Food security is national security, according to Pennsylvania state Rep. Barb Gleim.

Sponsored by Hillsdale College Republicans, Gleim gave a lecture Feb. 11 titled “American Farmers Under Attack: Fake Meat, Raw Milk & Foreign Ownership.” Gleim presented a number of challenges American farmers and consumers currently face in agriculture production and maintenance. 

“We have China, Iran, and North Korea as our top three foreign adversaries,” Gleim said. “We don’t want any of them owning farmland in our states, but we also don’t want them owning farmland within three or four miles of a military installation.”

Gleim used the example of Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned packaged meat company based in Indiana, to support her point about foreign adversaries playing a controlling role in American agriculture. 

“As of last year, there’s over 600 acres owned just in the state of Pennsylvania by China directly,” Gleim said. “Smithfield Foods is wholly owned by China. They control 25% of our pork in the United States.”

Aside from foreign affairs, Gleim also touched on a number of topics including the uptick in cases of bird flu, the new push for fake meat, the merits of drinking raw milk, and her experience as a representative on the forefront of agricultural policy. 

“For so long, agriculture has not been a part of the infrastructure discussion in the United States,” Gleim said. “Now we are starting to include agriculture as a critical infrastructure that we need to protect.”

With the inclusion of agriculture in national policy conversations and cultural discourse comes criticism as well. According to Gleim, raw milk and real meat are “under attack” in America by left-leaning representatives and movements. 

“You can see under this Green New Deal some of the green initiatives that they’re running that they want to try to somehow curtail beef because they think it’s bad for the environment,” Gleim said. “But I can tell you right now that there is nothing that can help the environment more than farms: grass, trees, anything that naturally grows and emits oxygen that helps curb the carbon they’re so concerned about.”

Gleim asserted that raw milk is one of the best things consumers can drink. 

“It has every vitamin in it that you could want,” Gleim said. “When you pasteurize raw milk, yes, you can take out some of the bacteria in it, but you’re also taking out some of the good ingredients in it — it has microbials. It has all sorts of great things for your body. I think everybody should be drinking it.”

Pasteurization, a method developed by Louis Pasteur in 1864, involves heating dairy products to a certain temperature for a set period of time depending on the amount, type of product, and level of desired pasteurization. The goal of pasteurization is to kill disease-causing microorganisms found in raw milk like salmonella, E. coli, and listeria.

The FDA advises consumers not to drink raw milk to limit their exposure to some of these microbes, specifically pregnant women, children under five, and people with weaker immune systems.

Sophomore Cate McCartney said she doesn’t drink raw milk regularly, but said she attended the talk for neighboring reasons. In the light of a new Trump administration’s health-related actions, McCartney said she’s been inspired to get back to more “natural foods.”

“I really appreciated hearing Barb’s perspective since she’s a farmer herself, and her experience and passion for the health and strength of American farms is evident,” McCartney said.

Associate Professor of English, fellow farmer, and talk attendee Jason Peters stressed the importance of supporting the local economy and farming communities.

“The food security issue has another element to it that she wasn’t interested in talking about, or didn’t talk about,” Peters said. “If we’re not taking care of farm communities and if we’re going to just let farm communities die or not going to support small-scale farmers, family then we’ve got another security issue. That’s not going to go away just because we tell China they can’t buy the property next to a military installation.”

To Gleim, the most pressing issue facing agriculture now is the lack of budding young farmers. 

“If you haven’t heard in the news, we are aging out,” Gleim said. “The average age of a farmer in the United States I believe now is 55. We really need your generation and younger to get involved, and we’ve got to figure that out not on a state level, but on a national level. We have to figure out how to make that affordable and a life-sustaining type of vocation for you all.”