We now eat food that is grown an average 2000 miles from where we get to eat it. Government has implemented laws and regulations to mitigate the risk of eating food imported from this distance. These laws however often make it impossible to eat food that travels one mile. What follows is a conversation between Food Chain Radio’s Michael Olson and Joel Salatin, the President of the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. Joel is the author of Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.
Food Chain: Joel where is hog-heaven?
Joel: There is a sacred and moral dimension to what you and I patronize, beyond the manipulative ability of humans. These are habitats that allow the cow to express its “cow-ness,” or the “tomato-ness”of the tomato. In the industrial food system, we look at food as inanimate bunches of protoplasmic molecular structure that we can mash, reconstitute, genetically engineer and ingest; expecting the three trillion critters in our insides to step up to the plate. This industrial food system has been perfected for about 50 years and has run its course, like the feudal system did in Europe. When this happens the systems become inefficient.
They don’t hold up with the new dynamics, like castles didn’t hold up against gunpowder. Salmonella and E.coli are manifestations of an industrial food system that has gone beyond its point of efficiency. Nature is screaming at us through these bacteria names saying, “Enough!” Just because a 100-cow dairy is ok doesn’t mean a 5000-cow containment seven days a week is better. There are physics involved in size and things have a point of inefficiency when a paradigm runs its course.
What we are doing as alternative farmers is trying to enter this arena which has created a mega load of regulatory laws, to protect us from those things we can’t pronounce. We have rules and regulations enacted to protect us, but it has restricted how we buy and sell things to our neighbors. The average person would be stupefied to learn what is available in our communities were there the opportunity to do some neighbor-to-neighbor food commerce. I wonder how much e-Bay would have occurred if in order to sell anything you would have had to file for a zoning change, and have an OSHA approved separate free standing structure to do your business in. That same thing is happening whether it’s raw milk, or cheese.
Food Chain: Joel, this is one of the things that your Association is striving for: getting rid of the rules and regulations. That’s anarchy!
Joel: Well I am often getting reports of some small farmer being put out of business or, can’t continue to sell the first steak or cornbread muffin. They have to be huge enterprises off the bat, so they never get
born.
Food Chain: Enterprises can’t get started because industrial farming doesn’t want the competition. They don’t want me buying steak from you.
Joel: People that think that our current system is safe are living with their heads in the sand. With the huge food recalls occurring in this country that food does not leave the food system. It has already been consumed. The recalls don’t happen in time to catch the food before it’s ingested.
Food Chain: So it’s bad news that’s history, not current.
Joel: There are certainly ways to allow oversight. One would be to establish empirical thresholds. We don’t have a threshold for pathogens on carcasses. Meaning if you call the USDA and say, “how many parts
per billion of salmonella is allowable in poultry from a Tyson chicken plant?” Well there are no thresholds because they are too difficult to enforce. What they do instead is require a certain amount of candlepower
in lights, x number of bathrooms, locker rooms and hand-washing stations. They try to create systems, but all it takes is lack of practice and all that infrastructure breaks down when an employee doesn’t wash their
hands.
Food Chain: One employee can infect a whole city.
Joel: You can’t mandate integrity. Our position at the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association is that all of this regulatory oversight has been created by a system that has exceeded its own efficiency. When we go back to a relationship between producer and consumer with short distances, we go back to accountability. Then all of those regulatory requirements become obsolete.
Food Chain: What difference does distance make if I’m buying T-bone steak from
a guy a mile away?
Joel: It makes a lot of difference because you’re in a community together. You might pass them on the road next week and have to wave, or go to church together. It makes all the difference in the world when you
don’t outsource the relationship.
Food Chain: If I am able to look that farmer in the face and look him in the eye..
Joel: If there’s a piece of dirty food the farmer misses, or if somebody gets sick that becomes an immense consequence to their life and their ability to get on with the community. If I am buying a chicken from Tyson from 2000 miles away and get sick, then too bad. Tyson employs a whole bevy of Philadelphia attorneys as protection between them and irate customers.
Food Chain: Takes us through the litany of what we will have to do.
Joel: One would be to legislatively exempt by number and scale, producers to some of these requirements. We have one for day care. You can have three children in your home without falling under the daycare
requirements. We have the same with elder care, with three people in your home you don’t have to fall under a nursing home requirement. Public law 90-492 is a federal exemption that farmer producer-
growers can do 20,000 head of poultry on their farms without inspection requirements. There are exemptions for numbers. Our culture has recognized for a long time that scale does have an effect on integrity.
Food Chain: You’re saying essentially that those who are local, small and work with their neighbors are
by definition more virtuous than someone big and far away.
Joel: Absolutely. Empires have a set of issues. Those of us, who don’t aspire to be empires, have a different set of constraints and accountability.
Food Chain: Would that be easy to measure for small-scale people to keep clean?
Joel: It certainly is easier for small-scale operations to stay clean because you can have periods of rest between processes. You don’t have the population and concentration. Because of this accountability you
don’t have these insurance policies and lawyers to protect you from litigation. Your vulnerability ensures an inherent cleanliness. You can run cultures, you can do infrared scanning. Another system would be complaint oriented. You have a hotline or a website. If there’s a complaint then it’s responded to. If
not then you rock along fine. In the final analysis we believe in freedom of choice. If a food-buyer wants to
inform themselves and take the responsibility to get involved with their food system, they should have the freedom of choice to opt out of government endorsed food. The food safety laws that we have are not about food safety. They are about defining a system that controls market access to only systems that fit government or industry template.
Food Chain: What can we do as consumers to further your mission?
Joel: The most important thing we can do as consumers is to ferret out and patronize
your local producer.
This interview was originally published in In Good Tilth
