Beware Of The Marketers

[ddmcwhirter]

When they found that one cow in the US or Canada with prion disease, my HEB buddy was getting calls constantly from HEB's owner. My buddy and I are at the bar after work and my buddy is constantly talking to USDA honchos who are trying to track down sources of infected cattle and the cattle's progeny.

[ddmcwhirter]

I had to chop several bunches of celery for a big potato salad. Dang, there's dirt collected down in the base of the bunch. Now, what if that had been "organic" celery? That there dirt would be manure? Yuck!

[ddmcwhirter]

He also recommended soaking your salad fixins (before chopping) with a little bleach for some time before rinsing. I don't recall how much bleach...just a little. I didn't care at the time, I had no fear and never got sick...just chopped that head of lettuce and ate.

[ddmcwhirter]

Remember the contaminated tomato scare? I think it was salmonella. My old buddy, retired from HEB Grocery, told me they discovered the tomatoes are washed under pressure so that, if the wash was contaminated with germs, the germs could be pushed through the skin. So at home, you wash again, make a fine salad, and could still get sick.

[Bkhuna]

One more correction; Charlatan, not Gwyneth.

[Willard]

Where did you get it?

[EdF]

As an aside, I've had Scottish farmed salmon that rivals the wild catch. Worth trying if you get a chance.

[new2smoking]

Red Man, I agree with most of your observations. Re: farmed or wild salmon, however, my thoughts have evolved. Yes, nothing in the world tastes better than Alaskan line caught Chinook (King salmon). However, just like the world can't feed itself by hunting wild animals and foraging for wild grains and roots, so can't the world consume fish only by catching wild seafood. We'll completely strip the oceans (and have been close in many instances.) So, I have resigned myself to also enjoying farmed seafood, and hope that we can improve 'best practices' so as to avoid problems like the recent broken pens in WA. (Sorry for the delayed response, we were out of country for a while.)

[Willy]

Murdy I am most definitely not suggesting we just "throw up our hands". There are indeed issues with "Big Ag" and I mentioned some of them elsewhere herein. They include fertilizer run-off (water contamination), mono-cropping (leading to increased pesticide use), and antibiotic overuse among them I don't think there are issues with the food produced by Big Ag as regards nutrition or safety. Smart people, people in positions to make changes, are aware of and working on all of these issues, none of which have simple, economical answers. I want to emphasize the economic issue. Conventional agriculture has succeeded because it produces an economical product. Its excesses have become apparent and they are being addressed--GMOs are likely to be an important part of solving some of the problems.

I will say that the controversy between conventional and organic agriculture isn't really an issue, imo, that is of any consequential concern. I think it's all but irrelevant. Both systems produce nutritious food that is safe to eat. As consumers, we can vote with our dollars if we do have concerns. That and growing some of own food are about the only important impacts individuals can make.

The human condition is fraught with problems everywhere one turns--rather than provide a partial list, I'll leave up to people to think of their own issues. We must just keep doing what we've done for millennia--moving forward and solving problems as they arise--hopefully on a stomach full of tasty food.

[Willard]

Just read this. Something to chew on...
https://www.npr.org/706004242

[ComfortablyNumb]

I just finished watching the documentary 'Genetic Chile'. If you can I suggest giving it a view.

[ComfortablyNumb]

I just finished watching the documentary 'Farmageddon' on Amazon Prime. I encourage all to give it a view.

[Red Man]

This has been a very interesting discussion. I’m no expert and have read few studies on the subject...mostly because I don’t really trust the studies so I don’t bother wasting my time. I like the reference ComfortablyNumb made to soylent green. I feel that we can’t just blindly accept that food enhanced in a lab will be good for us. Maybe our bodies won’t be able to process the nutrients in them, even if they have no long term health risks. I know the term natural on labeling is completely unregulated, but I would prefer that the majority of what I eat has not been “enhanced” in a lab.

I don’t really agree with the comments Meathead made about refusing to buy products labeled as natural or organic or cage free. I buy Costco maple syrup. It’s not fantastic, but it’s reasonably priced and it’s pure maple syrup. It’s labeled as organic. I like other syrup more, and buy it occasionally, but it’s way more expensive. I buy chicken that’s labeled free range because it’s also air chilled and raised without antibiotics. My other option is labeled as “southern chicken”. It’s cheap and doesn’t taste good.

I do refrigeration work and work on many farms and food processing plants. I buy my bacon, hams, sausage, etc from a local company whose refrigeration I work on. I’ve been in the plant. I’ve seen how they produce the food. It’s a high quality product and I trust them. Same for a lot of fruits and vegetables. I like to support local farms when possible and the product is superior. Most produce is better when local because it was picked when ripe, not picked early to ripen in transit. I do buy bananas year round. No bananas are grown any where near me. They taste fine. I’ve had bananas in the Caribbean where they were picked ripe and can hardly be compared to the bananas I get here.

I guess what I'm getting at is, I like to buy organic, natural, cage free, etc sometimes. I also like to buy things without those labels sometimes. I don’t like to buy things like Tyson chicken strips, farmed salmon, cheap pork, chicken, and beef sausages. I look for products that are made or produced with quality and care. Sometimes they have misleading labels and sometimes they don’t.

[ComfortablyNumb]

Murdy Well, if I were to suggest anything, it would be to throw up our hands and accept we live in a broken system, one broken by mankind and unsolvable by mankind. All we can do is to muddle through it as best we can until the day we die. The only hope for a solution would depend on your point of view, if it is Intelligent Design, the Creator will step in and fix it, if it is Evolution, hope the next step in the process will be capable of fixing it.

Personally, the key points from the SA article was first praising organic methods such as avoiding monocropping and crop rotations (although not totally true, I have neighbours who grow only organic garlic and have on the same plot of ground for over 15 years) and soil building. However that was tempered at the end with the criticism of it 'all or nothing'. The proposal 'the ideal future will merge conventional and organic methods' might be a step in the right direction.

However, it is NOT impractical to grow your own food or purchase from a local farmer. Actually, it was the only way for centuries. This probably comes as a surprise to many young people today, but we didn't always have a Walmart in every town, or an internet that could deliver food from all over the world, not to mention the trucks, airplanes, and refrigeration needed to accomplish that. People ate fresh, local food in season, then preserved for the rest of the year. Sure there were some staples that were traded, but their main diet was local. Now it may UNDESIRABLE, especially if you live in North America and want bananas, or Ethiopian food without traveling to Ethiopia, but not impractical.

In Utopia we would focus on the best farming practices and not let politics and greed be influential. We'd dispatch the 'us versus them' mentality and work in harmony, not just among each other, but with the environment as a whole. But we live on Earth.

[Murdy]

The stricter oversight comment was more a question than a proposal. It seems to me that you are suggesting that we simply should throw up our hands and accept the Big Ag status quo. Organic is flawed (a proposition with which I agree) and the only safe alternative is impractical (limiting all purchases to a local farmer you know and trust). Whether it be stricter oversight or some other changes, I would not be willing to abandon the organic movement at this early stage.

I read Pollan's book too, and the part I think relevant is big ag lobbying over the food pyramid and (I believe it was in Pollan's book) the lobbying around the Generally Recognized as Safe designation to food additives. There's a lot of industry interference in attempts to ensure what we consume is safe taken in the name of profit, and those folks don't have our best interests at heart. There's plenty wrong with the conventional food chain. It is efficient and cheap, both important values, but not the only ones. I think it important to try to develop a real alternative.

As the Scientific American article points out in the beginning, criticism of how organic is regulated is not the same thing as criticizing organic itself.