mac53’s Neighborhood

clipped from gristmill.grist.org

In the not-so-distant past, pigs and chickens ate grass, some grains, and food scraps.

Today, in the throes of a perverse industrial food system that favors cheap protein and quick growth (with often astonishing results such as Mad Cow disease), we now feed farm animals lots of small, tasty fish.

Pigs and chickens eat double the amount of fish that Japan consumes annually and six times more seafood than the entire U.S. population eats each year.

In places where government action is unlikely due to the mantra of free markets, it is more likely we would see some sort of awareness program, such as a seafood wallet card for pigs and chickens (who don't read).

"Better yet, we will tell pigs and chickens they can eat only what they catch," says Daniel Pauly, Director of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre.

Maybe we should feed pigs and poultry (literally) Michael Pollan's advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

And we should do the same.