Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
going to be upset, and scientists enjoy learning more than they
do debating. However, watching the food documentaries, we
realized that, regardless of whether one agreed with the con-
tent, they were asking good questions—many questions the
scientific community had ignored.
As we researched the controversial issues in agriculture we
gained an appreciation for controversy itself. If there is one
thing readers should take from this topic it is the importance of
good government in regulating things like pesticides, GMOs,
synthetic growth hormones, and the like. Conventional food is
considered safe and healthy by the authors because we place
considerable confidence in agencies like the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the
Department of Agriculture, and their European counterparts.
Watch the aforementioned food documentaries and it will
become apparent that most food activists feel differently. Yet
it is this skepticism about regulatory agencies that helps the
agencies perform so well.
Food activists may be constantly looking for any reason to
criticize agriculture, and sometimes the criticism is unfair, but
if nobody is looking for problems like water pollution they
will not be recognized until the consequences are terrible.
Consider China, where the absence of social activism allowed
firms to irrigate rice with polluted waters, going unnoticed
until 10 percent of its rice was contaminated with cadmium.
Problems are best solved if recognized early, and even if food
activists seem a little too eager to be in the vanguard, their
enthusiasm serves a useful role. It took the activism of Rachel
Carson to make us aware of pesticides' potential dangers, and
consequently, conventional food is safer. It took the activism
of animal welfare groups to make us think harder about the
well-being of chickens. As a result, groups like the United
Egg Producers have voluntarily improved their cage facilities.
Industry groups were not the originators of the sustainability
movement—activists were—but industry groups now mea-
sure their carbon footprint and seek ways to make it smaller.
