FERN’s Friday Feed: What good is beef?
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Rejecting Hindu nationalism and enjoying a juicy steak
FERN and Switchyard
“The point is not whether beef is bad for the planet. It clearly is, but so is dairy, and the filthy, unloved mother cattle I saw wandering the alleyways or running feral on the agricultural fields of Uttar Pradesh, with its totalitarian vegetarianism, contribute emissions to the planet’s atmosphere just as much as beef cattle do,” writes Siddhartha Deb. “Yet we all have primordial attitudes. It is hard for me, when surrounded by self-righteous Hindus on a flight to New York, or observing the slight grimace of distaste cross the face of an Indian American woman as she passes the non-vegetarian section of an airport lounge buffet, to resist ordering the non-vegetarian option or help myself to meatballs at the buffet counter. If I am not eating the mother of the Hindus, I am certainly eating something more than just beef or protein. I am eating against fascism, against caste purity, against the idea that there is only one kind of right food and one kind of right people.”
At World Central Kitchen, Jóse Andrés is in the middle of a mess
Bloomberg Businessweek (registration required)
“[D]isaster relief nonprofits tend to operate in dangerous, often chaotic environments. It’s extremely unusual, however, for one to pause operations to take stock of internal scandals and staff complaints. That’s what happened in the middle of this year, when [World Central Kitchen] stopped deploying to new disasters for about a month,” writes Sophie Alexander. “Staffers called for reforms to a range of basic WCK procedures. Some of these changes they proposed in response to safety concerns. Others they sought in response to a Bloomberg News report that WCK leadership had spent years ignoring allegations that its director of emergency relief was a serial sexual harasser. Still others … were intended to head off the potential waste of millions of dollars in donor funds directed to questionable partners. Current and former employees say the driving force was often Andrés’ demands to serve more meals, faster. As in the kitchen at one of his restaurants, his word carries the weight of law. ‘It’s this “yes, Chef” shit,’ says Prabakaran Sechachalam, a contractor in Turkey who was fired this spring after he raised concerns that partners in the local supply chain were defrauding WCK. ‘Everybody had to impress him.’”
The plight of America’s aging farmworkers
The New York Times
“Esperanza Sanchez spends eight hours a day, Sunday to Friday, crouched down to the ground, trimming and picking leafy greens and packing them into boxes. She pauses only if a dizzy spell throws her off balance,” writes Miriam Jordan, “which she chalks up to high blood pressure, something she learned about last year when a raging headache prompted her to visit a doctor for the first time in recent memory. ‘I feel tired,’ she said, seated at her mobile home’s kitchen table after a day’s work. ‘I feel like stopping, but how can I?’ At 72, Ms. Sanchez is the oldest on her crew working in California’s Coachella Valley. She is among tens of thousands of undocumented farm workers who have spent decades working in the United States — doing the kind of sweaty, backbreaking work that powers much of the country’s farming industry — but are ineligible for Social Security, Medicare or the other forms of retirement relief that would allow them to stop working.”
‘How do you reduce a national dish to a powder?’
The Guardian
“Reuben and Peggy are not their real names. Reuben is a snacks development manager and Peggy is a marketer, and they work for a ‘seasoning house,’ a company that manufactures flavourings for crisps,” writes Amelia Tait. “I meet the pair on Zoom, hoping they can answer a question that has consumed me for years. In January 2019, I was visiting Thailand when I came across a pink packet of Walkers with layered pasta, tomato sauce and cheese pictured on the front. Lasagne flavour, the pack said. You can’t get lasagne Walkers — or Lay’s, as they are known in most of the world — in Italy … I’ve sampled Hawaii-style Poké Bowl crisps in Hungary and chocolate-coated potato snacks in Finland; I have turned away from Sweet Mayo Cheese Pringles in South Korea. So why can you get lasagne flavour Lay’s in Thailand but not in Italy, home of the dish? Who figures out which country gets which crisps?”
What would it take to end the meat culture wars?
Grist
At COP28, which ended on Tuesday, more than 130 countries signed a declaration saying that the world must transform its food systems “to respond to the imperatives of climate change.” Eating less meat would need to be a big part of that transformation. But, as Max Graham writes, “The problem is that meat consumption is as politically polarizing as ever.” To Sparsha Saha, a political scientist at Harvard who studies meat politics, “the solution isn’t to keep meat out of political conversation; it’s to talk about it differently and focus on building consensus. Rather than avoid the issue or pretend like it doesn’t have to be political, she thinks the meat-reduction movement would benefit from messaging supported by a broader coalition, including religious leaders, hunters, and even ranchers who oppose factory farming.”