changes in food prices since 1978

Notice a pattern?

the fat tax

I thought I'd post my thoughts on the idea since people are suddenly talking about it again. In my opinion, otherwise reasonable people get a little obtuse when you use the word "tax." The tax isn't about "punishment," and it's not the government trying to tell you what you can and can't eat. You can still buy cigarettes and booze!

It's about steering behavior to more healthful eating, the idea being that while people buy cokes and twinkies because they love them, the fact that they're super cheap is also part of the equation for many people. This is especially true of a lot of the stuff you find in the middle of the grocery store, the box dinners and such that feed 4 people for $1.99. So the theory goes, if the price differential between crap and produce were lessened, the balance between these foods in people's diets would also shift.

And before we get all anecdotal about all the fat people you know that will still buy twinkies, consider this: in the case of tobacco use, cigarette companies have admitted (.pdf) that higher taxes are a major curb on use among both teens and adults.

Still, if the fundamental problem is the low price of bad food compared to good food, a better idea than disincentivizing soft drinks via a new and unpopular tax would be to deal with the cause of rock-bottom coke prices in the first place: the corn subsidy. Much of the trouble with the American diet can be traced back to the overproduction of corn and soybeans, from which stem the low prices of everything from soft drinks and twinkies to french fries, boxed dinners, and ground beef. These crops are overproduced because the lion's share of farm subsidies are earmarked specifically for those growing corn and soybeans. Moreover, the subsidy is based on how much you grow, meaning farmers are encouraged to produce as much as they can even when the price of corn has bottomed out.

If the government wanted to encourage more healthful eating, the single best thing it could do would be to change corn and soybean subsidies to fresh produce subsidies.

Joel Salatin in Michiana

For those of you who are local and hip to The Omnivore's Dilemma, Joel Salatin will be at the Goshen Theater on Tuesday.

sustainable living: viva Chipotle!

A coda to the last sustainable living segment: here is some very good news for local growers and pastured meat enthusiasts: the burrito chain Chipotle is experimenting with switching to local, pastured pork. Chipotle also happens to be pretty easy on the taste buds, so this is especially good to hear. One more excuse to go out for dinner!

sustainable living: going grass fed

They're very excited to be here.
(picture c/o Natural Wellness)

As I mentioned in my post on the farmer's market, one of the things we found in Elkhart last weekend was a booth selling pastured, or "grass fed" beef, pork, and poultry. I was also pointedly reminded that Sap did not eat 3 different things to my 1, that I had neglected to mention the apple fritter that tided me over while she had her quiche, but that's beside the point. Pastured meat is obviously the original way to raise livestock, but it's rarely done these days because, frankly, the game has been rigged against it and in favor of industrial feedlots. FDA protocols and regulations originally intended to protect the food supply have been retooled by industry lobbyists and political cronies to make industrial feedlots more cost-effective and make slaughtering meat so horrifically expensive than only the CAFOs can afford the facilities to do it.

The reason I still wanted to search out pastured meat, however, is in its health benefits for myself and the land. Grass finished beef-- that is, from cows that weren't just reared in the pasture but actually spent their entire lives in it-- has half the overall fat of skinless chicken breast, and yet is significantly higher in omega 3's (that's the "good" fats that come from fish and walnuts), almost as high as some fish, in fact, and it lacks the growth hormones and antibiotics of its industrially-produced counterparts.

(c/o Fair Oaks Ranch)

Despite the lack of antibiotics, pastured beef is also cleaner than CAFO beef in terms of food-borne diseases (spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease," for instance, is a product of CAFO cows being fed beef fat. And yes, most of them are fed it).

There's also my concern about CAFO's from an ethical standpoint. I eat meat, and animals are killed to feed me, and I'm okay with that. I'm comfortable with my omnivorous nature. What makes me less comfortable, however, is stacking animals in a giant, smelly building so close to each other that they can't even turn around, standing directly over a giant lagoon filled with their own festering shit and being fed a food they weren't biologically designed to eat that makes them sick (generally a mix of corn, soy, growth hormones and beef fat-- remember, cows are ruminants, meaning they're strictly grass-ivores). The unhealthy food and unsanitary conditions means they have to be pumped full of antibiotics while the lack of space to move necessitates the hormones. The cattle are slaughtered mechanically or via low-wage labor, often still alive when they start to get chopped up, and are dressed so lackadaisically that frequently the intestines are punctured or burst in the process, covering the meat in its own shit. And yes, some of that does shit does get shipped in the chuck; where do you think e. coli comes from? Pigs live in similar conditions, while chickens have it even worse: chickens are kept in quarters so cramped that they go mad and start trying to peck their neighbors, and themselves, to death. Consequently, industrially-raised chickens have their beaks removed, and often sport open wounds on that spot.

Meanwhile, the prodigious amounts of feces produced by these feedlots can't be broken down by nature because it's too concentrated and has to be sequestered in artificial, sealed lagoons or sprayed over farmland from shit sprinklers, whence in either case it eventually drains into the water supply, taking its diseases and bacteria hormones and antibiotics with it.

I still eat industrial meat, however, because like many people I'm appalled by the ethical and health-related implications of CAFO's, but not enough so to stop eating meat. That has historically been my only option since, like a mere 99% of Americans, we shop for our food at the grocery store, and I've never even heard of a grocery store that sells pastured meat. The farmer's market finally offers a chance to indulge my carnivorous cravings more safely and healthfully.

So to test it out, I bought a package of frozen hamburger meat, which cost me about $3.50. It's expensive for hamburger meat, no question. It's wrapped in simple white paper stamped with a meat inspector's stamp, and when I opened it, I found that the meat was noticeably darker than store-bought beef. It also has an odd odor to it, not an unpleasant one, perhaps reminiscent of buffalo meat (probably because buffalo tends to be pastured, too). It's a damn lean meat; I had a hell of a time flattening it into patties with breaking pieces off, and very little fat drained from this meat when I cooked it, especially when compared to store-bought hamburger. That odd odor was reflected in the flavor as well. With other high quality meats, like free-range chicken, for instance, it usually tastes a little better than regular chicken, but it's a subtle difference. If someone gave you a cooked chicken breast and told you to identify whether it's free range, you'd probably be hard-pressed to give the right answer. There would be no such difficulty telling this meat from regular beef, though. It's almost a sweeter meat, less savory, which makes sense if you think about the strong, slightly sweet flavor of grass and clover, especially compared to corn. I'm not sure if I'd say it tastes better than store-bought beef, but if I got used to this I'd probably have a hard time going back.

And I do intend to get used to it. I bought my second pound on Saturday.

video of CAFO workers abusing sick cattle

More videos like this. People need to see this stuff to understand what is wrong with CAFO's and the way we deal with the animals that feed us. It doesn't have to be this way.

Nothing disinfects like air and sunlight.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

From the NYT:

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles tracked the eating habits of 602 area women taking part in the federal W.I.C. program. Some of the women were given $10 in weekly vouchers for vegetable and fruit purchases at a nearby farmers’ market or supermarket, while a control group received coupons for non-food products in exchange for sharing information about eating habits.

After six months, women who shopped at the farmers’ markets were eating about three additional servings of fruits and vegetables a day, compared to the control group. Supermarket shoppers consumed 1.5 extra servings.

Amazing what direct interaction with farmers and actual fresh produce (not the stuff that's shipped across the country, waxed for sheen, and sprayed with water to mimic dew) will do to people's buying habits.

And speaking of diet and buying habits, Michael Pollan has a new one out: In Defense of Food. He argues for moving away from the center of the grocery store and toward the periphery and buying more locally grown food.

Locally grown food: it's just better.

And Adam Stein is a foolish contrarian working for right-wing hacks, writing articles that curiously resemble his diet (waxed to a shine but lacking in substance) and still fighting the War on Hippies 30 years after the last one rejoined society. Why is he agin' locally grown food?

Answer: because the Deadheads in his head are for it. What a sad existence.

He's also, apparently, suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. After deriding Chris Dodd for being a "northeastern liberal" who he expected to solve poverty by handing out rebates on iPhones, Stein tells us about his grocery trip:

Marcona almonds from Spain that were so much softer, sweeter and nuttier than any I can get here; Greek olives; Brie from France; smoked salmon from Scotland. I thought about getting a rack of lamb from New Zealand, but I couldn't resist asking the guy behind the seafood counter for the fish with the most frequent-flyer miles. I was going to get the opah from Fiji, but then I spotted the Chilean sea bass from South Georgia island, southeast of Argentina -- more than 7,000 miles of travel just to get eaten for a magazine article ... I added some asparagus from Peru to my shopping cart and, for dessert, threw in a pineapple from Hawaii (which was cheating, it turned out, at just 2,500 miles, but it looked so good and my sense of geography is so bad) and a young coconut from Thailand.

Yeah, 'cuz you're clearly a real salt-o'-the-earth kinda guy. Remember to wash the axle grease from your hands before preparing your brie and Chilean sea bass.

Chicago Trib goes to bat for Big Ag

From Chicago's conservative rag:

Because of a little-noticed legislative change buried deep within the 2007 farm bill approved in July by the House, only state inspections would be required for some meat products.

The measure was planted in the farm bill by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), according to congressional staffers familiar with the bill. It would be a boon to small meat processing companies whose products must remain in the state of origin because they lack a federal inspection stamp.
...
The debate over the state inspections is unfolding during the recall of 21.7 million pounds of hamburger produced by Topps Meat Co. of Elizabeth, N.J., because of E. coli contamination.
...
Other large beef recalls include a 2002 action by Con Agra, which recalled 19 million pounds of ground beef because of E. coli, and a 1997 recall of 25 million pounds of beef made by Hudson Foods.
...
Topps is a large-enough meat processor to require the presence of one of the USDA's 6,500 meat inspectors in its plant. But many companies aren't that big. The requirement for a USDA inspection and stamp on meat that will be sold interstate hampers sales for smaller meat processors, according to beef industry advocates.

Shorter Trib: Big meat packing companies with federal inspectors on site abuse the public trust by using such skeezy practices that we have to recall 20 million lbs. of meat every year. Therefore, smaller companies should continue to be shut out of the market.

The agricultural market (in meat, especially) is not a capitalistic system; it's been rigged against smaller companies, farmers, and ranchers by decades of unfair regulation aimed solely at preserving their oligopolies. Smaller meat packers can't get their meat federally inspected because the inspectors won't give you the time of day unless you have a million dollar operation, yet they're blocked by federal regulation from moving their meat to more lucrative markets across state lines and thus making the kind of money it takes to get the inspectors. And that's only the beginning.

Michael Pollan writes in The Omnivore's Dilemma that one organic farmer he talked to in Pennsylvania was told that, if they wanted a single inspector for his operation, he would have to change to a purely indoor facility, even though the meat from his outdoor one always tested lower rates of E. coli than of the federally inspected facilities (at first that sounds weird, but when you think about it, an enclosed slaughterhouse is actually a cesspool, even if you could totally clean it regularly). He would also have to build the inspector his own bathroom, among other absurdities.

Yet despite this incredible burden on small companies, and the presence on site of federal meat inspectors at the big companies, how much safer is your meat compared to even 10 years ago (or at last year's rate, 2,500,000,000 lbs. of recalled meat ago)?

I can say this: when my parents were my age, they could eat rare steak without losing a wink of sleep over it. E. coli was virtually unheard of.

I think it's safe to say that the small-time companies aren't the problem.

Our food system is plagued by a whole myriad of deformities, most of them stemming from the monopolistic, exploitative, and negligent behavior of Big Foods, of companies like Topps and Conagra. It's long past time to start breaking down the old system and moving toward a more localized, sustainable way of producing food.

all asshat, no cattle

From The International Herald Tribune (h/t Rick Perlstein at .common sense):

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. - A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was scheduled to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal, effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge has played out.

Note: it doesn't say Bush is fighting to keep meatpackers from having to test their animals for mad cow, which is how I read it at first. No no, it says he's actually trying to prevent them from being able to test them all.

This would bring corporate welfare to a new low, but the agricultural industry has been in this rut for years, where small ranchers/farmers/packers are forcibly denied their right to produce a better product so that the big dawgs won't be forced to raise their standards. How, exactly, is this capitalism?

These are the kind of people that many are starting to refer to as "E. coli conservatives," that is, people who have developed their economics around their desire to protect big business. For the E. coli conservative, the protection of big business is not the by-product of laissez-faire economics; rather, laissez-faire economics is the by-product of protecting big business. When the two come in conflict (and that happens more often than one might expect), it's the economics that goes out the window, not the protectionism. These are the people who support corporate welfare, which is designed to preclude competition and is, thus, the very antithesis of free market economics, but even that is not what gives them their name. The term comes from their willingness to endanger other people's health and lives for the sake of big business' bottom line, most egregiously illustrated by the support of a lazy, dangerous, and exploitive livestock-raising and meatpacking system that has led to the pervasive presence, in beef especially, of the eponymous bacteria previously found only in the animals' excrement. This is why it's no longer safe to eat rare steak.

Perlstein has some choice morsels for this one:

First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they're even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to - voluntarily! - hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

There's your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

Michael Pollan on the impending Farm Bill

It sounds so boring to us non-rural folk, but the farm bill that comes around every 5 years is one of the most important (and most completely broken) bills that Congress deals with. It's more rightly called the Food Bill, as it affects not just farmers but all consumers in innumerable ways, and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, wrote an article about it in The New York Times. I strongly suggest you check it out.