Eat Fast, Die Young

Nice article on Kitchen's friend Will Harris of White Oak Pastures in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Harris is pouring all of his resources into an on-farm processing plant that means his cows are born on his farm and die in a humane fashion there, too - a closed loop that reflects how we used to produce food and should produce food again. As time goes on, I grown only more wary of factory farm meat and processed food. Honestly, if you can't pronounce the ingredients on the package, is it really such a swell idea to consume the food inside? Just look at last week's cloning decision. You can bet, despite disclaimers that the animals are too expensive to end up in the food chain, that the big food companies are hard at work figuring out how to use cloned animals to economize our food supply further, and I seriously doubt the goal (or the results) will target our collective health and well-being. This is not to say corporate food brands are not at times progressive. Chipotle is a fantastic company (full disclosure: they're a former client, and they are cool as hell people) that uses naturally raised beef, chicken, and pork from family farms across the country in its burritos and tacos. They charge more for their food, and people have been willing to fork it over because the difference in quality is clear, nevermind supporting independent farms or any other touchy-feely-do-gooder reasons. Why can't more companies get with the program and realize that "cheap" is running its costly course? If you're unmoved by the idea of supporting small farms like White Oak Pastures and haven't given much thought to where your food is from or what's in it, I hope this article scares the bejesus out of you like it does me. Antibiotic resistance is not just due to consumers popping every pill the doctor doles out. It is also linked to the rampant use of antibiotics in factory farm meat. This is a major story whose implications are unfolding in a pretty alarming fashion. As the t-shirt slogan goes, "Eat Fast, Die Young." For more information about factory farms and how you can buy sustainably raised meat, check out Sustainable Table or Eat Wild, which is all about grassfed foods and where you can buy them.