that quarter-pound lunch than the meat itself contains because industrial beef production requires so many expensive “inputs” such as fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, electricity and fossil fuels. True, some people are resisting the well-advertised lure of cheap, easy food, but in our hectic, consumer society, convenience is king. Yes, we should pay attention to the safety issues raised by the Maple Leaf disaster as well as to GPI’s warnings about the need to protect local farms and farmers. But that would require politicians to take on powerful economic interests which profit from distance and we ourselves would have to be willing to do the toughest thing of all — change our eating habits.

Copyright © 2008, The Coast