Food and Profit

It was a running joke at a former job I had, that for some reason, people routinely assumed I was a vegetarian. Actually I love meat. Beef, chicken, pork, lamb, duck, turkey...it's all fair game for me. I'd be at a Chinese restaurant with coworkers and we'd be discussing what we would order, and all of a sudden someone would say, "oh we can't order that because Erin's a vegetarian, right?" It was like someone started a rumor about me not eating meat and it just stuck. Years later, after watching the documentary, "Food Inc.", I'm finally fitting in with my old vegetarian reputation.

Which is not to say I'm using this blog to tell people they shouldn't eat meat because it's unsustainable, unhealthy and inhumanely produced. Although, if you watch the movie, or read the Michael Pollan books on which a lot of the movie is based, you would find that yes, most of the meat we eat is all those things. Because meat is only part of the problem, and a nationwide boycott of meat would not solve the problems with our food supply. It's just that after watching the movie lay out how meat is produced in order for a handful of giant corporations to make as much money as possible, I want out. It's not a political statement so much as a personal revulsion for these corporations' horrific treatment of animals, their disregard for their customers' health and safety, their despicable treatment of their workers, and the massive destruction of the environment that they bring.

One particularly moving story in the movie follows the mother of a young child who died a painful death as a result of e.coli bacterial poisoning from a hamburger. This mother is now campaigning in Washington D.C. to enforce stronger food safety regulations on the meat producers. Cattle are built to eat grass, but they are fed corn because it makes them big faster, and it's very cheap. Corn-fed cattle are many times more susceptible to having large amounts of e.coli bacteria than are cattle raised on grass. Plus industrially farmed cattle stand around in their own waste all day in giant lots, producing manure that is so concentrated that it cannot be used for fertilization. One of the scientists interviewed in the film pointed out that if you switch corn-fed cattle to grass for a matter of days, they shed virtually all of the e.coli in their systems. But the goal for the producer is to bring the cow to slaughter as fast as possible as cheaply as possible, no matter what that means for the living conditions of the animal, nor the amount of harmful bacteria in its gut.

There's an interesting segment of the film where the founder and CEO of a big organic dairy company is interviewed. And he's a former hippie type who lived on a commune, and he says something to the effect that to fix the food system you need to have a revolution. But we can't wait for a revolution, we have to act now. And to this end, he is selling organic dairy products to Walmart. He points out that it was largely due to Walmart customers' preferring milk without artificial growth hormone that is probably going to result in the entire industry abandoning the growth hormone. And that's probably a good thing. But that's one tiny progressive change in the midst of a giant catastrophe. Our food system is literally killing us with diseases like diabetes and heart disease, not to mention the e.coli breakouts. All so that a tiny handful of extraordinarily wealthy people can maximize their profits. Capitalism must be ended for any number of reasons that are written about on this blog, but not the least of which is the need to transform our food system. And I agree with the CEO, we'd better not wait for a revolution, but start building one now.