Never mind what we eat, what is our food eating?

Last week there was an interview with a pig farmer on the TV. Despite the fact that there should not be genetically modified food in the shops in Denmark, it seems that farmers are importing GMO soy products from South America to feed their pigs.

This is soy that has been modified to be immune to Round Up weed killer so that it can be liberally sprayed in the fields without damaging the soy crops but killing everything else. This unfortunately means that the soy is contaminated with weed killer.

Back to the pigs. It turned out that whilst the GMO soy was much cheaper than the feed he had been using before, it gave the pigs permanent diarrhea, reduced litter sizes and caused general poor health in the pigs. That meant that his veterinary bill went up by 300% and more or less wiped out the savings the farmer made on the food. In the end he went back to the non GMO feed and
healthier pigs.

I'm left wondering how it can be allowed to import food for pigs that makes pigs sick, but I also wonder how many pigs are ending up in the shops for us to eat that have had sick and unhealthy lives. It seems more than a little optimistic to think that eating meat that has been reared on food that makes it sick is not going to have at least some impact on us.