VOICES: There are some companies
that slaughter thousands of animals. Because it is much more expensive
to produce beef without hormones. Consumer's buy with their eyes. Can't buy an orange that's unpeeled. JOANNE FARYON (Host): Hello everyone. I'm Joanne Faryon. Welcome to this Envision
San Diego special "Food." It's something we take for granted. After all, California is the largest
supplier of food for the country. Grocery store aisles are stocked with
just about anything we care to buy. Chicken for less than a dollar a pound,
steaks the size of a dinner plate, every species of fish and fruit and
vegetables no matter the season. It may seem as though the cost of
these groceries continue to rise, but we actually spend less money on our
food then we did a couple generations ago. Just how all of this food makes
its way to the grocery store and your dinner plate is the
subject of tonight's investigation. We'll also tell you why it's relatively
cheap to buy beef, chicken even fish. Some of it you may not want to know, but at the end of the program we hope
you walk away a better informed consumer. 40 million pounds of San Diego oranges are on
their way to countries as far away as China. 13,000 head of cattle are being
fattened in Imperial Valley. One in five will be slaughtered
for sale in Japan, the others distributed across the country. In Mission Bay, scientists are trying
to figure out what to feed farmed fish. Those cattle you just saw,
well, they could be on the menu. The food chain doesn't look like it use to. Fish no longer eat fish, cattle eat
corn even though it can make them sick, chickens eat fish and fish are eating cows. Even chicken feathers become food. We grow oranges but send them away
because they're too hard for us to peel; the ones we eat come from Australia. Just how did it get to be this
way, and is it good for us? Tonight we look at the food we eat from the
dinner plate to the farm, field and ocean. And how our demand for cheap food and
more food has altered the food chain. A food chain that is motivated by
making the greatest amount of food for the cheapest cost, in
other words, efficiency. Americans consume nearly 20 percent of
all the beef in the world but only make up about 5 percent of the world's population. In 2008, the U.S. slaughtered
more than 34 million cattle, slightly more than the year before. So we followed the chain. And what we found was a fast-growing,
corn-fed, hormone and antibiotic-injected animal that likely traveled thousands of
miles before it ended up at your table. And most of the 1.4 million dairy cows are
also destined for your table as hamburger. Let's start at the beginning. In southern California, most cattle start
out like this, eating grass on a pasture. JIM DAVIS (President SD Imperial Valley
Cattleman's Association): In the '40s and '50s when my grandfather was running cattle here
he would basically sell his cattle as two or three-year-olds that would both be
taken to market here in San Diego County and then distributed here in San Diego County. FARYON: It doesn't work that way anymore. Now, cattle are raised on grass for
six months, then sold at auction to another rancher usually out of state. We don't have enough grass or rain
to feed all our cattle year-round. Once they're sold they'll live
another six months on grass. They'll be sold again. This time they go to a feedlot. Large pens where cattle are sent to be
fattened before they're slaughtered. This one in Imperial Valley
houses 13,000 animals. It's considered small. Some are home to more than 100,000 animals. Cattle spend four or five months here. They're fed mostly corn. The U.S. introduced cattle into feedlots and
corn into their diets after World War II. Both had a dramatic effect. The animals grew faster and fatter. Broc Sandelin is an animal sciences
professor at Cal Poly Pomona and a third generation cattle rancher. FARYON: Is there any research that says
they have a tough time digesting corn? BROC SANDELIN: I'm not familiar with any I'm not
a nutritionist so I don't really know for sure but I'm sure you could find something
or I could find something for you. FARYON: Is it easier for them to
digest grass rather then corn? SANDELIN: Yeah that's what they're
naturally raised on is grass. FARYON: Studies have suggested corn-fed
cattle may harbor more virulent strains of E. coli then grass fed
beef, although a new study out of Kansas State University is
now challenging that assertion. Feedlots have also led to
wider use of antibiotics. And almost all the beef you buy in the grocery
store comes from cattle injected with hormones. BILL BRANDENBERG: It is much more
expensive to produce beef without hormones. FARYON: Corn makes cattle fat. Hormones give them more lean muscle tissue. Bill Brandenberg says the cattle can
grow 10 percent bigger with hormones. BRANDENBERG: And without hormones the cattle
is going to have a lot more fat in them and they're going to produce a lot
more of those upper grades of beef. FARYON: Don't they have more fat in
them because we're feeding them corn? BRANDENBERG: It's a combination of the corn and
the fact that what the hormones actually do, the animal produces different
ratios of estrogen and testosterone. The hormone doesn't actually go into the
bloodstream per se but it causes the animal to produce its own different level so
it maximizes the production of lean and minimizes the production of fat. FARYON: But if we didn't feed them corn,
isn't it the corn fed that give them the fat? BRANDENBERG: Yes. FARYON: So if we didn't feed them corn
they wouldn't necessarily need the hormones to make less fat? BRANDENBERG: Well you could do them grass fed
without implants, you'd have a product too but it wouldn't taste near
as good as corn-fed beef. That's what the consumer in the United
States like is the flavor that goes along with tenderness that goes along with corn fed. FARYON: American beef is banned in
Europe because of the use of hormones. Shelton Murinda is an animal
sciences professor at Cal Poly Pomona. SHELTON MURINDA: The Europeans were using
what I would call the precautionary principal which simply indicates when there is not
enough scientific evidence it is better to be on the safe side. FARYON: Isn't it? MURINDA: It is always better
to be on the safe side when you do not have sufficient
scientific evidence. FARYON: Well then why do we still use
hormones in beef in the United States? MURINDA:The situation is rather different here. There are pros and cons that
have been thrown about. Some of them what I indicated:
the potential side affects. From as far as I know, there has not been
enough risk assessment that has been done with relevance to the side effects of those
hormones with respect to the human population. Not enough research has been to
gather that sort of information so there has been no risk
assessment that has been done. FARYON: So why not go on the side
of caution like the Europeans? MURINDA: We'd rather think differently here. We'd rather think differently. FARYON: So will any of these
cattle end up on your plate? MURINDA: The chances of getting beef that's
from California is rather slim in other words, most of it comes from outside California. FARYON: The average American eats
about 17 pounds of fish per year. Half the fish we eat is farmed fish. That means the fish was born, raised
and fed in a net not far off the coast. We wanted to know whether farmed fish
was as healthy as wild-caught fish. The answer? It all depends on what farmed fish eat. And just wait until you hear
what we're feeding them. DON KENT: I grew up in San Diego when San
Diego was the tuna capitol of the world you do down to the embarcadero and tuna sainers
were tied up next to each other three deep at the embarcadero and that's gone now. FARYON: Don Kent is President of
Hubbs-Seaworld research Institute. Here they're developing new ways to farm
fish, from the hatchery and now to your table. Hubbs-Seaworld wants to establish the largest
fish farm off U.S. coastal waters five miles west of Mission Bay. Kent sees it as a boon to the local economy and
a way to take pressure of depleting fish stocks. The debate over fish farming has
traditionally been about how to do it in a way that doesn't contaminate local waters. Hubbs believes by establishing nets five
miles off the coast where the water is deep and the current swift, it can
minimize contamination concerns. But there's another issue. Fish also eat other fish. If farmed fish are fed fish, the
practice could deplete dwindling stocks. So the challenge is to find other sources of
fish food and fish oil to feed farmed fish. JEFFREY GRAHAM: For every pound of growth for
a salmon it takes about five pounds of fish that are caught and ground up and
turned into pellets or some kind of feeding mechanism to give to these fish. So five to one, that's a very stiff ratio. What you're essentially doing
doing then is you're -- and part of the two-way street argument
that's given about acqueculture is well, take pressure off the natural populations. However, if you have to catch five pounds
of fish from the natural environment to rear one pound of salmon, for high-end
table consumption the arithmetic doesn't work out in terms of the long-term
benefits to the ocean. KENT: There's a lot of experimentation going on
and we do it here on our species that's looking to replace that fish meal
in the diet with soy protein or other processing byproducts
like beef or chicken byproducts. Basically waste in processing
that can be turned around and used as a protein supplement to
replace the fish meal. FARYON: According to the National Renderers
Association cow and chicken by products, including cattle blood and
bone, and poultry feathers, have been fed to farmed fish for decades. The association told KPBS cattle fat, blood
and bone meal are being increasingly used in fish diets as an alternatives
to fish oil and other proteins. So by now you might be asking what we asked when we learned fish were eating cattle
by-products: Can fish get mad cow disease? Mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy
or BSE, is a neurodegenarative disease in cattle that can be passed onto humans. Eurpean countries have banned
cattle by products in fish feed because if fish eat contaminated cattle
and cattle eat contaminated fish, the disease in theory, can be
transmitted to the food chain. Here in the U.S. the Food and
Drug Administration banned the use of most cow by-products as
feed to other cows in 1997. But the same rules do not apply to fish feed. However, a new regulation does ban the use
of cattle brains and spines in fish feed; both contain the highest concentrations
of infected material in diseased cattle. There has never been a case of humans
contracting mad cow by eating farmed fish. Meanwhile, there continues
to be an ongoing debate over the omega-3 content
of farmed versus wild fish. Omega-3s are the healthy fats that can
help prevent heart disease and Alzheimer's. One large grocery chain claims on its Web site, farmed salmon actually has
more omega-3 than wild salmon. KPBS put their claim to the test and sent fish
samples, wild and farmed, to a lab in Oregon. The tests results confirmed that farmed
salmon did have nearly twice the amount of healthy omega-3s as wild salmon but you had to eat nearly four times the amount
of fat to get those nutrients. Americans eat more chicken than any other meat, about 74 pounds per person each
year, and most of it is white meat. Consumers like white meat and so the industry
has found a way to give us what we want. CURTIS WOMACH: These are my fast-growing Cornish
cross and they're what's in the supermarkets, all the restaurants sell this kind of chicken. FARYON: Most of the chickens we buy in
a grocery store are called broilers -- a cross between two other chickens,
a Cornish and Plymouth Rock. WOMACH: They're bred to grow really
fast and have lots of white meat, see how wide it is, see the big breast? FARYON: But none of these chickens
will end up in a grocery store. Curtis Womach raises these chickens
on a farm just outside Julian. Most chickens in a grocery store
are raised on a factory floor. Womach sells his chickens at a farmers market. He's decided he will no longer
raise this type of chicken. WOMACH: Tthey can't physically mate
because of the white meat gets in the way. They're still chickens and they want to
be like chickens but they can't move; they would like to go under
the trees in the shade but it's too hard for them to walk over there. FARYON: The breasts are so big
these chickens can barely walk. Look at these, a different breed and
able to run away from our camera. Chickens are raised mostly on corn. Fish meal can be added to their
feed -- even chicken feathers. Antibiotics are used, but it's illegal
to use hormones in chickens in the U.S. So when you see labels like
this, "no hormones added," well, it's illegal to add hormones to all chicken. In fact, it's against USDA regulations to say no hormones have been
added unless this line follows. See that line in small print? And "natural"? Well, just about all the food you buy is natural
unless something artificial has been injected. And "fresh never been frozen"? The legal definition according to the USDA of
fresh chicken means the internal temperature of the chicken has never been
below 26 degrees farenheit. "Free range"? It doesn't mean your chicken
was raised like this. It means the chicken had access to the outdoors. But land to roam, time to grow, and feed like
this -- organic fruit -- comes with a price. Womach's chickens cost about 20
dollars each compared to seven or eight dollars for a grocery store chicken. WOMACH: I think a lot of chicken is wasted. If you're paying 60 cents a pound what does it
matter if you're not making stock from the bones but I think there is an American
culture where it's like we deserve all the meat we want everyday. FARYON: Americans drink more orange
juice than any other fruit juice. As KPBS reporter Amita Sharma
tells us, orange groves are part of our history for the past 100 years. AMITA SHARMA: San Diego County groves
produce 95,000 tons of oranges each year. Local growers are sending these
oranges to India, China, Japan. All countries willing to pay premium
rates for San Diego oranges viewed as some of the tastiest in the world. JOHN DEMSHKY: The color and taste of San
Diego fruit is quite popular overseas so most of our San Diego fruit we
actually send to a foreign country. SHARMA: Since we export most of our oranges,
thousands of miles away as far as Japan, where do the oranges we eat come from? It turns out, depending on the season, the
fruit we consume here is shipped from thousands of miles away from countries like
Australia, South Africa and Peru. It is we, the consumer, who've determined
that our oranges trot the globe. American shoppers like their oranges
to be seedless and easy to peel. But San Diego oranges have seeds and
their thinner skin is tougher to remove. We also like our oranges to be orange. DEMSHKY: Consumers buy with their eyes. You can't buy an orange that's unpeeled. But ultimately, that bright orange
color is really a factor of the climate and temperatures they were grown in. But clearly your San Diego fruit might
have had a little green on the top of it. It's something "regreening" in the industry. That's really just a cosmetic issue. It's not an indication of the
flavor of the orange at all. SHARMA: In fact, says 79-year-old Ben
Hillebrecht: HILLEBRECHT: They're sweet, juicy and just an excellent orange. SHARMA: Hillebrecht's family has grown
oranges for generations in Escondido. HILLEBRECHT: All my life I've been right here. If I live until December, I'll be 80 years old. SHARMA: Hillebrecht would prefer
to sell his fruit to San Diegans. HILLEBRECHT: But you can't make people
eat them just because they're grown here. You buy them much cheaper from some place else. Food in America is cheap. You only spend 10 cents out of your
dollar or 11 cents as an average American. SHARMA: But escalating water prices are making
it difficult for orange farmers like Hillibrecht to keep on growing especially with
oranges coming from Australia or Brazil. In fact, the Hillebrechts are turning
off the tap on some of their orange trees because keeping them alive
is no longer profitable. ERIC LARSON: Here in San Diego County,
it's tough for farmers to compete. The land is expensive, labor is
expensive, and water is very expensive because we import the water
from a great distance so it makes a very, very difficult to compete. SHARMA: The Hillebrecht family
has diversified what it grows and its fallback crop is
San Diego top food crop. Last year the county produced
59,000 tons of this fruit. Forty percent of the avocados
sold in the United States come from San Diego County groves
like this one in Escondido. When avocados aren't in season here,
chances are the ones you're buying in the store came from Mexico or Chile. MIKE HILLEBRECHT: In some ways that's beneficial because the consumer can
buy avocadoes year around. SHARMA: But Ben's son Mike Hillebrecht says
there are downsides to importing avocadoes for San Diego growers, again
because of labor costs. Local growers pay workers $8 an hour. In Mexico, workers earn $4 dollars a day. LARSON: Consumers really have a lot of control,
it's just they just don't tend to exercise it. If the consumer truly wants to buy local fruits
and vegetables -- number one farmer's markets -- you can't sell at a farmer's market
unless you're a California grower or a San Diego County grower so right there,
you know instantly, you're buying locally. If a farmer ships out of the area, it
goes through an additional packing house, they're only going to get
19 cents of the food dollar. If it stays local and takes some of
those middlemen out of the equation, they might be able to get a better
price for the product they sell. FARYON: Tomatoes are the number
one favorite fruit among Americans. As Reporter Ed Joyce tells us, San Diego County
grow the nation's largest vine-ripened crop. ED JOYCE: San Diego County is home to the
largest community of organic tomato growers in the state and nation, with 343
farms growing more than 150 crops. We wanted to find out what the
difference was between organic and conventionally grown tomatoes. And whether the way they
were grown affected taste. While tomatoes might be American's favorite,
they're also the fruit we're least satisfied with when it comes to grocery store produce. So we went to the People's
Organic Foods Market to talk with the coop's marketing
director Amber McHale to find out why the store only buys
and sells organic tomatoes. As a disclaimer, I'm a member of the coop. AMBER MCHALE: Some crops have been proven,
organically, to have a higher yield, of certain vitamins, not all,
that's a study that's still ongoing. But again, for me and for most of these
shoppers it's not the extra-added nutrition, although again, when you have healthier soil,
you're going to have a healthier product. It's the lack of what's not in there, those
synthetic toxic pesticides, those fertilizers. JOYCE: Organic growers say residue from pesticides can be harmful,
especially to children. The EPA recently announced it will begin a
series of tests on pesticides and their affects on human endocrine systems, which regulate
growth, metabolism and reproduction. An environmental group in Washington D.C. ranked
43 fruits and vegetables based on the amount of pesticides, but not the toxicity
of each pesticide, found on them. Â Tomatoes ranked halfway down the list with 47
percent of the tomatoes containing pesticide. Peaches were the worst offender,
with 97 percent. JOYCE:Â Where do these tomatoes come from, do they come from San Diego County,
do they come from California? MCHALE: Right now all our tomatoes
are coming from California. The jumbo's, the cherry and the heirloom
are coming locally from Be Wise ranch, and the roma's are coming from the central
valley so it's regional, not local. JOYCE: Casey Anderson is an organic grower. He and his mother grow 13 varieties of
organic heirloom tomatoes in Valley Center. It's late in the season so
Anderson's crop is winding down, but buying locally-grown organic
tomatoes at a farmer's market is as direct and fresh as they come. But do they taste better? ANDERSON:
They all have different tastes. I mean these, the green zebra's, these are um,
this is fully ripe, this is what they look like, and they are really sweet, but they
taste like they got lime drizzled over the top, they're really tangy. JOYCE: When it comes to flavor,
it may just be matter of taste. However, most tomatoes bought in a grocery
store have been picked when they're green so they can survive long
trips across the country. They're ripened artificially with ethylene gas. Temperature also play a role. Tomatoes won't ripen in temperatures
below 50 degrees. Some varieties are also bred for shape, color
and shelf life -- not necessarily taste. In California, most tomatoes
are destined for cans. The state produces 90 percent of
the country's processed tomatoes. FARYON: Americans eat more
per capita then ever before. And according to government
statistics, one third of us are obese. We buy 99-cent hamburgers and chicken
that costs less than a dollar a pound. Producers in the food chain tell us we
want cheaper food and we want more of it. DAVIS: Obviously the consumer votes
and tells you what's it's going to do. If you're raising something the consumer
doesn't want and you don't sell it, you're not going to raise it again. So you will vote. FARYON: And we've voted with our money. We don't have enough time
to peel our own oranges and we're too busy to find
out what's in our food. GRAHAM: If the soccer mom's got enough time
to do everything else she does and then worry about the quality or the source of the fish
sticks she's feeding her kids then she could look at these Web sites and
figure out how to do this. FARYON: Can we actually track our food from
the dinner plate the farm field and ocean? Most of it, we can't. And what happens when that search leads us here? The video you're about to see
is graphic and disturbing. Last year, a California meat company
issued the largest meat recall in history. 143 million pounds of beef was recalled after humane society video revealed
sick cows dragged to slaughter. It's illegal to use sick animals in the
meat supply because of the risk of disease. We had several questions for the USDA
when we began our investigation into food. They didn't respond to most of our
emails or our request for an interview. We did learn however, that so much of this
information is available to the public on government and trade association
websites, and in the scientific literature. Maybe we just stopped paying attention because the new mass-produced food chain has
made life easy and the food we eat cheap. Or maybe, we just don't want to
know where our food comes from. You can find out more about
our food investigation by going to our Web site: KPBS.org/food. You can also leave a comment;
we'd love to hear from you. For KPBS and Envision San
Diego, I'm Joanne Faryon. Thanks for watching.
