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Hawthorne

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Everything posted by Hawthorne

  1. Yes ... going back, the whole thing is even more bizarre than I had recalled, but there was no actual resolution on that - Chilean produce just magically reappeared and people happily bought it. Obviously it worked out fine, but ... I did glean the fact that the produce was being grown by Chilean growers, which answers one of my questions on that score. We really are on the same page. This really is my concern - though irradiation is not the only proposition in hand which could lead to this outcome. And again. I think though, looking at the new proposals to insure safety, disease control, security - that if we don't actively express our support for these alternatives (support in the way of buying them works only as long as they are available), we could lose them. There is an alarming trend in the direction of USDA regulation which will make these enterprises much more difficult to sustain, if we are not careful. It's hard to know just what is driving this; the stated goals 'disease control', 'food security' and 'national security' figure prominently, but don't gibe with the written regulations. As irradiation requirements could bury smaller produce farmers, so RFID tagging could bury small meat and poultry producers - and before I commit to something like irradiation to deal with bacterial contamination, I really do want to know a lot more about how the contamination is happening. But I think the bottom line is, we should beware the effect of unintended consequences.
  2. He has my brother's sympathy - I learned (after hating them for most of my childhood) to like them, but my brother won't touch them to this day, and he says that brussels sprouts make him gag. These were a winter staple for us, too. I am not by any means suggesting that people go back to eating only what can be raised within a few miles of them, only that to be as dependent as we are on centralized corporate production is foolhardy. I'm suggesting that there needs to be a lot more middle ground. So far as the issue of what to do about the ecoli contamination of produce - it seems to me that we first have to know what is causing the contamination. Vague indictments of cattle grazing nearby, or possible contamination of harvesting blades doesn't give us enough information as to the cause to offer possible solutions for the future. So far all we have on this is pure speculation, and seems to me to be designed to placate consumers without actually doing anything constructive about future prevention. Porta potties are now required in fields that are manually picked, that's true, but the strains of ecoli which are causing the contamination problem are not being generated in human waste, if I understand the thing correctly. As I recall, one of the first contaminations we heard of nationally was on grapes imported from Chile. This prompted an outcry about lack of production quality control in foreign countries, but didn't stem the tide of such imports, nor do I ever recall hearing how the contamination came about. We have had a number of these incidents since, some in imported produce, some domestic, but I don't recall a single instance where the cause was clearly identified. Plans to label food by country of origin is a popular idea, which I support, but it doesn't truly address the issue of how produce is contaminated, wherever it might be grown, and is probably a sop to keep consumers quiet. I think it would be interesting to know how such imports come to us. Are they yet another Dole or other corporate production, or a crop purchased off shore by United Grocers or another middleman? It is true that farmer's markets are flourishing and there are still independent grocers in many places which buy local produce in season, but not all by any means. We also have organic options now, and at the moment these alternatives are doing well. But the USDA tried pretty hard a few years ago to take the teeth out of State organic certifications, by imposing a Federal Standard which essentially said that if a grower found at some point during the season that he needed chemicals or pesticides, he could use them on his crop and still label it organic. The organic growers who were meeting stringent state regulations at the time screamed blue murder and let their customers know about this, and most of these 'exemptions' were dumped after people expressed their outrage. This was not a widely publicized issue, and many people were unaware of it, as people are now unaware of the current effort to write a 'standard' for pasture fed and range meat - with similar huge loopholes which will, if the regulations go through as originally written, render labels which say pasture/grass/range fed meaningless. Consumers have not been, and will not be, consulted about these issues. USDA information on many of these issues is vague and sometimes outright misleading, and to blindly trust the government to protect the food supply seems foolhardy. Given the public support for alternate food sources that do exist, wouldn't you expect better government support for same? But we don't have it. On the contrary, government appears to be actively undermining alternate sources. I'm waiting with considerable interest to hear exactly how the spinach and lettuce were contaminated. I'm not holding my breath, though. I think the goal is not to look any more closely at it than absolutely necessary to keep the public quiet, and to bury the issue as soon as possible. And without a lot more information, I don't see how any solution can be formulated.
  3. Huh? People were living in temperate and even cold climates in high concentrations long before corporate food production became the norm. Large farms were supplemented with personal production to some extent, but neither the climate nor the population prevented people from being fed. I agree that daily shopping is a pain, but I am not objecting to refrigerators and freezers. It would be much easier if one didn't have to go so far to shop, but how far away the shopping is depends a lot on where you live. I grew up in Eastern Canada where the growing season is short. Yes, we did have canners in those days, but commercial canneries didn't appear until early in the last century. Canned food was originally invented and produced for the french military early in the 19th century. It took some time to get to the point where it became an economically viable proposition for feeding the masses, and much longer before canneries were in a position to contract farmers to buy whole crops. That's a pretty recent development, historically speaking. But there are large cities in many areas of the world where cold climates preclude growing food except for a short growing season. Many of them are much older than corporate food production and distribution. Call it corporate food production if it makes you happier. The issue is that the production is both limited and centralized, which is not a healthy situation. Other considerations aside, when the national (global sooner than you think) food supply is controlled by a small handful of entities, your food supply is not secure. This is the stuff of which famines are made. The problem stems mostly from the source of the calories; to wit, over processed carbs paired with the cheapest possible fats. If you are suggesting that without corporate food production and distribution we would be looking at starvation, I don't buy it. Most famines are generated by political issues, not agricultural issues, and historically this has been the case. The Middle East has been feeding large populations for centuries, in fact the first chicken batteries known were found in Egypt much earlier than that. But entire continents were not dependent on a single producer. China and Japan have both fed large populations without resorting to being supplied by a very few huge producers. So I'm not altogether convinced that we have accomplished all that much. It's a heavily weighted choice. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the food refiners' budget goes to advertising. Much of what we spend on food has nothing to do with food, and everything to do with promotion and packaging. Much of what we spend for produce goes for transportation. I won't open the can of worms packed in fuel oil issues. We (I refer now to my family) eat the way we do because we eat what we grew up on, essentially. Much of this is habit; even when everyone in the household has been employed outside the home we have done a lot of cooking. But the cultural pressure to schedule every minute of every day in some 'productive' activity (often productive for someone else), leads people away from eating together, and away from cooking what they eat from scratch. This is reinforced by the idea that 'fast' food (often no faster than scratch preparation) is at least as good as anything you can make, if not better. It is certainly not a simple issue, and I am not trying to make it so. If you are happy with the situation, then nothing I can say will change your mind. Nor can you change my belief that it is not a healthy way to feed people in the long term. In the long term, centralized food production is a risky choice, and more a matter of food security and public health than whether or not we can buy asparagus all over the continent year round. It's an opinion, yes. I don't expect everyone to agree, but I hope that people who hadn't thought much about it might give the position some consideration. Raw produce shouldn't be a major health risk. That is the immediate topic here. But the issue is much broader.
  4. That's a bold claim. I don't think even supermarkets have tried to cop credit for that yet. ← Agribiz has, though. Any time a question is asked regarding the wisdom of this kind of food production/distribution, they claim that it's the only way to feed the world. Not just this country - the world. The thing is, it's not a foodie issue. Someone upthread was talking about living on cabbage without agribiz - but that is a *result* of being dependent on agribiz, in that local producers have gone away. It's a 'fix' for a non-problem. And I wouldn't be too complacent about an absence of hunger in this country, either. Soup kitchens, gleaner organizations and other charitable distributers have more patrons than ever. Many people are eating an incredibly poor diet, not because there are food shortages, nor because they can't afford better, but because they eat according to food company PR and advertising. And much of the time crunch that drives people to packaged food is also manufactured - it takes no longer to make hamburger and gravy and dump it over noodles than to make hamburger helper - even if you get fancy and chop some fresh veg into it. It is a very complex issue, but not one that belongs to foodies, particularly. But that brings another aspect of the thing to mind - what exactly is a foodie? If a foodie is someone who takes an interest in food beyond having a belly full of something that works as fuel on at least a semi regular basis, then I guess I'm guilty as charged. In reality, food is necessary to all of us, and it shouldn't be necessary to make it a kind of hobby to insure that you are eating a diet broader than cabbage, or hamburger helper, or that you be able to cook something more sophisticated than a grilled cheese sandwich. Good news in the Oregonian this morning, though - seems the lettuce is safe; the eColi involved in the lettuce contamination is not a lethal strain. I just don't find the news all that comforting. It doesn't resolve the spinach issue. It doesn't answer any questions. Just all is well, your lettuce is safe, business as usual. Until the next time, of course.
  5. Yes - but pastured cattle can foul the water supply, too, depending on various local factors - OR has begun to restrict fairly severely land use on creek and river banks, for this reason. Whether the regulations are effective or not will remain to be seen, but they are making an effort. We don't know, of course, whether these cattle are in fact the source of the contamination - it seems like a strong coincidence, but I haven't heard any more on the issue. It's not clear to me why they didn't just test the water, or whether they did test the water, and if so what the result was - there is actually a lot that is not clear on this incident. And others like it. That's true. So maybe we should be asking *why* our chains can't, or won't buy locally - It is certainly not a simple issue, and I don't mean to suggest that it is. It does seem to me that it is something we need to consider in more depth than we generally do. Locally, we are fortunate where we live to have both a micro packer and a fully independent grocer, who do buy locally - though I think the packer is going out for a much higher percentage of his meat than he used to - all his pork is now coming from Canada, for instance. We also have a local farmer's market, and still a few (but many fewer than there used to be) farmers and gardeners offering their wares at roadside stands, so we do have rather a lot of options. We can buy locker meat, if that suits us. Whether we will find such a happy situation when we move farther out is anybody's guess, but I won't be surprised to be stuck with Safeway; my last favorite food source. We will grow what we can. I am not labouring under the illusion that one person's dissatisfaction with the situation can shift the paradigm, even locally, nor that everyone could be growing his own, but we are very cavalier about our food, on the whole. The cost probably is one of the greater obstacles, and no doubt shorter distribution chains would have some downside - but it seems like an even greater problem, over time, to continue to centralize the production and distribution of food. We are likely to see more disease risks in meat production, and much greater risks for losing, whether from external contamination or from various kinds of failure, our produce crops. It is folly to fall prey to the illusion that our food is magically produced in the back half of our grocery stores, and that as it is today, so must it always be. That we should give much greater attention to our food sources seems to be a much more unpopular proposition than I'd have thought, given the increased problems which have surfaced over the last decade or so in both meat and produce. No one is immune to food dependency, it's something we all need. Though choices seem, superficially, to be icing on the cake, as we become more dependent on fewer options, the risk that something bad will happen at some point in the production or distribution of a major part of our food supply becomes greater. We need more diversity all across the board, seems to me. I think our current state of complacency is going to bite us one day. Maybe one day soon. Lynn
  6. Sorry for the loaded language, but it looks like my Oct. 13 report has been verified. They do now :-( Nope.
  7. actually, more than 80% of the farms in california are owned by individuals or by families. this is not to argue that there isn't a problem, just that the problem is a lot more complex than the usually cited "agribusiness" (how long would a farm that was not a business stay open?) or "corporate farming." ← Independent producers, as opposed to producers contracted to corporation X? Most of our larger farms in Oregon are so contracted, and they produce a particular variety of a particular fruit/veg/grain, fertilized and pest/disease controlled by X chemicals. They may not be huge producers, in terms of tons or acreage, and they be family run, but they are not really independent. If they decide to go to a mixed crop, or a different variety, if they want to deal differently with fertilizer or pest control, they are on their own. And they are taking huge economic risks in doing that, as a rule. Even where this is true, it is still better for the crop and easier on the land if the fields are smaller, and the crop is broken up from place to place, though better still when the crops are intermingled as much smaller truck farms generally are. Huge producers with hundreds of acres in one crop in one place are harder on the land and more vulnerable to all sorts of problems. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here - some of you seem to have a stake in this; it's very much the way things are economically these days, and it's not confined to just one country, nor just one continent. I am also not saying it's a simple business, and I apologize if that is the message that is coming through; I do know it isn't. But in terms of food quality, sustainability and also food security, it's not the best way.
  8. Pureed fresh garlic ferments! and it can be contaminated with botulism which grows in an anerobic (no oxygen) condition. When you puree fresh garlic, refrigerate it immediately. Otherwise you can treat peeled garlic cloves in vinegar overnight in the fridge, drain, wash and then puree it. If anything fresh or uncooked develops gas in a closed container, toss it out. If something has been cooked, canned and sealed and the lids bulge, throw it out. Don't take chances on anything that is low acid, (garlic, because of growing in the ground, is often contaminated with botulism) and don't use raw garlic to infuse oils unless you are going to keep the oil refrigerated. Conversely, pickled garlic, because of the high acid content, is safe. ← It can't have fermented in 5 minutes - it wasn't out long enough to have fermented, or to have grown anything. If it had been there any length of time and done that, I *would* have thrown it out. But I will bear all this in mind ...
  9. Have you ever thought " Gee, I wonder if this burner is hot?" You'd a thought I would have placed my hand over the burner, not directly on it. It was hot. As an aside, I have done a few of the other things mentioned here. And I must say it makes me feel better to know that I am not alone. ← Wow, I had totally spaced this one - actually, I did it after cleaning a stove. One of the burner pans was noticeably more filthy than the others, and I had heated it a second time. I dropped the burners carefully back into place, and after a final wipe down of everything, went around them all with the palm of my hand (bump, bump bump bump) to make sure they were all well seated. The last one was still very hot. The most amazing thing about this I thought, was that the palm of my hand, which was burned past blistering, healed without a trace of a scar. I hate electric stoves.
  10. I'm still back in '03 on this thread, but I think it is probably not only one of the most entertaining threads on the site, but undoubtedly the most educational! I have screwed up coffee makers every way there is to do that, and am on the second round with most of them. Have managed most of the other popular ones, too - however, here's something I discovered only a few weeks ago. Did you know that pureed fresh garlic grows? The day before DD's mother (visiting for the first time from Germany) turned up for dinner, I was clearing up the kitchen a bit, hoping to get it a bit more civilized for company. One of the little projects was to puree the couple of pounds of peeled garlic (purchased for this purpose) and get it into jars into the fridge - So I hauled out the processor, dumped it in, pureed it thoroughly, and packed it into mason jars. Luckily it didn't go straight into the fridge, because I gradually became aware as I multitasked my way around the work table that something was wrong, but it took a few minutes and the sight of the lid growing a dome to figure out what .. oops. I cleverly took it over to the sink to take the lid off, which was by now under a fair amount of pressure, and when it finally came off, it spat fresh garlic puree all over me, the sink, the window, the walls ... My husband, who claims to have no sense of smell (but we should probably call it a very selective sense of smell) wandered into the kitchen about half an hour later and said 'did you know that the house reeks of garlic'? I figured, hey, garlic is good, and anybody who doesn't like it probably isn't going to appreciate good food anyway, but I was a little relieved when my daughter told me the next day that the smell had worn off, mostly ... lol! The next time I do this I will be a lot more generous with the headroom ...
  11. Word. ← One more word: wool This is off topic, but when your beloved spouse helpfully washes - and dries in the dryer - your pure wool king size blanket, you now have a lot of material for truly superior oven mitts, potholders and other good insulating devices. When you have lemons ...
  12. I generally have some Stouffer's in the freezer, and Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie is edible. I occasionally succumb to something more exotic, but not that often - most of it is fairly spendy, and when we experiment, as often as not we say, well, interesting, but maybe we won't do that again. I had to laugh at the conclusions drawn by the abovementioned article - I suspect if you are going to do freezer fodder, you are better to stick to the rather plebian for the most part. I might indulge in more, or experiment more, if it weren't for the sugar and additive content, and the trans fats. Everything I put on the table myself isn't perfect, but it's at least all *food*. Is there a 'diy frozen food' thread out there somewhere? Maybe it would be fruitful to discuss this aspect of freezer fodder. I have tested that theory some, too, but not with great results. When I freeze quantity, or raw, it works fine, but meals ... well, mostly they get tossed. Seems like we need a way to make them more airtight, maybe.
  13. You'll hear no argument from me on this point. Though I'd be happy if food production were just in the hands of individuals, rather than huge corporations. However, I'm not sure that organic production in and of itself would eliminate these ecoli contaminations of produce. Cow manure, after all, is organic. However, we may be in a minority on this thing. There seem to be a lot of people who are happy for the government and agribiz to collaborate on what we get to eat, and what constitutes food safety. It's not been that long since the feds decided to write a standard for organic production. Or at least, to let agribiz write such a standard. Fortunately, the word got out, and some of the worst provisions of it did get fixed. As originally written, almost any produce could have been labeled 'organic'. They are now messing with the standards for 'grass fed' and 'pasture fed'. Anyone care to redefine some terms? They want to 'protect' our meat supply with rfid tags, too - more info at http://www.nonais.org. Cheers -
  14. groooaaann ... so it is :-) Should we start a new thread on water quality .. ? Don't get me started!java script:emoticon(':laugh:')
  15. we had that story too, but i don't remember seeing those specific words. our story said cattle grazing in fields nearby, which conjures up a different impression. i'm not trying to be argumentative here. it's natural when a disaster like this happens to try to find something where we can say "oh, that's what they did wrong." but sometimes, bad stuff just happens. again, these are crops that are grown out of doors in poorly controlled environments. unless you want to move everything indoors under greenhouses (or irradiate), i'm afraid that every once in a while something like that is going to happen. i covered the odwalla outbreak years ago and when all was said and done, the culprit was a farmer tossing in some apples that had been picked up off the ground--and unpasteurized fruit juices, which are now almost totally unavailable. and how do you feel now about raw milk cheeses? ← In the Oregonian this morning, it was stated that they found the same strain of eColi in 5 different samples. They didn't say whether the samples were taken directly from the cattle, or sampled on the ground somehow. They didn't say how many samples were taken altogether. But it's certainly suggestive.
  16. To my mind, the part that is not totally harmless and safe is the mindset that says 'don't worry about the contamination, we'll just zap it with this chemical/drug/process and all will be well'. Contaminate away. Feel free. I suppose it's all in your point of view.
  17. Are you still doing this? Did you actually run into the problem? How would you/do you control it? If there *is* going to be a problem, it is easier to deal with if it is a local one, and doesn't affect half the country, don't you think? The way things are going, if there is no control (and I think you are right about that at present, at least), there soon will be, but it is much more likely to affect small producers than the large ones. The large ones are in a position to negotiate loopholes, and do. Often controls involve expenses in the way of equipment and/or fees that are a much greater burden to the small producers than the large ones. You don't think it's consumers or small packers who resist serious BSE testing, removal of all offal from cattle feeds and who are pushing support for NAIS, do you? Agribiz figures what you don't know won't hurt them. And their near monopoly is becoming a problem to the food supply. Sometimes they do contract with small producers, of course, who are then forced to use their production methods. In some areas, there is enough choice for farmers to contract for this crop this year and something different next year, which is a help to the land, but there are still issues with chemicals. There is a fair amount of diversity around here, but that varies a lot from region to region, as nearly as I can tell. Where I can find them, I go with independent producers. They need our support; our food supply needs them. At best their product is superior, as well as more reliable. At worst, the risks affect smaller areas. I hope that now we are retired I will be able to go back to gardening and chickens. These options aren't available to everybody, though, and the bottom line is still that more competition offers better quality and more choices for everyone.
  18. I would probably agree if I knew what it was and where it appeared in the process :-) I am a home cook, and either: We are all dead, have been for years, or: We, and all our friends, have brutally efficient immune systems, or: My kitchen is much cleaner than it appears on first sight. The only food poisoning I have suffered resulted from eating a deli sandwich at a large chain, but I will admit to using gloves to handle raw meat, chicken in particular, since I was in chemo. However, one of my wood cutting boards is no doubt older than I am, it was old when I bought it at Goodwill for 50¢ well over 20 years ago. My 'new' one is over 20 years old. I recently acquired a bamboo one, but it's practically virgin, and therefore doesn't count! lol! I don't prep food on my pastry board ... for what that's worth. I refuse to use plastic; I hate plastic anything in the kitchen as I don't believe you can get it really clean. Perhaps the amount of onion and garlic I chop on the wooden boards has an effect. Or perhaps the study that was done shortly before plastic cutting boards became PC was correct in saying that nothing much survives long on them. I think the weakest link in most of the food chain is commercial production/packing, and avoid this where I can, meat or produce. As someone upthread has mentioned, oxtail is no longer on our list, but shin makes fine brown stock, though loss of the neckbones is a great disappointment. I'd buy them from range producers, though, and the oxtail too, if I could get them. I can get range produced ground beef, but not neckbones or oxtail .. that seems odd, now that I think of it. Must ask around. But cattle that have not been fed commercial feed are safe, so far as BSE is concerned, at least. BSE is transmitted through cows eating other cows. If you can find free range pasture fed beef, you're home free. Probably good so far as eColi is concerned, too, if it's handled in a small plant. I do think the salmonella has become resistant to the drugs they used to use to kill it, but I'm not sure of the current state of affairs with that, except I wish my local suppliers would quit washing the eggs. Washed eggs are porous and allow lots of stuff to pass through the shell, and go stale practically overnight. Unwashed eggs keep forever, and I'd bet are a much lower salmonella risk. The answer isn't killing the bugs after the fact, it's preventing the contamination to begin with. Killing the contamination after the fact is a bandaid, and a poor approach born of pandering to agribiz and their bottom line mentality. I won't even mention the practise of feeding antibiotics and steroids ... Edited for clarity...
  19. I wouldn't count on a fix from the government, unless the public demands an effective control on *agribiz* production practises. Even then I'd be very wary. If you read this article you will notice that it blythly cites the eColi outbreak in beef in '93, and talks about 'tightened controls' on the beef industry. In fact, what they actually did was regulate the *cooking* of beef, demanding that all ground beef served commercially be cooked well done - as they have cautioned us always to hard boil our eggs to deal with salmonella contaminations. In other words, the controls have NOT been applied to agribiz, and we need to beware any new regulations or laws which these incidents spawn, as the last couple of decades has shown that when such laws and regulations are proposed, a close look at them shows they target individuals and small producers, not the agribiz mega corporations which cause the problem. We could, of course, boil all our spinach and lettuce henceforth ...
  20. This eColi contamination of produce is becoming a pretty common thing. It doesn't appear that washing is a reliable way to eliminate the risk. I'd say the best thing to do would be to make a real effort to find alternate local sources of produce, if at all possible. I do realize that we have reached the stage where many people really don't have much in the way of choice as to food sources, but the risk is associated with agribiz corporate food production, not your local truck farm. Boycott agribiz sources wherever possible. Whether the result is opening up new sources, or forcing agribiz to adopt more reliably clean production methods, either way it's a win. As things stand, they get a free pass on this stuff because they have successfully squeezed out local production, and there are now enough people who no longer have enough choice that poor quality control doesn't hurt their business. Surely we are entitled to clean food? Without having to buy a $200 gadget to insure that? I'm inclined to go with those who doubt its effectiveness in any case. I think it would create a false sense of security, and that the manufacturer is exploiting a situation that needs a real fix, not a gadget.
  21. I think this is a bump - It's too late for your roast - what did you do in the end? How was it? But this is one of my major bugbears - meat that is so fanatically trimmed that there is no fat on it. Not only is the flavour compromised, but how can you roast potatoes with a roast that has no fat on it? How can you make yorkshire pudding? And sometimes precious little marbling, though that is a different gripe. Most standing ribs do have some marbling, at least. I hunted for years for a standing rib (or any other roast, beef OR pork), with enough fat on it to roast decently with no success. I tried all kinds of fixes. Lard. Bacon. I went to my local small packer and bought beef fat (I can't recall what he told me to ask for), and pinned it to the roast, but it really wasn't all that successful. I despaired. I basically quit dry roasting meat. One year I got mad, and went to the same small packer, rather at the last minute, and told him I wanted a standing rib with the FAT LEFT ON. He agreed, and I picked it up Christmas Eve. Christmas Day I unwrapped it and found it netted; he'd replaced the trimmed fat and netted it. I was mortally disappointed, but it was too late to do anything about it, so I went with it, and it really came out very well. Seemed like the critical thing was that the fat make *very* close contact with the meat. A workable compromise, at least. And enough fat for potatoes and yorkshire pudding. The next year I went early to order, and he said 'take the whole rack, and I'll age it for you, and split it and hold the other end in my freezer until you want it' ... I told him to pick me a fat beast, and I'd go for it. That one came with the fat still on, both of them ... and they were wonderful, the one at Christmas, and the other for some later occasion I have since forgot. The price has gotten a little unwieldy, and I'm not sure I'll be able to afford to do it this year, but as I have been using the fat all year to fry potatoes and am nearly out, I will probably have to find some way to weasel the price out of the budget somewhere. It may be hard to find someone who is still cutting the meat as he goes, and you may have to mortgage something, but I am convinced this is the way to go. There is no substitute for the fat that belongs on the meat, on the meat. But I'm curious as to what you did and how it came out - and what others are doing to cope with this problem. After all, Christmas is coming java script:emoticon(':smile:') smilie Maybe this year it'll have to be cornish hens or something more cost effective here, but maybe the Roast Beast Fairy will smile on me, and I'll be putting my order in again for my politically incorrect roast! java script:emoticon(':laugh:') smilie
  22. Monoculture, whether of plants or animals is hard on the environment in various ways. It makes the crop, whether meat or produce, vulnerable to disease and parasites. Not only does this lead to much greater use of various chemicals and drugs, but there is a much greater risk of losing a huge percentage of a particular crop in any given year, whether beef or citrus, or any other monoculture crop. Remember the recent British hoof and mouth disaster? Can you imagine the result if it happened here in a major packer feedlot? Monoculture of plants depletes the land of the same nutrients over large areas, and monoculture of animals, particularly in feedlot or battery concentrations contaminates it, and often the watershed. This is the simplistic answer, but it doesn't make it less true or real. In both cases the environment suffers. You are right that in many places the beef is raised on pasture or the range, shipped out and finished in a feedlot somewhere. But the fact that it is not happening on your doorstep doesn't make it irrelevant to your life or your food sources. As small producers have been squeezed out economically, so have the small packers and butchers, and control and accessibity shifts. You get fewer choices, not only of sources, but also of varieties. Quality suffers. Safety suffers. Now you can buy major packer meat and poultry ... or major packer meat and poultry. Their choice of cuts. And eggs. Milk with BGH ... dyed and waxed fruit, three varieties, pick any one. Different breeds of animals and poultry disappear. Different varieties of fruit and vegetables are no longer available. Remember when tomatoes tasted like tomatoes? I paid a ridiculous price a couple of weeks ago for some heirloom variety tomatoes .. I shouldn't have done it; I have no garden any more, and I'm still stuck with tomatoes bred for shipping. But they were great while they lasted! Small producers, at whatever stage of the process are more accountable than large ones. Leaving aside the issue of the quality of life of the animals involved, small producers are more responsible in a general way. We should not lose sight of the fact that the major function of the corporate structure is to limit liability. If you have concerns, for example, about avian flu, you should be concerned not about the backyard birds, or the small producers who raise range meat and/or eggs, nor the wild birds, but the egg and fryer factories which are the vectors for the virus. This is where the disease first showed up, and this is where it is concentrated. Wildlife and the backyard flocks are victims, not vectors. That's not what the government wants you to think, but that's the fact. Likewise ecoli and salmonella, both of which appear in places you wouldn't have thought likely. Some years ago a farmer's family suffered severe salmonella poisoning, and after weeks of trying to figure out what had caused it, they found it vectored in the veal calves they were raising - on milk replacers and antibiotics. Who'd have thought? It seems that the recent ecoli contamination of spinach, and perhaps lettuce probably originated with the irrigation water. If you want minimum risk with your produce, either grow it yourself or buy local. Small producers have a greater stake in their reputation, and also are more careful with their production practises. If they are irrigating the chances are they are drinking the same water they use for irrigation, and they will discover any problems therein pretty quickly and get them fixed. If they miss the problem up front, they haven't contaminated the food source for half the country. Small producers generally are living with their product - whether it's beef, chicken, produce or citrus. The control is with the Owners, either doing the work themselves, or personally supervising it. Yes, it is true that in poultry in particular, some enterprises are family businesses, but in my neighbourhood at least, a little poking around will show that they are contracted to Tyson or some other corporate entity. If you want high quality food, your local independent producer's meat, eggs, poultry and even milk are much more likely to be produced by traditional husbandry methods, which are cleaner and more humane than anything a corporate CEO would be willing to countenance. This guy is fairly easy to identify - his end product is available for independent sale; it's not contracted out in it's entirety to a corporate buyer. He produces locally, and he sells locally. And he's personally liable. Corporate production is controlled by somebody sitting in an office somewhere who knows squat about his product; his expertise lies in squeezing the last penny out of the quarterly bottom line. If it's cheaper to produce chicken by feeding protein derived from urea (processed from chicken manure), then that's what he feeds, and he will make sure the government will approve a urea percentage which will keep his balance sheet in the black. If meat and milk production are more profitable when you feed cows back to cows, hey, he has no problem with that. This is how you get BSE; feeding cows to cows. In theory that practise has been outlawed in the US; in practise, nobody is watching, and I wouldn't count on it. The USDA recently scaled back 90% of the BSE testing it was doing, and all it was doing was 'spot checks' anyway. What you don't know won't hurt them or the corporate producer. The corporate producer raises produce and fruit with the idea that it must be shippable in mind, not that it should taste great. If it's cheaper to keep the bugs and mildew off by poisoning it, that works for him. Does it sell better dyed? No problemo ... Size isn't the only factor ... but if you have to gamble on your food sources, and your choice is a national agribiz corporation or a local producer, go with the local guy. If you have some kind of problem with his product, at least you know who to complain to. It is certainly possible these days to live where there isn't much local production. This is a side effect of big bidness monopolizing food production. In your place, I wouldn't be defending it because it was all I had, I would be vociferously objecting, and demanding better access to better quality food. I would be decrying the centralization of the food supply, with its inherent security risks and other vulnerabilities. I would be screaming for a real BSE testing program. In fact, I am doing these things. I do have at least some access to local food, and I can buy range and organic if I don't mind bending the budget. Sometimes I do. But it is clear that unless I start making a racket, that happy situation is likely to change, and not for the better. You are already seeing the effects of the policies I am objecting to - you have very limited choices. Though I am presently better off, it looks like that won't last, unless everybody finds the status objectionable. This isn't a matter of being precious, or snobbish, or pro animal rights or some other idealogical position. It's a matter of survival - not for us, perhaps, but for our children. If I don't have the right to raise my own food, do I have any rights at all? At the moment we are discussing relative quality here, but how much control are you really willing to give to corporate industry? Sorry to be wordy - but this really is an issue which affects everybody. Please do go to http://www.nonais.org and poke around. And consider that they are talking similar controls on crops ...
  23. Very ... if I were going to add something for flavour, though, it would be beef fat :-) I don't know what the smoke point for beef fat is, but it can't be lower than bacon grease ... On the whole, I like peanut oil, but if I thought they'd fry better in canola, I use that too, and certainly it's cheaper. ...................................................... Ah. More notes on nomenclature. . .the potato they specify is the "Russet Burbank Potato, often called the Idaho". ....................................................... I am a coward where large pots of boiling oil on an open flame is concerned. My preference is a thermostatically controlled fryer, but I expect that is a separate topic :-) I suspect that I need a much bigger one than I have, which I'm sure isn't helping, but every time I admire a huge fryer, DH says something like 'but there are only two of us ...' It would probably be easier to convert him if he were a doughnut eater, but alas, his position on doughnuts is lukewarm at best. But it would be kind of nice to be able to turn out a few frites when the mood strikes :-)
  24. Perdue? Tyson? You might want to read "Fast Food Nation", and then you wouldn't have to ask that question. One of the few ways to stop this nonsense over how the ducks are treated would be to compare them to how the above mentioned companies raise their chickens, honestly. ← Perdue? Tyson? You mean anything that's a big company? I've seen chickens raised in upstate New York for smaller companies (from hatchlings to egg producers) - and it wasn't exactly a scene out of Old McDonald's farm. Have you or anyone else here ever seen chickens raised? What do you think is the ideal way to raise them? Like Martha Stewart raises hers? Robyn ← I don't know how Martha Stewart raises hers, but free range produces much better eggs and meat. If you raise chickens in the orchard, you also have excellent pest control, though it wouldn't deal with the mildews and viruses that monoculture fosters. I've kept chickens in the backyard, and would do it again in a heartbeat. To raise them commercially this way would take more space, but would not be much more labour intensive. Could you raise millions of birds at one location? No - but you could have many more local producers, which would decentralize the supply, and make fresher meat and eggs available to more people. It would be healthier all across the board, for people and for poultry. Tyson would suffer, of course.
  25. Just curious, but which kosher butchering practices would you consider inhumane? Kosher (and Halal) slaughter involves a quick, deep slash across the throat of the animal to sever the arteries, thus killing the animal (and draining out blood). The knife used must be razor sharp to minimize pain. Typically the animal is unconscious within 2 seconds using this method apparently... On the other hand, the most widely used method of slaughter is to stun the animal first with an electric shock, and then kill it. Seems like adding the extra step would actually cause more pain to the animal, prolonging its demise, as opposed to a quick slash to the neck without any prior trauma... I'm not Jewish (or Muslim), and not defending the method based on religion, it just seems to be a better way for the animal to go... ← The problem for HSUS and PETA and their allies is not really animal cruelty, despite the fact that they have coopted the term 'animal welfare', the problem for them is any human use of animals period - for meat, milk, eggs, butter, leather, wool, fur, companionship, service ... you get the picture. They are perfectly happy to pretend to be interested in animal welfare to progressively redefine the term 'cruelty' and 'abuse' to mean 'raising animals for human use', including meat and even for pets. They are whittling away at our rights not only to raise animals for meat, but to raise animals period, and one of their stategies is to pit one group of animal users against another, using each group's ignorance of another to misrepresent whatever practise they are currently targeting. There are so few people any more who know anything about animal husbandry that they can tell any lies they care to about hunting practises, raising ducks for foie gras, livetock management, dog and cat breeding practises, or any other group you care to mention. If they can put show dog raisers out of business by wringing their hands about puppy mills, they'll do that - individuals are much more vulnerable than corporations. They are working on small farmers, hobby and niche producers the same way. They put pork raisers in Florida out of business by successfully granting constitutional rights to sows. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=29542 I'm sorry to say this is not a joke. Worse, the feds are pimping agribiz interests, and if the NAIS program goes through, you will see a huge reduction in the availability of locally produced meat, poultry, eggs, game ... organic and range fed meat and poultry and eggs will go away ... Too long to go into here in any detail, but see http://www.nonais.org for info, links to the USDA, your reps, and everything else you'd rather not know about this misconceived program. Apart from this, though, don't blow off the AR zealots; they have money and power, and because their goals are ludicrous doesn't mean we won't get stuck with them if we don't recognize the seriousness of their agenda and fight them actively. HSUS has pages which show which legislation they support and oppose, both federal and state - but they write much of the current animal law, right down to local ordinance level, and are finding that buying politicians and legislation is much more effective than funding animal terrorism. Enough ... if you want to discuss this aspect of your diet and cooking habits, I'm at the.limit@comcast.net Lynn ← Agreed. And the only joke about our pig constitutional amendment (I live in Florida) is that we have/had almost no pork production here. I don't care how you look at it - but when the primary goal of the producer is to raise and kill animals - someone is going to be offended by something. I for one eat animals - and apart from gross acts of cruelty (which one is unlikely to see for the most part) - I don't see any problems with the food production process. Robyn ← But we could treat the animals we eat more humanely and also eat healthier meat. ← We could - to do that we need to retain our right to raise and use animals (from pets to meat) as individuals. Small producers = better quality of meat/eggs/milk Small producers = better quality of life for the animals involved. And small local packing plants (where they exist) produce a cleaner product too as a rule. In real life, between HSUS (and the other AR zealots) and the USDA we are losing the right to choose what we eat. Everybody needs to know how Florida lost its pork production - the more people who know, the harder it will be for them to do the same in the next state. Seems like no big deal to lose one meat animal in one state? How about 5 states? 30 states? Everybody needs to know about NAIS, and if you want to keep your right to local meat sources, and organic beef and range eggs - oppose it. So far as slaughter practises are concerned - dead is dead, and kosher slaughtering is no less humane than any other. A case can be made that it is more humane, and certainly kosher practises insure better hygiene than standard commercial standards. We could use more of that, too.
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