The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing. » Digest

Urban homesteading in Oakland

Ethicurean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:32:20 +0000

Community supported appetites: Fun profile of the Bay Area’s food-movement power couple, Anya Fernald (former director of CAFF and the woman who pulled off nothing short of a miracle at Slow Food Nation) and Renato Sardo (former head of Slow Food International, now food retailing mastermind). They’ve turned their Oakland home into a modern homestead, preserving vegetables, making jam and charcuterie, and hosting pig-butchering parties. (New York Times Magazine) We had a blast at Anya’s Pig Day II in 2007 and enjoyed her write up of Pig Day 2009 on Civil Eats.

‘So we’re eating at Taco Bell and we’re cleaning the Earth!’

Ethicurean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:15:37 +0000

Extra Onion, please!: The Onion has the most satisfying send-up of fast-food greenwashing we’ve seen in a while. Love it.

Russ Parsons on why flavor trumps organic label for him

Ethicurean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:59:24 +0000

“I don’t believe in organic”: LA food writer Russ Parsons argues that people need to get over the idea that “organic” always equals chewing the right thing, whether from an environmental, moral, or taste perspective. “Between pure organics and the reckless use of chemicals, there is a huge gray area, and this is where most farming is done,” he says. “Ignoring this means that not only are you being misinformed, but you’re also taking your eye off the real mission of supporting small farmers who grow wonderful food.” So true — but it does take more work to decide which values of SOLE food are most important to you,and sek them out without the benefit of third-party-certified labels. (Los Angeles Times)

Obesity rates rising, health care system buckling

Ethicurean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:35:55 +0000

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of fattiness: Tom Laskawy has a brutally pointed post about a new state-level study of obesity rates, which found that obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn’t decline anywhere. What’s particularly worrying is that in every state, the “rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds - the oldest boomers — than among today’s 65-and-beyond.” Cue a tsunami-like surge in Medicare needs. But hey, they’ll die sooner, right? Not before costing us more. Tom zeroes in on what should be health care’s No. 1 target: attacking the root cause. (Beyond Green Blog)

Canadian restaurants that serve seal come in for criticism

Ethicurean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:03:05 +0000

“It’s no worse than veal”: The handful of restaurants in Canada that serve seal got a boost last month, when the European Union banned imports of commercially caught Canadian seal products. Canada allows two different hunts each year: a small one by Inuits in the Arctic that pretty much no one objects to, and a much larger, fur-driven hunt on the Atlantic coast that produces all those horrible images of cute baby seals getting clubbed to death. The seal served in restaurants comes from the latter, and many think it’s (ahem) in poor taste to serve it. The meat doesn’t sound very yummy, either: the reporter describes seal tartare as “both gamy and fishy, with the consistency of shredded pork.” (New York Times) Fishermen are allowed to kill 280,000 seals out of a herd that Canadian officials estimate at 5.6 million — not a lot. Like the foie gras debate, seal meat seems a distraction: sure it’s objectionable, but it’s a drop of blood in the ocean of inhumane animal treatment: what about the 60 million hogs in this country living in concrete-floored factories that never get a breath of fresh air? Pigs just aren’t as cute as seals?

GMOs on their way out, high-tech-assisted conventional breeding is in

Ethicurean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:13:47 +0000

Mother Nature’s little helpers vs. Wannabe Gods: This story weaves an interesting story around a thread we’ve seen elsewhere, that companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are shifting away from transgenic seeds (those in which genes from one species of organism are inserted into another) and into using science’s most advanced tools in the service of native breeding. Reporter Mac Margolis ascribes the growing shift to the rejection by Europe and parts of Asia and Africa of genetically modified organisms, but it may also have something to do with the fact that the most widely commercialized GMOs do only two things — resist herbicides and pests — decreasingly well, and as Elanor recently covered here, aren’t living up to the yield gains promised. “Conventional breeding still does better at building up qualities that require a complex suite of genes, such as the ability to fight off certain insects or to resist drought, which involves a host of genes that determine the way plants take up and manage water,” writes Margolis. And thanks to high-tech tools like marker-assisted breeding, “traditional farming still has a brilliant future.” (Newsweek)

The lost art of butchery moves to YouTube

Ethicurean — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:23:53 +0000

Cowpooling director: Very nice piece by friend o’Ethicurean Tamar Adler on meeting a Le Grand, CA, butcher who processes mostly beef and lamb for the people who raised them or their customers. Thankfully, Bill McCann has begun to preserve his dying skills on digital video for the Inertent age. (Civil Eats)

Leaving the city to live the dream of goats

Ethicurean — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:08:21 +0000

Not kidding around: Writer Brad Kessler talks about his and his wife’s decision to leave New York City for Vermont, raise goats, and make cheese, chronicled in his memoir “Goat Song.” They now have 17 animals and a licensed operation that sells chevre to a few of New York’s most cheese-famous restaurants. Money quote: “Farmers generally are not high-stress people. The ones I’ve met are pretty even-keeled and generally happy with what they’re doing, even though they work their asses off. There’s no one I’ve met who works as hard as a farmer and no one who gets less. It’s absolutely a shame and a disgrace how farmers are treated in this country. Everyone I know who’s farming here has a really hard time.” Kessler has also never been happier. (Salon)

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NAIS-ness in a nutshell

Ethicurean — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:59:33 +0000

Tags are bagged, for now: The New York Times has a nice, colorful overview of the USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS), explaining the government’s rationale for modernizing the system for identifying livestock (food safety tracking), but giving more weight to smaller farmers’ concerns over the burden of such record-keeping. The article does not go into criticism that the largest producers — those most likely to affect massive public health in the event of an illness outbreak — will be allowed to group-tag animals in lots of thousands, while small farmers would have to do so individually. Meanwhile, the House Committee-passed agriculture appropriations bill for FY 2010 has recommended that funding be eliminated for NAIS: “After receiving $142,000,000 in funding since fiscal year 2004, APHIS has yet to put into operation an effective national system that would provide needed animal health and livestock market benefits. The Committee is aware that USDA is conducting a public listening tour around the country for several months to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how to design and deliver a successful animal identification system. Until USDA finishes its listening sessions and provides details as to how it will implement an improved animal identification system, continued investments into the current NAIS are unwarranted.” (Via the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s excellent weekly newsletter)

Modern therapy for the LOHAS set

Marc R. aka Mental Masala — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:56:43 +0000

Will Peak Soil counseling be next? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon has branched out from the usual counseling topics to writing an advice column called Peak Oil Blues about the coming oil shortages. People write in with their worries, brag about how prepared they are, or offer helpful advice. With all the dizzying information, choices, and tradeoffs confronting SOLE food seekers, sometimes we too could use counseling services. (The American Prospect)