I agree with Mark, the solution to the food problem will be slow in terms of any one gardener's working lifetime.

It would help (actually he'd be more alarmed) if he'd actually step foot in a factory farm and get to know one from the inside...actually, more than one...a factory pig farm is different from a factory broiler chicken farm is different from a factory egg farm.

He mentions antibiotics, but it seems he doesn't have much of a clue about the other chemicals we pump animals full of to do everything from increase muscle mass to keep that muscle mass from "exploding."

We have genetically selected (natural breeding, naturally selected) animals out there that are so unnaturally bred that it's amazing some of them can even stand on their own...and some wouldn't be able to if they lived to an old age rather than going to slaughter.

Nothing about getting rid of gestation crates leads to healthier animals...it just leads to less animal cruelty and provides them a better state of being.

The more the animals move and mix...the more disease spreads, the more waste they accumulate, and the harder it is to control that waste + clean the animals while they're living. We're talking about herding 100s-1000s+ animals here...and they're going from birth to slaughter in about a 1/2 year in commercial production.

I'm not saying getting rid of gestation crates is a bad idea, but it doesn't lead to food safety because the pigs are living a better quality of life.

Hell, most people don't understand that their "cage-free/free-range" chicken broilers are nothing new...that's how they're bred and live for almost all broiler farm operations. People are willing to pay a little more money for that wording, though. Lack of research can cost a consumer money.

Fwiw, a broiler chicken will go from chick to your plate in 5-7 weeks. That's breeding and animal feed amendments at work. Good or bad, that's what's going on. Antibiotics are "only" a small part of the equation in creating a fast-growing meaty animal.

One can makes a point that the entire factory farming operation needs to be done with and find an alternative, but "small victories" like getting rid of gestation crates is a feel-good solution in the system more-so than a food safety solution. Fwiw, I agree with getting away from gestation crate farming for the sole reason that I believe it's a horrible way to treat an animal for it's short existence. It does little to solve the "chemical pumping" of the animals, though.

I still don't understand how M.Bittman got a job writing about food activism for the Times when he's still so "green" to the subject and relies heavily on reading books others have written about the subject to find his rallying points. I have no doubt his knowledge base will grow over time, but he has a bit of holes in his writing. He is a food critic/opinion writer, not a scientist/farmer, but he might want to get his "feet in the muck" at some point to better understand the issues he wants to rally others to take on.

Well said, nc-crn. A very rational view.

I just want more activists-made-leaders to take a more pro-active role in educating themselves about what they write about...lest they become a useless mouthpiece of misinformation such as "the health ranger" Mike Adams and his nearly worthless naturalnews setup.

I'm not comparing Bittman to the useless pile of DNA known as Mike Adams, though...he has a very long way to go to become that evil and useless. Plus, Bittman's heart and passion seems to be in the right place.

This post was edited by nc-crn on Mon, Jan 7, 13 at 0:32

I agree. Bittman brought his fingernail clippers to a gun fight. He at least needs to do more reading. I would suggest starting with anything written by Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer who writes in the winter months. Check your library for his books.

Also look into holistic resource management. HRM is a philosophy of life but many people practice it specifically in livestock management. They have taken livestock production back to the basics. You grow native grass (not hybrids), stop fertilizing, stop weed killing, do not medicate or boost the animals with drugs, let the livestock fertilize the land (unmedicated dung is very good for the soil), and then move them off the land so the grass can grow back. When the grass has grown back, then you bring the animals back on to eat it. This requires alternate fields to move the animals to when they move off each pasture. Rather than having a 1,000 acre pasture, they might have 15 pastures that are only 50-60 acres. When you fence it off like that, you no longer need cowboys to round them up, because the animals are all in one small lot. Furthermore they are hungry when you open the gate so they are all right there lined up.

I've talked to ranchers doing this with both cattle and chickens. The results are amazing. Once you stop medicating the herd, you should see a return of dung beetles. Dung beetles are destroyed by common deworming medicines and are becoming a rare sight in Texas. But where the ranchers have stopped using the meds, the morning skies are actually darkened by dung beetles flying in. Once there, they bury all the dung in about 24 hours leaving a pristine field ready to grow more grass. And the holes the dung beetles leave behind are perfect for capturing several feet of rainfall even if it all falls at one time. One rancher reported 22 inches of rain in one week with absolutely no runoff. In fact he had so many beetle holes the 22 inches of rain did not even create puddles. Needless to say his water tanks (ponds) were dry and have become part of his pasture.

So what happens when an animal gets sick? Well, what happenes in Nature when an animal gets sick? It dies leaving only the survivors to breed. That's what these ranchers do. They send it and many of its siblings to slaughter. Now they have genetics in their livestock that does not get sick. Taking that just a little farther, some are breeding animals which do not attract flies, so they will have a 'mutation' of animals which do not get the fly-borne diseases.

When you eliminate the cost of seed, fertilizer, herbicide, fungicide, medicine/veterinarians, all the equipment to apply those things, plus all the buildings needed to hold all that equipment, plus the cowboys; then you are talking about very serious cost savings and no loss of productivity. These ranchers are raising grass fed beef for much less than it cost them to raise corn supplemented beef following the County Agriculture Extension Service program using all the seed, meds, etc.

Here is a link to a test of this philosophy in Miami, AZ. Miami is at 3,000 feet altitude in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The soil was tailings from a copper strip mine. This is the dust that has been soaked in acid to dissolve anything of value - this is the stuff left over. I was personally familiar with this pile of tailings since the 1950s. Not even weeds would grow on it. Now it is pasture - read the article at the link. It it can be done in that soil in that ecosystem, it can be done elsewhere.

In some soils a zero-input regime will not suffice. Try to raise livestock as Salatin does in the shenadoah, in florida sand instead and you'll have a lot of sick and dying animals eventually.

There was one point in the article I strongly agree with. We need to start regulating sugars just like tobacco. I would add to that fats, oils, salt, and processed grains. We also need to encourage people to eat more vegetables and fruit. Home gardening is the most long term sustainable way to do that. We still have the belief that we can eat and live however we want and somehow modern medicine is going to save us. That expense is not long term sustainable or effective.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden For Nutrition

This post was edited by GreeneGarden on Sun, Jan 13, 13 at 10:38

Green Garden, While regulating food material may seen highly altruistic, I believe enough in freedom to not force this. I also believe in soul health, but cannot make people do what is best.

Again I believe in home gardening very much, but many will not avail themselves.

We said "regulate", not make illegal.
I do not think anyone wants to see speakeasies spring up everywhere
where people can buy dime bags of brown sugar.
Nor do we want to see gangster gunbattles over Twinkies and Ho-Ho.
I think we are mainly talking limitations, taxes, advertizing, etc.
Similar to tobacco.

As for freedom, I think Abraham Lincoln may have said it best:
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden For Nutrition