The demons of factory farms?

by Dale Johnson

I enjoyed listening to an NPR program on local foods. But I was dismayed when a lady called in and said that children’s mental capacities and behaviors dramatically improve when they eat pasture produced meat that does not have the growth hormones and antibiotics from factory farms.
HOG WASH! HORSE S_ _ _!
This is the kind of talk that destroys the credibility of the local, organic, sustainable, or small farm movements. All of you know from reading my articles that I want to liberate the layers and that I am strong advocate of backyard farming, gardening, pasturing animals, local food production, farmers markets, and that I am a fan of Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Joel Salatin.
I don’t like many of the consequences of industrial agriculture (It put me out of business as a farmer). But to make uninformed and idiotic statements about it just hurts our efforts. So let me defend industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture produces good nutritious food with minimal pollutants. Hormones, antibiotics, and bacteria can only be detected in incredibly minute amounts, if at all. For example, BST milk cannot be distinguished from BST free milk with any scientific measurements we have today. If you get a bottle of milk that says “BST free”, it is false advertising because we don’t know for sure. We don’t have a test to detect it and we don’t park a milk policeman at the front gate of every dairy farm to intercept any UPS shipments from Elanco who produces and sells BST to farmers. A correct statement on a bottle of milk says “Our farmers pledge not to use BST.” And almost all farmers who make the pledge live up to it.
Scientists have established thresholds that pollutants cannot exceed to keep the public safe. Occasionally there is an outbreak of polluted food. But let’s put it in perspective. >300,000,000 people in the U.S. can buy any vegetable, fruit, or animal product that they want all year around to keep their family fed on less than 10% of their income. That is incredible. Decades ago diarrhea and food poisoning were common occurrences and you paid a high percentage of your income to get it. We live longer now than all generations before us. In fact we live long enough now to get many old age diseases that we never had to worry about years ago.
So does our cheap corn based diet from industrial agriculture contribute to obesity? I think there is a connection. But I would rather demonize a person who can’t break away from corn chips and the plasma screen TV long enough to get out and grow a salad on their terrace or in their back yard. I love producing my own chickens and turkeys on my pasture, but I shouldn’t complain (I do a little) when I get a pork tenderloin for $1.76 a pound from Circle Four Farms south of Milford, Utah (Look it up on Google Earth).
Please read Michael’s article on grass fed beef. Nowhere does he say that his children are mentally incapacitated or bouncing off the walls because he fed them a Ranchers Reserve steak from Safeway. Let’s defend alternative food systems, but let’s try to do it with facts like Michael does.