The Meaty Truth (18 page)

Silencing American Voices

America prides itself on being a country built on freedom of speech. Corporate interests are quickly and swiftly limiting that ability. Some of the most atrocious ways they are achieving this is through ag-gag laws, which make it illegal to defame or speak out against factory-farming practices. To agribusiness’s horror, undercover footage of atrocious practices in its “farms” that reveals the truth behind the factory doors made it to mainstream media.

The industry is worried about videos and photographs surfacing that show animal cruelty and filthy and barbaric conditions fit for the spread of pandemics, which could undercut its profits. Nor is it pleased that America is finding out just how disgustingly and inhumanely the animals that wind up on our plates are treated. The reason factory farms survive is because most Americans have no idea how they operate.

The agribusiness industry has responded to these revelations not by changing its practices, but by pushing for legislation that makes it illegal to showcase pictures or videos of factory farms. It has made very clear that the goal of these laws that result in jail time for offenders is to protect the industry. Now, friends, this should be a major clue that the industry is not engaging in wholesome activities. Why would it evade transparency if it has nothing to hide?

Most of us would think that these bills would never pass through and become law. How could states pass such egregious freedom-of-speech violations that work to make sure industry practices are secretive? And yet ag-gag laws passed in Iowa, Missouri, and Utah in 2011 and 2012. Ten other legislatures, including those in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Vermont all proposed bills for consideration in 2013. Pennsylvania’s proposed law even criminalizes downloading photographs or videos of factory farms over the Internet.

The corporations’ supposed-legal basis for these claims is the violation of their private property rights. They liken it to someone going into a person’s private home with a hidden camera. That is quite a logical stretch. What agribusiness seems to be missing is that our food production is not made in private homes but in corporate practices. America, let’s be honest. This has nothing to do with trespassing and everything to do with keeping the public in the dark so we know as little as possible about how food is produced. To propose this legislation in the first place is ridiculous, but to actually have it pass in certain states is preposterous. If anything, these ag-gag laws are encroaching on our civil liberties and those, rather than corporate interests, should be protected.

Silencing America’s voices just begins with ag-gag laws. Agribusiness has also sought to enact cheeseburger laws, right-to-farm laws, and veggie-libel laws. Cheeseburger laws make it illegal for plaintiffs to sue corporations for obesity claims. Surprisingly, cheeseburger laws have passed in twenty-four states. The most infamous laws supporting agribusiness are probably food-defamation laws, or veggie-libel laws. Oprah Winfrey brought these laws to light in 1996, when she claimed that she would never eat a hamburger again after learning how it was produced. Subsequently, sales of beef went down, and Texas cattlemen, led by Cactus Feeders, Inc. owner Paul Engler, sued her for defamation and lost profits.
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Apparently, the Texas cattlemen don’t believe in freedom of speech. Even though Oprah won, after a very expensive and drawn-out case, the fact that a person can get sued for expressing a personal opinion based on fact goes against the very principles of America as the “land of the free, home of the brave.”

And yet, veggie-libel laws have passed in thirteen states to date. If people voice that they hate Brussels sprouts or broccoli, should they be sued? Ag-gag laws seek to protect economic interests, but they are coming at an expense to American civil liberties. If we don’t like the way corporations are destroying our health and our environment, and if we never want to eat chicken again, we damn well should be able to express that opinion without retribution. In case agribusiness forgot: freedom of speech is not a privilege, it’s an American right.

Shockingly, the agribusiness industry has gone so far as to label those who speak out against their practices as terrorists. Dubbed the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, these laws provide stiff penalties for criminal conduct such as vandalism or theft when a farm is involved. While we wholeheartedly do not endorse violence or destruction of property, branding Americans as terrorists is beyond extreme. The fact that thirty-nine states have enacted eco-terrorism laws is not only mind-blowing, but also speaks to the clout of agribusiness in politics. The point of these laws is to establish a level of fear for attempting to go against these corporations that are “innocently trying to protect America’s food supply.” They aren’t
fooling anyone. Ask yourself: do these food corporations care more about their bottom lines or our health?

We can’t trust an industry to protect American interests when its wallet is at stake. The industry has proven this to us time and again through pushing chemically laced and genetically engineered additives in our food onto unassuming and trusting consumers. As former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich proclaims, “Companies are not interested in the public good. It is not their responsibility to be good.”
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Let’s be frank; the only way the food supply gets safer is when the public steps up to require corporations to disclose what is happening behind closed doors. For example, in 2009, undercover footage of downed cows, too sick to walk or stand, being forklifted to slaughter at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company plant in Southern California led to one of the largest meat recalls in US history to date. Since downed cows can pose a substantial human-health risk, more than 143 million pounds of beef were recalled.
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Without this footage, the industry would have continued these practices that work to endanger, not make safer or protect, our food supply.

The danger of these ag-libel laws is they undercut necessary and healthy inquiry that actually benefits consumers. All of these laws that stifle investigation and the flow of information go directly against consumer interests. America, we were born out of the fight for freedom to express our beliefs, and these very values are being corrupted by shortsighted corporate greed.

Government is supposed to protect its citizens, and yet our government has made it clear that it doesn’t give a damn about our interests. The National Meat, Dairy, Pork, and Chicken Councils are taking legislative action to avoid regulation, as well as keep the public in the dark about what is in our food. Slack regulation hurts our loved ones and our planet. Don’t be fooled. Do you really think our food is being inspected? It is time to enforce corporate accountability for making us and our planet sick. We are done standing by the sidelines. Let’s reestablish a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Know your Sh!t Solutions:

1) The chance of your meat and dairy being inspected is slim to none. Don’t be fooled by labels claiming it is USDA approved. The USDA inspects plans on paper. Safeguard your family by buying organic, plant-based foods.

2) Don’t blindly follow USDA guidelines. They are paid for by the meat, dairy, egg, and chicken councils, as well as influenced by Coca-Cola. If you trust them to give you unbiased information on what is healthy, think again. Better yet, get informed!

3) Do it yourself and grow your own garden. There is nothing better than homegrown veggies.

4) See a law you don’t like? Want to protect your freedom of speech? Say something!

CHAPTER 8

The Real Cost of “Cheap” Food

“If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.”

~ The New York Times

A
re we really getting the best bang for our buck when we eat meat and dairy? On walking into a grocery store, $3.50 for chicken breasts, $1.50 for a pound of ground beef, or $2.60 for a carton of eggs seems like a fantastic bargain. Not even close. When it comes to meat and dairy products, price and value are not one and the same. These grocery store “bargain” prices are deceiving, because they do not reflect the enormous, external costs to society in health and environmental costs that are not directly paid for at the cash register.

Let’s take, for instance, that $1.50 for a pound of hamburger meat. To produce that meat under the factory farming system requires oil for fertilizers, abundant land to grow crops for animal feed, antibiotics to compensate for the unsanitary conditions and disease outbreaks, growth hormones to raise animals at faster rates, and waste management to truck away the billions of tons of manure generated by the animals. This doesn’t include the amount of destruction left in factory farming’s wake from the cost of cleaning up polluted water, the irreversible loss of biodiversity and beautiful ecosystems, air pollution, global warming, and the destruction of our natural environment as well as the staggering health-care costs to fix our bodies from eating unhealthy food.

Overall the meat and dairy industries impose the highest costs to our society among all industries across the board. Consider this: for every one dollar of animal product sold, it generates $1.70 in additional costs from environmental to health care.
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This is nearly $7.8 billion not reflected on our grocery bills. Yet we are still paying for these in health-care costs and environmental degradation. These impacts have measurable, financial consequences. The hidden costs of meat and dairy-centered breakfasts, lunches, and dinners include $314 billion in health-care costs, $38 billion in subsidies, $37 billion in environmental costs, $21 billion in cruelty costs, and $4 billion in fishing-related costs.
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To put the subsidies in to perspective, Big Oil only receives a meager $10 billion in subsidies.

In total, the final bill for production costs not paid for by agribusiness is at least $414 billion.
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This price includes higher taxes, health insurance premiums, decreased value of homes near factory farms, and loss of natural resources. Next time you are at the grocery store, realize that the true price of that gallon of milk is not $3.00 but $9.00. Those pork ribs should cost us $36.00, not $12.00. Factoring in the external costs of factory farming at $1.70 per one dollar of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish sold triples the prices of the goods. We need to start paying the true “value” and cost to society of these food products.

The US Meat and Dairy industries have the sweetest business deal in history. No other industry, including big oil and tobacco, has come anywhere close to this level of governmental handouts and gotten away
without paying for any of the consequences. Each time the oil industry creates a spill, it is required to foot the bill. When the tobacco industry damaged our nation’s health, it had to pay Americans nearly $400 billion in health-care costs accumulated over five decades.
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For some reason we have exempted the animal agriculture industry from the same responsibility. As a society we are footing this staggering bill for any and all of the massive problems it is creating. We think our money can be better spent on less destructive practices. It’s time to realize that meat production is like the two-cent coin—it costs us more than it is worth to produce.

The High Price of the “Meat Maketh Man” Myth

Price is the most powerful determinant of how we act as consumers. The majority of us live on a budget, and so we tend to buy the cheapest food possible. Overall, the amount of money we spend on food has decreased since the 1990s. In 1990, we spent 2.4 percent of our gross incomes on food. As a society we only spend about 1.7 percent of our overall income on food today—the lowest percentage of almost every other nation. Since 1979, meat and dairy products have gotten progressively cheaper. Egg prices have decreased by 79 percent, butter by 57 percent, and bacon by 25 percent.
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Going back to Economics 101, when price falls, demand increases. Most of the food products we buy are meat and dairy, as we presume they are the cheapest “healthy” foods.

As the prices have dropped, we have been subsequently bombarded with messages from the industry and government to continue consuming these products high in saturated fat and cholesterol. This governmental push and support for meat and dairy products above healthier food options could have a little something to do with the millions of dollars that the industry shells out to Congress.

The most frustrating realization is that our government is subsidizing all of the wrong foods for our health. Since the implementation of factory farming and the $38 billion in government subsidies to factory farms, the meat and dairy industries have been able to secure some of the lowest retail prices in history for these products. To put this in perspective, this is nearly half of the total unemployment packages paid by all fifty states in 2012. By
comparison, our healthiest foods available—vegetables and fruits—do not receive anywhere near the funding that processed foods and meat and dairy products receive in both direct and indirect subsidies.

The federal government is fostering economic conditions and policies that are destroying American lives. Due to “low” meat and dairy prices, as a nation, Americans consume more meat per person, a total of two hundred pounds per year, than anyone else on the planet. We pay for it too. This ridiculously high consumption of the wrong foods is making us extremely sick and our pocketbooks poor. Obesity is a national epidemic and costs the nation $147 billion dollars annually.
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The animal-food industry costs us $600 billion in health-care costs every two years.
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$600 billion. Think about that number. Of the 750,000 Americans who died in 2011, one-third of the deaths were attributable to cardiovascular disease. In 2010, the bill for cardiovascular disease totaled $273 billion in direct health-care costs and an added $173 billion in indirect costs from productivity loss and premature death.
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At our current rate of meat and dairy consumption, heart disease is only expected to increase. By 2030, experts are predicting that 116 million Americans will have their hearts broken and cost us a staggering $818 billion. What is the number-one, unanimously agreed-upon contributor to heart disease in scientific literature? Animal products.