There’s a telling scene in the documentary Food, Inc where industrially raised cows are getting E.coli due to the cramped and unsanitary conditions they live in, and because they're being fed a diet unnatural to their systems. In order to combat this, food writer Michael Pollan suggests that if the cows were only put out to pasture for five days (to be
fed on grass, their real diet), the problem of E.coli would be self-correcting. It would go away. What does the industry do instead? It builds an enormous space-age looking factory where men in fully enclosed suits put all the meat into stainless steel kettles where it's treated with ammonia to remove the contamination. Forget about the condition of the cows or the final quality of the meat- the solution chosen is the one that will continue production unchecked so that outputs can continue to be maximized.
I’ve been noticing a certain sorrowful response to the Louisiana oil spill. In overheard conversations, on Internet article comment sections, on Facebook and elsewhere, there is a certain authentic depth of sadness being expressed that I’ve never quite heard before. It’s coming from somewhere deep in the guts. It sounds slightly winded, heartbroken. It’s hard to say what all the contextual coordinates are of this collective response to this latest environmental disaster, but it strikes me as important. But as ever in our troubled world, this sensitive response is in danger of retreating into denial and the comforts of distraction. We turn away for many reasons; it hurts too much, it’s too frightening, or it rakes too hard at our conscience. But it’s now more than ever that we must never look away.