Last week the largest beef recall in US history
occurred. 143 million pounds of beef from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. of
Chino, California,
a third of which went to the national school lunch programs and another hunk to In-N-Out.
“Where are the inspectors? There are not enough USDA inspectors!” everyone shouted. But I am going
to argue that no number of inspectors would have helped in the long
run. Because those cows aren’t green. They are a mess.
There is a critical detail about this scandal that is not
being reported - the cow’s diet. Corn. Mounds
of cheap corn. Corn that cows are
force-fed in industrial feedlots. Corn that the cows are completely allergic to
and makes them sick. So sick that they fall down and can’t walk to their fate.
Cows are grass-eaters. They cannot digest corn. Ruminants is the technical term. Yet, they are
forced to eat corn through tubes in feedlot operations. And they get really,
really sick as a result. Antibiotics to the rescue. Drugs for all of the cows.
Drugs that make their way into our systems when we eat the meat and drink the
milk. Overuse of antibiotics that leads to drug-resistant superbugs no
doubt. Drugs or no drugs, these cows are
more likely to contract and transfer E. coli because their stomachs are too
acidic from the corn. I don’t know about
you, but I am losing my appetite.
How did we get here? These
anti-green, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions are the result of one small
change in the farm bill in the 1970s. Policy matters. Government incentives determine what the
country eats. Before 1973, the government
propped up a target market price for corn by buying up surpluses and offering
farmers loans to delay selling. In the 1973 Farm Bill, everything changed.
Direct payments were instituted. Farmers
were paid for every bushel of corn they could produce, and so they produced a
lot. Bushels and bushels and bushels of kernels.
The plague of cheap corn began. Corn became
the backbone of our processed food system. High-fructose corn syrup, fructose,
malodextrin, xanthan gum, and more. In
1984, Coke and Pepsi switched from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup because it
was cheaper. Coca Cola is essentially
liquid corn.
Factory farms switched from feeding their cows grass to feeding
them indigestible, inexpensive corn. The
cows became ill. The cows fell down at
feedlots like Westland/Hallmark and were prodded with sticks. This is not an
isolated incident. This is an epidemic.
At the same time, the nation’s obesity rated shot up. The government is subsidizing cheap corn and
therefore, cheap fast foods. This is why a Big Mac is cheap and an organic
salad is not.
What are the green solutions? Where's the green beef? First, we need a new Farm Bill that encourages fresh and organic foods.
Second, we can eat Grass-Fed Beef from pastoral farms where cows still roam
free and graze on their natural grass. This is the way Mother Nature intended. Ask for grass-fed beef at your
local stores and restaurants. It is
healthier with 35% less saturated fat and more natural vitamins and omega-3s. You can taste the difference too. Excellent sources of green beef include:
Niman Ranch
Marin Sun Farms
Paicines Ranch
Vermont Natural Beef
The pivotal books on this beefy subject are Michael Pollan’s
riveting The Omnivore's Dilemma
and In Defense of Food
. He makes the best case for eating whole foods as close to how nature intended as possible.
We are what our animals eat and what is in our soil. In the old days, we put cows out to pasture in the morning, and they would
come back home to the barn in the evening to be milked. Let’s modernize the
Farm Bill and get back to our grass-fed roots. Otherwise, we are going to be
facing similar beef recall and health problems until the cows come home.
Some people think you have to be a billionaire to change the
world. Wilson Ling begs to differ. “I want to help the planet now,” says the twenty-something hip social entrepreneur “I don’t want to have to wait until I become
a billionaire.” We like his confidence.
You’ve heard of bootylicious and del.icio.us. Now there is ecolicious,
the organic cocktail hour at the W San Francisco’s XYZ bar every night Monday through
Friday from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. 
Last week the largest beef recall in 