Edible Media takes an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web.
The New York Times op-ed page appears to be grooming James E. McWilliams, a professor of history at Texas State University, as a rising pundit on food-politics issues.
In August, The Times ran a McWilliams piece worrying that growing consumer desire for local food might be harming the environment. And yesterday, they had McWilliams wringing his hands about whether cloned meat will get a fair hearing.
His local-food critique didn't amount to much on examination. And his cloned-meat piece is absurd. In other words, his pundit career is off to a rollicking start. Might a cable-TV show be in the works?
McWilliams' argument on cloned meat goes like this: because the debate around the technology is so polarized, it will likely never get a fair hearing, and thus we may never harvest its full benefits. He's making a kind of sensible-middle argument: if only everyone could think logically, unhindered by emotion -- like us in the sensible middle -- then everything would be fine.
The argument starts to go awry in his opening sentence:
Last month the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to food made from cloned cows, pigs and goats, with the agency's top food-safety expert, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, declaring, "It is beyond our imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe."
You see, while McWilliams worries about polarization, the FDA's green light effectively ended much of the debate around cloned meat. And consumers will likely reap its alleged benefits whether they want to or not, because the FDA also ruled that cloned meat need not be labeled. In other words, one side of this polarized debate has all the power, and has already rammed its agenda through. All that's left for hysterics and sensible middlers to do is, well, write op-eds.
This, despite the FDA's own finding that:
Calves and lambs produced through cloning tend to have higher birth weights and longer gestation periods, which may lead to difficult births. Repeated exposure of individual animals to invasive procedures to harvest oocytes for SCNT is likely to cause pain and distress. In addition, the survival rate of cloned fetuses is low, and some survivors have health problems such as heart and lung disease.
Given that cloned meat will soon enough become a fact of the supermarket, what precisely is McWilliams concerned about? He cites the case of genetically modified food. In his world, hysterical opposition to GM foods has cost the world a litany of wonders: "insect-resistant cassava or drought-tolerant maize [that] could be a boon to subsistence farmers in Africa," for example.
If similar opposition to cloning mounts, we'll miss out on "bacon that has heart-protective Omega 3's, say, or milk produced by cows that are stronger and thus need fewer antibiotics."
There are many problems with this argument. First, opposition to GM food may be strong, but some measures at least, it has failed miserably. Today, more than 90 percent of all U.S. soy, and about half of all corn, is genetically modified. These crops pervade the U.S. food system; shrill opposition aside, U.S. supermarket shelves and fast-food counters groan with food containing GM ingredients.
But hasn't anti-GM hysteria hindered efforts to help subsistence farmers in Africa? Not likely. Rather, researchers have largely been unable -- despite much trying -- to come up with effective GM tropical crops. The most famous example is Monsanto's ill-fated virus-resistant sweet potato in Kenya.
Meanwhile, while GM opponents write leaflets and blog posts, people with power and cash are hotly promoting GMs in Africa. The Gates Foundation, for example, tapped long-time Monsanto exec Rob Horsch to head up its lavishly funded ag-technology efforts in Africa.
So McWilliams' sensible-middle approach doesn't really illuminate much at all. Whatever the alleged benefits cloned meat offers, we'll probably get them -- like it or not.
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Comments
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Meteorswarm Posted 10:22 am
06 Feb 2008
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Sam Wells Posted 11:49 am
06 Feb 2008
I don't know about the cattle brain-power over at my old alma-mater, but Texas A&M is a leader on issues of how to genetically screen breeders for (1) maximum calving rates and (2) highest quality meats. Similar things have been done with sheep and interestingly, racing horses.
No idea what the worry is, since 99.97% of the breeders for any livestock is letting a male and female in a pen for the afternoon. You don't eat the special bulls or heifers until they about drop dead, in which case they make hamburger. /sam
Onward through the fog
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JMG Posted 1:22 pm
06 Feb 2008
I guess it's all part of the Times doing its bit to help people not feel so bad about the end of a 250 year old institution.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Bart Anderson Posted 9:21 pm
06 Feb 2008
It's disillusioning to see essays like that of McWilliams, appear - the lack of intellectual rigor makes one sick at heart.
It's PR and propaganda, with the usual memes: "Lost in this rhetorical battle was a quiet middle ground..." Oh come on.
Sad to say, I've run across this disease in a number of scientists. They may do wonders in their special fields, but they lack critical thinking and, in some cases, integrity. The comfy world of corporate research dollars is very appealing.
On the other hand, other scientists are the intellectual heroes of our time. Jim Hansen, Elaine Ingham, many others.
BTW, has anybody been watching the attempts of the current Canadian government to muzzle its scientists?.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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amazingdrx Posted 2:25 am
07 Feb 2008
The NYT, just when you think it can't get worse.
Clone this critic to provide a whole new generation of times reporters! Uniformly mass delusional media empire. That's worth a little god-play with the genetic ecosystem.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Sam Wells Posted 7:17 am
07 Feb 2008
Americans have a funny view about this because they think if livestock are to be eaten (gasp!), they should be happy and frolic among pristine fields, never in old age where they want to lie down. Indeed, laws have been passed to outlaw the practice of rendering horses, many of which were old or severely disabled. So instead of recycling them the horse must be buried in a landfill at great cost. Over in England they're called "knackers."
So I guess more laws to prevent cattle "drops" from being consumed are needed for the gentle-minded, I suppose. Maybe somebody can turn them into ethanol or something, right?
-sam
Onward through the fog
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:27 am
07 Feb 2008
The decision to run the McWilliams piece was probably made by one of the Op Ed editors. On the other hand, the Op Ed page has also run some great pieces in the last few years.
Many people work for the NY Times, some of the best in journalism. It's vitally important to keep our newspapers afloat, disagree though we might with some of their policies.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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kimberleywoelich Posted 10:57 am
07 Feb 2008
Most cows are sick in the livestock production, that is why half of all the antibiotics in this country is used on livestock. - Now if the cows were not sick why would they give them antibiotics?
The cows are not lying down because of old age, in fact a cow outside of the livestock industry lives to be around 23 years old. The cows that are consumed in the factory farming are usually killed by the average age of 5 years old. For male baby cows, it is much sooner, to product veal. So the ideas of old age in the factory farming is not applicable.
I do agree with you, most people do not think about conditions of their animal food. Instead they have a dreamy picture of the animal living a good happy cruelty free life. Which is not the case for over 90% of livestock.
I hope that you do some research, not through the meat lobbyist though. Proper research, and come to a more realistic conclusion. - I wish you luck in finding real information Sam!
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Sam Wells Posted 11:52 am
07 Feb 2008
Onward through the fog
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willa Posted 1:35 pm
11 Feb 2008
First of all, rendering dead horses isn't illegal, there just isn't much demand for it. There are a limited number of things you can make from carcasses (that is, not-freshly-slaughtered ones), but in reality most of the things we make from dead animals need to be made of freshly-dead ones. If I euthanize my horse and have the knacker come the next day and pick up the body, it won't be good for a whole lot, especially if it was euthed chemically rather than with a bullet (though the latter is also a totally humane and fine way to do it if you know how). Barbiturate-laced tissues aren't very useful.
Second, horse slaughter is currently not going on in this country, it's true. However, truckloads of horses go to Canada and Mexico every day. We need better laws to close that loophole (conditions in the Mexican slaughterhouses are horrible beyond conception), but in the meantime we are in a crunch. Between the overbreeding of racehorses for short, all-too-often-useless careers, the overbreeding of other purebred horses because people think they can make money (they can't, and once they figure that out they dump the horses), the overbreeding of useless backyard horses because people are just dumb...and then on top of it all we're in a serious hay shortage right now, thanks to global warming (the drought in the southeast US) and ethanol production stealing our hay fields...so right now there are a LOT of unwanted horses, and therefore a lot of outcry that we need equine slaughter, which is ridiculous. What we need is to stop breeding so many damn worthless horses that only the killer buyers want.
None of this has anything to do with rendering euthanized horses. Most of the horses who go to slaughter are young and able-bodied and just plain not wanted. As for the ones who are old and decrepit, it's hardly a fitting end for them to travel crammed in on trucks designed for cattle, deprived of food and water for days sometimes during the trip, packed in with larger and more aggressive horses who may hurt the old and lame ones. There's nothing good about the idea of re-legalizing the operation of horse slaughter plants in the US, except from the point of view of the selfish, greedy owners who feel the need to milk those last few dollars from horses rather than have the decency to take care of them in their retirement.
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caniscandida Posted 3:36 pm
11 Feb 2008
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/undercover_investig ...
Thanks, Willa, for the discussion of what happens to horses. The transportation of all hoofed animals is always difficult, even in the most favorable circumstances, e.g. when wild animals are transported to zoos. The huge distances that unwanted horses must cross to arrive at Mexican or Canadian slaughterhouses is truly dreadful.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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willa Posted 11:40 pm
11 Feb 2008
It is definitely different with horses, though. For one thing, horses are going through a system of transit and slaughter that's basically designed for cattle, which makes it that much more horrific. Horses are, on average, taller than cattle, so as cruel as it is to transport any animal in a crowded double-decker (where do you think the urine and excrement from the upper deck goes?), it's much worse when you put a taller, longer-necked animal in that space. Ditto the actual slaughter mechanisms; they are designed for short, short-necked cattle, and for fairly placid animals. Horses have long, mobile necks and are easily frightened, so you can imagine how easy it is to stun them or hit them accurately with the captive bolt gun that's supposed to stop brain activity as instantly as a well-placed gunshot.
To me, though, another big difference is that in a lot of cases slaughter-bound horses have already served humans their whole lives and, you'd think, earned retirement. It baffles me that so many people think horse slaughter is "necessary" just because they are too stupid/cheap/lazy to realize they are breeding an animal that can easily live 30+ years and that in so doing they take responsibility for 30+ years of care.
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