Monday, August 23, 2010

A Little Something to Chew On

A lot of my fellow bloggers are quick to point out the incestuous relationship (the lobbying, the money, the access, etc.) between government and industry. Well, guess what, folks - try adding me to that list, too...............................................................................................I cite, specifically, the intimate relationship between the USDA and agribusiness; the factory farming/meat industry, in particular. I mean, think about it here. You have an agency that, on the one hand, exists in part to promote the meat and dairy industry and, on the other hand, to provide nutritional guidelines to the American public. Talk about a God-damned frigging conflict of interest...................................................................................................And it's all pretty much bullshit, too. I mean, come on. 95% of the health community knows for a fact that we, as a country, consume entirely too much meat. Wouldn't it, folks, make a hell of a lot more sense to put an independent organization in charge of disseminating nutritional information (the World Health Organization, for example)? It sure as hell would seem better to me. But what do I know, right?

2 comments:

Oso said...

I'm aware of the phenomena of the interplay between lobbyist $/government regulation of their industries, but I hadn't considered this particular aspect.

Good writeup and observations. Just to continue on what I wrote on the previous post re: slaugherhouses - dear Lord what we do to those poor animals, to allow unbelievable suffering.

I believe it was Food Inc which showed a family farm where they raised chicken/pigs cattle free range. Then they killed them quickly and processed them. They went to independent laboratories to verify their level of cleanliness and lack of bacteria. They were consistently far above industry standards - yet the FDA (excuse my language) continues to fuck with them all the time.

Neither of us are stupid, we know why that happens.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Unfortunately, Oso, these types of farms are fewer and farther between. In fact, according to Foer's book, "Eating Animals", 98-99% of the meat that this country eats now comes from factory farms. And, yeah, you're absolutely correct, a lot of it IS contaminated. Pretty scary stuff indeed.