The Food Police (7 page)

The emerging agricultural basis of the American colonies was not just a way to make a living; it helped define the nation’s cultural and political identity. In the years surrounding the Revolutionary War, the colonists had to find an identity separate from the British culture they had previously aspired to emulate, and agriculture provided the means of differentiation. In
A Revolution in Eating
, the historian James McWilliams writes that the rejection of British culture “led Americans to embrace the virtues of the farming life as an explicit cultural and political cause. Thus the virtues of the frontier, as a conscious choice, rather than out of necessity, became an animating force in American life.”
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Americans were simple farmers eating simple food and they were proud of it. As the contemporary Thomas Jefferson put it, “Agriculture … is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.” And so began our romance with agriculture.

When the industrial revolution took hold and the process of urbanization began, the changes were thus seen by some as almost un-American. At the time of the Revolution, approximately 90 percent of the American labor force consisted of farmers. By the 1850s the figure had dropped to around 65 percent, and by the early 1900s, farmers made up less than 30 percent of the labor force.
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With the growth of cities, the
rise of textile mills and food manufacturers, the mechanization of farming, and the influx of immigrants, it seemed that a way of life that had defined a nation was being lost. The technical changes that were afoot set the stage for the rise of progressivism and the first epic of the American food police.

The Progressive movement that began in the late 1800s was intimately interested in food and agriculture. In fact, the longstanding importance that progressives have placed on food and health is often underappreciated—as is their paternalistic attempts to influence what others eat.

The Progressive movement can be seen, in part, as an outgrowth of Christian social gospel. It is perhaps no mistake, then, that in the late 1800s the two Kellogg brothers, following practices of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, established what would eventually become known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium. There, such famous patients as Henry Ford and President Warren G. Harding obtained spiritual and physical healing through dietary reform and a host of therapeutic treatments, including frequent enemas. The Kelloggs encouraged exercise and hygiene, but became best known for their promotion of a low-fat, low-protein, high-fiber diet, which was embodied in their new flaked breakfast cereal. The Kelloggs were just a small part of the larger grassroots pure foods movement.

While the Kelloggs were trying to convert all who would listen to their preaching on the latest dietary fad, others were intent on reforming the whole country—by force, if necessary. A confluence of economic and political events in the 1920s gave that period’s food police the leverage to outlaw the sale of alcohol.
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Prohibition became entangled with the suffrage movement, the establishment of the income tax, religious
fervor, and anti-immigration sentiment. Class paternalism was a key motivator for Prohibition, and Progressives were at the forefront of the movement to save lower-class drinkers from their own defective judgment. Some leftists were motivated by the belief that liquor was a tool used by the capitalists to keep the working man in his place. If the capitalists were at fault, I’m not sure who was to blame when people took to the speakeasies and backwoods stills of their own volition.

Rather than ushering in a sober utopia, Prohibition yielded all sorts of chaos and unintended consequences. Banning alcohol only increased the incentive for the likes of Al Capone to provide what customers wanted, only now underground and in a deadlier fashion. The economic foundations of towns such as St. Louis and Milwaukee were devastated. Those with political connections enriched themselves and went their merry way. Religious groups were still allowed to use wine for sacramental purposes, and one rabbi in Los Angeles found a new devotion to the faith—with his congregation increasing from twenty to a thousand families after Prohibition went into effect. There were more than a few O’Malleys and O’Connells claiming Jewish heritage. Policemen willing to turn a blind eye suddenly found their bank accounts ballooning.
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Fortunately for those who wanted to blow off a little steam, state and federal governments realized they needed the liquor taxes, and Roosevelt repealed Prohibition, concluding, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”

I can see it now: some future president thirty years from now—after repealing the fat, soda, and meat taxes, the salt and saturated fat bans, and the prohibition against food traveling more than a hundred miles—saying, “I think this would
be a good time for a Happy Meal.” That is, if there is still someone around able to sell her one.

While Prohibitionists were concerned with the meal’s beverage, others took aim at the main course. Many high school English students will remember Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book
The Jungle
, about the Chicago meatpacking industry. Fewer will probably remember that Sinclair wasn’t primarily concerned about the meat.
The Jungle
overtly promoted socialism, with the book’s main character eventually converting to the cause and going by the name Comrade Jurgis. Published eight years before the First World War and a decade before the Bolshevik Revolution, the book featured characters who could confidently promise a socialist utopia, claiming among other things an “unlimited food supply” and that “after the triumph of the international proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable.”
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It also bears mention that Sinclair was an ardent supporter of Prohibition.

Despite a failed run for the governorship of California, Sinclair could still take some pride in knowing he’d caused enough public outcry to help get new food safety regulations through Congress. Alas, he was dissatisfied that he managed “only” to clean up the meatpacking plants. A dismayed Sinclair said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
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His stomach punch helped lead to the first major federal food regulations and the creation of the precursor to the modern-day FDA. Ironically, this is the same FDA that modern-day progressives deride and the same meatpacking industry criticized in present-day books such as
Fast Food Nation
. At least Sinclair was upfront with his politics.

Although Sinclair complained about collusive meatpackers,
it wasn’t until 1920 that Progressives were able to dissolve the National Packing Company. Federal efforts to prevent monopoly power had been around since the Progressive Woodrow Wilson sought to curb food inflation during World War I. During that time, he had the Federal Trade Commission investigate the agricultural industry from “hoof to the table.”

What exactly has resulted from the century-long attack on the meatpacking industry? Despite decades of investigation and regulation, the meatpacking industry today remains dominated by a few large firms, just as it was in Upton Sinclair’s time. Four companies are today responsible for 80 percent of the beef processed in the United States.
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And the industry probably employs as many immigrants as it did in Sinclair’s time. Killing is nasty business no matter who does it, and it was only slightly less pleasant in 1900 than it is in 2012. As long as there are those who wish to eat meat, there will be those willing to pay others to kill. And until we find some better way to do it, employment in a slaughterhouse provides the best alternative for some people working their way up the economic ladder.

The fact that most of the meat processed in this country comes from a few large firms says more about the way the costs of processing beef change with the scale of production than it does about all the Progressives’ attempts to hinder cost-cutting efforts. The research shows that any market power these firms have gained through consolidation has been far more than offset by technological innovations and cost-cutting measures.
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We have to remember, after all, that these “evil” meatpackers have somehow found a way of selling us beef and pork that is now 20 percent less expensive and
poultry that is 50 percent less expensive than it was in 1970.
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And it is safer, leaner, and of more consistent quality, too.

As evidenced by the creation of food safety standards, not all changes in the Progressive era were counterproductive, and there was at least one other development that had a positive impact on modern-day agriculture. Justin Morrill, a congressman from Vermont, unable to attend college because his father could not afford the tuition, became an outspoken advocate for low-cost college education. In the late 1800s, Morrill helped enact the Land Grant Act, which provided for the establishment of publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions across the nation. The act was followed by legislation providing federal funds for agricultural research and education. These developments eventually led to the creation of universities and agricultural experiment stations from Cornell University to the University of Minnesota to the University of California–Berkeley. These Land Grant universities created new, higher-yielding plant varieties and more productive and sustainable cropping systems, and spread the new scientific findings about food and agriculture all over the countryside. The benefits of these investments have been substantial, with current estimates indicating that the benefits of the research have exceeded their costs by a factor of 32 to 1.
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Economists estimate the rate of return on agricultural research at between 10 and 50 percent.
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Try consistently getting that in the stock market! And no matter what you’ve been told, the primary beneficiaries of this research haven’t been farmers, industrialists, or agribusinesses—but you and me, the food consumers.
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Yet the food police’s most ardent wish is to strip us of these benefits and have us pay more for food.

If America seemed to be on a path toward a more natural and less industrialized food production system, the Great Depression and the Second World War would change all that as the country recognized the need for a production system that could feed the nation in a cost-effective manner. Spawned by the innovations coming from entrepreneurs and the agricultural colleges, dramatic productivity increases began to occur. In the early 1900s a farmer could expect to harvest about 29 bushels per acre of corn planted. With the development of hybrid seeds and the application of synthetic fertilizer, average corn yields increased to about 40 bushels per acre in the 1950s, and jumped to 113 bushels per acre in the 1980s. Today, with the use of biotechnology, average corn yields are around 130 bushels per acre, and yields of close to 300 bushels per acre can even be attained in ideal conditions.

It wasn’t just corn; the same thing was happening in all facets of agriculture. In the 1960s a sow could be expected to produce about 1,400 pounds of pork through the offspring she birthed. Today the average sow will produce about 3,600 pounds of pork. The result is that food is now
much
cheaper than it once was. As a percentage of their income, Americans today spend half as much as they did on food a hundred years ago. Of course, incomes have risen dramatically over that time as well—meaning that the real price of food has substantially fallen. It took a schoolteacher in 1900 a little more than one hour’s worth of work to earn enough to buy a dozen eggs. Today’s schoolteacher has to work less than three minutes to earn enough to buy a dozen eggs.
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Dramatically higher levels of productivity imply that today’s farmers (and, by implication, today’s consumers) get
much more food using many fewer inputs. That’s the signal that falling food prices send us: we’re using up less of the things we all deem valuable. Despite the fact that agricultural output is 2.75 times higher than in 1950, U.S. Department of Agriculture data reveal that agricultural input use has remained essentially unchanged.
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That’s like a technological innovation enabling me to write almost three books in the same time it now takes me to write one. These changes imply that farmers can now produce a lot more food with a lot less land. Indeed, despite now having a lot more to eat, agricultural land use is down 27.5 percent since 1950. One would expect this development to be a source of great pleasure and pride for the modern food progressive worried about the environment and the poor, but the food police are anything but happy about the way we eat.

The U.S. farm population peaked around 1910, and after the First World War, commodity prices fell precipitously as European agricultural production resumed. Progressives of the era lacked the power to enact the price controls they desired, but the intellectual framework provided by the Progressive era enabled the New Deal policies of the 1930s. It wasn’t until the Great Depression that Franklin Roosevelt enacted farm price supports and supply controls in an effort to better the lot of farmers.

The Progressives’ efforts eventually led to outright destruction of agricultural commodities at a time when much of the nation was starving. One of the most notable cases was that of Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn, who was taken on by the U.S. government for the heinous act of growing too much wheat. Even though he planned to use the wheat only on his
own farm, the Supreme Court decided that his actions had violated the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. His sin? By growing more wheat than his allotment, the court claimed, he had indirectly pushed the price below the bureaucratically determined minimum. The solution was simple: his wheat had to be destroyed.
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This kind of inanity wasn’t limited to court cases. The earlier Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 paid farmers to destroy hogs, and millions of dollars were paid out to cotton farmers to plow their crop back into the ground!