Of note, but of no further comment, was that after releasing the data, the USDA then attempted to recall the dataset from MuckRock, threatening legal action. Subsequently, they were not successful. At least for this author, it elicits some questions as to why, but moreover, I’m more drawn to what we can learn from analyzing the changes in SNAP reimbursements. Such as:

• Are there counties of Massachusetts that experienced disproportionate increases of SNAP reimbursements?
• Where are the majority of SNAP reimbursements being made?
• Are changes in expenditures at Whole Foods groceries significantly different from other stores in the area?

Eating Animals
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Little, Brown & Company; 2009
$25.99 (hardcover)

Meals have always elicited stories. For example, family traditions are passed down through the sharing of a ham on Christmas, or the food put out on the Seder plate at Passover. These histories tell us about the past, but they also allow us to perceive who we are in the present. Each narrative, constructed from a series of events bringing us to the here and now allows us to understand who we are as an individual, a community or a nation. At the moment of our birth, we fail to grasp our humanity, but as we learn where we came from, we take our place as a species, dominating the planet, its plants, animals and resources. How this imbued supremacy is reconciled and rationalized is buried in the story we tell ourselves—or the one we choose to forget.

In the last year, Tom Standage and Jonathan Safran Foer each published books that grapple with understanding our humanity though the lens of the food we eat. In both books I was struck by mechanisms of power that operated through food and agriculture, but yet was ultimately unsettled by contradictions in what each narrative then shed on my own humanity and morality.

Tom Standage is a British writer and editor, with a special interest in technology and business, who writes with a serious tone, yet lacks a more sophisticated academic formality (whereby the book is loosely referenced at best). In his book, An Edible History of Humanity—which is akin to his previous best-seller, A History of the World in 6 Glasses—Standage mainly deals with a series of historical transformations that profoundly altered the course of human history which, as he argues, were enabled by the “invisible fork” of food. Central to this idea is that agriculture and livestock are developed technologies, conferring power, wealth and control. In Standage’s opinion, cultivated crops are a technology and since we no longer consume much food from ‘wild sources,’ farming is an unnatural process (p.27) and furthermore, as humans have continued throughout history we have continuously honed “domesticated mutants better suited to human needs” (p.26).

With the level of historical detail in An Edible History of Humanity, one might be surprised to come to learn by the end that Standage actually acknowledges his enjoyment for a taste of food and could possibly appreciate it more than a technology. Nevertheless, the reader travels through an often abbreviated version of history, highlighting the intersection of food’s centrality to the construction of not only privilege, but power; not only inequality, but starvation; how agricultural civilizations were the foundation to further development which, eventually opened the door for the industrial revolution; how the ‘green revolution’ unlocked the limits of population growth; and finally, how food is a fuel and weapon in war.

Concurrently, Jonathan Safran Foer, an esteemed writer of fiction and a native of Brooklyn, New York, took on the writing of Eating Animals, to explore the question of ‘what meat is?’. Foer wastes little time in informing the reader that he is a vegetarian—but one who used to love meat at a younger age—however, his book isn’t one with a purpose of converting the reader to a plant-based diet. The value of the book is in the way he unpacks highly loaded issues on either side of the debate, qualifies the nature of industrial livestock methods, and with all the statistics that exist to “place facts in a story, a story of compassion or domination, or maybe both—place them in a story about the world we live in and who we are and who we want to be—and [then] you can begin to speak meaningfully about eating animals ” (p.14).

To accomplish a thoughtful dialogue, Foer writes anecdotally about his memories, histories and encounters with meat, animals and pets. But also, he introduces us to a whole spectrum of other characters, often speaking in their own words for pages at a time, people who interact with animals in profoundly different ways—including, ‘C’ (an animal activist who helps Foer break into a factory chicken farm), a factory farmer (interviewed anonymously), Frank Reese (a poultry farmer), Mario Fantasma (owner of Paradise Locker Meats), Paul Willis (pork farmer for Niman Ranch), Bill and Nicolette (owners of Niman Ranch), a worker at PETA (anonymous), Dr. Aaron Gross (of Farm Forward), and finally, chilling accounts of the horrible treatment of animals by workers in factory slaughterhouses, detailing what is considered the norm, not the exception. All of these voices invoke a “capacity to care that dwells beyond information, and beyond the oppositions of desire and reason, fact and myth and even human and animal” (p.263).

Both books attempt to form a comprehensive narrative–a history–of how human power has been constructed through our food. What we understand to be food today is a construction of how we interpret the past. Standage, dismisses the idea that our conception of food is somehow ‘natural’ as it has already been engineered past the point of recognition from its earliest states. Yet through improved agricultural practices of food–creating our first surpluses–civilization developed its first socially constructed inequalities and class distinctions which have managed to endure to the present. Additionally, further mastery of food production has unleashed the power of food to profoundly remake our society.

On the other hand, Foer views the power of food to be realized in our capacity to create animals with the sole purpose of killing them–animals who are kept alive by the most paltry, yet sophisticated and dramatic scientific systems. While even if we acknowledge the, controversially, inhumane treatment of animals, what do we take from this experience? How do we rationalize or forget the confusion of our exploitation of living creatures?

Standage, by comparison, would have no answer to the issues posed by Foer. In An Edible History of Humanity, there is hardly any mention of livestock practices, save for in the beginning of his book where he postulates that “corn, cows and chickens as we know them do not occur in nature, and they would not exist today without human intervention” (p.26). Ultimately, this is the last mention of cows or chickens for the remainder of the book, besides a smattering of loose references, for example, the technological breakthrough of canned meats which fed soldiers during war time. Nevertheless, Standage’s exclusion of modern mass-production practices of livestock doesn’t serve his own logic as a significant technological advancement to which effectively now allows masses of people to purchase and consume meat at a rate, and monetary cost, unprecedented in all of history. I should like to expect that any edible history of our humanity, would address this most dramatic example of our capacity to control the methods of our food production through the mechanized slaughter of animals.

But then, how are we to interpret Standage’s silence? Is it shame brought on by the realization that this story is not part of his narrative of a productive, progressing humanity he understands and wishes to extol? Possibly. But just as assuredly, there is nothing natural about the way animals are raised and slaughtered on factory farms. Therefore, on the side, this begs the question of what ideal should we expect from such a relationship. Yet, our masterful and efficient domination of our livestock is as profound an experience and realization of our own humanity as our agricultural productivity in the fields, whereby: “factory farming considers nature an obstacle to be overcome” (Foer, p.34). Foer encourages us to remember our place as animals, eating animals, but simultaneously acknowledge what each of us deliberately forget in way of eating meat.

While I read Standage, I can’t help but think of Michael Pollan’s countervailing theory on the account of how plants and humans developed together (see: Botany of Desire). Pollan posits that plants and animals aren’t just the product of our cultivation, but instead, sees humans as the unwitting participants in a relationship that has us reproduce their species to an unanticipated abundance. If Standage views the corn humans developed as ‘not of nature,’ could it then also serve to reason that the modern human would be comparatively as unnatural through the eyes of our earliest ancestors? The more I think about it, the more I come to feel that Standage, in his edible history of humanity, left out the development of what being human has come to mean.

For the sole purpose of bringing these two books into an amalgamation, for which each respectively details the human relations of power through what we eat, I must take considerable liberties with each narrative. What I would conclude is that our humanity comes at great environmental, ecological and social costs. In a narrative we construct, which propels our accomplishments to forefront of our consciousness, this is an undeniable act of forgetting at what expense this feat is realized. The profundity of food to elicit power is found in our earliest class inequalities; the expansion of agricultural productivity to launch the industrial revolution (and thus, further accumulation of capital for the rich); and a mechanism for fueling soldiers at war or starving out the besieged (the protection of power, interests and the expansion of further capital). And finally, the system of force which is currently exerted over 99% of the meat Americans consume is so extreme that it would be hardly recognizable by any civil notion of human behavior. As power continues to be concentrated through channels of our food system–whereby all efficiencies which master nature are glorified–would the only remaining obstacle be to prevail over the mouths and bodies, stuffing them full with the colossal fruition of our edible history? Or, is this history already being written as we speak (or remain silent)?

“A long time ago my father told me what his father told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water, who dreamed what was to be; and this was long before the coming of the Wasichus [the White-men]. He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider’s web all around the Lakotas. And he said: ‘When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those gray square houses, you shall starve.’ They say he went back to Mother Earth soon after he saw this vision, and it was sorrow that killed him. You can look about you now and see that he meant these dirt-roofed houses we are living in, and that all the rest was true. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.” – Black Elk

“…for Native Americans, current federal dietary guidelines promoting a meaty, cheesy diet amount to, perhaps inadvertently, the nutritional equivalent of smallpox-infected blankets.” – Neal Barnard, M.D. and Derek M. Brown

An Analysis of the Nutritional Transition from Traditional Foods to a Commodity Food Distribution Program Amongst the Sioux

Here is the start of what I think could be a larger project on visualizing livestock farming operations in the US. Most of the area outside of Greeley, CO where this map begins is primarily cattle.

Try zooming in on the highlighted areas for a closer view of what one of these farms looks like.

A few things stood out to me in highlighting obvious satellite images of these feed lots.

• They are mostly distinguished by dark brown patches contained by square fences amid larger sections of green.
• Satellite credits are given to the Digital Globe Geoeye, USDA Farm Service, which I believe that the USDA licenses this information from Digital Globe and is also sharing this imagery with Google.
• There was only one very large operation in this section that I surveyed which also had the highest concentrations of cattle in each smaller pen.
• The smaller operations tended to have lesser concentrations of cattle.

Not sure what the next steps would be after compiling this information other than generating an inventory of livestock farming in a particular area. What kind of changes can be measured?

When corn subsidies were first written into the bill during the 70’s, farmers were looking for help in assuring a stabilized price when bringing their food to market. Today, the situation is much different. This specific piece of the Farm Bill has incentivized the production of corn on a massive scale where it is mostly being grown by enormous farms. There is of course, a limit to how many ears of corn the American consumer’s in interested in purchasing. So, with this excess of cheap corn on their hands, the food industry found an alternative way to market and sell it to the same consumers. By adding value to the corn (in the form of salt and sugar, or in livestock feed), they could continue to produce a lot of cheap corn and then sell it the form of other products. The majority of corn that is subsidized by the government ends up in one of two places; first is high fructose corn syrup which is the main ingredient in most sodas, but it’s also used in countless other food products for added sweetness. And second, because the quality of corn is so poor, the corn could only be used to feed animals such as cows, chickens and pigs, regardless of whether corn is in their natural diets, which in all of the examples given, is not. The nutritional energy of the corn then goes into America’s food supply in the form of meat or milk, so that by eating a hamburger, we are unknowingly eating corn.

This model of agribusiness, enhanced by the US Farm Bill, affects public health in two ways. First, an accumulation of cheap calories in the market translates into more calories being sold to the consumer. Since the corn subsidies began, Marion Nestle has illustrated this effect in her writings that these calories have ended up in Americans’ fat tissue. Secondly, due to the cheap cost and abundance of empty calories, it has forced healthful and nutritious fruits and vegetables to appear relatively higher in cost. Often, the cheapest calorie a person can buy in a store with a dollar is in a candy bar. Time may tell, but these two outcomes may be modest in comparison to the ecological damage that this policy has on our environment in terms of soil degradation, monoculturation, increased antibiotic resistant pathogens and an agriculture system completely dependent on oil.

Moving forward, the Farm Bill needs to extrapolate the public health and environmental issues. In light of the rising health care costs associated, which can be traced back to the subsidized calories entering the market, corn subsidies should be capped at an amount reasonable to support a small farmer, not for large-scale farming operations. Second, there is a need for incentives that that protects soil and encourages sustainable farming practices, rather than using up our resources (e.g. land, fossil fuels) for short-term, seasonal profits. Third, institutional purchases through the Commodity Distribution Program and Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act could be rewritten to mandate a certain percentage of food be purchased from food grown within a reasonable mile radius of the institution or population.

In conclusion, the Farm Bill needs to be updated to include considerations of its affects in the short-term and the long-term. In making amendments there are two components, the first considers the net amount of subsidized calories gown. The second aims to improve the methods with which food is grown.

Both issues take root similarly at the forefront of the country’s health debate whereas the issue is observed across the entire population, though with higher incidence observed among individuals with lower socio-economic status. Secondly, the industries that are manufacturing the products are comprised of large, powerful companies with deep pockets, who can wield a great deal of influence over lawmakers. And finally, in the products they produce, as is the case with cigarettes and unhealthy foods, the health effects are not immediately observed and are correlated to their long-term use. It is almost damning of the food industry that in the context of these comparisons that that they have attempted to expunge their role in the current obesity epidemic behind the same gauze used by the tobacco industry of championing more ‘personal responsibility’ on the part of the consumer.

Yet, significant differences exist between the two issues. Unlike cigarettes, officials are trying to control a product that people must consume in order to live. This variance has made it difficult to exact bans of certain food products. Furthermore, cigarettes had been previously regulated, while it is hard to imagine regulating sugar or fat. And finally, while some consumers have made habits out of certain unhealthy eating behaviors, these foods are not chemically addictive as was the case with the nicotine in cigarettes. And in terms of public opinion, while it took a lot of work to stigmatize smoking in the eyes of the public, obesity has long been undesirable.

The tactics used to combat need to confront multiple channels. In the 1970s, anti-smoking campaigns believed that education alone would be sufficient to change the tide of cigarette usage. Evidence now shows that educating the public concerning the dangers associated with cigarettes and unhealthful eating habits are important, but are not sufficient for changing behavior. As explained by Beth Kilgore, a five-point plan for tobacco control in New York City included: taxation, legal action, cessation, education and evaluation. At the same time, the City initiated a series of advertisements and promotions that linked changes they were making in the physical environment to actionable steps that an individual could make to help him or her quit smoking. For instance, after viewing a commercial that graphically illustrated the dangers of smoking, a person could dial 311 to be enrolled in a program that would support them through the process.

In conclusion, it is easy to spot parallels between the anti-smoking and anti-obesity campaigns are being waged. For example legislative efforts to levy taxes on sodas and to ban candy from schools are already in effect. Yet, the best lesson that can be learned is that in conjunction of these programs which are changing the environment, public health nutrition officials also lay the groundwork for enabling individuals to make their change. As final note, I would also point out, in terms of what public health officials have learned from the battle of smoking, it is based on these same striking similarities, the food industry has undoubtedly learned how to shift their techniques in combating these efforts in order to keep their profits.

Beartrap applauds Sen Gillibrand on co-sponsoring the Hunger Free Schools Act (S.1343).

This bill reads similar to the one that I suggested the Senator to co-sponsor as it would eliminate the need for families whose incomes do not exceed 133% of the federal poverty level to submit applications in order to be enrolled in the school lunch program “by estimating socioeconomic data and the number of children eligible for such meals.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
780 Third Avenue
Suite 2601
New York, New York 10017

Dear Kirsten Gillibrand,

I am writing to urge you to co-sponsor the Paperless Enrollment for School Meals Act of 2009 (S.1226) to assure that the needy students of New York and across the country receive funding for the valuable meals they eat at school. Please consider the following benefits of the bill: improved efficiency and accuracy in determining Federal reimbursement rates; assurance that all students with food insecurity receive meals; and empowerment of our nations’ school lunch programs. I want to thank you for your time in considering this piece of important legislation to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Act.

As a resident of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY and a graduate student at New York University (MPH — Community Health Nutrition), this issue is very personal and important to me, but even more important still for school food directors, child nutrition advocates and, most of all the students and their families. Growing up as a cook, I’ve always held a deep respect of how what you eat transforms who you are. We are by now familiar with the statistics of obesity in our country: more than 17% of children between the ages 6-11 are classified as obese and often having to deal with health issues usually attributed to adults (i.e. type-2 diabetes). Our nation needs to take a close look at the food that is being consumed by this age-group and put our support into the programs that are working to improve the nutritional lives our country’s young people. Furthermore, according the CDC, the prevalence of obesity is even higher in areas of poverty and food insecurity. Fortunately, for many families, in 2008 the USDA fed over 5 billion lunches to students at schools across America through the funding of the National School Act. Each of these meals is an opportunity to not only provide sustenance in the middle of the school day, but also encourage healthful eating habits.

Last year, at the Politics of School Food Conference (October 8, 2008), I was inspired by one of the panelists, Joel Berkowitz, food service director for the New York City school system. He was passionate about bringing the healthiest most nutritious food possible to the students of New York City, but also honest about the barriers that prevented that food from getting to the children. One obstacle was funding, but the other which should be preventable, was paperwork. Irregardless of a student’s eligibility, in order for he or she to take part in the school lunch program–and for the school to be reimbursed by the USDA for the meal–the student’s family must fill in paperwork. As insignificant as this may sound, this is but another burden for those living in poverty and the fact of the matter is, many needy children go hungry at school. Proposed in the Paperless Enrollment for School Meals Act of 2009 (S.1226) is a modernization of Federal reimbursement methods to calculate the number of children eligible based on local survey and economic data. We have the seen the success of such a modernization in the pilot program which has been running for over 18 years in Philadelphia. It is time that this method is adapted to a national level.

In conclusion, passage of the Paperless Enrollment for School Meals Act (S.1226) is consistent with the values and intentions of the National School Act to address not only the students’ hunger, but also, nutrition in light of the challenges we face with dealing with an obesity epidemic. I’d rather David Berkowitz and his staff spend more time working on sourcing healthful ingredients, than piling through administrative paperwork. And, most of all, we should want to do everything in our power to see to it that all the students who need these meals the most, receive them.

Thank you for your time reading my letter. I hope you will consider co-sponsoring the Paperless Enrollment for School Meals Act.