American Forum

AMERICAN FORUM

By Kathleen Rogers

Climate change is a critical issue in the 21st century, and as we observe Women’s History Month we should bear in mind the effect of the environment on women. Women make up the majority of the earth’s population, and are most vulnerable to changes in climate and environment.

“The poor are not living in industrialized countries where the environment is distant -- where you have to go out to appreciate it. Our lives depend upon it," said Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Problems such as air pollution, contaminated water, lack of adequate sanitation, disease vectors and degraded ecosystems are all risk factors for women and their children. In 2005, 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe and affordable drinking water, nearly 20 percent of the earth’s population, while 40 percent of the earth’s population lacked clean sanitation. Approximately 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diarrhea caused by lack of clean water and proper sanitation. That is an average of 4,500 children per day.

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Hard economic times have spurred an explosion in home gardens with more people realizing that food does not begin and end in the supermarket. This increase in food awareness, coupled with recent food recalls, has brought increased attention to issues of food safety and farm policy.

Unfortunately, recent proposals fail to take into account the issues underpinning the food safety problems faced by this country.

Congress is seeking to enhance federal oversight of the production of food, thereby increasing food safety. To that end, all food producers would be subject to the same stringent regulations, regardless of their size. The local farmer and his organic or all-natural tomatoes will be treated with the same suspicion as produce from massive industrial “farms” which grow and process enormous amounts of food at unnaturally high rates, bolstered by synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified seed.

Similarly, small ranches where cattle graze on open fields of grass and are slaughtered one or two at a time in local abattoirs would be subject to the same requirements as the giant meat packing companies whose relentless “protein” production requires that they pump their cattle full of growth hormones and steroids, and dose them with antibiotics to combat the dangerous effects of a grain-based diet on the stomachs of animals designed to eat grasses.

The push for food safety ignores the real and important differences between modes of production.