Organic Stories

In this week’s reading we got a chance to look at selected chapters from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Perhaps one of the most interesting chapters that we read from this book was chapter nine, which was titled, “Big Organic.” Pollan sums up the importance of this chapter in one sentence, “the word ‘organic’ has proved to be one of the most powerful words in the supermarket.” Though true, it is beginning to appear that the word “organic” itself is not enough these days. As Pollan described in his story on his trip to Whole Foods, foods today come with stories attached to them that paint a naturally idealistic portrait in which the animals are in a pure state of bliss before they are slaughtered, processed, and packaged. Though the demand for organic foods is high, it would seem that consumers are demanding even more, the comfort in knowing that the animal meats they are buying are from animals that were “living in beautiful places” and were “free from unnecessary fear and distress.” Addressed in the later chapter concerning Pollan’s pig, perhaps this demand is to push away the disgust instinct that humans associate with dead and processed meats, or perhaps it is another instance of humans attempting to idealize nature for their own aesthetic benefits. Whatever the incentive may be, the fact of the matter is that grocery shoppers don’t want an image of factory assembly lines when they are buying their meat, but prefer to think of animals on open fields under the care of a local farmer before they are led into the slaughterhouse. Pollan reveals later on in this chapter, however, that these ideal stories may paint a different picture than reality actually reveals. “But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old¾for fear they’ll catch something outside¾and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.” Perhaps in the food industry ignorance is bliss.

The statement that ignorance is bliss when it comes to the food industry is shown best through Pollan’s experience with hunting and “cleaning” a pig. As Pollan and his hunting guide were processing the pig, Pollan began to have trouble being able to imagine ingesting this animal. “And yet now the prospect of sitting down to a meal of this animal was unthinkable. Pâté? Prosciutto? Ventricina? Just then I could have made myself vomit simply by picturing myself putting a fork to a bite of this pig.” This is the image that markets and food producers attempt to avoid by making the idealistic stories mentioned above. Our natural instincts have deterred away from hunting and preparing animals to buying and cooking meat, so even thinking about killing and cutting an animal open brings about the disgust instinct that should only be associated with eating things that would be detrimental to our health. It is interesting to notice how our natural instincts have changed and how our society has changed to adapt to these instincts, keeping the natural aspect of killing and preparing meat behind a closed curtain