Industrial Food

An interactor said that America and India should switch their kids to solve the malnutrition in India and the obesity in USA. Perhaps the point that was missed is that industrial food creates malnutrition and obesity at the same time. The article below summarizes what is happening to food in rapidly industrializing countries where processed snacks are replacing food.

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From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/world/asia/31india.html
December 31, 2006
India Prosperity Creates Paradox; Many Children Are Fat, Even More Are Famished
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
NEW DELHI, Dec. 30 — Presenting a confounding portrait of child health in India, new research commissioned by the government finds that despite the economic advances of recent years India’s share of malnourished children remains among the worst in the world.

Paradox being pervasive in this country, the new data on child malnutrition comes even as public health officials confront what they call alarming levels of childhood obesity.

In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India’s youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions.

Consider the statistics from Delhi, one of the country’s most prosperous states and the seat of the capital. A recent study conducted by the Delhi Diabetes Research Center among schoolchildren ages 10 to 16 found nearly one in five to be either overweight or clinically obese.

At the same time, preliminary figures from the latest National Family Health Survey showed one in three children under the age of 3 to be clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition.

Most vexing, especially for the government, is that the preliminary findings of the national survey, conducted in 2005-6, suggest that India’s share of malnourished children seems to have declined only modestly since the last national survey seven years ago.

In Delhi, for instance, the share of underweight children dipped to 33 percent from 35 percent in that period. In perhaps the most damning indictment of the public health system, the share of Delhi children who were fully immunized actually fell to 63 percent from a level of 70 percent.

During that period, the Indian economy soared.

“I just want to assure you, government is very aware,� Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission said at a meeting of children’s rights advocates this month. “We must really judge our success in terms of these indicators, not in terms of growth.�

Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said bluntly at the same gathering, “Our failure here is very extraordinary.�

The rampant malnutrition occurs even though India has long had a surplus of food grains, and one of the largest child health and nutrition programs in the world. Public health experts say social practice and government neglect are more to blame.

Deprivation starts with mothers: poor women, who are likely to be malnourished to begin with, tend to get insufficient food and rest during pregnancy. They give birth to underweight babies and often cannot produce enough breast milk.

Millions of families, including their babies, survive on little more than rice, wheat and lentils. Poor sanitation, irregular immunization and a lack of access to primary health care can make already fragile children even more prone to falling ill and losing more weight.

The child nutrition program, which is supposed to provide food rations and health counseling to mothers and children, has a checkered record, delivering high-quality meals in some places but dogged elsewhere by charges of corruption and mismanagement.

A government panel this year recommended sweeping changes to the program, including serving cooked food to children and delivering rations at home for pregnant women and babies.

In a rare rebuke, the Supreme Court of India this month ordered the government to expand swiftly the number of nutrition programs in the country. The programs now serve around 46 million children, at least on paper.

The repercussions of child malnutrition, particularly in a country where 40 percent of the people are younger than 18, are obvious and far-reaching. It stunts mental and physical development and makes children additionally susceptible to illness.

The World Bank this year put a price on malnutrition, saying that India lost up to $2.5 billion annually because of reduced productivity.

The government has so far released data from the latest National Family Health Survey for 22 of the country’s 29 states, and it reveals, like most everything else here, a mixed picture. In India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh in the north, 47 percent of children younger than 3 are clinically underweight. In central Madhya Pradesh, home to many of India’s indigenous tribes, the portion is a staggering 60 percent. In southern Tamil Nadu, the share has steadily dipped over the past decade to 33 percent.

Because not all state information is released, no official figure is available yet on the latest nationwide malnutrition figure.

An independent analysis by Jean Dreze, an economist and advocate for the expansion of the national child nutrition program, estimated that the national malnutrition rate was 42 percent, based on the population-weighted average of the 22 states where figures are available.

That represents a slight decline from seven years ago when nearly 47 percent of children nationwide were found to be underweight.

One morning in a destitute rural district called Barabanki about 300 miles northwest of here, a dozen small children, most of them barefoot, some of them barely clothed, lined up for help at a program known as Integrated Child Development Services.

On this morning, every child received a scoop of dry cereal, a bland mixture of wheat, sugar and soy that is called panjiri in Hindi.

Some brought a plastic bag to hold their gift. Others made a bowl with the dirty end of whatever they wore. They sat on the ground and shoveled the food into their mouths.

Mothers in this village said the dry ration cereal sometimes made their children sick. No cooked food was available at this center. The center was also supposed to dispense vitamin-fortified oil to the villagers, but they said it rarely came.

Child health workers assigned to the centers in Barabanki were infrequent visitors. One parent said she had not seen a health worker in her village in months, since the last distribution of polio vaccine. Immunization rates in this state are among the lowest anywhere in India. Fewer than one in four children are fully immunized, according to the latest health survey.

An independent survey by Mr. Dreze and his team across six states in India concluded that, like the centers in Barabanki, most of the feeding programs had neither kitchens nor toilets. A third of them were described as being in “poor� or “very poor� shape.

The best ones, the survey found, like those in southern Tamil Nadu state, served a variety of hot, freshly cooked food. Stubborn social divides in some parts of India meant that low-caste children or those from Muslim families were not served at all.

Around the corner from one center in Barabanki, at the home of a toddler named Asma, who is almost 3, was a typical portrait of want.

Asma’s mother, Alia Bano, said she had never had enough breast milk to feed Asma, the youngest of six children. She barely had money to buy milk, and with it, she made a pot of milky tea for the family each morning.

The family’s daily meals consisted of lentils, with rice or whole wheat bread, and sometimes a vegetable. Fruit was too expensive. Asma’s mother could not recall when she last bought meat or eggs. The family lived off the earnings of Asma’s father, a day laborer. They owned no land.

Asma waddled with a distended belly, a hallmark of malnutrition. Her mother said she frequently suffered from diarrhea and fever.

A portrait of India’s afflictions of plenty is almost equally commonplace.

Here in the nation’s capital, on a Saturday afternoon several months ago a teenager named Mansi Arya sat in a nutritionist’s clinic, recalling just how much she had eaten during her last round of school examinations.

She would come home from class, persuade her mother to fry spiced bread known as parathas or open a packet of namkeen, the deep-fried spicy snacks that are the Indian equivalent of potato chips. She would plunk down with her books and study until dinner, eat and return to the books.

At school, the canteen served all manner of hot fried delicacies, all of which Mansi ate with abandon. At birthday parties, there was the usual array of junk food and cakes. That year, when she was in the 10th grade, Mansi said she had gained close to 22 pounds.

For nearly five months, with the help of nutrition counseling, Mansi dropped pounds. She gave up junk food. Her mother kept fruit on the dinner table. Her parents bought her a treadmill. The family gave up eating white bread and switched to healthful grains.

Then, a few months ago, she entered the crunch of college entrance exams, the most serious in an Indian youngster’s life.

Mansi confessed last week that her discipline had melted in the face of stress. She said she craves chocolates and spiced potato cutlets. She said she couldn’t remember when she was last on that treadmill.

“With this tight schedule and so much of stress, I don’t like all that diet food,� she said. “I feel hungry when I eat that diet food, and I can’t study when I’m hungry.�

A continuing study among Delhi teenagers by Anoop Misra, a doctor at the privately run Fortis Hospital here, found that the ranks of the obese had jumped sharply in the last two years alone, from 16 percent to nearly 29 percent.

Mansi, now 16, swears she will get back on the diet after her exams next March. She says she wants to look good when she starts college next year.

Re: # 37

``]``
this piece was intended to be an exclamation mark guys

Since Saima sheds light on the processed food, how about the fact that environmental factors [that includes processed food] cause 65-70% of breast cancers in north american women?

Only 5% of Medical Research Council’s funds are dedicated to women’s health according to the Advisory Committee on Women’s Health Research Issues (1994)

If the fact is true then women are objects of biomed research [because biomed approach does not want to recognize collective women`s health problems, nor treats them. Wait, maybe it does –but the same way as men`s problems are treated because the medical research/result is andocentric].

Even if the fact is not true, we still know somewhere in the back of our heads that something man-made is responsible for all ills of the world.

Sighs, -especially for the poor female beings [thank God they are at least considered human being ]

More information on similar topic. As long as the organic food delivers on what it promises then everything is hunky dory. The recent love affair between Spinach and Ecoli has been raising a lot of concern. The local whole food stores carry imported stuff in abundance and it`s amusing to find imported ingredients in many local items. The following article also presents a good insight into the global organic food market. Being a frequent visitor to my local whole food store, I must mention that food is not the only item on the isles. The organic picture does not start and end at what goes in your tummies, it includes cosmetics, cleaning detergents, nutritional supplements, and everything that is part and parcel of one`s daily life. The consumer is indeed paying a very handsome price for the toilers` efforts. The end comsumer would just hope and wish that the investment is worth it.

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The Organic Myth
Pastoral ideals are getting trampled as organic food goes mass market

By Diane Brady

Next time you`re in the supermarket, stop and take a look at Stonyfield Farm yogurt. With its contented cow and green fields, the yellow container evokes a bucolic existence, telegraphing what we`ve come to expect from organic food: pure, pesticide-free, locally produced ingredients grown on a small family farm.

So it may come as a surprise that Stonyfield`s organic farm is long gone. Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S. True, Stonyfield still cleaves to its organic heritage. For Chairman and CEO Gary Hirshberg, though, shipping milk powder 9,000 miles across the planet is the price you pay to conquer the supermarket dairy aisle. ``It would be great to get all of our food within a 10-mile radius of our house,`` he says. ``But once you`re in organic, you have to source globally.``

Hirshberg`s dilemma is that of the entire organic food business. Just as mainstream consumers are growing hungry for untainted food that also nourishes their social conscience, it is getting harder and harder to find organic ingredients. There simply aren`t enough organic cows in the U.S., never mind the organic grain to feed them, to go around. Nor are there sufficient organic strawberries, sugar, or apple pulp -- some of the other ingredients that go into the world`s best-selling organic yogurt.

Now companies from Wal-Mart (WMT ) to General Mills (GIS ) to Kellogg (K ) are wading into the organic game, attracted by fat margins that old-fashioned food purveyors can only dream of. What was once a cottage industry of family farms has become Big Business, with all that that implies, including pressure from Wall Street to scale up and boost profits. Hirshberg himself is under the gun because he has sold an 85% stake in Stonyfield to the French food giant Groupe Danone. To retain management control, he has to keep Stonyfield growing at double-digit rates. Yet faced with a supply crunch, he has drastically cut the percentage of organic products in his line. He also has scaled back annual sales growth, from almost 40% to 20%. ``They`re all mad at me,`` he says.

As food companies scramble to find enough organically grown ingredients, they are inevitably forsaking the pastoral ethos that has defined the organic lifestyle. For some companies, it means keeping thousands of organic cows on industrial-scale feedlots. For others, the scarcity of organic ingredients means looking as far afield as China, Sierra Leone, and Brazil -- places where standards may be hard to enforce, workers` wages and living conditions are a worry, and, say critics, increased farmland sometimes comes at a cost to the environment.

Everyone agrees on the basic definition of organic: food grown without the assistance of man-made chemicals. Four years ago, under pressure from critics fretting that the term ``organic`` was being misused, the U.S. Agriculture Dept. issued rules. To be certified as organic, companies must eschew most pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, bioengineering, and radiation. But for purists, the philosophy also requires farmers to treat their people and livestock with respect and, ideally, to sell small batches of what they produce locally so as to avoid burning fossil fuels to transport them. The USDA rules don`t fully address these concerns.

Hence the organic paradox: The movement`s adherents have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but success has imperiled their ideals. It simply isn`t clear that organic food production can be replicated on a mass scale. For Hirshberg, who set out to ``change the way Kraft (KFT ), Monsanto (MON ), and everybody else does business,`` the movement is shedding its innocence. ``Organic is growing up.``

Certainly, life has changed since 1983, when Hirshberg teamed up with a back-to-the-land advocate named Samuel Kaymen to sell small batches of full-fat plain organic yogurt. Kaymen had founded Stonyfield Farm to feed his six kids and, as he puts it, ``escape the dominant culture.`` Hirshberg, then 29, had been devoted to the environment for years, stung by memories of technicolor dyes streaming downriver from his father`s New Hampshire shoe factories. He wrote a book on how to build water-pumping windmills and, between 1979 and 1983, ran the New Alchemy Institute, an alternative-living research center on Cape Cod. He was a believer.

But producing yogurt amid the rudimentary conditions of the original Stonyfield Farm was a recipe for nightmares, not nirvana. Meg, an organic farmer who married Hirshberg in 1986, remembers the farm as cold and crowded, with a road so perilous that suppliers often refused to come up. ``I call it the bad old days,`` she says. Adds her mother, Doris Cadoux, who propped up the business for years: ``Every time Gary would come to me for money, Meg would call to say `Mama, don`t do it.```

Farming without insecticides, fertilizers, and other aids is tough. Laborers often weed the fields by hand. Farmers control pests with everything from sticky flypaper to aphid-munching ladybugs. Manure and soil fertility must be carefully managed. Sick animals may take longer to get well without a quick hit of antibiotics, although they`re likely to be healthier in the first place. Moreover, the yield per acre or per animal often goes down, at least initially. Estimates for the decline from switching to organic corn range up to 20%.

Organic farmers say they can ultimately exceed the yields of conventional rivals through smarter soil management. But some believe organic farming, if it is to stay true to its principles, would require vastly more land and resources than is currently being used. Asks Alex Avery, a research director at the Hudson Institute think tank: ``How much Bambi habitat do you want to plow down?``

IMPOSSIBLE STANDARD
For a sense of why Big Business and organics often don`t mix, it helps to visit Jack and Anne Lazor of Butterworks Farm. The duo have been producing organic yogurt in northeastern Vermont since 1975. Their 45 milking cows are raised from birth and have names like Peaches and Moonlight. All of the food for the cows -- and most of what the Lazors eat, too -- comes from the farm, and Anne keeps their charges healthy with a mix of homeopathic medicines and nutritional supplements. Butterworks produces a tiny 9,000 quarts of yogurt a week, and no one can pressure them to make more. Says Jack: ``I`d be happiest to sell everything within 10 miles of here.``

But the Lazors also embody an ideal that`s almost impossible for other food producers to fulfill. For one thing, they have enough land to let their modest-sized herd graze for food. Many of the country`s 9 million-plus dairy cows (of which fewer than 150,000 are organic) are on farms that will never have access to that kind of pasture. After all, a cow can only walk so far when it has to come back to be milked two or three times a day.

STEWARDS OF THE LAND
When consumers shell out premiums of 50% or more to buy organic, they are voting for the Butterworks ethic. They believe humans should be prudent custodians not only of their own health but also of the land and animals that share it. They prefer food produced through fair wages and family farms, not poor workers and agribusiness. They are responding to tales of caged chickens and confined cows that never touch a blade of grass; talk of men losing fertility and girls becoming women at age nine because of extra hormones in food. They read about pesticides seeping into the food supply and genetically modified crops creeping across the landscape.

For Big Food, consumers` love affair with everything organic has seemed like a gift from the gods. Food is generally a commoditized, sluggish business, especially in basic supermarket staples. Sales of organic groceries, on the other hand, have been surging by up to 20% in recent years. Organic milk is so profitable -- with wholesale prices more than double that of conventional milk -- that Lyle ``Spud`` Edwards of Westfield, Vt., was able to halve his herd, to 25 cows, this summer and still make a living, despite a 15% drop in yields since switching to organic four years ago. ``There`s a lot more paperwork, but it`s worth it,`` says Edwards, who supplies milk to Stonyfield.

The food industry got a boost four years ago when the USDA issued its organic standards. The ``USDA Organic`` label now appears on scores of products, from chicken breasts to breakfast cereal. And you know a tipping point is at hand when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. enters the game. The retailer pledged this year to become a center of affordable ``organics for everyone`` and has started by doubling its organic offerings at 374 stores nationwide. ``Everyone wants a piece of the pie,`` says George L. Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley, the country`s largest organic farm co- operative. ``Kraft and Wal-Mart are part of the community now, and we have to get used to it.``

The corporate giants have turned a fringe food category into a $14 billion business. They have brought wider distribution and marketing dollars. They have imposed better quality controls on a sector once associated with bug-infested, battered produce rotting in crates at hippie co-ops. Organic products now account for 2.5% of all grocery spending (if additive-free ``natural`` foods are included, the share jumps to about 10%). And demand could soar if prices come down.

But success has brought home the problems of trying to feed the masses in an industry where supplies can be volatile. Everyone from Wal-Mart to Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST ) is feeling the pinch. Earlier this year, Earthbound Farm, a California producer of organic salads, fruit, and vegetables owned by Natural Selection Foods, cut off its sliced-apple product to Costco because supply dried up -- even though Earthbound looked as far afield as New Zealand. ``The concept of running out of apples is foreign to these people,`` says Earthbound co-founder Myra Goodman, whose company recalled bagged spinach in the wake of the recent E. coli outbreak. ``When you`re sourcing conventional produce, it`s a matter of the best product at the best price.``

Inconsistency is a hallmark of organic food. Variations in animal diet, local conditions, and preparation make food taste different from batch to batch. But that`s anathema to a modern food giant. Heinz, for one, had a lot of trouble locating herbs and spices for its organic ketchup. ``We`re a global company that has to deliver consistent standards,`` says Kristen Clark, a group vice-president for marketing. The volatile supply also forced Heinz to put dried or fresh organic herbs in its organic Classico pasta sauce because it wasn`t able to find the more convenient quick-frozen variety. Even Wal-Mart, master of the modern food supply chain, is humbled by the realities of going organic. As spokesperson Gail Lavielle says: ``You can`t negotiate prices in a market like that.``

While Americans may love the idea of natural food, they have come to rely on the perks of agribusiness. Since the widespread use of synthetic pesticides began, around the time of World War II, food producers have reaped remarkable gains. Apples stay red and juicy for weeks. The average harvested acre of farmland yields 200% more wheat than it did 70 years ago. Over the past two decades chickens have grown 25% bigger in less time and on less food. At the same time, the average cow produces 60% more milk, thanks to innovations in breeding, nutrition, and synthetic hormones.

It`s also worth remembering how inexpensive food is these days. Americans shell out about 10% of their disposable income on food, about half what they spent in the first part of the 20th century. Producing a budget-priced cornucopia of organic food won`t be easy.

Exhibit A: Gary Hirshberg`s quest for organic milk. Dairy producers estimate that demand for organic milk is at least twice the current available supply. To quench this thirst, the U.S. would have to more than double the number of organic cows -- those that eat only organic food -- to 280,000 over the next five years. That`s a challenge, since the number of dairy farms has shrunk to 60,000, from 334,000 in 1980, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. And almost half the milk produced in the U.S. comes from farms with more than 500 cows, something organic advocates rarely support.

What to do? If you`re Hirshberg, you weigh the pros and cons of importing organic milk powder from New Zealand. Stonyfield already gets strawberries from China, apple puree from Turkey, blueberries from Canada, and bananas from Ecuador. It`s the only way to keep the business growing. Besides, Hirshberg argues, supporting a family farmer in Madagascar or reducing chemical use in Costa Rica is just as important as doing the same at home.

Perhaps, but doing so risks a consumer backlash, especially when the organic food is from China. So far there is little evidence that crops from there are tainted or fraudulently labeled. Any food that bears the USDA Organic label has to be accredited by an independent certifier. But tests are few and far between. Moreover, many consumers don`t trust food from a country that continues to manufacture DDT and tolerates fakes in other industries. Similar questions are being asked about much of the developing world. Ronnie Cummins, national director of the nonprofit Organic Consumers Assn., claims organic farms may contribute to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, although conventional farming remains the proven culprit.

Imported organics are a constant concern for food companies and supermarkets. It`s certainly on Steve Pimentel`s mind. ``Someone is going to do something wrong,`` says Costco`s assistant general merchandise manager. ``We want to make sure it`s not us.`` To avoid nasty surprises, Costco makes sure its own certifiers check that standards are met in China for the organic peanuts and produce it imports. Over at Stonyfield, Hirshberg`s sister, Nancy, who is vice-president of natural resources, was so worried about buying strawberries in northeastern China that she ordered a social audit to check worker conditions. ``If I didn`t have to buy from there,`` she says, ``I wouldn`t.``

For many companies, the preferred option is staying home and adopting the industrial scale of agribusiness. Naturally, giant factory farms make purists recoil. Is an organic label appropriate for eggs produced in sheds housing more than 100,000 hens that rarely see the light of day? Can a chicken that`s debeaked or allowed minimal access to the outdoors be deemed organic? Would consumers be willing to pay twice as much for organic milk if they thought the cows producing it spent most of their outdoor lives in confined dirt lots?

ETHICAL CHALLENGES?
Absolutely not, say critics such as Mark Kastel, director of the Organic Integrity Project at the Cornucopia Institute, an advocacy group promoting small family farms. ``Organic consumers think they`re supporting a different kind of ethic,`` says Kastel, who last spring released a high-profile report card labeling 11 producers as ethically challenged.

Kastel`s report card included Horizon Organic Dairy, the No. 1 organic milk brand in the U.S., and Aurora Organic Dairy, which makes private-label products for the likes of Costco and Safeway Inc. Both dairies deny they are ethically challenged. But the two do operate massive corporate farms. Horizon has 8,000 cows in the Idaho desert. There, the animals consume such feed as corn, barley, hay, and soybeans, as well as some grass from pastureland. The company is currently reconfiguring its facility to allow more grazing opportunities. And none of this breaks USDA rules. The agency simply says animals must have ``access to pasture.`` How much is not spelled out. ``It doesn`t say [livestock] have to be out there, happy and feeding, 18 hours a day,`` says Barbara C. Robinson, who oversees the USDA`s National Organic Program.

But what gets people like Kastel fuming is the fact that big dairy farms produce tons of pollution in the form of manure and methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide -- gases blamed for warming the planet. Referring to Horizon`s Idaho farm, he adds: ``This area is in perpetual drought. You need to pump water constantly to grow pasture. That`s not organic.``

Aurora and Horizon argue their operations are true to the organic spirit and that big farms help bring organic food to the masses. Joe E. Scalzo, president and CEO of Horizon`s owner, WhiteWave, which is owned by Dean Foods Co., says: ``You need the 12-cow farms in Vermont -- and the 4,000 milking cows in Idaho.`` Adds Clark Driftmier, a spokesman for Aurora, which manages 8,400 dairy cows on two farms in Colorado and Texas: ``We`re in a contentious period with organics right now.``

At the USDA, Robinson is grappling with the same imponderables. In her mind the controversy is more about scale than animal treatment. ``The real issue is a fear of large corporations,`` she says. Robinson expects the USDA to tighten pasture rules in the coming months in hopes of moving closer to the spirit of the organic philosophy. ``As programs go,`` she says, ``this is just a toddler. New issues keep coming up.``

Few people seem more hemmed in by the contradictions than Gary Hirshberg. Perhaps more than anyone, he has acted as the industry`s philosopher king, lobbying governments, proselytizing consumers, helping farmers switch to organic, and giving 10% of profits to environmental causes. Yet he sold most of Stonyfield Farm to a $17 billion French corporation.

He did so partly to let his original investors cash out, partly to bring organic food to the masses. But inevitably, as Stonyfield has morphed from local outfit to national brand, some of the original tenets have fallen by the wayside. Once Danone bought a stake, Stonyfield founder Samuel Kaymen moved on. ``I never felt comfortable with the scale or dealing with people so far away,`` he recalls, although he says Hirshberg has so far managed to uphold the company`s original principles.

The hard part may be continuing to do so with Danone looking over his shoulder. Hirshberg retains board control but says his ``autonomy and independence and employment are contingent on delivering minimum growth and profitability.`` Danone Chairman and CEO Franck Riboud expresses admiration for the man he considers to be Danone`s organic guru, but adds: ``Gary respects that I have to answer to shareholders.``

The compromises that Hirshberg is willing to make say a lot about where the organic business is headed. ``Our kids don`t have time for us to sit on our high horses and say we`re not going to do this because it`s not ecologically perfect,`` says Hirshberg. ``The only way to influence the powerful forces in this industry is to become a powerful force.`` And he`s willing to do that, even if it means playing by a new set of rules.

<<< You ever wonder why such lengthy reports don`t come out of non-industrial chronically hungry areas such as Bihar, Somalia, Ethiopia etc.? >>>

They do, they just don`t make it to the mass media or Chowk. Ad hominem is always a cheap attack.

Re: # 32
I was impressed by title industrial food.
The writer`s points are well taken and understood and thanks for that. The means of production, effiencies to produce by small companies or farmers or MNCs will be decided by political bosses and not much can be done.
I feel now most food produced is ``industrial`` in sense it is based on modern technology and extensive use of Nitrogen based compounds worldwide and is enevitable as growing poor people and over breeding of poor people its problem but we can not say it.
Over years agricultural industry will be more industralized. Country like ours where population will be doubled in about 25 years need to look at industrial agricultural as solution to feed additional 150 millions by 2032. The water resources, land remain same in fact will reduce at anout 1/2 % by my simple calculations due to needed place to additonal people. H2o available will shrink by about 25% in that time for agricultural ( It is assumed that expected draughts do not happen and that dreadful speculation of reduced rain does not happen). China is reversing flows of Satlaj and they will definitely do same with water courses which supply to Indus. Indians will slowly but surely use more water and little MFA of water available through bias, Satlaj and Ravi will shrink as their demand goes up and water resources are used more. Our back stabbing afghan Darlings ( secular or fanatics does not matter)will definitely start useing more of Kabul waters and its reduction will be felt sooner than most expect. Will affect waters of Tarbella and accelerating rate of sedimentation and drastic power reduction.
To have food, cerals, fruits and fiber only way is industrial farming. Major investments will be needed to use available water fruitfully. Crops may be modified, improvised at basic molecular levels and people will be forced to accept and eat engineered foods. ( Today most meet products are engineered when one knows most antibiotics used in Pakistan is for animals than humans). People have already accepted these things. Farmers will do any thing to have larger outputs. MNCs if entered in food chain will give good assurance for growers as they are efficient in providing value addition and providing help at farmers level so he produce and fill quotas. Instead of say useing so large amount of H2o for cotton and sugar cane we can produce artificial fibre with arabian hydrocarbons ( doing for years otherwise without artificial fiber cotton will be so costly that people will have to go naked its ugly situation as most of us are not staues of vigor and youth). Cotton takes too much water. Instead of Sugar we are already producing ``industrial sweetners`` and they are great and people need not need to be too fussy about useing them. These artificial sweetners can reduce worldwide extreme use of water required for sugarcane. It is possible with going future reseach hopefully plant develop such way that they eat insects and you get lots of protin. I have read very costly steaks in Japan are made from black liquid gold. There was fear about railways and even taking power out of water. Many men were afraid to drink water from indus as ``its power`` was taken out by big generators. They felt they can not keep their wifes always PP ( P1=permanant, P2= pregnant) due to imfertility due to drinking of powerless water. I think people overcome fears. I heard animal worshipping hindus were horrified to eat tomotos as they felt like blood when White people brought to Pakistan and India. Only way to survive is to study for industial farming and try to reducing water use for agricultural use by finding agricultural industial products new. One I felt is enhancing product like mixing dirty water in milk as diet reduction help or making vegetable ghee of tar sands or some thing like that. Its all possible and infact its all possible we will have new industrial produced `` foods`` which are much cheaper than regular. One should not be afraid of new products. All drugs are industrial herbs are quite noneffective. I think lots leftists have no cause left to mourn so they pick stuff to whip. This hysteria is neither true nor scientific when they are useing all artificial products. It must be faith which keeps them on line to have something to be angry. Let us welcome Industrial food.

Re: # 31
Beej, I think Tieko is on the money. All the living communists somehow end up teaching at LSE, and all the old hippies end up working as fund managers at the Street. I hate them morons, they play Santana in the BMW’s, smoke Montecristos (in addtion), and make a million dollars a day while criticizing the war on terror.

Also.. Yankees suck!

#30 Tie-ko

Good Lord, another Jinnah lover raises his ugly mug again! I think this site is INFESTED with them – far worse than cockroaches!

(I think they need nothing less than INDUSTRIAL-grade “food” to raise them from their hiding places!)

After hiding for THREE whole years (or perhaps simply masquerading under a different nick!)!

And typical of roaches, he takes one quick bite – and a real CHEAP stab at ridiculing poor places (like Bihar) – makes a bit of cockroach mess and runs back into that crevice again.

Darn those roaches!

Hope nobody squashes you too soon – and you remain safe in your crevice for the next ten years or so!

Ok all.

Saima behn sure had full stomach when she sat down to pen this thingy. Otherwise the report would be half as long or shorter.

You ever wonder why such lengthy reports don`t come out of non-industrial chronically hungry areas such as Bihar, Somalia, Ethiopia etc.?

Namaste and Salaams.

Here is some new US ``progress`` reported by Reuters

Scientists question U.S. air pollution decision
Wed Oct 4, 2006 10:57AM ET
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pollution experts have ``serious scientific concerns`` that newly unveiled U.S. air quality standards may pose risks to human health and welfare, according to a letter made public on Tuesday.

The experts, all charter members of a key advisory panel to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, questioned the agency`s decision to keep annual standards for fine soot particles at the same level they have been since 1997.

The panel`s scientists, along with a broad range of environmental and health groups, had sought to lower the amount of soot permissible, citing research that showed health risks from even small amounts over the course of a year.

``There is clear and convincing evidence that significant adverse human-health effects occur in response to short-term and chronic particulate matter exposures at or below 15 micrograms per cubic meter (of air), the level of the current annual ... standard,`` the experts wrote in a September 29 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

Johnson announced the decision to leave this standard unchanged on September 21, saying it offered ``cleaner air to all Americans,`` and would reduce premature deaths, heart attacks and hospital stays for people with heart and lung disease and bring health benefits valued at between $20 billion and $160 billion a year.

#26 <<< please tell us in your words, the difference between the hungry in pakistan and the hungry is US. >>>

Socially the hungry in the US suffer more than the hungry in Pakistan, due to greater relative deprivation, biologically both suffer the same.

#26 <<< The US way is the way forward for progrees >>>

Like the ``progress`` we see in Iraq, or the ``progress`` we see in Afghanistan, or the ``progress`` we shall see shortly into the future due to America`s ``sound`` environmental policies.

Re: # 25 O great Pir of Jammat-e-chowk-ibn-al-qeada, Shreek of Jamaat-e-nostradums, Amir of Jamat-e-namards, please tell us in your words, the difference between the hungry in pakistan and the hungry is US. In absolute terms the ones in pakistan are worse off than the ones in US.

The US way is the way forward for progrees. your way is the way forward to anarchy, ignorance, mysogyny, homosexuality!

The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. 6 million children die every year from starvation related causes.

Here is just one indication of the anarchy of the economic system of the US and its forcing of it on the rest of the world:


US wastes half its food

News Archives


11/26/2004 - As the US celebrated Thanksgiving, a new study revealed that almost half the food in the country goes to waste - a statistic that should alarm an industry that is struggling to achieve greater efficiency in order to salvage profits.

The new study, from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, indicates that a shocking forty to fifty per cent of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, has spent the last 10 years measuring food loss, including the last eight under a grant from the US department of agriculture (USDA). Jones started examining practices in farms and orchards, before going onto food production, retail, consumption and waste disposal.

What he found was that not only is edible food discarded that could feed people who need it, but the rate of loss, even partially corrected, could save US consumers and manufacturers tens of billions of dollars each year. Jones says these losses also can be framed in terms of environmental degradation and national security.

Jones` research evolved from and builds on earlier work done at the University of Arizona. Archaeologists there began measuring garbage in the 1970s to see what was being thrown away and discovered that people were not fully aware of what they were using and discarding.

Those earlier studies evolved into more sophisticated research using contemporary archaeology and ethnography to understand not only the path food travels from farms and orchards to landfills, but also the culture and psychology behind the process.

The fact that the US is a wasteful nation is not necessarily news, of course. The country has long has been chastised for its wilful consumption of the world`s resources, and many aspects of the country`s culture encapsulate what environmentalists disparagingly refer to as today`s ``throw-away society.``

Similarly, researchers have known for years about the volumes of food Americans toss into the trash. But only recently, though, has that been quantified as a percentage of what is produced, and the UA statistics are the first tangible proof that US food production is frighteningly wasteful.

Re: # 17

Lol:). Try camomile tea or yoga...boycott the pharmaceutical industry.