CAFO

Greener Eating: Look for Grass-Fed Meat

scleaver — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The chickens at Kris Hirth’s Old Pine Farm in Manchester, MI spend their time strutting around the farm, happily ruffling their feathers and ignoring barn cats. Instead of being cooped up in a huge CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) where they never see the light of day, these chickens are free to roam outside as much as they want, and retire to a roomy coop when they get tired. Old Pine, as Heather Newman wrote in this week’s Detroit Free Press, specializes in grass-fed beef, pork, chicken, and emu, and raising animals the old-fashioned way.

As we learn more about just how our food is really raised, many people are turning to grass-fed meat. Grass-fed and pasture-raised meat may be harder to find, but it’s leaner, tastier, and chemical-free. Moreover, farmers that raise their animals on pastures make a greater profit per animal, and are happier, according to David Conner, research specialist at Michigan State University.

What’s the best way to incorporate grass-fed meat into your diet?

1. Pay attention. “We’ve all lost touch with the animals that become our meat,” Catherine Friend, a farmer in Zumbrota MN, and author of The Compassionate Carnivore, told the Free Press. “Paying attention is the first step, and it’s the hardest because we’re busy.”

2. Start slowly. Can’t incorporate grass-fed meat into every meal? Try one or two, or seek out restaurants that cook it when you’re going out.

3. Read labels closely. Don’t assume you’re getting pasture-raised meat at the grocery store. And, because of how meat is processed, meat coming from small farms may not be in your local grocery store, and if you do find it at a local market, it likely won’t be packaged in the way you’re used to.

4. Seek out local farmers. It takes more effort to pick up eggs, chicken, and slabs of beef from an out-of-the way farm, but it’s worth the drive. In metro Detroit, those pigs that Jim Koan used as pesticide on his apple farm are now being snapped up for pork, bacon, and ham. Find local meat producers and learn more about grass-fed farming through Eat Wild.

Photo of an emu at Old Pine Farm taken from the Free Press article.

Book Review: Trespassing

scleaver — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Recently, Wayne State University Press published “Trespassing: Dirt Stories and Field Notes” by Janet Kaufman, a professor of English at Eastern Michigan University. It’s a combination of short stories and essays inspired by Kaufman’s experience living on an 80 acre farm in Hudson, MI (near Ann Arbor) that’s three miles away from a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation).

I was intrigued to see how Kaufman incorporated the southeast Michigan food system into fiction, and to learn more about the region’s farm country, so I hurried out to buy the book. The stories—a woman who loses it when the 24/7 neon pink and orange glow from a nearby CAFO overtakes her home, a child’s relationship with a drain near her house during an EPA clean up, and more—give a glimpse into what it’s like to live near one of the CAFOs that have moved into much of the Midwest, taking over what used to be viable farmland.

But, I enjoyed the essay section much more than the fiction. In her essays, Kaufman discusses the myth of the farm and, though today’s farms look little like the “farm” that we learn about in kindergarten (red barn, silo, windmill), the myth still permeates public thinking and policy. Rather than those Old MacDonald farms, today’s farms, Kaufman writes, are “long, low steel [buildings], some of them a quarter-mile long” with manmade ponds filled with “gallons of untreated animal waste” in the back. Instead of idyllic country communities, what used to be farm towns are now polluted and desolate around the CAFOs (who would want to live next door to a huge cesspool filled with waste from thousands of cows, after all).

She explains how Michigan’s first farmers turned the swampland into viable ground by running underground drains that collected groundwater and moved it into streams and how these drains are now helping agricultural pollutants and wastes run into streams that are now too polluted for kids to wade in.

Kaufman ends the book by writing about the “skinhead agriculture” that has changed the landscape. For nine months out of the year, fields lie unnaturally bare across the Corn Belt. Instead of rotating crops to maintain soil quality, “even in midsummer, with row crops growing, between the rows and rows of corn lie rows and rows of bare earth.” And those barren fields are not without consequence: “From these bare fields each year flow and blow more than a billion tons of sediment and the pollutants bound to it, a degradation of America’s soils, air, and water.”

For southeast Michigan, a region hard hit by the current economic downturn and rising food prices, this book couldn’t have come at a better time. For southeast Michigan readers, it begs questions about where we put our resources and what effect it has on our economy and quality of life. For non-Michigan readers, unfortunately, Kaufman’s experiences living near a CAFO and on land that’s changed for the worse in the decades since she moved there, as well as the way farms have changed will ring true and raise questions that we should all be asking ourselves: what should a farm look like? And, when will we stop buying into the myth, challenge industrial agriculture and stop leaving land fallow when people are hungry and kids are splashing through polluted streams? After all, one of the takeaways from Kaufman’s book: it doesn’t have to be this way, and until recently, it wasn’t.

Image credit: Wayne State University Press.

Keeping CAFOs Honest About Emissions

scleaver — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The Ethicurean reported yesterday on the dangers of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). After some grisly stories about the dangers of working around huge animal farms—namely toxic, even deadly, manure fumes—blogger Elanor discusses the danger that CAFOs pose to humans. Painting the full picture: “Across the country, CAFOs generate over 500 million tons of manure each year, three times more than all U.S. human residents.” All that manure produces gas that harms the workers and neighbors, in ways that I’d never read before: CAFO workers and people living nearby who breathe the gases wafting downwind suffer from respiratory problems, memory loss, nervous system impairment, mood disorders, and death. Here’s what Washington has had to say about this issue: In 2005, Senator Craig (R-ID) wanted to exempt CAFOs from air emissions reporting requirements (the bill failed).In 2006, Reps. Blount (R-MO) and Hall (R-TX) wanted to “exempt manure from being considered a ‘hazardous substance’” (their bill also failed).Tomorrow, March 27, 2008 the EPA has proposed changes to air emissions rules from CAFOs that bring back Craig’s 2005 proposal (and bypasses the legislative branch). Protest at This Web Site or, if you want to learn more before taking action, read the full Ethicurean blog post Smells Like a Free Ride for more information and a primer on how to leave comments for our dear EPA as they go into making this decision. It’s not a pretty picture (or a pleasant smelling one) but you can help to change it!Photo Credit: The Ethicurean

Downer Cows Part Two

scleaver — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:14:17 -0500

The Detroit Free Press had an article this morning (February 22) that was alarming at best. The headline: Inspectors Fear Meat is at Risk: Short Staff May Let Sick Cows Slide, They Say (originally from the Associated Press, read it HERE). Basically, the article explains that there are too few government inspectors working to keep us safe—there simply isn’t enough manpower in the USDA to stop sick cows from heading to processing. Moreover, the inspectors come so infrequently that the slaughterhouses and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations where hundreds of cows are fed and fattened in preparation to be processed) that workers know when they’re coming and, like kids readying for Christmas, are on their best behavior.

In 2006-2007, according to the Associated Press, the USDA figures that “the inspector ranks nationwide had vacancy rates of 10% or more.” The inspectors, the AP reported, “said they fear that chronic staff shortages are allowing sick cows to get into the nation’s food supply, endangering the public.”

Also in the article was a grand pointing of fingers. The slaughterhouse blamed the USDA for not having enough inspectors, the USDA admits that it has vacancies, but doesn’t want to accept responsibility for anything but issuing the recall last week. Might I suggest that removing a cow that’s so sick they’re falling down from the group that’s going to be made into steaks and hamburger patties, isn’t necessarily something that you need to do with an USDA inspector present? Perhaps, responsible companies should be doing that on their own, to keep their food as safe as possible, not because they’re being watched by the government.

But, as the article points out, this shortage of meat inspectors is nothing new. In the 1990s, big meat companies started letting slaughterhouses create their own checklists and reporting sick cows when government inspectors aren’t there. And so, here we are—kids are eating beef from sick cows for lunch and the USDA is issuing recalls that date back over a year.

Perhaps this would be the time to re-evaluate where our meat comes from. When sick cows are being kicked and pushed up ramps. When the government doesn’t have enough inspectors to stop people from abusing animals. When people are working in conditions that eventually lead them to do things like lifting cows to standing positions with forklifts. So, not to belabor a point, but if we don’t reevaluate this now, what will our next chance look like?

Photo is of a suspected Mad Cow from a USDA video, taken from CBC News at www.cbc.ca.