I watched Best Friends Animal Society‘s 25th Anniversary DVD last night. Their 33,000-acre animal sanctuary in Utah houses almost 2000 cats and dogs (also some rabbits, potbellied pigs, horses, goats, and birds). They’ve even got a television show, National Geographic Channel’s Dogtown. I’ve volunteered in Utah, and now I’m writing news stories for their web site. They’re amazing.

What always strikes me is their positive message. It’s never “thousands of animals like Fluffy are dying horrible deaths every day unless you help now.” Instead, it’s “Fluffy had a pretty rough past, but thanks to friends like you, she’s learning to trust again….” Their visuals are never PETA-style photos of starving, abused animals, but rather the “after” photos of those now-healthy animals in a clean, safe place (either the sanctuary itself or a new home). Not that Best Friends ever whitewashes the truth of homeless, neglected, and abused pets; occasionally there will be a “before” photo of an animal in a tragic situation, or more often a description of an animal’s sad history. But their emphasis is on the “after.”

It’s so smart. No one wants to contribute to a losing cause.

That’s what I’m struggling with on this blog. The topic of factory farming tends to bring out the Debbie Downer in me. Now, I know I can’t go to the opposite extreme and become a Pollyanna about it. But my goal is to enlarge my sphere of influence by informing and entertaining people, and I realize you catch more bees with honey. Not that you’re a bee. But you know what I mean. I’m trying to lighten up.

So here’s my question: how do you deal positively with rotten realities? How do you remain optimistic and pro-active and actually effect change, instead of bitching about how hopeless things are? How do you remember to focus on what does work, rather than what doesn’t?

I’m dying to know. Please post a comment and tell me all about it. I’ll be so heartened, I might even send you a donation.

I’ve tried to stop saying things like “I can’t afford X” or “I don’t have time for Y” because they both really mean the same thing: It’s just not a priority for me. I do have time, and I do have money. Both resources are limited, of course, but I decide how to spend them.

Humane-certified meat is relatively expensive, as is organic produce. This leads to the complaint that the various emerging healthy food movements (I’m including the local and slow food movements as well) are elitist and don’t account for socioeconomic differences. It’s partly true: some families really can’t afford certain types of food, or don’t have access to it. However, Americans now spend 11% of their income on food–the lowest of any country, and the lowest ever in U.S. history. And yet we’re somehow both overfed and undernourished.

Why is this? Partly because we tend to buy food that spares us all the time once spent in preparation. The choice is convenience over quality: a frozen entrée can seem like a godsend after an exhausting day of work.

Another factor is price. Imagine you’re standing at a poultry case comparing a chicken from Perdue with a far more expensive “certified-humane” chicken from Murray’s. For most people, the process ends there, because price is more important than some abstract benefit to animals. Others may pause to weigh the issue of quality, believing that the Murray’s chicken tastes better or is better for them.

In the end, every bite we take reflects a choice we’ve made, a choice that reveals our priorities. Consciously or unconsciously, we make our food decisions by factoring in (or factoring out) a number of variables. Depending on the person, these may include price, convenience, health, animal welfare, and environmental impact. (The Slow Food movement, for one, attempts to re-conceive this equation.)

People usually do due diligence when buying a new car, finding a doctor, or choosing a school, and often decide to pay more for quality. We might spend extra for a safer car, a more experienced surgeon, a school with a lower teacher-student ratio.

This is precisely how I think of humane-certified meat. I’ll pay more for it because it tastes better, doesn’t introduce antibiotics or hormones into my body, and is produced by a system that doesn’t torture animals or harm the environment.

I’ll even spend more time looking for it. And more time preparing it, too. A girl’s gotta have her priorities.

I couldn’t figure it out. Why are there plenty of small, local family farmers raising animals well, but so little humane-certified meat available in stores and restaurants? I finally put two and two together: It’s the slaughter, stupid. Here’s the four-part problem.

All farmers must use USDA-approved slaughterhouses.

Farmers cannot legally sell meat unless it’s been “harvested” at an approved plant (otherwise, they can only eat it themselves or give it away). Obviously, it’s crucial for a government agency to ensure that disease is kept out of the public food supply, but the USDA is a bloated bureaucracy whose rules favor factory farms and help them to thrive. And factory farms are responsible for E. coli and Salmonella outbreaks and mad cow disease (the USDA lets factory farms feed dead, diseased cows to living cows).

Small farmers are limited to smaller slaughterhouses.

Larger plants don’t take small jobs; it’s about economy of scale. At harvest time, small family farmers are forced to transport their animals to the nearest legal “processing plant” that will accept their animals. These plants often do not conform to the high standards farmers have for their animals’ welfare, but the farmers have no choice.

Humane certification requires humane slaughter, which only some slaughterhouses do.

From an animal welfare standpoint, how animals die is as important as how they live. So unless the farmer is lucky enough to have access to an outstanding small slaughterhouse with transparent policies, they can’t get the certification, even if they did the right thing every day of the animals’ lives. The USDA regulations focus on the health of consumers but have little to do with animal welfare (USDA inspectors often overlook violations of the Humane Slaughter Act).

Sadly, these small slaughterhouses are getting to be fewer and farther between.

More and more small plants are closing, having become financially crippled by the complexities and demands of federal regulation because the USDA’s regulatory framework favors the big players (e.g., those located on factory farms) and makes business quite difficult for a small operation.

Summary

There’s plenty of supply. There’s plenty of demand. Between the two is a giant hurdle made from government-issued concrete.

Like a child’s Christmas list for Santa, here’s my Earth Week gift list for the USDA.

Dear USDA, I have been a very good girl this year. I worked hard to research where my food comes from and I got better at feeding myself. These are the gifts I would like from you this Earth Week for me and my fellow Americans:

1. Please end your unhealthy and destructive relationship with big agribusiness. Stop subsidizing corn and soy, the key ingredients in industrial livestock feed. Start subsidizing small farmers and sustainable local food networks. Make policies that benefit small organic farms. Expand your Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education farmer grants program.

2. Enforce the Humane Slaughter Act. It’s been around since 1958, even George W. Bush improved it in 2002, and it simply requires that pigs and cows be rendered insensible to pain before they are slaughtered. Empower your Food Safety and Inspection Service employees to identify and report violations, and then actually penalize the offenders. Also, expand the act to include chickens and turkeys.

3. Your food pyramid that helps determine what Americans eat? Stop enlarging sections according to the big food industry’s lobbying efforts. Instead, endorse Harvard School of Public Health’s version. Better yet, hand the whole job over to Health and Human Services, since you have an apparent conflict of interest.

4. Reform the school lunch program so school lunches include less factory-farmed meat, fewer processed foods, and more vegetarian options. (Today is Farm Sanctuary’s National Call-In Day to urge legislators to support H.R. 4870, the Healthy School Meals Act).

I’d like to think that wanting these things to happen is not quite as childish as expecting reindeer to fly.