A Bum Steer: Big Beef Throws Its Weight Around at Cal Poly
Domenica Marchetti
Contributor
Posted:
10/21/09
Big Beef has a bone to pick with Michael Pollan. And who can blame it? After all, Pollan, a professor of journalism at University of California at Berkeley and a critic of industrial agriculture, almost got away with delivering a lecture last week to students at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. How dare he?!Pollan had been invited by the university's Sustainable Agriculture Resource Consortium, a faculty-run group that works to make sure students are exposed to alternatives to conventional agricultural practices.
Apparently Big Beef decided to get mad -- and get even. David E. Wood, chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co., a sprawling feedlot and meat-processing operation that produces 150 million pounds of beef per year, pitched a fit in a letter to the university's president, Warren Baker. Wood also happens to be an alumnus of the school -- and a generous donor (he pledged $150,000 toward a new meat-processing plant for the campus's herd, according to news reports).
In his letter, posted by New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle on her blog, Food Politics, Wood threatened to reconsider his donation. He wrote, "While I understand the need to expose students to alternative views, I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices." He also railed against a professor who identified "grass-fed" and "organic" farming systems as sustainable, but not "grain-fed" production systems.
How did Cal Poly respond? Not quite the way a respected institution of higher learning that has the best interest of its students at heart would. The school caved -- though in a letter responding to Wood, Baker defended the school's efforts to involve students in the debate over sustainability. Still, the university changed the format from a lecture by Pollan to a panel discussion, adding a professor of meat science and the founder of a large organic vegetable company. (The event was held last Thursday.)
I agree that a panel is a fine and appropriate way to debate the complex issues involved with how our food is grown and raised. But was it necessary to stifle one lecture by one person to mollify an angry donor? It's not like Big Ag doesn't get to have its say on this subject. Aren't the agricultural and land-grant schools already heavily focused on teaching conventional farming practices? And isn't 90 percent of the beef in this country already industrially farmed and processed?
More importantly, what about academic freedom?
Believe it or not, I am all for hearing dissenting view points. Take this one, an articulate critique of Pollan's book by someone whose family has been farming in this country for generations. I don't buy all of his arguments, but I appreciate his perspective, especially as I am not a farmer but a consumer.
Big Beef may hope to silence critics like Michael Pollan. Me? I'm going to buy the just-released young reader's edition of Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for my kids. You know, in the interest of academic freedom.