The road to hell is paved with good intentions when vision is limited by ideology, and causes and consequences ill considered. President Obama’s quest to make the health care system accessible to all through government-backed health insurance is a point in question. Critics contend that this will bankrupt the economy because the health care industry is non-sustainable. Quality of medical care and access to services have sunk with the rise in health care insurance costs and in health ‘management’ systems where physicians’ decisions are controlled by insurance agencies that put profit margins before patient care.
With its emphasis on interventive rather than preventive and integrative medicine, and the escalating incidence of obesity, diabetes and a host of other disease which are preventable in the consumer populace, the health care system is clearly dysfunctional. The primary beneficiaries of any government funded health insurance scheme to enable people to access this health care system will be the pharmaceutical industry and a handful of CEOs and share holders. Secondary beneficiaries will be the petrochemical, agricultural and food industries, including the livestock and poultry industries with their cruel and disease spreading factory farms and feedlots.
These industries continue to profit from non-sustainable, chemical- and drug-dependent methods of food production that put the health of millions of consumers in jeopardy. The widespread use of antibiotics by the livestock and poultry industries plays a significant role in the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. The FDA estimates that two million people acquire bacterial infections in US hospitals annually, resulting in 90,000 deaths, 70 percent of which now involve bacteria resistant to at least one drug.
The public pays for the production of basic food commodities ( e.g. corn & soy) through billions of their annual tax dollars in the Farm Bill that allots subsidies that benefit these producers and commodity brokers. Lowered costs for the food industry mean lower food prices in the market place for manufactured and processed foods and mass-produced animal products that the uneducated consumer accepts with out question, and under the erroneous belief that someone in government is really looking out for their well-being. The same must be said about most manufactured pet foods that result in otherwise preventable diseases in dogs and cats, many of which are shared by their owners, like cancer, immune system, neurological, developmental and endocrinological diseases like diabetes mellitus, as well as obesity, heart and kidney disease, and arthritis. According to US government reports, in 2009 two-thirds of the adult human population was overweight, and 34 percent were actually obese, while one-third of the child population is overweight with a shocking 17 percent obesity incidence. This is a mega-food-born epidemic that is quickly bankrupting the health care system, and undermines financial backing for educational, environmental, and employment-creation, with military employment and deployments escalating month by month, often coupled with US government and corporate funded foreign aid and disaster relief all subsidized by American citizens whose basic infrastructures are in dire need of repair and upgrading.
They also pay the price for deteriorating physical and mental health which are in large measure products of what people eat and drink, medicate themselves with, and are prescribed. Except for selling dieting/weight reduction drugs, the pharmaceutical industry has profited royally from treating diabetics with insulin from millions of pigs---pharmaceutical pharming, that is now expanding as flocks and herds of genetically engineered animals are cloned to produce biological and medical products for the brave new animalpharm biotechnology industry.
While people’s pets are like the proverbial canaries down the mineshaft, both humans and animals are the guinea pigs of a feeding experiment of unprecedented magnitude. It was so poorly designed that it is now almost impossible to monitor the safety of a new category of food ingredients that have been genetically engineered. These genetically modified (GM) ingredients are now in farmed animal feedstuffs, pet foods, and human foods, beverages, and various supplements. It was an earlier Republican administration that opened the market for the now global agricultural biotechnology industry with its patented varieties of GM crops from corn to soy. These are now the main ingredients used by the human, livestock and pet food industries,---publicly subsidized no less,--- and their safety is now in question following several studies in laboratory animals that documented harmful effects on virtually all internal organs.**
The right solutions to health care reform are long overdue, and with clarity of vision, unclouded by ideology and by those vested interests hell bent on protecting the status quo of both the health care system and the food industry from censorship, accountability, and truth in advertising and labeling, there is hope for change. We should all follow the advice of Hippocrates, the founding father of modern medicine: ‘Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food.’
* Veterinarian & Bioethicist. Website www.twobitdog.com/DrFox/
For more details on this modern food crisis and its adverse effects on companion animals, see Not Fit For a Dog: The Truth About Manufactured Dog And Cat Food by veterinarians Drs. M.W. Fox, E. Hodgkins, and M. E. Smart, published in 2008 by Quill Driver Books, Sanger, CA.
Michael W. Fox, BVetMed, PhD, DSC, MRCVS is a member of the British Veterinary Association and an Honor Roll Member of the American Veterinary Medical Association. He has doctoral degrees in ethology/animal behavior and medicine from the University of London, graduating from the Royal Veterinary College London in 1962. ** For further documentation of the above concerns, visit www.twobitdog.com/DrFox/
SOME REFERENCES AND END NOTES
Organically certified foods of both animal and plant origin contain more essential nutrients, notably antioxidants, than conventionally grown produce, and of course cause less environmental harms and are pesticide free. For documentation, see Cooper J, Leifert C, and Niggily U, (eds) Handbook of Organic Food Safety and Quality. Cambridge, UK, Woodhead Publ. Inc. 2007. For evidence that organic farming methods can feed the hungry world, see Badgley C, et al, Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22:86-108, 2007
Campbell, T.C, The China Study: The most comprehensive study of nutrition conducted, and the startling implication for diet, weight-loss and long-term health. Dallas TX Bell Bella Books, 2005
Fox, M.W. Bringing Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society. Albany, NY. State University of New York Press, 2001.
News and Reports. Rats reveal risks of ‘junk food’ during pregnancy. The Veterinary Record, Aug 18, p 215, 2007.
Steinfeld, H, P. Gerber P, Wassenaer T, Castel V, Rosales M, and de Haan C, Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options.United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Washington, DC, 2006.