Via PR Newswire, Paula Deen donated 30,000 pounds of “meat products” on behalf of Smithfield Foods to the Chicago Food Depository. Though Chicago’s homeless and working poor probably don’t need more cholesterol to nudge them to an early death, we applaud the fact that Deen’s using her pull to get Smithfield to do something good. After all, some food is better than no food. Still it seems like an expensive publicity ploy to get people to look past Smithfield’s track record as a bad corporate polluter and for their poor labor relations. Consider this and this

For an alternative story on responsibly produced swine, check out the latest news on Chicago Reader journalist Mike Sula’s Mulefoot Pigs.