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J.L. Anderson.  Capitalist Pigs: Pigs, Pork, and Power in America.  West Virginia University Press, 2019.

I saw this book in the office of my food historian colleague, Amy Bentley, and snatched it up.

I love the title.

The book is a well researched history of pigs, feral and domestic, in the United States, from colonial times to the present, from free-range to CAFO, from waste as fertilizer to waste lagoons, and from lard to lean.

The book is fabulously illustrated with dozens of reproductions of etchings, drawing, and photographs of pigs in all their glory, as well as their confinement and butchery.

If you want to know how pigs arrived in America, how farmers treated them, how their numbers grew, and their place in U.S. diets, this book has it all.

But for me, the title is the best part of this book.  I was disappointed in its lack of a more forceful discussion of how pigs exemplify larger issues of corporate power and capitalism in today’s society.  The index has not one listing for “capitalism,” “neoliberalism,” or “pig industry.”

Unless I missed others, only two sentences bear directly on “Pigs, Pork, and Power:”

What about the farmers who continue in the pig production business, including the large-scale enterprises, contractors, and independent producers?  While it is difficult to generate much sympathy for the corporate leaders and integrators who are more concerned about shareholders and the bottom line than about communities, it is important to remember that many farmers and farm wage workers care about the animals they raise and the communities in which they live (p. 220)

For a recent update on the politics of pig farming, see Charlie Mitchell and Austin Frerick’s The Hog Barons, on Vox (April 19).  This article focuses on Jeff Hansen, Iowa’s largest hog producer.

Hansen’s company, Iowa Select Farms, employs more than 7,400 people, including contractors, and has built hundreds of confinement sheds in more than 50 of Iowa’s 99 counties. Since they began to arrive in the 1990s, these sheds have provoked controversy. Citing damage to health, livelihoods, property values, the environment, and the farm economy, rural communities in Iowa have campaigned fiercely against them.  While their efforts have yielded small victories, they have lost the war: The state’s hog industry, led by Hansen, has cultivated close relationships with state politicians on both sides of the aisle to roll back regulations, and confinements have flooded the countryside. The Hansen family’s charitable efforts have seemingly solidified these ties; it’s not unusual for a sitting governor to attend a charity gala thrown by the Hansens.

The big issues in that chocolate you like so much: low prices for farmers, unsustainable practices, child labor.  These are still with us.

• European governments and legislators urged to help cocoa farmers as prices continue to fall in West Africa:  Fairtrade urges EU to implement regulation to recognise the right to living income in cocoa sector in any forthcoming human rights due diligence regulation, as European Cocoa Association calls for an ‘enabling environment’ across the industry. Read more
• New Oxfam study shows cocoa suppliers still falling short on supply chain transparency:  The world’s largest food and beverage companies and their suppliers must do more to create an equitable and sustainable food system for all, says Oxfam. Read more
• Cocoa giants face fresh US lawsuit over child labour claims in Cote d’Ivoire:  Multi-national cocoa companies Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut USA LLC, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have been named as defendants in a federal class action lawsuit in the United States on behalf of eight Malian boys who have alleged they were used as slave labour on cocoa farms in Cote d’Ivoire for one or more of the firms. Read more
• NORC final report released – finds over 1m cases of child labour in West Africa’s cocoa sector:  Long-awaited US government-funded report from National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC) that assesses progress in reducing child labour in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana’s cocoa regions shows figures are lower than previously thought (1.56 million compared to estimates of 2.1 million in 2013/14) but it is still a sobering read for the chocolate industry, despite some signs of progress in trying to eradicate the issue. Read more

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Leafy greens contaminated with toxic E. coli make eaters very sick (this is an understatement).

Toxic E. coli are excreted by cattle raised in the vicinity of lettuce and spinach fields.

But leafy green safety is overseen by FDA whereas everything having to do with food animals is overseen by USDA.

This is why the latest moves by FDA about leafy green safety are so noteworthy.

• The FDA is warning leafy green growers that they must take better precautions to prevent E. coli contamination.
• It also is warning cattle growers that they must prevent wastes from contaminating leafy green fields.

The Big Question: Will—can—the FDA force cattle ranchers and leafy green growers to adhere to food safety precautionary measures?

Let’s hope.

Here are the relevant documents:

FDA statement on release of a report on a 2020 outbreak

The findings of foodborne illness outbreak investigations since 2013 suggest that a likely contributing factor for contamination of leafy greens has been the proximity of cattle. Cattle have been repeatedly demonstrated to be a persistent source of pathogenic E. coli, including E. coli O157:H7.

Considering this, we recommend that all growers be aware of and consider adjacent land use practices, especially as it relates to the presence of livestock, and the interface between farmland, rangeland and other agricultural areas, and conduct appropriate risk assessments and implement risk mitigation strategies, where appropriate.

Report on the 2020 outbreak investigation

The analysis has confirmed a positive match to the outbreak strain in a sample of cattle feces, which was collected during follow-up investigations on a roadside, uphill from where leafy greens or other food identified in the traceback investigation were grown. While the finding does not provide definitive information on how E. coli may have contaminated product during the growing and harvesting season, it does confirm the presence of a strain of E. coli O157:H7 that causes recurring outbreaks in a more narrowly defined growing region and a potential, continued source of contamination.

Leafy Green STEC Action Plan

As outbreaks have continued to occur, despite significant efforts in recent years, greater emphasis will be needed around such complex issues as adjacent land use, agricultural water, and understanding likely routes by which human pathogens may contaminate leafy greens.

Former FDA food safety official Michael Taylor’s comment on these documents

FDA declared the recurring strain implicated in the 2020 outbreak to be a “reasonably foreseeable hazard,” which FDA attributed to the presence of cattle on land adjacent to growing fields.  This finding seems obvious and shouldn’t be surprising. The surprise, however, is that FDA used regulatory language to express its finding and spelled out the implications: farms covered by the FSMA produce safety rule “are required to implement science and risk-based preventive measures” to minimize the risk of serious illness or death from the E. coli hazard…I do not anticipate FDA taking judicial action to enforce its April 6 finding, absent egregious practices or clear negligence in a particular leafy green growing situation. I do see, however, a heightened sense of urgency at FDA and frustration that efforts to date have not solved the leafy greens safety problem. I share that frustration.    

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler’s comment

The FDA took specific aim at California growers as the cause of repeated and ongoing outbreaks, putting the responsibility of combating the outbreaks squarely on the growers.

FDA’s investigations into foodborne illness outbreaks are available from its outbreak page.  These are the ones from 2020.

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Dem-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (Dem-MA) have reintroduced their bipartisan bill for a Green New Deal, H. Res. 109, aimed at preventing further climate change.

The Green New Deal provides for improvements to food systems and to food access (with my editing and emphasis):

• Resolved that it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal to secure for all people of the United States for generations to come—healthy food.
• The goals should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (the “Green New Deal” mobilization”) that will require workfing collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including by (a) supporting family farming, (b) investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health, and (c) bulding a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.
• To achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization will require providing all people of the United States with clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.

The details are yet to come, but this plan has much to offer and deserves widespread support.

The Green New Deal was first introduced in 2019.

• Text of the original bill, February 7, 2019
• A 7-minute video about the bill narrated by AOC
• A Food First backgrounder on the bill
• A paper by Raj Patel and Jim Goodman setting the Green New Deal in political context

This ad appeared in yesterday’s New York Times.

The ad is signed jointly by JBS and Pilgrim’s, but JBS owns nearly 80% of Pilgrim’s, so this is JBS’s ad.

At the bottom of this ad, you can read about the company in very small print:

JBS is the second-largest food company in the world, producing high-quality beef, chicken and pork products, alokng with innovative prepared foods and plant-based alternatives that reimagine the future of protein….

The company is based in Brazil, where burning of the rainforest to grow soybeans—to feed cattle–produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases.

In this ad, JBS promises to achieve “net-zero emissions” by 2040.

How?  It’s a bit vague on details.

We’re setting time-bound, science-based targets and backing them up with $1 billion in capital over the next decade.  We’re supporting producers by investing $100 million by 2030 in on-farm research.

We will cut our own emissions by 30% by 2030 and eliminate Amazon deforestation from our supply chain within five years.

For the record, JBS’ annual revenues are nearly 40 times higher than what it plans to spend on this over the next 10 years.

The company’s revenues have been declining.  Does that explain its sudden interest in preventing climate change?

This looks like classic greenwashing to me.

Before believing that this is not greenwashing, I’d like to see those “time-bound, science-based targets” and to know who is holding JBS accountable for meeting them.