have the supposed food safety, or the happiness of eat something clean”: it implies rather all in our lives, our activities, our economy, and most important so I think, the leeway we have for correct the wrongs. The important changes operated externally by the human hand, can be organized in five groups (I am sorry, sure there are more groups, or can be otherwise organized, or being lacking some issues):
(1) On the lands: the reduction of the number of species cultivated and associated around them; the destroying of soils containing the organic matter and structure, which supports the vegetable coverage; the exhaustion of soils, and for many regions of the underground waters; the rising of sulfate and nitrate levels into soils to values that will not be lowered unless have passed many years, and its slow trespassing to waters and its cycle, the water communities and the nearby farms downstream; the loss of soils in tropical region by overexploitation; the degradation of lands wrongly changed, by the countering the local natural ecosystem. None of these "changes" might turn out to be harmless; I hope you already know.
(2) On the genes: the essential linkage of plants to chemical treatments producing a couple or triad product (seed-treatment-fertilizer); the induced resistance to some pathogenic specie with wide effects over others; the extensive change of genes from different specie that share the site and now "can talk to each other”; the overflowing introduction of molecules that may be mistakenly recognized at the genetic level, which can act as never should act.
(3) As consequence of practices: the decoupling of livestock from the grasses and soils unbalancing the consumption of meal, becoming his breeding in a world filthy for animals and for us; the absorption of chemicals by plants, arthropods, and upper animals in different degree, becoming every being in a carrier of pollutants; the negative impact over soils communities of microorganisms and the related animals, including effects over the breeding, behavior, feeding, and survival; the abandonment and desertion of cropping from natural species, its management conquered along centuries, currently avowed worldwide by biologists or some agronomists.
(4) Related to treatment of food: the inclusion into the food of compounds absorbed on the soils and from the spreading, in a mix of tested and untested effects, accumulative and no accumulative substances, and byproducts; the appearing of a large list of relationships between chemicals used and alterations of metabolic functions, effects over other diseases or linkages yet under investigation, additionally to the already unveiled or described today; the extension of food with less variety of nutrients, high content in fats, greases and substituted carbohydrates.
(5) On the market: the fill of the market with improved modified organisms resistant to poor conditions of soils, or highly productive for biofuels (as consumer of nutrients), always coming exclusively from the genetic engineering; the displacement of natural food by the treated, the processed or elaborate food; the omnipresence of feed fed beef, the dependence from global prices marked in the rich countries; the oversizing of farms accounts and machinery; the loss of estates by poorest peasants in the undeveloped countries; the sale of lands to low prices in those countries; the linkage to an extensive range of packages for carry, deliver, keep and offer the foods; the over production of an uncontrolled amount of waste and debris from the alimentary industry, adding homes, malls, factories and farms.
This scenery comes from the modern and “revolutionary” agriculture, and other fields as chemistry manufacturing, machinery, and the markets of distribution and sale. Then the organic agriculture, can be seen like a back step, or a smart move forward?
Between food safety and the boot that treads organic farming.
Changes operated are related to the concept of quality of food and its different issues, the most of them have had as goal transform the food in a handling product, safe, but always and mainly marketable: (1) organoleptic features, as the taste, the smell, its touch, how it sounds when you eat, it appearance; (2) assimilative features, what provokes after eating, easily to assimilate; (3) marketing features, as the handling, the size; (4) nutritional features, its contents, importance in nutrition, modifications, compounds included and excluded, presence of pre and probiotics, flavonoids; (5) hygiene features, absence of contaminants or pathogens (bugs are not welcome), thermic treatment, conditions for storage; (6) service features: stability to decomposition or alteration through treatments (freezing, drying, salting, smoking, canning, UHT ultra-pasteurization) use or purpose, keys for selling.
Is there some rule that could define a behavior for the handling of food? It is there, could have been the Codex Alimentarius. Anyway, as many other rules this could end being a new way to control the market and its characteristics, what is common and appreciated in high offices. It is a join of norms generalized about the features of food, revised mainly by the FAO and WHO, including approved food additives, many methods of analysis, lists of contaminants, inspection and certification systems, and residues from medicines and pesticides. Are established the maximum levels for substances, conditions for frozen food, fresh vegetables, juices, cereals, legumes, derivative, proteins, greases, fish, meats, and more. An agreement called TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) regulates trade restrictions by legitimate goals according to the health protection of people, animals, the environment and national interests. Another agreement called SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary safety), establishes the individual rights of states to regulate levels of safety applied locally, and has a more specified scientific basis. States must demonstrate the scientific reasoning that could base the running off a new regulation, what is intimately linked to commercial interests from food companies.
Examples of why we need treat the food (when this is reasonable completely) and how are we doing this are of many kinds. A common example of treatment in the food is the milk and its pasteurization (Pasteur, 1864): this thermic process has the goal of reduce the number of natural pathogens that contains the milk which are thermolabile, but it does not kill all spores or microorganisms; these little colonies remaining cannot intoxicate humans. Anyway, the treatment also alters the state of vitamins and proteins, with a strong loss of nutritional value. When one liter of milk is treated by the fifth time, barely has any value, but yet keeps some like taste. Two treatments are used currently, mainly with bulk liquids: the HTST (high temperature, short time) and the UHT (ultra high temperature) that eliminate coliform bacteria common in soil, water and plants (E. coli, cholera). The shelf life is between two weeks and three months, but the milk can be reconditioned again until five or six times, and by this way returns to the market. The treatment prevents anyway tuberculosis, salmonella, polio, diphtheria, brucellosis, typhoid and scarlet fever. But, for reasons that really we still do not know, some variants of Mycobacterium avium (which causes the Crohn's disease in humans and Johne's disease (PTBC) in animals, resist the process: that is why UK changed the standards for the process. Two byproducts of degradation on milk are the hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a potential carcinogenic, and furosine.
As ever, main and natural diseases are likable to treat, and when it is applied to huge populations makes sense completely. Well, there is a lot of changes to do, a lot of improvements to reach, but now recovering the value of food, our food: that is an opportunity for research, invent and design new ways of organizing this matter.
By contrast, the blanching of vegetables or fruits for preservation, aims deactivate the enzymes that break off naturally proteins, lipids and carbohydrates: the reduction by a hot steam atmosphere of the peroxidase and catalase activity ensures inactivation of other enzymes and maintaining nutrients. The scalding of vegetables is a smart practice during cooking, keeping as many proteins with a simmer. Whilst some processes have been completely established, and could be modified but ever following the same goals of safety, some other processes or interventions can be more likely object of discussion.
A very old debate and argument shows how it works, the wide intervention on food with unclear purposes: it is the use of the growth hormones
(GH, or somatotropin), banned in the EU. The European Union banned the use of five hormones in 1988, after some outrage, but it caused the replying of the US and Canada: both countries claimed sufficient evidence, and as a countermeasure increased trade tariffs until the rectification of the EU. What is GH? A study leaded by Choh Hao Li (director of the HRI of the University of California, San Francisco) found the genes that regulate into the cells the production of growth hormones: the GH is secreted only by somatotropic cells within the lateral wings of the anterior pituitary gland. The side-effects never have been completely studied, some of them never were. And are known some common effects already (carpal tunnel, increasing in the risk of diabetes, influence over the Hodgkin's lymphoma, or immune response to GH). In 1985, were reported the cases of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, in humans treated previously with a byproduct HGH (growth hormone obtained by recombinant DNA technology) extracted from cadavers 15 years before: the use of the HGH was linked to the transmission of prions. The companies that produced and sold the GH are various: Lilly,
An Invisible Chain of our Time Page 34