Where's the Beef? In the San Francisco Chronicle!

I happen to love the San Francisco Chronicle.  It has, after all, columnists like Steve Rubenstein and Heather Knight.  But today's Chronicle was almost like product placement, that practice where a business (beef) pays to have itself featured in movies and TV.  Has this practice come to journalism?

I'm really being facetious--I hope--because I trust the SF Chronicle--kind of!

I think they were just reporting the unfortunate pushback against doing what's good for animals and the environment.

Here's the response my letter to the editor got:

Would rather eat steak

Regarding “Plant-based options” (Letters, April 26): Who appointed the letter writer “Food Czar”? I don’t want to “Google ‘vegan comfort food recipes’ (and) make them, and savor them.” What I want is a juicy, thick T-bone steak, grilled asparagus and fresh dinner rolls with lots of butter.

David Tulanian, Las Vegas

Since he'd totally ignored the reasons why we might want to move towards a plant-based diet, I wondered whether he worked for the beef industry and looked him up.  He turns out to be a Trump supporter and a frequent letter-writer to the Las Vegas Sun.

Moving right on:  Heather Knight reports on the "gift" of beef  to food banks from the Snake River Farms in Idaho.  The "prized meat" is in Fremont now being cut and packaged.  They say that this is a family-owned farm that focuses on raising its animals "humanely," which--if true--wouldn't be sustainable. 

 It makes me think of tobacco companies giving away free cigarettes to acquaint the consumer to the pleasure and create a need although I acknowledge that this isn't a perfect analogy.  This company is giving away the steak it would normally be selling to restaurants, now inactive because of the social distancing and shelter-in-place mandates.  Anyway, this beef will be delivered to the SF-Marin Food Bank and then delivered to organizations we know and love.  I hope this pandemic won't lead to a return to all bad habits--driving instead of taking public transportation, using plastic or paper instead of reusable bags, and moving away from vegetables, fruits, and nuts and returning to a meat-and-dairy-heavy diet.  

Even Steve Rubenstein, a writer I love for his Mark Twain kind of humor, reports on companies that normally provide school lunches and are now having to provide "whole chickens and 1-pound packs of hamburger meat to the mommies and daddies."  

Well, at least they're trying to stop the cockfighting, which is an even greater abuse of animals than the factory farms--although maybe the roosters have a little bit more space move around before they're killed.