“Little
Red Barns -
Hiding the Truth, From Farm to Fable” by Will Potter, 2025 (Part 2)
Potter in his quest to ‘witness’ decides to follow the
money. Between 1998 and 2019 U.S.
agribusiness spent $2.5B on political lobbying, more than the oil industry, mostly
on climate change issues related to diet.
Tyson Foods alone spent $3.2M from 2000 to 2020, in a percentage of
their profits far higher than Exxon.
National meat and cattlemen’s groups led the way to stop climate change
regulations, spending $200M. At COP28 in
Dubai, big meat and dairy companies sent 120 delegates, 3 times more than in
the past, as part of a U.S. ‘government’ delegation no less. They were able to
blunt efforts to rein in factory animal farming there. U.N. reports advocating
less meat, or a plant-based diet were stopped or changed. Other climate and animal regulations in the
Euro Zone have been weakened by the efforts of these Big Ag firms. Their efforts add up to denial of the
science, much like tobacco firms did and oil firms still do.
Massaging science is the name of this game by creating
doubt or manipulating methods and facts, both familiar tactics. The ag industry,
like the pharmaceutical industry with animal hormones and anti-biotics, shovels
money to university researchers. They have created two pro-meat institutes at universities
in California and Colorado, churning out deceptions. They have even massaged ‘regenerative’
agriculture as a green-washing tool, as has RFK Jr. They established the Livestock Global Alliance
to defend CAFO practices, including countries like Argentina and Brazil. Its purpose is to procure ‘industry-friendly research.’
Given ag-gag laws are so blatantly anti-democratic and
anti-journalism, some were repealed or rejected in the legislative phase. Potter reminds the reader that Upton Sinclair,
his hero, spent 7 weeks working undercover in slaughterhouses on Chicago’s
South Side prior to writing “The Jungle.’ Undercover journalism and even amateur
journalism has a long history, and has won many awards. So blatant censorship is not always a winning
hand, as it brought together a coalition from the AFL-CIO to the Newspaper
Guild to the Sierra Club to oppose it. Of course, ‘public sentiment’ is
irrelevant in many states. Government
reports have been hidden if they cover factory farm pollution or treatment of
animals and workers. The USDA’s reports
on this were deleted on-line by the first Trump administration. Some of the
CAFO proponents now call for more ‘sunshine’ – just like police departments
grudgingly installed body-cams. Yet the
cameras have changed little.
The
Guv’mint on the Side of Big Ag
Controlling the government is the name of the next game,
i.e. regulatory capture. Potter here concentrates
on environmental effects. While the
National Academy of Sciences says air pollution from factory farms kills 17,000
people a year, there is no bar to size or construction. 83% of agricultural land use is for animals
and feed, but again, the Ag Department or EPA has nothing to say about
this. Beef’s carbon footprint is 20
times greater than cereals and root vegetables. Efficiency? Regulation?
70% of all birds are now domestic fowl for slaughter, reminding us of
the devastation to wild bird habitats. Potter
has many more stats. And yet for all
this land, energy and green-house gas, only 37% of protein is derived. This kind of massive animal agriculture is
basically inefficient but the government and society are captured by Big Meat’s
profit motive.
No other agency is captured so thoroughly as the FBI, which
targeted environmental and animal rights ‘terrorists’ in their stated defense
of ‘the economy.’ When January 6, 2021 happened, everyone but
the FBI knew violence was afoot. Their
kid gloves approach to fascist and right-wing violence Potter compares to their
long-term and hard-core surveillance, arrests and intimidation of non-violent
animal and environmental protesters. (He covered this in a previous book ‘Green is the New Red,” reviewed below).
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| Old McDonald's hog waste lagoon in NC |
Potter goes into some soul-searching about how ‘light’ on a
subject sometimes doesn’t change a thing.
The genocide in Gaza is one example.
He contends that the real power is one of ‘stories’ – and the U.S. story
about red barns and ‘the cow goes mooo…’
from our youth still control the narrative of what is going on in rural
areas. As he puts it “Old McDonald had a poop lagoon…” does
not quite carry the same cachet. He
shows how the government has promoted land-grant colleges and 4-H, forming tech
partnerships with big farmers that has created land consolidation. Even State Fairs participate in this agrarian
myth-making, as we see perfectly groomed farm animals competing in contests. Potter claims that 85% of animal welfare
claims by vendors are bogus, and this includes organic claims, 'free range,' ‘humane’
butchery and the like.
The material need to eat is not considered by Potter, nor
long decades of eating animal products in various forms by nearly everyone on
the planet. Habit, custom and the dead
hand of the past are common. Nor the
financial investment of a large part of the capitalist system. Blaming it on a ‘story’ is a form of leftie
idealism, though still relevant as far as it goes.
Potter notes that the national ACLU and the Southern
Poverty Law Center both consider animal rights and environmental activists as
similar to right-wingers, with the latter calling them ‘eco-terrorists.’ Some
‘leftists’ distain them too, even to this day.
Their ideological point is that these movements are not about ‘humans,’
hence a distraction. Yet CAFO
agriculture impacts workers and human health, while also impacting the human
environment. It should also be noted that humans are ‘animals’ of a sort, a
point ignored because ‘it’s so obvious’ as one leftie told me. Potter makes a plea for ‘intersectionality’
regarding these struggles, much as Marx understood political economy ‘holistically.’ It is
not about empathy for ‘others,’ though it is that for some who don’t understand
how animal ag impacts them too.
Philosophy
Potter, by this circuitous route, ends up discussing the
present link between the Right, fascism, rural politics and animal agriculture.
The latter is a profitable extractive
industry based on killing. Most of its immediate proponents are wealthy corporations
and petit-bourgeois farmers, ranchers and businessmen. This occupation eventually needs a ‘philosophy.’ So the Right or fascists call anyone they
don’t like ‘animals.’ This is a long-standing and standard
rhetorical device. Potter cites the use
of forms of the ‘animal’ slur by the Klan, Nazis, Trumpists, Proud Boys,
racists and Israeli government Zionists, and the history of colonialist ‘human’
zoos in Europe and the U.S.
This is why ‘soy boy’ is a macho insult and why the cultural
Right promotes raw milk and butter and the pathetic and toxic carnivore or
paleo diets. Standard bearers like RFK
Jr., Trump Jr. and Kristi Noem take pride in oddly killing animals. A dog,
goat, whale, bear and a rare African rhino! Animal
abuse is the first step for many murderers, people like Jeffrey Dahmer. So think about the ‘animal’ insult. Their intent in industrially killing animals
– and this extends to big game hunting for the ‘sportsmen’ of the lot – is now
trained on some humans. Marx once said
that you can judge a society by how it treats women. You can also judge a society on how it treats
animals and nature.
Of note, Potter does not discuss health issues about the
food produced by CAFO’s, which are filled with hormones, antibiotics, PFAS, feed herbicides and
chemicals. Nor of the level of fecal
matter in products, like chicken for instance, nor industrial fishing or
certain mass aqua-cultures. He does not
investigate the economics of Big Ag either, the gigantic pet industry in the
U.S. or zoo-aquarium logic. He
concentrates on abuse and the environment, and the politics of it all. His solution is an ‘Anti-Story’ that narrates
a different view towards nature, animals and our inter-connections with both. He’s not a socialist, so he does not make a
plea for some kind of eco-socialism. But certainly, at this point in history, any workers’ government
interested in the environment, human health, hunger and efficiency would limit or
end industrial animal agriculture.
Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search
box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: ‘CAFO,’
‘agriculture,’ ‘vegetarianism’ ‘veganism,’ ‘industrial agriculture,’ ‘Upton
Sinclair,’ ‘Will Potter,’ ‘Green is the New Red.’’
And I found it at May Day Books, which has many left books
on agriculture and the environment.
Red Frog / August 7, 2025
