Few things in this world function so well as the natural food
system. Sunlight and water rain down to feed plants, which convert
solar energy to food energy as they grow. Animals then live off that
energy by eating the plants, or eating animals that eat the plants.
Animal turd and movement in turn spread seeds, fostering more plant
growth, and the cycle begins again. It is a robust, secure
system—astronomers figure the sun will be providing free power for
the next seven billion years. And a Health Canada scientist is raising
the alarm that it bears almost no resemblance to the way most food is
produced in our country today.
Shiv Chopra is a career public servant. He has the gold watch and
certificate signed by the prime minister that honour 35 years of
service, although he was fired by Health Canada shortly before the
milestone anniversary. That bungling of dates is a minor bureaucratic
offence compared to what Chopra observed and endured during his time on
the inside, a full accounting of which is the subject of his new book,
Corrupt to the Core.
Subtitled “Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower,” Corrupt to
the Core lays out in painstaking detail his employer’s repeated
failures to act in the public interest. When the Right to Know
Coalition of Nova Scotia recently brought him to Halifax, Chopra
explained to an audience of about 100 people how Health Canada gave
rise to “the worst food safety record in the world.”
The basic problem is there’s a lot of pressure on Health Canada to
support giant pharmaceutical and agricultural companies, rather than
fill its legislated role as regulator. Chopra has faith in scientific
testing and data as ways to protect Canadians from harmful drugs, and
little desire to compromise. He describes corruption—a million-dollar
bribe offer from Monsanto, scientists told by a supervisor to approve
an unsafe product because the manufacturer was a fundraiser for former
prime minister Brian Mulroney—without cynicism. And he speaks out
despite the bureaucracy’s seemingly limitless capacity to ignore,
discriminate, punish and otherwise discourage dissent.
Chopra says Health Canada’s cozy relationship with agribusiness
allows farming practices that are outlawed elsewhere. Compared to the
natural food system, the agribusiness food system is more assembly line
than cycle, an assembly line designed to consume a lot of
pharmaceuticals. The natural way to make a steak is for the sun to feed
the grass, the grass to feed the cow, the cow to feed us. The
agribusiness way takes a cow and feeds it synthetic growth hormone,
making the cow bigger, faster. And because oddly large cows crowded
onto a feedlot together get sick more often, they need to be put on a
steady stream of antibiotics.
Big cows also need to eat something other than grass to bulk up
quickly. The carcasses of other cows—ground and rendered into protein
powder—used to fit the bill, until people realized turning cows into
cannibals led to Mad Cow Disease. In the 1990s, many countries banned
rendered feed altogether, whether for ruminants (cows) or other farm
animals, but not us. “Even now in Canada,” Chopra writes, “the ban on
the feeding of ruminant materials applies to only cattle but not to any
other species, such as swine and poultry, which are still recycled to
make animal feeds, including those for cattle. The only purpose of
doing so is to get rid of slaughterhouse garbage. Continuing to do so
in Canada is unconscionable.”
Besides hormones, antibiotics and rendered feed in animals, Chopra
is concerned about pesticides and the use of genetically modified
organisms in plant farming. He is calling for a Canadian ban on these
items, the “five pillars of food safety,” and he needs your help. “The
public has immense power if it exercises it,” says Chopra. He advocates
signing petitions, going to rallies, writing politicians. And even
after his time in government, he believes change is possible. “I am
certain we will win.”
Tell me your concerns about Canadian food by emailing editor@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.
