This story originally appeared on The Faster Times.
This weekend, I finally got around to watching this Larry King segment (which aired on October 13th), featuring foodborne illness lawyer Bill Marler and the mothers and grandmothers of several children who have been victims of E. coli 0157: H7, including Barbara Kowalcyk, the outspoken mother from Food, Inc. who has gone on to found the Center for Foodborne Illness.
The show also contains a strange medley of pro and anti-meat figures from biochemist T. Colin Campbell (anti) to star chef Anthony Bourdain (very much pro). Nutritionist Nancy Rodriguez
is vehemently in favor of eating meat in moderation; novelist Jonathan
Safran Foer, who has just written a book about being a vegetarian, Eating Animals, weighs in, too. (I told you it was an odd melee.)
Aside from the squirm-inducing questions from King himself—at one point he pointedly asks the grandmother of Kevin, a healthy two-year-old who died of gangrene of the small intestines after eating E. coli-tainted ground beef, if his death was painful. Looking dumbfounded, the woman answers, “Yes, Larry, it was very painful”—the show was disappointing on many levels. I know talking heads go through media training that tell them to inflexibly hammer home their points, but the back and forth between Campbell and Rodriguez was circular and skirted around the (to me) crucial distinction between factory-farmed beef and beef that’s been raised humanely and safely by small-scale farms.
Campbell’s argument is that the caseins in protein help “turn on” cancer growth—his book the China Study details the results of a large-scale study that Campbell directed in the 70’s and 80’s which surveyed death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more 65 rural counties in China. (The outcome, according to the book’s web site was “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic diseases…”) Rodriguez respectfully disagrees, pointing out that animal protein is a more efficient way to get essential nutrients and vitamins such as amino acids, iron and B vitamins. She concedes that “diligent” vegans can get enough zinc and amino acids but says meat is a more practical source for most Americans. The average American is not going to start consuming large quantities of lentils and Brewer’s Yeast (or fortified soy milk), for example.
What neither of them delve into is what type of meat they’re talking about here. When Campbell carried out his research in China, was the meat that the Chinese ate from pastured animals? (Disclaimer: I have not read the China Study, so have no idea, but I’m guessing the answer is no.) Were they doused with antibiotics the way most cattle raised for consumption are here in the U.S.? And when Rodriguez talks about feeling absolutely safe serving her son hamburgers off the grill, is she serving him Cargill burgers or those from Niman Ranch?
The person who gets closest to raising this issue is Bourdain, an adventurous traveler and eater who loves meat—but who does not love the industrial system that raises it here in the U.S. His succinct rant was a gem, and elicited a simple “Wow” from Larry King:
If you look at our basic design…we have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have high teeth and long legs…we have evolved so that we can chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them. That said, we may be designed to eat meat—we are not designed to eat fecal coliform bacteria. And I think the standard practices of outfits like Cargill and some of the larger meat processors and grinders in this country are unconscionable and border on the criminal.
Yet Bourdain didn’t single out the type of meat he prefers to eat, presumably the kind that does not come from gargantuan meat processors such as Cargill. This would’ve been an excellent opportunity to give a shout-out to a small family-run farm whose meat is of such superior quality that it probably never tests positive for this dangerous strain of E. coli.
Safran Foer, too, notes that 99% of the meat that’s raised in this country comes from factory farms. Right, but we CAN choose that 1% that is not factory farmed, no? (Especially in Brooklyn, I yelled through my computer screen to Safran Foer, who lives in the foodie borough, too.) But really, all over the country…in rural Utah. In fast-food restaurants in Oregon and Washington. Even in Missouri. But instead, Foer seems to be saying, being a vegetarian is the only practical choice to this practically inescapable industrial food system.
Foer briefly touches on his ethical reasons for spurning meat, arguing with Bourdain’s logic that eating animals is somehow “natural”: “The entirety of human progress is defying what is natural. If we were so concerned with what is natural, we wouldn’t obviously be in this studio right now, having this conversation.” (He expands on the ethical side of his reasoning in an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book in the food issue of the New York Times Magazine.)
Thankfully, Marler gets the last word in, though, asking the Beef Manufacturers Association to be more transparent with the public. Private companies should, for example, post the results of the USDA’s inspections on their web sites. (Not surprisingly, Patrick Boyle from the American Meat Institute did not think this was a good idea.)
Note: Author Jonathan Safran Foer responded to this article on The Faster Times here.
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