A while ago Ruth talked about the movie Food, Inc. and mentioned how it can be life-changing. In the movie, they discuss what seems to be a simple concept. Where does our food come from? While you may think this is an easy question to answer, it really depends on where you shop for your food. The average large chain supermarket gets their food from extremely large scale food distributors. The movie gives figures for how we went from several farmers, each serving their local area, to a small handful of giant meat production plants. It’s quite common for the steak you eat for dinner to have been raised halfway across the country. Perhaps you’re wondering what the problem is with this, since it likely leads to lower prices. This is true, but at what cost?

To service such a large field of animals, these plants have resorted to what are called CAFOs or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. If you have ever driven up the 5 towards northern California, you have likely passed a giant one called Harris Ranch. In these operations, the cows almost never see grass. Instead, they are fed grains to fatten them up and often spend all day standing in their own feces. This is a double whammy, as the grains make the cattle more susceptible to E. Coli and standing in their fecal matter makes it that much quicker to spread. You see this scenario play out with meat recalls, including the one million pounds of ground beef being recalled this month by Valley Meat Co. This particular distributor has a reach from California to Texas, Arizona, Oregon and even internationally!

Cattle CAFO, no grass in sight

Things aren’t much better for poultry. In the large operations, the chickens are kept in small cages as the equivalent of egg vending machines. Most of us who watched the movie The Matrix gasped at the thought of people plugged into a network, not physically moving around, but just being used to create a power output. Sadly, these mass production centers treat chickens much like that, minus the alternate reality to pacify them. Much like the CAFOs, fecal matter abounds and in these places you get Salmonella outbreaks. By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the 550 million eggs recalled due to Salmonella. All of those tainted eggs came from just two operations in Iowa. The most heavily affected stores were the big grocer chains. Conversely, if you shop at Trader Joe’s, only one brand was affected. To see a full list of brands involved and how to identify, look here. Perhaps the scariest part of the whole ordeal is that those eggs are quite likely to still make it into your food. They can be reused for liquid eggs, mayonnaise or ice cream.

Chickens as far as the eye can see

This is one of the main reasons why we trainers are always encouraging you to check out your local farmer’s market. Getting back to the question of where your food comes from, you will have the opportunity to actually meet the farmer in person. There’s something to be said for being able to know the person who grows the food you put on your table. That single degree of separation lets you have much more confidence in the quality of their product. On Saturday, I was at the Torrance farmer’s market and stopped by the chicken farmer’s stand. I asked the girl if they were getting additional egg business due to the recall, and she laughed, saying that they were about three times as busy. Sometimes it takes a bad event to shake people enough to make a positive change in their lives.

Further reading: Time Magazine, Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

WOD 08.26.10

Make Up Day