The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

If you buy one at the farm, a Polyface chicken costs $2.05 a pound, compared to $1.29 at the local supermarket. To keep that premium as low as possible is yet another reason for processing on the farm. Having to take beeves and hogs to the packing plant in Harrisonburg adds a dollar to every pound of beef or pork Polyface sells, and two dollars to every pound of ham or bacon, which regulations prohibit Joel from smoking himself. Curing meat is considered manufacturing, he explained, smoking slightly now himself, and manufacturing is prohibited in an area zoned for agriculture. Joel is convinced “clean food” could compete with supermarket food if the government would exempt farmers from the thicket of regulations that prohibit them from processing and selling meat from the farm. For him, regulation is the single biggest impediment to building a viable local food chain, and what’s at stake is our liberty, nothing less.