Imagine if you will, a nation of Irishmen waking up late on a very frosty Sunday morning, with just a wee bit of a hangover from a company Christmas party that went until three in the morning. The smart ones--that is most of them--booked a room at the hotel, both to enjoy a night away from the kids as well as to not have to worry about driving after far too much Guinness.
Our Irishman and his wife both emerge from the shower feeling a bit better, and head downstairs to that staple of Irish luxury, the full Irish breakfast. Their mouths are salivating at the thought of a plate piled high with eggs, back rashers, sausage, black and white pudding (well, maybe she moves the black pudding to
his plate), and a token tomato, all washed down with some strong black coffee. Imagine their disappointment, then, when their waitress explains that there is a nationwide recall of pork, and the
Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) is asking everyone, from merchants to housewives to restaurateurs, to destroy all pork and pork products produced in Ireland since September 1 of this year.
Like those fellow partygoers, I awoke to a headache and the same headline, and though pork was not on the menu for Sunday, I do have a pricey organic loin roast in my freezer, purchased a few weeks ago from a local farm stand. An email to my friendly contact at the farm stand gets her on the phone with her farmers and her inspector. It's a blanket recall so she can't tell me it's OK to eat, but reading between the lines, I think I should wait before chucking it, as it is likely that over the next few days many farms will be declared clean. As a postscript, she notes that Dominic makes his own pig feed, and expects the "pro organic/anti-cheap food debate" to rage for a few days. She sounds happy about this bit, because it can only be good for business.
As an American, food recalls are nothing new to me. The last major one, of over 20 million pounds of tainted beef, is an order of magnitude larger than this one, which, though it encompasses all pork produced in this island nation for two months, is inherently different, and not just because of its size.
How so? First up, the wording in yesterday's refreshingly concise
press release: "The FSAI is requiring the food industry to recall from the market all Irish pork products produced from pigs slaughtered in Ireland." Imagine, a government agency
requiring industry to do something
without asking. What's more, they extended the recall to all farms and immediately banned the transfer of pigs between farms, even though they suspect that the feed has only contaminated about 10% of the island's pork. But they want to be sure. The contaminant, dioxin, was detected last week; the ban came down Sunday, "as a precautionary measure." By Monday, they had named the source of contamination, and warned that some beef may be affected. They will be out testing in the next few days, and as farms show themselves to be free of the contaminant, they'll be allowed back into the supply stream.
Contrast this to the massive recall of American ground beef last September: USDA inspectors detected the
E. coli O157:H7 pathogen. The initial
press release lists products with production dates in June and July of 2007; the recall came nearly two months later. Note also that the USDA cannot actually enact a recall themselves, which is why we see the wording 'XYZ Company is voluntarily recalling so-and-so-many-thousand pounds of meat.' By the time the USDA released more information, nearly two weeks later, the recall had been expanded to meat produced at one factory for
an entire year--21 million pounds.
Now, dioxin is a bad thing for people to eat, but small quantities eaten over the short term don’t usually have serious consequences. But
a trace of E. coli, ingested even once, can make people extremely ill, and can even kill those with weaker immune systems. And yet, US government inspectors had to prove--not just suspect--that meat was tainted before they could
ask the business to pull the meat. Given that both the FDA and USDA are chock a block with representatives from agribusiness, it's amazing that recalls ever happen at all.
I ducked into the market today, and there is an empty case both at the butcher's counter and where the bacon and sausage live around the corner. They will likely begin filling in the days to come, as FSAI gives producers a clean bill of health. The huge display of Christmas hams is equally void, and is likely to stay that way, as there isn't enough time to cure new hams.
That doesn't mean all is perfect in Europe, as industrial animal production is alive and well here: Sunday's
front page article of the
Irish Times appends the customary listing of similar outbreaks at the bottom of the page, and I have to read it twice to make sure I got it right: "In 1998 dioxin-contaminated citrus pulp from Brazil was used in feed for dairy animals in France and resulted in contaminated milk." Mention of just how ridiculous it seems to be shipping citrus pulp from Brazil to France is absent.
I reflect on how food waste recycling has only come to Dublin this year (and certainly not out here), and how I and millions of French housewives are scraping their plates into the garbage. I wonder, why do they have no local food waste to feed their
cochons? The thought of making the food stream run both ways crosses my mind briefly.
I wonder if Dominic would like my kitchen scraps for his pigs?
