“You can’t regulate integrity,” Joel is fond of saying; the only genuine accountability comes from a producer’s relationship with his or her customers, and their freedom “to come out to the farm, poke around, sniff around. If after seeing how we do things they want to buy food from us, that should be none of the government’s business.” Like fresh air and sunshine, Joel believes transparency is a more powerful disinfectant than any regulation or technology. It is a compelling idea. Imagine if the walls of every slaughterhouse and animal factory were as transparent as Polyface’s—if not open to
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