Podchef's Gastrocast Podcast

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A Tale of Two (Mad) Cows

Why is it the Japanese get it and the USDA doesn't?

American Beef isn't tested for Mad Cow. Japanese beef is--100%. Whether the disease is present or not, doesn't it make sense to verify that it isn't by testing more than 1% of cattle? Now even though Japanese beef is more expensive to consumers than untested US beef, the Japanese are only buying their own, locally raised meats. Sounds good to me. Everyone wins--the Japanese farmers get to raise and sell more beef and the consumers get a product from a local source they can trust. Hurrah!

So why then won't the USDA allow companies to privately test their beef? Why won't they test more beef themselves? Instead they use Mad Cow as an excuse to try to ram through National Animal ID--a system which is more costly on the whole than just testing every slaughtered animal for the damn disease. They may be good at spending money, but no one said they were smart, or served the consumer's best interest.

Now in another brilliant stroke Homeland (in)Security is blathering on about agriterrorism and how Mad Cow (BSE) and Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) could be used as terrorist weapons to destroy our food supply. Well, thank you very much--why not hand out written invitations and vials of the toxins to any would-be terrorist cell within range? In fact, why not gather all our nations food supplies into central zones and destroy America's ability to produce its own food--Oh, wait! Centralization has already been happening!

The USDA and NAIS are already destroying the potential for diversity and small farming. Who are the real terrorists--the foreign foes who would look out of place on a 10,000 acre ranch trying to polute the waters, or a Government agent so pissed off his bonus isn't coming because his agenda isn't being met?

So to beat a dead cow a bit more. . . .First off, how could these would-be terrorists get BSE? Most scientists working on the issue for years haven't been  able to identify much about the mysterious prions which cause it, let alone know how it works. And even if a terrorist fed ground up cow spine from a known infected animal to a herd of cattle, how could they be sure it would work, and how long would it take? And how widespread the destruction? Sure, lots of panic perhaps. But if the USDA would begin testing every beef animal slaughtered for BSE, then there wouldn't be much a hope that this plan would work.

So let's tackle FMD--the "dread" disease. One fact source states:

Is FMD harmful to the animals?

While FMD does not pose a health risk to humans, it can be fatal for young cattle, sheep and hogs by causing inflammation of the heart muscle.

The disease is generally not fatal in older animals. Cattle, sheep and pigs infected with FMD develop a fever followed by blisters around the mouth and feet but they can recover.

Infection drastically reduces milk production in cattle. Infected animals also become weak and prone to other illnesses.

Why is it necessary to carry out mass slaughtering of animals in FMD infected areas?

FMD is the most infectious animal disease known and there is no cure for it. Unless the disease is stopped quickly, it can spread rapidly through an entire region. This affects productivity and a country's ability to export so the disease has profound impact on a country's economy and agricultural sector. While vaccination is used in many countries to control the disease, in an outbreak such as has occurred in the UK, vaccination is infective in stopping the spread of the disease. The only way to deal with an outbreak is to slaughter animals at sites of infection.

So if it is not fatal to the animals, except perhaps the young--why not test for it? Doesn't the mass slaughter of countless, suspected, but not proven, diseased animals affect "productivity and a country's ability to export"? I mean if all the cattle are dead and burnt up from extermination than they certainly can't be exported, can they?  Wouldn't it be better and cheaper for the industry to allow the cattle to weather the virus and recover to be productive another day, than to wipe everything out and start again? Wouldn't an immunity build against the disease which doesn't happen if everything must start afresh each time?

Now I am not a veteranarian--although I did study to be one--so, I do play one on the interent. It seems to me that knee-jerk reactions and industry pressure are what lead to mass-inihillation of animals in an agriterrorist or disease outbreak scenario. Why not beat the terrorists by testing and using common sense? Remove the efficacy of the target and there is no target.

At an Animal ID meeting recently, as if on script, when pressure was applied to a State Veterianarian he trooped out the "threat" of FMD. When I said it wasn't fatal, he began to use the words "100% morbidity rate"--which on the surface can be confused with "mortality" but really mean it is highly infectious. When I called him on that he claimed I should ask the people undergoing an FMD outbreak right now North of us what they thought. So I tried. But the Vet lied. There hasn't been an outbreak of FMD in the area anytime in the last 100 years.

During the meeting when further pressure was applied to the Vet on animal ID, out came the script. "What if a terrorist went into a livestock aution and dropped this (he held up a pen)--a vial of FMD. . .This is why we need Animal ID. . ." No. Animal ID won't prevent terrorism, or disease outbreaks. Proper testing and better control of the money the USDA spends will.

by: ChefNeal at 08/30/06 14:51 | link | comments |
food contamination, usdassholes, mad cow, beef, food safety, bioterrorism, bse, nais, national animal indentification, animal id, agriterrorism

Arise and March!

Awake my friends! One State has fallen. How many more are next? The small farmer and the American Way of Life is under attack!  The government wants to track you, your animals, and now your vegetables.

We cannot be held as slaves to a foreign power. We must maintain control of our local food supplies. These ID programs amount to an extra tax on what we eat. We cannot allow our country to be held hostage over food! If you care about your local farmers, what you eat, or freedom in general, please don't take my word for it. Research the topics and get the word out! Google, nonais.org. Fight the good fight--so we can all keep on cookin!

by: ChefNeal at 08/29/06 16:17 | link | comments |
freedom, usdassholes, farmers market, nais, farming, national animal indentification, animal id, food politics, premise id, save the farm

Square Peg, Round Hole

Here we have an example of everything which is wrong, and continues to be wrong with American Food Culture--How to mass-market Green (environmentally friendly) low-input Grass-fed Beef Hamburgers. The article talks about industrializing an artisanal product, how difficult it is, but how it can be achieved. I must ask, however--to what end?

In this telling paragraph:

For example, the food service company dictates that the patties must be cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and the ebb and flow of business at many of the sites where the patties are used necessitates that the burgers must be par-cooked and held until there is a rush, whereupon they will be cooked the rest of the way. These are truly the worst-case conditions for a grass-fed beef hamburger.

. . .I find the solution to the problem--don't do it! Why industrialize something which is the antithesis of industrialization? Why mass-market something to a fast-food, consumer could care-less what they're eating situation? If this example represents a "worst-case" scenario for grass-fed burgers, than shouldn't the model change, or shouldn't it just be accepted that grass-fed meat will not fit into this mold?

It is once again the case of cramming a square peg into a round hole. Rather than provide a solution--hey, grass-fed artisanal meats need a grass-roots artisanal venue to display them at their finest: say, a local organic, or green, hamburger stand where they take pride in what they serve--the owner of this business wants to take on the big boys. But how "green" is it to ship your product around the country to serve customers meat that has been par-cooked and held for hours? What reputation does your product get then? Perhaps one which it deserves, to the detriment of grass-fed meat everywhere.

Whether you process the meat yourself into hamburgers or anything else really isn't the point. I would hope we can get back to a situation in this country where artisanally produced foods are processed by the farmer who raises the raw-materials. The real question is what you do with the product once it is made. Where is it going, who is using it and how will it be shown to its best? And if the answers are not "locally", "Small-scale, quality sellers", "by providing the customers with fresh, and better foods" than there will be major snags. I wonder how many of those artisanally crafted burgers end up in the bin after being held for hours--how green is that? Where is the respect for the animal and environment shown in that? That is not the way forward.

by: ChefNeal at 08/25/06 17:20 | link | comments |
beef, grass fed revolution, artisianl foods

Gastrtocast #73

A show this week! I know, I know, I'm making a liar out of myself. I said I wouldn't have time. But I did! I found some spare moments in all the chaos to edit the audio from my cooking demonstraition at the San Juan County Fair.  No photos as of yet--Mrs. Deedop, any chance of uploading them soon?? I will post them if they ever become available.

So until next week, sit back, hear me pontificate and cook as usual and enjoy.

All the best!

by: ChefNeal at 08/24/06 22:41 | link | comments |
podchef, gastrocast, paella, farmers market, san juan county fair, live cooking demonstraition, food politics

Water World

There's something I just don't get. People never seem happy. Either they're bitching about Global Warming, which either does or doesn't exist, depending on how you vote, apparently, or they're whinging about Population growth, density, and impact. And now water. So which is it going to be--is there going to be Global Warming, where the seas will rise, reducing land mass, increasing population density (but probably also wiping out the type of people who love to live near flooding rivers no matter what, or refuse to be evacuated from Volcano zones. . . .), but probably also producing bucket-loads of rain to fall back to earth in freshwater monsoons, OR, is there to be a doubling of water usage in the near future as third-world countries achieve the American Dream and Corporations expand their non-sustainable ways of consumption and pollution, creating wholesale water shortages and hording as the population blows out of all proportion, in a toxic, barren, desert wasteland?

According to this Gristmill article both things will happen with equally disasterous results--in short we're fucked. But hey, before we get all gloom and doom lets look at this from a different perspective. Normally I'm all down on Lawyers. I used to think they screwed the world up beyond belief. Now I've rather shifted my opinion. Firstly as to water useage. America needs to get online with some serious water conservation efforts anyway. Now is too late, but better late than never. Local beauraucracies need to pave the way for rain-water collection systems, grey water recycling and ways of reducing run-off. That's a start. We also need to more aggressively limit corporate growth in terms of polluting ground water--they should be made to recycle or collect or?? some percentage (above 45%) of the water they use. Farmers need to be rewarded for creative solutions to crop irrigation and not charged for water-rights which only restrict growth and don't encourage correct usage of resources. Now as to the rest of man's social ills. We can't blame this stuff on the Lawyers, first and foremost, although they do play a part--after all who allowed the patenting of life forms? No, as the linked article show, and so many more examples of things which have gone wrong or are snafu'd today, we can lay all the blame evenly at the feet of the SCIENTISTS.

"But they've given us so much", you say. Haven't they cured diseases, created cleaner, better power sources, researched ways to heal and extend life, etc? Indeed they have. But should they have? Most scientist are fine. They walk down their chosen path doing great things. It is when they veer off the path in search of intangibles and secret sciences for the government that we get into trouble. See the comments I left about this article on meat grown in labs. . . . Left unchecked Scientist come up with new and better ways of wasting money on "research" which is unproven and which testing creates all sorts of environmental disasters, at what overall cost? They've given us longer lifespans. But did anyone ask us if we wanted to live longer if it still meant that we would be bed-ridden, drug-addicted fools if we chose that path? They have extended our life, but not given us any assurances of quality near the end. Likewise, space exploration, genetic engineering, altering weather patterns, radioactive technologies, robotics. Cool, perhaps, exciting. But most of us get along fine without it. In 20 years have there been significant enough breakthroughs to warrant the amount of money spent, pollution created, strange side-effects or spurious alter-sciences created? I don't think so. Most of the time you hear about how science failed us. How something went wrong. Or how scientist have given over common-sense for the sake of "science" and the greater good--whether those of us in the greater good want it or not.

Yes, we can fear Global Warming, Rising Tides, Changing Weather Patterns, Global Drought and a host of other ills. But for my money there is nothing scarier than the unabated, unwatched March of the Scientists.

by: ChefNeal at 08/17/06 23:11 | link | comments |
gm foods, gmo, grist, global warming, drought, water woes, scientists

Gastrocast #72

A quick Gastrocast for you this week--I'm rushing to the San Juan County Fair to register entries and to prepare for my cooking demonstration. But more of this in a week or so. I'm rushed off my feet over the next two weeks with the fair, cooking jobs and the Mrs'. vacation.

As stuff comes up about the fair, I'll post it and include links.
Enjoy.

Comment here or at podchef@gmail.com

by: ChefNeal at 08/17/06 14:32 | link | comments (1)|
podchef, san juan islands, gastrocast, san juan county fair

Is it EM or EM?

A video might clear up the issue:

by: ChefNeal at 08/11/06 03:44 | link | comments (3)|
video, em, effective microbes, em turf war

Gastrocast #71

I say 2005 at the opening of this week's show, but you know I mean 2006.

It's a jam-packed, adventure filled show. Tomatillo gathering, Probiotics, Food Wrapper Latex Allergies, Mango Chutney and and unexpected surprise!

Flickr Photos

Agenda 21
    Description
    Chapter on Biotech

by: ChefNeal at 08/10/06 14:59 | link | comments |
cooking, podchef, gastrocast, cooking show podcast, culinary podcast, agenda21, latex allergies, chutney, indian cuisine, mango chutney