In Defense of the Passionate Argument

Thank you, Liz, for posting.  It is your comments that inspired this post.  I hope that I won't offend you with my further comments.  This is the closest I've ever gotten to a real discussion of these issues.

Liz is a blogger.  (She writes about farm life, but she is a politically-energized mom as well as a farmer.  You'll find her blog, if you're interested, at http://iafarmwife.com/.)   In researching an earlier post I ran across her blog and became one of her "followers."  In some ways, her writing is a balm to my occasional bouts of homesickness, when I'm mired in the political drama that envelopes me here in Michigan.  When I read about pickling a cow tongue, I feel a little closer to home.  I come from the folk that pickled everything, you know.  Even watermelon rinds.  I come from the folk that don't throw anything away, ever.  The anti-consumption element - that's rural America, where the memory of the Great Depression lives on through the self-sufficiency and thrift of its people.  We didn't recycle, but then we didn't waste, either.   We had the first two R's down pat; if you do the first two, you don't need the third.)* 

It is true that I will blog with passion and emotion.  However, those things do not necessarily exclude logic.  They are necessary to any endeavor.   And it is because of my passion that you can trust my intent.  Don't hesitate to correct me when I might be wrong about something.  While I wish I understood it all, I know that I don't.  If you're knowledgeable, share it.

My views are not the only ones.  Sometimes I'll get it wrong, and sometimes there will simply be another way to look at it.  But if you go back to my first post, you'll know where I'm heading.  I'm not doing this for money.  I'm doing it because my journey has led me to question whether "progress" is in fact moving us in the right direction.  In fact, I'm wondering whether "progress" has led us down a dark and sinister path.  Somewhere along the path of progress, we turned a corner.  We moved away from mass deaths due to bacterial infections -- we moved away from poor sanitation by employing technology.

At some point, though, it became all about the money.  Somewhere, it became not about sustaining our kids' lives into adulthood but about setting them aside while we busied ourselves with more, bigger, faster.  Somewhere, a bigger TV with a clearer picture became progress.  Somewhere, we decided that what we do is more important than what we stand for.  Somewhere, we came to accept others' poor and miserable state of existence as proof of their deficiency, rather than the obvious corollary to some taking too much.   We've been inculcated with the view that those who aren't cutting it are simply not trying.  Are lazy.  Are undeserving.

When I see this belief in the community of parents of sick kids, it bothers me deeply.


But I digress.  (Again.)

It is not unusual or unexpected for anyone experiencing a degree of success within the status quo to defend the status quo.  It is also not unusual for those who have been left wanting to desire change -- history is replete with examples of revolutionary movements borne thusly.   This will always be so.  It is not surprising, therefore, that Liz - a successful farmer who operates a beef CAFO and raises the feed that those cattle eat - would tend to view my post skeptically, and that I - the mom of a cancer patient and aunt of an autistic boy - would question the status quo.  Does that make either of us inherently wrong?  No.  Inherently biased?  Well, of course it does.

That's what makes the discussion part so vital, isn't it?

Understand that I am here because I see connections that I want to explore.  I am not out to wreck anyone's livelihood, and I am not out to accuse anyone individually.  It is exceedingly difficult to argue that we have acted with sufficient caution.  We have failed to consider before acting the impact upon our offspring seven generations down the line, as the Iroquois Nation implored. 

What if, just for argument's sake, that Liz -- or someone similarly situated -- decided that there was in fact error in our ways and that person wanted, as a result, to change how they did things.  How would they do that?  How would they continue to support a family while dissembling their livelihood?  It would be very difficult.

Denial would be a much easier path.

But I don't think Liz is "in denial."  I think she is a practical and hardworking person, typical of the part of the country from whence I came.  She reminds me a bit of my sister, calm but firm in her arguments.  Of course, my sis has an autistic son.  So her bias is a little more tough to predict.

Just an example of a conversation my sis and I had when she was here:  we talked about the "Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act" and its possible impact on even pasture-raised beef.  See, cattle eat pesticides.  It's not impossible, but it is difficult to raise beef on grass alone; in colder climates especially, they get some grain.  And there are generally pesticides in those grains.  Cattle hang out in creeks.  Apparently they congregate there.  They drink the water and they relieve themselves in the vicinity of it.  What if not all pesticide pollution in water sources are from crops?  Can we envision a future in which cattle might be prohibited from free-ranging?  It's just a thought.  It's difficult to consider every feasible possibility.  It is, as we say in popular culture, complicated.

And this is a person who concedes that maybe pesticide exposure played a role in her son's condition.  A farmer who thinks pesticides hurt her child . . . it's an interesting dichotomy of sorts.  She probably has a constant headache from it all.

What I would ask everyone here is, please keep yourself informed.  I will continue to state my views and ask for your political action, but I'm not necessarily "right."  I'm just doing my best to recognize that status quo has failed our kids and to react accordingly.  There are very few experts in any children's health circle that don't believe environmental factors play a significant role in disease incidence.  The more I learn, the more galvanized I become.  The more I learn, the more urgency I feel. 

Logic is nothing more than a structural argument. It cannot lead us to the truth.  Maybe passion is a better guide on that path.  Sometimes, when the truth is hidden, we mistakenly believe that logic offers our best hope for ferreting it out.  Where most people go wrong logically is in seeing a foregone conclusion in an argument that has many possible conclusions.  I've mistakenly claimed that logic will show us the way; upon further inquiry I've decided that maybe it's not logic, but fallacy, that will enlighten our views.  So let's explore the two, so as not to confuse logic with fallacy. 

What's a fallacy, you ask?

Lucky me, I took Logic in college and found its principles repeated throughout law school.  In seven years of trial practice and countless witness examinations, I have learned that fallacy tends to convince the listener as often as solid logic, and gets used more often, because the advocate's goal (and professional duty) is not to be right but to win.  To win a trial, you have to think a little differently.  The "truth" rarely comes to light in a trial.  The burden of proof (who has to prove it) and the standard of proof (how far do you have to convince them) carry the day.  And you can accomplish what you need to without ever making one true statement.  You merely cause someone to question theirs.  Let me give you an example, using . . . bias.

A man and a woman are fighting for custody of their kids.  Another woman testifies on behalf of the man that he's a great parent and should therefore win custody, and the other side's attorney asks her about her relationship with the man.  She's his employee and she's pregnant with his child, which will be supported with the man's income.  Immediately you discount her claims, don't you?  Here's another.  Man is up on charges of premeditated murder of his wife, who died from ingesting arsenic.  The prosecutor doesn't have to prove motive, but the defense's theory of the case is that the man only accidentally poisoned his wife.  Does the fact that the man stood to gain a million-dollar life insurance payout tend to convince you that he did it?  Sure it does.  It's a form of bias.  It doesn't prove that he did it, but it still helps convince you that he might have. 

It is not logic, but fallacy, that will lead you to that conclusion.


Logically, there are many explanations for why a woman might claim her lover is a great dad, or why a woman died from arsenic poisoning.  An insurance policy doesn't make it murder.  Maybe the woman has observed the guy's parenting and truly thinks it's stellar - maybe she's not at all worried about losing her job or seeing his income paid out to the ex.  But that's how we see it.  Now, common sense tells us that the facts may well be causally related, but logically, they're not necessarily connected. 

At the end of the day, we simply know what we know.  Sometimes logic will stand in the path of truth, but passion will blaze a trail.  It finds a way.

I am biased, in favor of cleaning up environmental pollutants and improving the quality of our food, so that kids won't continue to be born sick like mine was.  And my common sense tells me that even if logic doesn't foreclose other possible explanations, the big corporations - ag-related and otherwise - are not looking out for my children's health.  So I question everything that they do.  I know whose interest they're interested in. 

Logic may well fail us in this endeavor, because we cannot know all of the facts.

I am not anti-farmer.  I'm not even necessarily anti-CAFO, although I'd have to argue that it's a case of "size matters."  It's possible that all of the crap (literally) running downstream is from the really big operations and that the small-to mid-sized operations are actually repurposing the poop for fertilizer on the corn and alfalfa.  But the trend is indisputable toward bigger, faster, more.  And again, that might not equate with better.

Know what "antitrust" is?  Think Ma Bell.  We don't like unfair competition.  And the trend is, in agriculture, toward crop monopolies of a sort.  I'd be curious to know what parameters Liz's farm has to operate within in order to sell to Tyson.  I bet they sign what's known in the law as a "contract of adhesion," meaning that one party just gets a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer.  But I'm just guessing.

As usual, I am offering a link to an interesting article on the pork industry.  Some of the statistics are different from those I quote below, but we all know how gray statistics can be.  I hope you'll take the time to read it, but it is a bit long.  Here's the link:  http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/Antitrust-Pork-web.pdf

Unfair competition drives the little guys out of business, and the big guys get pretty powerful as a result.  The free market is premised on the notion of competition; there can be no real competition without multiple actors.  So our government intervenes to promote fair competition.  (This is nothing new.)  Traditionally we haven't really thought of farmers as belonging to such a discussion, but times have really changed.  In the last 15 years, 160,000 independent cattle producers have gone out of business.  In Liz's state of Iowa, over 72% of its independent family hog farmers aren't raising hogs anymore.  I don't remember how many companies own most of the hogs in America, but it's something like five.  Pretty astonishing.

The USDA has also written a set of proposed fair market contract rules under Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) that would make it illegal for packers and slaughter houses to unfairly discriminate against independent farmers. Those rules have not been finalized and giant (as in, not Liz or my sis but the five or so hog corporations and their cow and chicken buddies) agribusiness meat interests are pressuring Secretary Vilsack and the Obama administration to weaken these vital rules that would provide fair market contract protections for small and midsized farmers for the first time.  I need to learn more about these rules, but if there's a comment period coming up, I'll let you know so that you can make those calls.
Also, ask your senator to support S. 1026, the Livestock Marketing Fairness Act of 2011.  Read the text here:  it was introduced about a month ago and is in committee.  http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-1026

I'll get my sister's take on these governmental efforts and share them with you afterwards.  As always, I look forward to hearing more out of Liz on this.  Not to put her on the spot or anything.


As for the rest of you, the parents of sick kids, if you're wondering what any of this might have to do with sick kids . . .

My sis, who knows a bit about animals in the slaughterhouse, says animals don't know they're going to be slaughtered.  So there's no cortisol in the meat, and you're not going to be healthier by eating "happier" cows, she says.  Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, and I'm certainly not qualified to say one way or another.  I'm not opposed to eating things that had mothers and faces.  I think that's silly, honestly; it sounds sweet, but what's alive and sentient and what's not?  Eating plants exclusively, under this rationale, smacks of a belief that only things that look like us matter.  I always joke that people only think aliens would be green, slightly different versions of us because we see ourselves as the center of existence, and there's a word for it - anthropocentrism, I think it is.  Jellyfishes lack faces, but they're not plants.  Coral lack faces, but they're not plants.  And what if they were plants?  Plants too fight for their own survival.  Life is driven to sustain itself, whatever its form.  It's silliness.  Eat a damn cow.  Just appreciate it, don't waste it, recognize that it's dying in order for you to live.  Maybe don't eat quite so much of it?  Seriously.

There is an argument to be made that our current food production system is detrimental to the nutritional value of our food, and there is an argument to be made that its profitability is the reason that corporations are taking over.  I almost choke on the words, "Monsanto's crops will feed the world" when Monsanto has not exactly kept its terminator gene a secret.  What's the terminator gene, you ask?  Well, it keeps the seeds from being planted, making "seed saving," a farming tradition, a dead-end as well as a patent infringement.  Farmers like to save their best seeds for next year's harvest.  In America (and Canada,) farmers have been threatened with lawsuits for having "saved" seed.  Monsanto wants them to buy new seed every year.  While the courts have, thus far, favored Monsanto - it's clear that Monsanto isn't taking any chances.  Its crops yield seeds that won't produce another generation.  That's the terminator gene.  And it doesn't support their claim of wanting to feed the world.  Creating plants that can't propagate?  Freaked out yet?

When McDonald's demands similarly-sized chickens, does that mean that the natural variations within the species are being bred out?  Is it possible that other genetic factors we don't know about or understand are being bred out?  Do we really know what we're doing here?

We do know that high Omega-6s cause inflammation, a condition present in almost every diseased state, be it cancer or autism or diabetes.  We also know that grass-fed cattle have a high ratio of Omega-3s (the good ones) to Omega-6s, whereas the grain-fed cattle have almost no Omega-3s.  When the cattle are missing the grass, or maybe getting too much grain, it affects the quality of their meat nutritionally.

When plants fight disease and sun and parasites, they produce things like phytonutrients, which are also good for us.  When we manipulate them genetically, what do we change unintentionally?  If we provide too much protection externally, do we reduce their nutritional value?  Do we leave them vulnerable to other diseases?   What do we actually know about any of this?  Do we really know enough to be monkeying around with them?

Meat without Omega-3s, vegetables without phytonutrients.  Combine that with all of the chemicals we ingest, and there you have it - disease. Dr. Charlotte Gerson says that disease is the result of nutritional deficiency and toxicity.  Our food production systems are hard at work to bring us both on one plate.    Disease . . . thank God that Big Pharma is working on curing all of it. 

Rrrright.

Think I'll go tend my garden.  What's on the grocer's shelf gets less appetizing by the day.



*Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Most people think recycling is the key to it all, but it's not necessarily . . . repurposing is a form of recycling, and a better form than most people employ.  It takes energy to recycle post-consumer product into a reusable form, and most of that energy is from fossil fuels, so if you really want to do good for the world, focus as intently upon the first two R's as you do the third.  Okay?