fauren

Stop Cutting Up My Friends

I'm a recent newcomer to Mark Bittman, but I've quickly become a fan. While I was home in Massachusetts this past weekend, my dad turned to The Best Recipes in the World on the local PBS station for some background entertainment while we engaged in one of our many heated Scrabble battles (yes, we are one of those families). But soon enough, the game took a back seat to watching Bittman, who devoted an entire episode to what's generally referred to as the best restaurant in the world: El Bulli.

I first heard of El Bulli when I read Clotilde's amazing account of her six-hour dinner there over at Chocolate & Zucchini. I don't think I'd even heard the term molecular gastronomy yet, but there it was in all its glory. And on Saturday evening, I watched in amazement as Bittman learned from chef Ferrán Adriá how he makes his spherical olives and Parmesan "air."

I have to say, I'm a real sucker for Bittman's everyman personality. Even when he stands next to and converses with some of the best chefs in the world, there's something about him that makes me think he could show up at my apartment at any moment and start raiding my fridge. His cooking videos on the New York Times website are casual and refreshingly unpolished, and as if I needed further incentive to enjoy those anti-Food Network stylings, the New York Times posted one of his quirkiest videos to date today.

May I take a moment to share with you roasted tomato soup, featuring Mark Bittman and a very special friend. What I would give to sit down for dinner with this guy.

Field Trip!

Punctuality has never been my forte, so perhaps it comes as no surprise to the people who know me that I'm just now posting about something I did more than a week ago: I finally took my first trip up to Stone Barns. This was significant, considering I'd been meaning to go for about three years.

I was admittedly motivated to get off my duff about it by Dan Barber himself, whose discovery of my proclamation of love, though more than a little embarrassing, was happily also a conversation starter. So on a crisp Saturday morning, friends Martin and Zabrina and I rolled out of bed and hit the road up to Pocantico Hills.

First activity of the day was the Insider's Tour. Though mid-February might not seem the best time to be walking around on a farm (and don't get me wrong, it was COLD), it was really interesting to see what could be considered the farm's off-season activity. Of course, there really is no such thing as an off-season at a working farm, but I know so little of what goes on from November to May that it was really interesting to see the peas and salad greens already growing in the greenhouses and the beds of the dooryard garden that had been planted with garlic.

The greenhouses were bright and warm, and we got to nibble on a few samples right from the beds. There's nothing like picking a little leaf, brushing the dirt from it, and popping it right in your mouth. Here I discovered my new favorite salad ingredient: golden frills. It's an unassuming little mustard green, but it packs a spicy punch not unlike horseradish. Unexpected and delicious!

From the greenhouses we wandered out to visit with some little friends.

USDA Weighs In On Cloned Meat

I was momentarily hopeful to see the headline in Wednesday's Washington Post, "USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market." Then I started reading, and it turns out that recommendation is only temporary:

Bruce I. Knight, the USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, requested an ongoing "voluntary moratorium" to buy time for "an acceptance process" that Knight said consumers in the United States and abroad will need, "given the emotional nature of this issue."

Thanks, USDA. That's awful sweet.

More disturbing, though, is the fact that meat from the offspring of cloned animals has apparently been on the market for quite some time, despite a request from the FDA not to enter these animals into the food chain. No particular surprise that it wasn't made public, I suppose, since many proponents of cloned meat don't even want to label the stuff that will legitimately enter the marketplace.

I remain highly skeptical that meat and milk from cloned animals pose no more a health threat than those from non-cloned animals, but that issue aside, it disturbs me to no end when consumers are not given the choice to know what they are buying and eating. Sure, farms that don't raise cloned animals could theoretically go the route of producers of non-GMO foods and label their meat and dairy "non-cloned," but why on earth should that burden befall the people that are not doing it?

Well on that note, it's the end of the work day. I think I will not stay at my office any longer.

Déjà Moo

Good morning, world.

And what a wonderful day it is, because today! Today it's officially safe to eat meat from cloned animals in the United States.

The European Union's Food Safety Agency made its announcement to this effect this past Friday, with the Food and Drug Administration expected to follow suit shortly thereafter. Well, the Washington Post has obtained a copy of the FDA's report, which has not yet been officially released, and it indeed draws the conclusion that meat from cloned pigs, cows, and goats is no less safe to eat than meat from their non-cloned counterparts. That is all they are at liberty to conclude, however:

"Moral, religious and ethical concerns . . . have been raised," the agency notes in a document accompanying the report. But the risk assessment is "strictly a science-based evaluation," it reports, because the agency is not authorized by law to consider those issues.

Like Bonnie over at the Ethicurean, I'm kind of horrified that these conclusions were drawn after mere months of study. The FDA research is based on an inconsistent pool of animals, and because it is so difficult to determine what will actually predict the safety of food from cloned animals, the FDA is just going with what's (only kind of) worked so far:

...agency scientists decided to use the same simple but effective standard used by farmers since the dawn of agriculture: If a farm animal appears in all respects to be healthy, then presume that food from that animal is safe to eat.

Somehow, I'm not reassured... E. coli, anyone? Added bonus: as of now, when that cloned meat starts hitting the grocery shelves, it will not be required to be labeled as such, à la the current guidelines for genetically modified foods.

Though the few articles I've looked at this morning haven't really touched on this, the only point I can see in cloning animals for food is to give cloning companies business and boost meat production in the States, like we need it. Is that so crazy, or am I missing something? Well, count me among the folks who would rather eat meat from a known farm upstate once every couple of days than have cloned meat from who knows where for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

New York Times: Cloned Animals Safe to Eat, FDA Concludes
Washington Post: FDA Says Clones Are Safe For Food
Washington Post: Animal Cloning: A Risk Assessment (excerpts from the FDA report)
The Ethicurean: FDA approves food from cloned animals

Farming on the Y-Axis

On my way to class this afternoon, I was listening to an interview with Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia's Department of Environmental Health Sciences, on the Leonard Lopate show.  Despommier is doing work on vertical farming, an agricultural model for an increasingly populated world with increasingly limited resources.  From the abstract to the Vertical Farm Essay:

Over the next 50 years, the human population is expected to rise to at least 8.6 billion, requiring an additional 10⁹ hectares to feed them using current technologies. That quantity of farmland is no longer available. Thus, alternative strategies for obtaining an abundant and varied food supply without encroachment into the few remaining functional ecosystems must be seriously entertained. If traditional farming could be replaced by constructing urban food production centers - vertical farms - then a long-term benefit would be the gradual repair of many of the world’s damaged ecosystems through the systematic abandonment of farmland.

Some upsides to the initiative hold a lot of appeal (cutting down on fossil fuels, converting abandoned property) while others seem just a little far-fetched at this point (we can't go to the moon or to Mars until we know how to farm indoors on Earth), and, as with any innovation, it's probably not out of the question for some drawbacks to reveal themselves in time.  But on the whole I have to say I'm intrigued, and I'll be really curious to see if this or something like it comes to fruition in the coming years.

Food Safety in the NYT

Denise Grady wrote an interesting piece on food-borne illness for yesterday's New York Times.  Especially after finally finishing What to Eat, it's clear to me how much of our food safety is left up to the consumer, and it's good to see the Times and others continue to put some important food information out there in the ether.  Maybe it'll help to get more people thinking and buying locally.  After all, this comes straight from the mouth of Dr. Christopher Braden of the CDC:

The way produce is farmed and processed has changed. It’s become more centralized, and you have these huge processors and distributors that produce tens of thousands of pounds of a particular produce in a particular day. If something goes wrong with that produce you’ve got a big problem, whereas with small farmers, if there is a problem it’s much more limited.

When Bad Things Come From "Good" Food (registration required)

Food, Ethics & the Environment on the Web

I'm happy to report that the webcasts of the Food, Ethics & the Environment conference sessions are finally up on the Princeton WebMedia site for your listening pleasure.  I would particularly recommend the presentation given by Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society in Session III and the entirety of Session IV, which was a pair of talks given by Michael Pollan and Bob Langert, the Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at MacDonald's (quite a pairing, to say the least). 

If you listen to no other part of the latter, I would suggest at least skipping to the Q&A at the end, beginning right at minute 58.  Mr. Langert, to whom I give much credit just for being willing to speak to a roomful of people who probably haven't patronized MacDonald's in years precisely for ethical reasons, was put to the test, and the back and forth between him, Pollan, and the conference attendees was unlike much I've ever experienced: entertaining, frustrating, tense, and engaging.  (Mr. Langert makes reference to the MacDonald's corporate responsibility report in his talk, and it can be found here.)

Enjoy.

Food, Ethics & the Environment webcast
(no permalink available; search for November 16 and 17, 2006)