We need to change our entire food system

In Sunday's Gazette, you ran guest columns addressing school lunches and water pollution from animal production. These issues both portend serious threats to public health and both result from the same well-intentioned but flawed system.

Public health officials predict that unless we reverse our obesity epidemic, one in four children born after 2000 will develop type-2 diabetes. We not only must quit serving school lunches that increase obesity in our children, but we need to change our entire food system so that instead of the worst food being the cheapest and most consumed, we embrace healthy food.

The excellent column by Bob Watson and Larry Stone is predicated on the supposition that the waste product of animal industrial agriculture is sludge. Aaron Putze wants us to view confinement animal feeding operations as if they are run by small farmers who care about their animals, land, water and communities. They are not. In Iowa today, 60 percent of farmland is owned by absentee landlords. Even if CAFO owners or operators follow the guidelines Putze touts, upward of 25 percent of the sludge ends up in our waterways.

Farmers are trapped in a system that jeopardizes our health. We all need to help create a different system.

Bob Sessions

Iowa City