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voices: there are some companiesthat slaughter thousands of animals. because it is much more expensiveto 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 envisionsan diego special "food." it's something we take for granted. after all, california is the largestsupplier of food for the country.

grocery store aisles are stocked withjust 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 andvegetables no matter the season. it may seem as though the cost ofthese groceries continue to rise, but we actually spend less money on ourfood then we did a couple generations ago. just how all of this food makesits way to the grocery store and your dinner plate is thesubject of tonight's investigation. we'll also tell you why it's relativelycheap to buy beef, chicken even fish. some of it you may not want to know,

but at the end of the program we hopeyou walk away a better informed consumer. 40 million pounds of san diego oranges are ontheir way to countries as far away as china. 13,000 head of cattle are beingfattened in imperial valley. one in five will be slaughteredfor sale in japan, the others distributed across the country. in mission bay, scientists are tryingto 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 eatcorn 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 awaybecause they're too hard for us to peel; the ones we eat come from australia. just how did it get to be thisway, and is it good for us? tonight we look at the food we eat from thedinner plate to the farm, field and ocean. and how our demand for cheap food andmore food has altered the food chain. a food chain that is motivated bymaking the greatest amount of food for the cheapest cost, inother words, efficiency.

americans consume nearly 20 percent ofall the beef in the world but only make up about 5 percent of the world's population. in 2008, the u.s. slaughteredmore 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 ofmiles before it ended up at your table. and most of the 1.4 million dairy cows arealso destined for your table as hamburger. let's start at the beginning.

in southern california, most cattle startout like this, eating grass on a pasture. jim davis (president sd imperial valleycattleman's association): in the '40s and '50s when my grandfather was running cattle herehe would basically sell his cattle as two or three-year-olds that would both betaken 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 forsix months, then sold at auction to another rancher usually out of state. we don't have enough grass or rainto feed all our cattle year-round.

once they're sold they'll liveanother six months on grass. they'll be sold again. this time they go to a feedlot. large pens where cattle are sent to befattened before they're slaughtered. this one in imperial valleyhouses 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 andcorn into their diets after world war ii. both had a dramatic effect. the animals grew faster and fatter. broc sandelin is an animal sciencesprofessor at cal poly pomona and a third generation cattle rancher. faryon: is there any research that saysthey have a tough time digesting corn? broc sandelin: i'm not familiar with any i'm nota nutritionist so i don't really know for sure but i'm sure you could find somethingor i could find something for you. faryon: is it easier for them todigest grass rather then corn?

sandelin: yeah that's what they'renaturally raised on is grass. faryon: studies have suggested corn-fedcattle may harbor more virulent strains of e. coli then grass fedbeef, although a new study out of kansas state university isnow challenging that assertion. feedlots have also led towider use of antibiotics. and almost all the beef you buy in the grocerystore comes from cattle injected with hormones. bill brandenberg: it is much moreexpensive to produce beef without hormones. faryon: corn makes cattle fat. hormones give them more lean muscle tissue.

bill brandenberg says the cattle cangrow 10 percent bigger with hormones. brandenberg: and without hormones the cattleis going to have a lot more fat in them and they're going to produce a lotmore of those upper grades of beef. faryon: don't they have more fat inthem because we're feeding them corn? brandenberg: it's a combination of the corn andthe fact that what the hormones actually do, the animal produces differentratios of estrogen and testosterone. the hormone doesn't actually go into thebloodstream per se but it causes the animal to produce its own different level soit 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 cornthey wouldn't necessarily need the hormones to make less fat? brandenberg: well you could do them grass fedwithout implants,ã‚ you'd have a product too but it wouldn't taste nearas good as corn-fed beef. that's what the consumer in the unitedstates like is the flavor that goes along with tenderness that goes along with corn fed. faryon: american beef is banned ineurope because of the use of hormones.

shelton murinda is an animalsciences professor at cal poly pomona. shelton murinda: the europeans were usingwhat i would call the precautionary principal which simply indicates when there is notenough scientific evidence it is better to be on the safe side. faryon: isn't it? murinda: it is always betterto be on the safe side when you do not have sufficientscientific evidence. faryon: well then why do we still usehormones in beef in the united states? murinda:the situation is rather different here.

there are pros and cons thathave been thrown about. some of them what i indicated:the potential side affects. from as far as i know, there has not beenenough risk assessment that has been done with relevance to the side effects of thosehormones with respect to the human population. not enough research has been togather that sort of information so there has been no riskassessment that has been done. faryon: so why not go on the sideof caution like the europeans? murinda: we'd rather think differently here. we'd rather think differently.

faryon: so will any of thesecattle end up on your plate? murinda: the chances of getting beef that'sfrom california is rather slim in other words, most of it comes from outside california. faryon: the average american eatsabout 17 pounds of fish per year. half the fish we eat is farmed fish. that means the fish was born, raisedand fed in a net not far off the coast. we wanted to know whether farmed fishwas as healthy as wild-caught fish. the answer? it all depends on what farmed fish eat.

and just wait until you hearwhat we're feeding them. don kent: i grew up in san diego when sandiego was the tuna capitol of the world you do down to the embarcadero and tuna sainerswere tied up next to each other three deep at the embarcadero and that's gone now. faryon: don kent is president ofhubbs-seaworld research institute. here they're developing new ways to farmfish, from the hatchery and now to your table. hubbs-seaworld wants to establish the largestfish farm off u.s. coastal waters five miles west of mission bay. kent sees it as a boon to the local economy anda way to take pressure of depleting fish stocks.

the debate over fish farming hastraditionally been about how to do it in a way that doesn't contaminate local waters. hubbs believes by establishing nets fivemiles off the coast where the water is deep and the current swift, it canminimize contamination concerns. but there's another issue. fish also eat other fish. if farmed fish are fed fish, thepractice could deplete dwindling stocks. so the challenge is to find other sources offish food and fish oil to feed farmed fish. jeffrey graham: for every pound of growth fora salmon it takes about five pounds of fish

that are caught and ground up andturned 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 doingdoing then is you're -- and part of the two-way street argumentthat's given about acqueculture is well, take pressure off the natural populations. however, if you have to catch five poundsof fish from the natural environment to rear one pound of salmon, for high-endtable consumption the arithmetic doesn't work out in terms of the long-termbenefits to the ocean.

kent: there's a lot of experimentation going onand we do it here on our species that's looking to replace that fish mealin the diet with soy protein or other processing byproductslike beef or chicken byproducts. basically waste in processingthat can be turned around and used as a protein supplement toreplace the fish meal. faryon: according to the national renderersassociation cow and chicken by products, including cattle blood andbone, and poultry feathers, have been fed to farmed fish for decades. the association told kpbs cattle fat, bloodand bone meal are being increasingly used

in fish diets as an alternativesto fish oil and other proteins. so by now you might be asking what we asked when we learned fish were eating cattleby-products: can fish get mad cow disease? mad cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathyor bse, is a neurodegenarative disease in cattle that can be passed onto humans. eurpean countries have bannedcattle by products in fish feed because if fish eat contaminated cattleand cattle eat contaminated fish, the disease in theory, can betransmitted to the food chain. here in the u.s. the food anddrug administration banned the use

of most cow by-products asfeed to other cows in 1997. but the same rules do not apply to fish feed. however, a new regulation does ban the useof cattle brains and spines in fish feed; both contain the highest concentrationsof infected material in diseased cattle. there has never been a case of humanscontracting mad cow by eating farmed fish. meanwhile, there continuesto be an ongoing debate over the omega-3 contentof farmed versus wild fish. omega-3s are the healthy fats that canhelp prevent heart disease and alzheimer's. one large grocery chain claims on its web site,

farmed salmon actually hasmore omega-3 than wild salmon. kpbs put their claim to the test and sent fishsamples, wild and farmed, to a lab in oregon. the tests results confirmed that farmedsalmon did have nearly twice the amount of healthy omega-3s as wild salmon but you had to eat nearly four times the amountof fat to get those nutrients. americans eat more chicken than any other meat, about 74 pounds per person eachyear, and most of it is white meat. consumers like white meat and so the industryhas found a way to give us what we want. curtis womach: these are my fast-growing cornishcross and they're what's in the supermarkets,

all the restaurants sell this kind of chicken. faryon: most of the chickens we buy ina grocery store are called broilers -- a cross between two other chickens,a cornish and plymouth rock. womach: they're bred to grow reallyfast and have lots of white meat, see how wide it is, see the big breast? faryon: but none of these chickenswill end up in a grocery store. curtis womach raises these chickenson a farm just outside julian. most chickens in a grocery storeare raised on a factory floor. womach sells his chickens at a farmers market.

he's decided he will no longerraise this type of chicken. womach: tthey can't physically matebecause of the white meat gets in the way. they're still chickens and they want tobe like chickens but they can't move; they would like to go underthe trees in the shade but it's too hard for them to walk over there. faryon: the breasts are so bigthese chickens can barely walk. look at these, a different breed andable to run away from our camera. chickens are raised mostly on corn. fish meal can be added to theirfeed -- even chicken feathers.

antibiotics are used, but it's illegalto use hormones in chickens in the u.s. so when you see labels likethis, "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 beenadded unless this line follows. see that line in small print? and "natural"? well, just about all the food you buy is naturalunless something artificial has been injected. and "fresh never been frozen"?

the legal definition according to the usda offresh chicken means the internal temperature of the chicken has never beenbelow 26 degrees farenheit. "free range"? it doesn't mean your chickenwas raised like this. it means the chicken had access to the outdoors. but land to roam, time to grow, and feed likethis -- organic fruit -- comes with a price. womach's chickens cost about 20dollars 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 itmatter if you're not making stock from the bones but i think there is an americanculture where it's like we deserve all the meat we want everyday. faryon: americans drink more orangejuice than any other fruit juice. as kpbs reporter amita sharmatells us, orange groves are part of our history for the past 100 years. amita sharma: san diego county grovesproduce 95,000 tons of oranges each year. local growers are sending theseoranges to india, china, japan. all countries willing to pay premiumrates for san diego oranges viewed

as some of the tastiest in the world. john demshky: the color and taste of sandiego fruit is quite popular overseas so most of our san diego fruit weactually 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, thefruit we consume here is shipped from thousands of miles away from countries likeaustralia, south africa and peru. it is we, the consumer, who've determinedthat our oranges trot the globe. american shoppers like their orangesto be seedless and easy to peel.

but san diego oranges have seeds andtheir 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 orangecolor is really a factor of the climate and temperatures they were grown in. but clearly your san diego fruit mighthave 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 theflavor of the orange at all. sharma: in fact, says 79-year-old benhillebrecht: hillebrecht: they're sweet, juicy and just an excellent orange. sharma: hillebrecht's family has grownoranges 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 preferto sell his fruit to san diegans. hillebrecht: but you can't make peopleeat 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 yourdollar or 11 cents as an average american. sharma: but escalating water prices are makingit difficult for orange farmers like hillibrecht to keep on growing especially withoranges coming from australia or brazil. in fact, the hillebrechts are turningoff the tap on some of their orange trees because keeping them aliveis no longer profitable. eric larson: here in san diego county,it's tough for farmers to compete. the land is expensive, labor isexpensive, and water is very expensive because we import the waterfrom a great distance

so it makes a very, very difficult to compete. sharma: the hillebrecht familyhas diversified what it grows and its fallback crop issan diego top food crop. last year the county produced59,000 tons of this fruit. forty percent of the avocadossold in the united states come from san diego county groveslike 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 canbuy avocadoes year around. sharma: but ben's son mike hillebrecht saysthere are downsides to importing avocadoes for san diego growers, againbecause 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 fruitsand vegetables -- number one farmer's markets -- you can't sell at a farmer's marketunless 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, itgoes through an additional packing house, they're only going to get19 cents of the food dollar. if it stays local and takes some ofthose middlemen out of the equation, they might be able to get a betterprice for the product they sell. faryon: tomatoes are the numberone favorite fruit among americans. as reporter ed joyce tells us, san diego countygrow the nation's largest vine-ripened crop. ed joyce: san diego county is home to thelargest community of organic tomato growers in the state and nation, with 343farms growing more than 150 crops. we wanted to find out what thedifference was between organic

and conventionally grown tomatoes. and whether the way theywere 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'sorganic foods market to talk with the coop's marketingdirector amber mchale to find out why the store only buysand 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 theseshoppers 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,ã‚ thosesynthetic toxic pesticides, those fertilizers. joyce: organic growers say residue from pesticides can be harmful,especially to children. the epa recently announced it will begin aseries of tests on pesticides and their affects on human endocrine systems, which regulategrowth, metabolism and reproduction. an environmental group in washington d.c. ranked43 fruits and vegetables based on the amount

of pesticides, but not the toxicityof each pesticide, found on them. ã‚ tomatoes ranked halfway down the list with 47percent of the tomatoes containing pesticide. peaches were the worst offender,with 97 percent. joyce:ã‚ where do these tomatoes come from, do they come from san diego county,do they come from california? mchale: right now all our tomatoesare coming from california. the jumbo's, the cherry and the heirloomare coming locally from be wise ranch, and the roma's are coming from the centralvalley so it's regional, not local. joyce: casey anderson is an organic grower.

he and his mother grow 13 varieties oforganic heirloom tomatoes in valley center. it's late in the season soanderson's crop is winding down, but buying locally-grown organictomatoes at a farmer's market is as direct and fresh as they come. but do they taste better?ã‚ 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 theytaste 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 grocerystore have been picked when they're green so they can survive longtrips across the country. they're ripened artificially with ethylene gas. temperature also play a role. tomatoes won't ripen in temperaturesbelow 50 degrees. some varieties are also bred for shape, colorand shelf life -- not necessarily taste. in california, most tomatoesare destined for cans. the state produces 90 percent ofthe country's processed tomatoes. faryon: americans eat moreper capita then ever before.

and according to governmentstatistics, one third of us are obese. we buy 99-cent hamburgers and chickenthat costs less than a dollar a pound. producers in the food chain tell us wewant cheaper food and we want more of it. davis: obviously the consumer votesand tells you what's it's going to do. if you're raising something the consumerdoesn'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 timeto peel our own oranges

and we're too busy to findout what's in our food. graham: if the soccer mom's got enough timeto do everything else she does and then worry about the quality or the source of the fishsticks she's feeding her kids then she could look at these web sites andfigure out how to do this. faryon: can we actually track our food fromthe 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 seeis graphic and disturbing. last year, a california meat companyissued the largest meat recall in history.

143 million pounds of beef was recalled after humane society video revealedsick cows dragged to slaughter. it's illegal to use sick animals in themeat supply because of the risk of disease. we had several questions for the usdawhen we began our investigation into food. they didn't respond to most of ouremails or our request for an interview. we did learn however, that so much of thisinformation is available to the public on government and trade associationwebsites, and in the scientific literature. maybe we just stopped paying attention because the new mass-produced food chain hasmade life easy and the food we eat cheap.

or maybe, we just don't want toknow where our food comes from. you can find out more aboutour 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 sandiego, i'm joanne faryon. thanks for watching.