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.

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.

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.