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!

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 was jazzed to see profiles and a photo spread of women farmers in last Sunday’s NY Times Sunday Magazine. According to the piece, even though the number of farms has decreased, there are 80 percent more women farmers today than there were 20 years ago in the United States. In the Northeast alone, women run some 20,000 farms.

And the point of the article (which, BTW, appears in “The Way We Eat” section)? That women “are forging new bonds between field and table, strengthening the connection between things we love to eat and the stewardship that makes them possible.”

How true. Down to Earth blog is part of this.

I must admit, though, that I experienced a moment of indignation when I saw that the piece focused exclusively on farms, and only those in the Northeast. What about the rest of the country? WHAT ABOUT RANCHERS? Sara soooo should have been included! Perhaps she can help fill in some of the holes in the article. Sara, has there been a surge in women ranchers “forging new bonds between [our great plains] and table”?

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

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!

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.

Our recent discussion on “What should we eat and how should it be produced raised the very good point that as we talk about sustainability and food safety, we need to think about the safety of those working on the farm.

I found this through the Eat.Drink.Better blog: Olivia Tamayo made history last week when she became the first female migrant worker to successfully bring a sexual harassment suit against her employer to a federal jury. Last week, a federal court upheld a decision that Harris Farms was guilty of sexual harassment and discrimination, finding that Harris Farms inappropriately responded after Ms. Tamayo was raped three times by her direct supervisor. [rape is sexual harassment?]

An Op-ed piece in the LA Times reports that this is the first case. Hers is the only suit brought by a female farmworker to reach a federal jury. They raise the valid question of how many more cases have not been prosecuted.

In fairness to our nation’s farmers and ranchers, the workers at farms and ranches I know and have visited are treated as well as they would be in any other jobs. Often, immigrant workers have employment for several members of their extended family. Many have good long-term relationships with their employers.

How sad it is that we often give more thought about how our food choices affect the welfare of the environment or the welfare of animals, than the safety or welfare of those who participated in the production. When people have issues about how our food is produced, it is seems most often directed against animal production or corn and other grains. Our food system for fresh produce is built on the backs of migrant workers. Their plight gets relatively little attention in the mainstream media.

We have animal welfare labeling program for our meat, egg and milk products to help us choose food from companies that have pledged to abide by certain standards. We have “Fair Trade” labels for imported goods. How many of you have heard of, or seek out the United Farm Workers label?

Oh yeah, like I’m going to be able to address that in a single blog post….

When you get down to it, what we eat and how it is produced is the Meta-issue of this blog. Our questions about food safety, technology, health, environment, food prices and availability, environmental impact, etc. all end up being answered by the choices we make as consumers (what we buy), and as producers (how we grow it).

So much of what I read is narrowly focused on a single problem or single solution. In a larger context there is an entire web of cause and effect around each of these single issues. We have a food system that cannot be separated from our economic, environmental, political and ethical/religious systems.

If we were to design a food system from scratch, what would it look like? Let’s start by creating a wish list. Please give us your opinions about what should be on our list, and in what order of importance.

• Safe: By most accounts we have the safest food supply in the world, in terms of food-borne illnesses. How do changes in how our food is produced affect safety (i.e. locally produced without USDA oversight, non-pastuerized milk, intensive/monoculture vs. extensive/mixed systems).
• Affordable: Americans spend less of their disposable income on food than almost any other country. Can we/should we be willing to pay higher prices in order to achieve some of our other food goals? What about the impact on those with lower incomes?
• Nutritious: The basic purpose of food is to nourish us. In reality, flavor, convenience and price probably play a larger role in our choices.
• Sustainable: We need to produce our food in a way that doesn’t rob Peter to pay Paul. Can we be truly sustainable without decreasing our food supply and having devastating effects on some of the other issues here?
• Environmentally responsible: Notice the avoidance of the term “friendly” here. If we really were going to be environmentally friendly, we’d choose not to perpetuate our species. Given that we choose to exists, how can we care for the earth and still meet our food needs?
• Practical: It’s common knowledge that fresh is best, but let’s face it, most of us ‘give’ on other issues for convenience. I bet most people wouldn’t put “easy” high on the list of food priorities, but voting with their dollars shows otherwise.
• Ethical: Food issues are tied at a gut level to our belief system. Don’t try to talk an ethically-motivated vegan out of their position through scientific arguments. What is “ethical” in food production? Do we hold our food production system to a higher ethical standard than we do our other consumer goods (sweat shops in India for textiles, environmental impact of steel/plastic/transportation)?
• Feasible: I”m a big local food supporter, but realize that a totally local food system is not currently feasible in many areas of the country. Many of the production methods I use myself on my own ranch are difficult (impossible?) to implement on a national scale.

What did I miss? How do these rank in importance relative to each other?

I’d like to share an e-mail I recently received from one of my (former) beef customers. By way of background, I co-founded the company in Austin that is one of the leaders in livestock cloning. I make my primary living now from raising registered cattle and selling pastured beef through local outlets, primarily Farmer’s Markets. I have been in partnership on cloning a couple of cows; I don’t own the clones, but do have future rights to some embryos produced by them.

Dear Sarah,

As my husband and I can understand your choice on cloned animals, we can not in good conscience choose to eat it as you choose not to tell your clientele unless they ask. We have therefore found a ranch that has no clones of any kind and does not believe in the marketing or selling of this type of animal. While we appreciate your honestly with us, with a heavy heart we ask to please be removed off your email list.

Dear _____

Thank you for your e-mail; I appreciate your sentiments and your integrity in being upfront with us. I applaud you and your husband in sticking by your convictions and will certainly remove you from our mailing list.

I would like to make clear, however, that we will not be selling beef from the offspring of clones through Wild Type Ranch Beef. I understand my clientele and respect that part of the reason we have such loyal clients is that they trust the us to produce beef in a way that they can know and understand.

I happen to personally believe in the technology, and in the data that the FDA used in reaching its decision. At this point in time, there is no chance that beef from a clone or the offspring of a clone will be sold as Wild Type Ranch Beef. If this does occur, it will be with full disclosure and complete transparency.

Best regards,
Sara

Why, if I believe in the technology and the safety of meat produced with it, am I stating that it isn’t being sold as our beef? There are a number of reasons, but the first being that even though I was one of the “early adopters”, there won’t even be a chance that we could harvest beef from the offspring of clones until mid-2010.

Here’s why: The cloned cows were born in fall of 2006. The first one will calve this fall, then she will be used as a “donor cow” to produce embryos that other cows will carry. Called “Embryo Transfer” or ET, this is a common practice in registered cattle production (over 10% of registered Angus cattle are produced by ET). The ET sons and daughters of the cloned cow will be born at the end of the year 2009. They will be of such high genetic worth, that they will be targeted as breeding stock. Still, we cull about 10% of our top animals, so there is a slim chance one of them could end up as beef. If it does, it would be ready to harvest sometime around mid-to-late 2010. More likely, the genetics from the cows I was involved in cloning won’t affect the beef supply until her sons are used as bulls and their calves get harvested as beef. Meaning, they will be grand-offspring of the cloned cow and will hit the market sometime around the middle of 2012.

And what will happen if/when I harvest beef that can trace part of it’s pedigree to a cloned cow or bull? I won’t feel any need sneak it into my beef supply, nor would I out of respect for the wishes of my customers. On the contrary, I expect I’ll advertise it widely, as I expect it will be some of the best we’ve ever produced.

I’ve been meaning to post something about our ranch and my background. In the meantime, an article came out in this week’s Texas Country World newspaper that gives a glimpse of both: “Good Management Yields Tastier Beef”

Although it is a really nice article, it is a good example of how misinformation gets into the media. Sticking to his principles of independent journalism, the reporter declined my request to check the article for accuracy before it was printed. Even with his positive outlook on our ranch and the best intentions, there are a number of bits that are wrong: We raise Red Angus, not Red Brangus; most of our cattle grade Choice, not Prime. Although neither of these are likely to sink our beef business, they do have potential to do some harm, since we pride ourselves on the purity of the Angus beef we sell and the integrity of the claims we make about our beef.

I see this type of thing (or much worse) almost daily in my newswatch of technology coverage. One of the things we are trying to do here at Down to Earth Blog is to clear up the fog and address some of the urban myths that are perpetuated. Sometime, I’ll tell you the REAL story of Dolly the Sheep….