GAP’s

Food Integrity Campaign

What is Food Integrity?

The term “food integrity” implies a global per-spective on food issues – from soil to plate. The term goes beyond food safety to include how food is produced, procured, and distributed.

Food with integrity is produced in ways con-sistent with community values, principles, and beliefs. Regrettably, today’s industrialized food system is often an affront to our values and a danger to our health.

A Program of the Government Accountability Project

The mission of the Food Integrity Campaign (FIC) – a program of the Government Ac-countability Project – is to enhance overall food integrity by protecting the rights of employees in the food industry and government who speak out against unsafe, unhealthy and inhumane practices.

Consumption

Whistleblow-ers play a critical role in reporting unlawful and immoral practices of food industries that promote starvation, obesity,

and disease. These truth-tellers also expose hidden toxins and health risks associated with food refuse, which ultimately contaminates the soil and streams that nourish tomorrow’s crops.

FIC supports citizen activists who speak out against problems with this system, and works closely with coalition groups that focus on the following issues:

• Agribusiness and Health: The corporate food system is about maximizing earnings – not nour-ishment and health. Even food that is prepared in sanitary conditions is often a menace to public health, addicting consumers to dangerous levels of fat, salt and sugar. This leads to diabetes, obe-sity, hypertension and death.

• Leftovers: The sheer amount of food waste and disposable containers produced in America is massive. These ‘leftovers’ often end up in landfills and incinerators that release dangerous toxins into the air and soil, in turn poisoning water sources and tomorrow’s food supply. Other chemicals – including many man-made toxins – enter the environment as a result of industrial processes and end up in the food chain, posing a direct threat to public health.

Whistleblowing in the Food Industry

foodwhistleblower.org

foodwhistleblower.org

1612 K St., NW, Suite #1100Washington, D.C. 20006

202-457-0034

Government Accountability Project

Most foods available at the supermarket have gone through some form of processing. Not all process-ing is necessarily dangerous to consumers – but the large-scale production facilities pres-ent numerous opportunities for food safe-ty problems. Often, bad management practices in these facilities are to blame for some of the widest and most deadly food safety outbreaks. FIC works with whistleblowers on the following issues within processing plants and slaughterhouses:

• Contamination: Deadly pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella can increase and spread as a result of improper food handling and hygiene, especially in plants where thousands of animals are housed in a single facility – increasing the likelihood of cross-contamination.

• Additives: Commonly used to enhance the color, flavor or shelf life of food, additives are chemicals and may be harmful. Food industry titans often take advantage of loopholes to keep ingredients off of product labels.

• Agency Regulation: Many processing problems result from insufficient government author-ity to regulate the food industry. Current food oversight is inefficient and allows regulators to become cozy with the industries they regulate.

Modern-day agriculture is a radical departure from the iconic image of livestock roaming freely in grassy fields. From field to factory, food production has been industrialized in order to churn out ever-greater amounts of product. That may be good for the few who reap the profits but it’s not always such a blessing for industry workers, the environment, or animals subjected to inhumane treatment.

The Food Integrity Campaign (FIC) exists to change that. FIC protects food industry insiders who blow the whistle on problems on the “farm,” including:

• Harmful Environmental Impacts: Waste and contaminants from these industrialized facilities that endanger our fragile ecosystem, placing us all at unnecessary, serious health risks.

• Inhumane Handling: Animal mistreatment is frequent, and includes driving cattle too fast, excessive prodding, and forcibly moving livestock that are too weak to stand on their own.

• Worker Rights: Workers have limited whistle-blower protections and are often exploited. Mi-grant workers who choose to come forward risk their welfare and possible deportation.

Life on the “Farm”

Problems with Processing

Transportation and Retail

Transportation and retail food handling are critical components of the food supply chain. Unfortu-nately, food safety issues that arise during these key phases are often overlooked. Food transport – often involving trucks traveling over one thousand miles – presents critical challenges such as contamination-free storage and proper refrigeration that can lead to dangerous public health outcomes. Retail stores have a history of selling products that are unsafely handled or past expiration dates. In this area, FIC helps work-ers expose problems within:

• Shipping and Distribution: Food integrity issues range from improper temperature expo-sure on loading docks to bioterrorism threats. Distribution centers and warehouses hold a tremendous amount of our food on a daily basis, but the sheer amount of product and turnaround procedures presents countless opportunities for contamination.

• Retail: The conduct of retail establishments gives rise to several issues involving both the safety and wholesomeness of foods. GAP has exposed many acts of selling expired or unsafe food, and product mislabeling.