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Pot Luck

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Thu Jul 28, 2011 at 19:00:00 PM PDT


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Pot Luck | 106 comments
boehner (4.00 / 1)
I think that if any rational Republicans were wandering the halls of the House of Representatives, President Obama would now be seen to have lost this debt ceiling thingamajig a few months ago, when he extended the tax cuts in return for a few tasty croutons in a very large bowl of turd soup. Lo and behold, "Der Boner" became House Speaker in January 2011 and, since about February 15, Rachel Maddow has been pointing out bad at his job he is. She's correct. Even if Boehner manages to come up with enough corrupt backroom deals to pass his bill, he'll look like a loser.

Rachel is fishing with her dad, and she's caught some very nice fish. Nevertheless, I bet she partly wishes she was at her desk in 30 Rock.

Im really very surprised that geriatrics arent rioting (4.00 / 2)
when the mention of ss not being paid is made, afterall, all these years they have been paying into the system; how come the money isnt there???  What would they do if they went to the bank to withdrawal some of their savings, and the bank manager said Nein! nein!  nein!....we cannot pay you unless we get to borrow money from the federal reserve and that doesnt seem likely,,,,sorry!  yikes!

what a joke, how lame and the worst; guys who we saved from destruction who then paid themselves millions of dollars in bonuses are writing to washington to tell them how to run things HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH /end rant

[ Parent ]
geriatrics (4.00 / 2)
We aren't rioting because we don't think the checks won't be in the mail. We'll riot if SS defaults. Of course we'll riot politely and genteelly, as is appropriate to our revered status in society. Also, many of us can't throw rocks with much effect.
[ Parent ]
the pie man laughs (4.00 / 2)
I think the bozo who invaded the Murdoch hearing before Parliament's Sports and Media Select Committee should be sentenced to life in solitary confinement. He'll surely receive a slap on the wrist with a wet noodle, which will disappoint me.

I love this, though:

'Jonnie Marbles' guilty of pie assault on Rupert Murdoch

The part-time stand-up comic emerged from court and said: "I would just like to say this has been the most humble day of my life."

That's a quote from Rupert Murdoch's testimony.

Old Farts Riot? (4.00 / 2)
Nobody in this country will do anything until their
TV channels are cut.

Peace, Bob

My new potatoes are ready for harvest (4.00 / 2)
I dug some reds the other day. So in honor of that, I'm having boiled red new potatoes (you know, those evil weight gain causing tubers) dressed with a simple vinegarette.

;-)

Plus, with the weather the way it is, I'm having to harvest all of my microgreens early. I just got back from delivering to the distributor and in addition to the orders, I brought two bags of microgreen bags (a normal bag is 1/2 tray). I asked the fellow doing receiving if he liked radish microgreens. He said yes, and I told him to take some of the extras home with him. There are only 3 guys working for the distributor and I told the receiving fellow to make sure that the other two fellows got some to take home.

He asked me if I wanted them to use the overage as samples to more restaurants, and I told him that sure they could, but to take some home. Those guys have done me a lot of good in the past 5 weeks.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

I should clarify the overage on the microgreens (4.00 / 2)
the two bags of overage each had 4 1/2 tray bags in them. So I actually gave them 8 1/2 tray bags, or around 2 1/2 lbs of microgreens to enjoy.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
weather the way it is (4.00 / 1)
Does the weather allow you to have more microgreens coming along?
[ Parent ]
um, yum (4.00 / 1)
new red potatoes + wilted microgreens!
[ Parent ]
Oh yah (4.00 / 2)
the plants are going crazy. Because of the heat, I'm having to spray the trays down 4-5 times a day, and the ones that don't have cover have to be sprayed every couple of hours or the sun will cook the seedlings.

Combine mid 70s and 80s with constant misting and you'll double the yield on a tray while at the same time cutting 2-4 days off of the production. I'm getting 40% - 50% more off of an 8 day old plant than I will this winter. The really bad part about this is that, because the plants are growing so rapidly, I really need to harvest the trays at 8-9 days. This winter the same trays will be harvested at 2 weeks of age and the harvest window will be about 7 days long. The cotyledons on the radishes will also be much more petite. Right now they're like a succulent.

This winter will be interesting. I'll probably be supplying more restaurants (I hope so anyway), but I'll have to have more trays going at any given time because the growth will be so slow. It'll be slowest in December and January when the days are the shortest. On towards the end of January, things will pick up because the days will be long enough again.

That's what I noticed in the tunnels. I finished planting tunnel #1` on the 26th of December. The plants grew some, but it was really slow. Then around mid January, things started taking off. I harvested my first lettuce, mache, and green garlic in mid February. By mid March, the mache had all bolted, the green garlic looked like leeks (the stalks were really thick and tender), and the lettuce was really going wild. Of course, March is the end of winter. I usually see the indian plum fully leafed out and blooming around here by the end of March. Indian plum is one of my spring indicators.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
harvesting (4.00 / 1)
How do you harvest the micros? Pull up the whole plant, snip the stems with scissors, what?
[ Parent ]
I grow the micros (4.00 / 2)
with the exception of baby pea greens, in 72 count plug trays. To harvest, I use scissors, slide the blades on either side of a cluster growing out of a cell, grasp the tops of the seedlings, and then snip near the top of the tray. When it's done right, I don't even have to wash the micros after harvest like I did when growing them in open flats.

Seeding goes faster in open flats, but the harvesting is slower and you have to wash the micros after as they'll still be covered with soil residue. Also, with open flats you use 2-3 times as much soil as the plug trays. I've grown micros in open flats, 50 count plug trays, 72 count plug trays and 512 count plug trays. Of all of those, the 72 count trays are the best as far as ease of use and cleanliness of final product.

I know that some farms grow them in fibre matts, and then you don't have any soil to deal with, the greens are completely clean, and people hold the matt by the end, letting it hang down while they cut the micros off it with an electric knife.

I don't want to grow them that way as the input costs would be a lot higher (I can seed 400-500 trays with $50 worth of soil and $24 worth of coconut fibre), plus when the micros are harvested the spent plugs go into pots to grow other crops (unless I'm using them to fill a raised bed) and after that second crop is done, the soil goes from the gallon pot into a raised bed or other growing area. So the soil actually does triple duty or better, while the fibre matts will cost more to purchase and then cost me even more money when I have to take them to the dump.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Agatha Christie, surfer (4.00 / 1)
Agatha Christie 'one of Britain's first stand-up surfers'

This remarkable picture reveals how crime writer Agatha Christie was one of the first people in Britain to try stand-up surfing.

Researcher Peter Robinson, from the Museum of British Surfing, said the discovery about the author's pastime had come as a "complete surprise"

The author was an avid bodyboarder after taking up the hobby during a holiday in South Africa with husband Archie in 1922.

But it was during a trip to Hawaii that she picked up the art of surfing while standing up, which experts say was one of the first examples ever recorded by a Briton.

How cool is that?

Saving Valentina (4.00 / 1)
Saving Valentina

Can one whale and a handful of human beings be any cooler than that?

That is WAY COOL! (4.00 / 2)
and talk about the happy dance at the end!

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
more boehner (4.00 / 1)
House Speaker John Boehner has a darned good haircut, I don't care what anybody says otherwise.
so disgusted with him and Republicans (4.00 / 2)
I've been watching Glee online. Sue is running for Congress
(played by the amazing Jane Lynch)
[ Parent ]
mid-year resolution (4.00 / 3)
Use my bike for as many errands as possible within 2 miles of my home (hope to extend that to 3-4 miles as I get more used to riding on streets). Today it was a bit cooler, mid 80s rather than 90s, and I was able to get a few things done. It helps that I now have a mirror attached to my handlebars.
Good resolution. (4.00 / 1)
Sometimes I wonder if I'm too old to take up skateboarding or inline skating for errands, but I always decide to leave fate untempted.

Walking is good too, if you have errands within a mile. I walk for all my errands, but I'm retired so I have the time.

[ Parent ]
Heh. (4.00 / 1)
I'm a big fan of the official "Skateboard Route" street signs in Downtown Portland.  Only place I've ever seen those in my life...
[ Parent ]
Nice! (4.00 / 2)
Great one. I was doing a lot more biking before it got so HOT outside.

"I can understand someone from Iowa promoting corn and soy, but we are not feeding the world, we are feeding animals and soft drink companies." - Jim Goodman
[ Parent ]
tomatoes (4.00 / 3)
http://twitpic.com/5y6nq8

from my garden. The red one is a Talula and the dark purplish is a Cherokee Purple. I managed to pick these before the squirrels got them.

Both have incredible flavors.  

I grow the Cherokee Purple (4.00 / 2)
every year and they do have outstanding flavor. Where'd you get the Talula seed? I'd love to try those out next year.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
correction they are Goldbergs Italian American (4.00 / 2)
The Talulu haven't ripened yet. I get tomatoes from a local woman who gets seeds from a seed bank. I'll send you her email address and u can ask her. The Goldbergs are tasty too and REALLY beautiful. The Cherokee Purple are YUMMY. I just made pizza dough and am going to a friends to make tomato sauce from heirlooms and we will make pizza tonight :)
[ Parent ]
debt madness (4.00 / 2)
Discussion of debt ceiling legislation now turns to consideration of Reid's bill. In the House, the vote will be taken under a special rule that requires a 2/3 majority. Do I have that right? Boehner believes in majority rule for Republican legislation but not for Democratic bills?

Boehner is such an ass.

I have other words for Boehner (4.00 / 3)
But he created a Golem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

by giving in to the Tea Party assholes

[ Parent ]
I'm beginning to think the debt ceiling won't get raised (4.00 / 2)
what a waste.
[ Parent ]
Micros are bolting so bad with this warm weather (4.00 / 2)
I harvested 12 plug trays of micros and 4 flats of baby pea greens. Glad I had CSA members showing up for shares today, but even with them, I still have bags and bags of micros in the fridge. Guess what I'm gonna be eating for the next few days????

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
Caviar, Kobe and Sake? (4.00 / 1)
;-P
[ Parent ]
This is great... (4.00 / 2)
Shamelessly stolen from a blog buddy over at GOS earlier this morning -

The Paomnnehal Pweor Of The Hmuan Mnid.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch as Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

:-D

Nice (4.00 / 1)
I had to steal it too!
[ Parent ]
Ha, was that you over at FB (4.00 / 2)
where I saw that psoetd? Sheesh, it's harder to type with the words out of order than in order.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Funny for this morning - (4.00 / 2)


Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
Installing common Sense (4.00 / 2)
Joanne, Sorry but we have passed peak intelligence.

Peace, Bob

[ Parent ]
I'm afraid you're right Bob nt (4.00 / 2)


Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Debt deal (4.00 / 2)
Obama capitulated to a bunch of wingers, and appears to love the result. Me?


My take on the soy bean (4.00 / 2)
Here's how I look at it -

You grow the soy beans. You get two cops/benefits directly from your crop. Obviously you get the legume to sell and it fixes nitrogen in the soil.

The beans are then pressed/processed for vegetable oil. That's one more product.

The meal is then used in animal feeds - that's another product, plus the meat/eggs from the animals - another product.

The manure from the animals is used for fertilizer - another product. If the animals are in a facility where the manure is collected (confinement hogs or cattle which would have to be done without antibiotics, etc., an organic dairy would be ideal where the manure would be collected in the milking shed) the manure can be used to produce methane - another product

If the animals fed are cattle, after the manure is used for methane, the water can be removed from the slurry and used for fertilizer - another product. The solids from the dehydrated manure can be used as a soil ammentment or as one dairy does, it can be formed into pots to grow plants (similar to peat pots but produced from a renewable resource) - yet another product. If the dry solids are used to produce pots, when those plants are planted in the ground, the pots break down and add organic (biological) material to the soil. Essentially they become a soil ammendment - yet another product.

So, theoretically, one field of soy beans can produce or aid in the production of no less than 9 different products.

Not bad for a little legume.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

The foundation of fabulous fake meat! (4.00 / 2)
I'm always joking abut fake meat, but we got some fake chorizo at the Grocery Outlet yesterday, It was only $1.25 for an 8 ounce package and wasn't even close to the sell-by date (maybe the company went out of business). I had some of it with fried onions and potatoes. Viva las frijoles!
[ Parent ]
Legumes (4.00 / 2)
Speaking of beans, I happened to see a vid of an American hiking in the backcountry of Japan and he came across what he said was an old-fashioned bean field. But actually it appears to be some sort of peas. Very cool and old fashioned.


I love the way the peas are trellised. (4.00 / 2)
with bamboo stakes tied with rice straw. Cut the stakes yourself from the bamboo stand over yonder and tie 'em up with rice straw from either your farm/garden or the neighbor's. Now that's the way to do it.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
36 million lbs. of Cargill turkey product recalled (4.00 / 2)
Reuters says:

Aug 3 (Reuters) - A Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] unit is recalling roughly 36 million lbs of fresh and frozen ground turkey products due to possible contamination from an antibiotic-resistant Salmonella strain believed to be linked to one known death.

Cargill Value Added Meats Retail said it has suspended production of ground turkey products at its Springdale, Arkansas, turkey processing facility until it is able to find the source of Salmonella contamination at the plant and take corrective actions, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The company said it is immediately recalling Honeysuckle White, Shady Brook Farms and several other turkey products that were produced at the facility from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2.


FSIS must have found something positive in the plant (4.00 / 2)
up until now no one would release the name of the company because they said there hadn't been any bacteria found in the plants they were looking at.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Someone found something. (4.00 / 1)
...suspended production of ground turkey products at its Springdale, Arkansas, turkey processing facility until it is able to find the source of Salmonella contamination at the plant and take corrective actions...

[ Parent ]
here's the pdf of the recalled products (4.00 / 1)
http://www.cargill.com/wcm/gro...

quite large

www.wiserearth.org   go, join, act

[ Parent ]
I don't think the list is all that large, especially considering how big Cargill is (4.00 / 1)
There are 8 brands plus unbranded bulk product. It does mean that the plant was co processing for different brands and selling bulk unbranded ground turkey. I'm not surprised to see that some of the product was sold to Safeway. Cargill is their supplier. If you're ever at a Safeway store and see their Ranchers Reserve brand, all of that meat is supplied by Cargill, or at least it was a year or two ago.

Likewise I'm not surprised to see that Cargill is supplying Kroger. A lot of companies use co-processors. It saves a company investing in the infrastructure to do the processing themselves. I'm going to be using a co-processor myself to produce things like pickles, jams, etc. from produce that I grow or harvest myself. It's impossible for me to get my kitchen certified as a commercial home kitchen (I have animals in the building the kitchen's in). But a friend of mine just got her home kitchen certified as a commercial kitchen. So I'm going to supply the produce, jars and other materials, and she's going to do my processing for me. She's also getting her travel trailer licensed so that she can store foods for sale in it, and she's also going to use it as a vending trailer when she caters events.

But getting back to that plant, I wonder how much the epedimiologists had to go through to finally trace this outbreak back to that particular plant. This particular outbreak has been going on since March. But the strain of salmonella that's caused it is very common. To trace the outbreak back to that one plant, I'd think that you'd have to get the DNA fingerprint of the bacteria and then wait for enough samples to come in with positive cultures that all had the same fingerprint to be able to see a pattern.

Epedimiology is so fascinating! Glad there are people out there looking the all those needled in all of those hay stacks.

I wonder if the plant itself or any of it's equipment has tested positive? You could trace out an outbreak like this all the way back to the plant and then test everything in the plant and come up with all negative plates from the plant samples.

The thing that gets me is when there's an outbreak of illness and some health official declares that the source of the outbreak is such and such a product and doesn't even bother to test any of it. That happened with a restaurant that Joel Salatin was supplying with eggs. The local health official declared that it had to have been the eggs that caused the outbreak. Didn't bother testing any of the eggs that were in the restaurant, the shells of the used eggs, and when Joel had the eggs tested at his farm and they came back negative, he said the official said that a negative test didn't mean anything, it still had to be the eggs. I can see both sides of the argument, but at least test the eggs at the restaurant.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
yeah, i should have made myself clearer (4.00 / 1)
i meant the scope of the distribution is quite large, especially the bulk stuff.   who knows which restaurants were using it or even schools. that, in itself, is quite a chore to trace. and i agree with you on epidemiology, quite fascinating and challenging detective work.  

www.wiserearth.org   go, join, act
[ Parent ]
trackback (0.00 / 0)
I read an earlier story reporting that a victim had a partial package in the fridge, and that package carried an establishment code identifying the facility. That version of the story has disappeared. Here's what is being reported now:

Cargill recalling 36M pounds of ground turkey

MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
14 hrs ago

All of the packages recalled include the code "Est. P-963" on the label, according to Cargill. The packages were labeled with many different brands, including Cargill's Honeysuckle White.

The CDC said this week that cultures of ground turkey from four retail locations between March 7 and June 27 showed contamination with the same strain of salmonella, though those samples had not been specifically linked to the illnesses. The CDC said preliminary information showed that three of those samples were linked to the same production establishment, but it did not name that plant.

This version actually seems to refer to the earlier information that you mentioned above, the establishment wasn't being identified. I wonder why the "victim had a partial package" story disappeared.

[ Parent ]
lost is found (0.00 / 0)
36M lbs. of turkey recalled in salmonella outbreak

MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
2 hrs 56 mins ago

Just before the recall announcement Wednesday, CDC epidemiologist Christopher Braden said he thought health authorities were closing in on the suspect. He said some leftover turkey in a package at a victim's house was confirmed to contain the strain of salmonella linked to the outbreak.

That isn't quite the same as what I read previously, but it confirms that as of this writing, the information was coming from the field, not the processing facility.

[ Parent ]
The info, at least as far as positive tests, has to come from the field first (4.00 / 1)
otherwise there's no telling where the contamination came from. That's why (at least one reason) that the establishment number has to be on the package. I think the establishment registration and numbers appearing on the packaging came about because of the Bioterrorism Protection and Response Act of 2002 (BPARA 2002). I remember when that came out and a lot of people, including myself, were concerned about the government ramping up surveillance and registration in additional databases as overly intrusive. The BPARA 2002 came about as an extension or complementary for The Patriot Act and is meant to protect the food and water supply.

Turns out it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

It's also a reason why, if I produce approved foods in my uninspected kitchen, next year when the new law in Oregon takes effect, I'll have to put my name and adress on the container. So if someone gets sick, and they test the product I sold, and it comes back positive, that the product can be traced back to me. I'll also have to put on the label that the product was produced in an uninspected kitchen, and I'll only be allowed to sell direct to the end consumer (no restaurants, etc.). That's to keep things produced in uninspected and unregistered facilities, from being distributed through chains that can spread them far and wide.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Here's the FDA guidance web page for the BPARA 2002 (4.00 / 1)
FDA Guidance on BPARA 2002

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Thanks, Crider. (4.00 / 1)
Last time I saw the story, the source was not known. Thanks for the update.
[ Parent ]
Cargill still finds (4.00 / 1)
it cheaper to ship food without testing, and forbid its customers to test, and pay these costs of recalls and legal settlements for wrongful death, than to test its products. I know I'm flogging corpses here, but this is disgraceful.

Will the recalled meat be sold on into the market for pre-cooked food? Pet food?

[ Parent ]
Yah, (4.00 / 1)
except this was a Cargill plant that was contaminated. Even if they still do prohibit testing by further processors, that argument wouldn't apply to Cargill's own plant.

I know Cargill and some of the other big processors were prohibiting testing at one time, there was a discussion of that over at Meatingplace. But as I understand it, now those prohibitions are no more, at least from Cargill.

One of the problems with testing product for further processing, like grinding, is that if you're grinding trimmings, you can test one part of a lot and not find anything, when a piece of meat in another part of the same bin will be contaminated. Even if you test the ground product you may take a sample from one part of the bin that isn't contaminated, and miss another part of the bin that is contaminated. Therefore, a bin or lot of product could test negative and still make people sick.

Kind of like the egg example I gave above. Someone could get sick from eggs you sold. You go out and test a sampling of eggs from your flock, or a sample of eggs from the shipment of eggs that sickened someone, but if those eggs you select for testing aren't contaminated, the test will come back negative, even though it was one of your eggs that made the person sick. It just wasn't any of the eggs that were actually tested.

This is what makes epedimiology in a situation like this so challenging, and I'm sure frustrating.

Especially with a bin of maybe 2,000 pounds of product, because the sample taken is so small (you can't test every gram of product in the bin), it's likely that some product in the bin is contaminated, but not all. If you happen to take samples from locations in the bin where there isn't any contaminated product, you'll get a negative.

At least from what I know of sampling and testing, that's how it looks to me.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
prohibition (0.00 / 0)
I know Cargill decided to let Costco test. Did Cargill change the policy for all their customers?

Obviously, whether customers are allowed to test or not, many of their customers do not test.

[ Parent ]
I think they may have removed the prohibition from all of their customers (4.00 / 1)
but I'm not sure. That was the impression I got from the Meetingplace discussion.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
testing (4.00 / 1)
My fault, sorry. As a former quality control officer, I forget that lay people do not know that "test" means "effective test", and that includes the sampling protocol. No sense in sampling and testing if the regime is not designed to catch the problem. Reminds me of the brand name peanut butter case a couple of years ago, not the PCA one. The company's defense propaganda was, they tested the product. At the end of a long and mostly meaningless congressional committee hearing, one of our glorious defenders of the republic finally thought to ask the company's chief quality control officer about this. How could the company have tested and then shipped contaminated product? The QC guy's answer was educational. He said something like "Well, um, errrrr, yeah, we 'improved' the test after people started dying." The test had been designed to facilitate product shipment, not to protect the public.

Being fair, I don't remember if that case involved dead people. Maybe the victims "only" got sick.

Requiring Cargill to implement effective sampling and testing protocols is to no degree unreasonable. Pity it won't happen. Killing customers is cheaper, so that's what Obama will support.

[ Parent ]
As to effective test (4.00 / 1)
I understand what you mean, but what would you consider to be an effective test on a bin of trimmings? Or on a lot of ground meat?

I could see how taking only one or two samples from a bin of trimmings wouldn't be much of an effective test, but for ground meat, how much. And do you test before or after the meat is ground? If after, how many samples per X number of pounds. Do you test every package, or every X number of packages?

Very problematic.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
sampling (4.00 / 1)
One glaringly obvious response is that any program implemented by a QC manager would be better than mindlessly shipping poison food month after month. Perfection is not the goal.

I would sample after grinding. Reverting to your hypothetical 2,000 pounds, if the line produces 1-lb. packages, 2 samples seems too little, 20 samples seems too much. I would start with whatever frequency Costco uses, then figure out if that number needs adjustment up or down. A close analysis of the process would be required - compromise between perfection and economic reality and all that - but it doesn't seem all that problematic to me.

Costco samples after the product has been packed, stacked, and shipped. I speculate that, at the Cargill plant, sampling from the line before packaging would be OK, but I don't know. For one thing, storing 10 samples wouldn't mean storing 10 pounds of product. (I also speculate that, at present, Cargill does not even have frozen 1-ounce samples retained for reference.) Then after sampling, say 10 samples for 2,000 pounds, small portions from those 10 samples could be combined and pureed for one analytical test. Or more than one analytical test, because I'm supposing that testing would look at least one, perhaps two or three E. Coli strains as well as at least one, perhaps two or three salmonella strains.

[ Parent ]
I'm not sure exactly which bacteria they test for (4.00 / 1)
some bacteria are considered adulterants and some are not. FSIS has a live chat feature available during business hours Monday through Friday. If I have a chance I'm going to get on there next week and ask them which bacteria are tested for in turkey production.

As to mindlessly shipping poison food, I think that's a bit of a stretch.  

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
mindlessly shipping (0.00 / 0)
What would your better description be? They did it for months.
[ Parent ]
Well (4.00 / 1)
one problem is that according to stats I've heard on the news, 7% of poultry (commercially raised/processed) is contaminated with salmonella. That's allowed by FSIS and FDA.

That makes me think that 100% of ground poultry meat is contaminated to a greater or lesser degree with salmonella. All allowed by the federal government per food safety laws/regulations.

So, if you know that the raw product coming in for further processing contains salmonella, and that salmonella, as long as it's below a certain level, is allowed by USDA, FSIS, are you knowingly shipping poisoned product?

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Kind of reminds me of the milk regs (4.00 / 1)
I think that the coliform limits are way smaller for raw milk than milk that's going to pasturization. Pasturization kills the pathogens (or in the case of milk, the coliforms, whether they're pathogenic or not). So what difference does it make if there's a high coliform count in the milk. It's going to be nearly sterile when it comes out of the pasturizer anyway.

Same with poultry. While there may be some crazy people (like me) who like raw beef, there are very few people who like raw, or even rare, poultry.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
I emailed the food safety question answerer (4.00 / 1)
at Oregon Department of Agriculture yesterday afternoon. I asked her what USDA FSIS tests for as far as bacteria. She emailed me back and said that she had forewarded my questions on to her contact at USDA. Hopefully I'll get an answer back Monday some time.

The people I've contacted at ODA have been pretty good and open about ansering questions like these. For instance, it was one of the food safety people who told me the work around for poultry slaughter so I can raise poultry, have the birds slaughtered and processed in an inspected facility, but not under continuous USDA inspection, and still be able to sell to restaurants, at the farmers market, etc. and still be legal. There are only one or two facilities slaughtering under continuous inspection for independant poultry growers (that's why Tyson et al had to go out and build their own plants, then grow large enough to pay for it). Some can use those slaughter houses (although it costs a lot to have them do the work). So the rest of us use the work around.

One of the problems I've discovered is that inspection, if you're slaughtering fewer than 20,000 birds/year is voluntary. When inspection is voluntary, that means that you, the slaughterhouse owner, get to pay the FSIS inspectors wages and benefits out of your own pocket. Once you break that 20,000 bird/year cap, then inspecion goes from voluntary to mandatory. Once it becomes mandatory all the inspectors wages and benefits are paid for by the federal government.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Another problem, at least with poultry (4.00 / 1)
is that I think that FSIS does not have a 0 tollerance  policy on salmonella. It's assumed that a certain percentage of poultry will have salmonella, under a certain level, salmonella is not considered an adulterant. So poultry meat, and I assume the further processed raw ground meat, can have a certain level of salmonella and still considered to be fit for consumption.

Having raised poultry and slaughtered same here on the farm, I can see the logic in that. It's impossible, short of iradiation, to completely eliminate salmonella and other bacteria during slaughter and processing.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Think about the slaughtering/ dressing process (4.00 / 1)
The birds will have some manure on them. On their feet at the least, and they'll have manure particles and bacteria on their feathers too. The birds are brought in, hung in shackles, run through a slaughter line where they are stunned, the head removed, bled out, and then into a scalding tank that's probably at 150°F for a short period to loosen the feathers, then they are plucked, eviscerated, and sent on down the line to be trimmed (feet removed, necks removed, etc.).

The scalding tank isn't hot enough, nor are the birds in the water long enough, to kill the bacteria. If the water was hot enough to kill the bacteria in a very short period of time it'd cook the birds, if the birds were in the scalder long enough at 150°F to kill the bacteria it'd cook the birds. So if just one or two birds go through the line and are contaminated with salmonella (an almost certainty), then they'll wind up contaminating all the subsequent birds moving through the line.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
What is the matter with us? (4.00 / 2)
The Colonel is going to cry BS on this one.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/...
I feel sorry for the single mothers (4.00 / 1)
trying to eek out a living. Those lucky enough to have a job often don't have time to make a decent meal at night, and so many people don't even know how to cook anymore.

Our local supermarket flyer is advertising those little Banquet TV dinners at 5 for $4.  Just nuke and serve. Real food doesn't seem to have much of a chance against those crappy frozen 'meals'.

[ Parent ]
I hear that as far as the heat and eat meals go (4.00 / 1)
that's why I do bulk cooking when I can. But even though you can save prep time on a day to day basis, you still have to devote at least 1/2 a day on one particular day to do bulk cooking, more if you want several different choices for meals during the week. There's a logistical hurdle that you have to negotiate to do bulk cooking well.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
I cook early AM (4.00 / 1)
and always cook extra and freeze and I eat lot of cold foods and salads. Tonight will be spicy lettuce mix from the garden (critters don't touch it) and and heirloom tomatoes (Cherokee Purple and Pink Brandywine) My daughter discovered Greek Kalamata EVOO at Trader Joes and its great on salads.

But I don't eat a lot of meat or convenience foods and I eat a lot of beans and grains.

[ Parent ]
Salads and what not from the garden (4.00 / 1)
are the ultimate fast foods. I try to keep a bag in the fridge all the time. If I don't have anything made ahead, I can just grab a salad. Takes me about 2 minutes to make a vinegarette and I'm good to go.

If I have some bread, I'll have that with the salad, otherwise I'll have a little bit of pasta dressed with EVOO, herbs and parmesan cheese. I don't like cooked grains, but if I have some beans made up, I love beans and pasta.

I almost never cook day by day unless it's go boil some pasta. If I don't have it made ahead, I just don't eat. I try to keep ramen in the house as emergency rations, along with some wine to add to the broth. That stuff's great as a cold meal with a salad. I cook the ramen noodles aldente, then rinse with cold water, drain and dress with sesame oil and nothing else. I reserve the broth packet for use in other soups.

I've also got a lot of radish greens and micro greens. Last week I grew way more than I sold. The CSA members are going to be getting about a pound of microgreens each (that's about $30 worth at the prices I sell them to the distributor). I'm going to make a radish greens pesto. If it turns out good, I'm going to grow a lot of radish greens and make them into pesto to freeze. I love pasta with pesto.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
just made some pesto (4.00 / 1)
will post recipe later on.

I'm surprised about not liking cooked grains.have you tried pesto w/farro or barley?

[ Parent ]
Hah! (4.00 / 1)
I made pesto yesterday too. I used pea greens as my base along with radish microgreens. I flavored it with some basil leaves. I didn't have any nuts so I just made without. I know some people who have hazelnuts, and I'm going to start using them.

I've got some types of pesto I'm going to experiment with that will have more of an asian or middle eastern flavor to them. One I want to try out with radish greens, sesame oil, ginger and garlic.

I'm out of the pesto making game for today, I used up all my EVOO yesterday. But when I deliver to Portland on Tuesday, I'm going to swing by Costco and pick up more EVOO and parmesan cheese. Then I'll be making pesto all over the place!

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
making fortunes (4.00 / 1)
Is it time to buy common stocks yet?
First ripe tomatoes!!!! (4.00 / 2)
Today I picked and ate the first of the tomatoes in my garden to ripen. These were Stupice tomatoes, a cold-tolerant variety brought to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia.

These delicious tomatoes are small, just a bit bigger than a cherry tomato. And they taste so tomatoey. I was a little skeptical about planting such an early maturing tomato because I usually don't like the taste of the early ones. Oregon Spring and Early Girl mostly taste like cardboard to me. The Stupices taste like tomato.

A friend grew these last year here in Portland. Last summer was cold and wet, and the tomato crop was disappointing (My only consistent ripeners were red grape), but the Stupices pumped out a big and continuous crop of ripe tomatoes for my friend. So, after our cold and wet spring I decided to give them a try. Boy howdy, am I glad I did.

So the dog didn't kill me... (4.00 / 1)
...though it sure tried.

Recovering today from the multiple bites suffered last night after an attack by the vicious beast upstairs.

Just ventured outside, and apparently Portland Hipster Douchefest 2011 just ended at the art gallery / tee-shirt shop across the street.  I can't believe how many of them there are!  They move slow, as that's their thing, so they'll be hanging out on the sidewalks for a while.  Many, many dozens dressed in their uniform of frighteningly skinny jeans and 'ironic' tee-shirts with mustaches and glasses to match.  Pretty sure they're drinking PBR from cans.  Quite a scene to behold...

OMG, Jay! Are you all right? Do you need (4.00 / 2)
medical attention? WTF happened with the dog? And did you call the police and report the attack?
[ Parent ]
I'm okay. :) (4.00 / 1)
Have to say though, I haven't been doing too well to begin with and I did not need multiple dog bites on top of all my other current problems...

Heh.

Just came back in, washed it off.  My favorite pair of jeans was ruined.  Argh.  My legs aren't turning blue or green or anything, so that's good.  Haven't reported it.  Should I?  I'm really still kinda dazed, not sure what to do.  I've never been attacked by a dog before.  So much conflicting information out there.

[ Parent ]
Yes, you should call the police. Getting attacked by a dog is a (4.00 / 3)
big deal, Jay. A dog who attacks someone is not a safe dog. This dog might go after someone else, maybe a child or an elderly person. The owner needs to be on notice to keep control of the dog. And the authorities need to know if there is a dangerous dog.

Also, tell the landlord. The building owner is legally liable, has insurance, and may be responsible for paying any medical bills you get because of this.

If you haven't already, check to be sure the dog is up-to-date on its shots. If it is not, get yourself to a doctor immediately. I'm serious here, Jay. And the police should be told if this dog has not had its shots.

Did the dog break the skin? Was there bleeding? If so, it becomes even more important that you see a doctor.

I'll bet you're dazed. A few years ago I was attacked by my neighbor's pit bull. I was walking to my car, and the dog broke free from its owner and charged at me. Luckily, I was holding a thick bag on my wrist and was wearing a thick and sturdy canvas coat. When the dog snapped its jaw around my arm, the bag and the coat kept it from sinking its teeth into my arm. I got off with scrapes and major bruises.  And my neighbor was right there and managed to pull the dog off me.

I was stunned and shaking and horribly shaken up. And I stayed that way, to one degree or another for several days. I was never afraid of dogs before that, respectful yes, but not afraid. Now I am very wary of any dog.

At the time a friend who raises and shows German Shepherds told me it was absolutely necessary that I report the dog to the police. She said that a dog never just bites one person one time, and dangerous dogs need to be away from people.  I'm not one for turning to the police to resolve every problem and it was hard for me to get over feeling like some kind of whiny tattle-tale, but I knew I would feel even worse and quite guilty if the dog went after someone else and I had not reported it.

Please do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself. And demand your neighbor pay for those ruined jeans.

Let me know how it goes.

[ Parent ]
Dog has had all its shots... (4.00 / 2)
...so I'm pretty sure I'm okay there.

Sorry to hear about your incident!  Now that's frightening.  I'm just glad this dog is smaller than many cats I've known.  Three bites, only one really broke the skin but I was bleeding like hell from that one for a while.  The other two left bruises and scratches.

I'm pretty sure it was trying to kill me, it lunged at first but obviously can't jump that high.  Think it was going for my throat.  I'm just glad the bites weren't to any... sensitive parts.  Major one on the right ankle, the two others were near the left knee.

[ Parent ]
I doubt that the landlord is legally responsible for damages from the dog (4.00 / 3)
unless he/she knew that the dog had a history of biting. But the dog owners are legally liable, both for your property damage and any medical bills incurred from the bite.

And Casey's right about reporting to get that dog on record as well as the dog's owners.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Absolutely you should report it (4.00 / 3)
you are required by law to report bites that break the skin, and even if a bite doesn't break the skin it should be reported.

Keep an eye out for blood poisoning from the bites, it sounds like one or more broke the skin? Or did your clothing protect you well enough that you're bruised and scratched?

Either way you should report it. If for no other reason that the dog will go on record as a dangerous dog with the city/county. If you have any medical bills from the attack and replacement of the clothing that was damaged, the owners are legally liable for those as well.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
yes...let us know how it goes (4.00 / 2)

Scrapple! (4.00 / 1)
These guys just up the street a couple miles make it.  Was just there and picked up some lamb sausage, didn't pick up any scrapple today but definitely next time.  I actually did get some here last year, but I can't remember how it was.  Anyway.

Scrapple!

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name pon haus,[1][2] is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then panfried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as a rural American food of the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland). Scrapple and pon haus are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonites and Amish.

[...]

Scrapple is arguably the first pork food invented in America. The roots of the culinary traditions that led to the development of scrapple in America have been traced back to pre-Roman Europe. [9] The more immediate culinary ancestor of scrapple was the Low German dish called panhas, which was adapted to make use of locally available ingredients, and it is still called "Pannhaas," "panhoss," or "pannhas" in parts of Pennsylvania.[10] The first recipes were created by Dutch colonists who settled near Philadelphia and Chester County, Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries.[11] As a result, scrapple is strongly associated with rural areas surrounding Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and surrounding eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and the Delmarva Peninsula. Its popularity on the Delmarva Peninsula is celebrated annually during the "Apple-Scrapple Festival" in Bridgeville, Delaware.

In composition, preparation, and taste, scrapple is similar to the white pudding popular in Ireland, Scotland and parts of England and the spicier Hog's pudding of the West Country of England.

Tastes much better than it sounds.

;)

my father LOVED the stuff (4.00 / 1)
and truth be told if we eat meat, there are parts that shouldn't be thrown away.

I just never liked the look of scrapple

[ Parent ]
my father LOVED the stuff (0.00 / 0)
and truth be told if we eat meat, there are parts that shouldn't be thrown away.

I just never liked the look of scrapple

[ Parent ]
DB Cooper! (4.00 / 1)
Is this the guy?

We're coming up on the 40-year anniversary...

With regard to the discussion on testing and pathogens in meat/poultry (4.00 / 2)
This article has some interesting info on pathogens and their declaration, or not, by USDA as an adulterant in food.

I was unsure whether salmonella was classified as an adulterant. I know that there had been some discussion about classifying it, but was unsure if it had actually been declared an adulterant or not.

Jean Halloran, CU's director of food policy initiatives, said in a statement: "The current USDA ground turkey standard, which allows 49.9 percent of samples in a test run to be positive for Salmonella, is unacceptable and clearly ineffective as a tool for food safety."

Salmonella is not declared an adulterant, not even antibiotic resistant salmonella, and the above quote is quite chilling.

Glad I'm raising my own broilers again this year and will be through out the fall and possibly into the winter. Also makes me glad I've got the rabbits back up and running so I can have some rabbit meat this winter too.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

adulterant (4.00 / 1)
From the article, I infer that only one strain of E. coli is classed as an adulterant.

When USDA accepted E. coli O157 as an adulterant in 1994, the agency created a sampling and testing program that operates within the food-production industry to detect the organism and stop it before it goes out the plant loading dock.

That can't be true, can it? If it is true, the program is woefully ineffective.

[ Parent ]
Here's the reply I got back from FSIS (4.00 / 1)
To answer the questions about testing:

The Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) branch of USDA does testing of raw meat and poultry products, as well as testing of cooked meat and poultry products. Testing is performed based on plant size, volume, and previous sampling history. For ground beef products, E. coli O157:H7 is probably the most common testing performed, as E. coli O157:H7 is classified as an adulterant in raw ground beef. FSIS also performs routine Salmonella testing in raw ground beef also. Again, testing is based on production volume and plant size. Regarding E. coli, as little as 10-100 cells can make someone sick, whereas Salmonella takes somewhere between 250,000-1,000,000 to cause illness.

Salmonella testing on poultry products is performed, but there are specific "performance standards" regarding Salmonella on poultry. Because Salmonella has always been prevalent on poultry, a specific performance standard was developed between FSIS and the poultry industry. Whole birds produced have a performance standard of 20%. Meaning, up to 20% of the birds leaving the plant may contain Salmonella. For ground poultry products, the performance standard is 50%. Yes, It sounds high, but that was the agreement between the government and industry when the poultry regulations were written. Campylobacter in poultry previously had no standard and no testing was performed, but that just changed. The new standards for Salmonella and Campylobacter will be at 5% and 10% respectively on whole birds. Not sure at this point if there will be a new standard for ground poultry products, but after this latest recall, I am guessing yes.

Hope this helped.

Paul Sherman

Enforcement Investigation Analysis Officer

Food Safety Inspection Service



Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Borders... (4.00 / 1)
An interesting article.

It's embarrassing now, but on the day that I was hired to work at Boston's flagship Borders store in 1996, I was so happy that I danced around my apartment. After dropping out of college, I had worked a succession of crappy jobs: mall Easter Bunny, stock boy at Sears and Kmart and Walmart, a brief and nearly fatal stint as a landscaper. A job at Borders seemed to be a step, at long last, toward my ultimate goal of writing for a living. At least I would be working with books. And the scruffy Borders employees, in their jeans and band T-shirts, felt a lot closer to my ideal urban intellectuals than the stuffy Barnes & Noble employees with their oppressive dress code and lame vests.

The fact that Borders offered me a full-time job, which allowed me to quit two part-time jobs (at a Staples and a Stop & Shop) and offered health insurance (that promised to help pay for my impending wisdom tooth extraction), was a pretty big deal, too.


British law enforcement (4.00 / 1)
Some British figures are calling for the use of water cannons in trying to control the arsonists and rioters, which were operating in three cities as of last night - London, Birmingham, and Liverpool. Water cannons are used by British law enforcement in Northern Ireland, but the Home Secretary says things are done differently in the "mainland" (seems a peculiar designation for an island nation.) The Home Secretary declines to use water cannons in England, and besides, says New Scotland Yard, there aren't any water cannons in England. They're all in Northern Ireland.

UPDATE: Scotland Yard has just been replaced by a multi-story cuckoo's nest, whose head nurse is the woman who was Home Secretary.

I'd be ticked off if I lived in Northern Ireland. Might even throw a cobblestone or three.

English riots (4.00 / 1)
Now reportedly spread to Bristol.
[ Parent ]
spreading violence (4.00 / 1)
"small pockets of disorder" in a neighborhood in Leeds. The spread might not be too bad, though - police seem to get control of the away-from-London situations pretty quickly. Apparently Scotland Yard (metropolitan London police) is the only agency that doesn't know what it's doing.
[ Parent ]
Cargill rocks, Cargill rolls (4.00 / 1)
Cargill earnings up 61 percent as it continues global expansion

Tom Webb
08/09/2011

In the past year, Cargill said it invested more than $3 billion on acquisitions and expansions, including the Australian Wheat Board business in Australia, a condiment business in Brazil, alcohol operations in Europe, animal feed mills in Russia and Vietnam and poultry processing operations in Thailand.

No word yet on how much Cargill invested in food safety in the U.S. last year.

Probably no more (4.00 / 1)
than the federal government (bastion of food safety and protector of the public health) said was necessary.

That's the problem with the food system we have today. Everyone expects the federal, state, county and city governments to protect them. We get lulled into a false sense of security and then are terribly disillusioned, not to mentioned sickened or killed, when the government falls down on the job. A job, I might add, that the government isn't really capable of doing. But instead of blaming the fed for setting up the rules in the first place, we blame companies like Cargill.

They actually both share the blame, but that's the food system we in this country have encouraged to grow and grow and grow, all in the name of convenience and low cost.

I'm just as much to blame as anyone. I just got back from Costco with bulk containers of parmesan cheese, olive oil, spices, and pop corn. God I can't believe I got 8 lbs of pop corn (thank you Con Agra) for only $10.99.

See what I mean when I say we're all to blame?

;-)

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
Costco (4.00 / 1)
Speaking of Costco, Reser's potato salad is back in Costco refrigerators. I guess Reser's convinced the Costco buyer that their contamination problems were solved.

I bought 5 lbs of potato salad Saturday, ate it all in two days!

[ Parent ]
I love potato salad! I could live on the stuff. nt (4.00 / 2)


Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Don't blame me! (4.00 / 2)
I never said that maximizing profits was Cargill's #1 goal. Nor did I ever insist that Cargill must grow and swallow up its competition. I'm totally out of high fructose corn syrup. I don't eat dead turkeys.
[ Parent ]
If not you, (4.00 / 1)
who?
[ Parent ]
If not me, when? ;) (4.00 / 1)
Oh wait, that doesn't quite work does it?
[ Parent ]
LOL (4.00 / 2)
you too Jay.

:-P

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
I never blamed you. Or at least not only you. (4.00 / 1)
For the food system we have nowadays. It's all of us, you, me, everyone who shops at a store for any kind of food, even if they're substantially self sufficient and only buy food of any kind a few times a year.

And I used to  blame the food companies, processors, slaughterhouses, etc. too. That is until I learned more about the system we have and how it came about. Now I see deeper problems that are intrinsic in the system and I see that there is absolutely no way that they can all be solved. One of the problems is the industry and government mantra that we have the safest food in the world. Well, we do have very safe food, but the safest food is food that the consumer produces him/her self. The safest meat is from an animal that the consumer slaughters, butchers, puts up and cooks his/her self. One reason is that if you're doing that on a fairly regular basis your immune system is exposed regulary to those very same pathogens that can make you sick. Will you get sick? Yup, if you don't do things right. If you do things right, probably not, or at least your risk is way lower.

Every time we allow someone else to join the chain of production in our personal food chain, we add a little bit of risk. In a product like ground turkey, you're adding hundreds of people in between you and your food. And if it's something like a TV dinner or a pizza (cooked or uncooked) it's probably more like thousands of people. But it's way more convenient to pick up a package of ground turkey at the store, or a pizza and my favorite pizza joint than it is do do everything myself that it takes to make those products myself.

Knowing the risks and the inherent limitations of the system, I use a lot of caution in handling and preparing those and other products. But it we were to tell people this and really rub their noses in it, all of those businesses would collapse because their end users, the general public, would stampede away. At least until they got hungry again.

Of course Cargill's #1 goal is maximizing profits. But to knowingly send out contaminated product isn't what I would call a viable strategy for maximizing profits. Costs lots of money, the company's image takes a terrible hit, weakens consumer, and wholesale buyers' confidence. Believe me, if you're a company like Cargill, you are wholely dependant on selling huge ammounts of product into the wholesale market as well as your ability to co-process for other retailers/wholesalers.

A recall like this costs the company a shitload of money, not just now, but on down the road.

And as to testing, Cargill is going to do what USDA tells them to do. From the FSIS official's email, I got the impression that there is a 0 tollerance level for E. coli 0157. That's because as few as 10 cells can kill you. The tollerance for salmonella is much, much higher because the risk is much, much lower. I've watched programs on how FSIS tests facilities, and how most facilities are cleaned, maintained, etc. Both the USDA and the manufacturers are doing as best they can to keep from sending out tainted product. With the exception of a very, very small number of bad actors like the person/people in charge of that peanut plant that knowingly sent out tainted product, everyone's trying as best they can to send out non contaminated product.

That having been said though, short of irradiation or a sterilizing dunk or spray that kills 100% of all bacteria on the inside or outside of a carcass, there is no way in hell to completely eliminate some level of contamination in the slaughtering process. I know, I slaughter animals several times a year on my farm. I do the slaughtering, I'm up to my elbows in blood, I'm more careful than you could ever know (short of coming out here and working alongside me), and I still don't eat raw meat unless it's a whole muscle cut and it's been soaked in an acid or something else that will kill bacteria that may be on the surface of the meat. And that's after I've spent years being exposed to all of the bacteria and viruses present on my particular farm, so you'd think my immune system would be able to spot an intruder right off the bat.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

[ Parent ]
My motto - (4.00 / 1)
"Safest food in the world" = false sense of security.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
I'm reminded of the great peanut debacle a few years back (4.00 / 1)
Workers under that giant peanut corporation which produced and sold those rotten peanuts did indeed knowingly do so.

There's no reason to assume that workers under the Cargill Corporation didn't knowingly violate laws or internal procedures when they shipped out dirty meat.

Of course, it's easy to blame modern corporate culture. That culture which would put a generalist in charge of a ground turkey factory. Maybe they have an MBA and previous production experience overseeing a toy factory. I've seen that a lot in my days - hiring a highly degreed generalist with no experience in a specific industry to run things.

So that generalist is very good at cutting expenses, and cuts expenses. Don't they all these days? The shift manager duly implements expense cutting by demanding higher productivity. The department supervisor in turn forgoes some daily, time-consuming scrubbing procedures in order to avoid overtime charges in his department. I've seen stuff like that happen a lot.

There we have the unthinkable, a nasty salmonella getting in the system. What's so awful is that Cargill and is such a huge bottleneck where so much turkey 'product' goes through, that many, many people are at risk from just a single point of failure.

It's the overwhelming size of that turkey bottleneck that's insane. It's the limited-liability nature of corporations that encourage the workers of That Piece of Property to do things that they themselves would never do if they, a living, breathing person actually owned a turkey slaughterhouse.

Corporations aren't necessarily inherently evil. My doctor is a medical corporation a small one at that. That corporation doesn't do evil things as far as I know.

But huge corporations are inherently evil, because it is often in its profitable 'interest' for its workers to do evil things and say untrue things.

A corporation is really nothing more than piece of property. It has no soul, no heart, no brain. It doesn't breathe or eat or go to the bathroom. It doesn't sleep, doesn't lie awake at night sweating in regret either. It kills other corporations that are deemed a threat by its workers. It will often cheat its own lower paid workers by using machinations of its higher paid workers (I'm think about the great pension theft of the past 20 years)

Odd thing it is.

[ Parent ]
So, I planted a three sisters experiment (4.00 / 2)
kinda late in the season, but I did it just for fun. I used corn from my bulk corn stash. I used pinto beans from my bulk stash, zucchini seeds from a 2 year-old packet I had laying around, and I transplanted an unknown winter squash volunteer from near the compost pile.

Anyway, it's all growing nicely, but the pinto beans are bush beans, not pole beans! I didn't have a clue until I realized they weren't growing any tendrils. Ruined the whole game as the squash is growing over the top of some of the beans because they're so short.

I plan to get some heritage varieties from Native Seed Search for next year and do it all again with tepiary pole beans and I want to plant them on the same spot. I don't believe that New World Americans practiced rotation on three-sisters plantings, so I want to see what pests, if any, show up to wreck havoc.

That's cool (4.00 / 2)
LOL on the pinto beans. I didn't know that they're bush beans either untill I saw them harvested with a combine. Kinda hard to do that with pole beans.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.
[ Parent ]
Pot Luck | 106 comments
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- GroundTruth
- Irresistable Fleet of Bicycles
- John Bunting's Dairy Journal
- Liberal Oasis
- Livable Future Blog
- Marler Blog
- My Left Wing
- Not In My Food
- Obama Foodorama
- Organic on the Green
- Rural Enterprise Center
- Take a Bite Out of Climate Change
- Treehugger
- U.S. Food Policy
- Yale Sustainable Food Project

Reference
- Recipe For America
- Eat Well Guide
- Local Harvest
- Sustainable Table
- Farm Bill Primer
- California School Garden Network

Organizations
- The Center for Food Safety
- Center for Science in the Public Interest
- Community Food Security Coalition
- The Cornucopia Institute
- Farm Aid
- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
- Food and Water Watch
- National Family Farm Coalition
- Organic Consumers Association
- Rodale Institute
- Slow Food USA
- Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
- Union of Concerned Scientists

Magazines
- Acres USA
- Edible Communities
- Farmers' Markets Today
- Mother Earth News
- Organic Gardening

Book Recommendations
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
- Appetite for Profit
- Closing the Food Gap
- Diet for a Dead Planet
- Diet for a Small Planet
- Food Politics
- Grub
- Holistic Management
- Hope's Edge
- In Defense of Food
- Mad Cow USA
- Mad Sheep
- The Omnivore's Dilemma
- Organic, Inc.
- Recipe for America
- Safe Food
- Seeds of Deception
- Teaming With Microbes
- What To Eat

User Blogs
- Beyond Green
- Bifurcated Carrot
- Born-A-Green
- Cats and Cows
- The Food Groove
- H2Ome: Smart Water Savings
- The Locavore
- Loving Spoonful
- Nourish the Spirit
- Open Air Market Network
- Orange County Progressive
- Peak Soil
- Pink Slip Nation
- Progressive Electorate
- Trees and Flowers and Birds
- Urbana's Market at the Square


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