Jolley: “Fadism” Strikes Jonathon Foer & Other Anti-Ag Writers
11/09/2009 07:20AM
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There is a serious case of ‘fadism’ attacking the brain cells of too many writers who presume to know something about our food supply and how it gets to market. They’re quick to pick up on the tired attacks mounted by the likes of Michael Pollan and, without doing the necessary research to validate those thoughts, quickly reword ‘boilerplate’ phrases without truly understanding the facts behind the food business.
The list of sinners is long, undistinguished and disingenuous. There is a chattering cabal of rarely-been-west-of-the-Hudson River or east-of-the-Cal-Berkeley-campus pseudo-experts who travel on the same midnight train to an eco-purgatory where all food is suspect, meat and poultry is particularly deadly, and the evils of factory farming will force us into an unsustainable, doomed lifestyle that will eventually kill our planet.
Jonathon Safran Foer is the latest to join the Pollan school of ill-literary research. He is the Brooklyn born vegetarian who first popped up on the Larry King show about ground beef. Supposedly a critically acclaimed author of several books of fiction, he’s been beating the P.R. drums to promote his new book, “Eating Animals,” which will be poorly placed in the non-fiction department of your local Barnes & Nobel.
If you see the book in the non-fiction section, please feel free to move it over to the fiction side of the aisle, no need to ask permission from the B&N clerks.
Mr. Foer, like the albatross he’s trying to hang around the neck of animal agriculture, regurgitates the same half-digested fish those momma birds feed to their young.
“It’s arguably the #1 cause of global warming.”
“It’s the #1 cause of animal suffering.”
“It’s a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu.”
And, of course, he talks about ‘factory farming,’ a nice, catch-all phrase that seems to be a too convenient descriptor for any ag operation larger and more ambitious than 40 acres and a mule. Would Pollan or Foer or any of the other short-sighted peddlers of this nonsense please issue a precise definition of ‘factory farm?’ Is it a ranch that raises more than a dozen head of cattle? Two dozen hogs? A nice place in central Nebraska that grows enough wheat that they have to mechanically harvest, leaving the scythe hanging on the wall at the nearest TGI Friday’s? Maybe it’s just a few hundred acres worked cooperatively by an extended family?
He links most food borne illnesses to the evils of that ill-defined ‘factory farm.’ No mention anywhere of that egg salad left out in the sun for a few hours before the family picnic or the cross contamination caused by using the same utensils for raw and cooked product. And can I gently point out to everyone of those coastal writers that E. coli contamination happens because of failures at the slaughter facility, not the factory or family farm or ranch? Just one of those ‘fun’ facts, they ought to know.
Then there is this truly off-the-wall claim: “On a typical family farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal.” (Hey, Jonathon, didn’t you mean ‘factory’ farms here?
I thought they were the bad guys in your Pantheon of evil-doers.) He backed up that claim by quoting the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that often sits at the ragged edge of credibility.
Most family farms operate on very thin margins. Administering expensive drugs “with every meal” is not a financially sensible option. Using the appropriate vaccines and other medications as necessary to fight disease is a decision most family farmers make because they understand the care they must take to raise healthy animals.
As one farmer told me years ago, “I had my children vaccinated because it’s the right thing to do. I do the same thing for the animals I raise on my farm.”
The latest charge levied by these fad-driven but socially acceptable Agri-terrorists is America’s cheap food carries hidden expenses. The complainers inevitably point to the increased incidence of diabetes and an ‘epidemic’ of obesity. Does cheap food really equal disease and an overweight population? Would someone show me the research that proves cause and effect? Are we to assume that people are unable to make their own dietary decisions so those choices must be turned over to the government? Or possibly worse, make their food prices so high that they can’t afford basic nutrition?
Cheap food means more people eat and fewer people are afflicted with the dread ‘food insecurity,’ a tragedy of much greater impact that sounded more loathsome when it was called ‘starvation.’
Bottom line: Instead of banning factory farms and the efficiencies those large-scale operations bring to the world’s dinner table, we need to find ways to become even more efficient in order to adequately feed our planet’s growing population. The true miracle of modern agriculture has been its ability to produce more and more food from less and less arable land, ending much of the mass starvation and death we suffered just a short half century ago.
Comments? CRJolley@msn.com
Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com.