The current issue of Mother Jones has a story about a group of pro-agribusiness college students who are being simultaneously educated in press relations by “Big Beef” (agree with them or not, you have to appreciate Mother Jones’ anti-establishment literary aplomb).As we’ve discussed here at “The Biz” a few times lately (scroll away), the price on beef commodities and beef futures are soaring due to a number of factors, not the least of which being some overseas grain crises, and the rise in cost could provide oxygen to the burgeoning flame of the various “locavore”/organic movements across the country.
Obviously “Big Beef,” or the “National Cattlemen’s Beef Association if we’re being journalistically proper, would prefer not to allow any threats to the profitability of their product to grow stronger, especially with the Senate’s decision on Tuesday* to increase standards of food safety nationwide, a decision that will certainly drive the costs of production and retail value upwards.
According to the MJ piece, at least part of the Beef Lobby’s plan is to target the de facto poet laureate of the “Locavore” movement, Michael Pollan.
Pollan, a best-selling author and quasi-prophetic figure in the hipster food community, has been a powerful opponent to the “factory farming” model of beef production that powers the financial engine of the vehicle that is the Beef Lobby.
And targeting Pollan apparently means creating “sleeper-cell” type groups of students that will make their livings in the worlds that agribusiness allows to exist in their economic shadow.
So the MBA’s (“Masters of Beef Advocacy”) are now on the prowl, with money from the Beef Lobby lining their pockets, and they’re apparent mission is to reach out within their own age group and zeitgeist to counterweigh the effects of Pollan and his messianic message of an American palate devoid of agribusiness-created foods.
* - (ed note: More on that Senate bill ASAP)
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