First Stop on the Real Food Road Trip

Last year we created 52 episodes about sustainable and adventurous food in Minnesota. For the final episode of this past season, we announced our plans to take this web series on the road. And with this Episode (# 53!) we start a whole new round of weekly videos about Real Food across America. Traveling with my camerawoman (and girlfriend) Mirra Fine for the next six months, we will be meeting farmers, fisherman, hunters and foragers -- telling their stories, creating recipes with their ingredients, and showing our own road trip adventures. This first episode follows our departure from Minneapolis, travels across Iowa and arrival at the unique Radiance Dairy where Francis Thicke lets his Dairy Cows live out their lives after milking. I hope you enjoy this week's episode, but remember to come back every week for the next 6 months!

For more videos, visit www.theperennialplate.com

 

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Comments

[Animalkind]

01:04 PM on 05/18/2011

For our own health and that of the environment, humans do not need to eat other sentient beings. I have been vegetarian or vegan for over 40 years; am in my late 70s; and in better physical and mental health than most if not all of my meat-eating friends. Please don't respond with the tired non-truth that plants feel. Plants don't have nervous systems so they can't feel pain; nor are they non-sustainable. Cut and eat a plant and it will regrow. Kill an animal, it will bleed, feel pain, and try to escape the brutality. Any other explanations are rationalizations to defend finicky palates. Vegan and vegetarians foods are colorful, more nutritious and in the right hands, tastier than foods made of animals or their juices or skins.

[backwoodsliberal]

08:17 PM on 05/17/2011

Finally!

I've been looking forward to your return.

My two cents on the vegan-omnivore controversy. I fall in the latter group. My philosophy is if something isn't immoral, illegal, unethical and doesn't adversely effect me, then I've no problem with it. So I've no problem with veganism. In fact, I admire vegans committment to their principles, especially the non-exploitation of animals. But oddly, there is a group that will suffer. The animals themselves. Cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens have been bred domestically for so long they have no home except with humans. There is no 'wild' place for them to return to. If we don't continue to tend them, protect them and feed them, they will mostly die out. Only a few will survive as pets kept by those who have enough land and money to care for them without a return on investment.

On the other hand the treatment of most domestic animals is abhorrent. So I say to vegans: keep it up. Keep raising our consciousness and our consciences until the omnivores rise up and dictate how domesitc animals are fed, and treated during their lives and how they are slaughtered.

[MJinCanada]

12:13 PM on 05/19/2011

I agree completely.

There is no real harm to cows, chicken and sheep if we use their milk, eggs and wool -- the harm that comes to them is only through poor farming practices, especially industrial ones. I was shocked to learn that calves are taken away from dairy cows so young. We never did that on our farm; we did with a little less milk until the calves were weaned.

And not everybody's body is suited to going vegan or even vegetarian.

[jeanniecotter]

02:23 AM on 05/17/2011

Indeed, cows and goats play very important roles in sustainable agriculture, but instead of using the normal argument propagated by vegangelicals that is to put an end to animals in agriculture altogether, another angle should be examined. Personally, like humans, I think cows are being exploited heavily by certain quarters, especially extra large supermarkets, i.e; being squeezed (literally) for low prices and then sold to customers at high prices..End result: Farmers struggling to operate their farms and earn sustainable profits while mega supermarkets get fatter and richer at the expense of everybody (cows included).. Price wars in milk prices are already happening in UK and Australia and if nothing is done by governments around the world to put a ceiling price to milk prices, the entire dairy industry would collapse...

[wildisthewind]

05:18 PM on 05/16/2011

I can't help but wonder what the Perennial Plate's real agenda is. Daniel has admitted that he constantly wrestles with the idea of supporting putting an end to animals in agriculture altogether. His girlfriend Mirra Fine is a vegetarian who doesn't approve of meat eating, and considers the segments about eating animals to be "animal snuff films." Vegangelical extremists such as Ellen Kanner have even used Mirra Fine's anti animal ag rhetoric as propaganda for putting an end to animals in agriculture, even though animals are essential to every major form of sustainable ag. Is this whole series really a ruse to make a statement against animal agriculture? Signs seem to be pointing to that, particularly since people such as Kanner are already using it for that ends, without a peep of protest from Daniel.

I assume the above dairy does not let the male offspring die of old age, which is a fact that was mysteriously left out. Also, the "retirement" model is nice and I am all for it, but it certainly isn't realistic for a large number of farms.

[Daniel Klein]

09:26 PM on 05/16/2011

Thanks for your concern. My real agenda is to get people thinking about their food, engaging with it and making choices about what they eat. I don't have the answers but I like to learn and share. I'm not a vegetarian (have you seen the episodes where I kill animals?), but I like my girlfriend and others to be able to voice their opinions.

[wildisthewind]

12:40 AM on 05/17/2011

Thanks Daniel. Yes I did see those episodes. And I was a fan of what you were doing till I saw that your girlfriend was referring to them as "animal snuff films" and that people who are trying to put an and to every major form of sustainable agriculture by taking animals out of agriculture, such as Ellen Kanner, have been using those words as rhetorical weapons against sustainable farmers. I know you aren't a vegetarian, and I also know that you said that you are constantly wrestling with the notion of becoming one and supporting an end to animals in agriculture, which would mean an end to every major form of sustainable agriculture.

I applaud your efforts to get people thinking about their food. It's an issue that I have worked on extensively as well. I was a big fan of what you were doing till I saw those jokes about making animal snuff films being used as a weapon against conscientious animal farmers, without any protest from you. And when you said that you constantly wrestle with the notion of supporting an end to every major form of sustainable agriculture by taking animals out of agriculture, I was just dumbfounded.

I was a vegetarian for years myself, and I still have many near and dear friends who are vegetarians, so I am certainly fine with vegetarians voicing their opinions. What I am not okay with is mocking conscientious animal farming or trying to put an end to it.