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Food, Water & Product Safety - How safe is what we buy and import?

Recently, as you heard in the news I just read, we've had some problems with imports from China with regard to melamine which has been added on purpose to fool a test for protein to increase the value of the product. This additive has turned out to be toxic. So how safe is what we buy to eat, drink and put in our bodies?

How often do we consider or even know where our food comes from? Do we know what processes it went through from being picked in the field or slaughtered to being packaged at the processor to hitting the selves in the supermarket to ending up in your cupboards? What are the risks to our health, our community, our country and our environment if we don’t know the answer these questions?

The 100-Mile Diet I've talked of on lots of these shows spurred a new movement called the Locavore Phenomenon, defined as “eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within an area most commonly bound by a 100-mile radius.”

Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon pioneered the 100-Mile Diet in Vancouver by deciding that for one year, they would only buy or gather food from within 100 miles of their apartment.

If you're concerned about the environment then make note: Most ingredients in an average North American meal have travelled approximately 1,500 miles (2,414 km) to get from farm to plate. To cut out a big chunk of this travel would greatly reduce not only pollution from transportation and refrigeration but also the greenhouse gases emitted, as well.

Nutritionally, locally grown fruits and vegetables are usually sold within 24 to 48 hours of being harvested. Because they are picked at the height of ripeness and travel only a short distance to market, their freshness, nutrition, and flavor are retained. Produce trucked in from far away loses taste, quality and nutritional value.

When you buy directly from a farmer or a community grower you help keep dollars within your community instead of sending them overseas.

“There are a significant number of people who are concerned about our food system,." industrialized agriculture encourages monoculture planting of single crops and extensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides—some of which are banned in the United States but still used abroad to grow food consumed in this country.

Melamine is high in nitrogen and is commonly used in plastics and fertilizers, which registers as high protein levels in routine tests of food and feed. Though experts say at low levels it does not pose a risk to human health, higher concentrations harm the kidneys. But the long term affects are unknown.

Asian food-safety specialists said the tainted eggs contained much lower concentrations of melamine than the powdered baby formula. Hong Kong food-safety officials said a child would have to eat about two dozen of the eggs in a single day to become ill.

Still, if eggs, milk, and animal feed are tainted, then there is the very real possibility of other foods that could come under scrutiny, including pork, chicken, bread, eggs, cakes, seafood, and candy.

First it was baby milk formula. Then, dairy-based products from yogurt to chocolate. Last week we discussed the finding of this toxin in vegetables and now chicken eggs have been contaminated with melamine, and an admission by state-run media that the industrial chemical is regularly added to animal feed in China fueled fears Friday that the problem could be more widespread, affecting fish, meat and who knows what else.

Peter Dingle, a toxicity expert at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, said, however, that aside from the tainted baby formula that killed at least four Chinese infants and left 54,000 children hospitalized just over a month ago, it is unlikely humans will get sick from melamine.

The amount of the chemical in a few servings of bacon, for instance, would simply be too low, he said.

But Dingle and others said China should have cracked down sooner on feed companies that have boosted their earnings by fortifying their products with the chemical, which is normally used in the manufacture of plastic and fertilizers.

Extremely high levels of melamine — as found in the Chinese baby formula — can cause kidney stones, and in extreme cases can bring on life-threatening kidney failure. But while scientists say it's not dangerous to ingest small amounts, they cannot be definitive because there have been no tests on melamine's effects in humans. Until the contaminated baby formula became public in September, there was never any reason to.

In his best seller, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes of the growing costs of our “love affair” with fast foods. He states, “fast food has triggered the homogenization of our society… has hastened the malling of our landscape, a widening of the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism abroad.” He documents how fast food has lured us into choosing diets deficient in nearly everything except calories, supporting practices deceptive in every aspect from advertising to flavoring, and systems that degrade nearly everyone and everything involved. The problems arising from the fast food industry are rooted deeply within American society.

In a new book, Fed Up!, Harvard-trained physician and medical reporter Susan Oakie suggests that today's childhood obesity epidemic is associated with a number of factors which characterize today’s American society. Sprawling suburban neighborhoods discourage walking, ballooning portions in fast food restaurants encourage overeating, poor choices of menus for school lunches rob children of nutrition, and a decline in home cooking and the resulting tendency to snack rather than sit down for a family meal has transformed the act of eating into refueling. Current diet and health problems in America are not just food safety or food quality issues; they are symptoms an increasingly exploitative and degenerative culture.

My own doctor, who is from Vietnam, made a comment to me during a visit that Americans eat more food in one meal than they eat in their country in two days. It's killing us physically and it's killing us with contaminents as we buy more food from overseas because we don't feed ourselves here.

This is why I advocate the 100 mile diet but in some cases, depending how rural or how urban the area you live in is, you may find that difficult so you may switch it up to a regional diet but whatever choice you make, we all need to advocate a national diet of food grown, raised, made HERE under safe conditions. The reason for 100-mile or regional diet is that food is processed in smaller, safer plants.

A giant meat processing facility offers the potential of contaminated meat, animals that are ill, poorly processed or over-processed with fillers. Pre-made, frozen foods are dead food. Their nutritional value is added but isn't there naturally unless you buy a quality product or, buy locally.

And from a safety standpoint - in May 2002, the Fifty-fifth World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA 55.16 which expressed serious concern about threats against civilian populations by deliberate use of biological and chemical agents or radionuclear materials.

In December 2002, WHO published Terrorist Threats to Food, which was intended primarily for policy-makers in national governments with responsibilities for ensuring food safety, and was designed to assist them in incorporating considerations of food terrorism into existing food safety systems. The document received favourable comments from governments, the food industry and consumers and has been one of the most requested WHO documents in the field of food safety.

In October, 2003, The FDA reported that there is a "high likelihood" within the coming year of a deliberate attack or accidental outbreak in the US food supply that sickens a large number of people.

Although no specific threats were identified, the FDA said it came to the conclusion because of recent foodborne outbreaks and reports that the Al Qaeda terrorist network was plotting to poison the food supply.

"FDA has concluded that there is a high likelihood, over the course of a year, that a significant number of people will be affected by an act of food terrorism or by an incident of unintentional food contamination that results in serious foodborne illness," the agency said in a declassified report.

The food supply is especially vulnerable to an attack because of the broad range of biological and chemical agents that can be used, the FDA said.

The agency said salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7, and ricin pose a significant threat because they can be disseminated easily to food. Anthrax and botulism are considered the most deadly.

"The relative centralization of food production in the US and the global distribution of food products give food a unique susceptibility," the FDA said.

Last month, the FBI warned that "terrorists might use two naturally occurring toxins, nicotine and solanine, to poison US food or water supplies." The FBI said "terrorist manuals and documents" recovered in Afghanistan referred to the use of these substances as poisons.

Contaminated food sickens 1 of 4 Americans annually, or about 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths, according to government data. Almost all of the cases are unintentional.

The FDA said there were "many points of vulnerability to sabotage" in food production and distribution that could sicken many people. Due in part to this, the agency said officials in some cases may not be able to determine whether a foodborne outbreak was intentional.

Several cases of food sabotage have occurred in the United States. In 1984, a cult contaminated salad bars with salmonella to disrupt a local election. The case caused 751 illnesses, including 45 hospitalizations.

In May, 2003, a supermarket employee pleaded guilty to poisoning 200 pounds of ground beef with an insecticide containing nicotine. Although the meat was sold in only one store, 111 people fell ill.

The FDA said the food supply also can be a target because of the potential for great economic loss.

In June 2007, the revised International Health Regulations (2005) entered into force across the globe for WHO Member States. As a consequence, this guidance has been updated and expanded, especially to inform responsible authorities in WHO Member States of their new obligations concerning foodborne disease under the revised Regulations. Certain incidents, potentially involving deliberate contamination of food, may be considered of international significance and subject to these Regulations.

Canada is the recipient of heaps of artificially cheap US food, which is running our own farmers out of business (and hasn't done any good for the family farm in America, either). In Mexico, farmers growing heirloom corn have been ruined by the flood of cheap US corn, which is often genetically modified to boot.

"Eat local" has become one of the mantras of the new environmental movement but not in the way that should make you afraid to be concerned about ecology.

How often do we consider where our food comes from? Do we know what process it went through from initial conception to arriving on our plates? Might there be risks to our health, our community, and our environment if we don’t ask these questions?

A new way of thinking is gaining momentum. It’s known as the Locavore Phenomenon, defined as “eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within an area most commonly bound by a 100-mile radius.” This movement was largely kick-started by the introduction of the 100-Mile Diet.

Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon pioneered the 100-Mile Diet in Vancouver by deciding that for one year, they would only buy or gather food from within 100 miles of their apartment. This humble idea sparked interest with individuals and grassroots groups who followed their lead and developed their own eat-local mantra.

And what about drinking water?

The United States has one of the safest water supplies in the world. However, national statistics don't tell you specifically about the quality and safety of the water coming out of your tap. That's because drinking water quality varies from place to place, depending on the condition of the source water from which it is drawn and the treatment it receives.

Now, though, the EPA has set up a way for you to check your own water as long as it comes from a public source. Every community water supplier must provide an annual report (sometimes called a consumer confidence report) to its customers. The report provides information on your local drinking water quality, including the water's source, the contaminants found in the water, and how consumers can get involved in protecting drinking water. If you have been looking for specific information about your drinking water, this annual report will provide you with the information you need to begin your investigation.

Now the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) reports on the drinking water systems of 19 cities and finds that pollution, old pipes and outdated treatment threaten tap water quality.

Many cities around the country rely on pre-World War I-era water delivery systems and treatment technology. Aging pipes can break, leach contaminants into the water they carry and breed bacteria -- all potential prescriptions for illness. And old-fashioned water treatment -- built to filter out particles in the water and kill some parasites and bacteria -- generally fails to remove 21st-century contaminants like pesticides, industrial chemicals and arsenic.

FBI says al-Qaida after water supply
Memo says bin Laden backers scoured Web for attack ideas
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Jan. 31, 2002 - The FBI on Wednesday sent a bulletin to computer security experts around the country indicating that al-Qaida terrorists may have been studying American dams and water-supply systems in preparation for new attacks. The bulletin was sent after U.S. authorities found a computer belonging to a person with indirect ties to Osama bin Laden that contained architectural and engineering software related to dams and other water-retaining structures, according to the FBI.

They specifically sought information on water supply and wastewater management practices in the U.S. and abroad.

In the bulletin, the FBI indicates members of al-Qaida have scoured the Web in search of methods for gaining control of water supply facilities and wastewater treatment plants through the computer networks used by U.S. utility companies.

Existence of the bulletin was first reported by computer security firm SecurityFocus.com.

The bulletin was not made public, but instead was sent by the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center to about 3,000 members of the center's InfraGard program, an information-sharing partnership between the FBI and private industry, according to SecurityFocus.com.

This is all under your own control.