Michael Pollan’s latest book ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ is a chilling account of the consequences of factory farming. It is as important as Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, or Tim Flannery’s ‘The Weather Makers’. The three books are all connected in the sense that they highlight the perils of man being disconnected from the earth and the implications for our health; or in the case of climate change, our very survival.
“Our species is the first to turn its food supply into one of the biggest threats to its health,” writes Anne Lappe after reading this book.
“Today’s generation of children will be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will be less than their parents.”
One in every three American children eats fast food everyday – in fact 20% of American meals are eaten in a car! Is it any wonder that there are now more people overweight and overfed than those who are starving? Genetic Engineering companies like Monsanto have been allowed to use our food supply to sell us more of their pesticides and weedicides.
Powerful food corporations in the short space of just one generation, have turned the growing of food into an industrial system. Governments have deregulated our food system in the name of market fundamentalism, so that corporations have turned our food supply into a threat to our health!
Pollan describes the American eating disorder "unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily".
Australians like Americans have never had a strong culinary tradition so we are vulnerable to the blandishments of advertising and corporate manipulation. Michael Pollan reveals the full extent of the American ‘bottom line’ approach to Factory Farming.

Factory farming meat – the American way
Almost all the meat consumed in America, whether it is beef, chicken, turkey, pork, lamb or even salmon is derived from a diet of hybrid or genetically modified corn, all of which is heavily subsidised by the US taxpayer. Even milk and cheese is derived from corn since dairy cows don’t eat grass anymore but are fed in feed lots on corn.
The modern industrial corn is either a hybrid or genetically modified. This confers a patent and therefore higher prices and profit for the Seed Company. This hybrid or GM corn is planted four times as close as traditional corns and now provides yields of 10,000lbs per acre, which is 9 times the yield of 1920 cultivars (just 1200lbs/acre).
To produce these prodigious yields the munitions factories that used to turn oil into explosives during World War 2 switched to making fertilizer. Oil derived pesticides were also produced once the demand for poison gas ceased. Synthetic fertilizers replaced the natural organic processes, so instead of relying on carbon farming using the energy of the sun, Americans switched to fossil fuels to feed their crops which then feed their livestock. Americans are now literally 'eating' oil. This corn crop is so extensively planted now, it uses 50% of all synthetic nitrogen fertilizers which is the most ecologically damaging way to grow food.
Animals reach maturity much faster on a diet of corn, so the industrial feed lots use corn to replace pasture in the diet of cows, chickens, pigs and lamb. A diet so rich in corn is actually unhealthy for ruminant animals designed to eat grass. This causes huge health problems for the cattle and sheep and then the consumers of those animals – us humans. Standing ankle deep in faeces with almost no exercise to build muscles and being forced to feed on corn which it was never designed to eat, puts the cattle under enormous stress. These feed lot cows now need to be fed antibiotics to keep them alive for longer than 150 days.
“By switching from grass fed to lot fed meat the level of fatty acids has changed and medical researchers now feel that these trans-fats are worse for our arteries than butter”, Michael Pollan.
“Grass fed meat, milk and eggs contain less total fat and less saturated fat than the same foods from grain fed animals”, Michael Pollan.
Apart from the health problems and the pollution caused by the massive effluent disposal, it takes 32 pounds of grain to create 4lbs of beef. Such vast quantities of oil are needed to produce the fertilizers and pesticides that grow the corn that it now needs huge military support to keep the price of oil and corn and food at bedrock prices.

If Australians don’t take charge and insist on grass fed beef and chickens then the 34% of our beef that is lot fed will suddenly become 60-70% in the next decade.

Uncontaminated natural food
Michael Pollan compares alternative foods such as the gardener/hunter gatherer or organic local and the organic cross country national system of food distribution. Even if we choose organically grown food he explains how absurd it can be to buy a nationally distributed organic product, such as a prewashed lettuce, with a food value of 80 calories which when shipped from California to the east coast used up 4600 calories of fossil fuel! At local Australian Safeway/Woolworths stores – that claim to be the ultimate in Fresh Food, the same absurdity is normal:
• strawberries are shipped from Perth, a 5,000km trip
• cherries are shipped from California, a 15,000km trip
• garlic is shipped from Mexico, a 15,000km trip.
All of the above are offered for sale unlabelled as to the age or the distance shipped.
Fortunately for Australians grass fed is still the way most of our beef and lamb is produced but if we leave it to Safeway and Coles then all our meat will be lot fed with consequent affects on our health.

Farms that provide healthy food
Most of us are aware that the organic system of farming treats our land, our animals and our planet in a sustainable way. When we farm as nature intended there is no waste problem, since one creature's waste becomes anothers lunch. Pests and diseases should really be seen as a symptom – natures explanation to the farmer that something is wrong. Instead of growing grain with artificial fertilizers and pesticides, grazing animals should feed on solar-powered grass. In the process of grazing, the animals exercise to build up muscle and their effluent becomes the food for the grasses in a continuous recycling system.
At Polyface Farm in Virginia USA, a truly utopian farm is not only highly productive but provides healthy food which has integrity. On this bio-diverse mixed farm cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys and rabbits are farmed on rotation without needing fertilizers, pesticides and minimal fossil fuel. The cows are moved frequently to ensure the grass is still plentiful – not over grazed. Three days later chickens are brought in to eat the grubs that emerge from the cow pats so that 20% of the diet of chickens is either grass or insects. The chickens roost in a mobile – "egg mobile" – so they exercise, have plenty of fresh air and are truly free to Free Range.
Pigs nest in the shelter of the forest rather than in cages amongst their urine. On just 100 acres the farmer produces:
• 30,000 dozen free range organic eggs
• 10,000 free range chickens
• 25,000lbs of grass fed beef
• 25,000lbs of free range organic pork
• 800 stewing hens
•1000 turkeys
• 500 rabbits
All the poultry are slaughtered on the farm in full view of the buyers so just as at Farmers Markets, buyers and sellers can see each other face to face. Instead of wasting 7-10 calories of fossil fuel energy for 1 calorie of food, the organic system uses solar powered natural sources to produce high energy food with virtually no impacts across the farm gate.

Conclusion
Good healthy food will only be grown if we demand it. We don't want multi-national organic or cross country organic but simply organic food that is regional.
Industrial food which creates huge carbon emissions, pollution of our rivers and declining personal health will only continue if its users are totally ignorant of its consequences. Michael Pollan's book is an alarming wake up call. It's beautifully written – a tour de force following after his highly acclaimed book 'Botany of Desire'. He confirms the adage that:
The quality of life begins at the table.