"The additional costs are impacts from healthcare costs from workplace injuries, food insecurity and pollution, and additional costs attributable to obesity," reads the report. Many health-related costs of the food system would be eliminated through a concerted effort by policymakers to expand access to healthy food for all Americans, business incentives, infrastructure investment, and other reforms, the report says. "Clinicians should be demanding a transformation of our food system," tweeted Dr. Gaurab Basu, co-director of the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy.
The report states, "our food system rings up immense 'hidden costs' from its impact on human health, the environment, and social and economic inequity." The organization evaluated 14 metrics, including air pollution, food insecurity, antimicrobial resistance driven by the widespread use of antibiotics in farming, and greenhouse gas emissions, and found that "externalized costs" amounting to at least $2.1 trillion annually are being incurred by consumers, producers, and future generations.
"Don't think we're getting a good deal here," the organization said in a video posted to social media. "We're getting squeezed. Society pays that balance not out of our pockets but through other means like rising healthcare costs, effects of climate change, and food workers who are often underpaid and undervalued."
"The additional costs are impacts from healthcare costs from workplace injuries, food insecurity and pollution, and additional costs attributable to obesity," reads the report.
Many health-related costs of the food system would be eliminated through a concerted effort by policymakers to expand access to healthy food for all Americans, business incentives, infrastructure investment, and other reforms, the report says. "Clinicians should be demanding a transformation of our food system," tweeted Dr. Gaurab Basu, co-director of the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy.
(Editor’s Note: While this report is quite informative, MOH does not endorse all the policies and agendas of the Rockefeller Foundation)
Our food system is contributing to severe and long-term, chronic diseases and deaths, increasing shutdowns, and economic disasters. We truly cannot afford to allow this to continue. This is a matter of national and global security.
Not only should clinicians be demanding a transformation of our food system, but consumers, business owners, and elected officials should be demanding the transformation of our food system.
It is clear. Healthy food is required for a healthy economy, educational system, society, and global power position. Transforming the food supply, rejecting GMOs and toxic chemicals, subsidizing regenerative organic, and supporting local small farmers, is a matter of national and global safety and security.
Sign our letter to your Representatives and Senators now to demand that subsidies spent on GMO agrochemical farming be transitioned, primarily via the school systems, to regenerative organic agriculture. We must heed the Mayor of Barjac in France, as featured in the movie Food Beware, The French Organic Food Revolution.