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Critical need —A Broken Food Chain

The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than it had in the previous 10,000. The average American supermarket has over 47,000 products on its shelves.

We live in amazing times.

Demand for access to food has increased to a level never seen before in history. And as a result, pressures on the system have created a paradigm that is unmanageable and unhealthy. In the United States, the FDA and USDA are underfunded and under equipped to be able to do the kind of inspections needed to guarantee a healthy food supply. As for imports, these same government agencies aren’t given the authority to deny port entry to foods not inspected or that have not passed a safety inspection.

In the past decade the world has seen food quality issues rising from or contributing to the outbreaks of salmonella poisoning in everything from dog food to peanuts, Mad Cow disease, e-coli outbreaks, bird flu and now and pandemic of H1N1 Swine flu (which has been identified and tracked since the 1930’s). The current U.S. Presidential administration is talking about putting laws in place that would require food suppliers to be able to track the origins of the products they are shipping. This is a result of contaminated meat supplies and other food products entering the marketwith no ability to know precisely where they came from.

The consumer is worried about their food supply because the food chain is broken.

Concern for the content of our food is bigger than the lack of a shipping manifest.

Pressures on growers have resulted in the use of growth hormone steroids, BST in our milk, contamination of fruits and vegetables, and in some cases, unsafe or untested hybridization. As advances in cloning become more common, we will see cloned animals in our meat supply as well (with no assurances of what the ramifications forour health will be).

The rise of the organic food movement is not new, but is gaining a bigger market share every year against commercial grocery traffic. Stores like Whole Foods, GNC or Vitamin Cottage (terrible name, given their focus), all offer hormone-free, all-natural or organic products on every shelf. Even our average supermarket chains have all natural or organic offerings in most every category of food product.

Sustainable farming practices and local cooperative farming groups are popping up everywhere around the country, largely as a response to the broken food chain that is in place. But as with any viable business opportunity, these new markets are driven by the consumer or buyer. Consumers want access to safe, healthy, and reliable food choices.

Not surprisingly, consumers driving the demand for a safer food chain are also concerned for the welfare of the animals being raised. This includes pushing for laws

limiting factory farms, open pit manure collection, and the confinement or abuse of animals entering the food supply. All of these things are important to a discussion about who the buying audience is for all-natural beef or organic grain.

The critical need for Sharp Iron Land & Cattle Company is in addressing the broken food chain.