War on Rural Lifestyle

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The industry insists that all regulations be “scale neutral,” so if the U.S.D.A. demands that huge plants have, say, a bathroom, a shower and an office for the exclusive use of its inspectors, then a small processing plant that slaughters local farmers’ livestock will have to install these facilities, too.

This is one of the principal reasons that meat at the farmers’ market is more expensive than meat at the supermarket: farmers are seldom allowed to process their own meat, and small processing plants have become very expensive to operate, when the U.S.D.A. is willing to let them operate at all.

from THE VEGETABLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX By Michael Pollan New York Times
October 15. 2006

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October 16, 2006 Issue #462

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