FI 183-213

Joel Salatin's essay arguing for the ability to opt-out was an eloquent and well-written article. Since seeing him in the film, I've been impressed with Salatin's ideas and the way that he can make them accessible to almost anyone. This article really focused heavily on making everyone believe that they could simply opt out of the massive agro-industrial culture and begin cultivating plants and animals in a safe and sustainable way.

One my favorite parts was a brief passage when he is addressing safety issues with cultivating and slaughtering animals outside. His analogy that he draws to the hunter who "gut-shoots a deer" and then proceeds to drag the carcass through squirrel shit, hang it up in his back yard for a week and then feed it to his children. This man is revered as a patriot and so to Salatin this means that safety is not a problem. He goes further to argue that you have a better chance of contracting a disease from CAFOs then you could by having an animal slaughtered outside underneath the warm sunshine.

Marion Nestle's article on eating made simple explains the world of food science through the eyes of a scientist and not an activist. I appreciate this worldview because the book and film are bogged with journalists and farmers/activists whose opinions will be skewed because they are coming from an inherently biased side. Nestle, however, argues for safer and healthier eating, i.e. organic, because she is concerned mainly with the health of people and their eating habits.

I think her argument can appeal to anyone who is automatically turned by the images of cows being slaughtered and the "unethical" treatment of chickens and pigs, but who still want to engage in healthy eating. My mom would hate the movie because the images are graphic in areas and she doesn't have the strongest constitution, but she would love Nestle's article because it's not primarily arguing for the animal's health, but for our own. I think a small but striking fact about the article was a little fact she threw in to the mix. She said that the cardiologist Ancel Keys promoted the balanced diet of fruits, veggies and whole grains as a way to garner a healthier life. In addition, according to Nestle, Dr. Keys died in 2004 at the ripe old age of 100. If that's not incentive to eat healthy, I don't know what is.