A recent research study of conventional and outdoor antimicrobial-free (no antibiotics) production systems showed pigs raised outdoors without the use of routine antibiotics carried more bacteria and parasites, according to Feedstuffs newspaper. The research sampled pigs from three states (WI, NC, OH) and compared “niche-market, outdoor and antimicrobial-free (no antibiotics)” to “intensive indoor (conventional)” rearing systems.

Blood tests showed the outdoor pigs had significantly more exposure to Salmonella and Toxoplasma. Two pigs from different outdoor farms had antibodies to Trichinella. Trichinella is the parasite that infests muscles, and is the primary reason we have all been conditioned to cook pork thoroughly. The parasite has been virtually eliminated from conventional rearing systems.

I admit to being a little surprised by the research. In keeping with my science-geek image, I tracked down the authors, who very kindly sent me a copy of the original research paper. The research seems solid, and the stats are supported by other research in this country and in Europe.

So why the higher infection rate in outdoor pigs? The reasons given by the authors include exposure to wild and domestic animals (i.e. cats can carry trichinella), and access to soil and moisture which are viable environments for pathogens.

The skeptic in me can’t help wondering exactly what the outdoor systems studied were? Were they just raised in outdoor pens, or were they “pasture-raised” where they were foraging for a significant part of their diet? It is common in the chicken industry, where “free-range, vegetarian-fed” chicken and eggs abound, for such chickens to have access to the outdoors, but be no more pasture-raised than if they were confined indoors.

It is important to remember that many production practices that come under fire, such as indoor rearing and antibiotics, were put into place to increase food safety and/or animal welfare in response to increasingly intensive animal production. Merely removing these practices without addressing the reasons they were implemented in the first place does not necessarily bring about the benefits to humans or animals envisioned by consumers who purchase based on a “free-range” label.

Would you like some fish oil with your yogurt? Yoplait and other yogurts now contain added omega-3 oil. Just 29 servings gets your child his/her daily dose of this heart-healthy nutrient. Omega-3 yogurt will dent your wallet more than it will grow their brains. Maybe it’s best to just eat some fish.

Food Prices and Land Use: Via Food Law Prof Blog. Ross Clark maintains our food shortage could be cured by better use of the world’s land.

Living Green: A great article in the Austin-American Statesperson. Are you up to the challenge of buying less, buying used and environmentally friendly cleaners, cosmetics and other products?

The Price of Food: A comparison of retail and farm gate prices for fruit, vegetable, grain and livestock products between May 2007 and May 2008. Looks like peanut butter will be a bargain protein source!

Take a Green Roof Safari. From Ecogeeks. Going to Europe this fall? Take a tour of green roof projects in Germany or Switzerland. More information on green roofs can be found at greenroof.com

Since April, there have been 613 people identified as infected with Salmonella St. Paul in this country. For the most part, consumers have embraced the warnings and precautions put out by the FDA. (btw, Barfblog has an excellent collection of posts on this subject, including suggestions for ensuring safety of farmer’s market tomatoes).

From 1998-2005 there were 831 illnesses reported from unpasturized (raw) milk and cheese. Considering the number of people eating tomatoes vs. consuming raw milk, the per-consumer illness rate has got to be much higher for milk. Yet, government intervention in raw milk sales is not met with nearly the same attitude as seen in the case of tomatoes. Why?

For one thing, milk is probably the most emotion-charged food there is. It is so closely associated with children and wholesomeness that is it literally a “sacred cow” when it comes to safety, adulteration, regulation, hormones, antibiotics…. I’ve seen more conflicting statistics quoted about raw milk than almost any other food topic I’ve researched. (What’s that saying about lies, damned lies and statistics?). It’s hard to find a balanced piece of reporting on this topic, but there was one in the Seattle PI recently.

Raw milk advocates abound, and have some valid, or at least interesting points. For one thing, it DOES taste better (IMHO). There are claims of it being less of an allergen, easier to digest, and more healthful in a number of ways. There are a number of sites promoting raw milk. Sadly, most of them seem so fanatical, that I find it hard have faith in their statements and facts. If any of you know of good, sound, science-based raw milk sites or references, please let me know!

So, I’m not going to give you a pat yes or no answer on raw milk. If you choose to go raw, I will advise you to at least be sure of the following:

• purchase from a state-certified dairy (this is one reason I hate to see states outlaw raw milk-it turns it into an unregulated black-market item)
• be absolutely certain the milk is chilled immediately (this is not just stuck in the refrigerator, it is chilled in the equivalent of a circulating ice bath)
• drink your raw milk before it is a week old (the sooner the better). This means a week from when it was milked, NOT purchased!
• Be sure your dairy is testing routinely for coliform and other bacterial contaminants
• visit the dairy, if possible, before you trust their product. i.e. know your producer

I grew up on the raw milk produced by my family’s traditional dairy farm. We drank the milk from our bulk milk tank; it was not pasteurized until it got to the processing plant. BUT, I’m not even tempted to buy raw milk now. The primary reason is that without pasteurization, I am completely reliant on the producer to ensure that my milk is safe. In addition, the raw milk I grew up on was consumed within 24-48 hours of milking. I find it extremely difficult to trust raw milk from a dairy shelf in the health food store. I do know some local, certified raw milk dairies from which I would be comfortable purchasing. They all have waiting lists for customers.

Hello readers…yesterday amidst the parties, networking, and actually working for clients, I had a chance to attend an educational session. And I’m so glad I did for two reasons: I learned something, which one always hopes to, but rarely does at these conferences; but more importantly, had a reminder of how blessed I am to live the life I have. The panel, “Biotech Crops in Center of Origin: The Case of Corn and Mexico” was organized by Monsanto (please suspend your cynicism and keep reading) and the Mexican Confederation of Corn Peasants (CNPAMM).

A little background. Mexico is the center of origin for corn, which most of the world refers to as maize. Over thousands of years it has evolved from teosinte shown at the left in this photo (thank you John Doebley, Univ. of Wisconsin), to the familiar corn on the right. This was done by plant breeding, or crop “manipulation” by man. The point being that had farmers not “interfered with” mother nature, this food staple for Mexico, where one billion corn tortillas are consumed each day (that’s an average of 10 per person) we’d be noshing on something other than nachos during the Super Bowl. Because Mexico is the center of origin for this crop that has cultural and religious associations for the populace, there has been tension about the introduction of biotech corn to the region, particularly in the state of Oaxaca. Corn, in case you didn’t know, is a very promiscuous plant whose pollen is prone to mix with other corns, whether they’re interested or not. For those who want to preserve the many different land races (or varieties) of native corn, this is a problem.

OK, history lesson over and back to the present. The session opened with a presentation in Spanish, by Carlos Salazar, Secretary General of CNPAMM. CNPAMM is part of CNC, the National Confederation of Mexican Peasants, with more than 2 million members. Fortunately, a translator was at hand. He shared with the audience a video that interviewed the peasant farmers and showed them planting and growing their crops. It was a poignant illustration that despite the profound advancements that have been made in agriculture, many have been left behind. These smallholder farmers are using the same “technology” that their ancestors used to grow teosinte. They (or their children) plant the corn by hand, one seed at a time. They use yoked animals to pull a plow to work the fields. Everything is done by hand, including harvest where each corn is pulled from the stalk one at a time, and placed in a basket on the back of the worker as he or she walks the field. They then sell the corn for a peso, but it costs them two pesos to buy the corn if they need more. Their stories were moving, telling of the difficulty of raising a family, the disruption of the community as their children leave for the greener pastures of the north (the U.S.), and the desire to have a better life and more education for their children. These are the people that outside interests are trying to “protect” from the incursion of the fruits of today’s modern plant breeding: genetically modified corn varieties that have been improved to resist insects, survive drought, and yield more corn per acre. As I looked at the earnest expressions on sun ravaged faces, sharing smiles that reflected a lack of the dental care we take for granted, I was counting my blessings.

The video set the stage for the purpose of the panel which was to tell the international gathering about a project to both conserve native species, as well as find opportunities to support the farmers and find value opportunities for the native germplasms. I’ve been watching the evolution and acceptance of biotech crops since 2000, and to me, this program is a reflection of the growing maturity of an industry. When the biotech crops were first introduced, it was all speed ahead and touting of the tremendous benefits the crops offer to farmers. Developed by scientists, to whom it was incomprehensible that anyone could object to crops that could be grown with less labor, fewer pesticides, improved yield, less fuel use, and built-in insect resistance, industry was stunned when groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth launched massive campaigns to stop the introduction of these crops. Industry has slowly and painfully come to understand that societal concerns must be addressed to help the ultimate user of the crops, the consumer, better understand this radical transformation of crop production. The maize program, discussed at great detail and in earnest by the panel members, shows the evolution of corporate seed developers to recognize this learning and develop socially responsible programs to address the needs of two different kinds of farmers, the smallholder who wants to both preserve a culturally important crop, but still find a way to benefit from newer seeds, and what the group called professional farmers, who have access to modern machinery, the best seeds, and who grow on the large scale necessary to feed a country that is required to import substantial amounts of corn from other countries to feed its people.

It was a wonderful, but sparsely attended session. The program could be a model for others to study as they work to introduce other crop varieties that have important cultural associations that merit preserving, balanced with a need to continue as man has done for centuries, to improve the crop making it more sustainable to meet changing needs.

A full description of the panel and participants can be found here.

Here I am (second from left) at last night’s international food and ag reception.  My new friends are from Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. Click for the full size!

In honor of our blogger-on-the-road, Lisa, we’re going geeky with this week’s Earthlinks.

Should Biotech companies Blog? Are blogs by biotech companies a good idea from a corporate standpoint? Maybe if more companies had open blogs, there might actually be some real communication.

Animal Research, Giving the Gift of Life: a guest post on noted Ethicist Terry Etherton’s blog, by Barb Glenn, (a wonderful woman and friend from the Bio Industry Organization) .

Guaranteed Tender Steak: from Feedstuffs Foodlink. Technology to the rescue–University of Nebraska scientists have developed a method of identifying tender beef while it is in the processing plant.

Plants have Social Lives: also from Feedstuffs Foodlink. Plant behavior is more complex than you think. If plants are sentient, does that affect how we should grow, harvest and eat them?

Kudzu-A Potential Biofuel: from Ecogeek. The “plant that ate the South” may be the answer to Suzanne’s biofuel headache.

And as always, one slightly less serious link to end:

Make your own icecream drumsticks:  Does this make icecream count as “local food”?

With floods causing untold amounts of damage to the well-being and property of native Iowans, farmers and wholesalers will also feel the blowback of this natural disaster. The Associated Press is reporting that corn and soybean prices have skyrocketed from the crisis:

CORN KEEPS CLIMBING: Corn prices pushed closer to $8 a bushel Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said 12 percent of Midwest crops were in poor to very poor condition because of devastating floods.

SOYBEANS APPROACH RECORD: Midwest flooding has also inundated soybean fields, lifting prices near the all-time high of $15.96 a bushel.

And while Midwestern farmers must struggle to rebuild, their consumers are getting hit with more than just a steep price at the produce section. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News illustrates how vulnerable our fuel prices have become as a result of the country’s reliance on corn-based ethanol:

“Is it more important for people to eat or drive?”

The catastrophic Midwestern floods, and their likely effect on the U.S. corn harvest in a year of worldwide food shortages, makes the question relevant.

The reason? With the Corn Belt suffering big weather-related crop losses and global demand for U.S. grain rising, it becomes hard to justify putting corn into gas tanks via ethanol, rather than into people’s stomachs.

Add all of the taxpayer money we sink into ethanol and this flood has become a heavy burden for more than just Iowans. Has the way we approach food and fuel in this country left us vulnerable to the unpredictable acts of Mother Nature? That’s not counting the random shelf-pulls of the veggies that are near and dear to us. So far corn and tomatoes are off the menu. What’s next?

Get ready to challenge your preconceptions.

Milk-fed veal is arguably the most hard-to-defend meat production system in this country from an animal rights point of view. Most veal is produced from male dairy calves, which are a byproduct of sorts, of the necessity of having a cow calve yearly in order to produce milk. As all dairy calves are, they are removed from the cow shortly after birth and grown using specialized production practices, to produce the very tender, pale meat most US consumers associate with veal.

Serious Eats recently posted about Azulana, which produces pastured raised veal. Most beef calves in this country are raised on pasture with the cows until weaning. Pasture-raised veal basically consists of harvesting these these animals at weaning, rather than growing them out to mature beef. Veal raised in this way is classified as “red veal”, because of the stronger flavor of the meat that results from the rumination process necessary to digest grass.

It turns out, that until sometime in the 1950s, most veal sold in this country was produced this way. Pastured veal would have to be among the most “natural” of meats, because the animals are grown with minimal intervention, no supplemental feeding, no confinement, on a diet of milk and grass.

A Labor of Love: From What’s Fresh. I couldn’t express better myself the philosophy and motivation behind growing and selling local food. Be sure to check out the double chocolate zucchini cake recipe, too.

Jumping on the Healthy Food Bandwagon: from Marketing Profs Daily Fix. Food companies (i.e. Kraft, General Mills, Sara Lee) are answering consumer demands for “Less” everything and the perception of healthier product. Along with this is usually a higher price tag. Is this a good thing?

Ecogeek’s Guide to Saying Thanks to Dad: A green giving guide for Father’s Day. This entry begs the question: Can one buy one’s way to environmental responsibility?

Cloned Meat: A logical next step: From Word of Mouth. An unusually non-emotional discourse on the place of cloning in our selective breeding practices. Here is someone who gets that this is more of a non-issue than one worth “media hand-wringing and deep moral debate about Frankenstein Friesians”.

Food Safety During an Emergency: From Momify. Loss of power during an emergency can endanger the food in your refrigerator or freezer. The USDA has published a Guide that includes tips on what to do in floods, power outages and removing odors from freezers and refrigerators. I wish I had seen that last bit last Thanksgiving, when I forgot to turn my frig back on after cleaning it out and then left for a week out at the ranch!

Safe vs. Organic Personal Care Products:  from BlogHer’s Green and Ecoconscious section.  We touched on this in last week’s Earthlinks.  The author (who also blogs on greenLAgirl) points out there is safety and eco-friendly on both sides of the organic fence in this excellent review.

Celebrating Extinction: From Ethicurean. This is a spoof on bluefin tuna extinction so well written that I took it seriously. After my recent mistaking of the “Obesity Causes Global Warming” for a spoof, I’m convinced that it is hard to tell in today’s world what is outrageous and real and what is outrageous and fictional.

My boys love raw tomatoes or “menos” as they were first dubbed by a toddler that would position himself in front of the cherry tomato section of a salad bar and eat until chased down by one of his humiliated parents.

So should they or shouldn’t they (and we) be eating tomatoes these days? Since mid-April, 167 people in 17 states have been infected with a rare strain of bacteria known as Salmonella Saintpaul, which has been linked to several kinds of raw tomatoes. Most of the cases have been in Texas and New Mexico, and 23 of them have required hospitalization.

McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse and Taco Bell have even voluntarily pulled tomatoes from their offerings.

Perhaps most scary — the FDA has even warned consumers to stop eating raw tomatoes – traditional, round, Roma or plum. Although the FDA website says there haven’t been problems with 19 states and 4 countries, it does say if you don’t know where the tomato came from, you shouldn’t eat it.

Of course, the North American tomato industry is absolutely gut-punched and the Florida tomato growers say the entire system is on the verge of collapse. Number one tomato producer Florida says $40 million worth of tomatoes will rot in the next few days unless the U.S. FDA traces the source of the outbreak and clears the produce.

Pretty scary stuff. My feelings? There will be no more toddler “meno” salad bar attacks in the near future. But, made of rough stuff as I am, I did actually eat all the tomatoes in my salad today. No tummy rumblings yet. I’ll let you know if I make it.

And — minor screed — some people (we like) are bashing the FDA, but I really think Congress is the problem. Since the early 1990s there’s been a strategy afoot to cash starve the agency to limit its ability to “meddle”. First put into place when Kessler started to take on the tobacco companies in the 1990s, this unfortunate but successful strategy is working.

Don’t blame the agency. FULLY AND APPROPRIATELY FUND THE U.S. FDA so they can quickly handle these sorts of matters. My bet is that these tomatoes are coming from abroad, but the poor FDA inspection service is so poorly staffed and funded, how would we know? Yet domestic agriculture is taking the hit.

Other tomato conversations:

Shakesville, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

I guess this places bruschetta and BLT’s on the endangered species list for the time being until the safe tomato population gets its act together.

Alana Kellogg, food editor on BlogHer, It’s Summer Tomato Time — Or Is It?

Are you thinking it’s much ado about nothing, that hey, life is risky and what’s a little tomato compared to stuff like global warming, skyrocketing food prices, $4 a gallon gasoline, healthcare and education issues, childhood obesity, earthquakes in China, floods in the Midwest, who the Bachelorette’s going to knock off this week?

Wine Before Dinner, The Salmonella Tomato Scare

If American establishments would buy tomatoes grown in America, this Salmonella Scare would have never happened. This is nothing against Mexico, it’s hard working people, and their farmers. I just think that produce being shipped from that far away has to go through many hands, trucks, crates, etc. The farther these things travel the better chance they have of becoming contaminated.

Wall Street Fighter, The 2008 Tomato Scare

If some film studio decided to make a major motion picture about ‘Tomato Scare ‘08″, I bet there will be a dramatic scene in there where someone runs into the Tomato factory and screams at the top of their lungs, “Stop the picking and packing machines!” Then he’ll probably slam on some bright red emergency stop button, which should be in the shape of a large cartoon tomato.

Sara’s post on labels and farm workers reminded me of a recent article in The New York Times.  Titled, With Migrant Workers in Short Supply, A Farmer Looks to Machines, the reporter tells the story of Jim Bittner, a farmer in upstate New York who cut down 25 acres of cherry trees because he was concerned he wouldn’t have enough workers to harvest the fruit. This caught my attention for two reasons — first, since I live  just outside Washington, DC, I have a special affinity for cherry trees.  Yes, I know that the trees surrounding the tidal basin that spill forth blossoms in frothy splendor each spring aren’t the same kind of tree that Mr. Bittner grows (or should I say grew), but they’re truly gorgeous.  And second, there’s nothing better than fresh-picked cherries eaten straight out of hand.  Yum! 

But Mr. Bittner’s 25 acres of sweet cherry trees (some 30 years old) are now piles of sticks along with 20 acres of peach trees.  No, it’s not a blight of any sort, and he’s not getting out of farming.  He now plans to grow crops such as blueberries and tart cherries (the kind used in pies) for the simple reason that these crops “could be harvested by machine and did not require migrant workers.”  You see, like farmers around the country, the New York region’s growers rely heavily on migrant workers from Latin America to work the fields and pick the crops.  Unfortunately, with government crackdowns on illegal immigrants, and a lack of reformed immigration policies, these folks are in short supply.

You may think, OK, a fruit is a fruit, no big deal.   And maybe you prefer blueberries to cherries or peaches.  But here’s the point — U.S. immigration policies are causing farmers and food producers to rethink what they’re planting and sourcing.  It’s incongruous that at a time when locavores and foodies want to buy foods within 100 miles of home, they may find a shrinking diversity of foods available.  As the Times’ article notes, “the shift from labor-intensive crops would accelerate if the uncertainy over migrant labor and immigration policies remain unresolved.” 

This is an issue that not only affects the northeast, but is one of the top ag issues in states like California, as well.  Yet another NYTimes story, (I admit it, this is one of my favorite news sources) from 2006 reported tons of pears that rotted on the ground because there were no workers to pick them.  This was a $10 million loss for growers in California.  And pear growers don’t receive those “government subsidies” we’ve been hearing so much talk of lately.

These stories have caused my little brain to spin in too many directions.  First, our TVs and newspapers are filled with stories about rising food prices and food shortages.  Yet in these examples we have food rotting, going to waste, or not being grown at all.

Second, we’re fostering a nation of obese children.  The nutrition and medical communities tell us we can address the problem by feeding them more fruits and vegetables.  But oops, our immigration polices make it difficult for farmers to hire the necessary workers to plant, grow, tend and harvest these healthy, unprocessed foods.  Fresh cherries would be a great after school snack, but because they can’t be picked mechanically, Mr. Bittner is switching to growing tart cherries for pies and baking.  Mmm, I love my cherry pie (especially a la mode), but I suspect the more nutritious choice would be the fresh sweet cherries.

And finally, farmers have enough factors outside their control (weather, insects, fluctuating market prices) that the last thing they need to worry about is planting a crop they’ll later see rot in the field.  Isn’t it time our government leaders come up with a coherent immigration policy that faces the reality that whatever system we have is not working?  I’ll put on my Pollyanna bonnet once again and say that it seems simple to me: There are groups of people who want to come to this country, work very hard, pay taxes, send their kids to school, and work in our fields to produce healthy and nutritous foods.  What’s wrong with that?  If we can’t find a solution, we may face a shortage of homegrown veggies and fruits.