The Inherent Conflict of the USDA

While finishing up my research paper last weekend, I came across an article that left me utterly speechless (link below). Part of me was disappointed at finding yet another case of the USDA practicing obscene loyalty to the beef industry, and yet another part of me was thrilled at finding yet another example that supported a point I was trying to make in my paper: that the beef industry has far too much power.

The article was written back in July, but it essentially described an example that illustrated the internal conflict the USDA faces between supporting American agriculture while at the same time doling out nutrition advice, an issue we discussed in class with regard to the excerpt we read from Marion Nestle's book. I wrote about this very conflict in my paper as well. Essentially, the article was about how a memo circulated around the United States Department of Agriculture office recommending different strategies employees can use to be more environmentally friendly. One of the strategies on the list was joining the Meatless Mondays campaign, abstaining from meat for one day a week. The memo went on to list some of the environmental benefits of cutting down one's meat intake. After the memo was published on the USDA's website, there was a vocal backlash from various cattlemen and meat lobbyists and even a congressional representative from Iowa for the USDA advocating that anyone reduce his or her meat consumption.

After this negative backlash was made public, the USDA removed the memo from their website and went on record stating that the USDA does not endorse the Meatless Mondays campaign and that the memo was written by a non-reputable source, essentially denying affiliation with the memo in question.

What stood out to me the most in the article was a statement made by a spokesperson for the National Cattleman's Beef Association. He referred to the "offending passage" as "'a slap in the face of the people who every day are working to make sure we have food on the table to say "Don't eat their product once a week."'" The reason this shocked me because they were referring to meat-eating as a product like any other; as if the USDA accidentally advocated one brand over another. However, the memo was only suggesting to eat less meat because of real-world environmental impacts of eating meat. What irritates me is that the meat industry refuses to acknowledge that there can be any downside to consuming copious quantities of their products. And as long as the USDA insists upon supporting this message despite a growing amount of scientific literature supporting the extensive number of environmental and health consequences of a high degree of meat consumption, I cannot take the USDA seriously as an organization that claims to defend public health.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/us/usda-newsletter-retracts-a-meatless-mondays-plug.html?_r=2&