I just learned today that there is a MEAT INDUSTRY HALL OF FAME. Dan Murphy and Chuck Jolley founded it in 2009, and act as Executive Director and President respectively. Murphy is a meat industry commentator, former Vice President for the American Meat Institute, and author of the book, “The Meat of the Matter: Why Everything You Think You Know About Meat is Dead Wrong”. Jolley is president of Jolley & Associates, a marketing and public relations firm that concentrates on the food industry.
Here is a list of the Inaugural Class of Inductees in 2009, which includes 21 members elected by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Trustees. According to Mr. Jolley, it’s a virtual “who’s who” of the meat industry, and includes industry executives and university researchers.
Earlier this month, the Hall of Fame announced the 12 new Inductees for 2010. The list for this year also centers on industry executives and researchers, but includes three post-mortem inductees that are particularly noteworthy. These are: Ray Kroc, founder and chairperson of McDonald’s Corporation; Col. Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken; and Dave Thomas, founder and CEO of Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers.
In related news…The State Food and Drug Administration in China is calling for a national investigation of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets after reports that they contain a chemical also used in Silly Putty.
Filed under: Agribusiness | 1 Comment
Happy Re-birthday 猪坚强
Last week at the Jianchuan Museum outside of Chengdu, 猪坚强 (the hero pig of China) celebrated her second “re-birth” day, exactly two years after she emerged from the rubble of the Wenchuan earthquake. She was reunited with her owners, pigged out on birthday cake, and was the star of a press conference and photo shoot.
Here’s a link to a short video of the event in English, and an article in Chinese. (photo re-posted from Chinese article at news.163.com)
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(1) Thank you Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, for this brilliantly straight-forward article about private investment in agriculture and destruction of the “global peasantry”.
It is regrettable that, instead of rising to the challenge of developing agriculture in a way that is more socially and environmentally sustainable, we act as if accelerating the destruction of the global peasantry could be accomplished responsibly.
Please read the article here, at farmlandgrab.org, a blog maintained by GRAIN.
(2) Here is an article called, “Pig-Sticking Hungarian Style: Can Small Farmers be Saved?” from Conducive Chronicle on May 14, 2010. The author, Matthew Treadwell, writes about witnessing an “old school” pig slaughter in a small Hungarian village in 2004, and situates his experience within new agricultural policies the country came under with accession to the EU that same year. Aside from using words such as “disgusting” and “nauseating” to describe various slaughter processes and resulting consumables, which I find rather unnecessary and counterproductive, the article provides some insight to the challenges small farmers face when agricultural policies take a decidedly industrial turn.
(3) I’m an occasional guest writer at the China section of IATP’s Think Forward blog (Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy). Here is a recent post about “Chinese piggybusiness”. It is very short, but includes current estimates about the the share of pig production controlled by agribusiness firms in Sichuan Province.
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The EPA just announced new members of its Farm, Ranch, and Rural Communities Committee (FRRCC). Dennis Treacy, the Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer at Smithfield Foods is among the appointees. The FRRCC is an independent committee that advises the EPA on issues such as non-source point water pollution, agricultural air quality, and environmental markets. Smithfield Foods is the world’s largest pork producer and processor, factory farm granddaddy, and environmental, antitrust, and labor law violator. Add to that dodgy international practices and an arguably central role in causing the “swine flu” epidemic in 2009, and we have to wonder what on earth a Smithfield exec is doing advising the EPA on ANYTHING!
Surely, it is Smithfield’s “Core Values” that qualify Mr. Treacy to sit on the FRRCC. The company now lists “To protect the environment” and “To have a positive impact on our communities” as 2 of their 5 core values. The other values of the moment are “To produce safe, high-quality, nutritious food”, “To be an employer of choice” and “To advance animal welfare”. These would be better named, “Things we continually violate, destroy or are sued for”.
Seriously.
Smithfield was fined by the EPA for violation of the Clean Water Act –the $12.6 million fine was the third largest civil penalty ever issued by the EPA.
The US Department of Justice assessed Smithfield $900,000 in 2009 because of illegal merger activity with Premium Standard Farms LLC in 2006.
The National Labor Relations Board won a lawsuit against Smithfield in 2006 for an unfair union organizing election.
Smithfield has continually come under fire for the use of gestation stalls and farrowing crates in pig production, the former they vowed to phase out in 10 years, but then recanted.
And while Smithfield denies it to the teeth, local sources claim that production practices at a Smithfield subsidiary in Perote, Mexico helped cause the “swine flu”, or “NAFTA flu” epidemic of 2009.
So, Smithfield, give me a break with these “Core Values”. These are the “Core Areas” where you are failing miserably, but instead of changing course (why would you when you continue to reign supreme in the agbiz world?), you name them and call them your values. This may work for impressing your investors and dazzling your public with shiny propaganda brochures, and it may help you get execs on “independent” legislative committees, but it’s embarrassing.
In addition to Mr. Treacy, agribusiness is further represented on the FRRCC by Tom McDonald, the Vice President for Environmental Affairs at JBS Five Rivers Cattle Feeding; Steven Balling (Committee Chair), a Director at Del Monte Foods; and Janis McFarland from Syngenta. Here is a full list of the new committee.
Filed under: Agribusiness | 1 Comment
Debates surrounding the role of livestock production and environmental degradation got a shot in the arm yesterday with the release of a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Through their International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, the UNEP published a report on June 2, 2010 called Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production – Priority Products and Materials. The authors set out to answer a basic question: “how [do] different economic activities influence the use of natural resources and the generation of pollution?” (p. 9). They analyzed industrial production processes, product and consumption categories, and materials and resources, consulting a wide variety of studies conducted in particular countries and at the global scale. The group concluded that the two most important priority areas in terms of environmental and resource impacts are (1) food and agriculture, and (2) fossil energy carriers used for heating, transportation, metal refining, and the production of manufactured goods.
This excerpt from the discussion about food and agriculture points to livestock production specifically, and implicitly recommends that we eat less meat and dairy, and eat closer to home:
Food production is the most significant influence on land use and therefore habitat change, water use, overexploitation of fisheries and pollution with nitrogen and phosphorus. In poorer countries, it is also the most important cause of emissions of greenhouse gases (CH 4 and N2O). Both emissions and land use depend strongly on diets. Animal products, both meat and dairy, in general require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant-based alternatives. In addition, non-seasonal fruits and vegetables cause substantial emissions when grown in greenhouses, preserved in a frozen state, or transported by air. As total food consumption and the share of animal calories increase with wealth, nutrition for rich countries tends to cause higher environmental impacts than for poor countries. (p. 78)
The meat industry is predictably quick to respond to this publication. Pundits argue that like the FAO’s 2006 report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, this one is equally flawed for overemphasizing the role of animal agriculture in environmental degradation. As evidence of these claims, commentators continually reference a speech by UC Davis Professor Frank M. Mitloehner’s at a National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in March 2010[1]. Professor Mitloehner argued that the FAO’s oft-cited statistic that the livestock sector is responsible for 18% of global CO2 emissions is inflated because it was calculated as a sum of emissions throughout the animals’ lifecycles, including those emitted in the in the process of feed production. He said that the same kind of lifecycle analysis was not conducted for the transportation sector, meaning, “This lopsided analysis is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue”.
I’ve written a bit about this issue here. The meat industry loves to use Mitloehner’s argument to exonerate the livestock sector, and often goes a step further to say that decreased meat consumption would only lead to increased hunger in the world’s poorest countries. Agribusinesses see traditionally poor countries as sites for exploitation of people and resources, or as exciting new markets where middle classes are growing, like in China and India. From this neoliberal point of view, the way to combat hunger is to open national markets to unfettered agricultural trade, and to let agribusiness firms restructure economies such that “the market” becomes the grand (and fairest) distributor of agricultural goods and resources. The argument that less meat equals more hunger is based on a logic that only industrial livestock production can provide meat for the masses, and that this particular form of agricultural development is the saving grace for curing the ills of hunger and poverty. I’m afraid the apples and oranges that are constantly being conflated these analyses are industrial meats on the one hand and let’s call them locally-produced, small-scale meats on the other.
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions and a whole host of social and political inequities, the scale and mode of livestock production that is the problem is large-scale, industrial, and commercial in nature. This CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) mode is the fastest growing form of livestock production in the world, as agribusiness exports the so-called “factory farming” model to the global South, dramatically restructuring agricultural economies and societies along the way. Hungry people already placed outside of the reach of the market, become even more vulnerable when agribusiness, in cohort with governments, significantly changes the agricultural economy of a place such that small-scale producers are considered redundant. For instance, when “the market” controls prices, costs, and standards, it becomes increasingly difficult for small-scale farmers to buy and sell livestock, and to conform to the global industry standards that are set by international institutions in an attempt to standardize the entire planet, all in the name of profit.
Food and agriculture analysts, both at institutions such as the UN and FAO, and in the popular press, need to be very specific when making calls for decreased meat consumption as a priority for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial production, based on long-distance grain trade and market monopoly or oligopoly at any stage of production, is the apple here – a rotten apple that needs to be tossed to the compost pile where the magic of microorganisms can break it down and create something useful. No doubt, people need to eat (and be sold!) less of this kind of meat. The orange in the analogy is small-scale livestock farming, whether it involves animal grazing or feeding. Rather than reducing this form of meat production and consumption, we would do well to learn from it, fund it, and support it, through agricultural and social policy, NOT just through the market. Well-intentioned “vote with your dollar” food campaigns not only give the vote only to those with the dollars to spend, but also place the onus of fixing a flawed agricultural system squarely on consumers. Real change will only come from combining consumer food movements with policies that work for the good of people, not profits, and that hold agribusinesses and their “markets” accountable for the crises they have created.
[1] Professor Mitloehner originally published his analysis with two co-authors in Advances in Agronomy in 2009.
Filed under: Agribusiness, Eating | 1 Comment
Yesterday I made a trip to the Jianchuan Museum in Anren, a small town about 140 km west of Chengdu. It was actually a pilgrimage to see 猪坚强[1], the hero pig of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. 猪坚强 (zhu jianqiang),whose name means “strong pig”, is a celebrated cultural figure and beacon of hope, and was named China’s most inspirational animal in 2008. Zhang Yunteng and Jin Bo even collaborated to write a song and make a music video about her. It’s worth watching.
The hero pig’s story is pretty remarkable. On June 17, 2008, a group of soldiers with a rescue team in Pengzhou found this persistent piggy under the rubble of a house that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake. She survived for 36 days by eating charcoal and drinking rainwater. When the soldiers found her, she weighed only 50 kg (110 lbs), about a third of her pre-disaster weight.
News of this unlikely survivor spread, and soon Chinese netizens were begging that the pig never be slaughtered, some even offering to take care of her themselves. But after loosing everything in the earthquake, the pig’s owner, Wan Xinming, had no way to feed her.
Enter Dr. Fan Jianchuan, founder and curator of the Jianchuan Museum. Dr. Fan bought the pig from Mr. Wan for 3,008 RMB ($438), and named her “strong pig”, with the nickname “Baby 36” for the 36 days she survived in the rubble. Dr. Fan vowed that the pig would never end up on the wrong end of a chopstick, and would spend the rest of her days as part of the Wenchuan Earthquake display at his museum.
Okay. So there’s a national hero pig living only an hour’s bus ride away from me. Can you imagine my excitement at the prospect of meeting her? Or my disappointment when we arrived at the museum only to find said hero slumped motionless in the corner of a concrete cage? Having plumped up to over 150 kg (330 lbs), Lady Strong Pig seeming to have about as much spunk as a Krispy Kreme-fed human couch potato. I couldn’t even find her at first, hidden as she was behind an enormous plow on display for its role in clearing rubble in the earthquake.
Let me describe the scene. 猪坚强’s cage is built into the side of an outdoor concrete structure, and is about 10’ x 10’. The only thing in the cage is the hero pig herself, and her feeding trough from Tuanshan Village, on display but empty. Above her are photos and descriptions of her significance — images of a skinny pig crawling out from under debris, and of a happy, much plumper pig feeding on greens.
I guess I just wasn’t prepared for this scene. I’d read media stories about Baby 36, all of which extolled her posh post-quake lifestyle, and included pictures of her frolicking in green fields. I’d even seen video of her romping about. So when I met the hero pig, I sort of felt like I was meeting the washed-up, retired version of herself, almost like Mikey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler, but with less desire to stay on top. I wanted her to do something heroic, or at least stand up so I could have a proper picture taken with her. Instead, we visited her cage 3 times over the span of 4 hours, and each time found her in the same lifeless position. The best I could do is get a shot of me with her big ol’ pork butt.
Now, because I’m the type of person who can’t encounter a fly without offering some kind of analysis, and because my current obsession and life project is analyzing the Chinese pig industry (as a development sociologist), I can’t help but share a couple of thoughts about the hero pig.
First, that the miraculous animal that survives the earthquake for 36 days by scavenging for charcoal and rainwater is a pig is no surprise. Pigs eat anything and everything, and this makes them exceptional livestock, particularly for small-scale farmers. Contrary to agribusiness and researchers (as if the two are distinct these days!), pigs don’t need to be raised on a diet of corn and/or soybeans. Agribusiness needs to sell corn and soybeans, but pigs don’t need to eat them[2].
Second, that the hero pig’s digs are Spartan at best might possibly reflect new ideas about pig housing. I wanted to see the pig running around in a “pig sporting arena” (I’ve been to pig farms that have a yard so named), or perhaps bedding on straw with a little mud for rolling around in, or maybe she would have her own personal lanai. Instead, her home looks like the inside of a commercial pig farm, complete with a spanking clean concrete floor and metal grates for caging (Her housing was designed and provided by Baisikang Biotech Co.). I imagine that this is considered the lap of luxury, as industrial production is thought to be the height of modernity and animal welfare.
Finally, I need to look into this further, but 猪坚强 doesn’t seem to be a native Chinese breed of swine. She looks more like a Western breed, perhaps crossed with a local breed. This provides another little nugget of insight that tells us about the changing Chinese pig industry, from genetics and semen at the micro end of things, all the way to housing and marketing on a broader scale.
I don’t want to overstate my disapproval of the hero pig’s quarters at the museum. In fact, she gets taken out for walks twice a day, and was even put on a diet at one point when she became too fat and lazy. She also gets heaped with attention, and people, like the other tourists who visited her yesterday, really seem to love her. We witnessed lots of baby-talking to the pig, and people remarking at how amazing she is. My comments are more a result of reality not matching expectation. I was hoping for something more along the lines of: A girl and a hero pig, who upon catching the other’s gaze, instantly recognize a close bond of the porcine kind. The pig nuzzles the girl. The girls strokes the pig’s back. The two pose for a picture, vow to be BFFs, and to write often. Maybe this was asking too much.
[1] There is some disagreement about the pig’s name. Some sources list it as 朱坚强, using the Chinese surname 朱 (Zhu), which is pronounced the same as 猪(zhu), meaning pig. But at the museum, the placards use 猪坚强.
[2] Feeding pigs corn and soybeans (or other feed grains), of course, produces leaner meat, but this is a separate issue entirely.
Filed under: Pigs | 3 Comments
breaking the seal
For this, the first post on my very own blog, I’m going to cheat a little. I wrote an essay a few weeks ago about grappling with being a vegetarian that my friend (and blog mentor) Raj Patel posted on his site. It’s called “If I could, I would eat that pig snout…notes from a reluctant vegetarian in Chengdu on going whole hog” (click if you care to read it).
Ironically, I got the chance to put my real mouth where my loud mouth is this week on a research trip. I went out of town, and in addition to having to drink lots of baijiu (Chinese liquor), I ate pig ear, pork dumplings, back fat, red braised pork, and a fiery hot Sichuan pork dish when they were served to me as the guest of honor. I’m not sure if I broke the seal to further meat eating, or if this was just the inevitable emergency situation I’d been dreading, but I’m glad to know I can choke the stuff down if I need to!
Filed under: Eating, Pigs | 4 Comments
