I came across this article from the "Food Manufacturing" website and I think that it is a really important one to keep in mind. In much of the literature that we have looked at in class including Pollen and Kingsolver's books, as well as Food Inc, we have mostly heard a very critical viewpoint of the meat industry. This article is about meat farmers and their efforts to give themselves a more positive name in response to such criticism. I think that what is so important about this article is that it puts the people back into the conversation. In my opinion, in Food Inc they were very careful to criticize big corporations while getting sympathy for the small farmers. However, there are just regular people who work for the corporations as well. This article shows that some meat farmers are just doing their jobs the best way they know how, and although movies like Food Inc try to blame the corporations, not the people, the farmers are still feeling the repercussions of it. According to a spokeswoman representing the meat farmers, "I would estimate that 2 percent of farmers have issues, either not following good production practices or not following good environmental practices and unfortunately they are the ones picked up by the opposition," she said. "The opposition has taken that 2 percent and made them the poster children of agriculture." This is an important opinion because until now we have only really heard about the problem farms. It is so interesting to me that she says only 2% of farms are actually like that. I would like to see some data to follow up on this so that I can make informed decisions myself. So far I feel like all the information I've seen has been from one side or the other.
Here is the link to the full article:
Food Producers Join to Fight Bad Image
Really good post, Karen. Like most people, I'm easily swayed by the rhetoric from documentaries like Food inc. Even the meat CSA I belong to...well, I've never been to the farm itself, which is up in Vermont. The pictures online are lovely, and the farmer is a sweet guy, but who knows what they're doing up there?
ReplyDeleteWhat makes me nuts is people who want to take what few teeth there are left out of the FDA, because really SO few of us know what we're eating or where it came from or whether it was really prepared in a safe manner. We need someone who is trained and trustworthy to check this stuff out for us. Otherwise, we could be eating shitty meat.