This is the best practical guide to buying well-sourced meat and animal products I’ve ever read. It’s just a few pages and full of concrete strategies for better eating–well worth printing and keeping on the fridge. The author’s introduction reminded me of my own experiences:

To avoid the products of factory farms, I became something of a food detective. My groceries were the subjects of my investigations. Where were they coming from and how they were produced? I roamed grocery store aisles carefully reading product labels, but there was little to no information about the conditions in which the animals were raised… The food system’s lack of transparency was frustrating. Eventually, I mostly gave up on supermarkets and began exploring new ways to get at the good food I was seeking. Although the task was daunting, my goal was simple: I wanted all my food to come from places I would enjoy visiting.

–Nicolette Hahn Niman

Here are some similarities between meat and oil:

• Both are subsidized by the feds
• We’re consuming neither in a sustainable way
• Many Western consumers consider them a birthright
• Their consequences are getting harder to ignore
• Both industries keep the media away from the crime scenes

Here’s one difference, though. We can’t control the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, but we can control our consumption of factory-farmed meat.

New college graduates have recently stepped into the bright sunlight of “the real world.” I recently had a wake-up call of my own as I learned a little about the role of universities in agribusiness.

I grew up not far from UCONN, where one could be an “ag major.” That sounded cool–a person could get a degree in farming. There are beautiful small farms all over Connecticut. Of course, I was oblivious to the big picture.

It’s this: Many state-funded schools were originally chartered with the purpose of teaching and fostering agriculture. These are called “land grant universities,” and Iowa State and Michigan State were two of the first. Cornell is one as well. These universities have agricultural “experimentation stations” and “agricultural extension agents” who support agriculture in the local communities.

This all sounded fine and good until I learned that the programs are funded by the USDA and the usual biotech conglomerates. Iowa State even has a Monsanto Auditorium. Naturally, it follows that this segment of academia conducts plenty of research that favors agribusiness practices. For instance, many land grant university “studies” support the caging of hens, GMO’s, and chemical-dependent agriculture.

It’s a bit like BP offering free science curriculum to public schools.