Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
seems fi nally to have formally recognized the obvious benefi ts of organic
farming and has overcome the objections of the agrochemical industry.
The farm bill enacted in May 2008 contained:
A guarantee of $78 million for organic agriculture research, fi ve times
more than the former funding level
The possibility of $100 million more through the year 2012
$22 million to help qualifi ed farmers and handlers achieve organic
certifi cation
$5 million to collect specialized organic marketing data
Nevertheless, all is not well in the organic farming community, and
the main problem has no easy solution. The problem is nonorganic seeds
and pollen carried by the wind and insects. Organic crops are becoming
“polluted” with genes from neighbors' nonorganic and genetically engi-
neered crops. In 2002 a survey by the Organic Farming Research Foun-
dation found that 8 percent of organic farmers had lost certifi cation
because of contamination by genetically engineered crops.
22
One hundred
forty-two cases of contamination were reported worldwide between
1997 and 2006, twenty-two of them in the United States. In one-third
of the cases, the contaminated product was corn. Dozens of lawsuits by
farmers against agrobiotech companies have been fi led. The few that
have been settled have been won by the farmers.
23
Is Your Food Contaminated?
The food safety regulatory system in the United States is a shared respon-
sibility of more than 3,000 local, state, and federal agencies that for the
most part are poorly fi nanced, poorly trained, and disconnected. In the
federal government, responsibility is split among fi fteen agencies operat-
ing under at least thirty statutes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) has 7,600 inspectors and is responsible for the safety of meat,
poultry, and processed egg products; most of the rest, 80 percent of the
food supply, is the responsibility of the FDA. Hence, cheese pizzas are
inspected by the FDA, while pepperoni pies go to the USDA. The FDA's
budget has decreased regularly over the years, and the number of inspec-
tors and inspections has decreased correspondingly. There were nine
times more food safety inspections in the 1970s than there are today,
even as the volume of imported food from Third World countries has
grown dramatically.
Almost every year there is a national food scare because of products
contaminated with harmful bacteria. Sometimes the culprit is spinach,
