Civil Authority

I saw this video here. This is Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) agent Jackie Owens attempting to carry out an inspection at the farm of Vernon Herschberger. Like Dan Allgyer in Pennsylvania, Herschberger is in the middle of the national debate over raw milk. In some ways their cases are very similar.

One thing that struck me in watching this video was the civility of the proceedings. While Ms. Owens was clearly frustrated and exasperated that the Hershbergers were not cooperative, she never lost her cool. She did a good job playing the good cop.

This civility was noted in the blog and comments, with various political spins attached, but I want to look at it from a different perspective. (And let's also leave aside the fact that this interaction was recorded, and how that may have changed her demeanor.)

If this is how regulators act when investigating a relatively powerless independent farmer, how do they act toward the big players? Is civil authority sometimes too civil?

Pass the Grassfed Butter

There's little love lost between John Robbins ("Diet For a New America") and the Weston A Price Foundation ("Nourishing Traditions"), but as I see it there is a lot of commonality in their messages. Both are concerned with sustainable agriculture, human health, and animal welfare, and both see (or should see) giant agribusiness as the biggest threat to these things. That's also been the constant thread I've followed from being a lapsing and imperfect vegetarian to a confirmed omnivore and "food-aware-ian."

Unfortunately for Robbins, one of his important pillars is the lipid hypothesis, the idea that saturated fat and cholesterol are the major causes of cardiovascular disease. This is looking more and more like a case of incomplete science become entrenched public policy. Perhaps the work of Uffe Ravnskov ("The Cholesterol Myths") shows this best.

Maybe the most compelling part of the Weston Price message is that the diet of our ancestors, the food that supported generations of humanity up until the last few, could possibly be healthy for us and the planet after all. Defining the traditional diet is where it gets a little trickier.

Staying away from the soy-vs-beef debates, but still taking aim at big ag, journalists Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma") and Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") teamed up with documentarian Robert Kenner to bring us the 2008 film "Food, Inc." If you haven't thought much about where your food really comes from, this film and these books should change that.