My interview from earlier this month was featured on Our Hen House‘s podcast this weekend. We talked about Torah teachings about compassion for animals, how well Judaism and vegetarianism mesh together, kosher slaughter, the new Jewish food movement, and vegan versions of traditional Jewish foods.

To listen to the podcast, click here. My in-depth interview starts about a third of the way into the podcast. I encourage this blog’s readers to listen to the whole interview, but here’s an excerpt:

There is a lot of foundation for compassion for animals and vegetarianism and veganism in the Jewish faith. And I feel proud to be Jewish knowing that Judaism is one of the forebears of animal welfare in Western civilization.

And I feel that my views on whether you want to call it animal rights, animal welfare, animal protection, what have you, can really be summed up by a Jewish term, it’s in Hebrew, called tza’ar ba’alei chayim, which means unnecessary animal suffering. That is, we should prevent causing animals any unnecessary suffering.

How you interpret that could be deemed, on the one hand, as treating animals humanely with animal welfare and just trying to minimize their pain. Or it can be, in my case, saying that if we don’t need animals for meat or for other ways in which they are exploited, we’re better off without meat and without circuses and rodeos and leather and fur, etc. So if that kind of animal use is unnecessary and suffering is inherent in causing those products to be produced, then, in my mind, it’s tza’ar ba’alei chayim, or unnecessary animal suffering.

This entry is cross-posted at http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com .

I am pretty excited this morning, because today’s the day that the grounds manager from a small local college is coming over to spend a few hours helping me salvage a row of overgrown, antique quince bushes and convert a small corner of my yard into an edible garden.  I expect that we’ll be working pretty hard, so before he gets here I need to eat breakfast, and that’s what we’ll be discussing today.

Well then, what’s for breakfast?  In one word?  Protein.  In three words?  Not refined carbohydrate.  For more on why not, read here,  here, and here.    When I stayed in a youth hostel in Cairo, Egypt, many years ago, breakfast consisted of steaming bowls of mashed fava beans.  In Germany the breakfast tables were filled with plates of thinly sliced cheeses and meats.  In Israel, we ate soft cheeses, cucumber and tomato salads, and roasted eggplant.  Where refrigeration is less common, people typically eat the leftovers from dinner when they awaken. 

The six major categories of protein include meats, eggs, fish, beans, nuts and dairy.  Now I’m not saying you have to eat them all.  Just pick what you like from among all these choices.  Want some examples?  OK — here goes.

In the meats department, you could have a leftover hamburger.  Or ribs.  Or heat up some chicken wings from last night.  Yes, for breakfast.  In the Midwest, you know, a typical breakfast 150 years ago might have been a pork chop and a cup of coffee with real cream.  They didn’t have a diabetes epidemic then.  Want something more exotic?  Check your refrigerator.  Chopped liver maybe?  Anything goes, from aspic to venison, or veal, if you prefer. 

Don’t care for meat?  What about fish?  There’s smoked whitefish, catfish, tuna (straight from the can if you’re in a hurry), sardines of course, kippered salmon, leftover trout, cod or shellfish, though I expect the chances are slim that you’d find much leftover lobster.  Still…

Eggs.  My favorite, hands down.  Boiled, fried, scrambled, poached.  You can crack one into a little ramekin containing a spoonful of basil pesto. Put the dish into a water bath (loaf pan with 2 inch water) and stick it in the toaster oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  You cannot believe how extraordinary this recipe is until you taste it.

For really busy people, nuts are a mainstay of healthy breakfast eating.  When my children were younger, particularly the one who did not usually appear downstairs until 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come, I would run plastic spoons along the surface of the peanut butter and hand them over, calling them “peanut butter lollipops.”  A short time later, on my own way out, I would collect the empty spoons from the mailbox at the top of the driveway.  Peanuts not your thing?  Try almond butter, or cashew butter.  It’s not cheap, but then again you don’t have to eat it every day.  I also keep a jar of peanut butter at the office for the 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. hungries. 

Then there are the nuts themselves.  If you keep a bag of nuts in the car, you can eat a handful or two on the way to work.  This has to be the easiest way to eat breakfast!  If your excuse is that you don’t have time to eat breakfast, this is the way to go!  Don’t care for peanuts?  No problem.  Try almonds, cashews, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts…did I miss any?  Buy a different kind each time, or make a trail mix from a few.  The more the merrier.  Don’t buy coated nuts.  Make sure to avoid salted nuts, especially if you have salt-sensitive high blood pressure.  You want to buy pure, unadulterated nuts.  I would also suggest storing large bags in the refrigerator or freezer to protect their fragile oils.  They will keep fresh a lot longer. 

Allergic to nuts?  No problem.  Substitute sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.

Now let’s talk about beans.  Maybe there’s some lentil soup in your refrigerator, or a three-bean salad.  If you have refried beans, you could heat them up in the microwave with some cheddar melted on top.  Hummus and tahini are great choices for breakfast.  Scoop them up with slices of cucumber, celery sticks, carrots or even apples. 

What about a burrito?  Is it ok to eat a whole-grain tortilla for breakfast?  Here are your guidelines for eating grain at breakfast time:  If you are 1) diabetic, 2) pre-diabetic (at high risk), or 3) more than 30 lbs. overweight, do not eat grain for breakfast.  Can’t deal with that?  OK, maybe one serving once a week, like at a Sunday brunch, or on another special occasion.  Otherwise, stay away.  It’s making you sick. 

Why?  Because grain requires a ton of insulin to metabolize.  Even whole grain.  Worse, stripped grain requires even more insulin.  Stripped (refined) grain requires an absurdly enormous load of insulin to digest and metabolize.  Remember that insulin works less efficiently in the morning, and that learning to eat smart is all about learning to conserve your insulin.  So if you eat refined carbohydrate at breakfast time, not only are you wasting your body’s insulin, but you are wasting it at the exact time of day when it works worst.  That’s like hitting a man when he’s already down.  Don’t do it.  Eat plenty of fresh produce with your high-protein breakfast instead.  Especially vegetables.

Now, as long as you do not fit into one of the above 3 categories, you should feel free to incorporate some grain into your breakfasts — BUT it must be a whole-grain product. 

Lastly, let’s discuss dairy.  Last week’s post about yogurt works.  So does cheese, and milk.  Less well known, but just as good, are kefir, clabber, and so on.  Goat milk works, just like all the other mammals whose milk is consumed by humans, although not commonly in America.  What kind of cheese?  You name it, as long as it doesn’t contain the words “processed” or “food.”  If someone has to tell you it’s food, it probably isn’t. 

So what did I choose for breakfast?  Leftover guacamole, tomatoes, and 3 generous slices of jarlsberg (a type of swiss) cheese.  A cup of tea with real cream.  And 1 banana for good measure.  Now watch me garden! 

A couple of months ago, I noted that the office of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger in Israel had released an encouraging statement that seemed to mark the end of Israel’s imports of meat from animals killed by shackling and hoisting in South America. (The cruel slaughter method is no longer used in Israel or the U.S.) I was, however, skeptical because a similar forward-looking statement in 2008 was never enforced. This time around, it looks like the Chief Rabbinate’s plan will be enacted.

On June 18, Haaretz reported that “by 2011 the Chief Rabbinate will no longer certify [as kosher] meat from slaughterhouses that use shackle-and-hoist – a controversial method employed in almost all South American kosher slaughterhouses, which provide 80 percent of all the meat imported into Israel.” This is a major step forward, both because it means action will be taken within the next half-year and because business considerations (e.g., the fact that an overwhelming majority of Israel’s imported meat comes from the slaughterhouses in question) will not be allowed to determine what’s right.

This decision has far-reaching implications. Avi Blumenthal, assistant to Rabbi Metzger, said, “The chief rabbi believes this method is primitive and causes unnecessary pain and anguish to the animals. If the meat factories switch to more humane, kosher methods, we will certify their meat.” The Chief Rabbinate doesn’t have the authority to stop imports of the meat into Israel. Rather, it is specifically saying that it will not certify the meat as kosher because of the way animals are treated.

All too often in recent years, kosher certification authorities have contended that tza’ar ba’alei chayim (unnecessary animal suffering) is a distinct issue from kashrut and does not invalidate the kosher status of meat. In this situation, a hechsher is actually being revoked because of tza’ar ba’alei chayim (or perhaps the negative publicity it has caused), which means that it is not an independent consideration.

In the past, the kosher certification establishment has claimed that a statement like “Cruelty to animals means that meat from those animals is not kosher” is false. I have no rabbinic authority, but a logical extension of this new decision seems to make that statement true.

Haaretz quoted Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Danish-born former chief Orthodox rabbi of Norway, as saying that “lessening an animal’s suffering is a religious requirement from the Torah – just like the kosher requirement itself.”

Release Your Passion For Stew

Not long ago, at a party, I met a dark-eyed Peruvian woman with a sultry accent who had just discovered her slow cooker. She’d owned it for two years before a visiting friend released it from confinement in the back of the kitchen cabinet. That whole week they ate nothing but stews. After years of indifference toward it, my new friend had fallen in love with her slow cooker because “it giff so mush flavor!” When I told her that good, complex flavor means good nutrition, and that she should use it as often as she wants, she fell in love with me.

It is a little known fact that when a chef talks about flavor, he’s also talking about nutrients. When he says some flavors take time to develop, he’s saying sometimes you have to wait for certain nutrients to be released. Cooking meat slow is the best way to turn an ordinary meal into something extraordinary—in terms of taste and nutrition. The potential flavor of meat, or any food, derives from its complexity. Depending on the cut, “meat” may include muscle, tendon, bone, fat, skin, blood, and glands—each a world of chemical diversity. When that diversity is released on your tongue you can taste it, and the rich, savory flavor means a world of nutrients are on their way.

You don’t actually need a slow cooker to cook meat slowly and enjoy all the same benefits. All you need is moisture, time, and parts (as many different tissue types as possible: ligament, bone, fat, skin, etc.). Making soup, stewing, keeping a top on to trap the steam, basting often when cooking in the oven—all these techniques keep the moisture inside the meat, enabling water molecules to make magic happen. Here’s how.

The transformation of, say, a cold and flavorless chicken leg into something delicious begins when heated moisture trapped in the meat creates the perfect conditions for hydrolytic cleavage (see figure). At gentle heating temperatures, water molecules act like miniature hacksaws, neatly chopping the long, tough strands of protein apart, gently tenderizing even the toughest tissue. And because water also prevents nearby strands from fusing together, keeping meat moist prevents the formation of the protein tangles that make overcooked meat so tough.

Perfectly done: Hydrolytic cleavage clips proteins strands releasing peptides, making meat tender and savory

How does hydrolytic cleavage translate into taste? It’s simple. Taste buds are small. The receptor site where chemicals bind to them is tiny. So things that impart taste (called flavor ligands) must be tiny, too. If you were to take a bite of a cold, raw leg of chicken, you wouldn’t get much flavor from it. Cooking releases trapped flavor because, during the process of hydrolytic cleavage, some proteins are chopped into very small segments, creating short strings of amino acids called peptides. Peptides are tiny enough to fit into receptors in our taste buds. When they do, we get the sensation of savoryness food manufacturers call the “fifth flavor,” or umami. (Sour, bitter, salt, and sweet are the other four major flavors.)

How does having additional parts (skin, ligaments, etc.) create additional nutrition? Water molecules tug apart the connective tissue in skin, ligaments, cartilage and even bone, releasing a special family of molecules called glycosaminoglycans. You will find the three most famous members of this family in nutritional supplements for joints: glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, and hyaluronic acid. But these processed supplements don’t hold a candle to gelatinous stews, rich with the entire extended family of joint-building molecules. What is more, cartilage and other connective tissues are nearly flavorless before slow-cooking because (just as with muscle protein) the huge glycosaminoglycan molecules are too big to fit into taste bud receptors. After slow-cooking, many amino acids and sugars are cleaved away from the parent molecule. Once released, we can taste them.

Slow-cooked meat and parts are more nutritious than their mistreated cousins for still another reason: minerals. Mineral salts are released from bone and cartilage during stewing, as well as from the meat itself. These tissues are mineral warehouses, rich in calcium, potassium, iron, sulfate, phosphate and, of course, sodium and chloride. It turns out our taste buds can detect more of these ions than previously suspected, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, and possibly iron and sulfate, in addition to the sodium and chloride ions that make up table salt.

Overcooking traps these flavorful materials in an indigestible matrix of polymerized flesh that forms when meat begins to dry out. You can only taste, and your body can only make use of, minerals that remain free and available.

A word about flavor complexity. Although we’ve been told that some taste buds taste only salty, others sour, others bitter, and others sweet, studies have revealed that, though taste buds may taste one kind of flavor predominately, one bud can in fact detect different flavor ligands simultaneously. It turns out, the more, different kinds of flavors there are, the more we taste each one. When peptides and salt ions bind at the same taste bud, the result is not a doubling of flavor, but a powerful thousand-fold magnification in the signal going to your brain.

In this way, our taste buds are engineered to help us identify and enjoy (nutritional) complexity. (This is why hot dogs, for instance—or better yet, actual sausage—taste better with sauerkraut and bittersweet mustard.)

Now, some of you might still pine for your Arby’s or your Big Mac. But keep in mind, the MSG and free amino acids in fast foods are tricking your tongue. The artificial flavoring MSG (a free amino acid, called glutamate) binds taste receptors just as peptides in slow cooked meat would. MSG and other hydrolyzed proteins are manufactured by taking hydrolytic cleavage to its completion, fully breaking down plant or animal protein products into free amino acids while refining them away from other cellular components. Health food stores sell these taste-enhancers in the form of Bragg’s Aminos, which is no better for you than hydrolyzed soy sauces. (Brewed soy-sauces derive flavor from peptides, which are safe.) The problem with these products comes from the fact that certain free amino acids have neurostimulatory effects that can lead to nerve damage (amino acids glutamate and aspartate are the most potent). When consumed in small amounts as part of a meal containing a diversity of nutrients, free amino acids are actually good for us. But when consumed in large quantity without their normal complement of nutrients (most notably, without calcium or magnesium), these amino acids can cause temporary memory loss, migraines, dizziness, and more. This is why the concept of whole foods must be applied to animal products as well as plants!

Some readers will inevitably question the involvement of PETA and be tempted to tune out the details. Don’t just shoot the messenger. If you can see the video footage with your own two eyes, read the statements from leading animal welfare experts like Dr. Temple Grandin, and take note of AgriProcessors’ punishment by the U.S. government, then that’s evidence enough in my book.

It’s not surprising that misinformation abounds on issues related to AgriProcessors. As U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose said in a press release today largely about the financial charges, “various interest groups and people evidently seeking personal notoriety have hijacked the true facts of this case for their own purposes. It is impossible to address the mountain of false information that has found its way into the public arena.”

2004

Watch this PETA undercover video, and you can see for yourself that cattle had their tracheas ripped out of their throats and suffered prolonged agony following shechita.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) later told the plant to stop the throat-ripping procedure and determined that AgriProcessors employees “had engaged in acts of inhumane slaughter.” (One of the comments in response to last night’s post attempted to shift the blame from AgriProcessors to the USDA. While the USDA also erred in its role, it is false to claim that the USDA report somehow vindicates AgriProcessors.)

The abuse was condemned by myriad rabbis and animal welfare experts. Dr. Grandin, who is deemed a leading expert on animal welfare in slaughterhouses by both animal welfare advocates and the meat industry (certainly including AgriProcessors), noted, “In conclusion, many of the cattle that had their trachea removed were fully conscious and fully sensible. The duration of complete sensibility was probably prolonged by the pain of having their inner tissues cut and pulled during this dressing procedure.” She separately stated, “I thought it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been in at least 30 other kosher slaughter plants, and I had never ever seen that kind of procedure done before.”

2007

As I wrote on The Jew & The Carrot in July 2007, “Last week, video footage from an undercover investigation of Local Pride, a [Rubashkin-owned] kosher slaughterhouse in Nebraska, was released by PETA. The footage shows that cows had their ears mutilated to remove ID tags and their throats ripped into with a hook–all while they were still conscious. Veterinarian Dr. Holly Cheever commented, ‘This method of slaughter as depicted on this tape is brutal and should be amended to provide a humane end for these animals.’”

2008

Another PETA video investigation “showed that a worker other than the shochet made a ‘second cut’ to animals’ throats following the initial cut of shechitah, which is a big no-no,” as I explained on heebnvegan in September 2008. The procedure was condemned by Dr. Grandin and is illegal under the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

The Des Moines Register reported, “Federal regulations bar workers performing kosher slaughter from making the second cut unless a rabbi is watching. Agriculture Department inspectors followed up on the video and determined that a worker had violated the regulation and issued the citation, known as a ‘noncompliance record,’ said Amanda Eamich, a spokeswoman for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.”

Today it was announced that tomorrow, former AgriProcessors executive Sholom Rubashkin will be sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $30 million in restitution. In November, Rubashkin was found guilty on 86 of 91 federal charges related to financial fraud. Although an appeal is likely and the trial of at least one more AgriProcessors defendant has yet to start, I’d like to think of this sentencing as at least a temporary end to a long-running scandal that has divided the Jewish community.

Formerly the world’s largest glatt kosher slaughterhouse, AgriProcessors had previously been notorious for cruelty to animals, environmental devastation, and labor woes. But in May 2008, the company’s absolute demise began when its primary slaughterhouse in Iowa was raided by more than a dozen government agencies. AgriProcessors later stopped production to a large extent, declared bankruptcy, and got bought by another company. Rubashkin faced 72 immigration-related charges in a separate trial that was supposed to follow the one that ended in November, but federal prosecutors dropped those charges, apparently because they were satisfied with the verdict in the first trial and didn’t think there was much to gain from expending vast resources on a second. Rubashkin was also one of several defendants from AgriProcessors originally charged with 9,311 violations of Iowa child labor laws; many of those charges were later dropped or consolidated, and earlier this month, Rubashkin was found not guilty on all 67 state charges that he ultimately faced. That verdict does not exactly clear the company of any wrongdoing, though. As Failed Messiah reflected, “Rubashkin’s defense team pointed their collective finger at Heshy Rubashkin, who like his brother Sholom was an Agriprocessors VP. Does it make you feel any better about Agriprocessors labor practices if the documented abuses are Heshy’s fault rather than Sholom’s?”

This saga has caused pain for so many. It has caused great hardship for the Rubashkin family, and by many accounts, Rubashkin was a great contributor to the Jewish community in his personal life. Animals were treated inhumanely in a manner that had already been uncovered and supposedly stopped. The community of Postville, Iowa, was economically devastated, and many former AgriProcessors employees and their families suffered tremendously. When the second federal trial was nixed, it meant that “workers, who for over a year have been prevented by the government from returning home, will not have the long-awaited opportunity to tell their story and seek justice through the trial on immigration charges of Sholom Rubashkin,” as a letter from Iowa clergy put it. Their struggle was prolonged for naught.

The whole ordeal has galvanized numerous factions within the Jewish community. The publicity generated by the scandal helped pave the way for Magen Tzedek and Uri L’Tzedek to develop seals for ethical treatment of workers. Many Orthodox supporters of Rubashkin seemingly refused to consider the facts of the cases and insisted that prosecutors and critics were acting out of anti-Semitism and unfairly targeting Rubashkin and AgriProcessors. As just one example, at least 15,000 people reportedly “attended” a rally for Rubashkin either online or in person earlier this month. When the jury found Rubashkin not guilty in the state trial, some in the Orthodox community were outraged that Jewish groups had doubted Rubashkin’s supposed innocence and demanded an apology, as though Rubashkin had been totally vindicated and there were no other parts of the story.

As I noted as part of my High Holidays reflection before Rubashkin’s trials began, I struggled with this ordeal as a Jew. I loathed AgriProcessors for the alleged crimes that had been committed, but I also realized that hoping for a man’s downfall and suffering was not a righteous position to take. In a heebnvegan post on September 19, I concluded, “I hope that Rubashkin receives justice, both from the U.S. court system and, ultimately, from Hashem�nothing more and nothing less.”

Now that “the results are in,” I leave the last word to Magen Tzedek, which issued the following statement in November:

The news out of Sioux Falls, SD, yesterday, that Sholom Rubashkin was convicted on 86 out of 91 counts … delivers both justice and a heavy heart to those of us who champion the cause of ethical kashrut. . . .

There is neither joy nor a sense of schadenfreude in yesterday�s conviction. Those of us who toil in the field of tikkun olam are downright demoralized by this highly preventable outcome. This story could have ended very differently.

Failed Messiah was a secondary source for much of the information in this post and was a leading secondary source of information for anyone looking to keep a close watch on this developing story over the last few years.

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This morning my daughter and I stopped by our neighborhood butcher to buy something to grill tomorrow.� Arriving only 10 minutes before closing, we were absolutely astonished to discover that just a few packages of chicken remained, along with some knockwurst and hamburgers.� Not a single steak, roast, chop or rib.�

It seems odd, but we celebrate Memorial Day by eating meat.� It�s a meat lover�s holiday.� Is this a good thing?� Despite the U.S. dietary guidelines, which recommend eating less red and processed meat, I think eating meat is a fine thing.

Dr. Renata Micha, of the Harvard School of Public Health, would probably agree.� She published the results of a very interesting experiment in this month’s journal, Circulation.� Dr. Micha�s team contacted the authors of 20 previously published studies about the effects of eating meat (evaluating a total of 1 million adults in 10 countries on 4 continents), and asked them to go back and separate the results of their raw data into processed (smoked, cured or salted) and unprocessed meat.� All the meat contained similar amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol.� The researchers found that eating the equivalent of one hot dog, or 2 slices of deli meat, per day was associated with a 42% increase in the risk of heart disease, and a 19% increase in the risk of diabetes.� But eating twice as much unprocessed red meat was associated with neither.

It is important to note that they are not saying processed meat caused heart disease or diabetes here.� At this point, they are just saying that they saw an association.� This means it may be the processing, and not red meat itself, that is the problem.� Processed meats contain 4 times more sodium, which increases blood pressure, and 50% more preservatives (like nitrates) than unprocessed meat.� Nitrates promote insulin resistance and hardening of the arteries.� You can learn more about the Dr. Micha’s study�here.�

This study and its not-so-surprising results demonstrate a fundamental change in nutrition research.� For a long time, researchers, nutritionists, and government analysts have grouped together various foods in ways that made it difficult to draw conclusions.� Given that they are studying nutrition, it seems to me like a serious oversight.

For example, last year another Harvard University study was published that examined the effects of 3 different diets on mouse blood vessels.� The researchers called the diets �low-carbohydrate, high protein (LCHP),� �standard chow diet (SC),� and �Western diet (WD).�� But they did not explain what they meant by LCHP.� They did not actually explain what they fed the mice.� Did the protein come from grass-fed beef, genetically modified soybeans, or canned cat food?� And what is an SC diet?�� How much carbohydrate, protein and fat are �standard�?� What about the WD?� Did those mice get fried chicken, burgers, iceberg lettuce, soda pop and doughnuts?� Also, what do mice in the wild normally eat?� These are crucial questions if we are trying to draw conclusions from what the mice ate.

A second example comes from the nutrition labels on the packages at the grocery store.� In order to determine the amount of white flour or starch in a product, for example, I must�add together�the fiber and sugar, and subtract that sum from the total carbohydrates.� Determining the polyunsaturated fat content presents a similiar difficulty.� Well, I�m not going to let it worry me this weekend.� I’ll just be grateful that my cousin John came home safely from Vietnam, and then I’ll look forward to a dinner of barbecued chicken, homemade cole slaw and potato salad, and grilled onions, plus some new curly, red-leaf lettuce from our garden.

While video footage of shackling and hoisting is appalling in its own right, the bigger controversy here is that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel agreed to end shackling and hoisting in 2008 following a similar PETA investigation. In Popper’s article, various parties seemed more interested in pointing fingers as to why shackling and hoisting had not yet been phased out than taking responsibility and implementing change.

On Thursday, YNet reported that the office of Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger has responded by saying:

The Rabbinate recently convened all the meat importers in Israel and notified them that they will no longer be allowed to import meat slaughtered using this method, and that the plants must switch to the boxing method, which minimizes animal suffering. Currently, following a period of adjustment in which the slaughterhouses made arrangements to carry out the new orders, the Rabbinate is prepared to enforce the new directive.

This new statement seems encouraging, but then again, so did the one in 2008.

If you haven’t had a chance to see Food, Inc., carpe diem! PBS recently aired it on POV, television’s oldest showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV has also put the entire film on their site for free viewing for a limited time. It’s only up until April 28, so check it out today!