I was raised eating plenty of meat. My Dad had occasionally gone hungry in the great depression, but was very prosperous as an adult. He liked for Mom to cook a lot of beef. I still like the taste, but in view of the environmental and health costs, and the grocery store prices, I have cut back on all sorts of meat.
Even on a family farm, slaughtering and eating animals isn't a kind, warm and fuzzy process, but it has become difficult to reconcile our appetites with the realities of
industrial scale of food production. Agribusinesses respond by essentially asking if we'd rather go hungry.
The LA Times reports how Harris Ranch is pushing back against new ideas about farming:
California agribusiness pressures school to nix Michael Pollan lecture
Threatening to pull donations from the school, a major California agribusiness has succeeded in turning what was to be a campus lecture by Pollan tomorrow into a panel
discussion involving Pollan, a meat-science expert and one of the largest organic growers in the U.S.
"While I understand the need to expose students to alternative views, I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices,'' David E. Wood, chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co., wrote in a scathing Sept. 23 letter to the Cal Poly president.
Wood has pledged $150,000 toward a new meat processing plant on campus. In his letter, he said Pollan's scheduled solo appearance had prompted him to "rethink my continued financial support of the university.'' He also criticized an animal sciences professor who said that conventional feedlots like the one run by Harris Ranch were not a form of sustainable agriculture.
(Isn't a meat-processing plant on a campus sort of redundant?)
[Pollan] said the Harris letter raised troubling questions about academic freedom.
"The issue is about whether the school is really free to explore diverse ideas about farming,'' he said. "Is the principle of balance going to apply across the board? The
next time Monsanto comes to speak at Cal Poly about why we need [genetically modified organisms] to feed the world, will there be a similar effort? Will I be invited back for that show?"
On the other hand, in Gagging Michael Pollan, Counterpunch, which is trying to raise funds to stay afloat, notes:
... agribusiness has the University of Wisconsin-Madison to deal with.
The land grant, ag-based university, in the middle of dairyland, clearly doesn't remember its roots. It gave Pollan's In Defense of Food ... free to all incoming freshmen as part of its common book read program ...
Protesting farmers who came to hear Pollan speak at the university's 17,000-seat Kohl Center in September wearing matching green T-shirts which said "In Defense of Farming: Eat Food. Be Healthy. Thank Farmers." were clearly outnumbered. So were bumper stickers reading No Food; No Farms and Don't Criticize Farmers With Your Mouth Full in the parking lot.
Students get all their facts from writers like Pollan, the farmers, who were bussed in by Madison-based feed company Vita Plus, told the Capital Times. They have never visited
a farm for first-hand knowledge of food production and don't know what they're talking about.
But efforts to open farms to the public are not always successful.
This month United Egg Producers' "Opening the Barn Doors" media tour at Morning Fresh Farms in northern Colorado, for example, only confirmed the size of today's egg farm that make humane conditions impossible (36 barns; 23,000 birds each, 23 million dozen eggs a year) and raised further questions about environmental blight by showing the press wearing white HazMat suits to enter the barns.
Clearly, the farms have grown into agribusinesses in response to demand. But, no matter what ag students learn, what sort of change in demand could lead to more sustainable practices?
