By Johanna Kolodny

I didn’t find out until the end of Polyface Farm’s Field Day last month that this gathering — set in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Swoope (pronounced Swope), Virginia — was illegal. Polyface owner Joel Salatin, the farmer made famous in Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” was answering a question at the final gathering in the barn when he explained that technically, the farm needed government permits to host a paid event for such a large group. Oh, and they should have gotten the health department involved, because they served lunch. But they didn’t.

It’s not so unusual for Salatin to partake in illegal activities. One need not look further than his most recent book, “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From The Local Food Front.” For him, selling his meat out of a store on his farm (violation of food-safety laws and commercial regulations) or charging us to attend this event (violation of zoning laws — he runs a farm, not a theme park) is just part of everyday life. But I found it exhilarating. I have a clean record, you know.

Salatin explained that he purposefully only advertised through two farming magazines and the farm’s website in order to fly under the radar. Even so, people came from far and wide: from Oregon, Florida, and everywhere in between, plus Canada. Word in the crowd was that one attendee came from as far away as Africa. The final day’s count was 1,650 adults, and there were plenty more children. I’d estimate there were 2,000 people. For all those in attendance, this fun-filled farm day was a pilgrimage to what many might call farming’s Mecca. It was hard not to observe, though, that the majority of the attendees were Caucasian, which I believe speaks to the lack of diversity in both farming and the food movement in this country.

Though it was put on by law-breakers, this was a totally professional event. The day ran like a well-oiled tractor. The day’s schedule was followed precisely; a hundred volunteers — Salatin family members along with former and current apprentices, who stood out from the crowd with their bright red collared shirts — were on hand to answer questions throughout. About a dozen exhibitors, including poultry-processing equipment makers, mushroom cultivators, and representatives from the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, set up shop.

Here’s how the day unfolded: (more…)

I’m a bad, guilty blogger these days. I spent Friday and Saturday of Slow Food Nation just taking it all in — the stupendous design of the Taste Pavilion, that glittering temple to good food constructed of recycled pallets, vegetable bins, and canning-jar lids; the crowded green bounty of the Victory Garden, which shamed me and my scraggly little sunburned backyard plants; the back-to-back panel discussions in airless Herbst Theater through which the fog of self-congratulation occasionally parted to let loose a shaft of genuinely inspiring rhetoric; the homespun Powerpoint presentations of Changemakers Day (I crashed it). On Saturday night, 25 writer/blogger friends and acquaintances from all around the country converged at Essencia, an organic Peruvian restaurant in the Civic Center, for a chaotic, crazy dinner of local halibut ceviche and Argentinian grassfed beef washed down with (mostly) California wine.

In short, I was too busy eating, listening, talking, and walking to blog. And now I am writing this on a plane to England, en route to a sorely needed two-week vacation in Hove (East Sussex, near Brighton), then London (Maida Vale), then York, for which I have barely packed, let alone planned. (I would love UK readers’ recommendations for restaurants, farmers markets, and farms in those areas.)

Yet I’m still thinking about Slow Food Nation. I’ve been to several sustainable food conferences in the past two years — WK Kellogg’s Food and Society (twice), Eco-Farm, the Sustainable Institute at Monterey Bay Aquarium — and SFN stands out in sheer scale and spectacle. Which is not to say I don’t have a few quibbles with it. I agree with Kerry over at Eating Liberally: there should have been more simple fruit and vegetables featured at Taste, given the season — why not a tomato pavilion? or a stone fruit, or a leafy greens one, in addition to the charcuterie and cheese? Pickled vegetables are wonderful, but so are fresh. And while it was heartening to see the ethnic and generational diversity of people touring the Victory Garden and the farmers’ market showcase, I was hard pressed to find a nonwhite face in the grazers at the $65 per ticket Taste Pavilion, except behind the food counters, or at any of the Food for Thought lectures I attended. (more…)

I had intended to do some “man in the garden” interviews while I hung around the Victory Garden watching the crowds come through. But my first set of victims were so interesting I talked to them for the entire half hour I had in between lectures.

Maestra Macuilxochitl, Luz Alvarez-Martinez, and Carlos Ruiz-Martinez turned out to be members of a Native American dance troupe, Danza Xitlalli, invited to perform a blessing of Slow Food Nation. If I understood the soft-spoken Carlos correctly, Xitlalli is an ancient Aztec form of dance whose name means star. They are descended from the Aztecs and related to the Hopis and the Ute tribes.

They wanted me to take their picture in front of the Three Sisters planting of blue corn, pole beans, and giant squash. “This kind of planting is thousands of years old, it comes from our ancestors the Aztecs,” Carlos told me with pride. Not only do the three crops “offer the body complete nutrition,” but they grow well in concert: the corn stalks provide a natural trellis for the beans, while the broad leaves of the squash plants shade the ground and conserve moisture.

“It is so great to see it like this,” he said, “and for the young to be able to see it.”

Carlos led me over to the chest-high stand of amaranth across the path, a plant which I know only as a whole grain I buy occasionally to add to the multigrain porridge I make. “This was very important to our ancestors,” he said. The seeds were used to make figurines that decorated the altars in prayer ceremonies; the Aztecs danced around them and then when the ceremony was complete, they passed around the figurines and ate them. The Spanish conquerors had banned amaranth for many years, he said. “They were trying to get rid of our way of life.”

I could not help but think of how history repeats itself. But now the assault is coming from the dumping of cheap corn on Mexican growers and the spread of genetically modified maize.

Late Saturday afternoon I ran into Taylor Boetticher, who with Toponia Miller are the meat geniuses behind Fatted Calf and the youngest rock stars of the Bay Area’s charcuterie boom. (They still laugh about me calling their duck-liver mousse “sex on toast.”) Fatted Calf had by far the longest queue of the Slow on the Go “slow fast food” booths; people were lined up for practically a full block to get the grilled sausage and peppers on an Acme bun. It was just the right combination of juicy fat and savory sizzle. Taylor said they’d sold about 450 and credited his borrowed “wiener wagon” — a mobile barbecue trailer, whose grill will run on propane, charcoal, or wood, for keeping the line moving. ‘You can really do some numbers on this thing,” he said.

The Fatted Calfers had learned from the previous weekend’s not-so-smooth experience at the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park that serving just one menu item was the only way to go. “We were selling charcuterie plates at a fucking rock concert,” said Taylor. “How crazy is that?”

Slow Food Nation had been incredibly well organized, Taylor praised. “I’m well aware that there are a lot of detractors, but everyone has been great to work with,” he shrugged. “I really like all the use of recycled and biodegradable materials. And I think the Victory Garden is just incredible; I hope it stays. The Victory Garden and Slow on the Go, awesome food in a cool setting that anyone can come to — they’re not just words, not people patting themselves on the back while they drink fine wine. It’s Slow Food in action.”

I asked Taylor if the $8 he was charging for his generously sized Slow on the Go sandwiches was covering the cost of the materials and labor. Fatted Calf was breaking even, he thought, but not making a profit. “Things like this, they run on the backs of a lot of favors. And you can only do that for so long — we’re stretched pretty thin right now,” he said, adding, “But we’re not looking at this as a moneymaking venture. I mean, look at the company we’re in! And we’re feeding people we’d never otherwise reach. They’re excited, they’re happy. It’s cool.”

It’s still Monday on the West Coast, so here, under the wire, is my second annual Labor Day ode to workers in the food system. (The first one is here.) Although I was busy staffing the tap water dispensary for most of Slow Food Nation weekend, I did manage to escape for long enough to attend a panel on agricultural labor. Moderator Eric Schlosser, best known for authoring the meaty exposé Fast Food Nation (I’d also urge everyone to read his more recent book, Reefer Madness, for an incredible look at the lives of strawberry pickers in California), summed it all up as the panel opened: Workers plant seeds, harvest crops, pack them for shipping, prepare food for consumption, and serve or sell it. Without them, we’d be — well, pretty screwed. And yet when it comes to public food consciousness, workers always seem to be eclipsed by issues that consumers find more personally compelling: Nutrition and health concerns, freshness and taste, environmental pollution.

Why are food-system workers so invisible? Perhaps it’s their status: More than 1 million [pdf] of the 3 million U.S. farm workers are undocumented, while an estimated 10 to 15% of all restaurant workers lack papers. By nature, their status requires that they fly under the radar and go unrecognized (and unprotected) by public and legal structures. Or it could be that most workers in the food system are not unionized, so they have no opportunity to demonstrate their collective presence. Or perhaps it’s just another example of the human tendency to think about things that directly affect us — will the pesticides on this apple poison my child? Will the Teflon on this pan screw up my endocrine system? — before we consider the implications for people we don’t know. I can’t judge that tendency; I’m just as guilty of it as the next person. But I can plead that we all start paying more attention to the workers who give us our food.

In that vein, here’s a Labor Day rundown of some of the major victories and ongoing struggles for farm and food workers over the last year. Have more to add? Please share them in the comments. (more…)

If you’ve strolled through your local farmers market lately, you’ve noticed that for most of us around the continent, we’re seeing the peak of harvest season. Farmers pile their tables high with intensely red tomatoes, brilliantly hued hot peppers, earthy potatoes, luscious fruits of multiple varieties, and plenty of vivid green zucchini and beans and other vegetables. Who doesn’t love shopping for produce at this time of year?

Well… it’s not that we don’t love it, really. But for those of us who are experiencing the harvest season firsthand through our Victory Gardens, sometimes even the excitement of the farmers market pales in comparison to the first pickings of a carefully nurtured — perhaps even heirloom — fruit or vegetable.

All of the Ethicurean Victory Gardeners have put a great deal of effort into growing, weeding, harvesting, and even preserving a portion of our many crops this summer. And with the Labor Day holiday approaching, it seemed appropriate to make this month’s Victory Garden update a virtual potluck so that we can share the fruits of our labors with all of you as well as with each other. We may not all be geographic neighbors, but our shared experiences this year have given us a deeper sense of community here at the Ethicurean, and we hope it’s done the same for you.

So tuck that napkin into your collar and grab a fork. We’ve got good food waiting… (more…)

Slow Food Nation, the three-day festival that’s been hyped as the “Woodstock of the food movement” and the “first continental culinary congress,” has begun and is full swing. It encompasses a thriving Victory Garden in front of San Francisco’s City Hall (pictured); a Food for Thought lecture series with speakers such as Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser, and Dan Barber; a Taste Pavilion with curated sections devoted to everything from charcuterie to ice cream; Slow On the Go booths with local restaurants, markets, and artisan purveyors selling “fast food” made from SOLE ingredients; speeches out in the park area; a rock concert; films; and more.

I confess, I was really skeptical that Slow Food USA would be able to pull this off. Back in January, rumors of mass chaos were circulating, some farmers I knew were grumbling at what they were being asked to “donate,” and very few details had been nailed down.

But you know what? Slow Food Nation is really friggin’ cool. They did it. I’ve been blown away by every aspect so far: ordinary folk are learning about composting and growing food, the lectures have been great, everything looks fantastic, there are composting stations and tap water dispensers everywhere (the Ethicurean’s Elanor is in fact womanning one), and the food is of course terrific. If you live in the Bay Area, come on down (but for god’s sake, bike or take BART). It’s hot and the lines are long, but actually both of those are good things. There’s plenty to do and see and eat that you don’t need tickets for.

I’ll be posting updates as I can, in between running back and forth to various lectures and stuffing my face.

Canada is gearing up for a shift in its food system. Two things have happened to spur this possible upcoming shift in Canadians’ buying and eating habits.

First, Maple Leaf Foods, Canada’s largest food processor, has announced that some of their products contain a strain of listeria bacteria. There have been many illnesses and several deaths. My email inbox, which receives updates on all CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) health hazard alerts, has been bombarded with messages about all of the different products that are associated with this outbreak. People are only just now realizing how many brands are manufactured by Maple Leaf Foods, and also how many restaurants use their products; McDonalds and Subway are among them.

Interestingly, Maple Leaf foods is owned not by some greedy billionnaire looking to take over the world, but technically by a bunch of schoolteachers. The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board has a controlling interest in the company, which makes you wonder that anyone associated with education might be careful about where they invest their money. Or maybe not.

Second, the Canadian federal government plans to transfer key parts of food inspection to industry so companies can police themselves. This change would include the elimination of a Canadian Food Inspection Agency program that requires companies to get labels approved for meat and processed fruit and vegetables before they hit store shelves. Since details of these changes have not yet been fully disclosed, due partially to a communications leak and also to the current and ongoing listeriosis outbreak, consumers don’t know if the new plans will work for or against the health of Canadian consumers.

As for the listerioisis, Maple Leaf Foods president Michael McCain has accepted all responsibilty for the outbreak. He posted a video message on YouTube and sent out a press release. Here is an excerpt:

I once again wish to express my deepest personal sympathies to those Canadians who have been affected by this tragedy. While this is the most unfortunate of events possible, I absolutely do not believe that this is a failure of the Canadian food safety system or the regulators. Certainly knowing that there is a desire to assign blame, I want to reiterate that the buck stops right here.

If the buck really were to stop there, Maple Leaf Foods would completey revamp their food processing methods and perhaps consider doing something to change the way all processed foods are handled in Canada. They could also contribute to educating the general public about what is really going on with our food supply. Hopefully this horrible chain of events will cause Maple Leaf Foods and other food businesses to stop trying to have consumers believe that these processed foods are “fresh” and “natural.” Two examples of these marketing ploys are Maple Leaf Foods Prime Naturally and Simply Fresh™ product lines, which I highly doubt are either “natural” or “fresh” — unless you are fairly flexible with the definitions of those terms.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call to Canadians to be more aware of what foods they are buying, eating, and feeding to their children and elders.

More to come as the situation develops…

Crank up the RSS feed! The news is out that Americans are worried about the safety of their food supply.

This astonishing revelation comes to us via the Center for Food Integrity, an organization established just last year in Kansas City, Mo., “to increase consumer trust and confidence in the contemporary U.S. food system.” Needless to say, they have their work cut out for them. To wit: the organization’s Consumer Trust Survey, whose findings were partly released yesterday. Of those Americans surveyed:

• More were worried about the safety of their food than about the war in Iraq or global warming.
• Less than 20 percent strongly agreed with the statement that “government agencies are doing a good job ensuring the safety of the food we eat.”

The organization — whose members are an odd amalgam of industrial farm organizations (eg American Farm Bureau Federation), suppliers (Monsanto), universities (Purdue) and government agencies (Missouri Department of Agriculture) — intends to release the full survey results at its annual meeting in October.

The lack of confidence is hardly surprising when things like today’s announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture of a proposed rule to ban “downer” cattle from the food stream comes only after months of pressure. (Downer cattle are the too-sick-to-stand cattle that the USDA said didn’t exist at packers until the Humane Society caught them on tape. And that the USDA chief then shrugged and said shouldn’t be banned.)

And don’t forget the doubts sown by the Great Pepper Salmonella Poisoning incident this summer, which officials attributed to tomatoes and startled consumers by admitting they couldn’t actually track tomato shipments from import to delivery. The food recalls are too numerous to mention.

I hope that the Center for Food Integrity isn’t just window dressing for industrial ag as usual. It’s mission “to promote dialogue, model best practices, address issues that are important to consumers, and serve as a resource for accurate, balanced information about the U.S. food system” isn’t nearly as heartening as if it aimed actually to produce safe and healthful food that’s also safe for the long-term health of agriculture and the environment.

And having Wal-Mart’s grocery exec Jack Sinclair as a keynote speaker at the center’s upcoming annual meeting isn’t a strong sign that these folks understand or care in the slightest about SOLE food, except perhaps as a marketing ploy. How can you take anything Sinclair says seriously when he contends, “Sustainability goes to the heart of everything we do at Wal-Mart”? Maybe he needs to visit his own stores.

These days, everywhere you look, a new industry or service is marketed as “greening” itself — making it more environmentally conscious by reducing its carbon footprint or assuaging its corporate guilt through any number of steps. Usually that’s considered a good thing.

But an article in this week’s New York Times explains why “greening” in the Florida citrus industry is the last thing we want: this form is caused by a bacterium, Candidatus liberibacter asiaticus, transmitted by the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri), and results in green, lopsided, bitter fruits. (Image at right from the University of Florida, Citrus Research and Education Center.)

It’s a relatively new problem to Florida, appearing only three-and-a-half years ago, but the disease has spread so quickly that some estimate that “virtually all the state’s citrus trees will be infected in 7 to 12 years.” Spraying has not stopped the spread of disease, resistant varieties have not been found, and scientists are having difficulty recreating the pathogen in labs in order to research other potential controls, including resistant hybrids.

Various genetic modifications of orange and grapefruit species are being tried to stave off the bacterium.  (Lemon and lime trees are apparently tolerant of the disease thus far and have not seen a decline.) Though initial tests have shown success, Dr. Jude Grosser of the University of Florida is aware that not everyone would be excited about GMO citrus, though he suggested that “it’ll probably come down to the point where people have to decide whether they want orange juice or not.”

No word on whether or not this bacterium has affected organic crops, or backyard trees surrounded by diverse plants. Planting guava trees nearby seems to protect some trees from greening.

Though the article largely deals with the scientific aspects of dealing with the disease, the economic results seem obvious: expect higher-price citrus fruits and juices as the Florida citrus industry sees a broader spread of the disease, and expect that citrus grown elsewhere will become more prevalent in the supermarket.

Orange you glad to know that? We’re not.

Been feeling a bit queasy about all the contaminated meat peppering the news lately? Put that weary stomach to rest. Yes, children, all is well with the world (or at least the world of ground beef). In yet another illustration of its almost preternatural ability to correctly identify and attack food-safety problems at the source, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued a clarion call: Small and very small meat processing plants need better testing of ground beef. And, reports Food Chemical News today (sorry, subscription only), FSIS has new guidelines to show them how to do things right.

Huh. That’s funny. I was under the impression — mistaken, I’m sure — that the recent beef recalls originated at large processing plants. Very, very large ones. Forgive me. I probably had salmonella at the time or something.

But I digress. Today, FSIS released new E. coli-testing guidelines for small meat processing plants. The guidelines were released at the same time as a lengthy report [pdf, 200 pages] on the testing practices used by meat processing facilities of various sizes. You might think, then, that the report had some light to shine on testing at small-scale plants, problems the new guidelines will help to fix. Ah, but that would be too simple for the crafty FSIS! They chose instead to take a more roundabout route. The report summarized the number of meat processing plants of each size (small and very small operations account for 93% of all U.S. processors) and the amount of meat they process (small and very small operations process roughly 10% of all U.S. beef). It then proceeded to present the results of its survey on E. coli testing procedures without breaking any of the findings out by operation size, leaving us to intuit which ones had the problems. It makes the whole process more exciting, really– a veritable adventure in food-safety mind reading. (more…)

As part of the “How We Eat” series at the Commonwealth Club this month, Slow Food Nation Policy and Communications director Naomi Starkman moderated a thoughtful panel discussion last week about the centralization of the food industry with Michael Dimock, president of Roots of Change; Paul Frankel, managing director of Ecosa Capital; and Don Shaffer, president and CEO, RSF Social Finance.

In the initial discussion about centralization, Frankel raised the important point that centralization is just a tool — it can be used for good or bad purposes. And it can have good or bad effects. The positive impacts for consumers include low prices (it’s important to note that our food system has many costs that do not appear on the price tag); the reverse include nationwide food-safety crises — the 2006 spinach-related E. coli outbreak, in which contaminated spinach from a single field caused suffering and death in 26 states (I mapped it last year).

The panelists agreed that the current focus on maximizing return on investment and seeking high profits is a major problem. When dollars are the primary goal, other things get ignored, such as health, local culture, and flavor. To help correct the elevation of profit above all else, Shaffer called for new thinking about investments; he explained how his company is trying to create alternatives to the equities market, such as setting up investment funds for individual investors that will make loans to worthy enterprises. Institutional investors, venture capitalists, non-profit foundations and so-called “angel” investors have always been involved in financing small businesses, but it is somewhat new to have an investment vehicle where ‘regular people’ can help cause change in the food system while also (ideally) receiving a return on their investment in exchange for sharing some of the risk (I haven’t seen any statistics, but would guess that the food and farming sector is a fairly risky place to invest).

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California’s ongoing drama about permitting raw (unpasteurized) milk to be sold in stores has turned sour once again this week. Just when it looked like proposed legislation palatable to the raw dairy industry — that would allow those that implemented a more holistic food-safety program to opt out of draconian bacterial counts — would flow smoothly through the legislature, some new twists threaten to shut off the tap once again.

Practice round

Here’s the back story. Since October, California raw milk advocates have been engaged in legislative battle over new sanitation requirements for raw dairies. Legislation was enacted in September of 2007 that required raw dairies to meet a much more strict sanitation requirement, based on a bacterial count that was so strict that California raw dairies question whether the new standards can be met. The raw milk community passed the hat to hire a law firm to challenge the bill and a lobbyist to try to get the legislation overturned. The legislative battle has been a surprisingly smooth one for a movement with anti-government tendencies, up until this week.

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By Debra Eschmeyer

The carrots with which we entice our children to perform well have morphed into colossal sugary carrot cupcakes, as highlighted in the Los Angeles Daily News this morning. The article portrays the debate over the appropriate incentives to get children to read as pitting one responsible party against another. Whose job is it to keep our children healthy — government, parents, or public/private institutions such as libraries?

The answer is D: All of the above. We are responsible as a society to give the best possible future to our children. I’m involved with two organizations that work toward that goal. With 30% of our school children overweight, we need programs such as Farm to School to plant lifelong eating habits in our kids, to help them appreciate real food that will nourish their minds and bodies. And as Moira Beery, the California farm-to-school coordinator at Occidental College’s Center for Food & Justice, says, “Pizza parties in and of themselves aren’t bad, but we have to be deliberate about examples we set for kids.”

While the Olympics race on in China, the USDA is holding its own tryouts of sorts right now with listening sessions to discuss the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which affects school lunch programs, WIC, and much more. Groups ranging from children’s health advocates to sustainable agriculture nonprofits are speaking up for universal access to healthy food, higher reimbursement rates tied to meal quality, and mandatory funds to support farm-to-school programs. Sessions in Georgia, Illinois, and Colorado are coming up (see schedule). You can also submit comments on the Act electronically up until October 15. 

The greatest return on investment we can make as a nation is feeding our children nourishing, good, fair, and clean food that will fuel the best bodies and create an environment for better learning, which will in turn build a healthier community and stronger nation.

Go for the gold, America!

Debra Eschmeyer is the marketing & media manager of the National Farm to School Network and the Center for Food & Justice; she also works a fifth-generation family farm in Ohio, where she raises organic heirloom fruits, vegetables, and chickens.

“Paper Bags” by Chris Jordan, www.chrisjordan.com, used with permission

When artist Chris Jordan (right) began the first talk of the 2008 TASTE3 conference, the audience was excited, engaged, and ready to learn. But with his first few slides — paper bags, plastic cups, water bottles — they started squirming a bit, as Jordan showed how everyday individual actions like drinking a bottle of water or buying groceries create nearly inconceivable quantities of waste and environmental damage when considered on a national scale.

For his series “Running the Numbers,” Jordan created digital photo-mosaics that illustrate some unpleasant realities of the industrialized world. Through what must be painstaking digital manipulation, Jordan lays out an endless vista of plastic beverage bottles (2 million used every 5 minutes), builds a maze of plastic cups (1 million used on worldwide airline flights every 6 hours), and grows a forest of brown paper grocery bags (1.4 million used in the U.S. every hour). Although much of his work is about waste, he also looks at other topics like drug abuse, gun violence, and the shredding of the Constitution.

At a distance, he said, our consumption seems OK — we get lots of great things. But dig down a bit to the details, and it looks much worse. Take cell phones, for instance. To build one, we need minerals like coltan. The mining of coltan causes environmental destruction, human exploitation and war, primarily in Africa. Disposing of the over 400,000 phones that are retired each day in the United States is another challenge, as most phones contain toxic materials that can leach into ground water or create toxic chemicals when burned. (A 2001 New York Times Magazine article describes some of the problems around coltan; another New York Times article explains what happens to retired cell phones.)

The reality behind abstract statistics such as “2.3 million Americans currently incarcerated” can be hard to comprehend. Jordan strives to help us truly see these quantities. In other words, he takes inert numbers and invests them with feeling. If the issues have emotional weight, Jordan said, perhaps we will change our behavior.

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