13.

Corporate Food Brands Drive Massive Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico

Reynard Loki, “Corporate Food Brands Drive the Massive Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” Truthout, August 28,
2018, https://truthout.org/articles/corporate-food-brands-driving-the-massive-dead-zone-in-gulf-of-mexico/.

Oliver Milman, “’Dead Zone’ in Gulf of Mexico Will Take Decades to Recover from Farm Pollution,” The Guardian,
March 22, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/22/dead-zone-gulf-of-mexico-recover-
study.

Student Researcher: Adriana Babicz (Sonoma State University)

Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips (Sonoma State University)

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the result of water polluted with manure and fertilizer
runoff from major beef-producing states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and
Nebraska. Dead zones are areas in a body of water that lack sufficient oxygen to support
marine life. Covering approximately 8,000 square miles, the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone is about
the size of New Jersey and ranks as the world’s second-largest, surpassed only by the dead
zone on the Gulf of Oman. As the Guardian and Truthout reported, the Gulf of Mexico’s dead
zone continues to grow because big food companies lack sustainability policies to prevent
environmental pollution, including especially animal waste and fertilizer runoff from industrial
farms.
As Reynard Loki wrote for Truthout, a study by Mighty Earth, an environmental action group,
found that the largest fast food, grocery, and food service companies in the United States are
“helping to drive one of the nation’s worst human-made environmental disasters.” In a survey of
23 major brands – including Target, McDonald’s, Subway, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods –
Mighty Earth found that none have policies requiring “even minimal environmental protections
from meat suppliers.” Mighty Earth’s study, “Flunking the Planet,” gave all but one of the
companies a failing grade overall for environmental safeguards after considering the sources of
animal feed, the processing of animals’ manure, and overall greenhouse gas emissions.
(Walmart earned a D-grade, based on its commitment to reducing supply chain emissions
through its Project Gigaton initiative.)
“By not requiring environmental safeguards from its meat suppliers, the world’s largest natural
and organic foods supermarket – and most of its big-brand counterparts in the retail food
industry, like McDonald’s, Subway, and Target – are sourcing and selling meat from some of the
worst polluters in agribusiness, including Tyson Foods and Cargill,” Truthout reported. Mighty
Earth’s study noted that the main source of water contamination is runoff from industrial farms
that produce animal feed. The five largest meat companies “dominate” the supply chain, Mighty
Earth reported, and bear “primary responsibility for driving the negative impacts as well as
delivering solutions at scale.”
The runoff of nitrogen from chemical fertilizers poses nearly impossible challenges for the
restoration of marine life in the Gulf. A study published in Science in April 2018 found that, even
if all current nitrogen runoff was stopped, the Gulf would take “about 30 years to recover,”
according to the Guardian. One of the Science study’s co-authors, Nandita Basu, an associate
professor of environmental sciences at the University of Waterloo, likened the challenge to
going on a diet: “you can’t expect results right away,” she told the Guardian. A marine scientist
at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Denise Breitberg, observed that the study
“shows we need a scientific strategy and can’t expect instant results, but we know what needs
to be done to improve things.”
As Mighty Earth reported in its study, big brand food retailers fail to use their influence to
encourage more sustainable practices. According to Mighty Earth’s report, companies like
Walmart, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, and Burger King “have the power to set and enforce
standards requiring better farming practices from suppliers.” Mighty Earth recommended that
food companies require meat suppliers to implement sustainable feed sourcing, responsible
manure management, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and that these changes
should be made with time-bound targets and should be verified by third-party audits, with
progress reported to the public on a regular basis.
Corporate news coverage has largely focused on the scale of the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone
and its consequences – rather than on its causes, including industrial agriculture and corporate
irresponsibility. In August 2017, CBS News discussed the size of the dead zone and interviewed
fishermen who witnessed large decreases in fish populations at popular fishing spots. In August
2017, the Washington Post published an article on dead zones around the world. National
Geographic published a substantive article on the topic the same month. The findings and
recommendations from Mighty Earth’s “Flunking the Planet” study appear to have gone entirely
unreported by the corporate press.