Mother Jones: Big Meat vs. Michael Pollan

[marmar]

Big Meat vs. Michael Pollan
A beef industry group crusades to stop the Pollan-ation of America's college students.

— By Wes Enzinna


Carrin Flores is a cattle rancher's fantasy come true: An attractive 26-year-old with stylish eyeglasses and glossy lipstick, she's unabashed about her love of cows. "They are so cute. Their cute little tongues. Oh, and their eyelashes," she says. "But I also friggin' love to eat them." She cooks beef four nights a week and can list dozens of ways she likes it: T-bone, tri-tip, boneless rump roast...Flores, a graduate student in veterinary medicine at Washington State University-Pullman, plans to work in the beef industry when she finishes. But she's already a graduate of the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA), an industry-funded program that trains college students to fight back against critics of big agribusiness, like Michael Pollan.

"Pollan," Flores tells me over beers at Dupus Boomer's, a campus bar, "is really our enemy right now." More than 35,000 college students were assigned one of his books last year; The Omnivore's Dilemma is one of the most widely read titles on US campuses. Flores and her fellow big beef advocates hope to counter that. "In the future," she says, "we're the ones who are going to tell you about your beef."

Since its launch in March 2009, the MBA has trained nearly 3,000 students and farmers to spread the "positive beef message," offering online lessons on how to combat PETA and organizing a Twitter and Facebook "Food Fight" against its "campus critics." Daren Williams, the communications director for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, helped start the MBA with $240,000 from the Beef Checkoff program, the beef industry's PR wing. He says the MBA's "focus has really become young people on the big land-grant campuses," from which more than one-fifth of future farmers and industry leaders will emerge.

The MBA is just one part of a pro-beef backlash on campus. In May 2009, Washington State's president canceled a lecture by Pollan, citing budget cuts, and pulled The Omnivore's Dilemma from the freshman reading list. (The talk was rescheduled when a wealthy supporter stepped in to pay Pollan's way.) That September, when Pollan was asked to speak at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, the owner of Harris Ranch—a stockyard critics have dubbed "Cowschwitz"—threatened to withhold a $500,000 donation to the school. Campus officials turned the speech into a panel featuring a proponent of conventional beef. This was followed by a dustup at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Pollan's In Defense of Food was distributed to incoming students, angering local ag groups, which bused in farmers to protest a speech by the author. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/11/michael-pollan-backlash-beef-advocacy

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Her "MBA" tells her that beef is "healthier" or healthy enough if cattle are

fed not only corn instead of grass (e-coli), but GMO corn feed.

And Pollan is only "the enemy" because Flores and her ilk don't have facts that prove the invalidity of his premises. He is hindering their total control of corporate production of beef.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

2. Pollan's message is getting out on campuses......

Just yesterday I talked to a young lady who said she'd never eat Chicken McNuggets again after reading how they were made in Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.