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arguchikhere's an interesting website for and about meat, eggs, and dairy from grass fed animals. i've been really curious about this topic since finishing michael pollan's new book, the omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals, and i've been wondering what kinds of farms, buying clubs, etc. are available in this area. this website seems like a good clearinghouse for information (they even sell books--including pollan's).
pollan's book has challenged my thinking about meat and other animal-derived food. i have twice chosen to become a vegetarian because factory farming practices really depress me, and i saw little or no way to ensure that any meat, eggs, or milk i consumed wasn't factory farmed. both times i have, at some point, suddenly found myself craving meat. i take that as a sign that there's something i'm not getting from a vegetarian diet that my body needs; and i think i'm right about this, because when i start eating meat again i feel better within a week or two. but then i find myself squarely confronting the factory farming problem again. and frankly, even when i have been a "vegetarian," i have still eaten eggs and dairy products, both of which are also factory farmed. furthermore, the egg industry is inseparable from the chicken industry, and laying hens (even the so-called "free range" ones) live the bleakest lives of any food animals, bar none. similarly, the dairy industry is inseparable from the beef industry--especially the veal industry, and veal cattle endure the worst lives of any other cattle. then there are the pigs...and the turkeys...
labeling rules for "organic" and "free range" are a joke, so even buying thusly-labeled meat, eggs, and dairy products from the PCC or some other natural foods store doesn't help all that much. you get food that was raised without chemicals or cages, but that's kind of a technicality--most "free range" "organic" chicken, for example, is raised indoors in crowded sheds with only token access to the outdoors. because they can't use antibiotics if they want the "organic" label, chicken farmers are loathe to let their birds outdoors because of the risk of infection. furthermore, most of the beef labeled "organic" is still corn-fed on an industrial feed lot. cows do not digest corn well, organic or not. it makes them sick, hence the "need" for industrial feedlots to use the antibiotics that are in turn breeding antibiotic-resistant diseases in us. they also produce meat that is vastly inferior, nutritionally, to pasture fed beef. ditto the chickens, who prefer to eat grass and bugs. i have eaten eggs from pasture fed chickens. they are completely different from factory farmed eggs. the shells are stronger, the yolks are a deep golden orange color (as opposed to the anemic yellow of factory farmed eggs), and the whites are thicker. the flavor is also much, much better. i suspect the same is true of pasture fed meat. unfortunately, instead of addressing the painfully obvious root cause of the problems that plague industrial farms--in which i would include the myriad health problems that affect people who eat industrial farmed food--they just keep slapping quick-fix upon quick-fix. it's straight out of kafka, i swear.
as pollan's book shows, it is the glut of government-subsidized corn that feeds the many pathologies of the contemporary american diet. corn-fed beef raised on feedlots requires hormones and antibiotics to keep the animals healthy enough to reach slaughter weight. the antibiotics keep down the infections that corn-fed ruminant animals are prone to. the hormones cause the animals to bulk up faster, so that they don't have to live as long and thus run a greater risk of developing diseases or other secondary problems related to the corn diet, the constant stream of antibiotics, and the fact that the confined animals spend most of their lives knee-deep in their own shit. other foods contain products made from corn as well, most notably high-fructose corn syrup, which dieticians are blaming for recent increases in obesity and diabetes. that stuff is in almost every soft drink you can buy anymore, including soda and a lot of juices. according to pollan, you would be hard pressed to find processed foods in a typical grocery store that didn't contain at least one, and more likely several, of the various refined derivatives of corn. (even our gasoline contains ethanol brewed from corn, but i don't personally object to that...) all that excess corn has to go somewhere, so inventing new "somewheres" has also become a huge industry.
anyway, i went veg because of factory farming, not because i think it is inherently wrong for people to kill animals for food. animals (including humans) have been killing each other for food for millions of years; they aren't going to stop anytime soon (unless we succeed in sterilizing the planet), and at this point most of these predator species (including humans) have co-evolved with their prey species to the point where severing the predator-prey relationship would mean extinction for all involved. also, the combination of my early training as a biologist and my current training in cultural studies makes me skeptical of the habit of arranging living things hierarchically according to the taxonomic kingdoms. in short: i don't believe that it's any more or less moral to eat plants or fungi or even protists, archaebacteria or eubacteria, than it is to eat animals. no matter what you eat, it had a life before you got there and would no doubt "prefer" to live that life undisturbed. however, i do object to inflicting undue suffering or stress on an organism that is wired to feel suffering and stress. perpetually thwarting the natural instincts of animals causes both. factory farming perpetually thwarts those instincts because it treats food animals as isolable commodities rather than as living, feeling organisms that are knit into larger ecological systems, what pollan calls "food chains." (he didn't invent this term, obviously, i'm just crediting him for using it in this same context.) when you try to farm an animal in isolation from its larger food chains, you end up not only thwarting its instincts and feeding it a less-than-optimal diet, but also unhooking its tailpipe (ahem) from those organisms that would otherwise break down its wastes. the result is a vast, unmanageably concentrated accumulation of shit that causes a host of other problems for the animals themselves, for the farm's neighbors, for the farm's watershed, and for anyplace where water from that watershed accumulates. because...like it or not, things are connected; you can either work within the constraints of the connections that have co-evolved over millennia, or you can do the much harder work of forging new connections in response to various problems that arise from your attempts at re-engineering a complex system on a large scale. (kafka redux.)
of course all of this raises some obvious questions: is it possible to feed the u.s. or the world without factory farming? i don't know...offhand i'd say probably not, at least not the population numbers we're seeing now (not to perpetuate a malthusian argument). is it likely that the agricultural industries will move away from factory farming practices? judging from the trend toward increasing interventions (like antibiotics, hormones, GMO's, breeding and genetically engineering cattle for corn and stress tolerance, etc.) to facilitate an intensification of industrial agriculture, i'd again say probably not.
the politics of food are complex and heavily class-inflected. eating a vegetarian diet is a largely bourgeois conceit, as is eating pasture raised meat, eggs, and dairy. it takes money and a certain level of class privilege to become that particular kind of picky eater (i am obviously not exempting myself from this criticism--far from it). you can go insane trying to make buying and eating decisions in this maze of information, and most working people don't have the time or the desire to even enter that maze. i don't blame them. sometimes i wish i had stayed out of it. as with most mazes, though, i stumbled in as a teenager without even realizing what it was. another obvious class issue here is the higher expense of eating organic vegetarian and/or pasture raised food... of course, industrially farmed food is a lot more expensive, overall, when you consider all of its runoffs and ramifications; but it's founded on those aforementioned government subsidies of the corn--and soybean--industry, so the food itself is proximally cheaper. there are small-farm, slow-food advocates who rightly proclaim that the trend toward industrial farms and fast food is nothing less than a war on the poor, only instead of being an overt war, it is covert, fought partly within the bodies of the poor themselves, but also within the landscapes that we all depend on for our sustenance.
more than one of my friends would probably argue that the various large-scale industrial systems (including but not limited to industrial agriculture) which together comprise the world system scholars call "late capitalism," eventually will collapse under their own, collective weight, because they are inherently unsustainable. thus, it would be better to let that process come to fruition sooner rather than later. get it over with so that whatever is left of the planet's biosphere can begin the recovery process. so is it also better to just...eat the factory farmed food? i guess that depends on a) whether or not one buys the premise that such a collapse is unavoidable, and thus that trying to change anything about the system will only delay the inevitable; and b) whether or not one would want to try to survive such a collapse. i can't even imagine suffering on that scale...survival would probably be nightmarish.
pollan's book has challenged my thinking about meat and other animal-derived food. i have twice chosen to become a vegetarian because factory farming practices really depress me, and i saw little or no way to ensure that any meat, eggs, or milk i consumed wasn't factory farmed. both times i have, at some point, suddenly found myself craving meat. i take that as a sign that there's something i'm not getting from a vegetarian diet that my body needs; and i think i'm right about this, because when i start eating meat again i feel better within a week or two. but then i find myself squarely confronting the factory farming problem again. and frankly, even when i have been a "vegetarian," i have still eaten eggs and dairy products, both of which are also factory farmed. furthermore, the egg industry is inseparable from the chicken industry, and laying hens (even the so-called "free range" ones) live the bleakest lives of any food animals, bar none. similarly, the dairy industry is inseparable from the beef industry--especially the veal industry, and veal cattle endure the worst lives of any other cattle. then there are the pigs...and the turkeys...
labeling rules for "organic" and "free range" are a joke, so even buying thusly-labeled meat, eggs, and dairy products from the PCC or some other natural foods store doesn't help all that much. you get food that was raised without chemicals or cages, but that's kind of a technicality--most "free range" "organic" chicken, for example, is raised indoors in crowded sheds with only token access to the outdoors. because they can't use antibiotics if they want the "organic" label, chicken farmers are loathe to let their birds outdoors because of the risk of infection. furthermore, most of the beef labeled "organic" is still corn-fed on an industrial feed lot. cows do not digest corn well, organic or not. it makes them sick, hence the "need" for industrial feedlots to use the antibiotics that are in turn breeding antibiotic-resistant diseases in us. they also produce meat that is vastly inferior, nutritionally, to pasture fed beef. ditto the chickens, who prefer to eat grass and bugs. i have eaten eggs from pasture fed chickens. they are completely different from factory farmed eggs. the shells are stronger, the yolks are a deep golden orange color (as opposed to the anemic yellow of factory farmed eggs), and the whites are thicker. the flavor is also much, much better. i suspect the same is true of pasture fed meat. unfortunately, instead of addressing the painfully obvious root cause of the problems that plague industrial farms--in which i would include the myriad health problems that affect people who eat industrial farmed food--they just keep slapping quick-fix upon quick-fix. it's straight out of kafka, i swear.
as pollan's book shows, it is the glut of government-subsidized corn that feeds the many pathologies of the contemporary american diet. corn-fed beef raised on feedlots requires hormones and antibiotics to keep the animals healthy enough to reach slaughter weight. the antibiotics keep down the infections that corn-fed ruminant animals are prone to. the hormones cause the animals to bulk up faster, so that they don't have to live as long and thus run a greater risk of developing diseases or other secondary problems related to the corn diet, the constant stream of antibiotics, and the fact that the confined animals spend most of their lives knee-deep in their own shit. other foods contain products made from corn as well, most notably high-fructose corn syrup, which dieticians are blaming for recent increases in obesity and diabetes. that stuff is in almost every soft drink you can buy anymore, including soda and a lot of juices. according to pollan, you would be hard pressed to find processed foods in a typical grocery store that didn't contain at least one, and more likely several, of the various refined derivatives of corn. (even our gasoline contains ethanol brewed from corn, but i don't personally object to that...) all that excess corn has to go somewhere, so inventing new "somewheres" has also become a huge industry.
anyway, i went veg because of factory farming, not because i think it is inherently wrong for people to kill animals for food. animals (including humans) have been killing each other for food for millions of years; they aren't going to stop anytime soon (unless we succeed in sterilizing the planet), and at this point most of these predator species (including humans) have co-evolved with their prey species to the point where severing the predator-prey relationship would mean extinction for all involved. also, the combination of my early training as a biologist and my current training in cultural studies makes me skeptical of the habit of arranging living things hierarchically according to the taxonomic kingdoms. in short: i don't believe that it's any more or less moral to eat plants or fungi or even protists, archaebacteria or eubacteria, than it is to eat animals. no matter what you eat, it had a life before you got there and would no doubt "prefer" to live that life undisturbed. however, i do object to inflicting undue suffering or stress on an organism that is wired to feel suffering and stress. perpetually thwarting the natural instincts of animals causes both. factory farming perpetually thwarts those instincts because it treats food animals as isolable commodities rather than as living, feeling organisms that are knit into larger ecological systems, what pollan calls "food chains." (he didn't invent this term, obviously, i'm just crediting him for using it in this same context.) when you try to farm an animal in isolation from its larger food chains, you end up not only thwarting its instincts and feeding it a less-than-optimal diet, but also unhooking its tailpipe (ahem) from those organisms that would otherwise break down its wastes. the result is a vast, unmanageably concentrated accumulation of shit that causes a host of other problems for the animals themselves, for the farm's neighbors, for the farm's watershed, and for anyplace where water from that watershed accumulates. because...like it or not, things are connected; you can either work within the constraints of the connections that have co-evolved over millennia, or you can do the much harder work of forging new connections in response to various problems that arise from your attempts at re-engineering a complex system on a large scale. (kafka redux.)
of course all of this raises some obvious questions: is it possible to feed the u.s. or the world without factory farming? i don't know...offhand i'd say probably not, at least not the population numbers we're seeing now (not to perpetuate a malthusian argument). is it likely that the agricultural industries will move away from factory farming practices? judging from the trend toward increasing interventions (like antibiotics, hormones, GMO's, breeding and genetically engineering cattle for corn and stress tolerance, etc.) to facilitate an intensification of industrial agriculture, i'd again say probably not.
the politics of food are complex and heavily class-inflected. eating a vegetarian diet is a largely bourgeois conceit, as is eating pasture raised meat, eggs, and dairy. it takes money and a certain level of class privilege to become that particular kind of picky eater (i am obviously not exempting myself from this criticism--far from it). you can go insane trying to make buying and eating decisions in this maze of information, and most working people don't have the time or the desire to even enter that maze. i don't blame them. sometimes i wish i had stayed out of it. as with most mazes, though, i stumbled in as a teenager without even realizing what it was. another obvious class issue here is the higher expense of eating organic vegetarian and/or pasture raised food... of course, industrially farmed food is a lot more expensive, overall, when you consider all of its runoffs and ramifications; but it's founded on those aforementioned government subsidies of the corn--and soybean--industry, so the food itself is proximally cheaper. there are small-farm, slow-food advocates who rightly proclaim that the trend toward industrial farms and fast food is nothing less than a war on the poor, only instead of being an overt war, it is covert, fought partly within the bodies of the poor themselves, but also within the landscapes that we all depend on for our sustenance.
more than one of my friends would probably argue that the various large-scale industrial systems (including but not limited to industrial agriculture) which together comprise the world system scholars call "late capitalism," eventually will collapse under their own, collective weight, because they are inherently unsustainable. thus, it would be better to let that process come to fruition sooner rather than later. get it over with so that whatever is left of the planet's biosphere can begin the recovery process. so is it also better to just...eat the factory farmed food? i guess that depends on a) whether or not one buys the premise that such a collapse is unavoidable, and thus that trying to change anything about the system will only delay the inevitable; and b) whether or not one would want to try to survive such a collapse. i can't even imagine suffering on that scale...survival would probably be nightmarish.
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