Food Supply Safe and Adequate? The Question

¶ … Food Supply Safe and Adequate? The question to be answered in this essay is whether or not America's food supply is adequate and safe. The two issues are related. One of the reasons America has an ample food supply is because of advances made in the biochemistry of agriculture. This affects food coming from both animals and plants. New advances in herbicides have helped farmers increase the size of their crops.

The newer herbicides are biodegradable and rapidly change from something that poisons some living things to chemicals not known to cause harm to plants or animals. Some people worry any time chemicals are added to the food chain, but farmers will argue that they need to make the most effective use of their efforts and their land. Similar arguments can be made about fertilizers. Most people know that unless farmland is enriched, eventually it will become so depleted that crops won't grow well.

Nevertheless, this process introduces chemicals into the food chain that weren't present before. The United States Department of Agriculture is in charge of making sure that farmers do not use chemicals dangerous to human beings. They cannot test all food, and they cannot supervise all farms at all times, but they do make efforts to monitor the quality of our food. The media rarely reports cases of contamination, which gives consumers some confidence. Some have concerns, however, about produce imported from other countries.

During the winter a lot of our fruit comes from South American countries such as Chile, and Mexico provides much as well. These countries may not be as rigorous in their inspections, and their rules may not carry as much force. Most people know, however, to wash their fruits and vegetable thoroughly before eating them. It's a sensible and easy precaution. People have different concerns about meat production. Some find the conditions animals are raised in to be so crowded that they are inhumane.

This raises another concern regarding disease control. Some ranchers give their cattle and chickens antibiotics to prevent disease. It is believed by some that small amounts of these antibiotics may carry over to the people who eat the meat. If that happens, they argue, disease-causing microbes might develop the ability to resist those antibiotics. Two other concerns have emerged particularly about the beef industry. We have had several instances of people who ate incompletely cooked ground beef becoming extremely ill.

Several small children have died from these infections, with the result that the public has been cautioned to cook beef, especially ground beef, thoroughly. However, many people find hamburgers cooked until they're well done unpalatable, and most people do not like steaks cooked in this way. It has been proposed that beef be irradiated to kill the e. coli causing this disease, but some people worry that this will have some ill-effect. Finally, Great Britain has had a serious problem with Mad Cow Disease. The epidemic has devastated their.