Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [153]
34. James Bovard, “The Great Sugar Shaft,” The Future of Freedom Foundation, Freedom Daily (April 1998), available at link #37.
35. Int’l Trade Admin., U.S. Dep’t Com., Employment Changes in U.S. Food Manufacturing: The Impact of Sugar Prices (2006), 2.
36. Bovard, “The Great Sugar Shaft.”
37. Daniel J. Ikenson, “America’s Credibility Goes ‘Timber!’ ” Free Trade Bulletin (2005), available at link #38.
38. Edwards, “Agricultural Regulations and Trade Barriers Downsizing the Federal Government,” 8.
39. United States Corn Subsidies, EWG Farm Subsidy Database, available at link #39; Donald Carr, “Corn Subsidies Make Unhealthy Food Choices the Rational Ones,” Grist, Sept. 21, 2010, available at link #40.
40. Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 48–53; Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise, “Feeding at the Trough: Industrial Livestock Firms Saved $35 Billion from Low Feed Prices,” 07-03 Global Development and Environment Institute Policy Brief 2 (2007), available at link #41. (“Factory hog operations saw the price of feed drop to 26% below production costs during the 1997–2005 period.”)
41. Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise, “Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production,” Global Development and Environment Institute Working Paper 07-04 (2007), 1, 3. A second factor they point to is lax enforcement of environmental rules.
42. Ibid.
43. “Food and Water Watch, Another Take: Food Safety Consequences of Factory Farms,” in Weber, ed., Food, Inc. In May 2011, a coalition of environmental groups filed suit against the FDA to force it to enforce its own findings about the dangers from routine antibiotic use. Tom Laskawy, “Groups Sue FDA to Stop Big Ag Antibiotic Abuse—and It Just Might Work,” Grist, May 26, 2011, available at link #42.
44. Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 74, 78–79; Weber, ed., Food, Inc. See also Donald Kennedy, “Cows on Drugs,” New York Times, April 18, 2010, available at link #43.
45. Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” (2008), 13, available at link #44 (“Food-borne pathogens can have dire consequences when they do reach human hosts. A 1999 report estimated that E. Coli O157:H7 infections caused approximately 73,000 illnesses each year, leading to over 2,000 hospitalizations and 60 deaths each year in the United States…. Costs associated with E. Coli O157:H7–related illnesses in the United States were estimated at $405 million annually: $370 million for deaths, $30 million for medical care, and $5 million for lost productivity…. Animal manure, especially from cattle, is the primary source of these bacteria, and consumption of food and water contaminated with animal wastes is a major route of human infection. Because of the large numbers of animals in a typical IFAP [International Federation of Agricultural Producers] facility, pathogens can infect hundreds or thousands of animals even though the infection rate may be fairly low as a share of the total population. In some cases, it may be very difficult to detect the pathogen; Salmonella enterica [SE], for example, is known to colonize the intestinal tract of birds without causing obvious disease,… although the infected hen ovaries then transfer the organism to the egg contents. Although the frequency of SE contamination in eggs is low (fewer than 1 in 20,000 eggs), the large numbers of eggs—65 billion—produced in the United States each year means that contaminated eggs represent a significant source for human exposure.” Citations omitted.)
46. The three–year-old’s story is told in Food, Inc. The dance instructor’s, in Michael Moss, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life ,” New York Times, Oct. 3, 2009, A1, available at link #45.
47. A Cato Institute study estimated that it took seven barrels of oil to produce eight barrels of corn-derived ethanol. The Monitor’s View, “Corn Lobby’s Tall Tale of a Gas Substitute,” Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2006, available at link