Fast Food, Ed Behr, and Ponds filled with...

Reading this recent article on the Farm Bill I realized I had heard of these waste lagoons somewhere before. Sure enough, I found mention of them in an excerpt that didn't make it into the Diner Journal's winter interview with Ed Behr. Lagoons alone are creepy places, horror film motels are always situated next to a lagoon, creatures lurk and are spawned from them, Nancy Drew seems to always be catching robbers counting their loot down by the lagoon, but this is above and beyond.

Here we are talking with Ed Behr about his influential article in The Art of Eating on Niman Ranch and Paul Willis in Iowa. This article about raising hogs naturally, without antibiotics and on pasture greatly influenced Steve Ills, CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a fast food chain now committed to using humanely raised animals.

DJ: Have you been to Chipotle?

EB: Yes. We ate at one in Denver. There aren't any up here in Vermont. And I just didn't realize how big they are and how much pork they use. It's really significant that they are asking for good pork. It's just mind-boggling. It's honest food without meat that is evil.

DJ: Well you know I guess the question is then about grass fed beef?

EB: On my long "article-to-do" list is one on purely grass fed beef, not finished on grain. It sounds much more complicated then it seems. I like grain-finished beef. But then the big issue has to do with flavor, slaughter, hanging and all that. I worry that Michael Pollan is simplifying the issue. And sometimes it is necessary to simplify a cause to a slogan to get a large amount of populous support. And I don't know if this is the case. Getting cattle out of unhealthy feedlots is different then feeding them grain.

DJ: Well if people don't till the soil to grow the grain and the cows are out to pasture we can sequester carbon and reduce green house gasses dramatically.

EB: I'm hugely in favor of that. That's charming. But the question is and I don't the answer but how much grain do you need? How can you grow grain without massive inputs in oil? Surely it can be done. There is a wonderful organic dairy farmer, there first non-traditional organic dairy farmer in Vermont and the United States. His name is Jack Lazor at Butterworks. He bought valley land just to grow grain he loves to grow grain and he is building his own windmill to create their own power.

DJ: We are visiting Abe Collins tomorrow who is selling carbon credits on the open market and has pasture raised cows on grassland.

EB: Well there are things that can be clearly superior on grass and then it's the quality of the grass and once upon a time it was the Shepard's job but now we do all those things differently. Animals at pasture are just a beautiful thing. When we were in Italy we saw three career Shepards at work, which was really great, and amazing that there are any left.

DJ: So back to Chipotle, you had such a huge political impact.

EB: It's stunning because it's anti-industrial farming. And all of these things bear on Vermont too. Now the state mandates manure ponds which is one of the worst aspects of pig farming. And they are mandated in Vermont and I mean you have to wonder what evil things are going on in there, like when the manure lagoons bust and fishermen get lesions in their arms. But you know if you're out to pasture your manure is not going into a pond.

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