Failure to show people what you’re doing doesn’t necessarily indicate guilt, but it sure raises doubts.\u00a0 New York Times food expert Mark Bittman has reported that — while Iowa’s efforts to prevent scrutiny of farms (it’s “ag-gag” law) hasn’t passed yet — farms raising hogs, chickens and other food we eat are already off-limits to the press, consumer groups, and anyone else curious to see what’s going on.<\/p>\n
We’re the big advocates of civil society all around the world — subsidizing them to demand access to basic information that affects their lives — but allow doors to close to it here.<\/em><\/p>\n New York Times<\/p>\n July 5, 2011, 11:19 pm Mark Bittman on food and all things related.<\/p>\n Iowa\u2019s ag-gag law failed to pass before summer recess last week: a good thing. The ridiculous proposition, which died along with similar ones in Minnesota, Florida and New York, would have made it illegal to videotape or photograph in the agricultural facilities that house almost all of our chickens and pigs.<\/p>\n Sadly, a lack of idiocy is not the same thing as a presence of wisdom, and the demise of ag-gag won\u2019t give us a clearer view of food production. We need more visibility, not less. But when I visited Iowa in May, I appealed to producers of eggs, chickens, pork and even cooking oil to let me visit their facilities. In general, I was ignored, politely refused or told something like \u201cit\u2019s a bad week.\u201d (I made standing offers to return at any time; no one has taken me up on that.)<\/p>\n When a journalist can\u2019t see how the food we eat is produced, you don\u2019t need ag-gag laws. The system\u2019s already gagged.<\/p>\n The videographers that have made it into closed barns have revealed that eggs are laid and chickens are born and raised in closed barns containing (literally) hundreds of thousands of birds; an outsider wouldn\u2019t even know what those barns were. Pigs are housed cheek-to-jowl, by the many thousands, in what are called concentrated animal feeding operations, where feeding, watering and monitoring are largely mechanized. Pregnant sows are confined in small concrete cells. Iowa is industrial agriculture\u2019s ground zero. But when it comes to producing animals, zero is pretty much what you\u2019re going to see.<\/p>\n One medium-size pig-raising operation did offer me a tour, and we drove to a site where they ran four barns, each of which normally housed around 1,200 pigs. But the one we explored held only 200 pigs and reeked of deodorant. The animals had plenty of room, and they were calm and clean, as were the floors.<\/p>\n Not at all what I expected. Except I\u2019d been expected, and a cleanup must have preceded me by, I\u2019d guess, no more than two hours. (Either that or these were magic, non-defecating pigs.)<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are the other thousand pigs?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve shipped a whole bunch recently.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow about the other three barns? Are they full?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNope. We don\u2019t have many pigs here right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Some tour. But I\u2019d seen other pig barns during the course of the week because whenever I saw one that appeared unattended (it\u2019s easy enough to tell; there\u2019s no car), I checked it out as best I could. On some roads, there are almost as many pig barns as farmhouses, which may not be a coincidence: If you were an older farmer and your neighbor put 1,200 pigs in a barn, you\u2019d probably move to Florida, too. The smell can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n Most have a small enclosure by the road, usually with a Dumpster. That\u2019s where dead pigs are tossed until the next garbage collection. (Yes, I saw this, several times.) Many of the barns are open on the sides so you can see how crowded the pigs are. (Videos of gestation barns \u2014 virtually impossible for an outsider to see \u2014 show that the sows can\u2019t even turn around.) The pigs were visibly upset when I approached the outside of the barn.<\/p>\n That was the best I could do, and it wasn\u2019t much. I could\u2019ve been arrested for trespassing; extreme versions of ag-gag would make it illegal for me to write about it, or at least publish pictures.<\/p>\n Which would bring us a step closer to China, whose Health Ministry is trying to clamp down on news media outlets that \u201cmislead\u201d the public about food safety issues. (It\u2019s worth noting, on the other hand, that the Chinese Supreme Court has called for the death penalty in cases of fatal food poisoning.) \u201cMislead\u201d apparently means reporting about pork tainted with the banned drug clenbuterol, which sent a couple hundred wedding guests to the hospital; watermelons exploding from the overuse of chemicals; pork disguised as beef, or glowing blue; and \u2014 my favorite \u2014 cooking oil dredged from sewers. (Check my blog for the details.)<\/p>\n Our watermelons don\u2019t explode and, for now, I can write about it. Yet when a heroic videographer breaks a horror story about animal cruelty, as happens every month or so, the industry writes off the offense as an isolated incident, and the perpetrators \u2014 usually the workers, who are \u201cjust following orders\u201d \u2014 are fired or given wrist slaps. Business continues as usual, and it will until the public better understands industrial animal-rearing techniques.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I grew up here,\u201d said an Iowan I spent some time with, \u201cpeople were proud of their animals. They\u2019d have signs with their breeds, or their names, and they\u2019d offer to show you around.\u201d That\u2019s no longer the case with most animal operations in Iowa. Next week I\u2019ll write about some of those that give us reason to hope.<\/p>\n A version of this column appeared in print on July 6, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Failure to show people what you’re doing doesn’t necessarily indicate guilt, but it sure raises doubts.\u00a0 New York Times food expert Mark Bittman has reported that — while Iowa’s efforts to prevent scrutiny of farms (it’s “ag-gag” law) hasn’t passed … Continue reading
\nBanned From the Barn
\nBy MARK BITTMAN<\/p>\n