Category Archives: Educate Yourself

More random news from the interwebs

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Here’s what I’m reading while working on my next real posts:

  • The latest Edible Blue Ridge, featuring an article about our favorite fancy local-food restaurant, Brookville. Also exciting: a blurb about a new book called Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement Is Changing the Way We Eat, by UVA professor Tanya Denckla Cobb.
  • We’re Eating Less Meat. Why?, a NYT blog post by Mark Bittman, which examines the reasons that Americans are eating less meat, despite federal subsidies, lax environmental regulations, and lack of support for smaller farms in competition with the giant factory farms, all of which aid the meat industry.
  • Five Easy Ways to Eat Local: Tips on finding and incorporating into your diet more local foods, and a nice description of the health and flavor advantages of local, seasonal food.
  • The end of ethanol subsidies? Demand for the corn product will remain high as the government increases the required percentage of ethanol in gasoline.

Random news from the interwebs

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Some tabs I’ve had open in my browser for a week or so, but haven’t finished reading. Hopefully these are interesting!

  • EatKind.net: some news blurbs, and some directories for organic/vegetarian/local/pasture-raised options in the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, and New Zealand (not all directories exist for all countries). I found this when looking for happy food options in Japan
  • Smithfield Foods To Stop Using Gestation Crates For Pigs By 2017
    • I did not realize Smithfield is the world’s largest pork producer
    • I did not realize Smithfield is based in VA
    • Smithfield’s explanation for their decision was that their customers want it–so voting with your dollars can make a difference!
  • Article on the return of US horse slaughterhouses. Man, this is controversial. PETA is for, HSUS is against. I haven’t completely formed an opinion on the issue, other than:
    • It’s more humane to put a horse down than to let it suffer from neglect–if there are no other options for adoption/shelter/assistance
    • It’s more humane to send a horse to a slaughterhouse in the US where (presumably) treatment regulations would be stricter than in other countries where horses are currently shipped for slaughter–and shorter transport distances are easier on the poor beasties
    • Yay: “Churchill Downs says it won’t assign stalls at any of its tracks to any trainer or owner found to have sold a horse for slaughter.”
    • Not sure how legit this one is, but it could be a contributor: “Hancock said that she’s worried that the potential availability of slaughter ‘makes it easy for some people to continue to overbreed or overproduce because they have an out at the end.'”
  • Biosolid use as fertilizer: gross. Fertilizing farmland, that is then used for grazing or crops, with human waste? The waste is treated, but not all pathogens are killed, and chemicals, steroids, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals are among the pollutants found in the sludge. This seems like a bad idea to me.

Happy reading!

ASPCA Reports Hope for Laying Hens

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The Fall 2011 issue of ASPCA Action describes a July agreement between United Egg Producers (UEP), representing the owners of 80% of the US laying hen population, and animal welfare groups, in which the UEP pledged to support (yet-to-be introduced) legislation phasing-out of battery cages for hens.

A battery cage, according to the ASPCA Farm Animal Cruelty glossary, is:

A wire cage, measuring no more than 16 inches wide, in which four or five hens are housed. These cages are lined up in rows and stacked several levels high on factory farms. This system of production has been outlawed by countries in the European Union.

Hens in these cages are so cramped that they can’t extend their wings, and the discomfort can lead them to attempt stress relief by fighting. Factory farmers often use debeaking to curb the damage done by these miserable birds. Again, from the ASPCA glossary:

Debeaking [is] a process that involves cutting through bone, cartilage and soft tissue with a blade to remove the top half and the bottom third of a chicken’s, turkey’s or duck’s beak. This measure is taken to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds in factory farms.

Let’s hope the ASPCA and other farm animal welfare groups can push Congress to enact legislation quickly to improve conditions for laying hens and other factory farm animals.

The FDA is breeding superbacteria to kill us all.

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It’s true: FDA Turns Down Petitions to Withdraw Medically Important Antibiotics from Animal Agriculture

Why do we, as consumers, care about this? Because the overuse of antibiotics in our food supply leads to drug-resistant bacteria. We’re seeing that with the rise in MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, infections, which are not treatable by most antibiotics.

Antibiotics are regularly fed to healthy factory farmed animals to ward off any diseases that are likely to strike when large numbers of animals are confined together in a small, unsanitary space. This irresponsible use of antibiotics means that bacteria have more opportunity to evolve defense mechanisms against the antibiotics, making the drugs ineffective, and creating super bugs like MRSA.

The Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming has some scary statistics:

  • In 1998, the Institute of Medicine estimated that antibiotic resistance generated at least $4 billion to $5 billion per year in extra costs to the U.S. health care system, more recently estimated at $16.6 billion to $26 billion per year
  • Up to 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are given to healthy food animals
  • More than 25 million pounds of antibiotics a year are used as a non-therapeutic treatment to artificially speed up the growth of food animals and to compensate for the effects of unsanitary conditions on the farm

The World Health Organization has recommended that the FDA and USDA regulate the administering of antibiotics to food animals, and end this dangerous practice. But since they won’t, we consumers need to be responsible and only purchase animal products from animals that were not fed antibiotics. Check labels to be sure the animals’ diet was drug-free, or look for the Organic designation, which means no antibiotics, hormones, or steroids were fed to the animals. Even better, purchase your animal products from small, local farms, where you can visit and confirm that the animals are pasture-raised and happy. The future of humanity may depend on it!

In the news

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Haute Pasture has been busy preparing for a trip to Asia. While we are slacking on the real posts, here are some headlines:

‘We Support Agriculture’ combats animal rights initiatives in Nebraska: A new political action group, formed by the Nebraska Cattlemen, Nebraska Farm Bureau, Nebraska Poultry Industries, Nebraska Pork Producers Association and the Nebraska State Dairy Association, is organizing to protect themselves from regulations, such as the banning of gestation crates.

Kaparot: Jewish leaders want to end animal killing: Some Jewish leaders are calling for the end of the kaparot tradition, in which chickens are ritually slaughtered. Jewish law is strict about the care of animals, and many feel kaparot is abusive.

‘Food, Inc.’ Wins News and Documentary Emmy Award: Good review of the documentary from Audubon Magazine’s blog.

Hoping to learn and post some insights about farm animal rights in Asia over the next couple weeks!

How to work quail eggs

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As the proud new owner of quail eggs, I was excited to try them out. How do they compare to chicken eggs? Quail eggs At the risk of overwhelming the eggs’ flavor, I scrambled 3 eggs to mix in with my regular egg-and-roasted veggie breakfast. Getting the eggs out of their shells was no easy feat. I wish I could have taken pictures of that process! I tried cracking Egg 1 like a chicken egg, but the shell smashed and splintered while the membrane stayed intact, and I ended up squeezing the innards out through a small hole. Egg 2 I opened with a combination of banging to crack the shell, and poking with a fork–still very messy. But by Egg 3 I was a pro. Here is my advice: hold the egg in one hand and a dinner knife in the other, and in one quick motion, cut the egg in half with the knife. The clean cut doesn’t pulverize the shell, and the knife breaks the membrane easily. eggs and veggies The quail eggs were lighter in flavor and color than chicken eggs. Perhaps in a dish that highlights eggs more than my breakfast slop I would have appreciated them more, but for this meal, it’s a lot easier to use a single chicken egg than three quail eggs. Even if I do know how to open a quail egg now.

Tips for cooking grass-fed beef

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Having a Labor Day cookout? These tips from Edible Blue Ridge will help you get the most flavor from your grass-fed steaks and burgers, which are leaner than corn-fed meat:

  • Choose burgers with a higher fat content for better texture.
  • Be sure to trim the white membrane from steaks, as the connective tissues won’t soften as well as in regular meat when cooked.
  • Sear the meat over high heat to keep the juices in, and then move it to a cooler area of the grill to heat though. Don’t overcook!
  • Let the meat rest before cutting it against the grain.

Have a great Labor Day! Haute Pasture will be enjoying the day on the Meet Yer Eats farm tour!

Hints from Haute Pasture

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Today’s hint is courtesy of State Farm. I don’t usually read the little magazines they mail customers to remind you that they care, but for some reason I read the most recent issue, and was pleased to see “A Greener Green: Eight time-saving penny-pinching, eco-friendly ways to get the lawn you want.”

Suggestion #1 jumped out at me as I have been reading about this problem on farms. As do farmers on their fields, homeowners often overuse fertilizers and pesticides on their lawns, and the overage runs off into waterways. The chemicals can be toxic to fish, and the fertilizers promote algae growth, crowding out fish and sucking up the oxygen from the water. Instead, homeowners (and farmers!) should use natural fertilizers and pesticides which won’t contribute chemicals to the rivers and oceans.

See related posts here and here.

Terminology: does CAFO = factory farm?

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Do the definitions of “CAFO” and “factory farm” differ?

According to About.com, BloggerNews, and others, a factory farm is an AFO (animal feeding operation), and the largest, as determined by EPA guidelines, are CAFOs (concentrated or confined animal feeding organizations). But many sites, such as Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, use “CAFO” and “factory farm” interchangeably.

The Wisconsin Sierra Club site lists the baseline numbers of animals for a facility to be considered a large CAFO. It’s pretty horrifying.

Hints from Haute Pasture

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If you plan to hit a salad bar for lunch, and aren’t sure if the meat is humanely raised, take your own hard boiled egg. I boil 5 eggs on Sunday and keep them at work, just in case.

Today’s eggs were purchased from Relay Foods!

No-fail cooking technique from Cook’s Country magazine: fill a pot with water, drop in some eggs, bring the water to a boil, then remove the pot from heat, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes. Transfer the eggs to an ice water bath to cool, and refrigerate. Two other tips from my experience: boiling eggs that are a couple weeks old will produce hard boiled eggs that are easier to peel, as oxygen has worked its way beneath the shell and separated the shell from the inner membrane; and if there’s a “power boil” setting on your stove, don’t use that for boiling eggs as the faster heating could cause them to crack.