Source: Sierra Club magazine: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/netflix-s-rotten-reveals-perils-global-food-production
We all love to eat. And increasingly, our cultural conversation centers around food—the cultivation of refined taste buds, the methods of concocting the most delectable blends of flavors, the ways in which it can influence our health and longevity, and the countless TV shows and books that are borne of people’s foodie fascinations. However, there’s one aspect we as consumers pay perhaps too little heed: the production of food before it reaches markets and grocery store shelves. We don’t directly experience this aspect of food, and as a result, it’s shrouded in mystery, and often, confusion.
Netflix’s recent documentary series Rotten tells the true and sometimes gruesome story of what goes on behind the scenes of global food production—and the pitfalls that accompany the widespread lack of awareness of how and where commonly consumed foods are sourced. The docuseries is produced by Zero Point Zero, the production company behind Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Parts Unknown, and consists of six hour-long episodes, each of which centers around a specific type of food. They feature those at the front lines of food production (beekeepers, garlic sources, peanut farmers), those laboring to reduce the dangers of food-induced allergies (restaurant owners and hospital researchers), as well as lawyers, detectives, and prosecutors who explain exactly how food production gets entangled with the law.
It is difficult to pin down a moral to the frankly appetite-suppressing series. While we recommend watching the show, know that it might trigger some panic around food consumption—episodes trigger dark queries. (Should we stop dining out altogether considering restaurants lie about catering to food allergies? Are bottles of fake honey mixed in with the real ones at my grocery store? Am I aiding and abetting forced labor in Chinese prisons when I add garlic to my pasta sauce?) However, the experts and producers featured in this true-crime-esque series leave many of the common and pressing questions unanswered. So, Sierra turned to food production experts. Read on to learn more about the issues presented in Rotten and to glean some easy ways to stay informed and combat potential food production pitfalls.
Rotten’s first episode, “Lawyers, Guns, and Honey,” digs deep into problems beyond the well-documented disappearance of bees and bee colonies. The crew visits honey importers throughout the United States, and a German lab, to discuss the history of cheap honey that’s been diluted with sugar or artificial sweeteners before being shipped to the U.S. The crew talks to prosecutors who busted one nefarious German honey importer, and to importers about how they test samples for “honey adulteration.”
The first solution for protecting oneself from such adulteration is a no-brainer: Get in touch with your favorite honey production company and ask where its honey is imported from. Know that labels that claim origin in Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Indonesia are likely to be fake. These countries often act as middlemen to China, which “launders” its fake honey in nearby countries before shipping it on to the United States.
Too many brands to grill? Never fear, check out the National Honey Board, which educates consumers, chefs, honey retailers, and honey farmers about the production of quality honey. NHB also has a locating service for local honey farms throughout the U.S., making it easy for consumers to find a farm that sells honey produced by its own bee colonies. Another quick tip? Look for a True Honey Source label on the jar you’re about to buy. THS allows consumers to track their honey all the way back through the supply chain to its country of origin, and the beekeeper who harvested it.
Episode 2, “The Peanut Problem,” discusses the precipitous rise in food allergy cases in the United States. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, food allergy prevalence among children increased 50 percent from 1997 to 2011, and the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology last October announced a 21 percent increase in peanut allergies in children since 2010. This episode is not about food production scandals so much as the plight that befalls America’s peanut farmers as peanut sales drop. It also chronicles the perils that ensue when a restaurant ignores the needs of customers with peanut allergies (people have died from such negligence).
“The Peanut Problem” explains that while scientists have been unable to determine the cause of the skyrocketing numbers, restaurateurs are necessarily stepping up their game to allergen-proof their dishes, and schools and communities are educating one another on the complex and sometimes lethal nature of food allergies. What are the best resources to educate yourself on food allergies, to locate your local immunologists, and to connect with fellow advocates for food allergy awareness? Food Allergy Research and Education and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. These organizations also provide grants that fund allergy research projects. Seeking truly allergy-friendly restaurants in the U.S.? AllergyEats is essentially the Yelp of the food allergy community. Users can tweak the search filters according to specific allergies.
Humans consume almost 50 billion pounds of garlic every year, and the global garlic industry rakes in $40 billion in annual revenue. “Garlic Breath” tells the story of how the world’s garlic industry is monopolized by a small number of powerful companies—and serves as an especially prescient wake-up call for shoppers unaware of where their food comes from.
Most of the garlic we buy is from China, where many prisoners are forced to peel garlic behind bars, working up to 16 hours a day—often until their fingernails fall off. Also unsettling? The show reveals that many leading garlic companies have found ways to game the system under the protection of the Fresh Garlic Producers’ Association. So what’s a garlic lover to do? Start peeling your own cloves. Around 60 percent of the garlic Americans consume from China is pre-peeled, likely thanks to illegal forced labor, so it’s best to buy unpeeled cloves directly from small garlic farms or farmer’s markets. The U.S. Department of Labor maintains an up-to-date list of “goods believed to be produced by child labor or forced labor and their source countries.” It’s a good place to start, but if you’re concerned that the DOL’s list may not always be current, you can always check this website to determine the whereabouts of your local farmer’s market.
Episode 4, “Big Bird,” might give you pause before buying another broiler chicken from your local grocery store chain outlet. The story begins with those behind America’s massive chicken production operation: the chicken “growers” whose control over their farms has in recent years been largely stripped away thanks to corporate giants like Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms, and Tyson. These corporate poultry companies have growers sign contracts to raise birds supplied by “Big Chicken.” While the companies provide feed and medication, the growers build their own farms and otherwise finance the whole operation.
The chickens are contractually raised in ways these corporations deem efficient (but not necessarily humane), and the process is also fashioned into a tournament system that pits growers against one another for bonuses awarded to those who manage to raise the heaviest birds using the least feed. Chickens never see the light of day (this keeps them inactive and plump), and growers at the bottom of the competitive pack wind up losing money as a form of punishment. This is a system curved to solely benefit the corporations.
In 2012, chicken surpassed beef as the most consumed meat in the United States, due to its cheaper price point and mass production efficiency. Not only has chicken production moved beyond traditional poultry farms, but it’s also now in the reins of a few major corporations in Brazil, the U.S., Thailand, and China—some of which have been bribing their local governments to look the other way as they expand their less-than-humane operations to multiply bird reproduction and then slaughter them, assembly-line style. The result of such mass production? Broiler chickens come cheap at supermarkets—around $7 each.
Some farmers have ducked out of this system to raise chickens on their own terms, in hopes of keeping the corporate giants from dominating the global chicken market. But one should be prepared to spend much more on ethically raised chicken. Chickens from one farm featured on Rotten (where they’re shown enjoying free space to roam freely) are sold for three times the aforementioned supermarket price. Concerned consumers might start by learning more about the industry lingo decorating meat and egg labels in the grocery store and learning to tell the marketing terms (neither “natural” nor “cage-free,” for instance, means chickens had humane living conditions) apart from standardized, informational labels (Certified Humane, Animal Welfare Approved).
You could also reach out to farms that sell their own poultry through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides a local foods directory through which consumers can seek out farms that offer “regular deliveries of locally grown farm products.” LocalHarvest and EatWild are other websites that provide growing databases for local farms in every state and even other countries.
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