From farmsted@cfw.com Sun Aug 1 23:39:52 1999 Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 22:19:34 -0400 From: Jeff Ishee To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Avery vs. Salatin/Installment #1 It was raucous, it was divisive. It was gentlemanly, it was thought provoking. And, it was probably the liveliest conversation about sustainable agriculture you'd ever want to witness without having boxing gloves on. The Dennis Avery/Joel Salatin debate over modern agricultural policies and practices took place on Thursday, July 28 in a live radio broadcast for two full hours. It was my honor to act as host and moderator. The exclusive transcript below is word-for-word, and offers the first 20 minutes of an extended debate which addressed everything from the use of municipal sludge on farm crops to genetic engineering, from irradiation of foods to pastured poultry vs confinement production, etc. The phone lines lit up with callers from the very beginning, and callers added a superb dimension to the discussion, bringing up world agricultural trade issues, cancer rates related to pesticide use, and numerous other issues concerning both high-yield and sustainable agriculture. As promised, the complete transcripts (over 20 pages) are available at my costs. The goal is not to make a profit here, but just to cover the cost of transcribing, printing, and mailing to you each and every word from a two hour debate. Please don't consider this as a solicitation, or "spam." If you would like a complete transcript, from beginning to end of the Avery/Salatin debate, just mail a check for $5.00 to the address listed below. I hope that each of you enjoys the thought provoking debate, a portion of which follows. Sincerely, Jeff Ishee Farm Director, WSVA Radio P.O. box 752 Harrisonburg, VA 22801 ********************* Avery vs. Salatin Transcripts WSVA Valley Farm Forum July 28, 1999 Good morning again neighbors, I'd like to welcome you to the Valley Farm Forum, a monthly program where we invite our guests in the studio to discuss the agricultural issues of the day . . . at length . . . with your participation. My name is Jeff Ishee, and joining us in the studio today are Mr. Dennis Avery and Mr. Joel Salatin, two of the most widely-known and, in my opinion, respected agricultural analysts in North America. The both travel extensively throughout the year addressing the concerns of farmers and the industry of agriculture, but as you will soon bear witness, they are as diametrically opposed in their viewpoints as anyone can possibly be when it comes to modern agricultural practices and policies. Dennis Avery is Director of the Center for Global Food Issues, a project of the Hudson Institute, and is a former senior agricultural analyst to the U.S. State Department. He is author of the 1995 book entitled "Saving the Planet With Pesticides and Plastics: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming." Dennis Avery resides with his family at their farm in the tiny community of Swoope, Virginia. Joel Salatin is an active farmer, producing and marketing poultry, beef, pork and other farm products directly from his farm to a customer base of four hundred families and twenty white tablecloth restaurants. He was one of the founders of an organization called the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, and has written three books, the most recent entitled "You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise." Joel resides with his family at their farm in, yes, the tiny community of Swoope, Virginia. Gentlemen, good morning to both of you. I, like many of our listeners, have been waiting for this program for quite some time. It's been my goal to get the two of you together in the studios of WSVA since I began this position a few years ago. In my opinion, we have two of the keenest minds in agriculture in the studio with us today, and both live within a few miles of each other. The Shenandoah Valley is blessed in more ways than one. Well, there are numerous ways that we could begin today's discussion, but I think I'll start off by simply repeating a story that the Associated Press ran one week ago today. Perhaps this will demonstrate to our listeners some of the basic beliefs and concerns of Dennis and Joel when it comes to agricultural policy. Then later in the program, we'll get to some more decisive (and probably divisive) issues in farming today. But first, this story as reported by the Associated Press on July 23rd. "A transatlantic battle over hormone-treated beef escalated on Tuesday with US officials blasting comments by the French that America has (quote)"the worst food in the world." A US plan to slap sanctions on European farm exports in a battle over hormone-treated beef drew howls of pain from European pork producers on Tuesday, and calls from French farmers for a boycott of American farm products. The French government strongly criticized the US move, but the European Union refused to give up hope of a negotiated solution to avert the US threat of punitive 100 percent duties on EU farm exports. French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said (quoting here) "the United States is the country that has the worst food in the world." American Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman said the "inflammatory nature" of the remarks about US food by his French counterpart could only worsen the dispute. Glickman said the French went too far when they criticized the safety and quality of U.S. farm products. Now, while Dennis Avery and Joel Salatin are pondering their reaction to this story, I'd like to invite you, our listeners, to feel free to join the conversation at any point by calling us at 433-9782, or you can call us toll-free from anywhere in Virginia or West Virginia at 1-800-388-9782. If you agree, or disagree, with any of the comments our guests have made, we invite you join in the discussion and tell us what you think. Those numbers again, 433-9782, or toll free 1-800-388-9782. Well let's get started with today's Valley Farm Forum. Gentlemen, your comments on this story. Dennis, we'll start with you. Dennis Avery: The hormone treated beef controversy is a very good place to start. About a dozen years ago, Europe announced that it would not use, and would not accept, beef from animals that had been treated with hormones. It was basically to prevent a worsening of their meat surplus, and the hormones do allow farmers to produce meatier carcasses more quickly and at somewhat less cost. The Europeans have now had twelve years, actually they had time before that, but they've had twelve years since the ban to find a danger in those hormones to point to as a reason for their erecting the trade barriers, and they haven't been able to find one. Recently the Codex Aliment arius in Rome, which is the referee for the World Trade Organization, said "Since you haven't given us any proof of danger, you're going to have to lift the trade barrier." All of this rhetoric about Americans having bad food is a reaction to Europe having it's feet held to the fire on scientific proof of danger. Either put up or shut up, and they can't put up. If the beef were dangerous, the Europeans would be dying like flies. When I was at the State Department, I remember a report from Belgium that about 40% of the beef carcasses slaughtered in that country that year still had the residues of the hormones in them. The European farmers are almost universally using the hormones, but instead of buying them from a reputable pharmaceutical firm, they buy them from the black market. People have been shot to death in minor wars over these illegal hormones. Host Jeff Ishee: Joel, your response to this story? Joel Salatin:I guess that I would suggest, and I would like to ask Dennis "Is science objective?" Avery: Science is as objective as we get, Joel, and obviously science is complicated and anytime you see one report on something, you'd better wait for what the researchers call the "consensus," but on meat hormones, we've had twenty years to develop, first a consensus, and then a regulatory posture, and then the results of it, which are a continuing decline in our cancer rates, and no indication of any problems with the hormone treated beef. Salatin: There have plenty of reports coming out of especially Central America showing the hormones in meats that have caused early puberty in children and things like that . . . Avery: There have been accusations of that Joel . . . Salatin: But you see, the question is "Is science objective?" Are there any limitations to science? Avery: Well, that is a very broad question. I don't think I am willing to proceed in a world where we regulate things on the basis of hysteria and rumor rather than trying to figure out reality. Basically, science is just talking about analyzing reality. Salatin: But what is reality? Avery: Reality might be deformed frogs in Minnesota that were blamed on pesticides until the researchers proved that there were tiny parasites that were attacking the tadpoles, and the parasites prevented the legs of the frogs from growing normally. That's one aspect of science versus hysteria. We had school kids all over America communicating on the internet about the number of deformed frogs that they had found, and speculating about which chemical caused it. Then it turned out that we had a natural cause. Salatin: You know, we can get into "I could give you five details. You could give me five details." We can get bogged down in detail. But I think that the important thing is to understand that our paradigm, our frame of reference, our world view dictates how we approach science. Science has two primary limitations: One is that it has to be observable, and the other is that it has to be duplicatable. Those are the, by definition, those are the two limitations of science. As you said, they are as real as we can get. We have to see it, we have to duplicate it. And so for example, when Chernobyl blew, when the nuclear reactor blew up a few years ago, and the people, the bureaucrats in Moscow were talking over the telephone with the fellows in the control room, they asked them "If you've had a meltdown, is there any graphite?" Well, there were graphite chunks the size of wheelbarrows lying around the yard at Chernobyl, and the scientists said "No. No. There is no graphite on the lawn," because they so believed in the foolproof design of the nuclear reactor, that they absolutely could not see the graphite. Avery: I have to warn you, and I worked in the State Department for almost ten years. I had very high security clearances. I was reading Russian radio traffic the day after it occurred. These people . . . this was not a belief in science. This was a Russian system that lied to each other endemically on a daily basis . . . Salatin: And you think that Monsanto, Ceiba-Geigy, and DuPont never lied to each other, and that the tobacco industry never lies to us? Avery: I think we have a lot more checks and balances than we used to. Salatin: I think you are very mistaken. Avery: If you don't think that we have more checks and balances in our society than Stalin had in his, I would suggest you reread your textbook. Salatin: I think humans are basically the same, and we all operate under certain paradigms. Our paradigms define what the questions we will ask in a scientific experiment. I could give you, I could go for two hours, and give you easily the skewed and flawed questions that research is asked as parameters of research projects to, not come to the answer, but come to the answer that best suits the funding of the research, of the researching donor or grantor. Avery: Well maybe it's useful, Joel, to look at some of the broader outcomes. We've added roughly twenty years to our life spans in the pesticide era. Our kids IQ scores keep going up, the kids keep getting bigger, stronger, faster, can throw the ball farther, kick the soccer ball past the goalie with more power. It's partly a result of better nutrition, and the better nutrition is partly the result of high-yield farming. And not only are we giving the people of the world about a third more calories than they used to get per person, but we're giving them far more of the high quality protein and micro-nutrients like calcium and iron . . . Host Jeff Ishee: High-yield agriculture is exactly the topic that I'd like to get to next, but at the moment we're going to take a commercial break. You are listening to the Valley Farm Forum in Harrisonburg, Virginia on News Radio 550, WSVA. (commercial break) Host Jeff Ishee: Dennis, I know that you are an avid supporter of high-yield agriculture and it's environmental benefits. Please explain to our audience what high-yield agriculture is, and just how does it benefit our environment? Avery: The Soil and Water Conservation Society of America says that modern farming with hybrid seeds, irrigation, chemical fertilizer, integrated pest management with pesticides, and conservation tillage, which also needs herbicides to help prevent soil erosion, they say this is the most sustainable farming in history. We have used it to basically triple the yields on the world's best farmland. Because of that, we have saved fifteen million square miles of wildlife habitat from being plowed down to get today's food supply. We are farming 37% of the earth's land area, but that's about what we were farming at the end of World War II when we had half as many people eating far less well. So, as we look forward to a peak world population of eight and a half billion affluent, non-vegetarians, we'll demand three times as much farm output. My concern is that we get the three fold increase in farm output by tripling the yields on the best farmland, maybe quadrupling the yields on American farmland, so that we don't have to plow down wildlife and wild species in order to eat. Host Jeff Ishee: I'd like to ask you about tripling and perhaps quadrupling the output in modern American agriculture, but I want to get to our callers, and at this point we've got several folks who would like to join the conversation, so, let's go to the phones. Good Morning and welcome to the Valley Farm Forum. You are on the air. Caller: I am interested in your discussion. I don't have a strong opinion about feeding hormones to animals. Maybe I should have, but I don't. But I do have strong opinions about the use of irradiation in foods. I'm not against it. I'm very much for it. How come the government doesn't force business to irradiate foods that are potentially harmful to us because of e-coli, salmonella, and maybe other viruses? Avery: I, also, am in favor of irradiation. I am particularly in favor of it for organic food that is grown when it is grown with the assistance of manure, because that involves a serious bacterial risk, and the irradiation would eliminate that. To me, irradiation is the one big, obvious thing we can do to make what is already the safest food supply in world history significantly safer. But, so far, the public doesn't want it, and we live in a democracy. I think until the public gets really scared of something, and we got pasteurization in milk because we were really scared of tuberculosis in the cows, until we get scared enough, in my view, of e-coli, the opponents of irradiation will continue to win. Caller: Let me take you back about 30 years, when our government decided that cyclamates had to be taken out of soft drinks. They said that if you drink eight hundred cans of soda a day, you might get cancer. They did tests on rats and found out that it did cause cancer, but you'd have to drink eight hundred cans a day. Now, if the government can force the public to go without cyclamates and go to something else, why couldn't they demand . . . uh, I don't believe that there would be a great backlash against irradiation. I know some people don't want to eat meats anyway, so they are very vocal. But, if that's the only choice you had, to eat irradiated meat, especially hamburger. Now it is more dangerous than steak, I believe, isn't that right? Avery: You are absolutely correct. I love rare hamburgers, and I don't dare eat them anymore . . . Caller: I don't either. Avery: I would offer irradiated meat, and this is now possible, the Department of Agriculture has just finalized the regulations for irradiating meat, but I'd offer it as a premium product. Salatin: I'd like to offer the fact that there are plenty of people, in the scientific community, who talk about formaldehyde, and the carcinogenic qualities, the nuclear type of qualities, that are caused by the irradiation of food, and I would rather, instead of eating sterilized poop, I'd rather get the poop out of it. Get the salmonella out, the e-coli out. Cornell University just told us that if we would quit feeding grain to cattle, there is no e-coli in the gut. I would rather see us go to systems where there is no manure in it, where it is clean to begin with, rather than irradiating so that we can all eat, at least, irradiated manure. I'd rather not eat sterile manure myself. Avery: Joel, Joel, Joel. Let's keep it a little bit more honest here. We're not talking about irradiated manure. We're talking about meat which is sometimes contaminated with bacteria of various kinds. And irradiation kills them all. It kills the salmonella, it kills the e-coli, it kills virtually all of the dangerous bacteria which we've never in history been able to totally eliminate. Salatin: And we've never had the strains that we have today because of the mutated, resistant varieties done by centralized agriculture. That's right out of the Government Accounting Office report. You know, I can read it to you right out of here. But the whole reason that we've got so much tainted food now, is because of the overcrowding and the centralization of the American food system. That's right out of the Government Accounting Office. Avery: Well, the Government Accounting Office has accountants and lawyers. It doesn't have scientists. Salatin: Oh! So now we're back to science once again. See, whenever science is on your side, you say science is objective. Whenever science is on my side, you say "Oh. Well those guys aren't real scientists. They're out here make believe and in a fantasy world." Look. Let's cut it to the quick. All scientists are operating under the limitations of their own paradigm. Period. Avery: They're all trying to find out the reality . . . Salatin: No. They are not trying to find out the reality, the truth. Do you think the tobacco companies are trying to find out the reality of whether tobacco is hurting us or not? Do you think Monsanto wants to find out if genetically modified organisms are harmful or not? Do they really want to find out, when they've already invested a billion dollars in Mycogen and in the research to find out if it's any good? -end of first portion- To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail