In 'Modern Meat,' an examination of America's high-tech animal-production system, published in 1984, the journalist and hog farmer Orville Schell admitted that he felt silly, when ordering pork in a restaurant, asking about the life of the pig. 'How many restaurant managers are besieged by customers worried about how the meat they are eating is raised?' he wrote. 'It is a subject most people would rather not think about, particularly while dining.' Thirty years along, we do care, to the point that consumer anxiety about agricultural practices is a core marketing message for Belcampo, the vertically integrated manger-to-table sustainable-meat company that I wrote about in this week's food issue of the magazine.
Belcampo represents the tip-top end of the market-think $49.99 a pound for beef tenderloin-but the fears about meat that it stands to benefit from originate at the bottom of the pyramid. Since Schell's book appeared, a series of investigations into the repercussions of cheap meat (for animals, society, the environment, and human health), along with several public-health crises (mad cow, E. coli O157:H7), have made diners seek alternatives, especially in chains like Chipotle, which uses meat that is free of antibiotics and hormones-and, according to Chipotle, comes from animals that are given space to roam and behave instinctively.
In September, a financial analyst, correctly predicting a profit hemorrhage at McDonald's, where declining global sales have been accelerated by a video showing workers at a Chinese supplier seemingly doing all kinds of insalubrious things with the meat (including, 'Jungle'-style, picking it up off the floor and adding it to the production line, with bare hands), issued an assessment titled 'That's Not Ketchup ... It's Blood.'
With a little rephrasing-'Is There Blood in the Ketchup?'-that line might have been part of McDonald's new transparency campaign: 'Our Food, Your Questions.' In an attempt to address consumer skepticism about the integrity of its food, the company has invited the public to ask it anything, and it's answering questions on Twitter and video-sharing sites. The campaign gives the impression, at least, that the company is confronting deeply awkward topics head on. Does McDonald's use pink slime? Why doesn't the burger rot? What's in a Chicken McNugget? It's as if Wrigley's decided to use its advertising budget to reassure the public that there are not, in fact, spider eggs in Hubba Bubba. To complement the Webby interactivity of the McDonald's campaign, forced on it by the mean and sometimes true things that people write online, the fast-food chain has a new slogan, which is expected to début early next year: 'Lovin' Beats Hatin'.'
For the videos, McDonald's hired Grant Imahara, formerly a host on Discovery Channel's 'MythBusters,' to 'investigate' the Big Questions. In one, he goes to Cargill, a major McDonald's supplier, to find out exactly what goes in the burger. Arriving at the plant, in Fresno, California, he is met by a McDonald's employee named Rickette Collins, whose job title is Director of Strategic Supply. 'We're really excited to tell you all about McDonald's beef today!' she says, with a big, forced smile on her face. She takes him onto the production floor, where Imahara's first question, to a Cargill supervisor, is, 'Are there lips and eyeballs in there, Jimmy?' The supervisor replies, 'No, it's one hundred per cent beef trimmings from the cow.' And so it goes, one ostentatiously penetrating question and 'No, silly' reassurance after the next, till you feel like you could almost eat McDonald's again. This is the infomercial-in-the-age-of-the-Internet myth, trolls versus strategic supply. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I hope you are watching. We need a musical.
The list of topics on McDonald's 'Our Food, Your Questions' page is an index of what mainstream America is thinking about food these days. Top on the list is pink slime, the ammoniated beef product that looks like strawberry fro-yo and caused a stir in 2012, when people realized that it was being served as part of the National School Lunch Program. (McDonald's refers to it as 'so-called 'pink slime.' ') Does McDonald's use it? 'Nope,' is the site's reply. Scrolling down the page, past the question 'Do McDonald's buns contain the same chemicals used to make yoga mats?'-the answer is yes, and you have to click the 'more' tab to learn that, and why you shouldn't worry about it-you find that McDonald's did use pink slime, or lean finely textured beef, between 2004 and 2011.
No. 5 on the list is especially interesting, because it gestures beyond the particular McRib-shaping practices of McDonald's to ask: 'Is your beef 'grass-fed' '? First, why is 'grass-fed' in quotes, like 'pink slime'? Because, as their answer reveals, McDonald's is dodging, and it believes that consumers are still not quite tuned in to the nuances:
Farming practices vary, but most of the cattle we use for our beef are raised in the U.S. on grass for the first part of their lives. Later, the cattle are provided a balanced diet of grains, grasses and minerals.
In other words, 'Nope.' All cattle, feedlot cattle included, start on grass. To suggest that this is somehow a partial version of what is meant by grass-fed is misleading. The feedlot diet of 'grains, grasses and minerals' is the problem. It is a cause of disease and distress in the animals, and a reason to dose them with antibiotics (which also hasten growth).
In 'Fast Food Nation,' Eric Schlosser showed how the market pressure exerted by McDonald's helped to transform both the poultry and the beef industries in this country into factories that crank out cheap meat, with a displaced social cost. What if McDonald's consumers got a little more pointed in their questioning, and demanded a truly grass-fed product? Even hobbled, McDonald's has the buying power to change the cattle industry's feeding practices again. Grass-fed beef takes more land and more time. It's not realistic, or desirable, to imagine swapping out all the feedlot beef for grass-fed beef. (We really just need to be eating less meat, of higher quality.) But, just as McDonald's has an 'artisan bun' that doesn't have yoga-mat chemicals in it, maybe it could offer an artisan burger, from a cow that eats only the food it evolved to eat. Belcampo just introduced a five-dollar grass-fed burger, and McDonald's could do the same.
Meanwhile, the ongoing drought in the American West is causing beef prices to rise, and pink slime is making a comeback.
Entities 0 Name: McDonald 's Count: 9 1 Name: Cargill Count: 2 2 Name: America Count: 2 3 Name: Wrigley Count: 1 4 Name: Eric Schlosser Count: 1 5 Name: Jimmy Count: 1 6 Name: Grant Imahara Count: 1 7 Name: Schell Count: 1 8 Name: Fresno Count: 1 9 Name: McDonald Count: 1 10 Name: Orville Schell Count: 1 11 Name: Hubba Bubba Count: 1 12 Name: Trey Parker Count: 1 13 Name: E. coli Count: 1 14 Name: California Count: 1 15 Name: American West Count: 1 16 Name: Matt Stone Count: 1 17 Name: Imahara Count: 1 18 Name: U.S. Count: 1 19 Name: Rickette Collins Count: 1 20 Name: National School Lunch Program Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1zhhcEc Title: How insects could feed the world | Emily Anthes Description: At first, my meal seems familiar, like countless other dishes I've eaten at Asian restaurants. A swirl of noodles slicked with oil and studded with shredded chicken, the aroma of ginger and garlic, a few wilting chives placed on the plate as a final flourish. And then, I notice the eyes.
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