Exclusivity

I still remember the week that Trader Joe's opened up near our home: a hitherto empty strip mall parking lot was suddenly full and people in the know streamed through the doors. Curious, I ventured in. Here were the "gourmet" foods I had missed from my European sojourns: the cheeses, the chocolates. And here were organics and staples at decent prices. I was in love.

It didn't take long, of course, for the bloom to wear off: favorite products "discontinued," the incessant and insistent displays of balloons (potentially life-threatening to those of us with latex allergies). It would be safe to say that we are more realistic about our relationship. This is after all, business, designed to make money for private owners. Even those incredible avocados are designed to line their pocketbook rather than feed my cravings for them.

Perhaps it is because of the attractively-priced rice pasta that I turn a blind eye, but I'm wondering if we are headed to counseling or at least a gripe session with a girlfriend. I'm referring to the use of the word "exclusive."

In my mind, that term conjures up images of a social bargain: they are the only ones to offer it, and I will seek it only there. But when the neighborhood busybody posts pictures on the Internet, falsehoods are exposed. The busybody here is the FDA, doing their job with their new and incredibly transparent recall website: not only do we get the names and objects of the offense spelled out, we get pictures. And there Joe is, the last in a lineup of little Splendido tomatoes, his label proclaiming exclusivity, when the other pictures clearly tell another story.

The online Bullshitometer reminds me that advertising and politics are rife with this kind of deceit, and this label scores a perfect 10 of 10. I would be lying if I said it didn't undermine the trust in our relationship. Perhaps Joe thinks I won't come back if I knew his inner truths; or perhaps I am using him as much as he is using me.

Squeaky clean

Annie Leonard is at it again, this time with a video talking about the incredibly icky stuff in our personal care products. She throws stones at the use of "organic" on top brands riddled with petrochemicals, and rightly dings one producer for displaying a pink badge for breast cancer awareness on the outside of the bottle, all while putting known carcinogens in the bottle.

When I was a girl, my father picked up a copy of The Foxfire Book, a compendium of lost and disappearing lore in Appalachia. He was revved by the notion of making his own soap, and managed to find someone at church who was slaughtering a pig: could he have the fat? A bit of lye from the hardware store, and a foul-smelling brew over a fire in the backyard (no way was Mom letting that in the house!), and he produced a tray mounded with oddly shaped bars that he touted as usable as soap, shampoo and laundry detergent. We all gave it a go, but it was soon relegated to my father's corner of the shower and the utility sink--the caustic concoction was ace for getting automotive grime off and cutting through Brylcreem.

Now you know where I get it. I have never felt the urge to render my own pork fat (well, maybe a little), but certainly prefer a fine hand-cut bar to the mass-packaged uniform cakes in the big box. Currently in my shower is a hemp and honey bar, the last of a handful from the West of Ireland that I had tucked into my luggage before returning. And next to it stands an empty shampoo bottle.

Since you can't see me,  I'll let you know that I have long hair. Down-to-my waist, hints of grey, thick, wavy hair. You would think I would have a whole hair care system, a daily routine to keep my tresses looking photo-shoot ready. But I don't. A single bottle of shampoo, used sparingly and weekly, is all I need. And I'll tell you another secret: shampoo is only ever used on the top; the ends are far enough away from the scalp that they don't need washing (unless they've dragged through something). What this means in practical terms is that I use very little shampoo--much less than my shorter-coiffed counterparts.

Which brings me to back to that empty shampoo bottle: it's taken just shy of two years to get it to that state. There have been times when I'm traveling that I used hotel samples (they're very smelly, and really strip oils off hair, which isn't good), and the odd camping trip that pushed a wash out a few days, but by and large, I buy shampoo about as often as some people buy jeans or cars.

So I need to do a bit of research before I buy. This particular bottle was purchased shortly after we arrived in the Emerald Isle, at my favourite health shop in Blessington. I also knew I was in the EU, which adheres to a precautionary principle, meaning chemicals must be proven safe before being added to foods and personal products. So I chose what smelled good to me, in this case lavender and geranium--from the real thing, not a chemical fragrance.

But I can't be that sure here. With no governmental oversight and laws that allow companies to largely hide their ingredients under umbrella terms like "fragrance" and "color," we could only guess. But the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics provides an online database of brand-named products and their ingredients. I am delighted to see local brands like Ballard Organics, and most of the brands from our local coop represented there. And I'm even happier to see that I have several options. And that I don't need to render any pig fat.

Resistance

Regular readers will know that I subscribe to the FDA Twitterfeed: with a seemingly endless supply of recalls, they never have to dig deep for content. There were a few drug-related, and "undeclared allergen" recalls this past week, and one voluntary recall each for salad with listeria and ground beef with E. coli. Nothing exceptional. I'm not sure there's much more to say about it, other than the regularity of so many alarms being raised is in itself dangerous, as we become inured and lax about it. After all, what can we do about it?

There is a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin has the hiccups. He asks his tiger buddy to scare them away, so Hobbes mentions the hole in the ozone and nuclear waste piling up. It doesn’t cure the hiccups, but it does drive home just how frightening this is--and how cynical we have become.

I was reminded of this strip when I opened up my virtual papers this morning, and read the headlines from across the pond. The UK press has a frightening tale to tell, of published studies of common bacteria that "have developed near total resistance to all forms of antibiotics." The words "total" and "all" frighten me. A gene in some bacteria has been identified that confers antibiotic resistance to the bacteria. And if that's not scary enough, there are three more bits of information we all need to be aware of:

1. It has been found in two very common bacteria, E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Yup, the same E. coli you read about in all those FDA recalls.
2. It can spread to other bacteria.
3. It has been found in at least eight countries, including the UK, India and the United States. The study's conclusion? "The potential of NDM-1 to become endemic worldwide is "clear and frightening" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10925411).

I had the opportunity yesterday to listen to an interview with a friend's mother, who was witness to the murders at Kent State. It was both horrifying and inspiring. A war protester in the 60s, this grandmother is still struggling with understanding why we as a country have settled into complacency over so many things the corruption and lack of political will of both government and industry does. How can we incite to change?

There is no one solution to this, and it is unlikely that any individual will make enough difference on their own, but we simply cannot desist from trying. So the next time you are faced with a skinned knee, don't reach for the antibiotic cream. If you must use anything against germs, walk past the sanitzer dispenser and try soap and water. The next time you decide to buy meat, support a producer who avoids routine anitbiotics by practicing responsible animal husbandry. And, if you are so inclined, write that letter to your representative or the FDA and ask them to clamp down on antibiotic use.

Resist.

All you can do

My electronic information consumer habits have brought many messages my way these past few days. Most of it is the usual recalls, corporate America getting it wrong (think oil spill) and government not doing much better. The FDA has been pouring recall notices into my inbox, the usual e Coli-tainted beef (two companies this wee, 39,000 pounds so far) and spinach, as well as an interesting one where 61,000 pounds of Brazilian recalled beef contains the animal drug Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic, used for de-worming, in case you were wondering). The sheer volume and negativity is overwhelming; I find myself paralyzed in terms of what actions I can take to make a difference. One glimmer of hope comes all the way from Australia, where supermarkets are beginning to post the kilometers the food has travelled to give consumers a tad more information (however incomplete) to help them make better decisions.

But Australia is pretty far from here, and I don't see that I can make my personal choices make much more impact than they already do. To the blog I turn, wondering if there is anything I can say, any way to beat the drum that the message will reach one more soul.

And then word comes from a friend of a friend: fed up with the increasing amounts of steroids her doctor is prescribing for her daughter, and at her wits end from seeing her suffer from eczema, she announces that she is ready to plunge into the land of the elimination diet: no eggs, dairy, wheat and soy. Her resolve lasts until she tries to fix her first--vegetarian--meal. She's completely overwhelmed and paralyzed, unable to act. She doesn't know where to begin. I know how she feels.

But upbeat news bekons to me from my inbox: the chatty newsletter from the Redmond Saturday Market, which reads like the church bulletins of my youth, including cute plays on words ("Market Thymes") and pithy quotations. And there it is, at the bottom of the page, from none other than Henry David Thoreau: "One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something."

Ok, so I can't do everything. So, something it is. I grab my electronic pen and sketch out a week's worth of kid-enticing vegetarian meals for her, along with some hints on where to find key ingredients. You see, it's overwhelming to start, but I've had enough practice that it's second nature to me. And it turns out that helping one person past paralysis helps me, too.

Dodged bullet

I am traveling right now to attend a series of intense meetings that require me to be in top form. I try to "live clean" in the days leading up to my departure, to be able to concentrate on agenda items rather than a sinus headache. No matter how you slice it, airline food simply cannot qualify as healthy fare. I used to be the only one who boarded with her lunch in hand, so I'm pleased that everyone else is bringing food on board. It makes me a bit less of an oddity.

Though I am still quite odd. There seem to be plenty of takers for the airlines paid offerings, probably because of price: $6 oatmeal seems cheap when you compare it to the $10 version in the terminal (though Pizza Hut seems to be doing brisk business). On my flight, there were no takers for the oatmeal at 10:00 am, though bagels were a popular item. I had breakfasted at home, and waited until closer to the end of the trip to pull out my bag of lettuce and huge avocado that was destined to be my lunch. My seat partner stopped snickering when he smelled that delightful little tangerine, a perfect cap to a refreshing meal on a stuffy airplane. I saved the carrot chips and nuts for the second leg snack, and arrived feeling well and not overly thirsty from heavily salted fare that is typical of prepackaged snacks.

But it could have turned out very differently. Indeed, in the days leading up to the trip, I was racing around, trying to get things done. One evening before dinner, I ducked out to go to the store for a liter of rice milk I needed for dinner, and a bag of lettuce for the trip: While I much prefer real lettuce, I had only a half hour, so rationalized that this would do. As luck would have it, the store of choice was festooned with hundreds of red and white balloons, effectively barring me from entering (maddening latex allergy).  What to do? The Kroger market down the road has a decent organics section, even though it's not my first choice. So off I went. I plucked a brick of milk from the shelf, and headed over to the produce section, to the wall o' bags. And there I stood, paralyzed. I knew only that I wanted something fresh and crisp, organic and darkish green (no iceberg, please!). And the more I looked, the less I liked what I saw. When the morbidly obese clerk passed by and asked if I was finding everything I wanted, I realized I hadn't and put back the bag. The bag was Romaine lettuce, the subject of yet another E. coli recall--the very next day.

I am more thankful than usual for my personal farmer, who placed a head of tender local red leaf lettuce--the first of the season!--in my box this week, the eve of my departure. And while I do not feel vindicated, I certainly am more motivated to follow my instincts. So the next time you stand in front of the display (it is so much more than just a shelf) in indecision, ask yourself if you found what you are looking for. You may be surprised at your answer.

Big brother

I was happily puttering in the kitchen this evening making supper (spaghetti day: plus sautéed fresh spinach and garlic and parsnip chips and hummus), when the phone rang. Nothing out of the ordinary about that, but the call was anything but ordinary.

It was a fellow from our local co-op, and he asked for me by name. Fair enough, I thought, I just wrote them a missive about some changes in the deli, and thought this might be a follow-up to my email. Though probably not, since I had already received a well-thought-out reply the same day to that one.

Nope, this cordial fellow wanted to let me know that the sun-dried tomato and chicken sausage I bought last  week--and ate last night--may have contained traces of turkey that were not included on the label. No problem here, no allergies to that particular bird. My guess is that they didn't clean the machine well enough between batches. Says the woman who uses the same workbowl on the food processor for slicing the parsnip chips and making the dip.

Even if it is kind of scary that the co-op knows that I bought it, but even that's not really scary, because I was using my member discount that day, so they scanned my membership card. So of course they knew. That they put together the data is nothing that mainstream supermarkets don't do when they extract demographic data to drive their marketing efforts by asking you to swipe your club card.

Of course, recalls were on my mind this week, as I just filed a spate of FDA recalls (and yes, Virginia, they are a daily occurrence, it's not just you). This batch featured a voluntary recall of Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP) tainted with salmonella that's an unlabeled additive in many items, including spice mixtures that are sold as is or contained in other processed foodstuffs. Already I've seen recall notices for bouillon cubes, pretzels, Pringles, ready-to-eat bacon, and a curry spice powder sold in bulk. More will come.

In this case, the apparent abuse of the voluntary nature of the recall system and the hidden nature of the ingredient (the FDA does not require disclosing it on the label) is a particularly nasty combination, and one that food writer Marion Nestlé blogged about this morning. Her piece quite rightly calls for a stronger FDA, one that does not have to beg manufacturers to do the right thing.

So it is a reaffirmation that the co-op is doing the right thing: calling me to check and make sure things are right when they made a mistake.  While it was good of them to call (wouldn't you call your friend if you found out something you made for them was bad?), I also applaud their use of media channels to get the word out: they issued a notice on their website, and used Facebook and Twitter to spread the word. All things that, by the way, cost them nothing at all to do. I got to thinking that this is probably what was intended when the system of voluntary recalls was developed. Unfortunately, like all reasonable institutions, it is open to abuse by those who play the system to their own benefit.

If we had been talking about two schoolchildren, one who owned up to making a mistake and did their best to make it right, and one who had obfuscated a deed for their own benefit, the teacher's course of action would have been clear: reward the virtuous child, and both remove the privilege of trust and require retribution of some sort from the other. To subject both of them to a harsher regime would be a mistake, and the fallen angel must have a chance to re-earn his wings.

Peanuts, get your peanuts!

Along about the time that the Irish government issued a blanket recall for all pork products, I logged on to the FDA website, partially to see if there was any information there for American consumers of Irish pork products (there was, a single entry), and partly to research information on the large beef recall of 2008. While I was there, I subscribed to an email feed of recalls.

Every week, I receive a list of company XYZ and ABC company recalling a small batch of contaminated this, and another bit of mislabeled such-and-so. The fact that not a week goes by without one is a cause for alarm on its own. But there hasn't been a thing since the recent "peanut story" broke. Were there no active recalls? Were the servers overloaded? Or did they eat some Nutter Butters?

It is, of course, a classic example of the complicated web of industrial food supply. Many are questioning the slowness of the response (the toxin was first detected around Labor Day, it's Inauguration Day today). But tracing the ingredients in our food is no easy task, especially given the complex web of distribution, with trucks and boats ferrying ingredients all over the world. The ability of the government to oversee our food safety is severely hampered by the crushing pressure to produce cheap food.

Lest we point our fingers at the government and say it's all their fault, I would remind us that our own desire to save money means that we have also willingly aided and abetted business and our government. We are the ones who shop the discount stores, who stock up on the marked-down cookies and who look at the price per unit instead of the ingredients. Chain stores are doing their part too, putting suitable pressure on producers to not only keep prices low, but make them lower (thus increasing profit margins and shareholder value, cornerstones to our "keep growing" economy); retailers are marking down things before they go past date to increase profits; and mother corporations continue funding lobbying to resist labeling requirements such as country of origin or genetic modification of ingredients.

But I would put to you that there is a way around all this mayhem. When bags of spinach from California were contaminated with E. coli, we munched on fresh spinach from Carnation; when the Irish government told us pork may have eaten dioxin-contaminated feed, we dined on apricot-glazed pork loin chops, reassured by the farmer that his beast had eaten kitchen scraps; and if we really want peanut-butter cookies, we can grind peanuts at the co-op to make fresh peanut butter, and then go home and bake our own.

Is it cheaper? I may have had to shell out a few more cents for my bunch of organic spinach, but the loss to the industry topped $350 million; those loin chops seemed expensive at the time, but no amount of money could buy any bacon or sausage during the first two days of the recall; and my peanut butter sandwich cookies are far tastier than anything you can find in a big box store. Whether they cost more--in terms of time or money--is your call, since I personally consider the time spent making (and eating) them enriching, not costly.

I guess it's just a matter of value. Or values.

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 c flour
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. baking soda
1/2 C butter
1/2 C freshly ground peanut butter
1/2 C granulated sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
1 egg

Combine flour, salt, and baking soda, and set aside. In large mixing bowl, mix butter and peanut butter until well blended; add granulated sugar and brown sugar, mixing well, and beat in egg. Stir flour mixture into peanut butter mixture until well blended. Drop by spoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet; flatten with a fork, and sprinkle lightly with granulated sugar. Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. (the key is really to watch them very closely--pull when just browned and let set before moving to the cooling rack / paper sack or whatever you use).

We dunk in this:

Chocolate soup

2 cups half & half
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Pour milk into a 2 quart heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring just to a boil. Remove from heat. Add the chopped chocolate and stir until well combined and the chocolate has melted. Cool a bit and serve in small espresso cups.

Boiled egg, anyone?

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?

Frozen coconuts

So we’re back to food safety. As we hunker down to winter fare, when we face a seeming dearth of fresh food, it seems normal that we should turn to boxes and cans and the freezer instead of the garden or the farmer’s market. But all is not well in Grocerilande: it appears that we have yet another case of tainted food, this time a frozen coconut dessert that contains the Listeria bacterium, as well as a particularly damning story showing high levels of harmful pesticides in everyday supermarket produce.

When I was in Alexandria, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., I had a free afternoon to explore a bit. Besides an incredible chocolate shop (up some narrow stairs, I found Kingsbury Chocolates) and a great chili joint (I slurped up the Frito-chili pie at Hard Times Café), I went hunting for a letterbox at Gadsby’s Tavern. The day was incredibly clear, but bitterly cold. I descended the steps near the tavern’s north end, where thoughtful restorers had created a cutaway view into the ice well. Unsuccessful in finding my quarry (though I did locate a cleverly disguised geocache), I read the historical marker. The well served as an underground storage area for ice cut from the Potomac in winter, offering a way to cool drinks and refrigerate foods into early summer. It is empty now, but for two artfully arranged hay bales, and the Potomac is not frozen—yet.

I scratch my head and think how odd it is we should think to consume a frozen coconut dessert in January, when it was made months ago, and it’s really too cold to be thinking about slurping popsicles anyway.

An intrepid researcher also released his findings today: apparently, when kids eat conventional fruits and vegetables, they show traces of organophosphate pesticides. If they switch to organics, the markers in their urine and saliva disappear. What’s more, the markers show up in higher concentrations during the winter months, when we tend to import more foods. There are no surprises here, but the alarm is sounding because this is the same family of pesticides that the EPA was supposed to remove from the food chain. Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist of the Organic Center, dares to speak aloud what is on the tip of many of our tongues: "Given the almost daily reminders that children are suffering from an array of behavioral, learning, neurological problems, doesn't it make sense to eliminate exposures to chemicals known to trigger such outcomes like chlorpyrifos?"

Indeed. Once again, I bypass Grocerilande and head over to Co-opville, where I pick up some lovely local thin-cut pork chops (they will be paired with an apple past its crisp prime), some local blue potatoes (“Mommy, why do they call them blue, when they’re purple?”), and some fuchsia red-stemmed chard. Our plates are beautiful, dark like the season, but colorful and delicious (and organic) nonetheless. Dessert is an indulgent square snapped off a bar of Kingsbury chocolate (with essence of orange, dried cranberries and pecans), also dark like the season. But not frozen.

How many cows?

Seems it was only last spring there was a huge recall of ground beef. First it was 75,000 pounds; then 445,000. Then it hit 5.7 million pounds. I started wondering how many cows to took to produce (for it is production, not raising on this scale) this amount of shrink-wrapped meat. And then a much quieter headline this week: Topps meats has recalled 21.7 million pounds of ground beef.

The details are similar to all recalls: sold under different brands, packages up to one year old, save wrapper for a refund. But the scale is mind-boggling. It’s not the largest recall ever: that dubious honor goes to Pilgrim's Pride, who recalled more than 27 million pounds of poultry in 2002, and Hudson Foods, who recalled 25 million pounds of ground beef in 1997.

As a child of depression babies, I was taught that thrift was a virtue, that waste was a sin. So, it saddens me doubly to see not only the frozen patties being disposed of (where? will the toxin leach into our groundwater and wells along with the antibiotics and hormones?), as well as all the energy and effort that went into making them being wasted.

How many cows did it take? Well, the friendly folks at the Cattlemen's Beef Board and National Cattlemen's Beef Association tell me that a cow will yield 180-225 pounds of ground beef. Simple arithmetic tells me that it took between 96,444 and 120,555 head of cattle to produce the meat affected by the recall. That seems a drop in the bucket of the 100 million or so beef cattle in this country, but it’s still a small town’s population.

According to the USDA, a cow eats between 80-90 pounds of food each day. The cattlemen tell me that it’ll take me 18-22 months to reach maturity for slaughter. That means somewhere between 5,208,000,000 and 5,728,800,000 pounds of feed had to be produced and transported to feed those cattle. They also needed water, though there is a discrepancy of information out there. Predictably, information is politically colored: the cattlemen tell me that cow needs a mere 435 gallons per cow, for a total of only 9,439,500,000 gallons. Vegesource tells me that it’s more like 2,500 gallons a head, or 54,250,000,000 gallons. I imagine the truth lies somewhere in between, but neither number is terribly encouraging.

I have honestly no idea how much of the other “input” went into these factory animals: roughage to replace grass (oyster shells, sand, poultry feathers, and rough plastic pellets); vitamins to replace greens (vitamin A); growth hormones to reduce the time to market (Because estradiol, a form of human estrogen is a natural hormone, it can be fed to the cows and they can still be considered natural); estrus suppressants (Heifers grow faster if they don’t menstruate); antibiotics (for common feedlot conditions: peneumonia, pinkeye or shipping fever syndrome, bovine respiratory disease complex); and vaccines (7-way blackleg (including overeating) plus tetanus).

If you can shake that off, let’s move on to output. Jubilee Farm’s Farmer Erick tells me in one of his epistles that fifty pounds is the accepted figure for the amount of manure a cow produces in a day. Our fictional herd will produce between 6,249,600,000 and 9,548,000,000 pounds of manure over their life cycle. In addition to the sheer massive disposal problem that billions of pounds of manure creates, it also contains the excess hormones and anitbiotics shed by the animals. They will leech into the groundwater supply and recycle back to all of us, whether or not we need or want of hormone replacement therapy or antibiotic treatment.

There’s also the matter of greenhouse gases: using EPA numbers, I estimate that our herd will flatulate to the tune of 20,387,393 to 31,147,407 pounds of methane over their lifespan.

This really stinks, in more ways than one. After investing all this time, energy and water, this meat will need to be destroyed. I’ve been considering the cows that made up this recall as an immense single herd, but they only came together at processing, where one source of bacterial contamination was spread to all of them. This kind of waste makes it amply clear that large scale meat production is not as efficient—or safe—as we’re led to believe. I guess size really does matter.

Everybody doesn’t like something

Another day, another recall. On the tail of recalls affecting Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains and Castleberry Chili (should we be concerned that pet food ran off the same line as the chili? Or that some of the product is over two years old?), we now have Sara Lee (nobody doesn’t like her, remember?) recalling bread that may contain bits of metal that broke off a sifter.

I am compelled to click through to the Sara Lee site to get the corporate take on this. I’m especially curious because I’ve never been the least bit tempted to sift flour when making bread. Granted, I use mostly whole grain flour for my breadmaking, but even when baking using cake flour, I don’t sift: I whisk to mix ingredients. It’s much more efficient, and helps the dry ingredients absorb the moist ones more evenly. And that’s not just an old wives’ technique, there are a couple of published studies out there that prove it.

So I click away, to Sara Lee land, which proudly exclaims, “Our mission is to simply delight you… every day.” The illustrations are of two women, obviously great friends, enjoying a cup of tea together on a sunny day, a freckled kid eating a hot dog with mustard artistically squeezed on it, a Douwe Egbert coffee machine, a loaf of Sara Lee Soft & Smooth whole grain white bread, and an Ambi Pur 90-day plug-in air freshener.

I know I’m not a typical housewife, but none of these images delight me: the women are obviously having a great time with their Douwe Egbert tea, but seeing the name reminds me of the hundreds of tins of Douwe Egbert Amphora pipe tobacco that my father burned up coating his lungs with black gunk. I dig a bit and discover that Sara Lee sold off the tobacco division in 1998, a full 20 years after it acquired the Dutch brand.

The other brand, Ambi Pur, is one I have never heard of, but I readily admit that I have never bought air freshener. My idea of fresh air is the stuff you get when you open the window, and I think that a kitchen that smells of cooking is a good thing. In spite of the studies linking the usage of highly scented products to increased asthma attacks, Sara Lee boldly states that its Ambi Pur products actually improve “the quality of air in the home.” I am delighted that the report on the hazards of household cleaners issued by Women and Environment has garnered a good deal of press, but am less than delighted to note that Ambi Pur products are being marketed in over 30 countries. Having increased asthma levels by 160% in this country, it seems we’re off the conquer the world.

But back to what brought us here: our daily bread. It is an unfortunate choice for the flash animation that fills the home page for the company, but it’s probably too expensive to slip a different image in, and the company is probably hoping it will blow over soon. And it probably will, because it is of limited scope. Well, limited in the context of the American food distribution system. The affected bread comes from a single plant in Mississippi, and was only shipped to “the entire states of Mississippi and Alabama, most of Arkansas, far southeastern Missouri, western Georgia, southwestern Tennessee, southeastern Louisiana and the panhandle of Florida.” This may sound like it's pretty far-reaching, but it’s relatively localized—think of how far and wide the tainted spinach of last summer spread.

The complexity compounds when I start reading the list of products. Of the 27 products affected by the recall, only seven are Sara Lee brand. Products include such wholesome-sounding loaves as Earthgrains 100% Natural Wheat Berry and Golden Bake Wheat Bread, as well as store brands for IGA and Piggly-Wiggly. I chuckle at the name “Shurfresh Split Top Wheat," which has a two week window on freshness.

However, I am concerned that the AP article I read makes mention of only two of the off-brand products. If someone reads the article and assumes they are safe because they bought Piggly-Wiggly Wheat bread instead of Sara Lee; if they do not bother to find the producer’s site and wade through the press release, they will be none the wiser.

Once again, protecting ourselves and our families boils down to knowing the source of our food, and buying locally. Bread, when we buy it instead of baking it ourselves, comes from the shelf at the co-op: We usually reach for the locally baked Old Mill Bread spelt sandwich loaf and crusty loaves from The Essential Baking Company over in Fremont, which makes a rosemary diamante that was destined to hold up a piece of brie. I am particularly fond of the notion their name implies, that essentials include things like pain au chocolat and chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and their loaves, like mine, are made by hand using organic ingredients.

A tale of two mustards

With beautiful weather beckoning, we decided to pull out the fire pit and throw some dogs on the grill. We scrounged and found some buns in the freezer, and found ketchup and relish in the fridge. But I had to raid the larder for mustard.

Since our trip to Germany last year, Little One has been in love with the sweet deli mustard from Germany. It’s unavailable here, so we made a point of bringing back three jars (that was an adventure). Number One Son, in the meantime, has decided that he’d like to try the white bread of mustard, the bright yellow stuff (called French’s, but decidedly American), so I picked up a bottle from the local discount grocer’s for $1.25.

The German mustard, priced at an attractive 29 Euro cents, comes in a glass jar with a simple plastic lid, the idea being that you will have a free, if homely, glass for your use when finished. Judging from my admittedly unscientific sampling of the number of these sturdy glasses in cupboards throughout Southern Germany, this is a highly successful brand. The French’s, by contrast, comes in a highly engineered, disposable plastic bottle, with a “stay clean cap,” consisting of a flip-top cover over a valve spout.

I happen to believe that the smell of freshly opened mustard is one of those little joys in life, as the odor fills the immediate area. In the case of Dijon mustard, it can bring you to tears, and not from joy. And opening these two mustards is a cultural exercise. The Euro-mustard is decidedly unfussy: the plastic lid comes off with little effort, and you’re ready to spread. By contrast, the safety-at-all-costs-in-a-fear-based-society mustard requires the starving picnic-goer to first unscrew the stay clean cap and remove and discard (“where’s the garbage bag?”) the tamper-proof seal (“for your protection”). Only then can the cap be replaced and the yellow goop squeezed out onto the cooling dog.

And so it goes with so many products: the salad dressing has a seal around its neck that requires a knife to break, the cucumber is covered in a shrink-wrapped condom, and the vinegar has a pullout seal.

I am always amazed and disappointed by the little pile of plastic tear-offs, twisty-ties and baggies that amass on the counter every evening as I prepare supper (I have long since stopped throwing them out one at a time, as the repeated trips to the garbage add minutes to my preparation time). I can’t help wondering what happens when we scale it up: how many others are doing the same thing each evening, and how much of our landfill is made up of these little doodads?

And even though the seals inevitably assure me that it’s for my protection, I’m not at all convinced that they’re making my food any safer. Indeed, these little safety devices came into widespread use after the Tylenol scare in the 80s, but since then, the larger threat has not been from individual tamperers or even terrorists, but from the food producers themselves, with a little help from our governement. Yup, it seems the FDA knew there were problems at that peanut processing plant in Georgia, but were not empowered to do anything about it. And yes, that peanut butter came in sealed jars.

I recall my French teacher explaining that one must check brie for ripeness by removing it from its box and squeezing it—in the supermarket. Imagine, being able to smell and feel your food before you buy it. It’s not about the wrapper, it’s what’s inside the jar. Smell the mustard.

Black noses

Scombre was found shivering in a snowy embankment in Shasta County. Her black nose stood out against the white snow, and we stopped. Thrilled with her newly adoptive family, she became my father’s fast friend, barking at the lawn mower as he pushed it every Saturday. She died of old age, long after my brother and I had left home.

Molly was a castoff from a single mom who couldn’t give the gentle dog enough attention and didn’t want to deal in impending puppies. She died on the vet’s table during the spaying procedure, her unknown hemophilia becoming apparent too late.

Peggy started life as the last of Molly’s seven puppies, just barely weaned when she was orphaned. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, she was very affectionate, my father’s faithful companion as he mapped out pioneer graves. She too died peacefully, of old age.

Nellie was featured in the local paper as the Humane Society’s pet of the week, shortly after Peggy’s death. A small, quiet Australian Shepherd (like all her predecessors), she was the perfect dog for my father’s declining years. Her favorite place was by his side, quietly waiting—even under his pew at church.

From overseas, I hear news of tainted pet food: wheat gluten, and now rice protein concentrate, contaminated with the chemical melamine, linked to the death of 16 animals. The list of brand names is 54 long, each one representing several types: literally hundreds of kinds are affected, with rebranding making the web more difficult to untangle. Our industrialized model harms not only us, but also those we love and protect. Yes, they are “only” pets, but the mounting numbers, each with a story behind them, must serve as (yet another) wakeup call. Had this been baby formula or Ensure, our grief would not go so quietly.

Nellie became ill suddenly and inexplicably. She died at the vet’s, quite unexpectedly and many years before her time. My mother’s grief at the loss of husband and elderly cat is compounded. No, Nellie is not counted in the official number, but she counted to us.

Do you believe?

The latest headline in the food world is an outbreak of salmonella, apparently traceable to peanut butter. Having had salmonellosis before (from a delicious flan in a Mexican restaurant), I can vouch that it’s terribly unpleasant. But I’m scratching my head. Salmonella is usually associated with eggs, which commonly harbor the bacteria, that haven’t been exposed to heat high enough to kill off the pathogen. That’s the reason you can’t get a soft-boiled egg in a greasy spoon anymore and fresh mayonnaise is off the menu in fine restaurants. It seems odd that a product that essentially contains one ingredient—peanuts—could be tainted.

A glance at Peter’s ingredients list tells me it contains roasted peanuts, sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (cottonseed and rapeseed) and salt. Hydrogenated oils are probably the most highly processed item on the list, made by adding hydrogen to liquid oils to make them solid. (At least that’s the common description; I can grasp making oil, but have no idea how you add a molecule of anything to a food.) Sugar is also highly processed, but neither of these ingredients are terribly prone to salmonella, which tends to prefer animal products. So, maybe it’s not the ingredients at all.

The product in question bears the label Peter Pan (of do you believe in peanut butter? fame), also sold under the name Great Value, and is manufactured by food giant ConAgra Foods—they apparently make all Peter Pan, but not all Great Value peanut butter. The affected jars all came from a single facility in Sylvester, Georgia (in “The Peanut Capital of the World”), The problem is national, affecting 228 people in 39 states, including states as far away as Alaska and Maine. It’s a fine example of how tangled the food supply web becomes at the food-as-a-commodity level.

My guess is that the FDA, now on site in Sylvester, will find bacteria at the plant: not associated with a type of food, but with the process as a whole. It’s unlikely that human hands touched any of the foodstuffs along the way, since harvesting and process are so completely automated. It may be something as simple as bird droppings contaminating part of a rapeseed field, entering the processing plant, which in turns distributes the bacteria among several thousands of jars destined for widespread distribution. The bacteria then propagate in jars of unrefrigerated peanut butter on stores’ and consumers’ shelves.

It is equally likely that results will be announced as inconclusive: between the time delays (the outbreak began in August of last year), and the political clout of large conglomerates, so vital to local economies in the South and elsewhere, the FDA will not be in a position to make any irrefutable statements, and the status quo will remain.