Old MacDonald had a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation...

Eee-I-eee-I-O!

And on that farm Cargill owned the pigs and the feed and the medication....

Eee-I-eee-I-Noooooooooo!

I visited a pig "farm" CAFO last week. It was part of Cargill's master plan to brainwash the public into thinking that factory-farming (don't use that term!) is inevitable and the animals are well-taken care of and the food is all good for you. It's called the State Pork Association "Lunch and Learn" series. You eat pig in front of pigs but, as it turns out, not with a bunch of pigs.

The people who work for food mega-giant Cargill are just people. They're not on par with Nazi doctors or anything. At least, not the ones I met during the lunch 'n' learn--the ones actually taking care of the animals. The couple who owned the farm, the 'field service agent' who checks that regs are being followed on this and about 12 other pig nurseries, and the neighbors who sometimes worked there were all from farming backgrounds and all wanted nothing more than to make a decent living and have their children follow them into farming one day.

We ate lunch (pork!) under a tent set up in a pasture that, according to piles of evidence, had recently been vacated by cattle. There were state representatives and senators, college professors, bankers (of course), a few stragglers (yours truly included), and Mennonites who pulled up in horse-drawn buggies. We listened to Mrs. Farm Owner talk about how she and her husband own the land and the barns where the pigs are housed, how they have to fill out reams of paperwork whenever they spray liquified pig shit on their soybean fields, and about how they only do that on days when they know their neighbors aren't having a picnic or doing anything else outside.

Then the Cargill rep spoke (I knew she was from Cargill because she--and many others--had on baby blue, V-neck-with-collars [odd] shirts with "Cargill" embroidered on the breast). She talked about how Cargill and the whole CAFO world are "Committed to their Communities". She talked about the tax dollars that Cargill farmers pumped into the community, how State was in the top five or ten producers in the nation for swine, beef cattle, dairy cattle, corn, and soybeans, and many more statistics. After her spiel, she said that anyone with questions could ask one of the blue-shirted people, and we adjourned for the tour.

Most people left, but my burning curiosity led me to one of three barns where a couple of thousand piglets (weaned at 3 weeks--it's about 3 months on a real farm) were kept for the next 5-7 weeks of their fabulous lives.

I was only allowed in because I took a blood oath that I had not been around any other pigs for at least five days, and because, in the office of the main barn, I donned heavy plastic 'boots' that looked like clear Christmas stockings and a full-on jumpsuit made out of some substance created by Dow. (Awww....all these gigantors work together!)

I walked into the barn and WAFT! What a stench! It's true that the big manure lagoon out back really wasn't that smelly, but the ammonia and turd aroma bullying its way into my nostrils nearly brought tears to my eyes (mustn't cry...). In front of me, under a low ceiling (if you have visions of a big red barn full of sweet-smelling yellow hay, or any other image conjured by Charlotte's Web, you're on the wrong track), were a shitload of little pigs, in groups of 6-15 or so, contained in many, many little metal 'paddocks'. The floor consisted of beige plastic in a rectangular mesh pattern, the rectangles being almost big enough to allow most of the turds to escape to the mysterious place below the mesh and, eventually, to take flight to the lagoon. The fencing was tubular metal, about an inch in diameter, and it was very open--you could step over it, and each pig could see the pigs in nearby pens. The windows were open and a breeze was moving through the screens. Even with the breeze, the smell was thick, with dangerous wafts that made me feel that I might have to get out of the barn and throw up. (Mustn't vomit....)

Along the ceiling, pipes. Pipes carrying food into the metal troughs, pipes carrying water to the metal auto waterers, pipes piping fresh air in in the winter? What is the smell like in the winter? There were also many propane heaters hanging down. This is a Nursery Operation, and the pigs--separated from mommy at a very young age--need to be kept warm.

They were born in a Sow Operation, where the sows live their lives in a circle of go in heat, get bred, be pregnant, give birth, and feed for 3 weeks. Does that happen on a normal farm? Sure! But the gals also get a little time off, walk on grass over areas larger than their bodies times 2, eat something besides corn (Cargill corn, of course). Then they are trucked to this nursery, or one of dozens like it in this State alone. They live in these pens until they're big enough to be trucked to a Finishing Operation, usually in Iowa or Illinois, where they are closer to the corn. Cargill corn. Then they are slaughtered--excuse me, "harvested", when they are the correct weight. Guess who harvests them? You go, reader! Then they are sliced up into different products and sold under some kind of brand, usually a subsidiary of...Cargill! When you see "Nature's . . . something--I can't think of what it is. "Gate"? "Choice"? Something like that. Anyway, something with "nature" in the title is the brand name of Cargill ABF (antibiotic-free) products. Coming to a Kroger near you! You've been informed.

While in the barns, I had a chance to ask a few questions, mostly of the field service agent, a woman about my age, who was the spittin' image of a pretty, scrubbed-clean farm wife who probably canned all of her own vegetables and could drive a tractor. I asked, "I see a lot of kids running around. What if one of these kids wanted to be a pig farmer, but wanted to raise their OWN pigs from birth through harvest?"

It was an interesting moment. She said, "I'm glad you asked that question. It's actually a very personal question for me." She picked up her own daughter, a girl of maybe four, who was obviously comfortable in the barn. Then the field service agent's eyes filled with tears. She said, "I just hope that one of my children will want to be a farmer one day. But I don't think they'll be able to farm like that."

I could almost see the Cargill PR gun jabbing into her kidney.

The consensus of the Cargill employees (and a young pig-farming intern from Texas Tech) was that the 'furrow to finish' pig farming of the past was just that--the past. What small farmer could possibly compete with the vertical oligopoly that is Cargill?

Well, there is a place for us. And our pigs. There are people who are raising pigs the old-fashioned way and making it. Chipotle restaurants are buying pork from humane, natural and largely regulation-free operations, usually co-ops, where the pigs can walk around, eat a wide variety of things (including the slop that helped a farm family recycle all of their food), and wean naturally, meaning that they didn't need the artificial heaters and antibiotics or go through the stress that comes from weaning too early for efficiency's sake. They also don't have to eat corn--Cargill corn--their entire lives.

Make no mistake--the Cargill people want their pigs to be healthy, and the pigs receive much attention and top-notch medical care. There was no piglet juggling, no sick pigs getting kicked from the pen to the 'compost' pile (where they do put dead pigs), nothing of the sort. Not only is it not economical to have sick and dead pigs, but the people running the show get no pleasure from mistreated pigs. I really believe that. That point got through to this extremely skeptical consumer during the lunch and learn. And I did question my anti-CAFO prejudice on the ride home through some of the best pasture-land in the world. Is my prejudice based on teary-eyed liberal claptrap? Or is there a real reason to oppose these kinds of operations?

I decided that there is a real reason to oppose CAFOs. The whole system is a mess. A big, complex mess. I can't even begin to explain it here. I encourage you to read books like "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and educate yourself about what agriculture in this country (and others) looks like. A monoculture of corn. 94% of the soybean crop going to animal feed (in this State--according to the literature I was provided). Animals raised indoors and trucked to specialized facilities several times in their lives. Farmers producing so much with their expensive equipment, seed, and fertilizer that they bring on the price collapse of the commodity to the delight of companies like Cargill, who can then buy the corn cheap (in almost all years), and leave themselves facing another year of having to produce even more to pay all that shit off. And, finally, the dearth of true, diversified family farms.

But there is some good news. The local food movement has real, positive ramifications for small producers and I hear about it all the time! Our consumer choices really do make a difference. And we can chase giants like Cargill, and giant assholes like Monsanto, right out of business. One day.

I didn't mean for this to get preachy but, since it is, here are my commandments:
1. Try to avoid high fructose corn syrup. It's making us very fat.
2. Try to buy meat from local, family farms--especially those who believe they owe their animals a happy, stress-free life and a painless death. Or just go vegetarian.
3. Raise a few vegetables in your backyard. Try to eat seasonal fruits and vegetables, preferably from local producers.
4. Cook more.
5. Give yourself time to do all this. Don't get nuts.

See? Not that hard! It's a slow, very imperfect process in my family, but it's coming around. My cows are looking great--and happy--and ready to be bred. I bought 1/4 of a beef and 10 pasture-raised chickens from a local farmer the other day. It was cheaper on average than meat in the store--the beef is going to be about $2.20 a pound, and that includes steaks. And they weren't trucked, were given no antibiotics (because they don't get stressed and sick when raised the right way), and all the money in the transaction stays local.

I learned a lot at the lunch and learn. Mostly, though, I learned that every lunch is an opportunity to educate yourself about what you're eating.