Quittin’ TIME
8/26/2009
By AgWeb
If you’ve been by the magazine stand at your local supermarket or library, you’ll note that one of the nation’s major weekly magazines has as this week’s cover story a blistering attack on conventional agriculture. [And I see fellow AgWeb blogger Matt Bogard has beat me to the punch, but as most fighters know, a 1-2 combination is most effective].
The Aug. 21st issue of Time magazine is entitled “the Real Cost of Cheap Food.” What’s mostly notable about the piece is how predictable and derivative it truly is. There is not a single new fact or assertion in the article that hasn’t long been trotted out by the various anti- activists. You know the ones: Anti-large farms, anti-antibiotic use, anti-carnivores, anti-change. In reading through the article, I kept waiting for something really provocative to appear, but in truth, it read like a college newspaper article. By that I mean that the author didn’t really sift his facts or consider whether the source of them was pushing their own agenda. He just threw them all in the article, because (in ironic comparison to the article itself, which says that too much cheap food leads to obesity) stuffing all those criticisms in one story makes for a very fattening diatribe. Read More
I believe that one of the most frustrating part of all of these negative articles being printed about agriculture is that they are nothing but opinion pieces yet they are trying to portray it as a factual, researched piece. And this isn’t even up for debate because Walsh interviewed several people actually involved in food production and yet chose not to tell both sides of the story. This blatant attempt to NOT tell both sides of the story probably speaks towards Walsh’s integrity as a whole and his respect for journalism.
Showing posts with label Bryan Walsh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bryan Walsh. Show all posts
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Walsh Refuses Accurate Info About Beef Production
TIME Publishes Biased View of Beef Industry
An attempt by the NCBA to educate TIME magazine reporter seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
By: Compiled by staff
Published: Aug 24, 2009
The cover story of the Aug. 31 edition of TIME is entitled "The Real Cost of Cheap Food." In the article reporter Bryan Walsh painted modern beef production with an unflattering brush of a wide range of claims. He included common myths of over-reliance on corn and antibiotics, poor farm animal living conditions, and how meat is leading to obesity.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association was contacted by Walsh last week asking what the cost of raising a 1200 pound steer from birth to slaughter in a conventional production method. NCBA Executive Director of Communications Daren Williams was concerned, knowing that Walsh had written a piece last September that was very biased and slanted against the food industry and beef industry. In that article Walsh accused livestock production of causing global warming and that eating meat increased the risk of heart disease as well as several other blanket statements that could not and are not substantiated by science.
"I had some immediate concerns obviously whether or not Bryan Walsh was interested in writing a fair and balanced piece on modern food production," Williams said. "At that time I put him in touch with and insisted really that he speak with a number of experts and actual producers." Read More
Bryan Walsh’s article in TIME magazine was a ridiculous compilation of nearly every inaccurate stereotype about modern agriculture. The lack of effort to write an article in which both sides were presented and the reader allowed to decide was glaring to say the least. Even with the ability to talk to people in the industry and see for himself how things work, he chose the lazy way out. If farmers and ranchers put as much effort into their work as Walsh did, we’d all be hungry and naked right now.
An attempt by the NCBA to educate TIME magazine reporter seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
By: Compiled by staff
Published: Aug 24, 2009
The cover story of the Aug. 31 edition of TIME is entitled "The Real Cost of Cheap Food." In the article reporter Bryan Walsh painted modern beef production with an unflattering brush of a wide range of claims. He included common myths of over-reliance on corn and antibiotics, poor farm animal living conditions, and how meat is leading to obesity.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association was contacted by Walsh last week asking what the cost of raising a 1200 pound steer from birth to slaughter in a conventional production method. NCBA Executive Director of Communications Daren Williams was concerned, knowing that Walsh had written a piece last September that was very biased and slanted against the food industry and beef industry. In that article Walsh accused livestock production of causing global warming and that eating meat increased the risk of heart disease as well as several other blanket statements that could not and are not substantiated by science.
"I had some immediate concerns obviously whether or not Bryan Walsh was interested in writing a fair and balanced piece on modern food production," Williams said. "At that time I put him in touch with and insisted really that he speak with a number of experts and actual producers." Read More
Bryan Walsh’s article in TIME magazine was a ridiculous compilation of nearly every inaccurate stereotype about modern agriculture. The lack of effort to write an article in which both sides were presented and the reader allowed to decide was glaring to say the least. Even with the ability to talk to people in the industry and see for himself how things work, he chose the lazy way out. If farmers and ranchers put as much effort into their work as Walsh did, we’d all be hungry and naked right now.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Stereotyping Agriculture
Friday, Aug. 21, 2009
Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food
By Bryan Walsh
Correction Appended: Aug. 20, 2009
Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009. Read More
In the first paragraph alone, the reporter (using that term loosely) manages to fit in nearly every stereotype that isn’t accurate about modern agriculture. This is more like hearsay than reporting. No matter what type of production system is used, there will be advantages and drawbacks. To read this, you would think there is a perfect model that can be easily followed. If a reporter wants to be taken seriously, they should fairly and accurately report both sides of an issue and let the reader decide for themselves what their opinion will be.
Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food
By Bryan Walsh
Correction Appended: Aug. 20, 2009
Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009. Read More
In the first paragraph alone, the reporter (using that term loosely) manages to fit in nearly every stereotype that isn’t accurate about modern agriculture. This is more like hearsay than reporting. No matter what type of production system is used, there will be advantages and drawbacks. To read this, you would think there is a perfect model that can be easily followed. If a reporter wants to be taken seriously, they should fairly and accurately report both sides of an issue and let the reader decide for themselves what their opinion will be.
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