I have a confession to make: I love pork. I eat pork at least once a week. I had pork chops for dinner on Monday and leftovers for lunch Tuesday and they were delicious. I acknowledge there are any number of ethical and philosophical arguments against eating meat and I agree with many of them, but my goodness, that pork is just so tasty – barbecued ribs, chops, ham, sausage or bacon – I love it all.
What’s good for me (my cholesterol is fine, thank you) is not so good for the pig. The pig has to die before any of my gastro-intestinal happiness can take place and this is unfortunate, but there are mitigating factors. The pork I eat is not just some anonymous hunk of shrink-wrapped meat from a refrigerated case; I’m eating my way through a particular pig and I’m familiar with its history. The pig I’m eating was raised on an organic farm up near the Canadian border by my friend Bob. The pig was not raised in confinement, but had the run of the barnyard and was fattened on meals of feta cheese and apples. (That last item was a point of mutual satisfaction for the pig and myself.)
So I feel good about keeping a family farmer in business, that a hundred or so acres are managed in harmony with the ecosystem and the pig in question had a good life… until it was killed, cut up and certain parts smoked.
That’s the good news. The bad news is, people like my friend Bob are becoming increasingly rare. In the 1950s, two-thirds of American farmers kept hogs – just a few on the side to feed the family and sell to a local butcher for extra income in the fall. Now pork is a business and 50 companies account for more than half the pork that pours through American supermarkets. The facilities in which these corporate pigs are raised are not farms, but concentrated animal feeding operations, with perhaps 10,000 pigs in one location. Needless to say, these pigs do not wander around the barnyard like the pigs at Bob’s farm. They are confined to small pens in dense concentrations that facilitate the spread of disease, which in turn is countered by huge doses of antibiotics, which end up on your dinner plate. Behind these porcine tenements are manure lagoons, which is a polite term for a lake of pig shit the size of a football field and 10 feet deep. In the U.S., 130 times more animal waste is produced annually than human waste and virtually none of it is required to be treated. The upshot is polluted groundwater, polluted rivers and lakes, massive fishkills from crap spills and foul air for downwind communities.
To no one’s surprise, these corporate pork factories are being sited – like any other toxic factory – in poor areas with higher-than-average populations of people of color. The heavy-handed corporate style comes to town, too. A North Carolina medical researcher released a study last May on adverse health effects in communities near corporate pig farms and had a threatening letter from the corporation’s lawyers on his desk just seven hours later.
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Well, not really. The glut of pork on the American market has sent prices plummeting and the family farmers are hit hardest. With each passing year that they lose money raising pigs, more small farmers will be forced out of business. The corporate pork producers profit by making deals with the corporate pork processors for higher-than-market rates for their pigs.
The corporate takeover of American pig farming means less nutritious food, more pollution and fewer family farms. If you take out the word “pork” and insert “beef,” “chicken” or “fish,” the results are nearly identical. It’s just harder for me to see pork go the way of all flesh because I do enjoy it so.
The only alternatives are to either find a farmer like my friend Bob and get outside the corporate farm system – or become a vegetarian.
Pork Barrel Politics
I have a confession to make: I love pork. I eat pork at least once a week. I had pork chops for dinner on Monday and leftovers for lunch Tuesday and they were delicious. I acknowledge there are any number of ethical and philosophical arguments against eating meat and I agree with many of them, but my goodness, that pork is just so tasty – barbecued ribs, chops, ham, sausage or bacon – I love it all.
What’s good for me (my cholesterol is fine, thank you) is not so good for the pig. The pig has to die before any of my gastro-intestinal happiness can take place and this is unfortunate, but there are mitigating factors. The pork I eat is not just some anonymous hunk of shrink-wrapped meat from a refrigerated case; I’m eating my way through a particular pig and I’m familiar with its history. The pig I’m eating was raised on an organic farm up near the Canadian border by my friend Bob. The pig was not raised in confinement, but had the run of the barnyard and was fattened on meals of feta cheese and apples. (That last item was a point of mutual satisfaction for the pig and myself.)
So I feel good about keeping a family farmer in business, that a hundred or so acres are managed in harmony with the ecosystem and the pig in question had a good life… until it was killed, cut up and certain parts smoked.
That’s the good news. The bad news is, people like my friend Bob are becoming increasingly rare. In the 1950s, two-thirds of American farmers kept hogs – just a few on the side to feed the family and sell to a local butcher for extra income in the fall. Now pork is a business and 50 companies account for more than half the pork that pours through American supermarkets. The facilities in which these corporate pigs are raised are not farms, but concentrated animal feeding operations, with perhaps 10,000 pigs in one location. Needless to say, these pigs do not wander around the barnyard like the pigs at Bob’s farm. They are confined to small pens in dense concentrations that facilitate the spread of disease, which in turn is countered by huge doses of antibiotics, which end up on your dinner plate. Behind these porcine tenements are manure lagoons, which is a polite term for a lake of pig shit the size of a football field and 10 feet deep. In the U.S., 130 times more animal waste is produced annually than human waste and virtually none of it is required to be treated. The upshot is polluted groundwater, polluted rivers and lakes, massive fishkills from crap spills and foul air for downwind communities.
To no one’s surprise, these corporate pork factories are being sited – like any other toxic factory – in poor areas with higher-than-average populations of people of color. The heavy-handed corporate style comes to town, too. A North Carolina medical researcher released a study last May on adverse health effects in communities near corporate pig farms and had a threatening letter from the corporation’s lawyers on his desk just seven hours later.
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Well, not really. The glut of pork on the American market has sent prices plummeting and the family farmers are hit hardest. With each passing year that they lose money raising pigs, more small farmers will be forced out of business. The corporate pork producers profit by making deals with the corporate pork processors for higher-than-market rates for their pigs.
The corporate takeover of American pig farming means less nutritious food, more pollution and fewer family farms. If you take out the word “pork” and insert “beef,” “chicken” or “fish,” the results are nearly identical. It’s just harder for me to see pork go the way of all flesh because I do enjoy it so.
The only alternatives are to either find a farmer like my friend Bob and get outside the corporate farm system – or become a vegetarian.