Hacking Meat is an online conversation exploring how can information and technology be used to hack (or reimagine) a more sustainable, profitable and healthy future of meat. Join the conversation and share your ideas or product requests in the comments, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

Guest Post by Haven Bourque of HavenBMedia

Photo & Recipe by Kim O’Donnel from “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations”

Let’s face it: Meat is complicated. And it’s emotional. Lines can be drawn in the sand and room temperature can skyrocket when the ‘I eat them to save them’ crowd intersects with the ‘I eat no food with a face’ group. Having munched my way through that entire spectrum, I insist that, when it comes to fixing what’s wrong with America’s meat, even vegetarians need to have skin in the game.

Here’s the proof: A few days before Thanksgiving, I convened a group of Bay Area women to honor one of our heroes, journalist, chef, and author Kim O’Donnel, and celebrate her new book The Meat Lovers’ Guide to Meatless Cooking. In the midst of a whirlwind book tour, Kim was the catalyst to bring together people of distinctly different perspectives on meat.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of culinarians, environmentalists and policy experts.  In deference to strong vegetarian sentiments, our potluck skipped the meat. I nervously noted Kari Hamerschlag, the brain behind EWG’s ‘Meat Eaters Guide to Climate Change’ and very close friend whom I know as a staunchly vocal vegetarian, introducing herself to Marissa Guggiana, co-founder of The Butcher’s Guild and author of Primal Cuts. I’m a huge fan of Marissa’s work, which brings artisan butchers into the limelight. Would a dust-up ensue, or would we all eat our Anson Mills grits and Cheryl’s poached pears and get along?

My mother Szari happened to be visiting from the east coast. She fit right in to our hive of contradictions: Mum has shot rattlesnake for her dinner out of necessity, not sport. And her artwork featuring reclaimed cow bones has appeared in high-end fashion magazines and the Smithsonian. Now retired, about 90 percent of her diet consists of vegetables she grows in her garden.  Comfortable in the kitchen, she stirred the grits and eyed the quinoa kale rolls with guarded curiosity.

As I circulated the room, I heard bursts of conversation about the public health and environmental dangers of industrial meat production, the progress of Consumers Union’s ‘Meat without Drugs’ campaign, and conflicting brining techniques for heritage breed turkeys.  The celebration could have turned into a brawl with so many strong-minded, opinionated experts on both sides of the fence. But it wasn’t just the buzz from the mimosas: I found no such tension.

Throughout the afternoon, voice after voice concurred that problems with meat production affect everyone.  Eating less meat, as modeled by Kim’s work, and eating ‘greener’ meat, as modeled by Kari’s work, are critical for personal health and the environment.  Supporting independent small-scale meat producers, and purchasing from butchers who know their sources, modeled by Marissa’s work, strengthens regional economies and farming communities and offers urban populations a sustainable meat supply. I was encouraged to hear culinary writers recognize that policy initiatives are key, as are grassroots efforts to unite communities negatively affected by industrial-scale meat production, whether they be fast-food consumers, slaughterhouse workers or the animals who end up at the end of our forks.  Whether our efforts led to the consumption of more grass-fed burgers or more beet carpaccio, the sentiment was clear that we all must work to make meat better.

We’ve had some big losses. In 2010 I wrote for CivilEats.com about the USDA’s GIPSA rule, reform of which would have given small meat producers fair market access. A year later, the movement to reinstate the rule lost.  Meanwhile, Meatless Mondays became a household name and artisan butchers kept a firm clamp on their rock star status.

I confess I’m confused myself. This autumn I flirted with hosting my neighborhood’s meat CSA, but felt far more comfortable taking on a CSF (Community Supported Fisheries).  I know a fellow scuba diver and ocean lover who disagrees that sustainable seafood consumption is a key to ocean conservation; she refuses to consume fish. She eats quite a lot of meat. This made me all the more inspired to fly from Oakland to NYC, carbon footprint be damned, for the Meat Hackathon. We need to leverage technological innovation as much as we need to honor the potlucks that deepen our connections with each other, in order to solve our current meat dilemmas.

Let’s fix meat. Let’s invite meat lovers to sit at the table with committed vegans and dream up farm-fresh, seasonal meals that anyone would enthusiastically eat. Let’s support small-scale meat producers, as they are our best advocates to lead more conventional farmers and ranchers in their own communities toward change.  Let’s cheer on programmers, business experts, chefs, farmers and all the other attendees who bring unique perspectives on meat to the table. Let the Meat Hackathon begin!

How can we fix meat and help small-scale meat producers?  Share your thoughts in the comments below, on Twitter using #hackmeat, on Facebook or at the Hack//Meat hackathon happening December 7-9 in NYC.

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Haven Bourque founded HavenBMedia in 2010 to bring communications expertise to food system change. Her group develops communications strategies, trains spokespersons, and teaches social media skills for diverse organizations ranging from prestigious non-profits to small businesses, national corporations and community activists working to reform food systems around health and wellness, social justice and environmental conservation. She is proud of her work with IATP’s Food & Community Fellows, NRDC, Bon Appetit Management Company and Straus Family Creamery. She is a judge for NASFT’s first-ever Leadership awards, a contributor to CivilEats.com and was a co-organizer of the nation’s first TEDx conference to focus on farmworkers. Follow her on Twitter: @HavenBourque.

This letter was initiated by Environmental Working Group and authors Anna Lappé and Dan Imhoff out of frustration with the lack of meaningful reforms and public input into the legislative process by the Senate Agriculture Committee as it drafted its 2012 Farm Bill. Every Member of Congress received a copy of the letter on June 4th in anticipation of the Farm Bill going to the Senate floor for debate later this week.

Now is our chance to turn the farm bill into a healthier food bill, but we need you to stand with us.

Join EWG, Mario Batali, Michael Pollan and more than 70 of the nation's food and health leaders in urging Congress to cut crop insurance subsidies and redirect that money into vital investments in nutrition, healthy food and conservation programs. Click here to take action right now – before the Senate votes on the 2012 farm bill.

Download the letter

An Open Letter to Members of Congress:

With the 2008 farm bill due to expire in a matter of months, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved legislation in April to steer the next five years of national food and agriculture policy. We applaud the positive steps that the proposed bill takes under Senator Debbie Stabenow’s leadership, including incentives for fruit and vegetable purchases, scaling up local production and distribution of healthy foods and bolstering marketing and research support for fruit, nut and vegetable farmers.

Unfortunately, the Senate bill falls far short of the reforms needed to come to grips with the nation’s critical food and farming challenges. It is also seriously out of step with the nation’s priorities and what the American public expects and wants from our food and farm policy. In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. Members of the U.S. Council of Mayors and the National League of Cities have both echoed this sentiment in recent statements calling for a healthy food and farm bill.

Although the committee proposal includes important reforms to the commodity title, we are deeply concerned that it would continue to give away subsidies worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest commodity crop growers, insurance companies, and agribusinesses even as it drastically underfunds programs to promote the health and food security of all Americans, invest in beginning and disadvantaged farmers, revitalize local food economies and protect natural resources. We strongly object to any cuts in food assistance during such dire times for so many Americans. These critical shortcomings must be addressed when the bill goes to the Senate floor.

As written, the bill would spend billions to guarantee income for the most profitable farm businesses in the country. This would come primarily in the form of unlimited crop insurance premium subsidies to industrial-scale growers who can well afford to pay more of their risk management costs. Crop insurance programs must be reformed to work better for diversified and organic farmers and to ensure comprehensive payment caps or income eligibility requirements. Otherwise, this so called “safety net” becomes an extravagant entitlement for affluent landowners and insurance companies.

In addition, the proposed $9 billion-a-year crop insurance program comes with minimal societal obligations. Growers collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance premium subsidies should at least be required to take simple measures to protect wetlands, grassland and soil. Instead, the unlimited subsidies will encourage growers to plow up fragile areas and intensify fencerow-to-fencerow cultivation of environmentally sensitive land, erasing decades of conservation gains.

Most of the benefits from these programs would flow to the producers of five big commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice and wheat). Meanwhile, millions of consumers lack access to affordable fruits and vegetables, with the result that the diets of fewer than five percent of adults meet the USDA’s daily nutrition guidelines. Partly as a result, one in three young people is expected to develop diabetes and the diet-related health care costs of diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke are rising precipitously, reaching an estimated $70 billion a year.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Government Accountability Office has identified modest reforms to crop insurance subsidies that could save as much as $2 billion a year. Half could come from payment limits that affect just four percent of the growers in the program. Congress should use these savings to provide full funding for conservation and nutrition assistance programs and strengthen initiatives that support local and healthy food, organic agriculture and beginning and disadvantaged farmers. These investments could save billions in the long run by protecting valuable water and soil resources, creating jobs and supporting foods necessary for a healthy and balanced diet.

When it is your turn to vote, we urge you to stand up for local and healthy food and nutrition programs and to support equitable and fiscally responsible amendments that will protect and enhance public health and the environment while maintaining a reasonable safety net for the farmers who grow our food. More than ever before, the public demands this. Come November, they will be giving their votes to members of Congress who supported a healthy food and farm bill that puts the interests of taxpayers, citizens and the vast majority of America’s farmers first and foremost.

Our nation was built on the principles of protecting our greatest legacy: the land on which we grow our food and feed our families. Stand with us to protect not only farmers, without whom we would all go hungry, but to enact a food and farm bill that fairly and judiciously serves the interests of all Americans.

Sincerely,

I thought that I was in the clear. That I dodged some bullets. I had two healthy pregnancies, during which I tried to do all the right things: I avoided gas stations and mainstream cleaning products. I didn’t color my hair, polish my nails or smoke.  Now nine years later, I have two healthy and thriving little girls, and we try to create a healthy home together.
But then two weeks ago, I found myself at the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Breast Cancer Fund. The Breast Cancer Fund fights to get scientists, the medical establishment and policy makers to pay as much attention to the cause of breast cancer as the cure.  During the evening, I was reminded once again how vulnerable women are to environmental exposure to chemicals, how our breast tissue is particularly sensitive. And most importantly, how puberty is a crucial window of vulnerability for girls, opening up channels of influence to chemicals much like those months in-utero. Only now our kids are older, a little more out of our grasp and control than when they were babies. Her speech shook me to the core. Suddenly, it feels like that bullet is coming right at me again.
My older daughter is on the cusp of puberty at 9 years old, my younger just a few years behind. All of those potent feelings I experienced during my pregnancies and their babyhood came flooding back. The momentary and false sense of control – if only I can buy the right sunscreen/feed them the right foods/clean with the right products, I can avoid unwanted exposures to environmental toxins like mercury, bisphenol A, phthalates, or flame retardants.  But now we know that exposure to these chemicals is beyond the control of any of us alone.
We as a society, for reasons complex yet unfolding, are foisting young girls into the turmoil of puberty long before they are developmentally ready. In 2010, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center published a report on the effects of chemicals found in products we all have at home, like nail polish, cosmetics, perfume, lotion and shampoo. The results show a direct relationship between use of these products and early puberty development in girls. Studies have also linked early onset puberty to common household items, and foods like dairy and fish.
If only we collectively decided to honor their bodies’ natural trajectories and let them remain little girls for as long as was meant to be. As long as girls have over the course of history. Now, history is apparently a moving target, as implied by the title of a recent New York Times Magazine article on the topic of early puberty: “Puberty Before Age 10: A New ‘Normal’?” An article that unfortunately failed to mention any solutions to the problem of early puberty, like changing the way our country regulates the use of chemicals.
Which brings me to policy change, which is more imperative than ever. We know that changing our personal eating/cleaning/makeup/chemical use habits will only get us so far.  As consumers, we should push the personal care, household products, and agricultural industries in the right direction. But at the same time, our legislators need to act to reform the outdated and broken 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and pass the new, updated Safe Chemicals Act of 2012, which focuses on children’s health as a benchmark for chemical safety. Authored by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and co-sponsored by 16 Senators, the Act will increase the safety of chemicals used in consumer products, and protect those most vulnerable to chemical exposure, like women and children.
Take action today to let your elected officials know there is strong public support for changing the way we regulate chemicals in the United States:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6639/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9696
As for me, enough is enough. I don’t want my daughters dodging the same bullets for their daughters someday.

Lena Brook has advocated for environmental health and justice for over ten years with organizations like Clean Water Action, Health Care Without Harm and Physicians for Social Responsibility. She’s currently a strategic communications consultant with HavenBMedia in San Francisco and can be found blogging about all things related to food at A Happier Meal.

June 17th, 2011