Who pays price for cheap food imports?
Adulterated US meat would enter the bottom rung of our food chain, warns Mario du Preez
AS always, it appears election manifesto promises are meant to be broken. And so it was with the Conservative Party’s vow (circa 2019) to “not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.” On Monday 12 October, MPs voted against amendments to the new Agriculture Bill. What this means is that current UK food standards, which are comparatively high, will no longer serve as the lower bound for future trade deals, such as the one ministers are feverishly hoping to strike with the US. Why does this matter? Well, under UK law, farmers and processors of food have to provide proof that endproducts, and the inputs used in their production, are safe before point of use, whereas, under US law, the provision of this proof is not a legal obligation.
But is the quality of Americanproduced food, such as chicken and beef, really that poor? Are animal welfare standards in the US really that low? After having read Vaclav Smil’s book entitled Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities, I would argue, yes, on both counts. Let’s consider the facts. In just over nine decades, Smil notes that the feeding span of US broilers was “reduced by 57%, the final weight had risen 2.5-fold, and the number of days required to add 500g of weight was cut from 49 to 8.5.” But the growth in US output of chicken meat “has subjected modern broilers to a great deal of stress, even outright suffering.” The main reasons for the stress and suffering are confinement, crowding, and poor lighting. Individual birds are confined to an area smaller than the standard A4 paper sheet (ie. 602 cm2). Ten thousand chickens are kept, at one time, in a single broiler house, measuring, on average, 12 × 150 m in size. What’s more, they live in near darkness “on a layer of excrement that damages feet and burns skin”. According to Smil, “Hart et al. (1920) discovered that the addition of vitamin D (dispensed in cod liver oil) prevents leg weakness caused by the absence of outdoor ultraviolet light and this made it possible to grow the birds indoors under artificial lighting and in increasingly smaller spaces.” Moreover, birds are bred to produce freakishly large breasts, which is painful since “it shifts the bird’s center of gravity forward, impairing its natural movement and stressing its legs and heart...” US broilers are also fed additives and antibiotics, like penicillin, chlortetracycline, and oxytetracycline, and by 2000 “American poultry producers were feeding more antibiotics than were pig and cattle farmers, a practice that has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in the modern world (NRC 1994; UCS 2001; Sapkota et al. 2007)”. And finally, the slaughtered chickens are bathed in antimicrobial chlorine.
US cattle fair no better. Before they are slaughtered, they spend three to six months in crowded feedlots for the ‘finishing’, where they are subjected to steroid implants to enhance their growth rate by 10 to 120 percent – “three naturally occurring hormones (estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone) and three synthetic compounds (Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol) are approved for use”. The feedlots are small enclosures devoid of greenery – instead they are covered by dung and urinesoaked mud.
But why worry, some may ask? After all, prominent UK supermarkets have promised not to stock undesirable, US-produced, food imports? Well, the problem is that these products will not necessarily enter the supply chain via supermarkets but will probably enter through food processing factories, meal manufacturers, school meals and prison catering. And unlike with supermarket goods, labelling will not safeguard consumers of processed foods and ready-meals, school children who eat school dinners, and prisoners who enjoy prison catering, as there will be none. What’s more, cheap, adulterated, US imports will create a two-tier system: the top tier will comprise expensive, locally sourced, organically produced foodstuffs while the bottom tier will comprise cheap, US-sourced produce. And it is, thus, not surprising that the least well-off among us, who would not be able to switch to the top tier, are most opposed to the likelihood of low standard, imported food flooding our markets.
And who would dare argue that these animal welfare standards accord with our British values? Surely no-one.
But there is something else, something more subtle – the evolution of the UK’s food culture viz. a greater appreciation of food (not unlike our fellow foodies in France and Italy), a preponderance of speciality food shops, delicatessens, market stalls and craft brewers, and a greater average spend on food items. Are we willing to compromise our values, standards, and evolved palettes for a US trade deal? I think not.
Mario Du Preez is an environmental writer based in Exeter
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