Twice this month (Nov. 2nd and 6th), I’ve blogged about Cattle Network writer Chuck Jolley’s excellent coverage of HSUS’ Vermont slaughterhouse investigation.
Now Jolley’s back, and it’s like he’s a whole different guy. It’s clear that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals
Reading Jolley’s piece, you would think he found every last sentence of Eating Animals objectionable. He goes so far as to call Foer part of a “chattering cabal” of “agri-terrorists.” Many of Jolley’s critiques verge on silly, like this one:
And, of course, [Foer] talks about ‘factory farming,’ a nice, catch-all phrase that seems to be a too convenient descriptor for any ag operation larger and more ambitious than 40 acres and a mule. Would Pollan or Foer or any of the other short-sighted peddlers of this nonsense please issue a precise definition of ‘factory farm?’ Is it a ranch that raises more than a dozen head of cattle? Two dozen hogs? A nice place in central Nebraska that grows enough wheat that they have to mechanically harvest, leaving the scythe hanging on the wall at the nearest TGI Friday’s? Maybe it’s just a few hundred acres worked cooperatively by an extended family?
As a short-sighted peddler off this nonsense, allow me to propose this definition for a factory farm: a place where animals are confined to an extent that they lack reasonable freedom of movement, in facilities with no direct sunlight and with miserable air quality.
How’s that?
Perhaps the strangest part of the piece is when Jolley addresses Foer’s coverage of antibiotics. Jolley quotes an animal farmer:
I had my children vaccinated because it’s the right thing to do. I do the same thing for the animals I raise on my farm.
I wonder if the farmer in question also laces his children’s food with antibiotics. (Thanks, Bea.) Link.
