Food for thought

"The food we eat has changed more in the past 30 years than in the last 30,000," Eric Schlosser '81, author of the bestselling book "Fast Food Nation" and co-writer of the new movie of the same name, said last night in a crowded Richardson Auditorium.

Schlosser joined philosophy professor Peter Singer in making opening remarks for the two-day "Food, Ethics, and the Environment" conference sponsored by the Princeton Environmental Institute. The conference's events examine the effects of modern food production on humans, the animals they eat and the environment.

Singer explained that while food is often overlooked as an ethical issue, the effects of food production are considerable. "No human activity has a bigger influence on the surface of the planet than the way we produce food," he said.

Food production has such far-reaching effects at least in part because of the particular methods that modern farming employs, Schlosser said. In order to produce large amounts of food efficiently, many farming practices have become increasingly centralized. When animals are heavily concentrated in a small area, the environmental dangers and ethical concerns are compounded.

Feedlots have become an especially important concern, Schlosser said. These farms may keep up to 125,000 cattle in close proximity to one another. With animals kept so close together, there is a greater chance that they will spread disease and infection to one another, especially since manure is often difficult to dispose of.

"When they live in each other's filth they are more likely to get sick, so we need to give them antibiotics," Schlosser said.

The increased concentration of animals also poses environmental hazards. While a pasture would normally be able to absorb all the manure from the animals, the ground near manure piles at feedlots cannot filter out all the waste. This waste can then be carried by rainwater into nearby streams.

The presence of antibiotics and growth hormones in the waste can have disastrous effects on the environment. "Scientists have found fish with deformed sexual organs downstream from feedlots," Schlosser said.

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Given the quest for faster growth and greater production from animals, it has become common practice to inject them with antibiotics and growth hormones such as steroids. Singer criticized the farming system for the unnatural strains that it places on animals.

"Male turkeys' breasts are so large that they cannot physically mate, so females must be artificially inseminated," he said. "Some chickens grow so fast that their legs cannot support them."

Both Schlosser and Singer said they are hopeful that these problems can be solved. Singer said consumers should be more conscientious in their buying habits, taking care to avoid food produced on factory farms and buying free-range meat and cage-free eggs, or cutting meat out of their diets as much as possible.

Schlosser said consumers should go a step further by being proactive in protesting the origins of the food they eat. "I think changing the world by what you buy can only go so far," he said. "If our government doesn't change its policies and its subsidies, what we do will not make a profound difference."

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He challenged how the government has handled the food industry, noting that a recent FDA decision allows the sale of meat from cloned animals. The FDA claims that milk and meat from cloned animals is indistinguishable from the food products from naturally-bred animals, but surveys show that around half of Americans are opposed to animal cloning for religious or ethical reasons.

Still, Schlosser said he is encouraged by recent opposition to the large biotech corporations that are developing cloning techniques for food.

"They have the money, they just don't have the facts," he said.