The editorial in the New York Times (Staying Organic, March 5th, no author given) brings up some excellent points concerning the politics surrounding the USDA organic standards for livestock. However, the author makes a serious final error in assuming the solution to the feed issue lies in subsidized production of organic grain.

The Organic standards should have required animals to be fed diets similar to their natural ones, but this was never the case. I suppose the reason for this is that many early Organic proponents were pro-vegetarian, so little attention was paid to the details of livestock farming. The easy thing to do was just stop eating meat, since the quasi-government sponsored health experts were suggesting that anyway. As it turns out, cattle do not thrive on grain; in fact they must be given continual doses of antibiotics while on high grain diets, organic or not, to stay alive. (Michael Pollan, NY Times)  Research has shown that dangerous acid-resistant strains of E. coli bacteria breed in the acidic stomachs of grain-fed cows, whereas cows eating live grass have none of this dangerous E. coli. (http://www.eatwild.com) Thus it is ending up in hamburger not only due to careless slaughtering practices. This is why the meat industry is pushing for irradiation rather than the more complex task of providing animals with foods they were meant to eat.

There are vast areas of land unsuited to conventional farming where grazing livestock can thrive, like rocky and mountainous regions. Therefore, Francis Moore Lappe’s contention (in Diet for a Small Planet) that livestock compete with humans for grain protein is purely a condemnation of modern factory-farm practice. Lappe, while staunchly pro-vegetarian, concedes that prior to modern grain feeding, livestock were indeed protein-producing, not protein-wasting. A cow with its rumen is an amazing producer when left to its natural diet of grasses, shrubs, weeds, and insects, converting those mostly unpalatable items derived from solar energy into more concentrated protein and micronutrients. In addition, when animals have enough acreage for natural forage their waste is an asset to the soil, not an environmental hazard as in confinement operations.

Admittedly, the right way to raise animals might be more expensive in labor and land. But it requires very little input of purchased grain, nutritional supplements, or medicines. (The grain and agro-chemical cartels don’t like natural farming because farmers can be independent of them.) But our food is already too cheap. Commercial eggs cost only slightly more now than two decades ago. Can the same be said for real estate or automobiles? Yet we don’t hear voices demanding that we make cars or homes less expensive by subsidizing methods that would cut back on quality, health and safety standards.  Is there any inherent reason that the real-estate business, for example, be more profitable than farming, given that food is just as important as shelter?  For bizarre reasons, we’ve come to accept that $2000+ per month is acceptable for shelter in New York City, but $4 for a dozen eggs (several meals worth) is too expensive.

The Times editorial, in supporting grain feeding for livestock (and hence confinement practice), supports a style of farming that is unhealthy to animals, humans, and the environment.  It also plays into the hands of agro-business who claim that only their genetic engineering technology can rid the world of hunger. It is interesting how the abuses of unsustainable livestock factory farming have inspired the unlikely partnership of the “Greens” with agro-business (we’ve seen those ADM soy commercials).  The answer for the organic industry is not more large-scale government-subsidized monoculture grain farming (which ironically caused problems that partly spawned the organic movement). The organic market is increasing by 20% per year, and if it becomes dependent on massive centralized grain production, it will harm the ecosystem almost as the conventional methods it replaces. Even if it means slower growth, the answer lies in continuing the conversion to small scale, traditional mixed farming, species-appropriate grazing, and sustainable land use.

March 10, 2003
New York City

[Mr. Grunberg is a conductor, violinist, and sql programmer. He can be reached here.]