‘Pork Chops with a Side of Nostalgia’

“Commercial farmers will have to decide whether we can withstand public opprobrium while continuing to efficiently produce the world’s most essential good or join the entertainment industry, selling expensive pork chops with heaping sides of nostalgia.”

With those 36 words in Sunday’s New York Times, Missouri Farm Bureau President Blake Hurst pretty much summed up the entire debate over modern livestock farming. Hurst was commenting on a television ad from Chipotle -- run during the Super Bowl -- implying that pigs in controlled housing are somehow less happy than those allowed to roam free.

“Since we can’t ask the pigs what they think,” Hurst wrote, “we know only one thing for sure about the effects of scrapping our most efficient farming systems: the cost of bacon will rise. Wealthy consumers will reward farmers who are able to pull off the Chipotle ad’s brand of combination farm/tourist attraction and are willing to trade efficient animal husbandry for political correctness. Many big multistate operations will also be able to afford to make the changes, or will at least have the political sway to resist them. But the small farmers now raising hogs will be pushed out of the industry.”

HOTH couldn’t have said it better!