As you shovel strips of bacon into your mouth at breakfast, do you ever stop to wonder where the pig came from? As residents of North Carolina, the second largest pork producer in the country, there is a good chance it came from just down the highway.
But shouldn’t we be asking more about our daily bread than that?
Most people I know don’t care much about the source of food, as long as they have some and it’s as inexpensive as possible. College students, myself included, are especially coupon savvy. A time-lapse look inside my roommates and my refrigerator would reveal an ever changing assortment of deli meat and yogurt brands. It’s not about the food itself, it’s about the price, duh.
This way of thinking seems good, thrifty even, on the surface. But wasn’t the maddening search for cheap and cheaper houses and loans what got the economy to its present state? There were too many huge companies making too many promises and taking on too much risk, all in the name of cheaper products.
Most of the food produced in our state comes from giant factory plants owned by giant corporations, which, at their core, aren’t all that different than banks and mortgage lenders. I’ll use Smithfield Foods Inc. as an example here, although it’s by no means the only one.
Smithfield Foods, which has a large presence in the state, is not only responsible for the food at the store branded under that name, but also Gwaltney, Butterball, Armour, John Morrell, Cumberland Gap, Cook’s, Weight Watchers and Farmland. And don’t forget the other 200 or so meat and “gourmet foods” brands.
Smithfield Foods employs 57,000 people. It’s huge. And it has problems, just like the huge mortgage lending companies and banks.
The company has been chastised in the state for polluting groundwater with hog waste and are in the middle of a struggle over low wages and dangerous conditions at a plant in Tar Heel, N.C. The company’s stock value has fallen from more than $30 per share to about $9 in one year.
On top of economic and legal trouble, mega corporations do not have the time to worry about the small things important to customers, like switching to organic pest control, stopping the use of chemical additives or giving livestock more natural environments in which to live. Health, basically.
And just like the housing industry, for years and years, neither economic, legal, nor health issues have impacted the consumer’s view of large food processing plants.
But with the rise of organic, unprocessed foods, the economic hardship big business is experiencing and the rise in environmental protection laws, these food giants may begin to experience some problems.
Maybe they’ll have to scale back, re-evaluate farming habits, change the things they do to our food. Maybe some will close. At the very least, some of those CEO types will be hurting for extra cash because their summer houses were foreclosed upon and they lost half of their 401ks.
And that all means costs will rise for consumers. Does this sound familiar at all?
Hard economic times call for a re-evaluation of our lifestyles. If consumers had been spending just a little more buying quality products (not sub-prime mortgages) from small-scale producers, I’m willing to bet our nation wouldn’t be in this mess.
It’s not too late to change our habits. I’m going to make an effort. I think you should too.
Send Taylor your thoughts on bacon to [email protected].
