To Pick a Bone with Organic Meat

[Animal 0]

To Pick a Bone with Organic Meat

PEJ News - Julie Muir - The designation of "organic" for milk, eggs, meat and other animal products has surfaced in the last few years as a response to consumer concerns, attempting at its best to address cruelty to animals, food safety including the spread of communicable diseases and the addition of hormones and antibiotics, and health and safety for food industry workers. Yet in many cases organic meat production simply reproduces the exploitation of animals and continues apace in fouling the environment and weakening our food security. This is due to the involvement of large agribusiness in the industry; instead of providing an alternative, "organic" meat remains ensconced in the profit system, and as such, will never have as its first priority the welfare of animals or of the consumers it is supposed to serve, but instead the money it can siphon from them.

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To Pick a Bone with Organic Meat

Julie Muir

PEJ News
September 16, 2006


Agribusinesses will always try to cut corners and influence politics to lower organic standards and standards of care for animals. Businesses such as Fieldale Farms of Baldwin have actually succeeded at times in influencing government policies to provide more favourable market conditions for their already vastly profitable enterprises. The company had convinced Georgia congressmen to create a special category of "organic" chicken which would allow them to be fed corn grown with chemical inputs, until public outrage exploded and forced them to backtrack on the issue. This example "is typical of the controversies that have marked the emergence of organic food as a serious market force in America" ("Agribusiness & USDA Ponder Degrading Organic Standards," June 5, 2002, Jeff Nesmith, Atlanta Journal).

And who knows how many large companies involved in organic livestock production are cutting corners in providing adequate provisions for their animals; for example Horizon and Aurora have recently been found to be "greenwashing" their dairy products under the label of USDA Certified Organic milk, when the investigations undertaken by the Cornucopia Institute show that these animals are not being treated in accordance with organic standards. The Cornucopia Institute has filed a legal complaint against Horizon with the USDA. Photographs of the Horizon Idaho farm show the dairy cattle in intensive production without adequate access to green pastures, with mountains of manure on the farms a testament to their confinement. Animals remain in their "winter housing" well into the summer, and their welfare and happiness in general seems questionable. As well, the disposal of waste from 8000 cattle can pose risks to groundwater purity, and the irrigation of desert for cattle feed puts immense pressure on the aquifers in the area, encouraging the spread of desertification (http://cornucopia.org/pasture/?page_id=18). Please join in the boycott of products from Horizon, Aurora, and affiliated companies, including Costco's "Kirkland Signature," Safeway’s "O" organics brand, Publix’s "High Meadows," Giant's "Natures Promise," and Wild Oats’ organic milk, as well as soy milk companies "Silk" and "White Wave."

It remains true that organic meat and dairy is largely the product of large businesses that transport their packaged goods long distances to be sold at large grocery stores; profit remains in the hand of big business and detriment is done to the environment. These companies succeed in "greenwashing" products, deceiving their loyal consumers who deeply care about buying ethical, healthy, environmentally-friendly food.

Another problem is that people assuage their consiences by eating organic meat, without asking the deeper question: is it ethical to kill a sentient being for food, when we have a wealth of other options available here in North America that still ensure optimal nutrition for less cost than anywhere else in the world? We may be quick to judge those in Southern countries who are forced to hunt "bush meat" including monkeys, turtles and endangered species - but these people have had their subsistence ways of life ripped out from under them and are trying to stave off starvation. Whereas we can eat a plentiful, relatively cheap (Canadians spend less income on food than any other country in the world), nutritious and readily available vegan diet with very little trouble. Much help is available to ensure a healthy and tasty animal-free diet; see www.meatout.org, www.veganoutreach.org, or www.goveg.com. And don't worry; lack of protein is the least of our concerns in North America - in fact, most of us get too much. A bigger problem is lack of fresh, local produce in our diets - it has been suggested by one researcher that atherosclerosis may in part be a less severe form of scurvy!

So why succumb to the destructive allure of organic meat and dairy? Though we may feel better about our purchases, one remains a "green consumer," a LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) participant in the global scene of exploitation, big business, long transport of foods and lack of respect for animals and the environment.


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