The Business of Food

Helping Food Producers Make Healthful Products and Consumers Make Healthy Choices

Posted on: 08/05/2004

Environmental Defense staff met with managers of a Smithfield contract farm to tour a hog barn. Sanitation suits were worn to protect the hogs from the spread of disease.

With some 6.4 billion people sharing this Earth, speaking thousands of different languages in about 193 different countries, there is at least one thing we all have in common: We need healthful food and clean water to survive and thrive.

More than ever buyers and consumers around the globe are concerned about the health and quality of their food. As newspapers splash headlines about mad cow disease outbreaks and contaminated fish, questions about the quality of what we're eating increasingly arise. Is meat free of contaminants and dyes? What role did antibiotics play in this animal's life? Does the seafood contain mercury or PCBs? What kind of pesticides were used on the vegetables? Is the food my grocer stocks genetically modified and what does that mean for my family?

Issues like these are causing more people to pay attention to the origin of their food, and consumers are realizing more and more they have a breadth of choices when it comes to eating. Vegetables, seafood and meat are all produced in a variety of good and not-so-good ways, from the small farmers and ranchers who tend several acres of farmland or own a small herd of cattle to the agribusinesses and ranching conglomerates that control thousands of acres and animals. Environmental Defense is working with a range of food producers to ensure the food you and your family eat is good for both you and the environment.

Greening the Supply Chain

If you're not serving food straight out of your garden, it has probably traveled through several links before it reaches your dinner table. Take meat, for instance. This food chain starts with the livestock farmer, who raises the animal. It then goes to a meat processor, who slaughters and butchers it, and then to a supplier, who in turn finds it a buyer. The buyer could be as large a company as McDonald's or a niche buyer like a small grocery chain.

All along this supply chain, members of the food industry have a responsibility to address consumer concerns and respond to consumer demand for food choices that reduce the environmental footprint of food production while guaranteeing healthful products.

Source:
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentID=3893

This article begins with stressing the importance of healthy food and water supplies. It continues to speak about awareness that companies are beginning to take on these topics. It makes some great points on how the media effects the awareness of the public. the article ends with a short paragraph on how companies are addressing food concerns.

Riam Fox