That wailing you hear in the distance is the sound of small meat processors begging the USDA for mercy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service recently proposed a set of new regulations that will require all meat processors to submit their products to a new series of tests, a procedure that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for even a modestly scaled operation, enough to cripple many small processors.
What worries fans of small farms and locally produced food is that the closing of small processors will mean the closing of small farms. Slaughter and processing is the biggest challenge for small-scale meat; they’re operations simply too costly and complex for farms to handle themselves. As it is, farmers have few options for meat processing without selling their animals to massive feedlot-meat operations, and without that piece of the puzzle, many farmers may quit. Why is the USDA considering the new testing regime? Some producers wonder if the machinations of Big Food are in play.
“The new testing would just ensure that the current processes, which are based on scientific consensus, are working,” according to Dustin VandeHoer of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. But, he adds that it’s not clear why they’re being mandated: “It doesn’t appear that it’s in response to any specific situation. They’re just kind of reinterpreting the existing rules.’” And he’s unsure that the new tests are necessary. “We haven’t had problems with food safety, especially with the smaller plants,” he says. “We should never become complacent, but I think we can reach a point where [small meat processors] can still be allowed to operate and food can be safe. I don’t know that we need to be taking this path that’s going to put small plants out of business.” (Repeated attempts by Salon to solicit comments from the USDA were unsuccessful.)
Greg Higgins, chef/owner of Higgins Restaurant in Portland, Ore., and a founding member of the sustainability and local-food-focused Chefs Collaborative, has darker suspicions. “What’s always in the back of my mind is the industrial food lobby,” he says. He suspects that the change in the USDA regulations, and the way they will affect small meat producers, was probably “fairly well thought out by the lobbyists.” The popularity of small farms, grass-fed meats, and artisan products like salumi and prosciutto is expanding rapidly, and Higgins suspects that the industrial food lobby is trying to squeeze producers out so as not to lose a share of the market.”They don’t want any competition,” Higgins says. “They’re very powerful and I think they would relish the opportunity to keep the market closed.”
Mario Fantasma of Paradise Meats in Trimble, Mo., wants to trust the USDA. “I’m sure their intentions are good,” he says, “but I don’t think that they see far enough into what it can do to small companies — and even large companies for that matter.”
Higgins says that it’s unfair for small plants to suffer when health safety risks are disproportionately linked to large-scale processing. “Think about all the big health scares we’ve had,” he says. “They’re all related to large-scale food production, whether it’s spinach from a massive grower in California or ground beef out of the Midwest, they’re all gigantic, they’re never these little tiny plants.”
And Fantasma argues that small plants are, by necessity, already more conscious about food safety. “At small facilities, we’ve always had food safety in our top priorities. We can’t afford not to. If one of our customers came here and got sick, what do you think would happen to my business? That alone would kill us. It’s common sense that we want to do everything in our power to make sure that our product is safe.”
“The thing that’s going to affect us is the cost of the testing,” Fantasma says. Regulations for small plants like Fantasma’s will require 13 samples of every product to be tested before processing, and another 13 samples after processing. “When you add all those products and tests, it racks up a super amount of money,” he says. “Right now we’re sitting at about $500,000 for the initial validation tests, just for the first year. We wouldn’t be able to do it. It would just really devastate our business.”
Fantasma recognizes the trickle-down effect of the new regulations. “It’s not just about us, the processors. Look at what would happen to the farmers who are trying to offer their farm-raised products to their customers. [The USDA is] taking away their ability to market their own products. Their farms would wither up. They would have to go back to selling to commodity markets, whether they want to or not. And what’s bad about it is that these guys raise some nice animals, hormone- and antibiotic-free. They work real hard for their living, trying to keep a sustainable farm running, and when you take their market away from them, it shuts them down.”
The American Association of Meat Producers and the Iowa Department of Agriculture have both made public statements against the new regulations and have started a letter-writing campaign. VandeHoer is hopeful that the USDA will heed their concerns about the fate of small plants, and Fantasma says the letter writing is his only hope. “All we can do is go to them and say, ‘Look, this is going to kill us.’”
Of course, everybody likes rabbits. They’re furry. They’re adorable. They make great pets, and, ask any child, they’re very generous about dropping off chocolate at Easter. But as Kim Severson writes in today’s New York Times, there’s another increasingly popular reason to love bunnies — they taste delicious!
Severson reports that the rabbit is becoming a trendy new meat for ethically conscious carnivores. This isn’t the first time that rabbit has been touted as the next big thing — the Wall Street Journal argued the same thing over a decade ago — but in this case, there are several cultural factors working in its favor. Most notably, the fact that the movement toward ethical, local butchery has become a major part of American food culture over the past few years, and the rabbit is perfectly suited to it. (In her NYT piece, Severson attends a Brooklyn seminar where aspiring butchers pay $100 to learn how to raise and slaughter their own rabbits.)
There are many reasons to love the rabbit-as-food: They’re the most sustainable meat for city farmers. They can be raised in a small space in a person’s home. They reproduce quickly. They’re quiet and clean, and because they are so effective at turning calories into body weight and can eat kitchen scraps, they are cheap to raise and have low carbon footprints. They’re also simple to slaughter and process. (As Severson writes, they are a good “gateway animal” for aspiring butchers.)
Nutrition-wise, rabbit meat is also very lean and healthy to eat. (If you’ve never had it, it tastes like a milder and sweeter version of chicken.) It’s versatile, and can be turned into everything from pâté to burgers to sausage (as Kitchen Cabinet member Tom Mylan recently did). With all that going for it, why aren’t Americans eating rabbit meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
In America, unlike in France, rabbits have only been consumed en masse during tough times. We were encouraged to raise rabbits for meat during World War II, but in the years that followed, the rising price of feed and the closing of several meat processors turned the bunny into niche meat. As PETA has shown, rabbits have a disconcerting tendency to scream before they’re slaughtered. The bigger (and more obvious) problem is the fact that, for most Americans, the rabbit is considered a pet. And one of the many things that we like to think makes America glorious is the fact that we don’t like eating our own domestic companions. As Severson writes, the owner of Brooklyn restaurant Buttermilk Tavern recently had a table of guests leave when they discovered rabbit on the menu.
But it’s increasingly becoming clear, thanks to the growth of ethically conscious butchering and meat-eating, that this sentimentality doesn’t exactly make much sense. Rabbits aren’t the smartest of pets, and we don’t shy away from eating other intelligent animals (like pigs). Given their breeding rates, they’re not likely to be going on the endangered list any time soon. And even Michael Pollan is a fan — as he told Good, “Rabbit makes more sense than chickens.”
To put it into perspective, Liza De Guia recently toured a New York rabbit farm for Food Curated. The farmer, John Fazio, delivers his rabbits to NYC restaurants (un-frozen, a day or two after they’ve been processed). Check it out below:
The interior of a McDonald's restaurant is seen in Washington D.C. January 22, 2010, the day the nation's largest fast-food chain is set to post its quarterly earnings. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS FOOD)(Credit: Reuters)
Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal heralded yet another introduction of healthy, low-calorie menu options at chains like Applebee’s and Starbucks. But “healthier” fast-food items are nothing new. Chain restaurants have been spinning out grilled chicken salads and yogurt parfaits ever since everyone caught on to the fact that their food made people fat. McDonald’s added salads to its menu in 1987, three years before it opened its first restaurant behind the Iron Curtain. But if they keep rolling these items out seemingly year after year like they’re the next big thing, they really never seem to be the current big thing. Does anyone order these things? And if not, why do they keep getting introduced?
The WSJ article suggests that the new wave of low-calorie menu items stems from possible federal legislation requiring chains to post calorie counts on their menus. The science is still out on the effectiveness of menu calorie counts — a Stanford University study showed that the posting of nutritional information reduced overall calorie consumption at Starbucks, but another study, by the New York University School of Medicine, found that the calorie information had virtually no effect on what people ordered in low-income areas, which are areas particularly high in rates of obesity.
So what’s really behind this new push for healthier menu items? To find out, Salon spoke over the phone to Bob Goldin, executive vice president at Technomic Inc., a restaurant research and consulting firm, about the effectiveness of calorie counts, how to sell light food during a recession, and why Americans just won’t eat healthier meals.
Fast-food restaurants have been offering low-calorie options for decades. Is anyone buying them?
Anyone? Yes. Not many people, that’s the problem. I think it’s safe to say they haven’t met with a resounding level of success. They haven’t proven to be big winners.
So why do these low-calorie options keep being rolled out?
It gives them something to talk about. It gives them an opportunity to try to stay ahead of the trend, to do something new. There is a need for good-tasting, better-for-you food. The problem is that consumers by and large haven’t manifested a desire to buy these things.
So these chains aren’t making any money off of them?
No. There’s a lot of cost to develop and introduce these items. They’re doing it to broaden their appeal, to cancel out veto votes [when one person resists eating at a restaurant that doesn't offer healthy menu items]. It gives them something to talk about. There are a lot of reasons to do it.
Do you think legitimate concerns about their consumers’ health factors into the restaurants’ decision-making?
The job of the restaurant industry is to give consumers what they want. Are they concerned? I think they find it very difficult to balance what people say they want and what they really buy.
Do you think calorie labels will encourage people to make healthier choices?
No — maybe marginally. I think there’s a huge shock value. We’ve been labeling packaged foods for 20 years, and that certainly doesn’t seem to affect what people eat.
Does the recession make it harder to sell healthier food?
Restaurants are promoting dollar menus, and what’s on the dollar menu? Inexpensive food, which has a lot of fat and calories. I think there’s a lot of other ways to get at health and nutrition. Gee, Einstien, eat less! There’s nothing wrong with eating French fries, there’s nothing wrong with eating fried chicken, and there’s nothing wrong with eating pizza. The problem is the portion size and the frequency.
We’re looking for a magic solution. I’m very much in favor of labeling. It serves an important purpose, which is to inform. Unfortunately, consumers continue to make very bad choices even when they’re informed.
For non-New Yorker readers of the New York Times, it must sometimes be hard to imagine that we all live in the same country (or the same universe). Especially when they read articles during a recession about the popular new “cave man diet,” the trendiness of the pot-belly, or the “hottest of all hot-button issues in yoga,” the epic war between yoga foodies and yoga practitioners who don’t eat meat.
Today in the Times dining section, Julia Moskin tackles the latter — and attends what might be the world’s most annoying-sounding yoga class in Manhattan:
Calling his mission “yoga for the Everyman,” Mr. Romanelli, 36, plays Grateful Dead songs during class, wears sweat pants rather than spandex, and has already experimented with offering chocolate truffles after chaturanga instruction. “It’s a way of getting people in the door,” he said in an interview.
Right, because the people who were skeptical about yoga are going to be lured in by the Grateful Dead and high-end chocolates. Given that, as Moskin points out, “both American-style yoga and the food revolution were born in the counterculture of the 1970s,” and both have morphed into large high-end industries (See: Whole Foods, the ridiculously expensive Lululemon), you wouldn’t think that there would be much to get upset about. But as Rick Bayless, one of the country’s most prominent chefs and a TV show host, explains in the article:
“It’s been one of my struggles,” said Rick Bayless … who has been practicing yoga for 15 years, is not a vegetarian and loves pork. “I think that sometimes the yoga community is a little too austere, and it’s hard to talk about what I do with people who believe in eating just what you need to stay alive.”
When it comes to eating meat, things get even more prickly. Traditionalist yogis believe that meat is forbidden, and some high-end teacher training programs only admit vegans. But recently many practitioners are getting to be a bit more open-minded about it: The teacher of the aforementioned Grateful Dead-playing yoga class uses bacon as a “yogic teaching tool, providing an opportunity to contemplate principles of attraction and revulsion, desire and self-denial” and, more delightfully, famed yoga teacher Bryan Krest labels himself a “‘selectarian,’ one who chooses everything he eats” (as opposed to being a whateverian, one who only eats food that falls into one’s mouth from above). Also:
“Yogic food choices can also influenced by ayurveda, a traditional Indian way of eating to keep the body healthy and in balance. Some yogis determine their dosha, or dominant humor, vata (wind/air), pitta (bile) or kapha (phlegm), and eat accordingly. Foods are invested with properties like warming or cooling, heavy or light, moist or dry.”
Of course, yoga is a popular movement that’s brought a lot of health benefits to a great many people, and I have the sense that the New York Times was invested in making some of these people seem as outlandish (or, as the article puts it, “woo-woo”) as possible, but, for those of us on the outside of the yoga world, this entire debate sounds about as ridiculous as a basing your diet on your “dominant humor” and medieval-sounding food-moistness criteria.
Good news Scottish-Americans and sheep-innard fans! Haggis, the traditional Scottish dish made with minced sheep offal, oatmeal, and suet that has been banned from the United States for 21 years, may soon once again be allowed in the country. Yesterday, the US Department of Agriculture announced it was planning on updating its rules (initially prompted by Mad Cow fears) to bring them “in line with international standards,” and allow the dish back into the country. In the past, the rules have led many Scottish Americans to rely on either smuggled haggis or inferior versions made from alternate ingredients (like beef) to satisfy their appetites.
The announcement has fortuitous timing, given that today is Robbie Burns Day — a celebration of the Scottish poet and day of traditional haggis consumption. But the Scottish dish isn’t the only international cultural delicacy that’s had trouble finding its way into United States. The USDA has a lengthy list of foods that aren’t allowed into the country because of environmental and safety reasons, and others are banned from a state-by-state basis.
What other exotic foodstuffs won’t you find in a grocery store near you? (If you thought the prospect of eating sheep offal was troubling, try “maggot cheese”):
Fugu:
For centuries, the Japanese have been consuming the liver of this odd-looking puffer fish. It can be turned into delicious foie gras, and laden with healthy omega-3 amino acids. Unfortunately, it’s also laced with tetrodoxin, a neurotoxin that accumulates within the fish and can paralyze or kill the person who eats it. Only one-third of wild fugu fish carry the poison, which can usually be cleansed by cleaning, but it still regularly claims victims and, even in small amounts, numbs the lips of the person who eats it. The fish is widely (if illegally) consumed in Japan, a fact that the emergence of non-poisonous breeds of the fish has yet to change.
Casu marzu:
This soft cheese is a delicacy on the Italian island of Sardinia, with a highly pungent smell, near-liquid texture, and a taste similar to very ripe gorgonzola. More excitingly, it also contains thousands of tiny writhing maggots. The cheese (also known as “maggot cheese”) is made when the critters are introduced into pecorino, and allowed to eat their way through the cheese’s fat, thereby enhancing fermentation. While the maggots are still alive, the cheese is consumed as a spread on a slice of bread (Diners are advised to cover their eyes to avoid the jumping larvae). The cheese has been banned in the European Union (and the United States) because it can cause vomiting, diarrhea — and because of the damage maggot mouthhooks wreak on stomach linings. If this whets your appetite, and you’d like to see the cheese in German-language action, check out this clip:
Wild beluga caviar:
The wild sturgeon, whose black eggs have become the cliche luxury food product, isn’t doing terribly well these days. In the Caspian Sea, where much of the world’s caviar is produced, the fish is imperiled by a pollution, overfishing, and a disappearing habitat. In 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has banned the sale of wild caviar, which has helped build a burgeoning caviar aquaculture industry (particularly in California), but left gourmet caviar fans disappointed. (And. as always during a recession, our thoughts are with the caviar fans.)
Salumi (high quality European salami, prosciutto and headcheese):
The U.S. only allows the import of artisan meats that have been killed at U.S.-certified slaughterhouses. This means that many of the best meats in Europe — produced in small villages, and old, small slaughterhouses — aren’t available on this side of the Atlantic. The solution for many chefs: Smuggle them into the country. As Chef Ray Knight described in a recent Wall Street Journal article, he snuck in “pork shoulder and fennel-pollen salami” inside a stainless-steel water bottle. With the impending arrival of full-body scanners at airports, it’s a strategy that isn’t likely to work for much longer, depriving American meat lovers, chefs seeking to create their own perfect salami, and those of us who enjoy a good pork-shoulder smuggling story.
Horse meat:
The selling of horsemeat is not only taboo, it’s illegal in California and Illinois. While the meat, which is tender and low-in-fat, is widely consumed in many other countries — at street-side vendors in Austria, in Swiss fondue, and as a diet staple in many central Asian countries, for example — your craving for horse tacos isn’t going to be easy to satisfy in ban-less states either. The last horse slaughterhouse in the United States closed in 2007, and, if you happen to go public with your appetite, the peer pressure alone will likely turn you vegetarian.
I’m pretty sure I lost weight yesterday because of the New York City Department of Health’s new anti-soda ad. I mean, screw soda — the sight of cellulite dribbling out of that dude’s mouth meant I wasn’t going to keep any food down.
That horror means something, I think. A friend of mine once got so sick on whiskey that 40 years later, the scent of brown liquor still makes him shudder. And I can clearly remember the smell of the Chef Boyardee I tried to eat when I was a kid, wishing to die from the flu, and it makes me deeply unhappy. So can this ad succeed in forcing people to make the emotional connection between drinking soda and being subjected to something out of “Saw 7″?
I spoke with Brian Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating” and director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab, where he does things like making bowls that slowly refill themselves to see how much soup a person will unconsciously eat if it’s sitting in front of them.
Let’s get right to it: Will this ad be effective?
Well, it’s getting a lot of buzz, but it’ll be most effective for the people who need it the least, people who are already very nutrition vigilant — they’ll be the ones talking about it. People with healthy lifestyles see something like that, and they all start talking about it like it’s the coolest thing since the toaster.
But the people who need it the most are going to be the most dismissive. There’s a segment of people in between who will respond to it, but as in a lot of these campaigns in the past, the effect is extremely temporary.
People’s food habits are what they are because they like them. They might drink less soda today or tomorrow. But then they might forget about the message, or if they see it over and over, they’ll become immune or dismissive of it.
OK, let’s back up a little bit. Say you had a bad time with brown liquor and can never have whiskey again. How do we create associations with food that last?
Well, it’s very fortunate that we do, first of all. It’s evolutionary driven. The kind of person who ate sour berries and kept getting sick eating sour berries eventually died from eating sour berries. Let’s say you get pneumonia and you had fried fish beforehand — you’ll be a long time from having fried fish again. It’s your body thinking, “That almost killed me.” But these aversions don’t always last a lifetime. The taste for it might come back, depending on how much you liked the food beforehand. If you’ve never had it before, that’s it. It’s never going to happen.
We did a really cool study of WWII vets in the South Pacific, on whether they ate Chinese food 50 years after the war. The basic conclusion was that if people weren’t in heavy combat, they could still like it. But if they did experience combat, they hated, hated, hated Chinese food even 50 years later, with the exception of one small group who liked Chinese food before going to war. Remember, this was in the ’40s, so not very many people had had it, but those who did, could like it again. But if the first time you had it was with grenades thrown at you …
But this ad can be pretty traumatic, even if not on that level. Why can’t this ad create those kinds of associations?
To some extent, it’s the visual thing. If you’re a big lover of soft drinks, you won’t suspend disbelief. You know how you can do that thing? “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie. Because I like Coke.” There isn’t a powerful physiological connection, like what eating a bad piece of fish will produce. That’s a real important part of this.
So is an ad campaign useless?
By itself, it will be pretty much useless. The memory trace of that ad might be strong, but it’s going to be pretty short, and will be pretty easily overwhelmed by the fact that you’re hungry.
Does it have a positive impact? Yeah, but the most positive impact will be on people who need that the least. There are probably some people who really don’t know there are a lot of calories in pop, so it might be a positive influence. But if they don’t know that, they might not care.
So if this won’t work, what would be effective?
So much goes back to what we do in our homes. We keep believing, “It’s not me, it’s the fast food industry, the soda industry, etc.” But once a parent or nutritional gatekeeper realizes that they control 72 percent of what their family eats, then it can be like, “Wait, there’re a lot of small things I can do.” Put a fruit bowl out. Don’t go to a cheesy chain, and order a salad instead of fries and ranch dressing.
It’s tricky to imprint these influences. You might be a great nutritional role model, but your kids may rebel against you. So there’s a balance you have to strike.
The interior of a McDonald's restaurant is seen in Washington D.C. January 22, 2010, the day the nation's largest fast-food chain is set to post its quarterly earnings. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS FOOD)(Credit: Reuters) 
