Just a partial list of some new-to-me facts:

• 97% of vegetables that were grown at the beginning of the century are now extinct.  That’s just scary.  What would be saying if it were 97% of animal species lost in a century?
• The right to patent living things was deliberately left out of the Constitution.  Maybe they had a good reason?
• Monsanto vs. Schmeiser.  This is just unbelievable.
• Transgenic corn has been genetically engineered to have BT, a bacterial toxin, in each cell.  This kills not just harmful insects, but beneficials as well.
• BT corn is not FDA tested, but is GRAS – “generally recognized as safe.”
• 25 countries require labeling of GMOs.  We are not one of them. We could be, if the bill ever makes it out of committee. (It will need to be reintroduced this Congress.)
• In ten years, all of the food in the world could be controlled by six companies, one of which will be American.  Any guess as to which company?  Walmart.

This film reminded me again that politics is in everything.  “The personal is political.”  And the political is personal.  We wouldn’t allow companies to patent our bodies, would we?  Why are we allowing them to patent other living things?  When they patent our food, it is personal.

Patents do not protect traditional knowledge.  Rather, they limit the process of passing on traditional knowledge.  Traditional knowledge is key to building resilient communities over generations.  How much has been lost in the last two generations?  There is a whole community forming today around relearning and revitalizing skills that we could have learned from our grandparents – growing and preserving food, and even basic cooking.  The more we allow companies to limit access to things no one person should own, the more we risk losing these fundamental skills.

Now let me clarify that I am a capitalist.  I really do believe in capitalism.  But I do not trust a corporation to self-regulate food safety and nutrition.  Corporations are designed to maximize profit, not nutrition.  The FDA exists for a good reason.

In order for corporations to continue doing what they do best (providing what consumers want), consumers need to be able to choose what to buy.  And in order to exercise choice, we must have access to information.  If genetically engineered foods aren’t labeled, we cannot choose.

We also need to start paying attention to who is running our government.  In The Future of Food, they narrated a long list of Monsanto-government crossovers throughout the last decade.  Just one – Michael Taylor, who was responsible for GMOs bypassing FDA testing in the early 90’s, previously represented Monsanto as Senior Counsel at King & Spalding.  In the best of worlds, there would be no such thing as a conflict of interest.  But Washington is not and has never been the best of worlds.

Do you take your children personally?  Do you take their food personally?  If so, now is the time to start taking politics personally.

* The Future of Food website does not appear to include the Hulu link.  If there is not a screening near you, or if you are lazy like me, you can watch the film online.

There are currently five food safety bills making their way through Congress.  Unfortunately, if passed in their current forms, these bills will have a tremendous negative impact on local farmers and the sustainable food movement.  The standards and regulations will raise costs substantially for all farmers, but prohibitively for small farmers who are not operating with an economy of scale.

Each of these bills addresses several elements of the food production system:

• Tracking the origins of food
• Creating standards for production methods

At the core of the concern about these bills is the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).  This is a policy requiring the identification of all livestock which, if implemented, would be prohibitively expensive for many small farmers and ranchers.  While none of the legislation currently in Congress specifically calls for NAIS, if the Department of Agriculture implements the program, much of this legislation will affect the scope and range of the system.  Specifically, none of this legislation distinguishes between factory-scale farming and local sustainable agriculture.  Unfortunately, the 2009 omnibus Appropriations bill, passed in February, included funding for NAIS.

As with so many pet issues of the mainstream media and of Congress, food safety has become a victim of a fundamental issue in framing.  The argument can be made that tracking is necessary in industrial agriculture and food processing.  If something goes wrong, officials need to know the source so that they can more quickly identify and remove products from the market — on a national scale.  In industrial agriculture, food is grown on one one side of the country, processed on the other side of the country, and distributed everywhere.  Knowing where food comes from is a key element in keeping people safe.

Tracking systems such as NAIS and the other mechanisms outlined in these bills protect us from something that is not an issue in local agriculture.  With locally sourced food, I know where my food is coming from.  And the people who grow and raise my food know where their products are going.

Local farmers do not have the economy of scale to necessitate this level of governmental regulation.  And they cannot afford to shoulder the expense of regulation mechanisms designed for industrial agriculture.   It is time to pay attention to what Congress is doing with our food.