My Beef With School Food

Just prior to the February 17 recall of 143 million pounds of ground beef, I received numerous emails pointing me to the Humane Society's video exposé of the killing floor at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company in Chino, California. The footage, low-resolution and fuzzy, is nevertheless gruesome, enhanced by the undercover activist's narration detailing the abuse of the animals.

What's hit the headlines is the fact that cows too sick to stand were being fork lifted into position and slaughtered against regulations, their potentially tainted meat ground up with that of hundreds of thousands of other cattle. It's been reported that 37 million pounds of that meat supplied schools across the country as a commodity item in the National School Lunch Program. "Downer" cows are forbidden for use as food because mad cow disease is one of several conditions that will cripple a cow. The USDA is minimizing the risk, but it takes about 20 years for mad cow to develop in humans and most of the recalled beef has already been consumed. With 20 million school children taking part in the program daily, that's nearly two pounds of contaminated beef per student. Scary.

I eat meat. My family, my kids eat meat. One of the stories my 21-year-old daughter tells of her "traumatic" childhood describes the time I sent her into our neighbor's farmhouse to ask her dad a question. She found him with a group of men and women gathered around a table in the basement where they were engaged in butchering a calf. The calf had been tethered in the barn the day before, nursing from his mother. My daughter knew him as "Gumpy." My six-year-old child emerged from the basement in shock. "They killed Gumpy!" "Papa killed Gumpy!" For years after, whenever we had veal for dinner, she would ask, "Are we eating Gumpy?"

My husband is from France. When he moved to America 30 years ago, he couldn't find the quality of food he was used to in France, not even in the most expensive gourmet markets in New York City. Shortly after we were married, we became partners in a farm in upstate New York. There we raised certified organic poultry and game birds using traditional French and biodynamic farming methods. Our daughter, definitely a "hair and nails" kind of girl, saw a lot of blood and guts on the farm. And though she attends a college with perhaps the largest percentage of vegans of any school in the country, her French half dictates that for now at least, she remains an omnivore.

I wondered if my daughter's first-hand knowledge of life and death on the farm de-sensitized her to the killing of animals for food?

When we began farming, we expected to bring our tenderly raised birds to a local slaughterhouse. As neophytes coming from the city, it would have been so much simpler for us -- less messy, and certainly less vulgar, to let someone else deal the coup de grace. "You give me 100 chickens, and I'll give you 100 back plucked and dressed, but no guarantee they'll be your same chickens," is what we were told by every operation in the county. After months of research, equipment auctions, and USDA inspections, we hired a crew of Vietnam Vets and began "processing" our beautiful Muscovy ducks, Chinese geese, Guinea Fowl, Pheasants and "Poulet de Bresse" on the farm.

Slaughter days were somber, yet disciplined affairs. We were efficient and careful to follow our newly acquired USDA rules and responsibilities. Most of our birds were sold fresh to the best restaurants in the city. Many neighbors showed up on slaughter days as well. Often we'd have a rabbi at one door, blessing our birds before carting them off to the local Kosher resort, and the only Muslim couple in the county at our other door, eager for fowl that was not only Kosher, but Halal as well!

The city chefs, the Rabbi, the Muslim couple and the neighbors all knew us. They knew our farm, they knew our flock, and therefore, they knew their food. Just like my daughter knew Gumpy.

I showed my daughter the Humane Society's video. She was horrified. "When we eat meat in school, or in a restaurant, we just assume that someone else is looking out for us" she told me. "Our farm drew a community together, giving comfort even on the gruesome slaughter days. Those people all knew where their food came from and it made them feel safe. When the scale gets so big and anonymous, we just get disconnected. It takes videos like this to remind us," she observes.

The shocking Humane Society video is educational in a negative way. We need an educational system that teaches kids positive lessons about food -- sourcing, preparation, taste, presentation, nutrition, marketing and politics. I documented positive food system education in my film, Two Angry Moms. In the schools where "farm-to-school" programs take place, school children visit farms, sometimes working on them as a learning experience, or bringing their acquired knowledge back to school gardens and greenhouses. These schools had classes where students learned to prepare whole meals from fresh ingredients. In one district, a month of school lunch menus were entirely planned and tested by the students. Where school districts purchase fresh ingredients from a variety of sources, I observed that food service directors, administrators, parents and even students all join in taking responsibility for the quality of the meals.

I had a call from a reporter who wanted to know, "Who's in charge? Who's the go-to person for insuring the quality of school food?" He caught me a bit off-guard. The obvious answer is, "The USDA slaughterhouse inspectors." As a parent and a whole food advocate though, I've heard many stories about what goes on in factory farms. The USDA admits there aren't enough inspectors. The only reason the Chino plant made headlines is because of an undercover independent investigation. I suggested to the reporter that he call a school superintendent, or a Board of Education member. We entrust our children's education and their safety at school to these administrators. Ultimately though, it's up to you and me -- parents, to safeguard and teach our children. We're in charge.

Not all kids will have my daughter's first hand education on the farm, but they all need a connection with their food. Schools that utilize the cafeteria as part of the curriculum seek the same quality in the food and in the food service that they demand from teachers and from textbooks. Parents, Boards of Education and school administration need to take responsibility for the food fed to our children in school. The more we know about it, the better equipped we all are to make decisions about where that food comes from. Isn't that what education is all about?

Comments

[mlaiuppa]

It's all about money.

The Government is too cheap to hire enough inspectors.

The slaughterhouse is too cheap to waste downers.

And neither cares about the children of this country. If they did, every child would have adequate healthcare and our schools would be the best in the world; they wouldn't have "adequate" funding but would have "excessive" funding. Our teachers' salaries would be the same as doctors, lawyers and architects.

The bottom line is you get what you pay for.

Children don't vote so no one cares.

[Mykel]

As a healthy, muscular, middle-aged, red-blooded American male and vegetarian for 13 years, it puzzles me to no end to hear blood-thirsty, flesh-eating animal-killers insist that they're simply living some "age-old" food-chain tradition that states one must eat or be eaten. Of course, this completely ignores the fact the human carnivores eat cows, pigs, fish and chicken that would never, in turn, eat a human being, but, hey, maybe it's the Mad Cow gettin' 'em.

Make no mistake: you who eat meat and damn the consequences to your bodies or to the rights of sentient creatures will be reincarnated as the very creatures you eat.

Get used to it.

[Pandu]

Man, you are awesome.

What he said.

When I get overwhelmed with grief over so much killing, I just remember that these animals being so horribly treated are simply suffering the sinful reactions they accumulated as meat-eating humans. Nature's justice is absolutely perfect.

Still I do what I can to stop the cycle of violence, including maintaining a private farm sanctuary. It's the least I can do for having eaten meat as a child.

Hare Krishna.

[ellezeebub]

If someone in your family has died of Creutzfeld Jakobs Disease (as at least 300 US families a year, every year, will testify to), you know how well-designed the US system is to prevent discovery of mad cow is. So well designed in fact, that although people come down with mad cow disease, only one cow in the United States has ever been proven to have bovine spongiform encephalapthy. Of course, they proved the cow had BSE after her meat had already been shipped to four states. The likelihood that only one cow has BSE in this country is vanishingly small. They say the risk of catching CJD is small--one in a million, .0001%. Yet, when my father was diagnosed with CJD, he was 100% dead. No one asked about his dietary habits, his surgery history, his genetic profile, or any of the other factors that could have led to him being infected with the disease. Look up CJD on the web. See how negligent and indifferent the CDC and FDA are, and you will find your attitude toward mass production of meat irreversibly changed. Our children and parents and neighbors are being put at risk needlessly, and some are paying the ultimate price.

[jdm58]

This article reflects what is missing in our children's education. I remember volunteering in my now-grown children's school, and the teacher (I think first or second grade) asked the class to draw a picture of a chicken. The majority drew either a leg, or a bucket of KFC.
A key component in our lack of education is that we ASSUME that someone, namely a government organization like the FDA, has our backs, and our safety foremost in mind. Sadly, we are learning daily that not only the food we eat, but even the drugs we are prescribed, are not what they seem. We can no longer assume safety when it means someone else is looking out for our interests.
The Future Farmers of America, Boy and Girl Scouts, and 4H, are all great places to get kids involved in the food process, even if they don't have their own family farm. Hopefully through education, their FUTURE won't be as scary with tainted food and drugs as their PRESENT is.

[dadw5boys]

WE CAN ONLY AFFORD INSPECTOR FOR THE EROUPEAN MARKETS WHERE NO CLONED OR GROWTH HORMONES ARE ALLOWED.

NOT LIKE THE GARBAGE MEATS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE SOLD.

[LitDr2B]

It sounds like your daughter's experience on your farm did not de-sensitize her to killing animals, but instead promoted that sense of connection that you address in relation to the community spirit on your slaughter days.

I totally agree with everything you say here, and I am a firm believer in the tenets Michael Pollan espouses in his _Omnivore's Dilemma_. He found that being more connected to his food (whether by gardening, slaughtering, or hunting/gathering) made him have a -more- humane attitude toward the animals, and made him feel less of a hypocrite about having that separation that the massive industrial food chain promotes.

I'm looking forward to seeing your film (if I can find it!). I've been rather appalled at what my daughter's school district serves up in its school lunches--and we live in a supposedly "progressive," "concerned," and "environme­ntally-con­scious" community (which, I suspect, does a whole lot of talking the talk, but not much walking the walk).

Keep up the good work!

[Pandu]

What's "more humane" about unnecessary killing?

If a man murders someone he knows well, is he any less guilty than someone who murders a stranger?

If a man is kind to someone until he murders the person, is he any less guilty than someone who is unkind before murdering someone?

People will think anything to rationalize their killing.