Security in your food system

What, exactly, was the point of last Tuesday’s Bangor Daily News article on poultry and eggs? After reading and re-reading it, I’m left with the conclusion that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – that, and our increasingly industrial food system.

So far the strain of avian influenza that causes severe illnesses in humans has been confined to China and Vietnam. Yes, we need to be wary and vigilant about the possible spread of bird flu to the United States; however, the article implies that the only solution is to rely on a food production system based on a few large farms.

Over the last 35 years the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) has been working with hundreds of farmers to develop an organic alternative to this centralized system that could help Maine be a leader in local and regional food production.

Basic biology tells us that when we concentrate large numbers of animals in any one place, they become more vulnerable to the spread of disease. Now we have reached the point where people who raise food for themselves, their neighbors and their communities are “irresponsible” because the animals on these dispersed farms might at some point be exposed to a disease which is then transmitted, through some mechanism that isn’t specified, to one of the industrial egg farms which house many tens of thousands of birds in a total confinement system.

Therefore, according to this logic, any place that keeps or raises any farm animals should become part of a national animal identification system (costs to be borne primarily by the farmer) so that if a disease breaks out in some farm anywhere in the area it will be easier to find, quarantine, and, likely, slaughter all potentially infected birds.

The first stages of this system are already being created with a voluntary program to get farmers to register their premises as a place where livestock are raised.

Eventually, any place with any farm animals (one chicken qualifies) will be required to be registered, and any movements of animals on or off the farm are to be tracked to final disposition. While a more sophisticated tracking system would have helped find the source of the few U.S. cases of mad cow disease, there is a large cost that will be paid by farmers in developing this sys-tem – and a high likelihood that it will be so burdensome that many will choose not to participate.

The article also implies that organic farmers, who do unusual things like feeding their birds grains that weren’t sprayed with pesticides and allowing their birds to actually move around outside on their own two legs, are particularly likely to cause problems for the industrial egg system. My two roosters, Bob and Earl, would really resent this forced lack of mobility, as would my hens.

MOFGA believes strongly in reaching farmers with good and accurate information about how to recognize problems in their flocks, and how to minimize the potential for the spread of any diseases, not just avian influenza. However, true security can’t be based on eliminating our capacity to produce our own food in favor of letting someone else do it for us, in ways that we’d really rather not consider.

If we’re concerned about true homeland security in all its forms, isn’t the solution based on having many people growing food in many different locations? The article implies that the opposite is true, that we’re supposed to rely on a few large producers to supply all our food, and that there is some way to keep every possible disease away from these birds.

Maine is one of the few states with the possibility of recreating a food system where it is possible to know the farmers who produce your food and the fishermen who catch the fish that shows up on your plate.

In the end, isn’t that the kind of true security that we are all looking for?

Russell Libby is executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) in Unity.