Oppositions in the Omnivore's Dilemma

A principle opposition that Michael Pollan implements in his Omnivore's Dilemma is the troublesome discrepancy between natural evolutionary logic and so-called industrial food logic. In nature, for instance, cows eat grass and live happy lives. Eaten grass is subsequently digested by the cow's rumen, a special inflatable organ designed expressly for this purpose. In keeping with the logic of industrial foods, however, cattle must be fed more "efficiently." Therefore, they are fed corn, which, unfortunately, is not digested by the rumen, leading to the organ's swelling and inevitable suffocation of the cow from the inside out. Antibiotics, namely Rumensin (treats bloat) and Tylosin (treats liver infection), must therefore be implemented by the industrial food companies to keep these bovine machines functioning...or processing correctly. Though a diet of corn would make little sense in terms of natural evolutionary logic as it is liable to cause Acidosis, "or diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, rumenitis, liver disease...general weakened immune system" (78), it makes sense, at least on the surface, from the Industrial side of things.

Corn (the hero of the book) is very cheap to use. According to Pollan, 3/5 of the Type 2 (non human edible) corn in American grown annually winds up at a feed lot, fed to steers in enclosed pasture. Thanks to "federally subsidized corn" (67), these animals are forced to abandon their natural ingrained ways for something decidedly unhealthy. It's a mirror of our own dependence on corn. Like Americans getting more and more morbidly obese on a corn-fed regime, cows experience rapid, unnatural growth, bulking up from "80-1,1000 lbs in 14 months" (71). This rapid growth comes at a price, and an "arsenal of new drugs" (71) must be used to make sure that price is not deadly. Is this really what we want to be eating? Nevermind the threat of "antibiotic resistant superbugs" that might very well form as a result of copious antibiotics floating around day after day, do we want out beef to be medicinal? Has our society fumbled into that future where food cannot stand alone on its own terms? The answer is yes. We are very much in a future where Whole Foods, by and large, untampered with by human means, are a rarity- embraced by celebs and hippies- but ignored by the mainstream. Corporations will continue feeding cattle corn and drugs until the demand lessens...even if the herd begins to languish.

This represents the central paradox, in my mind, of corn-fed cattle and the faulty industrial logic (aka blind, unconscionable avarice) that drives it. As Pollan so eloquently states, "[on feed lots] drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn't be sick if not for the diet...we feed them" (79). We have created a fossil-fuel machine that is bloated, sickly and sad. Numbered, force-fed, slaughtered. The corn-fed cattle debacle is Hitler's holocaust if only the captives had been fed better. That might seem extreme, but this is a monstrous situation without an easy remedy. Home gardening would be one option, more old-school farms without monocultures, without antibiotics and the veil of shifty-eyed "food security". This is an epidemic that must be stopped, but not with harder drugs.