In The Cheese Conundrum I lamented the difficulty of finding dairy products from well-raised cows. I continue to lament how difficult it is to trace any our food to its source. But whereismymilkfrom.com actually does get you pretty close. You type in the little code stamped on the carton or jug (cheese, yogurt, and sour cream have codes too), and it tells you which dairy it came from.

Different brands of milk often come from the same dairy, possibly even the same cow. The site’s information is from the Interstate Milk Shippers list, which is published by the FDA in conjunction with the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Public Health Service. Notice the USDA does not involve itself here, but that’s another lament.

You might find that despite the “pastoral”-looking packaging, your milk came from a factory farm in the Midwest owned by Conagra, one of the more evil corporations of its kind. Or you might find that it came from Berkeley Farms, which buys milk from different small California farmers and whose web site claims the cows are pasture-raised.

Of course, the information provided on a company’s web site can be vague or misleading. Most have “contact us” links where you can ask for more detailed information about how the cows are raised. If they ignore your questions, there’s your answer.

I’m certainly no scientist, but that’s never stopped me from developing theories. Here are two I’ve been thinking of. Some may call them cacamamie, but I’ve heard crazier things:

1. The antibiotics and hormones fed to factory farm animals to make them bigger and fatter faster must have some similar effect on the humans who eat meat and animal products from factory farms. (Since giving up such meat and reducing my consumption of dairy and eggs, I’ve lost weight without changing anything else in my diet.)
2. The rate of depression and anxiety in humans has risen since the advent of factory farming (depression rates have actually doubled every 20 years). We already know that stress at slaughter effects the texture and taste of the meat. I’d take it a step further: I suspect that pain and fear reside in animals’ bodies (ours included) on a cellular level, and that when we ingest the flesh of a tortured animal, it becomes our own.

The man who once filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act was also one of the few politicians on the national level to speak out against farm animal cruelty. From his landmark Senate speech from 2001:

The law clearly requires that these poor creatures be stunned and rendered insensitive to pain before this process begins. Federal law is being ignored. Animal cruelty abounds. It is sickening. It is infuriating. Barbaric treatment of helpless, defenseless creatures must not be tolerated even if these animals are being raised for food–and even more so, more so. Such insensitivity is insidious and can spread and is dangerous. Life must be respected and dealt with humanely in a civilized society.

When I visited Costa Rica I was shocked by how the rainforest teemed with life. It seemed like every nook of nature–and everything there was nature–was writhing with animals and plants. It was like “Planet Rainforest,” totally otherworldly. A crab loped across my hotel floor. I went on a zipline tour through the old-growth rainforest canopy, and toward the top of a tree I saw a hole in the trunk, filled with rainwater, a tiny yellow frog perched within. The moist jungle climate was almost scary; it reminded me that the life force was powerful and fierce and would not be denied. It would have its way.

The rainforest is the result of million years of co-evolution. There’s a certain kind of algae that grows nowhere but on the hair of the sloth, giving it a green sheen for camouflage. The sloth only eats leaves from the Cecropia tree in which it sleeps. It does its business on the rainforest floor once a week, and one certain kind of fly depends on it for food. The rainforest doesn’t need fertilizers or pesticides; the ecosystem knows how to keep life in balance.

Us, not so much. These days most of our food–both plants and animals–is grown as monocultures: single life forms grown or existing over great expanses (in contrast to polycultures).

Planted year after year on the same land, monocultures destroy topsoil. Agribusiness doesn’t believe in sabbaticals, the ancient Biblical recommendation that everything and everyone get a rest once in awhile: land every seven years, people and their work animals every seven days (and now, of course, tenured professors every seven years). Sabbaticals would reduce profit, in the short term, by 14%.

Monocultures also require more and different pesticides each year, since a single virus, bacteria, fungus, disease, or pest can wipe out the whole lot in a heartbeat. It’s not just crops, though, factory farm animals are also monocultures: there’s one breed of laying hen, one breed of pig, and so on. The ubiquitous Broad-Breasted White Turkey is the product of such bizarre breeding that it can no longer naturally reproduce. Animals on factory farms are so vulnerable to disease that they ingest “sub-therapeutic” antibiotics with every meal.

Animals on factory farms are bred to produce lots of milk or eggs, gain weight fast, or yield particular types of meat. They’re also almost exclusively fed the great American monoculture staple, corn. In contrast, heritage or heirloom breeds are better adapted to withstand disease and survive in harsh environmental conditions, and their bodies are better suited to living on pasture.

Naturally, thousands of animal breeds and crop varieties and the valuable genetic diversity they once possessed have disappeared since farming went industrial. Our diets have become “mono” along with them; when we eat meat, we’re eating more corn. Variety is the spice of life; the food we eat, however we may season it, has become dangerously unvaried. Thanks to the flavor manipulations of modern food science, though, we don’t even notice.

I’m no scientist, but I would guess that monocultures are to the food world what marrying your sibling is to the human world: a shortsighted genetic practice for which one eventually pays a terrible price. Monocultures also remind me of the mind-numbing sameness of airports. You get the same generic food and stores in every airport. It’s hard to get anything fresh and real; “airport land” is a corporate, airless bio-dome. You are trapped: if you want to ever get anywhere far away, it’s literally their way or the highway.

Luckily farmers’ markets are the opposite of airports. Those odd tomatoes you see there every summer, veiny and misshapen as goiters, in every shade and combination of red, yellow, green, and purple, are heirloom breeds. Same with the eggs that have a pale green shell. Most of the meat you see at the farmer’s market is from heirloom breeds, too. On menus, it’s a good bet that when a breed of animal or vegetable is named, it’s not a monoculture. Type in your zip code at Eat Well Guide to get to the good stuff.