I’ve probably typed before that I walked out of “Food, Inc.” ready to go order a burger, just a burger made from a cow that had been raised right, on grass rather than E. coli-inducing corn. And I know I’ve noted my consort and I eat more meat than ever now that we can find pork and beef raised right. And I am totally sure I have observed before that beans and rice, or corn and beans, are a far better choice than ground filth for those who can’t afford $20-a-pound grass-fed hanger steak. Still, nothing brought all those thoughts into focus more clearly than reading that a farmer is actually feeding his herd candy rejects during these tight times. Sure, his moneymakers aren’t dropping dead yet. But old Elsie was not designed by the Big Guy to thrive on slop. I was once commissioned to review a book that laid bare food fraud over the centuries that, to my warped mind, paralleled exactly the bankster thievery that was then threatening to bring on a global meltdown. So I know that, once upon a not-so-long-ago time, NYC feasted on “swill milk” — “milk from cows kept in vast, darkened cow sheds and fed the hot grain mash left over from distilling” — a nice little mess responsible for both the death of babies and the suffering of animals. Who was it who said that history does repeat itself — the motherfuckers just don’t listen?