Food News: Bird Flu & E. coli Win Big on Election Night
The newsletter that may soon have to be written in secret from a humanely-certified RFK Jr wellness farm.
hi hi,
before we get into the news, which admittedly has taken on a bit more of a doom-and-gloom theme than usual, i want to start with a few not-shitty things that are helping me exist. please feel free to add to this list by dropping some of your own not-shitty things in the comments!
not-shitty things that are helping me exist:
memes
ginny, duh
drugs (prescription, medicinal, and legal but recreational)
funny animal compilation tiktoks
having a job, especially one that is aligned with my values and cares about me as a full human and not just an employee (i know it sounds wild and a year ago, i didn’t think it could be real, either)
john oliver
specialty vegan cheeses
2 espresso beverages a day
shitposting on the internet
ranting on the internet
being cute on the internet
-k
What I’ve Read
Restaurant Chains Won Big on Election Night - “Last week, eight of the ten largest publicly traded U.S. restaurant companies saw their shares climb even as most of them posted disappointing quarterly results.” One potential reason for this is the industry anticipating more lax labor laws and Trump rolling back worker protections. Companies have shown throughout history that they won’t protect workers unless they are compelled to by government regulations.
Why the McDonald’s E. Coli Outbreak Still Comes Back to Meat - I covered food recalls and the McDonald’s E. coli outbreak in Food News: Vegan Weapons of Mass Destruction, the CDC data as of November 13th shows 104 cases, 34 hospitalizations, and 1 death spanning 14 states. This Sentient Media article mentions that this is the first document E. coli outbreak related to onions and discusses how E. coli contamination occurs (CW poop talk). It also provides a history of how concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO), aka factory farms, contaminate produce and how a decentralized food safety system with weak regulations allows for harm to continue.
E. coli outbreak linked to organic carrots sickens people in 18 states - Speaking of E. coli…The CDC documented cases of E. coli that emerged between Sept 6 and Oct 28th across 18 states. Of those who reported their illnesses, 39 people have gotten sick from these organic carrots and 1 person has died. Please check the recall details from the CDC to get information on the infected whole bagged and baby carrots sold by Grimmway Farms.
Soaring grocery prices helped Trump to victory. The climate crisis is only going to make this worse - I know we have been inundated with this topic for the past few months but don’t skip this article just because of the first half of that title. Feel free to skip it for other reasons, you do you, but I appreciated the context of how prices of consumer goods have impacted politics globally and how they are directly connected to climate change. This is an opinion piece by economist James Meadway explaining that, “price surges are having political impacts,” in 3 of the world’s largest economies—the US, Japan, and India. Meadway also pulls in data of how these prices have less to do with the political party in power at this moment and more to do with the very real climate crises around the world. Think heatwaves and floods impacting crop harvests and diseases impacting farmed animal herds.
“The world we live in now is one where geopolitical conflict intersects with the climate crisis to produce repeated, sometimes dramatic, shocks and shortages. Price rises on one side are all too often matched by outright profiteering on the other: the five agribusinesses that control 70% of the global trade made all-time high profits during 2020-22, while Oxfam reports that 62 new ‘food billionaires’ were created.”Alleged 'potato cartel' accused of conspiring to raise price of frozen fries, tater tots across U.S. - Two proposed class actions were filed against the top 4 potato companies in the US, alleging that they privately exchanged pricing data and other information to raise the prices of frozen potatoes goods over the past few years. The documentation of this supposed price-fixing by companies that control about 98% of the US frozen potato market goes back to 2021. I may not pay attention to the price of a carton of chicken eggs but I have noticed the price of frozen potatoes. I used to buy tater tots a lot, they are a comfort food in my child-free household, but over the past few years the bags have gotten smaller and the prices increased so they’ve become more of a special occasion purchase.
Canadian teenager in critical condition with presumptive bird flu as U.S. official warns the virus ‘seems to be gearing up for wider impact’ - A teenager is reported to have tested positive for bird flu and is now in critical condition in a Vancouver hospital. This person was not immunocompromised prior to developing flu symptoms and was not involved in animal farming operations or other activities that would have put them at high risk for bird flu. Extensive testing seems to have been done on the teenager’s network and animals they may have come in contact with but the source is yet to be identified. This is Canada’s first reported case of bird flu in a human since 2014. Not thrilled at the idea of having to rely on the Trump Administration, filled with science deniers and anti-vaxxers, for another pandemic response.
There are currently 55 confirmed reported human cases of bird flu in the US, check the CDC for more information with 1 potential case out here in the Bay Area. Read this Nature article for more scientific coverage of the case in Canada and concerns about bird flu in general.
Progressive groups share many of RFK Jr.’s goals. They’re opposing him anyway. - Some of RFK Jr.’s policies may sound like things progressive food systems advocates, including myself, support but we are also some of the most outspoken critics of his proposed appointment. And rightly so. The only things I think RFK Jr. are remotely qualified for are to be a professional hypocrite, anti-science quack, and fearmongering conspiracy theorist. Instead, he may very well become the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services—giving him control of healthcare research, the CDC, FDA, NIH, and many other crucial offices.
Whatever goals RFK Jr. has stated in language that may appeal to some progressives, he’s not approaching this role with Social Determinants of Health in mind or focusing on improving food access and nutrition assistance programs. He’s too busy promoting raw milk and vilifying seed oils. He’s also spent months dreaming up “wellness farms” where people like me who take antidepressants and ADHD medications would be sent to grow organic produce for a few years to help cure us of our food-related behavioral issues. For additional framing, we have to note that RFK Jr. would be attempting to reform our federal food, ag, and healthcare policies under President Trump, who spent his first term deregulating as much as he could to the detriment of much of what RFK Jr. says he wants to protect—our environment, small farmers, food security, small farmers, meatpacking workers, anti-trust activities, and so much more.
If You’re Going to Read 1 Piece in Full:
An undercover investigation reveals the deception of “humane”-certified farms
CW: descriptions of violence against animals
Quick Summary
The USDA guidelines for substantiating animal-raising and environment-related claims were updated over the summer. In Food News: We Can Trust Food Labels, Maybe? I shared a brief overview of top-level updates and tried to convey my limited hopefulness that the government trying something is better than doing nothing.
Here we are a few months later and experts are weighing in on how the updated regulations are ultimately performative with an enforcement protocol that this essentially the honor system. As this article mentions, the USDA does not conduct audits to verify the substantiation of claims and plays almost as fast and loose with labeling claims and pastoral marketing as the producers themselves.
Ex: The USDA states that pork products can be labeled “Humanely raised” as long as the pigs have “proper shelter and rest areas,” but considers standard factory farm conditions (extremely crowded, unsanitary, living on concrete floors) as meeting that requirement.
An undercover investigation with Animal Outlook took place over the summer at a Foster Farms operation that advertises its meat as “safe, sustainable, and humane” with “better care.” The investigatory documented workers “slamming birds into crates, kicking and hitting chickens, and numerous instances of forklift drivers funning over birds.”
The descriptions of violence and the visual documentation included in this article are unfortunately necessary to capture the point—the animal agriculture industry uses pastoral marketing and humanewashing claims to mislead consumers about how the animals that are farmed for food are treated and what impact the industry has on our environment. The industry does this through “humane” and “sustainable” labeling bolstered by private third-party certifications and a regulatory agency that doesn’t exist for true accountability or to uphold any meaningful sense of well-being of farmed animals, farm workers, or our planet.
Why It Matters
Our relationship to factory farming is inescapable. It’s estimated that 99% of animal products in the United States are produced through factory farming. I wish there was a world in which we had the option to fully divest from the horrors of industrialized animal agriculture but we are all tied to it in some way—through tax dollars, consumption choices, environment, etc.
If you consume animal-based meat, dairy, and eggs, or purchase consumer products made from animals or their byproducts your relationship is obviously more direct. But being vegan doesn’t opt us out of this system, either.
We are constantly sold the illusion of consumer choice. If you haven’t heard, choice is supposedly a huge benefit of a free-market, capitalist system. Because of this, the idea of “voting with your fork” is often painted as a strategy consumers should use to convey their preferences and influence the market. If we want farmed animals to be raised in a more natural environment rather than gestation crates or cages or being pumped full of hormones to their literal breaking point, we would purchase pasture-raised, cage-free, or hormone-free animal-based foods. The industry should then follow our demands.
Instead, we’ve seen that marketing is what tends to shift with demands. And though some marketing is regulated, as the linked Vox article shows, those regulations tend to be easy to work around and difficult to enforce. Part of this is because regulatory agencies, like the USDA and FDA, are under-resourced and underfunded but we also need to acknowledge that this is our food system at work. Our food system has been built to favor the food and agriculture industries rather than to ensure transparency or the well-being of people, animals, and our planet.
Undercover investigations aren’t just stumbling across rare examples of animal cruelty or one-off farms whose methods appear to completely contradict the claims that end up on the labels we see in stores. And even if they were, voting with your fork wouldn’t prevent animal mistreatment, mitigate environmental pollution, or promote worker safety.
The animal agriculture industry has systematized cruelty and harm, these are standard practices, and the industry lobbies our government to enable this system. It also relies heavily on marketing to convince consumers that the system really isn’t that bad and of course, if they want to align their food choices with their values all they have to do is spring for the more expensive products displaying tons of pay-to-play certifications that mean far less than most people might think.
Time and again when this system is exposed in some way the industry responds by using its immense resources and power to criminalize those attempting to shed light on the issues, settle their way out of accountability, or change just enough so that PR teams can frame it as a step in the right direction. All of these tactics can make it look like voting with our forks can achieve change—and it can—but these incremental changes, however positive, are not capable of reforming the entire system of industrialized animal agriculture.
We are being deceived. Animal meat, egg, and/or dairy eaters are being deceived into thinking that paying for “humanely-raised” labeled products means they are helping animals or getting truly higher-welfare products. People who keep kosher and eat kosher-certified animal meats, eggs, and dairy think that the farmed animals they consume are treated better than non-kosher-certified animals. Vegans are deceived into thinking that not consuming animal products means we opt out of this system or are somehow saving animals by refraining from buying animal-based foods.
Acknowledging this deceit is not to place blame on meat-eaters or vegans or make any of us feel shame, it’s to recognize the gaps between what we believe and reality as well as our inherent limitations as consumers.
We are enabled just enough to think our choices affect change but decades of voting with our forks have not ended factory farms, altered subsidies that fund this system of cruelty, or resulted in major wins for animals, workers, public health, or the environment. What we have gotten is fancier labeling that caters to our deception. Our desires for less cruelty and harm are on the right track and our choices do matter but we cannot continue to believe individual actions will bring radical progress without major systemic change.
(As always, I highly encourage you to read the article and formulate your own interpretation. If you want to share your thoughts, however similar or different from mine, I welcome them in the comments below.)
Thanks, as always. Another thing that makes you happy is your amazing mom!