I saw Food Inc. a couple of days ago. As one who is interested in and follows the food space, particularly as it relates to factory farms, many of the points were familiar to me. That said, seeing a cow whose legs were snapped in half from the weight of his body and the circumstances of his living situation being prodded by a motorized lift to get him to walk to slaughter ...and pictures of just-born chicks rolling down an assembly line and (something) being inserted into their skull without any anesthesia, expectedly sickened me.

What did surprise me were some of the facts about how people are treated in the Big Food system. While I knew that slaughterhouses were the most unsafe place in the country for a (mostly illegal) worker, I didn't know that Smithfield (the world's largest pork producer) has unspoken 'arrangements' with immigration authorities to arrest just enough illegals to meet America's appetite for 'cracking down on illegals' but not enough to disrupt the labor pool for production. These illegals are those that the largest agriculture companies have recruited from the pools of Mexican farmers that have lost their livelihood b/c cheap American corn flooded the market when NAFTA was signed by Bill Clinton.

Even more surprising was how Monsanto has used US patent law to grow from 7% to 90% soybean market dominance in just 12 years. In the traditional and sustainable form, farmers clean and save seed each year to reuse in planting foods the following year. Seed was public property. What Monsanto has done is to patent a Genetically Modified form of soybean. It has required farmers to pay whenever a farmer 'replants' a Monsanto patented seed. The seed is now so ubiquitous that even farmers who don't plant their seed typically find the Monsanto seed having mixed in with their crop. Monsanto then sues farmers or their suppliers who have deemed to clean or 'plant' their seed - essentially forcing them either to become part of the Monsanto system or go out of business. And that's exactly what's happened.

Another example was of a chicken farm. Already living in incredibly packed quarters, walking amongst their own dead, a former Perdue farmer talked about how Purdue (like Tyson - the worlds biggest meat producer) require farmers to take out debt to build ($300,000 on average) and then continuously require farmers to invest in new (and typically inhumane) technologies to increase 'productivity'. When the in debt and disgusted Perdue farmer refused to 'upgrade' in one case, their contract with Perdue was cancelled. One of these technologies is a fully dark chicken house where the chickens do not see the light of day. One Tyson farmer in the film wanted to show the filmmakers inside the house, but they were strong-armed by multiple visits from Tyson corporate and the inside of the house was never shown.

Some states, at the behest of these companies, have even instituted 'veggie libel laws'; where even the Republican mother of a 2-year old who died a few years ago from eColi poisoning from a hamburger was not allowed to tell the filmmakers whether she and her family have changed their eating habits. The big food companies, under these laws, are allowed to sue those who criticize their practices.

My questions are these:

• Why hasn't anyone sued Monsanto and others who use these practices for monopolistic behavior?
• If most people saw how their meat is raised and produced; they probably wouldn't want to eat it. How have we gotten to the point as a human race where we can practice such unspeakable cruelty (most of which people have 'some' clue about; even if they have never seen a factory farm), on a massive and consistent basis - while we turn away or continue to support the practice by buying factory-farmed meat? The holocaust, the slaughter in Rwanda and other examples of massive cruelty ended at some point, and the world has recognized its moral failure. Even if one has no compassion for animals (of which we are one), data has consistently shown that those that treat animals with such cruelty and disrespect will treat people the same way. Tyson, Purdue, Smithfield, Cargill and others have very directly shown this to be true.
• What happened to our right to free speech? A woman whose son died of eColi poisoning cannot tell a documentary filmmaker if she has cut back on eating meat?

On a positive note, like my watching of Inconvenient Truth many years ago, this film inspired me to want to do something to help. Unfortunately, all of the suggestions at the end of the movie and on its website are things I already do. This was a misstep on the part of the filmmakers b/c no doubt often the converted will be the audience of the film - and most of them have already cut back on meat, dairy and are already buying local and organic.

I spent some time on the Humane Society's site yesterday (an organization of which I am already a member and have been for many years) and the volunteer opportunities are focused on veterinarians.

A friend of mind and I have batted around started a local, cruelty-free pet snacks company. I'm still excited about this idea.

Other ideas?

Why Local and Organic Is A Bargain

(Reprinted from a 2007 paper at Presidio, and submission to the Raleigh News & Observer)

Why is it that we often prioritize the things we least need? Why is food, a foundation of our lives, something we treat as a commodity? Why does cost rank so highly over quality in decisions about the most important purchase we can make for ourselves and our families? We’ll easily spend an extra $50 a month on HBO, but balk at the idea of an extra .50 for an organic lettuce.

The commodity price of steak in 2002 was $1.60 per pound. That pound of steak, if you add in the real cost to your family’s health, our environment, our natural resources, human rights and other externalities, would cost $815 per pound. A conventional (non-organic) tomato, if environmental and social costs were factored, would cost us $374. So while organic or local food may seem a bit more expensive or inconvenient, you are paying just a slight bit more at the register to avoid paying the cost to your health and society’s longevity. What is your health, the environment, avoiding animal cruelty, and a safe future worth to you?

Eating local is 17 times less expensive than buying supermarket food[1]. Why?

· Taxes. Farm subsidies, especially to corn, represent $16B a year of your tax dollar. Those taxes go largely to big agricultural corporations – the largest 10% of farms get 66% of the subsidies.

· Environmental Destruction. When people talk about climate change, most of us think of reducing our driving and home energy use. Conventional agriculture, however, is responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions¹. Conventional agriculture also misuses incredible amounts of water. Here’s how:

Gasoline use and tilling: It takes ½ gallon of gasoline to grow a bushel of corn. This gasoline pumped from the ground with energy is necessary to supplement soil destroyed by years of monoculture tilling and chemical use. Plowing that soil then causes significant amounts of carbon to be released.

Animal wastes, exacerbated in industrial farming operations by feeding corn to cows who are meant to eat grass, cause 16% of the world’s methane release (methane is one greenhouse gas leading to climate change). These animal wastes also cause run off into local water systems, as happened in North Carolina in 1995, killing 10 million fish and poisoning 360 wetland acres. The air near Confined Animal Feeding Operations (‘CAFOs’) is also highly polluted.

Water overuse is another major problem. 60% of the water used in the United States goes towards agriculture. The Central Valley in California, which produces most of the nation’s fruit, nuts and vegetables, is irrigated by an aquifer and the snow pack on the Sierra. Both the acquifer and the snow pack are being drawn down at many times their recharge rates. Within just 2-3 decades, it’s unlikely the Central Valley will be able to produce any food.

Food miles traveled: The average meal travels 2000 miles from farm to table, further increasing energy use and emitting greenhouse gasses.

System effects of climate change: Increasingly fragile farm systems will be devastated by the temperature rises, changes in rainfall, changes in CO₂ in the air, increase in ozone and extreme weather events that are already happening as a result of climate change.

· Bankrupting Your Community. The day of your local farmer is nearly gone. 7% of our nation’s farms sell 72% of the food you eat. The proportion of farmers younger than 35 has dropped from 16% in 1982 to 6% in 2002. Small local farms yield an average of only $10,000 a year in revenue, and have found they can no longer survive in a world where customers won’t pay an extra few cents for healthier, more sustainable, food.

· Bankrupting Other Communities: Because the government uses your tax dollars to pay large agribusiness to produce so much corn that significant amounts of it cannot be sold in the U.S., this excess is ‘dumped’ into third world markets at such low prices that it bankrupts small farmers in those countries as well.

· Animal Cruelty: CAFOs are cruel, sad places where animals live in dark quarters, cannot move for their entire lives, have their beaks and tails chopped to avoid natural fear-induced behavior, and are made to eat food they don’t naturally eat. This vision doesn’t make me hungry.

· Your Family’s Health: While data on nutritional differences between local, organic food and conventional food is currently limited, there are some documented differences in fat content, toxic substances, unnatural homones and bacteria which exist in far greater amounts in conventional food. Corn increases the fat marbling in beef, making conventional beef much more fattening than grass-fed beef. Conventional agriculture techniques utilize massive amounts of pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and other poisons that pass from food to human when ingested. Hormones in meat have been shown to cause early sexual development in girls and enlarged breasts in you boys. Corn-fed cattle has also been shown to have higher eColi 0157:H7 counts than grass-fed, free-range beef. This is believed to be because free range cows have less contact with other cow’s manure, and corn makes cows stomachs acidic, giving rise to acid-loving eColi.

To add to all this, conventional food is just plain inefficient. It takes 10 calories of energy to produce 1 corn calorie. 80% of corn is fed to cattle, and it takes 10-16 lbs of grain to make a pound of meat.

So even if you’re convinced, you may still be confused about your options. Which is better: organic or local? Often, the best case scenario is being able to ask the farmer directly about how they raise your food. One way to do local sourcing is through Community Supported Agriculture or farmer’s markets. Increasingly local food is also being sold at both whole-foods oriented and even traditional supermarkets. Weaver Street Market currently sources 20% of their food locally, and is striving to raise this number each year. If you don’t see it, ask your grocer to source locally. Local food avoids the food miles traveled by non-local foods, multiplies every dollar you spend many times over in your local community and preserves local farms. And…the food typically tastes better.

If you can’t get local food, organic is always the next best option. Many small, local farmers are utilizing organic or even ‘beyond organic’ practices but find it too expensive to be certified. While the food miles traveled, till agriculture and sometimes animal welfare issues still exist – at least the lack of pesticides and antibiotics are better than conventional options.

How much extra would you be willing to pay not to cause these kinds of impacts on yourself, your family and your community? Likely - more than the extra few cents it will actually cost.

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[1] Sierra Club, truecostoffood.org

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

Finally : A mainstream media source talks about the real issues: Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food