Chicken Poop Cows, are they still mad?

I've been reading up on our local food systems in this country. It seems that we are all victims of a bad food bully...the USDA. They are the ones responsible for mad cow disease, they are the ones responsible for deciding what we should eat, and they are the ones responsible for making it almost impossible to get meat that was raised in a local and sustainable way. After reading Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense Of Food by Michael Pollan, Mad Sheep by Linda Faillace, and Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin I've gotten a nice little gist of what is ailing this country from the start. It seems that as a whole we, the eater, are not allowed to judge what is safe and healthy to eat. Instead the USDA, with all the beauracracy that goes along with any government agency as well as the funding and pressure that comes from special interest groups, is deciding what meat and dairy is allowed to be on our table. The USDA is putting intense pressure on small local farmers to get out of the business. When it was discovered and officailly recognised that Mad Cow disease is caused by feeding herbivores meat and bone from other herbivores, the USDA, after several years of continuing to feed the meat to the meat (especially since it could now be bought so cheaply from England where they figured out that this was causing the very deadly and expensive mad cow outbreak over there) asked farmer's to stop feeding the cows to the cows and instead suggested that cows be fed chicken poop and chicken bits. Make sense? Not to mention that cows fed chicken and chicken poop tend to smell like chicken poop. But there is also some discussion that maybe Mad Cow is caused by excessive use of heavy metals like aluminum and pesticides like fly killer. How can we know for sure when the majority of cattle today are standing in a pile of their own poop, eating whatever is cheapest, and being shot up with whatever is suggested to keep them on their feet until we can push them into the slaughter house that has the most processing ability (not the cleanest).
Now what about the little guy? The farmer down the road with 10- 15 cows that you would like to get a roast from when he does his slaughtering? We look at his cows happily munching away at some fresh grass, her little calf next to her side chasing after a butterfly, and we think how idyllic. That is how a cow should live it's life. In harmony and bliss. Plus there is no stink, it just smells like grass. The cows have been moved to this pasture after one day on the other pasture, where there are now chicken shelters dotted over the field, pecking at the manure to get to the grubs and worms and distributing the excellent fertilizer over the grassy ground. These chickens are also pretty damn happy as far as chicken joy goes. Bugs, grass, poop, fresh air, space to peck and scratch. It don't get much better! And the blessing for us as eaters? These animals are healthy. They don't get antibiotics, cause they aren't sick, they don't get hormones or steroids, cause the farmer knows these things make the meat tasteless and nutritionless. The farmer is actually out for our best interest. He wants to take care of me, just like he does his own family. If I'm happy as a customer, then I will tell people and increase his business, he'll make more money and can support more cows. It's like a perfect system, the one that most of civilization is based upon. Supply and demand. Fair trade. Taking care of the community that takes care of you.
So why is that not happening? Why is it a search to find a chicken that was raised on grass, not corn? Because the USDA, and behind them, backing them, are big business. The corn industry, the cattle industry, the poultry industry. These groups spend millions of dollars each year just to woo the beauracrats and congresspeople into passing more and more regulations and policies that make it impossible for the local farmer to survive. The easiest example is that in order to slaughter your own beef you must take it to a liscensed slaughter house. To be a liscensed slaughter house you must have among other obvious things, a bathroom for the sole use of the USDA inspector. You must have foot operated hand washing stations, you must have handicap accessability, you must have a two lane road to access the facility, these things all add up to no less then $500,000 to build a structure that can meet all these requirements. And then once you've raised that money, you find you cannot build it on your farm, no, that is zoned agricultural land and a slaughterhouse is a processing facility. Never mind that you have 5 employees and you only kill about 100 beef a year. That you use every last bit of that cow for meat, fertilizer, leather, and tallow. Nope, you are a hazard to your own health and the community's. Though a 100 miles away at the industrial processing facility, they are killing 1000 beef a day, tossing the remains in a trailer truck, and rinsing all that gore down to a pond that leaches out right next to the local river. The stench from this facility is smelled for miles and the bacterias are into the millions. Yet they are liscensed and considered officailly safe. They have mulitple violations daily from the questionably legal workers and the procedure following charts that are filled out months in advance. But they have a private bathroom for the USDA inspector, not to mention a rec room for him to hang out in. Is this a safe system, does it make you think twice about that unbelievably cheap T-bone at Safeway? Wonder just what are you eating? Chicken poop?

Got S.O.L.E.?

I've created this blog as a means to discuss, rant, consider, and express my concerns about what and how we eat. To me as a mom, wife, human, and chef, food is one of the most essential things I do that I direct control over. Though the more I'm aware of eating, the more I realize how much of my ability to decide what I'm going to eat has been stolen from me without my knowledge. I'm finding the need to be hyper vigilant when I get food. I can never make assumptions, but must do research and often extensive detective work just to find the answers to the basic questions I want to, and should, know about my meal. These questions are:
What is this?
Where did it come from?
Is it healthy?
What is it made/grown with/from?
What is the cost?

In terms of "What is this?" too often I grab a box of something that has a picture of food on it, but upon further examination I find that it is many other things as well, many of them things I have no idea what they are. A simple thing like rice has other things like maltodextrin, lecithin, modified food starch, soybean oil with TBHQ added, monosodium glutamate, disodium guanylate, & disodium insoinate (which are labeled as flavor enhancers). I can take the time and look these up, but I'm pretty sure most of these aren't that healthy and some may be downright scary. The fact is that I don't know, and shouldn't I? If I'm going to put this into my body, and my breast milk?
"Where did it come from?" In the case of this rice, the package says "Distributed from New Orleans". But where did the rice come from? Or the disodium quanylate? I don't know and doubt even with calling the company or even going to the distributing warehouse that I would not be able or allowed to find out specifics. In this age of global intermixing of products, and all the news about the milk from China, I'd like to know where my food lived out its days. Not to mention the possibility that eating food from my own eco-system helps my body to deal with and adjust to the elements of that eco-system.
"Is it healthy?" Probably the most loaded question of all. With scientists, nutritionists, doctors, herbalists, and folk wisdom all having their own say, I have come to the conclusion that nothing is "safe" to eat and everything could possibly cause some kind of harm. Water can be contaminated from toxic runoff from the beef ranch upstream, therefore just about everything else can be contaminated as well, not to mention the unhappy hormone, antibiotic, and chemical laden cows themselves. And not overlooking the toxic chemical and BPA filled containers that the food comes in. Just makes me freaked out to think of the depths this question can take me.
"What is it made from or grown with?" Though this harkens back to the first question I feel it should be asked also. Lets go back to the rice, what container was used to cook the parboiled rice? Was it aluminum? I have concerns about cooking with aluminum. Was the water fluoridated? Did the person who put it into its container have the flu? A cut on the hand? Will I only find the answer to that question too late? Was it grown in a field next to an over concentrated feedlot? Was it grown in a field next to a busy freeway? Did the seeds occur in a natural process of evolution or a laboratory? Was it watered from a stagnant pond, a fresh spring, or snow melt from two states away?
"What is the cost?" By this question I do not only mean the price on the label. Cost involves how and who brought it to this point. The toll on the eco systems, environment, farmers, workers, producers, packagers, shippers, fuel ( and oh how we are learning about the huge depths that simple word goes. Think polar bears, soldiers, families, politics, financial institutions, etc...), suppliers, vendors, grocers, advertisers, my time, my kids time, and last but by far not least, our health after consuming the product. Is this food food worth the cost?

So getting back to the point, I'm striving(and struggling)to keep what we consume good for us. Sustainable for our health, our community, our environment, our future, our planet. Organic and not riddled with chemicals, enhancers, laboratory science, and/or politics. Local support for local support. We couldn't thrive without keeping our community together. I love our village and want to keep it. And ever being mindful of my place in ecology. Ecology is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their natural environment. I think we play a very central role in our ecology and cannot fully know the impact we will make over the course of time. Not only to our surroundings, but to ourselves. We must take the interactions of all things we do very seriously. To quote a t-shirt "Karma is as Karma does".

So keep checking in with me and maybe together we can find a way to eat and be merry!