The safety of food was a major public concern long before the current action from the White House. I recall the howl of voices in the 1960s against the indiscriminate use of chemicals in farming and processing of food, as well as other consumer products. The moment of truth had broken through in the last century when “natural” and “organic” were terms that became passé rather than marks of quality, and safety lost its position of priority.
It wasn’t just food that was affected. Critics raised concerns for actual and inherent harm in the indiscriminate use of chemicals in consumer products, such as pesticides. A fledgling environmental movement supported the cause, in the hope of restoring sense in the use of chemicals in the consumer industry. That movement ended when it got hijacked by political alarmism under the buzzword “green.”
The promoters of what Dupont used to advertise as “Chemistry for Better Living” aggressively pursued the new orthodoxy for progress, while dissenters faced inattention and ridicule. It was plain to me however that besides safety another vital term had been omitted from the new equation for modern living: quality.
That was the original intent of the FDA, born early in the century and cutting teeth in the FDR administration. But what had begun as a lean watchdog grew into an overweight servant of the food, drug, and agriculture industries. A hint of that transformation is detectable in food labels that read more like items for a laboratory than for a kitchen.
As a gardener I had reason to believe that switching from an organic regimen to “chemical gardening” was a mistake. Growing things the new way resulted in diminished flavor in vegetables and fragrance in flowers. No big deal, some might say, but such differences told me that the development of the plants was deficient and incomplete. The proof came in the eating and in the smelling of flowers known for fragrance. What people today spend additional money for in food labeled “organic” gives some idea of what is gone.
For those old enough to remember the taste of food, growing up, the difference between the quality then and now is not a fantasy. It has left some of us to wonder if this is the cost of progress in the food industry. Are we and many other Americans living in a dream world for wanting food that is grown and processed as naturally as possible? Is this “purist” stand against the proliferation of chemicals in agriculture and food processing incompatible with sensible progress?
Progress at the expense of safety and health is an issue that won’t go away. It has finally poked the government into serious action, with reason to expect sanity in the matter, the case in countries that have already banned dangerous adulterants in food.
The time is here I’d say for bridging the gap between what is deemed necessary for progress and what is in fact natural in treating the food supply. The goal, when all is said and done, is health and wellbeing.
And so we need to ask, were the concerns of over half a century ago regarding the indiscriminate use of chemicals in food and in the environment exaggerated and off the wall, as the critics of that time claimed? Speaking from the current perspective, I would say that the neglect of taking those concerns seriously back then has resulted in deeply troubling anomalies. A typical one that misses the attention of most but is not hiding may serve to illustrate. And that is the selling of medical novelties on TV (like the street vendors of old-time quack medicine?) and informing you with a straight face of side effects that can send you to ER. To me that reflects the mindset of past health-product hustlers with scant regard for health. I would say that such crass advertising for products intended to benefit our health is off the wall.
A sweeping collective sense of wrongdoing and mismanagement in this country, over many decades, has stirred an overwhelming majority of Americans to elect a president with the stamina, boldness, and resourcefulness to begin mending this broken country. A most telling fact of the 2024 election is that politics-as-usual is over. Those still on the march to oblivion (e.g. Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right) — urgently need to wake up and join a movement called sanity.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.