You may wish to read the following, which gives the most compelling argument I’ve read on the matter:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_05_23/cover.html

This is not just a post. You’re written an article. You begin with a book review, but then move it into personal observations and experiences. You have provided us with a wealth of information and launched a great discussion. In another age, I would say that this article should be published in a newspaper or magazine, but this “new media” allows a grander level of immediacy and interactivity. This is just damn good writing.

I am seriously concerned about these issues and for the health of my family. Like Joanne, I thought there was little I could do, but you’ve made clear how important it is to be an activist when it comes to what we put in our body. I will share this article with everyone I know. Thank you.

The link between feeding cows corn and the need for antibiotics has been well established — publications from Time Magazine to The Stockman Grass Farmer have written about the causation.

Any ideas how to locate grocery stores that sell local products? Here in the suburbs of Richmond, I only know about a Ukrops down the street…

I don’t know any central resource to locate such stores, but I can tell you some of what to look for. Anything calling itself a “cooperative” or a “coop” is a step in the right direction — those sell local meat and produce. (Annie’s was a great coop just two blocks from me in Blacksburg — if you wanted a fresh chicken, you’d sign up a few days in advance and come pick it up from the farmer, who’d just slaughtered it.)

If their website is any indicator, Richmond’s Good Foods Grocery likely has decent local produce and meats, and they have a few different locations in the area. Ellwood Thompson’s website makes very clear that they qualify — they name the local farms from which they buy their produce right on the front page of their site.

Perhaps some Richmonders could name some other places scattered about the area?

BTW, great discussion — I’m really enjoying reading these comments.

For a few years my wife and I were “share-holding” members of the Bull Run Farm not far from our home. We’d pick up a share of the output of the farm each week (mostly produce, but sometimes honey and meat from a slaughtered farm animal). Our share paid at the beginning of the year helped the farmers buy important seed stock and supplies, and it was a bit of a gamble what we got each week. Some weeks were fabulous, others (the week after the bear struck the farm) were not so good.

All the produce on the farm was documented throughout it’s life cycle on the website, and the folks there are very nice. I recommend similar local solutions if they are available to everyone. The catch is there are a limited number of shares in each farm like this, and it has to be a supplemental source; as we ate more than one share of the output most weeks.

I am considering going mostly vegetarian, not in protest to eating meat, but in protest for all the crap that comes in our meat. Another thing about wheat grains, how many of them are genetically engineered and therefore patented and licensed unnecessarily? I just don’t see any reason to make the executives at Monsanto any richer than they already are.

As the need for meat increases (in some cases due to diets that push protein rather than carbs), the problems will increase. For example, one reason they use lights in production chicken houses is to keep the chickens eating for longer periods of time during the day—that way they put on weight much faster. At one time, the poultry companies also were accused of putting chemicals into their feed. The idea was that if the chickens’ didn’t feel good (stomach ache???), they would eat more thinking they were hungry. I much prefer the concept of the Eggmobile (or the “chicken tractor” approach as one of my friends describes using the concept on her place). Wal-Mart has been known to use carbon monoxide in their packaging process to keep meat looking fresher longer, even past it’s expiration date. And that is only one food chain-store; how many others are there that have similar practices?

We also face many of the same problems in producing vegetables. As the need for fruits and vegetables increases (especially with the need for fiber and the fact that many of them can be eaten in “unlimited” amounts on some diets), commercial raising of vegetables is going the same way as beef—using chemcials to make them grown faster, free of pests and at the right stage of maturity for the market. How many times have we heard reports that produce at markets contained traces of pesticides, harmful bacteria, etc.? We grow our own vegetables for our use in-season in 500 sq. ft. of gardens, and can or preserve the rest for use at times when it is winter. One reason I like growing my own is so that I know how they were raised. On the other hand, many CSAs have agreements with their member farms that limit what they can use. If I couldn’t grow my own, I’d want to participate in a program like that.

I’ve never really understood the objection to poor treatment of food-cattle. If there were any moral/ethical concerns involved, I’d think it would have something to do with the fact that their throats are slit allowing them to bleed to death — not that they get an inappropriate diet.

Because there’s a direct relationship between how they’re fed and how healthy we are. For example, grass-fed cows don’t get E. coli. (Of course, there are many, many kinds of E. coli — I mean the variant that cows get that, in turn, kills people.) E. coli develops in the rumens of corn-fed cows. No corn, no E. coli. (For that matter, if the cows are simply fed grass for the final week or two of their lives, no E. coli. But feedlots have no grass. It’s not an option.)

To provide another example, corn-fed cows contribute mightily to the degradation of farmland in the midwest, exhausting the soil by planting only corn (and occasional soy), to say nothing of farmers’ reliance on a corn subsidy system that just isn’t working.

On the topic of moral concerns, though, author Michael Pollan spends a good bit of time on the question. He’s denied access to any slaughterhouses, but he spends a time talking with an expert on the topic and learns how they work. Then he participates in a chicken slaughter at Polyface. And finally he kills his own boar, guts it, and eats it (though not all at once :). He reflects on the difference in each of these processes, considering which is more humane, which is “better,” and which he prefers.

Of course I’m probably eating soy that comes from Monsanto in its place; what can you do? without making policing your food a full time job.

If you’re ok with killing and eating them, the rest is just effluvia. At least, insofar as it applies to animals.