Leopold Centers Rich Pirog says consumer is clueless
May 18, 2007 - It's a choice consumers face every day in the produce aisle. Sometimes the organic produce on the shelves has been shipped halfway around the world in a plane that emitted a significant amount of greenhouse gases. But what if the locally grown alternative has been treated with pesticides?
Doing the right thing often means balancing competing choices -- between workers jobs, the environment, and most important, your own health.
That was just one of many issues raised at the Monterey Bay Aquariums Sustainable Food Institute on Thursday. For the second year in a row, the daylong event brought academics and food industry leaders together to stimulate discussion about sustainable eating -- an appetizer for this weekends Cooking for Solutions 2007.
The annual event is a celebration of fine cuisine and wine done the sustainable way. It started in 1999 as an outgrowth of the Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program, which helps retailers, restaurateurs and consumers make good seafood choices, said aquarium spokesman Ken Peterson.
It also explores the link between land and sea. As the food system becomes more sustainable, oceans will benefit -- and that's why the program has grown beyond seafood, Peterson said.
"All water flows downhill," he said.
Panelists acknowledged that the global food supply has become complex and interconnected. Take Kenyan green beans.
Rich Pirog, program leader for the Marketing and Foods Systems Initiative at Iowa State Universitys Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, told an audience of about 200 that about 70 percent of the country's green beans are exported to the United Kingdom each year. The green beans represent 1.5 percent of the total fruits and vegetables eaten by those in the U.K.
Yet, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released when shipping the
beans represents 50 percent of the total emissions to import all
produce to the U.K. each year, he said. Still, the money from the green
beans helps Kenyans develop their country.
"Maybe for the sake of good policy, you should do that," Pirog said.
But then there is the question of the 190 million cubic meters of water
necessary to ship the beans. That water might be a lot more useful in
the sub-Saharan country, he said.
"There are lots of trade-offs we have to make. Some environmental, some
socio-economic," Pirog said. "The consumer is clueless about what
really is going on."
In the future, technology will be used to give consumers information
about products, including details about labor and carbon usage, he
said.
For example, Tesco, a U.K. grocery store chain, is planning to put stickers with a plane image on imported products, he said.
With heightened awareness about the socio-economic and environmental
issues, Pirog said consumers may no longer see organic or local food as
being more expensive.
Trying to figure out what's healthful and safe to eat, particularly in
an era of repeated food-borne illness outbreaks, "is so complicated,
more people can't do it on their own," said Marion Nestle, a New York
University professor of nutrition, food studies and public health.
Nestle traced the confusion back to the 1980s, when she said obesity
and food-borne illness outbreaks started to become problems in the
United States. Both issues have one thing in common: They have their
origins in the same mass food system.
Meanwhile, Nestle said, shareholders began pressuring food companies to make more money. The pressure was on to change American eating habits and cut corners to keep costs down, she said.
At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 80 percent of the country's food supply, has been routinely underfunded, with the result that consumers sometimes get mixed messages about what is safe to eat. As an example, Nestle showed a cartoon of a woman about to eat a "double-edged swordfish."
"I'm delicious -- and I'm chocked full of mercury," the cartoon says.
Nestle touched on the bureaucratic web of federal agencies that are supposed to protect consumers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture regulates beef broth and dehydrated chicken soup, while the FDA regulates chicken broth and dehydrated beef soup, she said.
To combat confusion and bureaucracy, Nestle said new methods are springing up to change the old food system, including the "slow" foods movement, schools that are growing their own food and the growing organic movement.
Said Nestle: "I think weve got lots and lots of choices. These issues are well-worth thinking about."
Source: Monterey County Herald
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