Pigs and MRSA

Nicholas Kristof has a column today on the spread of MRSA (a potentially lethal, drug resistant bacterial infection) among people who live or work around factory-farmed pigs. This is yet another example of how our food chain has run amok. As Kristof notes, we've done a good job in the U.S. of providing cheap food. But the pricetag is far bigger than the one presented at the checkout. Increasingly, we're uncovering "farming" practices that put our health at risk -- animal waste that permeates and contaminates aquifers, overuse of antibiotics which manifests as drug resistance in humans, "meat" that has an entirely different nutritional profile than the meat eaten by our grandparents and great-grandparents -- the list of evolving hazards is long, and growing longer.

Most people I talk to about these issues are in deep denial about the quality of their food. If it's cheap and shrink-wrapped, then it's fine by them. As a group, Americans seem hell-bent on defending to the death their need to eat food that kills them and despoils the planet.

Hopefully, information like the kind in Kristof's article, information that has only recently been published in the mainstream press, will begin to challenge people's assumptions about the desirability of the foods they eat. We need to wake up and break the back of the factory farming industry in this country if we're going to significantly improve the environment and our personal health. A real test of our resolve to bring change, is soon to come: the Obama administration's new budget is attempting to reduce or eliminate subsidies for large agribusiness. This move is absolutely essential to fostering the resurgence of family farming; illuminating the true cost of the mass-produced food, especially meat, that we eat; managing our federal deficit, and addressing climate change. But be prepared. If you want a healthier food supply, you're going to have to fight for it ...and pay dearly.