Administrators at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo are coming under fire for refusing to allow the bestselling food expert Michael Pollan to give a lecture on campus about sustainable food policies. Pollan was scheduled to give a one-hour lecture last night. But the format of the event was changed after a top executive at Harris Ranch Beef Company threatened to withdraw a pledged $500,000 donation for a new meat processing facility on the campus. After Harris Ranch Beef issued the threat, the public university invited a professor with close ties to the meat industry to appear along with Pollan. Michael Pollan has been a longtime critic of agribusiness and meat production. He recently appeared on Democracy Now! and discussed pigs in factory farms.

Michael Pollan: “They administer antibiotics to these animals on a regular basis, because they could not survive without them. And the waste goes down directly below the animals into this giant cesspool that’s flushed, two or three times a day, out. And, I mean, they’re just — you know, they’re incubators for disease. The sows remain in crates their whole lives, so they can be conveniently inseminated, and they have their babies right there in their crates. You know, to go to one of these places is to stop eating industrial pork, basically. I mean, if we could see into this industrial meat production, it would change the way most of us eat.”