Who is Bayer — and the Executive Branch — fooling this April?
By Joel Salatin
Editor’s Note:
This article is a satirical commentary by Joel Salatin addressing the glyphosate executive order and broader debates surrounding agricultural policy and corporate influence.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
President Trump’s elevation of the ubiquitous herbicide glyphosate to national security status is a wildly unusual designation for an agricultural product. Citing collapsing farms and high food prices if glyphosate (Roundup) availability becomes difficult, the president’s Executive Order represents a public relations home run for the embattled product.
Unable to find judicial relief as jury after jury finds Roundup’s patron Bayer guilty of cancer consequences, the maker sought legislative relief last fall through legislative maneuvering. Bayer and friends attached a liability shield to an appropriations bill to protect any product deemed safe by the EPA. When discovered, citizen backlash caused politicians to strip it out.
Failing both judicial and legislative relief, it appears the company has strong-armed the third branch of government–the executive–to give it what the other two wouldn’t. Kudos to Bayer for pulling off a slam dunk by garnering national security designation for its product.
Food Security Claims and Glyphosate
Isn’t it interesting that a product used primarily on lawn weeds and industrial corn and soybeans receives such notoriety? Roughly 40 percent of commercial corn isn’t used for food; it’s fermented into ethanol for fuel. Corn and catastrophic food shortages don’t compute. Well, surely soybeans are more important for food. Actually, no. Half of all American soybeans are exported. Invoking disastrous food shortages in the face of diminishing glyphosate is fabricated fear mongering.
Clearly, Bayer has pulled off a magnificent ad campaign with the Trump presidency and garnered coveted national security brand status. Perhaps this will become the new Holy Grail of entrepreneurs nationwide. Making a case for your product to receive national security designation via Executive Order is the best protective marketing strategy imaginable. I wish I’d thought of it.
The Race for National Security Branding
No doubt copycats will organize campaigns to give their brands national security status. Silicon Valley is probably already convening war rooms to sell their products’ national security merits to a sympathetic president. Tyson chicken, Heinz ketchup, and Viagra can’t be far behind. Surely Talor Swift deserves national security status.
One of my mentors always told me about copycatting a new idea: “you don’t want to be first, but you don’t want to be last.” In keeping with that wisdom, I’m throwing my hat in the ring to get my chicken pot pie national security designated.
The Case for My Chicken Pot Pie
No product could be more important and yet exemplify catastrophic inaccessibility more than my chicken pot pie. My customers desperately need my chicken pot pie because it’s artificial additive free, antibiotic free, toxic chemical free, vaccine free, genetically modified organism free, and processed with well paid American legal labor. This puts it in a unique category as a nutrient dense and healthy food, unlike most of the things the government licenses for consumption. And what most Americans eat.
I raise my chickens on pasture where they receive sunlight, fresh air, a new salad bar each day plus the sheer joy of chasing bugs and scratching for worms. Because they’re happy, they have vibrant immune systems that protect them from factory farmed chicken maladies. They don’t carry antibiotic residues or mRNA genetic manipulation that will assault human microbiomes.
These chickens enjoy a habitat and life that respects their chickenness; as such, their happiness carries no stress-induced cortisol from adrenalin. Eating one of my chicken pot pies is like eating happiness. That surely merits national security designation.
Government Restrictions and Market Reality
As wonderful as my chicken pot pie is, however, it suffers from a scale-prejudicial federal government conspiracy: selling it is illegal. You would think a product sporting as many excellent qualities as this would find fantastic market position. But alas and alak, tyrannous federal agents from the government say I can’t sell one single chicken pot pie to a friend at church without wrapping it in a $300,000 quintuple-permitted facility.
I’ve just spent $50,000 upgrading my home kitchen. It’s state of the art with every imaginable techno-convenience available. I raise the chickens in my pasture, grow the vegetables in my garden, process everything, including the chickens in the back yard, and oversee every step in creating the most nutritious and delicious chicken pot pie on the planet. At least that’s what my friends say when I give them one.
Oh, I didn’t mention that I can give these chicken pot pies to friends. They can feed them to their children. I can offer them as fund raiser prizes at the local volunteer fire company raffles, to be eaten and enjoyed by people who don’t know me and have never seen my kitchen. Somehow, the government says accepting money for this treasure is hazardous to human health and must be prohibited. That surely qualifies as a breach of national security.
People need my chicken pot pies. They’re better than others. I need to be able to sell them or I might need to go on public assistance, and that would surely be a societal fiduciary tragedy. Even if society doesn’t need my chicken pot pies because our country’s pot pie producers oversupply the market, to keep me as a pot pie producer from financial ruin I need special protection. After all, farmers who overproduce corn and soybeans apparently have a compelling argument that they need special protection to keep the oversupply coming. Struggling over-producing crop farmers are a national security issue, don’t you know?
Roundup Pie to the Rescue
I actually have a more compelling petition than Bayer because my chicken pot pies are actually needed and they stimulate health, unlike glyphosate. And my inability to sell them is complete right now; it’s not an imminent threat; it’s 100 percent inaccessibility today. Our nation needs this now. Like this minute. Who has President Trump on speed dial? Give me the number. We have a national security issue going on in Swoope, Virginia, right here, right now.
Should I start by calling 9-1-1? This is serious, folks. Call ACRES USA. Hold the presses; we have a national security issue until we solve my chicken pot pie crisis. I may not be first, but I refuse to be last in the brand race to an Executive Order.
Hark! I hear a new angle. If I make my pie with Roundup, it qualifies. Of course, that’s the answer. Roundup Chicken Pot Pie, guaranteed to excite Trump and his Cabinet heads. All I need to do is add Roundup and my future is bright. Roundup Pie to the rescue.
