Keep the Food, Inc. Conversation Going (and Win a DVD!)

[sabelmouse]

When we set out to make Food, Inc. I was hoping to create a film that would raise questions, open eyes and prompt people around the country to think about how our food system operates.

Industrial food companies don't want us thinking about how our food is produced. They spend billions of dollars maintaining the myth of small family farms with white picket fences and cows on green pastures. In reality our food is produced on massive factory farms.

This system has been transformed more in the last 40 years than the previous 10,000. We are spending less money on food than at any other time in history but there are high costs to this inexpensive food that we don't see at the checkout counter. This food system is making us sick. One-third of Americans born after the year 2000 will develop early-onset diabetes, our water and land are contaminated with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer, animals are abused, and the workers (most of whom are illegal immigrants) who grow and process our food are subject to inhumane conditions.

Now that the public is becoming aware of the realities and consequences of industrial food production, there is a growing movement for change. And the food companies are starting to take notice. Since Food, Inc. opened in theaters, I've been invited to sit down with the very same companies that once refused to appear on camera.

Food, Inc. was released on DVD this week and I hope this conversation continues in living rooms, classrooms, community centers and dining rooms around the country. So tell your family, tell a friend to see Food, Inc. - keep the conversation going. Let's work to change our food system...one meal at a time.

To celebrate the release, we are giving away 10 Food, Inc DVDs right here on HuffPost. Here is what you need to do: Tweet your most creative thoughts about Food, Inc (how it changed your life, a new favorite recipe, what you learned from the film or why you want to see it.) Be sure to include #HPGFoodInc in your tweet and are following @HuffPostGreen so we can DM you if you're the winner. Send them by 5pm EST on Monday November 9th . (If you prefer, you can also leave a 140 character comment in the comment section below.) We'll choose our favorite 10 tweets and send you a DVD.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kenner/keep-the-food-inc-conve...

[sabelmouse]

Eating Animals: Jonathan Safran Foer Talks To Ellen About His New Book (VIDEO)


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/eating-animals-jonathan-s_...

Jonathan Safran Foer spoke with Ellen Degeneres today about his new book, Eating Animals, which uncovers the horrible world of factory farming. (Check out HuffPost's series of conversations about the book here!) He explained his mission writing the book, and how becoming a new father drove him to action. He also challenged environmentalists to step up to the plate -- factory farming, he said, contributes to global warming more than any other factor. What little steps can we take to changing the way we eat? Foer says the most important thing is to inform yourself, and learn as much as you can about what's going on.


WATCH:

First clip is an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer. Scroll down for Foer answering audience questions.




Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/eating-animals-jonathan-s_...

[sabelmouse]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/mZ42SCC1TX8O3

[sabelmouse]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/ieating-animalsi-caring-...


Eating Animals: Caring Is Not A Zero-Sum Game

Friday I read the strangest, most infuriating book review (on the front page of the New York Times Arts Section) I have ever seen. Minutes later, while I was still shaking my head, Larry called to rant about the "smug" review of Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, a book we had both recently read. "What's wrong with that reviewer?" he yelled in my ear. "Doesn't she care about fecal soup?!" See for yourself, read the concluding paragraph of Michiko Kakutani's review and tell me if it isn't completely insane:


It's arguments like this that undermine the many more valid observations in this book, and make readers wonder how the author can expend so much energy and caring on the fate of pigs and chickens, when, say, malaria kills nearly a million people a year (most of them children), and conflict and disease in Congo since the mid-1990s have left an estimated five million dead and hundreds of thousands of women and girls raped and have driven more than a million people from their homes.


Since Kakutani believes that caring is a zero-sum game, and that most of us are too pea -brained to care about more than one thing at a time, she felt it was important to put Foer in his place for raising a voice against factory farming -- an industry that, let's face it, is merely really, really, really horrible.

Since reading her review, we've found it difficult to remember why we ever cared about what kind of car we drive, or whether to pay or shoplift, or who to punch and when. She's right: in the bright light of malaria, everything else is invisible. So no more money to the NRDC, no more hand wringing about health care, and no more helping old ladies across the street. Screw you, injured person lying against the curb, there are hungry kids somewhere else! Better still, here's a kick!

One of the many problems with Kakutani's lame and flamboyantly irrational review is that it suggests her own irrelevancy. If one shouldn't spend time and energy worrying about 50 billion factory-farmed animals (and the attendant environmental and human health effects, which comprise the other half of Foer's book, and are curiously ignored in the review), then one most definitely shouldn't spend time reviewing books. How many kids did Kakutani's recent columns of text on Sarah Palin--"...she does a lively job of conveying the frontier feel of the 49th state..." -- save?

Except that we need book reviewers, not in spite of the good they might be doing in the world, but -- in the case of good reviewers -- because of the good they are doing. The function of a reviewer is not to impress her personality at any expense, but to connect readers to books, ideally to those they wouldn't likely find (or want to find) on their own.

We found Foer's book that way. We didn't know Foer, and Eating Animals hadn't crossed our radar yet. Someone said, "Check this out. You're gonna care about this." That was the understatement of the century. What should we care about more than what we are putting into our bodies and feeding our children every day, three times a day? Foer's book raises critical ethical questions we all need to face. I agree with Foer -- who doesn't? -- we shouldn't raise hens in cramped and stacked cages, or pregnant hogs in crates too small to allow for movement. We shouldn't modify animals' bodies in ways that destine them for suffering and steady diets of drugs. We shouldn't remove their appendages without anesthetic. We shouldn't pretend they aren't alive and we shouldn't be eating animals riddled with sickness and disease. We shouldn't be polluting the planet to satisfy our appetites.

Such care is not, as Kakutani implies, excessive. It is basic human decency. And decency never takes away from humans -- not even when it's directed toward animals. It's frankly hard to imagine the person who would argue that it's no big deal to systematically harm animals, while at the same time be a champion of human causes.

What a shame this book didn't have a more thoughtful review.

[sabelmouse]

[sabelmouse]

The Center for Consumer Freedom Wants You to Close Your Eyes to Animal Abuse

Stories of animal abuse and meat recalls abound in the news, a quick search of YouTube will result in ghastly videos of animals being tortured and undercover investigations turn up hideous acts of violence that some would like to decry as propaganda from animal rights zealots. If activists aren’t helping, then who is? The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) would like us to believe they are, but the realities of factory farming are getting harder and harder to ignore, deny or explain.

In an article by Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society, that appeared in the Huffington Post in response to the investigation of Bushway Packing Inc., Pacelle called out the CCF for what they really are; a front group for industries including tobacco, alcohol, agribusiness and essentially anything else that could possibly be bad for us.

With a name like the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), one might be inclined to think they’re some sort of watchdog group looking out for the consumer. Unfortunately, the name is misleading, and they appear to be anything but.

CCF, which was originally called the “Guest Choice Network,” was founded by lobbyist Rick Berman of Berman & Co., and is now responsible for websites including the Employment Policies Institute, which strives to keep minimum wages low and Animal Scam, which is supported by the food and beverage industry and promotes misinformation about animal cruelty and factory farming. They’re also against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and would even like to see more pregnant ladies consume mercury laden fish.

Regarding animal abuse, CCF’s spokesman David Martosko said, “Cheap solution to PETA & HSUS? Stop animal-rights infiltrators in farms & slaughterhouses ... " He also provided a link to a site that sells a supposed gadget to detect the presence of hidden cameras on his Twitter page.

Wow. Seriously? Abuse to the extent that even those in the industry are appalled is alright just so long as no one sees it? Of course, everything will be fine if we could just stop those meddlesome do-gooders from doing the USDA’s job and telling the public the truth.

It’s about time CCF gets the spotlight for being a worthless organization that isn’t driven by anything but profits from the food industry and agribusiness.

http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/the-center-for-cons...

[sabelmouse]

For swine flu, forget origins and start thinking about practices

Amid a trickle of news and science about swine flu over the past week, I’ve been rethinking my position on the novel H1N1 virus that has now infected millions of Americans (thankfully, so far, in a relatively benign way).

When I first began covering the story in April, I fixated on the question of origin. Had the new virus incubated in the vast hog confinements in Vera Cruz, Mexico? In a village near several large hog buildings there, a mysterious and virulent respiratory disease had broken out—and at least some of the cases were later confirmed have been infected with H1N1.

I still think it was right and proper to note the proximity between the CAFO and the outbreak. But now I think the focus on origins was wrong. Asking when and where this novel H1N1 strain mutated into present form is a bit like trying to identify the first mutant wolf pup that grew into a proper dog. In this context, origin is impossible to identify—and probably not that interesting.

The real question is, which of our practices are creating ideal conditions for the mutation of new swine-flu strains not recognized by human immune systems?

And once we identify those practices, we’d do well to phase them out. True, the current strain of H1N1 is behaving rather tamely—spreading fast but not causing much more damage than regular flu strains. And it has entered a phase of genetic stability—it hasn’t mutated much lately.

But what if it does begin to mutate—and new forms are more deadly, and resistant to Tamiflu? If and when it does begin to mutate, entire new vaccines will have to be generated—further straining a public health system already stretched to the limit by the current vaccine effort.

As anyone reading this already knows, I believe that concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) create excellent conditions for the mutation of new flu strains: thousands of genetically similar bodies living in close quarters, their immune systems compromised, swapping germs and occasionally coming into contact with human workers.

In its September issue, Environmental Health Perspectives ran an article called “Swine CAFOs and Novel H1N1 Flu: Separating Facts from Fears.” The article makes three main points: 1) that we’ll never know the precise origin of the current strain of swine flu that has caused a global pandemic; and 2) that CAFOs provide an excellent environment for the generation of new strains; and 3) that CAFOs operate under almost no oversight of public-health authorities.

The only current program for testing hog farms for the new H1N1 strain is voluntary—and CAFO operators are reportedly actively avoiding testing because they don’t want to risk losing their herds if an infection is found. And if operators do find H1N1 present, they’re encouraged but not required to report it.

Thus, given the incredibly slack nature of the oversight regime, no one can take comfort in the recent report of an H1N1 outbreak in an Indiana CAFO.

Or in the work of University of Arizona researcher Michael Worobey, who recently released research concluding that “This virus most likely has been circulating under the radar in pigs for the better part of 10 years.” In other words, not only is it currently appearing in CAFOs, but it’s been in CAFOs for a while, and only broke out into the human population this year.

Few people would knowingly store an open box of oily rags next to a furnace. Yet our meat-production system runs on just that kind of recklessness.

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-05-swine-flu-origins-conditions/