9 Disappointing Facts About Chipotle

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Mike Callicrate

The company says it serves “Food With Integrity.” What does that mean?


9 Disappointing Facts About Chipotle posted on June 25, 2014, at 2:56 p.m. by Deena Shanker BuzzFeed Staff

1. Chipotle doesn’t do all of its own cooking: Some is done by an outside company, the same one that makes McDonald’s McNuggets, Big Macs, and McRibs.Chipotle doesn’t do all of its own cooking: Some is done by an outside company, the same one that makes McDonald’s McNuggets, Big Macs, and McRibs.


Flickr: calamity_hane

Chipotle’s website says its “fresh cooking” is done “using classic culinary techniques — no shortcuts.” But Chipotle doesn’t do all of its own cooking: Two outside processing companies in Chicago, OSI and Miniat Holdings, braise the carnitas and barbacoa, trim the steaks, cook the beans, and make the bases for the restaurant’s green and red tomatillo salsas, all according to Chipotle’s specifications. (Everything else, said Chris Arnold, Chipotle’s Communications Director, “is made entirely in the restaurants.”)

OSI, a global meat processing corporation with facilities in 17 countries, also supplies McDonald’s with its burgers, nuggets, and other “value-added protein items” on its menu.

2. Some of Chipotle’s locally sourced food travels thousands of extra miles so it can be processed in Chicago. Some of Chipotle’s locally sourced food travels thousands of extra miles so it can be processed in Chicago.


chipotle.com

“The less distance food has to travel,” Chipotle’s website says, “the better.” Sourcing locally — defined by the company as within 350 miles from the restaurant — has long been part of the Chipotle mantra. It’s good for local economies, the environment, and the consumers, who get to enjoy the freshest foods.

But the ingredients for the carnitas, barbacoa, beans, and salsa bases, even when raised or grown just a short distance away from the restaurants serving them, have all traveled through Chicago, either through OSI or Miniat facilities. This is for consistency purposes, even if it has the potential to add thousands of food miles to your burrito. “You get cuts delivered and packaged to our specifications,” Arnold said. “It’s prepared in a really efficient and consistent way by having that done in fewer places than you would doing it in multiple places.”

3. Chipotle’s animal welfare standards may be better than other national restaurant chains, but they are still unclear. Chipotle’s animal welfare standards may be better than other national restaurant chains, but they are still unclear.


chipotle.com

A big part of Chipotle’s “Food With Integrity” philosophy is sourcing what it calls “responsibly raised” meat (originally called “naturally raised”). However, “responsibly” and “naturally raised” are not terms regulated by the government, and Chipotle does not require producers to have a third party certification, such as Certified Organic or Certified Humane. “‘Natural’ is on the honor system,” wrote food expert Dr. Marion Nestle in her book What To Eat. “Some producers of ‘natural’ meats may be honorable, but you have to take what they say on faith.”

Chipotle’s version of responsibly raised meat has three main requirements: animals have received no added hormones, no antibiotics ever, and were humanely raised. BuzzFeed asked to see the full definition of the responsibly raised standards, but the company declined to share them. “We struggle with getting people to understand the most basic elements,” said Arnold, “and adding details really runs the risk of muddying that understanding further.”

When the company can’t meet its needs with responsibly raised meat, they use conventionally sourced meat — meaning it’s from animals that were raised with growth hormones, sub-therapeutic antibiotics, and in conditions generally not considered humane — to fill the gap. In 2013, that came out to 7.8 million pounds of its beef (15% of its beef) and 88 million pounds of its chicken (less than 1% of its chicken). (All of the pork served fit their standards of responsibly raised.)

Several food and animal welfare experts recognize Chipotle for its efforts. “My reading of this is that they would like to be sourcing all of their meat from natural, sustainable, antibiotic-free, and cage-free farmers but can’t always get it,” said Nestle.

4. Chipotle is importing grass-fed beef from Australia, despite American producers lining up to work with them. Chipotle is importing grass-fed beef from Australia, despite American producers lining up to work with them.


Flickr: krossbow

Last month, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells announced that the company was sourcing grass-fed beef from Australia, saying “the U.S. supply isn’t growing quickly enough to match our demand.”

Many American producers, though, disagree. “We firmly believe that [Chipotle] could find domestic sources for all of their beef,” said Marilyn Noble, the American Grassfed Association’s Communications Director.

The Texas Agriculture Commissioner also wants in. “Texas ranchers want to be successful,” Bryan Black, Director of Communications for the Texas Department of Agriculture told BuzzFeed. “If there is a major market for grass-fed beef, then you can be sure many Texas ranchers would jump at the opportunity.”

But Chipotle did not contact these organizations before the announcement, nor did it respond to AGA’s email offering more domestic suppliers afterwards. “The price premium on grass-fed beef in the United States makes it a less viable solution unless we’re willing to raise prices,” Arnold said in explanation of the company’s decision.

Environmentalists would like Chipotle to find a way to source domestically. “We hope that importing from abroad is a temporary measure while they work to improve and transform the U.S. supply chain,” said Doug Sims at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Clearly, the best option is to minimize transport costs and impacts and have more U.S. sources of better beef.”

In the meantime, the savings on Australian beef may not last. Thanks to increased global demand for it, prices for Australian beef will go up in the second half of 2014 according to The Daily Livestock Report notes, “implying higher costs for beef processors and ultimately US consumers.”

5. Chipotle will not disclose which Australian companies are supplying its grass-fed beef, making the environmental impact of importing it widely unknown. Chipotle will not disclose which Australian companies are supplying its grass-fed beef, making the environmental impact of importing it widely unknown.


Flickr: gusveitch

By telling consumers that the Australian beef is from 100% grass-fed cattle that have never been given antibiotics or hormones, Chipotle is providing more information than most companies do about the origins of their meat. But without the names of the companies, consumers can’t fully understand or assess the environmental impact of importing grass-fed beef instead of using conventional beef from closer to home.

Grass-fed beef isn’t necessarily better for the environment than the conventionally raised kind. “To be ‘better’ or ‘sustainable,’ producers must verifiably follow best practices,” said Sims, noting that “climate smart” ranches take steps to maintain soil health and limit their release of carbon dioxide. “To verify whether their beef comes from a responsibly managed ranch, consumers increasingly want to see an independent, third-party standard and certification. The Sustainable Agriculture Network’s cattle standard, used by Rainforest Alliance, offers one such program for beef.”

Arnold says that all imported beef have “USDA label claims and is certified by AusMeat,” but neither address the questions about environmental impact.

6. Chipotle’s ingredients include GMOs and trans fats. Chipotle’s ingredients include GMOs and trans fats.

Flickr: lainetrees

Although Chipotle initially resisted calls to disclose their ingredients, it published a comprehensive list in March 2013, becoming the first national restaurant company to do so.

The annotated list on the website reveals that despite backing GMO labeling, Chipotle’s tortillas and tortilla chips are still made with GMO corn and soybean oil. The tortillas are also made with hydrogenated oils, better known as trans fats.

Arnold said the company “hope[s] to have GMOs removed from all of the ingredients by the end of this year.” Chipotle chefs are also looking for ways to make tortillas without hydrogenated oils, which Arnold said is “so little it rounds to zero under labeling rules [which require listing trans fats only if they are above .5g/serving].” Reconfiguring the tortilla recipe, Arnold said, “isn’t simple” because both of the available substitutes — lard, which isn’t vegetarian, and palm oil, which is environmentally destructive — present their own problems.

7. Chipotle’s advertising campaigns are as much fiction as fact. Chipotle’s advertising campaigns are as much fiction as fact.


youtube.com

Chipotle’s advertising campaigns (including the Willie Nelson tracked commercial Back to the Start, The Scarecrow featuring music from Fiona Apple, and the Hulu original series Farmed and Dangerous) all compare the horrors of factory farming with idyllic, beautiful sustainable agriculture.

But viewers should not confuse these fictional stories with Chipotle’s, or their competitors, actual practices. For one, Chipotle does rely on conventionally raised meat when it can’t find enough of its responsibly raised meat. (Importing beef from Australia will help but not solve the problem, Arnold said, as it’s “filling at least some of that gap.”) So it is not as removed from industrial agriculture as the ads imply.

Second, several of the messages these commercials convey are just not true, including that competitors use GMO animals (they do not), that Chipotle uses no GMOs (they do) and that their naturally and responsibly raised animals live in outdoor, open pastures. (That may be true, but can’t be verified without the full definition of its standards.)

8. The restaurant’s “Cultivating Thought” campaign features the work of ten writers, but none of them are Mexican or Latino.


vanityfair.com

The creative campaign features ten pieces of original work from American writers printed on the restaurant’s packaging. But there were no Latino writers on the roster.

“Personally, I was puzzled by the lack of Mexican American voices for an organization that built itself as a restaurant that’s a Mexican grill,” says Professor Alex Espinoza of California State University, Fresno, who has launched a Facebook page in response. “By not paying attention to the contributions of Mexican-American writers, it says in a very subtle way that Mexican-Americans are not capable of creating stories, that we’re not capable of creating art, and the only thing that we’re capable of doing is standing behind the sneeze guard shoving a burrito full of beans.”

Arnold told BuzzFeed that Chipotle reached out to more than 50 writers, including Latinos, but that none wanted to participate. “It was never our intention to omit any group of writers and there were several Latino authors on the initial list,” he said. “If we do more of these, we’ll continue to broaden that outreach and hopefully add to the diversity of voices.”

9. Chipotle’s two CEOs were paid a combined $49.5 million in 2013, while the average entry-level employee salary starts at $21,000. Chipotle’s two CEOs were paid a combined $49.5 million in 2013, while the average entry-level employee salary starts at $21,000.


CRAIG F. WALKER / Denver Post via Getty Images

Steve Ells and Montgomery Moran, who share the CEO title, have each made more than $100 million since 2011, the New York Times reported in May. Each earned more than the CEOs of Ford, Boeing and AT&T. An average entry level employee “would have to work more than a thousand years to equal one year of the co-CEO’s pay,” wrote David Gelles in the New York Times.

“Given the amount of money that Chipotle’s paying its executives, I think it can do a better job of paying its workers and American ranchers, without having to go to Australia,” said Eric Schlosser, the writer and producer of Fast Food Nation (both the movie and the book).

Arnold told BuzzFeed that Schlosser’s suggestion was nonsense.

The day after the Times report on the salaries, investors voted against a CEO compensation plan that would continue to pay Ells and Moran on that scale.

RELATED: Mike Callicrate’s Chipotle Experience: “Chipotle Selling Idealism – Delivering the opposite“
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Meat That Tests Positive For E. Coli Is Cooked And Sold In Human And Pet Food

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Mike Callicrate

And this might not be such a bad thing.

Meat That Tests Positive For E. Coli Is Cooked And Sold In Human And Pet Food posted on May 29, 2014, at 12:32 p.m. by Deena Shanker BuzzFeed Staff

Pre-cooked meat, like the patties used in fast food burgers, may have once tested positive for pathogens such as E. coli. Flickr: roboppy

The USDA and food processing company employees continuously test raw meat for pathogens such as E. coli before it is distributed to the public.

But when a batch tests positive, the meat does not necessarily get thrown away. It can be cooked according to a USDA-approved method then sold as processed food that you’d find in a supermarket freezer aisle, at a fast-food chain, or as pet food. Many Americans — and even several food experts contacted by BuzzFeed — are unaware that a secondary market for pathogen-tainted meat exists (or that it is regularly processed into safe, consumable food). But because the process is considered safe, even by consumer awareness experts, and uses meat that would otherwise go to a landfill, many see it as an efficient and economically savvy method of reducing waste. The existence of the secondary market for tainted meat, however, points to weakness in an increasingly industrialized and consolidated food system as industry leaders will not share information about how much meat is processed this way.

Since 1998, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (“FSIS”) has required every slaughterhouse and processing plant in the U.S. to have a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (“HACCP”) plan to handle and reduce occurrences of “food safety hazards.” One type of hazard addressed by these plans is the appearance and spread of pathogens such as E. coli. Under HACCP, companies are required to continuously sample and test the meat in their facilities. If a sample tests positive for a pathogen, the company has the option of cooking the meat for a specific length of time and at a specific temperature, proven to kill it (called the “lethality step”). This process is scientifically validated and FSIS-approved as safe. Not all slaughterhouses and processors have the resources for this kind of cooking, though, so they can sell their tainted meat to another facility that does.

The meat can also be rendered into pet food through a process that involves collecting the meat, adding heat to it and then removing and straining all the resulting liquid to leave behind a “meal” of fat, bone, and protein.

Workers at the Sam Kane beef slaughterhouse in Corpus Christi, Texas on June 10, 2008 dissect, sort and separate beef parts. USDA FSIS inspectors are on site to ensure the beef is processed in accordance with regulations. Flickr: usdagov / USDA / Alice Welch

It is difficult to gauge the size of this secondary market. The USDA told BuzzFeed that it does not specifically track these numbers, but is in the process of collecting the information to respond to our request. A spokesperson for American Meat Institute, the largest trade association representing the U.S. meat and poultry industry interests, said the organization “certainly [doesn’t] track that,” and that she is “guessing the data doesn’t exist.”

Customers cannot differentiate between a cooked product that is made from meat that once tested positive for a pathogen and one that is made from meat that was always safe because large food companies do not need to inform customers about whether its meat has undergone an FSIS-approved process to kill contaminants (or disclose who supplies their meat).

Colorized low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria Flickr: microbeworld

Food safety experts agree with the USDA that the process is safe.

“We don’t have a problem with this approach because it means that companies are at least testing and if they find E. coli then they are rendering the product fit for consumption,” says Christopher Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America. “By cooking the product, the company is destroying the pathogens and preventing consumers from being exposed to contaminated product. That’s a good thing.”

However, meat processors like Mike Callicrate of Ranch Foods Direct says effective prevention of pathogens is better practice than killing them when they appear. Callicrate has been operating his processing facility since June 2000 and says his products have never had a positive E. coli test, in his meat or even in his animals’ feces where E. coli originates. He attributes this to several factors, including the size of his operation — at most, he only processes up to 20 head per day as compared to 6,000 for a large plant — a better diet and a zero-mile distance traveled between his feedlot and slaughter unit as opposed to the 600+ miles traveled by some conventionally raised cattle.

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Chipotle: Selling Idealism – Delivering the opposite

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Mike Callicrate

The May 13th article, Soaring Earnings of Chipotle’s 2 Bosses Raise Investor Unease, inspired the following story of my experience with Chipotle:

Years ago, when I first saw the Chipotle big burrito, “Food with integrity” bill board, I thought what a great marketing campaign. But was it true?

I was part of an effort at Colorado College to replace Sodexo with Bon Appetit. Sara, a young student activist was leading the charge. We were successful. Bon Appetite is now one of Ranch Foods Directs best customers. Colorado College students are now eating well. Sara went to work for Chipotle upon graduating. She arranged a meeting for me to talk about working with Chipotle in the local area. June 2010 was our first delivery to the Colorado Springs Chipotles. I was very enthusiastic about the possibilities, especially the possibility of a national chain food company developing logistics that allowed the use of local food – acting in a way that builds communities instead of extracting from them. It hadn’t been done before.

Things couldn’t have gone better. The quality and consistency was great, customers were loving it. Pricing worked. Head purchasing agent, Doug George, was happy with our facilities, our product and my humane, no performance enhancing drugs and overall methods of production. My protocol of production affidavit and other agreements were on file with the company. A $185,000 slicing machine was put to work at Ranch Foods.

I stopped by the Chipotle headquarters in Denver sometime following our start of doing business. After a successful meeting with Doug George and Sara, Sara informed me confidentially that she would be leaving Chipotle. I asked why? She simply responded, “Tyson chicken?”

Chipotle produced the video, “Back to the Start”. It’s the story of hog farmer, Russ Kremer. Like myself, Russ left the university in the middle 1970’s with a model of industrial factory farming in his head. He realized later his training in animal science was a long way from animal husbandry. I promoted the film and it’s message in speeches and presentations. I was worried about the “Tyson chicken”, but thought the company was headed in the right direction. I believed a new day was possible for family farmers and ranchers to access the marketplace at a fair price and in a big way. Shareholders appeared to support sourcing good healthy food from family farmers.

We had been asking Chipotle staff to visit our cattle operation in St. Francis, KS since we started doing business. Finally in August 2012, three Chipotle representatives came to visit the cattle operation. We had a full day planned beginning in St. Francis, ending the day at the processing plant in Colorado Springs. They toured the plant the following morning.

I had an ugly feeling that something was up after I met Joel Martin, one of the three Chipotle representatives and former Meyer Natural Angus (operates under the Cargill umbrella) employee. Joel pretty well knew the business, but was describing a protocol different than the one agreed upon with Chipotle.

I have argued for years that the “never-ever” antibiotic and hormone protocol was a fraud. In the best of management and production programs an animal will still get sick and deserves good animal health treatment with all the withdrawals adhered to. I’ve watched the Coleman “never-ever” beef program for the last thirty years and knew how false affidavits were being used to qualify cattle for the premium prices. Starving ranchers and feeders were being asked to do the impossible, so they were cheating – and still are.

The protocol I registered with USDA accounted for the misuse of antibiotics while still leaving the possibility of responsible antibiotic use for treatment when needed. Chipotle had agreed it made sense.

nosubtherapeutic

By the end of the day of August 5, 2012, I was done selling to Chipotle. No mention of my investment in equipment and inventories of meat. Simply, “You don’t meet our protocol. We have to move on.”, click. Joel Martin didn’t like that we branded our cattle, he didn’t like our method of horn removal (a rare occurrence with Angus cattle), our method of castration (I invented the humane, bloodless and drug free method) or that we fed milk replacer to calves that lost their mothers, he didn’t like our USDA inspected mobile slaughter unit, and he didn’t like that Ranch Foods Direct was buying beef in addition to my Callicrate Beef, from other producers operating under the same RFD protocol (building a new local/regional food system). But he did suggest that Chipotle could continue buying From Ranch Foods Direct if we would take a lower price.

I learned that Chipotle was being sued by their shareholders for poor financial performance (not anticipating the increase in food prices after the 2008 run-up). Perhaps a motivation to reduce food costs?

Joel Martin was demanding a protocol of production that he knew was impossible to produce – a protocol not-to-buy. Chipotle could say they were doing the best they could, but were forced to buy in the commodity market. Of course plans for aggressive expansion continued, despite the fact that they had not met the “food with Integrity” promise on their existing stores.

The Colorado Springs Chipotle’s replaced the good beef from Ranch Foods Direct with meat from OSI Industries:

osi

OSI is a very large multinational corporation operating out of 50 locations in seventeen countries. OSI has a strategic partnership with Marfrig, the second largest meat packer in South America. Some of the cheapest beef in the world comes from South America, which is suffering ongoing problems with Hoof and Mouth disease (HMD) and recently reported a second case of Mad Cow Disease (BSE).

OSI push into poultry production in China: ‘It’s a different model’
chicken
By Rita Jane Gabbett on 3/19/2014
CHICAGO — Four years ago Aurora, Ill. based OSI Group decided to start growing and processing its own chicken in China to better serve its large food service customers like McDonald’s and Yum! Brands. From a new operation set to start production this year, OSI will grow and process 120 million chickens per year.

OSI Group Chief Financial Officer Bill Weimer told participants at The State of Food and Agribusiness conference here that the chicken business in China is a different model and the company is still honing its business model there.

OSI entered the Chinese market to better control the food safety aspect of the chicken it provided its customers. Unlike the U.S. poultry industry model, this meant investing millions of dollars per grower operation. In addition, grain is produced on such a smaller scale and in such a more fragmented way that feed costs are nearly double those in the United States.

Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, has been finding a market for the breast meat OSI produces in China. The company sells mostly dark meat and wings to McDonald’s and Yum! Brands in that market.

So far, Weimer said, most Chinese consumers have not valued the higher cost of production implicit in OSI’s state-of-the-art production and food safety practices. He said the company must seek out affluent Chinese customers in urban centers such as Shanghai, as well as find export markets for these chicken parts not needed by its key food service customers.

The law firm Mayer Brown hosted the conference.

OSI is one of three large companies in the country with the capacity to cook pathogen contaminated meat (there’s a lot of it these days) for sale as pre-cooked, value-added items and meals.

Instead of the promises of the marketing department aligning with operations, it appears that they continue to further diverge.

It is important to note that the combined annual CEO salary is 2,800 times more than that of the starting “Crew Member’s” annual income (based on the $8-$9 hourly wage and a 40 hour work week). The co-CEOs make in 45 minutes what their beginning workers make in a year.

Family farmers and ranchers are still waiting for the opportunity to sell into a fair marketplace.

Mike Callicrate
Ranch Foods Direct

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RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY: The Curse of Factory Farming

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Mike Callicrate

ruralroads
RURAL ROADS TO SECURITY
America’s Third Struggle for Freedom

RT. REV. MSGR. LUIGI G. LIGUTTI, LL.D

Copyright, 1940

The Bruce Publishing Company
Printed in the U.S.A.

Excerpt beginning on page 92:

The Curse of Factory Farming

Tenancy and land speculation constitute a very serious economic menace and should be reduced to a minimum. But there is a more serious economic menace on the horizon which also involves the land, and follows when ownership and tenant systems break down; namely, corporation farming. Although this menace has not progressed very far, yet it is very serious because it is being promoted by the industrialized, urban-minded, mechanized, stock-gambling forces of this generation. The unsound, agricultural technique of corporation farming will ultimately bring this system to naught. But America, unless we do some thinking and take effective action, may try this unsound agriculture too, if for no other reason than that it makes so many promises under the aegis of our American economic idol, the corporation.

Corporation farming will in time destroy itself with its mechanical methods in a field essentially biological, but before this stupidity will reap its empty harvest, our American families will be finally and completely uprooted from the soil. All ownerships will pass to United Farms Incorporated. All rural skills, cultural patterns, traditions, communities will be obliterated. In many places, if not all places, the present farm population will be replaced by people not now engaged in agriculture, for the inefficient land corporations will have great need of imported cheap labor. They will have to reduce the populations in their wheat, corn, cotton, livestock, and fruit factories – their vast soil-mining territories. Any rural homesteads remaining on soil acquired by them will have to be removed. Gigantic, collectivized mass shelters will have to be provided for the men and women and children who will come to the company camps. These laborers may be left to camp on the roadsides as we have witnessed in California and Missouri. Homesteads for these people will be unthinkable. They entire corporation process will make it clear that in its philosophy the giant factory farm is more important than the farmer who it reduces to the status of the proletarian hired man. Tenancy does much harm to our rural population; but it remains for the land corporation to destroy the farm homes, reduce the farm families to serfs, and erase forever all the economic, social, and spiritual values in our traditionally free and independent, brave and democratic American rural life. This last octopus of Wall Street will drive the remaining families from the land and crush the enterprises upon which they have spent the best years of their life – the personally owned and controlled productive enterprises on which democracy is built. Senator Arthur Capper gives a correct report on corporation farming and its destructive implications when he says:

Corporation farming is bad public policy. It is dangerous… Every farmer and every business man in rural America and every worker in the big industrial centers should oppose it. I feel that we are justified by the facts as known and the possibilities of the future as indicated by those facts, in using every proper means to nip this corporate farming development before it gets firmly established.9

In the areas where farm corporations have picked up the title deeds to their 20,000- and 30,000-acre tracts, the experience of the man, the farm home, the farm family, the school, the church, the community has been a sad one. In these areas social and spiritual leaders have learned what to expect under a system of factory farming. These leaders know that their social, moral, and spiritual institutions are given but a small chance to establish themselves and can never hope to become vital factors in these rootless communities of landless people who are allowed to become even more transient than the harvest in their efforts to find work in the specialized farm factories.

Mark A. Dawber gives us a sound warning when he writes:

The maintenance of the family the year-round is not the overhead of farming. It is the overhead of civilization. Replace individual farmers with floating hands employed for a few months in the year and you might just as well nail shut the doors of the churches and the institutions of learning. Individual farmers, not floating farm hands, rear children and give opportunities for scholastic education.10

A picture of what he calls “floating farm hands” is graphically give us in these verses. It will not readily be forgotten.

THE MOVERS
The East wind whips the skirts of the snow
with a passing shower,
and over Iowa on the first of March
wheels churn hub deep in the mud
or grit their teeth across the icy roads.

Home is only a shadow
flying down the wind in a
twisted swirl of snowflakes,
traveling down the road in an old lumber wagon
drawn by two shaggy horses
whose bones are too big for their flesh.

Even the wild goose
is not so homeless as these movers.
Peering ahead through the sliding curtain
of March rain they pass
with the furniture of home packed in a wagon.
Past corner, past grove, to the hilltop they go
until only chairlegs point from the skyline
like roots of trees torn from the earth.
And they are gone…

The Rural Family In Mass Production
This, the parade of the landless, the tenants,
the dispossessed,
but of their Canaan they march
with Moses asleep in the Bible.

Who will call them back, who will ask:
are you the chosen people, do you inherit
only a backward glance and a cry and a heartbreak?
Are you the meek?
But the early twilight
drops like a shawl on their shoulders
and sullen water
slowly fills the wagon ruts and the hoof prints.
-James Hearst of Maplehearst, Country Men
(The Prairie Press)

wagon
——
9 Dawber, M. A., quoted in Rebuilding Rural America (New York: Friendship Co., 1937), p. 38.
10 Ibid., p. 40.

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Tail Docking Bill: Fight Back Against Industrial Farming

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Mike Callicrate

Brian: Last Friday, six animal welfare ballot initiatives, three constitutional and three statutory, received title status from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. Mike Callicrate, Colorado Rancher and co-sponsor of the ballot initiatives, explains that he is supporting these bills in an effort to fight back against industrial farming, pushing for more consumer education, and support for family farmers and ranchers. He discusses Title 98.

Mike: It’s an amendment to the Colorado Constitution providing that it is not a defense to a charge under the Animal Cruelty Statue, that a livestock or companion animal is treated in accordance with an accepted animal husbandry practice. Now that causes producers heartburn but the problem is we never decided what an accepted animal husbandry practice is. But it’s a wide open excuse to do anything you want to an animal and my example is: how does a sow get into a gestation crate?
It certainly doesn’t happen with a family farmer! It doesn’t happen with a hog farmer! It happens with a big corporation that wants to hire cheaper labor and get farmers off the land and replaced with refugee workers. That is something we’ll be discussing as we go forward in this initiative and to see what actually is going to end up on the ballot.

Brian: One side note, he says he created the Callicrate Banders for cattle producers to use as needed. However, he says that although it’s acceptable to tail dock sheep, cattle tails in general don’t need to be docked, as they are used and needed to swat flies. According to Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture John Salazar, only one dairy in the state of Colorado uses tail docking. Mike Callicrate is being backed by the Humane Society of the United States and right now they are working to gather 80,000 plus signatures needed to get those initiatives on the ballot this November.

Brian Allmer | The BARN / Barn Media & the Colorado Ag News Networks

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