"Fantastic" Food Chains Serve Healthy Meat

Burger King, Wendy’s, Olive Garden, KFC, Chili’s, Sonic, Denny’s, Domino’s, Starbucks, Papa John’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Applebee’s, Jack in the Box, Arby’s, Dairy Queen, IHOP, Outback Steakhouse and Little Caesars are among the American food chains you can be sure are providing you meat that came from healthy animals, according to a new report released by Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Keep Antibiotics Working, the Center for Food Safety and Consumers Union.

Of course, that's not how those, uh, "food" organizations are billing the findings in their report, which is critical of fast-food and casual restaurants that sell meat from animals that received antibiotics. Those groups, which oppose modern food-animal production, blame the use of antibiotics in cows, pigs and chickens for a rise in illnesses that are resistant to antibiotics.

The problem is there's no scientific evidence that animal agriculture is to blame for the increase in resistance. The environmental and anti-agriculture organizations, however, cite dubious "studies," including one from 1971, to back their claims. They did mention a CDC study on antibiotic resistance, but that 112-page report devoted just two pages to antibiotic use in animals and included this rather revealing nugget: "up to half of the antibiotic use in humans ... is unnecessary or inappropriate."

Farmers and their veterinarians use antibiotics strategically to keep their animals healthy and to produce safe food. They follow industry guidelines and FDA-approved label directions in administering animal health products.

But groups such as Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council don't let facts get in the way. In their report, they gave restaurants letter grades based on their commitments to go "antibiotic free." The ones listed at the top of this post received Fs. 

No doubt that stands for "Fantastic"!

My Dream Columnist Label

In his new book, A Bone to Pick, and in an October 2012 column in the New York Times, columnist Mark Bittman called for a traffic light-type label for foods. HOTH proposes a similar label for columnists.

Red would be for conservative columnists, blue for liberal writers and yellow, of course, would be for columnists who use sensationalism and distortion.

This would allow readers “to make truly enlightened decisions” about the columns they read, letting them know how much stock to put in a column written by, for example, a “yellow” journalist who touts organic produce as somehow safer than conventionally grown produce or who believes the welfare of pigs raised outdoors and exposed to the elements and diseases is better than the ones raised in clean, climate-controlled barns.

HOTH realizes such columnist labels, like Bittman’s food labels, might affect jobs and people’s lives, but let’s not quibble about such trivialities. Readers have a right to know.

Fueling A Farm Crisis

Thirty billion dollars. That’s what a study issued late October says the Renewable Fuel Standard is likely to cost the meat and poultry industry next year.

Produced by FarmEcon LLC in Indianapolis, the study found that, if the RFS is not revamped, the loss in meat and poultry production next year “will balloon to about $30.6 billion,” while both ethanol production and corn exports will decline because of short corn supplies. Consumers, the study added, will see a 29 percent increase in meat and poultry prices, triggering a drop in consumption of 11 percent.

“It is time to step back and take a hard look at the realty of the 2007 RFS schedule versus corn production capacity and the welfare of the country,” the study concluded. “By diverting increasingly limited corn production into low value-added ethanol production and exports, we have dramatically reduced the actual and potential volume of high value-added, job producing food production.”

The RFS requires a set amount of corn-based ethanol to be blended into gasoline each year. The Environmental Protection Agency recently refused to grant requests from NPPC and many others to waive all or part of the RFS to ease pressure on soaring feed prices.

In Celebration Of Meaty Monday: More Reason To Eat Meat

Need more evidence that meat is “brain food”? A study from the Mayo Clinic found that elderly people who consume lots of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to have their thinking impaired.

Researchers tracked the eating habits of 1,230 people ages 70 to 89 over four years. Those whose diets were highest in fat were 42 percent less likely to face cognitive impairment, and those who had the highest intake of protein had a reduced risk of 21 percent. When total fat and protein were considered, people with the highest carbohydrate intake were 3.6 times more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment.

 “We think it’s important that you eat a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates and fat, because each of these nutrients has an important role in the body,” said lead study author Rosebud Roberts, a Mayo Clinic epidemiologist.

The findings were published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. 

Wisdom In Denmark, Ignorance In L.A.

Public officials in Denmark may be getting the message but not, apparently, Los Angeles.

In Denmark, lawmakers have repealed a tax on foods high in saturated fat while bureaucrats cancelled plans for a tax on sugar. Both levies were aimed at curbing obesity. “Now we have to try to improve public health by other means,” said Mette Gjerskov, the Danish minister of food and agriculture.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the City Council joined San Francisco and a few other U.S. cities in endorsing "Meatless Mondays." A resolution, adopted unanimously, urges city residents to pledge to forgo meat on the first day of each week. The move followed earlier city council steps to crack down on trans fats fast-food restaurants.

HOTH applauds the good sense of the Danes, at least on this issue, and suggests someone send the Los Angeles council some good pork barbeque. 

Foodie Post Mortems On Prop 37

The left-wing foodie elites have weighed in on the demise of California’s GMO labeling initiative, and the results aren’t pretty.

The initiative, known as Prop 37, would have required foods sold in California that contain genetically modified ingredients to be labeled, although fresh meat would have been exempt. The initiative was defeated, 53 percent to 47 percent.

“The Food Movement Takes a Beating” screamed the headline on Mark Bittman’s Nov. 11 column in The New York Times. “Prop 37 Defeat Reveals a ‘Food Movement’ that Is Still Half Baked,” added Jason Mark in the online Earth Island Journal.

Tom Philpott’s analysis in the liberal magazine Mother Jones came complete with a line graph showing how support for the initiative plummeted—and opposition soared—in the weeks before Election Day. The initiative failed, Philpott concluded, thanks to a “slick, relentless, truth-challenged” opposition lobbying campaign that spent $5 for every one spent by supporters.

“Money, lies and mistakes crushed the forward-thinking votes in California,” added Bittman, “but these are battles lost in a war that will (still) be won. The notions that we need to know what’s in our food and that food should not be harmful have not been defeated.”

HOTH thinks the California electorate simply saw the light in the end. With no evidence that foods containing GMOs are, in fact, harmful, how could anyone vote for Prop 37? 

Biggest Loser

Still smarting because your candidate or cause didn’t win in the recent elections?

Perhaps this will make your feel better. You probably didn’t lose as big as the Humane Society of the United States.

HumaneWatch, which keeps tabs on the anti-animal agriculture group, said HSUS’s lobbying arm, the Humane Society Legislative Fund, lost on just about every race it worked on this fall. Included were efforts to unseat pro-farmer congressmen Steve King of Iowa and Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee and a bid to defeat Arizona Senate candidate Jeff Flake.

What about ballot initiatives, where HSUS previously had scored several key victories? Not this time, said HumaneWatch. The radical animal rights group lost on a North Dakota referendum to make broadly defined acts of animal cruelty a felony, while two of its other ballot initiatives never got off the ground.

In one final affront, HSUS Pennsylvania state director Sarah Speed lost in a bid for the state House of Representatives from York County. “In all, HSUS and its legislative arm spent bundles of money and came up empty,” HumaneWatch concluded.