The cost of cheap chicken
[Rod Dreher  03/10 09:58 AM]

We’re winding down the food discussion today, and I’d like to start the home and architecture chapter around midday, so we can get into a battle-royal over McMansions and historical preservation before the weekend. On food, I’d like to post the following “Crunchy Cons” quote taken from Joel Salatin, the Evangelical Christian livestock farmer who highlights the hidden cost of cheap chicken:

As far as Joel is concerned, too many religious conservatives separate church from life. That is, they think all that’s required to get to heaven is to hold correct doctrine. Joel says that religious truth should illuminate and inform every aspect of a believer’s life. He brought up a well-known chicken magnate who has a reputation for being a conservative evangelical Christian.

“But his chicken-processing plants are consistently raided by immigration agents who find illegal aliens working there,” Joes said. “The children of those illegals come in and clog the school systems. And so what happens is the taxpayers end up picking up the tab for the additional school buildings that have to be built because suddenly all the classroom space that was used for instruction is now used for English as a second language tutorials.”

Joel listed several other serious social and moral problems resulting from the chicken tycoon’s exploitation of illegal Mexican labor. “My point is that when I eat that brand of chicken, I am supporting all that. People don’t see that. See, that’s the disconnect. We wouldn’t for a minute say, Let’s go to the cheapest church in town; let’s hire the cheapest preacher we can get. We wouldn’t say, Let’s go to the cheapest brain surgeon. But we’re very happy to put on the lowest respect level and honor level the stewards of our food system and the stewards of our landscape.”