Weekly Picks – March 2, 2025
Credit (left to right): Rhett A. Butler; Jeffrey St. Clair; Sutthichai Supapornpasupad
This week’s collection:
- Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat | Vox
- The Invisible Costs of Upward Mobility | Jacobin
- ‘Some people will die’: Conversations with Nigeria’s gorilla hunters | Mongabay
- The End of Oil and Empire | Counterpunch
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
Not from the past week (and sans excerpts), but also well worth indulgence:
- The Algeria Analogy | Jewish Currents
- A Memorial at Lety | Places Journal
1. Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat
“In the US, nearly all meat, milk, and eggs come from factory farms, which are prone to being overcrowded, stressful, disease-ridden environments where animals are especially susceptible to infections. Products from companies like Elanco are integral to preventing and treating those inevitable infections, serving an essential role in industrial animal agriculture.
. . .
The company’s work can be thought of as part of the “animal-industrial complex” — a network of companies, governments, and public and private research centers that, according to sociologist Richard Twine at Edge Hill University in the UK, make up the factory farm system, promote its continued existence and expansion, and defend it from criticism.
“There’s a lot of effort being put into protecting business as usual,” Twine said.
That animal-industrial complex encompasses meat, milk, and egg companies and their trade associations, pharmaceutical companies like Elanco, genetics companies that breed farm animals to grow bigger and faster, and the seed, fertilizer, and farm equipment companies involved in growing animal feed. It also includes public institutions, such as industry-friendly agencies like the US Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration, and even land-grant universities that receive funding from and partner with the meat industry on its research priorities.
The entities within this ecosystem work to boost meat production and sales, shape public policy, and amplify messaging that improves consumer perception of animal products. Both money and personnel flow between the different players.
Elanco, for example, sponsors meat industry conferences and awards, funds livestock industry groups and serves on their boards, and has published research with industry-friendly academics claiming that US dairy farming can achieve “climate neutrality.”
Elanco isn’t alone. Merck Animal Health — a division of Merck, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies — and Zoetis, which in 2013 spun off from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, engage in some of the same activities, like sponsoring meat industry conferences.
. . .
Over the last century, these companies’ innovations in developing infection-fighting antimicrobial drugs for livestock were critical to building the factory farm system as we know it today.”
The rest of the series can be found here: How Factory Farming Built America.
2. The Invisible Costs of Upward Mobility
“Polished reinforced what I already knew but even now have trouble admitting: no matter how much cultural capital I achieve (in my case, two graduate degrees, a few poetry books, a swanky award in arts journalism), the nagging feeling that I don’t entirely belong persists — as does the suspicion that the tastes and privileges of the affluent people around me are not, and will never be, “normal.” At the same time, I don’t fit in around the people I grew up with anymore and often feel bad that our interests and stories no longer overlap.
For the last twenty-plus years, I’ve learned to straddle these competing personae — a process Osborne calls “identity suspension” — so convincingly that only my inner circle have a clear sense of my class background. But it can still feel like a Cirque du Soleil act: so much effort to glitter from afar.
A slim volume divided into five accessible chapters, Polished charts student experiences during college admissions, the “great expectations and mismatched beginnings” of the first year enrolled, the “polishing process” that happens gradually, and the aftermath of receiving a degree from an elite institution of higher ed. The students who thrive typically boast a support network both on campus and off, one that consists largely of other peers from low-income or first-gen backgrounds. The students without such support often feel so alienated that they transfer to a less selective university closer to home or drop out of school entirely.
Osborne’s expository prose lacks the vivacity of their in-person demeanor, but their detailed accounts of students’ lives convey their sensitivity to the complexities of upward mobility, along with the extent of trust they were granted by those a generation younger. One student shares that she feels most at home in a working-class neighborhood down the road from her tony campus (“When I walk down this way, I start to feel more like myself for a minute.”) Another confides that his rural, blue-collar father mocks him for being a “fancy motherfucker” when his mannerisms change during visits home.
What’s clear is that, rural or urban, white students and students of color alike face similar class-based difficulties, though they may manifest in different ways. “What are the social and emotional costs of being the target of a social mobility initiative?” Osborne asks. To which I might add, “What are the costs of being socially mobile without such an initiative?” Are they really any different?”
3. ‘Some people will die’: Conversations with Nigeria’s gorilla hunters
“While demand for animal protein and hides remain at the heart of wildlife hunting in Nigeria, the trade in ape body parts is driven by more spiritual motives. Traditional beliefs in the powers of ape parts still hold sway across Nigeria. Adherents, including 58-year-old Okoro Uwakwe, claim to maintain a connection with ancestral spirits through rites powered by wild animal parts.
Okoro, who hails from Umu-Ogbuagu in southeastern Nigeria’s Enugu state, is famed for his deep mastery of the ape body part crafts, charms and rituals. The oral history of his clan equates gorillas to humans, holding on to myths, lore and legends that imbue apes with supernatural and magical powers. Gorillas, Uwakwe said, became ostracized from human society because of incest.
For decades, Uwakwe says, he applied charms and medicines made from ape body parts to heal various illnesses and conditions, including strokes and convulsion, to aid childbirth, neutralize poisoning and deter marital infidelity. “There is a lot that can be done with gorilla parts in traditional medicine,” Uwakwe tells Mongabay.
While all ape parts are said to serve various purposes, the most valued are often the head and the left hand. The latter is thought to be “full of power and magic. It harbors the full strength of the gorilla,” according to a seer who lives near Uwakwe.
“If ape body parts are available, it would be the first choice item for making a lot of strong charms and amulets,” Uwakwe says. “Ape heads can be exchanged for the life of someone who is sick to the point of death. We have started using apes as a substitute for human sacrifices many centuries ago.”
According to oral traditions recounted to Mongabay by several elders, rituals to mark heroic moments in the life of or death of warriors or kings once relied on human parts and blood. Gorilla or chimpanzee body parts, they said, now serve as equivalents in cultures where such rites and rituals persist.
In reincarnation, for example, ape body parts are believed to reform and make way for the safe return of the soul, while warding off evil from the living. Rituals for wealth and fortune, popularly known as blood money, might require fortification from ape body parts.
Today, as new investors finance supply chains and new technologies, and target wider regional markets, the hunting and trading of ape body parts has become increasingly commercialized. Evidence from previous Mongabay investigations suggest stronger cross-border trafficking activities as networks grow sophisticated and clandestine, and as ape populations grow ever scarcer.
Medicine men interviewed by Mongabay even speculate that a perceived rise in ritual killing and organ harvesting in parts of Nigeria could reflect a return to human parts rituals that were once overtaken by ape parts.”
“Simply put, we must stop burning carbon. Easy to say, but hard to do, especially in a world built on oil and gas. If you have ever smoked, you know how hard it is to quit. One solution is to imagine yourself in the future, say 25 years from now. Are you a smoker? If you don’t see a smoking you in the future, you must have quit between then and now – why not now? When you do, each day becomes a little easier until you are free. The same goes for those addicted to social media. Remove Facebook or Instagram from your phone and see how soon you lose interest in someone else’s idea of essential viewing (and not adding to a tech billionaire’s coffers). No one wants their epitaph to read “I wish I watched more TikTok.”
Change is not easy. It requires effort. Some of us need a push.
. . .
Controlling green supply chains for a larger electric world is important, but despite unrivalled financial might the United States is falling behind China, whose photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine (WT) installations continue increasing year on year. China has one-upped the American vertically integrated corporation model by providing more funding, internalized regulations, and less bureaucracy. Centrally planned command economies generally function more efficiently if appropriately directed, hampering indecisive economies in the West. One of the goals of the new authoritarian US government is to improve delivery by cutting regulations and streamlining decisions, but doesn’t apply to a burgeoning green economy. The brown status quo maintains the favored treatment from above.
But despite continued US backing, the oil industry pushing more carbon fuels, and the usual naysayers who delay and deny that carbon-induced global warming is an existential crisis, the transition to renewables will continue with or without American input. We are not comparing competing models of innovation – oil and gas is now more expensive, while wind, water, and solar (WWS) are cleaner, cheaper, and renewable – we are deciding who will run the future.”