Weekly Earthlinks a day early, as we are headed North to my “farma mater” to see family.

An Upside to Higher Food Prices? Do higher food prices have some benefit for humanity? Do higher food prices spur production, mean more income for farmers and discourage use of food for fuel? Or do they destabilize governments and contribute to ill-health? Enter your opinion on this discussion on the poll from The Economist.

Remember Food Safety when Reusing Plastic Containers: Some tips from the USDA–Do not use plastics such as margarine containers in the microwave. Avoid using garbage bags to store food. Do not re-use plastic drink bottles.

Get the dirt on eco-eating: Know your certification programs. From our friends at American Farmland Trust; a handy list (with links) to many eco-conscious and sustainability-focused certification programs.

Label-Wise, American Savvy About On Par With Global Consumers : An online Nielson survey says that despite the plethora of labels on our food, Americans don’t seem to be all that much savvier about food labeling than their counterparts in the rest of the world.

Celebrity Dog Food: Rachel Ray has released “Nutrish”, her own line of dog food. Don’t miss the satirical response from Gallery of the Absurd. And I thought “Angus” branded dog food was silly!

There’s an interesting discussion going on at one of the leading feminist blogs. It’s about one woman’s frustrations surrounding food choices and feeding her family. In one single post, she touches on enough topics to fill this blog for the next six months: How do you feed your family healthy, tasty, economical and appealing meals that you can afford financially and time-wise? Add to that a desire to make your food choices reflect your values and other concerns such as the desire to eat local, support sustainability and ethical accountability, and it’s enough to make any Mom pull out their hair!

I share these frustrations about food choices. It seems like we have more information at our fingertips than we can process. Add to that the fact that much “information” is actually propaganda and it’s even harder to make intelligent food choices.

I get PO’d by label claims that are confusing, relatively meaningless and designed to take advantage of people’s concerns for their health and desire to be environmentally or socially responsible.

I get frustrated when I talk to my farmer’s market customers who think “eggs from vegetarian fed chickens” means the chickens led a life of total freedom(chickens aren’t vegetarians). I find it equally dismaying to hear people blaming beef or milk for early onset of puberty (studies show the leading causes have nothing to do with either).

Then there’s the whole local versus industrial and traditional versus organic thing. To paraphrase one particularly well-written comment:

In practice, there are some things it is nearly impossible for industrial agriculture to do particularly well. Others fare better. Localizing food production more solves some problems, introduces others; it’s not a panacea. Over all of this also hangs the spectre of energy policy; some of the most productive (at least in some sense) industrial techniques are deeply coupled to assumptions about cheap fossil fuel availability. … local’ is no more a magic word than so-called `organic’, but it has a place in the discussion of how to fix some of the more broken parts of our current agricultural system.

Much of what is in the press or on the web is so slanted toward converting the reader to a point of view, it’s hard to believe anything. And who has the time to do all the research?

My frustrations are exactly why I started blogging here. I find myself on a mission to sort through some of the crap, research and propaganda so other moms, consumers, producers and food industry folks can get a sens of understanding on some very confusing issues.

A post comparing airlines and food safety got me to thinking: In general, is large-scale-produced food more safe than smaller-scale production?

One factor that is often not considered when we evaluate small-scale production food safety is “assessment bias”. If Joe’s 2 bushels of homegrown tomatoes from the farmer’s market are tainted with Salmonella, it is likely to go undetected or reported. Even if people got sick and reported the illness it is unlikely his tomatoes would be identified as the source and even less likely it would make national headlines.

I don’t think we have good statistics on real safety measures of small versus large production. Yet, food safety, especially for meat, ranked above quality and price in a survey of local food purchasers in the upper midwest.

There are some things “small food” has going for it with regard to food safety:

• Accountability. All producers, large and small are accountable. Small producers are usually directly accountable to the consumer. We put our livelihoods on the line each time we sell an inferior or unsafe product.
• Known source (sometimes). I say sometimes here, because many farmer’s markets sell produce obtained at large terminal produce hubs. Here in Texas, that means that unless you know that your market vendor is growing their own, you may be buying jalapenos and tomatoes from the Rio Grande valley or Mexico (one of the sources for the recent salmonella outbreak).
• Direct relationship with consumer. Having to look my customers in the eye when they buy my beef or ask me questions about my production, quality and safety practices is more effective than a whole slew of federal regulations.

On the other hand, “big food” is often under more rigorous scrutiny and regulation to ensure food safety. Many types of food have mandatory testing not requred for small and local producers. Many of the regulations and production practices in use were put in place to ensure food safety. Small producers often do not have food safety training or food safety plans.

So, don’t presume that local = safe. Ask questions of your local producer about productions practices, food safety, etc. Ask about sources for produce, handling and refrigeration practices for meat and eggs. When purchasing from a small producer it is up to you to be your own “food safety authority”.

The Troublemaker Mom: From Science Women. I’ve sooo been there, and it seems particularly hard for moms in the hard sciences where there’s not much room for the warm-and-fuzzies integral to parenthood.

The chocolate genome: Mars (the confection company, not the planet) is investing $10 million to help sequence the genome of the cacoa tree (from which we get cocoa). The project is in conjunction with the USDA.

Food and Environmental Justice named as a Church issue: In support of core prinicples regarding the environment and human rights, the Unitarian Universalists (of which Thomas Jefferson and Susan B. Anthony were members), have name Ethical Eating as a primary issue of study and action for the next four years.

Ranch Wife Guide 101: From Chewing the Cud. Funny tips on how to maintain your ranch AND your marriage. Hmmm… but maybe my husband would say I’m the “he” referred to in this post?

Number of women farmers growing: Some insights about women farmers and ranchers in the West, for Suzanne, who asked about it in this post about women farmers in the Northeast.

I love it when I find something that makes my job easier!

There is a new site that addresses many of the issues, myths and misconceptions about animal agriculture. Here’s a sample:

MYTH	Farming in the U.S. is controlled by large corporations, which care about profits and not about animal welfare.
FACT	There are 2.1 million farms in the U.S., and according to a May 2006 report on the structure and finances of U.S. Farms, exactly the same numbers counted by the 1997 Census of Agriculture. The 2006 report found that the vast majority of America?s farms (98%) are family-farms. The study also discovered that 61% of all farms did not participate in any farm program in 2003. This finding clearly indicates that only a minority of farmers receive agricultural subsidies. For more information on the report, click here.

I’ve added the Animal Agriculture Alliance to our blog roll for future reference

There is a post on What to Eat discussing a suite of lawsuits between a meat packing company and a church regarding responsibility for sickening people who ate meatballs at a church fundraiser.

I raise beef to sell at local farmer’s markets. Concern about food safety is one of the reasons my customers buy my beef. Even though my beef is 100% pasture-raised, any beef can still contain e-coli (and even the 0157 strain), because it is present in most environments to some degree. Is my beef safer? Maybe.

There are several reasons we have more ground beef recalls now than in the “good old days” that have nothing to do with whether the animal is grain or grass-fed;

1) we have better surveillance and identification systems. Tainted beef is sometimes identified by random testing and illnesses can be definitively determined to be caused by specific strains associated with ground beef.

2) beef is often ground before it hits the grocery store, giving the organisms time to spread through the product. In the “old days” when grocery stores employed butchers, ground beef was often or usually ground at the store, giving less time for the organisms on the surface of relatively large cuts of beef to be mixed throughout the product.

3) the grind is a mix of several or many animals, sometimes from different processing batches or sources. This increases the chance that one animal carried a pathogen. [theoretically, this would result in diluting the contaminant as well, but the bugs can multiply pretty quickly].

So what’s the bottom line for local beef?

On the plus side for food safety; Local ground beef usually comes from a single animal and is typically ground and frozen within 24 hours of when the beef is processed into individual cuts. It also usually stays frozen until it is purchased. In most localities, beef for resale must be processed under the supervision of a state-licensed inspector, similar to inspectors at larger plants. There is also direct (or at least more direct) accountability between the producer and the customer.

BUT, local producers/vendors are not required to (and usually don’t) have an approved or professional food safety plan. Locally processed beef does not undergo random testing for contamination. Food safety regulations for storing and selling beef vary greatly by location–from the ridiculously restrictive to absent. In our own case, we are concerned enough to monitor our freezers daily and to sell from freezers rather than coolers. We also eat beef from each animal before we sell it.

Nevertheless, there are no guarantees. You can provide the best insurance on ground beef safety. Cooking to 160 degrees, being aware of (and not consuming) beef that smells off or is past the “use by” date, keeping meat preparation areas and utensils separate from other utensils and areas (especially serving) and proper hand-washing before and after handling raw meat are your best assurances of safe ground beef. The American Meat Institute has a handy site for safe handling of all types of meat.

I believe that our meat supply is currently safer than it was 40 or 50 years ago, whether you buy your meat locally produced or at the grocery store.

10 Tips for Homemade Ice Cream Success: From Serious Eats. What would the 4th of July be without icecream? And I staunchly maintain that if you make it yourself, you can consider it a “local food”!

The Small Screen With a Big Impact: from Blogher. Some scary statistics. The average child in the US sees 15,000 commercials annually that promote candy, highly sweetened and processed food and fast food. One more reason to get the kids off their duff and out into the garden!

Best and Safest Sunscreens: Just in time for the long weekend, Environmental Working Group has released a comprehensive review of sunscreens based on UVA and UVB protection, as well as presence or absence of harmful chemicals.

Cow Fat Motor Oil: from EcoGeek. Another cool green-geek find from one of my favorite sites. This motor oil is made from animal fat, biodegrades sufficiently that it can be safely poured on the ground and is non-toxic!

Common livestock production practices coming under fire. from Advocates for Agriculture. Procedures such as castration are coming under fire as being “mutilations”. Being a big proponent of preventing unwanted pregnancies (in any species), this seems like a slippery slope to me.

WIC-ensuring buying power through prohibiting organic: From US Food Policy. There’s no arguing that organic foods are generally higher priced. The Michigan WIC program has placed limits on foods in an effort to increase the nutritive buying power of food stamps. Along with many convenience items, organics are specifically prohibited on many foods.

Nourishing Frugal Food: found via the Nourished Kitchen . The Nourishing Gourmet is having a frugal food festival. July 11th is main dishes and July 18th is sides and salads. Hmm, I’ll have to post a recipe from here to contribute. With two growing boys, I sure know about stretching the grocery dollar!

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.

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”?

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.