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It’s important to me, for reasons of professional integrity and personal sanity, to put a spotlight on the food journalists who are rigorously interrogating the human impact of industrial animal agriculture in the United States. Alice Driver, author of Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company and Fresno Bee reporter Melissa Montalvo are doing incredible work to show the world that there is no such thing as politically or morally neutral meat consumption—even and especially when it comes to chicken, yes. (My bugbear of late, because the Times cooking newsletter is always telling us about chicken recipes.)
In my food writer capacity, I’m using their work; the research of scientists on climate change, land use, and human behavior; and gastronomy history as the basis of how I think and write about the role of meat in culture—why its hold is so inescapable, despite the absolute environmental and labor imperatives to move away from mindless consumption. I’m so grateful they wanted to have this conversation for my readers.
“It's meat propaganda, like ‘we cannot live without meat. We will die. Our nation will die.’ And I mean, at the same time, Tyson Foods took out a full page ad in the New York Times while this was going on, saying ‘we are feeding the nation.‘ And the funny thing to me was that I was with workers, and they marked out ‘feeding the nation,’ and they put ‘of China,’ because they knew that Tyson was exporting meat to China.
So let's not pretend this is a national food shortage issue, or a people are going to die issue. This is 100% a corporate, ‘we got to keep our profits up for our shareholders.’ They made money hand over fist during the pandemic. It had nothing to do with with a food shortage, and everything to do with profits, and obviously nothing to do with protecting workers. And so that audio, which was recorded by a worker, nobody would have believed that if it wasn't recorded. I even had an editor say, ‘This cannot be real. I can't believe this.’ And I was like, Yeah, I mean, get inside this world where the discourse is really controlled by corporate entities and workers just have so little, very few resources to fight back against something like that.” Alice Driver
I think it’s important, too, to highlight the recent Eat-Lancet Commission report on food systems’ impact on climate change (and more), as well as what would constitute a “planetary health diet.” It’s not surprising that it would require consuming far less meat. It is 100% related to Driver and Montalvo’s work, as well as this conversation. A quick quote as I continue to work my way through the full issue:
“Human rights related to food systems (ie, the rights to food, a healthy environment, and decent work) are not being met, with nearly half the world's population below the social foundations for these rights. Meanwhile, responsibility for planetary boundary transgressions from food systems is not equal: the diets of the richest 30% of the global population contribute to more than 70% of the environmental pressures from food systems. Just 1% of the global population is in a safe and just space. These statistics highlight the large inequalities in the distribution of both benefits and burdens of current food systems. National policies that address inequities in the distribution of benefits and burdens of current food systems would aid in ensuring food-related human rights are met.”
And just in case you haven’t read it, here is my lecture from early 2024 on “Defining and Refining a Food Justice Lens for Food Media,” on how food writers can be more proactive in storytelling and narrative to make necessary change easier and more inevitable. This is the framework for how I approach what I do and how I think.
The full video of their conversation is accessible to members below, along with a PDF attachment of a text transcript. Everyone can view the preview.
You can now find previews of all Salon conversations on my YouTube channel. Members can access the full videos and transcripts: Anna Sulan Masing, Mayukh Sen, Carina del Valle Schorske, Layla Schlack, Pam Brunton, Jill Damatac, Anya von Bremzen.
The next Salons are October 21st’s “Is Cookbook Criticism Possible?” (sold out, but will be sent to members) and “A Plant-Based Holiday” on November 4th, featuring cookbook authors Joe Yonan and Philip Khoury. To attend live, please sign up.
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