Some recent brain candy found online…

[1] Could Industrially Raised Meat Be Illegal?

From Mark Bittman’s blog, [2] Bitten, at the NYTimes:

If greenhouse gases are a hazard to human health, as the EPA has declared, and the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act authorizes strict regulatory action on substances if there’s a reasonable basis to conclude that there’s “an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment,” and industrially raised livestock causes an estimated 18 percent of greenhouse gas (some estimates are much higher), could there be a legal case for tougher regulation of animal production?

[3] Politics of the Plate

One of the things I was going to miss most with the demise of Gourmet Magazine was Barry Estabrook’s investigative reporting on the politics of food. Lucky for us, his journalism has found a new home at his newly launched blog, Politics of the Plate. Recent posts include [4] Dirty Rice, on the case won by Missouri farmers whose fields were contaminated by GM rice,  [5] Aquaponics: A sustainable way to farm fish?, and [6] Petri-dish Pork: The other, other white meat.

[7]

[8] Is Locavorism really elitist?

At [9] Chewswise, Sam Fromartz’s thoughtful response to James McWilliams’ column, “Do farmers’ markets really strengthen local communities?”:

It’s fashionable, or maybe just attention-grabbing, to argue that local and organic foods are elitist, the preserve of wealthy shoppers who are willing to dole out wads of bills for a weekly fix of local, sustainable food at the farmers’ market.

Perhaps if it’s repeated enough, we’ll actually believe it, and then begin to spin yarns about the vast implications of this highly disturbing trend… 

James McWilliams takes this simplistic view over at the Times’ Freakonomics blog. If good, clean, food is elitist, he argues, then it leaves out the vast majority of shoppers and thus creates a wedge in our communities. So you better watch out! Farmers markets are secretly destroying your neighborhood.

 

In countering this ludicrous assertion, I’d first ask, Where is the evidence that local foods are elitist? You won’t find it in McWilliams diatribe. He just assumes it… 

[10] Gourmet Dirt  (scroll down link for article)

I remember the welcome smell of damp earth coming from one farmer’s potatoes at the Winter Farmers’ Market last February. It was the scent of terroir, the term wine growers use to describe the affect of place on taste:

Laura Parker, an artist and agricultural activist based in Northern California, asked a friend late last year to raise a 320-pound pig on his farm to see if its flavor would match that of the dirt it grew up on. In May, Parker and her friends butchered, slow-cooked and ate the pig while smelling soil from the same farm. At first, they were skeptical that they would recognize similarities between the dirt and the pig, which had been fed strictly local produce, bread and goat whey. But “it was harmony,” Parker says. Just to be sure, they tasted the pork while smelling soil from other farms, and it was obvious: in those other cases, there was no match. “Grassy” and “creamy” are common terms for wine tasting, but now they’re being used to describe flavors of soil. Parker has held many similar tastings — primarily in art galleries, free to the public — with fresh dirt from local farms. “Soil is the basis of everything we eat,” she says.