It's seriously insane, the power that the industry wields versus how impotent the federal government regulatory agencies are. What's so troubling is how in bed the U.S. Department of Agriculture is with entities like the U.S. Cattlemen's Beef Association, Monsanto and the meatpacking industry (to name but a few). It's like an interlocking directorate of conflicting interests.
Add to this the legacy of deregulation starting with the Reagan and Bush administrations and zero enforcement of the Sherman anti-trust legislation, and you have a taxpayer-subsidized juggernaut devastating the environment which also affects our health in so many ways from levels of obesity which the CDC has now termed epidemic, to the outbreak of food-borne pathogens that sicken thousands every year.
I wonder if this is the issue which will spur me to activism.
The thing is, this is not a vegan issue. It isn't an animal rights "fringe" issue. This issue affects anyone who eats anything grown, raised, bred, manufactured or processed anywhere: in short, it affects everyone.
We are, all of us, being fed poison, shit, drugs, diseased tissue and pathogens, all of which has been stamped USDA-approved.*
What the fuck?
This could be the food revolution for all of us, vegans, vegetarians, flexivores, frutitarians, unabashed omnivores, or I-only-eat-fish-on-Fridays-in-Lent-ivores.
*Don't believe me? Check out my abbreviated reading list:
- Diet for a Dead Planet, Christopher Cook
- Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
- Food, Inc: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter and Poorer, and What You Can Do About It Karl Weber, editor (companion guide to the upcoming documentary Food, Inc. The Movie)
- Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry, Gail Eisnitz
- USDA Inc.: How Agribusiness has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Philip Mattera (pdf document)
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