In Meat We Trust (46 page)

[>]
“I can do well”: Quoted in Bill Fleming, “Opinion Page,”
National Hog Farmer
38, no. 5 (May 15, 1993): 13.

[>]
“product development”: Barkema and Cook, “Changing U.S. Pork Industry,” 55.

[>]
“We want everything”: Quoted in Chris Mayda, “Passion on the Plains: Pigs on the Panhandle” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1998), 157.

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“entrepreneurial organization”: Quoted in ibid., 162.

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“technical . . . assistance”: “Clause in 1991 Bill Opened Gates for Corporate Hog Farms,”
Daily Oklahoman
, May 18, 1997; accessed online. For the Tyson operations, see Michael McNutt, “Swing Operation Prompts Watchdog Group—Strict Regulations Sought to Guard Environment,”
Daily Oklahoman
, March 2, 1994; accessed online. Also see Jim Stafford, “Cattle Industry in Oklahoma Faces Challenging Future,”
Daily Oklahoman
, April 25, 1993; accessed online.

[>]
“Now why do the poor people”: Both quoted in Mayda, “Passion on the Plains,” 176. On the area’s economic woes, see Ann DeFrange, “Rural Revival—State Towns Taking Charge of Their Economic Future,”
Daily Oklahoman
, October 2, 1994; accessed online; and Michael McNutt, “Guymon’s Economy Booming,”
Daily Oklahoman
, December 11, 1994; accessed online.

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“The trouble is”: Quoted in Mayda, “Passion on the Plains,” 212.

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“pigs came”: Quoted in ibid.

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“you control”: Quoted in ibid., 195.

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“I’m an advocate”: Quoted in ibid., 213.

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“a group like the Sierra Club”: Quoted in ibid., 318.

7. The Doubters’ Crusade

[>]
“innuendo, implication”: “NPPC to Answer Network Jibes,”
National Hog Farmer
26, no. 5 (May 15, 1981): 25.

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“100%”: The Nixon quotes are from “The Administration: Looking After the Hotdog,”
Time
, June 27, 1969; accessed online; and “Mrs. Knauer Says Nixon Opposes Fat Hot Dogs,”
New York Times
, July 13, 1969, p. 22.

[>]
“citizen consumers”: The phrase is from Lizabeth Cohen’s superb
A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
(Vintage Books, 2003). Two other essential works are Gary Cross,
An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America
(Columbia University Press, 2000); and Meg Jacobs,
Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
(Princeton University Press, 2005).

[>]
“private governments”: Quoted in Patrick Anderson, “Ralph Nader, Crusader; or, The Rise of a Self-Appointed Lobbyist,”
New York Times
, October 29, 1967, p. SM103.

[>]
“into the air”: “Environment v. Man,”
Time
, September 26, 1960; accessed online.

[>]
“a major national problem”: Quoted in Richard D. Lyons, “Salmonella Rise Disturbs Experts,”
New York Times
, April 9, 1967, p. 47.

[>]
“infection that [could] spread”: Quoted in ibid.

[>]
“The Consumer Revolt”: See “The U.S.’s Toughest Customer,”
Time
, December 12, 1969; accessed online.

[>]
“Evidently there’s a dearth”: Quoted in Lucia Mouat, “Will the Real Bargain Stand Up?”
Christian Science Monitor
, February 2, 1970, p. 9.

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“Other issues such as Vietnam”: Quoted in Lucia Mouat, “The Consumer Fights Back,”
Christian Science Monitor
, January 26, 1970, p. 9.

[>]
Keys’s ideas: My take on the history of the heart disease epidemic and Keys’s role in it is informed by Gary Taubes,
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2007); and Todd Michael Olszewski, “Cholesterol: A Scientific, Medical and Social History, 1908–1962” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2008). During World War II, Keys helped develop the K-rations fed to troops and conducted an important study of the impact of starvation on human physiology.

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“Once upon a time”: “Frankfurters,”
Consumer Reports
37, no. 2 (February 1972): 73.

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“pig swill”: The consumer comments are quoted in “P.S. on Pig Snouts,”
National Provisioner
168, no. 5 (February 3, 1973): 30, 32, 34.

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“wiener is being clobbered”: Joseph M. Winski, “Makers of Hog Dogs, Speaking Frankly, Say Sales Aren’t So Hot,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 29, 1973, p. 1.

[>]
“personal affronts”: Quoted in ibid.

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“I have an answer”: “‘Egghead’ Proposals Make Reader Sizzle,”
National Provisioner
166, no. 11 (March 11, 1972): 19.

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“aesthetics”: “Aesthetics No Basis for Byproducts Ban,”
National Provisioner
168, no. 2 (January 13, 1973): 15–16. A summary of the new rules is in “U.S. Sets New Rules for Processed Meat,”
New York Times
, June 2, 1973, p. 16.

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“Most of us”: Quoted in John S. Lang, “Cancer-Inciting Hormone Found in U.S. Beef Supply,”
Des Moines Register
, June 24, 1970, p. 1. Lang’s report was carried by the AP and appeared in newspapers nationwide. There are only two general sources of information about the history of the DES-in-beef controversy: Harrison Wellford,
Sowing the Wind: A Report from Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law on Food Safety and the Chemical Harvest
(Grossman Publishers, 1972); and Alan I. Marcus,
Cancer from Beef: DES, Federal Food Regulation, and Consumer Confidence
(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). Of the two, Marcus’s is the more complete account, although he is less interested in the history of DES regulation than in the way that the DES battle exemplified the fracturing of scientific authority at midcentury. Wellford was one of Ralph Nader’s colleagues, and his account is oriented toward the politics of the regulatory mechanisms. His take on DES also appeared as Harrison Wellford, “Behind the Meat Counter: The Fight Over DES,”
Atlantic
230 (October 1972): 86–90. For a useful look at the politics of DES regulation (and to a lesser extent antibiotics), also see U.S. House of Representatives,
Regulation of Diethylstilbestrol (DES) and Other Drugs Used in Food Producing Animals
, HR 93–708, 93d Cong., 1st sess.

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“intellectually fascinating”: Quoted in Walter Sullivan, “Bacteria Passing On Resistance to Drugs,”
New York Times
, August 9, 1966, pp. 1, 31. The editorial appeared in the
New England Journal of Medicine
on August 4, 1966. For scientists’ and veterinarians’ take on the state of knowledge in the mid-1960s, see the essays in
Use of Drugs in Animal Feeds: Proceedings of a Symposium
, Publication 1679 (National Academy of Sciences, 1969). The British were not as reticent. In 1969, the authors of a Parliament-sponsored investigation announced that they did “not accept the statement that 20 years of experience goes to show that there are no serious ill-effects from giving antibiotics to animals.” They argued that Parliament should ban human-use antibiotics in animal feeds. “In the long term,” the committee wrote, “we believe it will be more rewarding to study and improve the methods of animal husbandry than to feed diets containing antibiotics.” Quoted in Alvin Shuster, “Britain to Curb Antibiotic Feed,”
New York Times
, November 21, 1969, p. 17.

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“potential health hazard”: Quoted in Harold M. Schmeck Jr., “Limitation on Antibiotics in Feed for Livestock Urged by F.D.A.,”
New York Times
, February 1, 1972, p. 19.

[>]
“bad news”: Neal Black, “FDA Antibiotic Order Not as Bad as Feared,”
National Hog Farmer
18, no. 7 (July 19, 1973): 4.

[>]
“better research”: Quoted in George Getschow, “Meat Producers Fear FDA Will Curb Use of Antibiotics, Thus Reducing Supplies,”
Wall Street Journal
, January 6, 1975, p. 18.

[>]
“grossly inadequate”: Quoted in Rex Wilmore, “They Want to Ban Antibiotics from Feed,”
Farm Journal
96 (March 1972): 23.

[>]
“the furthest from being”: “Why United Packers Has Closed Its Doors,”
National Provisioner
167, no. 26 (December 23, 1972): 18.

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The critique of agribusiness: My take on the impact of the Hightower critique is an educated guess pieced together as I worked on this book. This is yet another example of the lack of historical research on topics relevant to contemporary America. To date, historians have ignored the turmoil in late-twentieth-century agriculture, particularly the spread of corporate hog farming and the rural activism that accompanied it. As of this writing—2013—for example, there are no comprehensive histories of the emergence of rural activism in the 1960s and 1970s, nor have historians studied the links between, say, programs in rural sociology and rural activism, to say nothing of the history of confinement, lagoons, or much else connected with agriculture since the 1950s.

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“relatively free”: “Bill Would Ban Large Corporate Farms,”
Omaha World-Herald
, January 6, 1972, p. 6.

[>]
“Do you get the feeling”: See the letter to the editor from Larry G. Hauer, “Small Producers Being Forced Out,”
National Hog Farmer
28, no. 10 (October 1983): 29.

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“If the people of Nebraska”: Quoted in C. David Kotok, “Stock Feeder: Initiative 300 Could Cripple the Industry,”
Omaha World-Herald
, June 22, 1983, p. 2.

[>]
burg of Doland: See Russ Keen, “Hog-Farm Opinions Split Doland Folk,”
Aberdeen (SD) American News
, February 21, 1988, p. 1B.

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“They can get [it] cheaper”: Quoted in Kent Warneke, “Local Farmers, Businesses Supportive—Atkinson Farm Corporation Not Seen as Villain,”
Omaha World-Herald
, December 30, 1984; accessed online.

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“stoop to anything”: Quoted in “Missouri Gains Hog Farm That Iowa Turned Away,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 7, 1989, p. 8E.

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“It’s going to be a big help”: Quoted in ibid.

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“We don’t need”: Quoted in ibid. For the Morrell example, see Charles Siler, “Where Did All the Pigs Go?”
Forbes
145, no. 6 (March 19, 1990); accessed online.

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“rest[ed] largely with”: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, “Economies of Size in Hog Production,” by Roy Van Arsdall and Kenneth E. Nelson, Technical Bulletin no. 1712, December 1985, pp. 39, 41.

[>]
“large corporate hog farms”: See Bill Fleming, “Opinion Page,”
National Hog Farmer
32, no. 11 (November 15, 1987): 9.

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“within 10 years”: Quoted in Bill Fleming, “Opinion Page,”
National Hog Farmer
31, no. 5 (May 15, 1986): 10.

[>]
There’s no better place: For discussions of these changes, see Walter Kiechel III, “The Food Giants Struggle to Stay in Step with Consumers,”
Fortune
98, no. 5 (September 11, 1978): 50–56; Walter Kiechel III, “Two-Income Families Will Reshape the Consumer Markets,”
Fortune
101, no. 5 (March 10, 1980): 110–14, 117, 119–20; Jean Kinsey, “Changes in Food Consumption from Mass Market to Niche Markets,” in Lyle P. Schertz and Lynn M. Daft,
Food and Agricultural Markets: The Quiet Revolution
, NPA Report no. 270 (National Planning Association, 1994), 19–43; Jean Kinsey and Ben Senauer, “Consumer Trends and Changing Food Retailing Formats,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
78, no. 5, Proceedings Issue (December 1996): 1187–91; and Alan Barkema, Mark Drabenstott, and Kelly Welch, “The Quiet Revolution in the U.S. Food Market,”
Economic Review
76, no. 3 (May/June 1991): 25–41. The late-twentieth-century shift in eating and cooking habits is often attributed to the increase in numbers of women working outside the home. But, as noted in the text, that cliché obscures another transformation: more households were headed by adults, male and female, who worked outside the home. As the divorce rate soared, for example, more households were the domain of single men or part-time dads who had no interest in cooking. Some analysts argue that while women were more “liberated” and educated, they also worked because they had no choice: their families were being squeezed by declining wages and rising economic inequality. But again, that easy explanation does not go far enough to explain the complexities of the change. Consider an obvious if uncomfortable alternative view: Postwar Americans grew up in an era of extraordinary affluence. They assumed that their homes would contain more than one change of clothes, a television or two, and gizmos and gadgets designed to make life easier (electric can openers and toothbrushes). Americans who suffered declining incomes in the 1970s could have adjusted their way of life accordingly. Some did but more did not, even if it meant carrying credit card debt to do so.