When Myth Meats Reality
No, that isn't a typo. The Washington Post has a sympathetic article about a growing number of small farmers who are defying Federal and State regulations - for a variety of reasons. Some are willfully skirting health and safety regulations in an attempt to compete with big agricultural producers. And some of them are in real trouble as a result.
To some, Richard Bean is a folk hero: the small farmer who dared to sell local, naturally raised pork chops, ribs, sausages and bacon. To the government, Bean looks like a felon.
Since 2001, Bean has sold his pork to restaurants and at farmers markets in the Charlottesville area, where he also offers chicken, vegetables and homemade bread. In many ways, his Double H Farm is exactly what the burgeoning eat-local movement wants: a diversified, family-run farm that sells to nearby customers.
But to make farming sustainable, Bean said, he has evaded government requirements that producers have animals slaughtered and processed in inspected facilities. His defiance led to his arrest Sept. 21 when state police officers, armed and dressed in flak jackets, arrived at the Double H with a search warrant and arrested Bean and his partner, Jean Rinaldi.
The officers handcuffed Bean, confiscated the couple's computer and charged them with felony intent to defraud, which carries the possibility of three years in jail for a conviction. The couple are accused of selling meat improperly labeled "certified organic." They also face seven misdemeanor charges. No hearing date has been set……….
………The Double H also followed organic principles when raising pigs, giving them a diet of non-genetically modified grain, soybeans and corn, an outdoor pen, and no antibiotics or hormones. But Bean never obtained federal certification that would have required him to submit a plan that, among other things, documents practices and substances used in production and allows annual on-site inspections. The cost of certification for a small farm is about $500 a year.
In the beginning, Bean had his hogs slaughtered in a federally inspected plant in Lynchburg, a 40-minute drive away. But in 2002, he began killing the pigs in his barn. "We were set up to do it, and I knew how, so it just made sense," Bean said.
In May 2006, Bean and Rinaldi were visited at a Charlottesville market by F.C. Lamneck, a state meat and poultry compliance officer. Bean said Lamneck told him that his meat should be slaughtered in a federally inspected facility. That June, Bean received a letter from state agriculture officials saying that he was in violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act but that legal action would not be taken based on his desire to comply with the statute.
Part of what Bean was doing is, frankly, dodging compliance with rules that are in place for food safety. Period. He and his fellow farmers may have a point that the regulations are onerous. But they can blame a dead man for that. Upton Sinclair, in his efforts to bring about a socialist worker's paradise in the United States published one of the most enduring myths in American history and helped bring about the rise of Federal controls over food production. The book - taught still in the schools today as an "expose" - is The Jungle. And it is mostly made up out of the whole cloth. But it raised howls of outrage from the public and led to Federal regulation. It was - and still is - a masterpiece of pure propaganda. Sinclair didn't quite achieve his goals with it - but he got the ball rolling.
One hundred years ago, a great and enduring myth was born. Muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel entitled “The Jungle” — a tale of greed and abuse that still reverberates as a case against a free economy. Sinclair’s “jungle” was unregulated enterprise; his example was the meat-packing industry; his purpose was government regulation. The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in history, or at least in history books, as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.
A century later, American schoolchildren are still being taught a simplistic and romanticized version of this history. For many young people, “The Jungle” is required reading in high-school classes, where they are led to believe that unscrupulous capitalists were routinely tainting our meat, and that moral crusader Upton Sinclair rallied the public and forced government to shift from pusillanimous bystander to heroic do-gooder, bravely disciplining the marketplace to protect its millions of victims.
But this is a triumph of myth over reality, of ulterior motives over good intentions. Reading “The Jungle” and assuming it’s a credible news source is like watching “The Blair Witch Project” because you think it’s a documentary.
Sinclair actually opposed the law, incidentally. It was a vast expansion of Federal power and actually a boon to the big meat producers - because American taxpayers footed the entire cost. There are unintended consequences every time the government intervenes in anything. Mr. Bean and his friends may have a point about the regulations - but socialistic agendas started the ball rolling for the regulations they are up against.
By feeblemind, Saturday, 20 October , 2007 @ 10:27 am
I agree with your assessment of The Jungle.
By Chris, Sunday, 21 October , 2007 @ 7:28 am
Anyone who would rather save $500 than comply with a known law is an idiot, not a hero.