EU and Small Farms

Old Ways, New Pain for Farms in Poland

But European Union laws are intended for another universe of farming, and Polish farmers say they have left them at a steep disadvantage. If they want to sell their products, European law requires farms to have concrete floors in their barns and special equipment for slaughtering. Hygiene laws prohibit milking cows by hand. As a result, the milk collection stations and tiny slaughterhouses that until a few years ago dotted the Polish countryside have all closed. Small family farming is impossible.

In early March, hundreds of Polish farmers demonstrated outside the office of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, complaining that they were losing money on each hog they raised. Anyway, Mr. Master said, raising pigs for sale was a nonstarter. He is forbidden to slaughter his own pigs, and the nearest abattoir that meets European Union standards is hours away; there are only five in all of Poland.

Depressing. Modern food law is increasingly monolithic, unwilling to accept non-industrial farming. I love how the EU-cronies in the article don't even address this, but just gabber "oh, well, they will just have to get used to not having subsidies." Never mind that Western European small farmers got subsidies to help them adjust to new food safety laws.

The byline is sterility. No risk of infectious disease is acceptable. Never mind all the foods that slowly kill us from diabetes and heart disease or that it's OK for large-scale animal agriculture to overuse the antibiotics we use to fight such infections, thus breeding ever more virulent strains and depleting our medicinal arsenal.

Right now I'm reading The Devil's Picnic by Taras Grescoe. The chapter on raw-milk cheeses is really good. It's interesting because it contrasts the EU and US strategies. The US just bans most raw milk cheeses, the EU institutes HACCP, a food-safety protocol designed to eliminate the risk of food poisoning in an place where it would be devastating -- outer space.

The book quotes Jean Berthaut, of Fromagerie Berthaut, world’s leading producer of Epoisses, the French traditional cheese implicated in a Listeria outbreak that lead to EU regulation “A raw-milk cheese, bought form the farm—there is zero risk involved! We, the French, ultimately decided that completely banning raw-milk cheeses was a bad thing…so we’ve introduced Draconian regulations to guarantee sanitation and reduce risk to a minimal level. It’s an approach that’s a little more thoughtful—and complex, and courageous—than total prohibition”

But then the book goes on to note that the initial outbreak was from pasteurized cheese made by a factory (not an artisan) that was simply fraudulent and Taras goes on to explore how the regulations have consolidated cheesemaking and shut down a lot of small producers...who were never to blame.

Chipotle

At the Chipotle here there is a sign touting their "naturally raised chicken and pork". It says something like "Our Meat Doesn't Require a Prescription" and then goes on to say "no antibiotics" etc.

Did they stop to think of the logical implication? Does the rest of their meat require a prescription? Hmm.

I hear they are shifting towards offering naturally raised beef though, which makes sense because their pork supplier, Niman Ranch, has gotten into the beef business.

They also have teamed up with Joel Salatin, to source from his sustainable farm in Charlottesville. Whether or not this will lead to sourcing locally in other places remains to be seen, but the story highlights some obstacles to doing so ranging from a non-uniform product to food-safety equipment.

Which leads me to another thing I've learned in my work: if you want to source locally, you need someone dedicated to the project. You can't just send in an order form for 400 carrots, you need to be able to work with a lot of farmers with varied methods of production and often you need enough knowledge to help each farmer provide the product you need.

Irradiation as a band-aid

Can't say I wasn't expecting it: irradiation, coming to bagged spinach near you. Don't worry, the House of Representatives claims it's just as delicious as the regular bland industrially-grown spinach.

Also, a really fantastic paper on the leafy green problem, as well as other subjects, that I found recently: Safe at any scale? Food scares, food regulation, and scaled alternatives

Government and food in Europe

Heirloom seed company in trouble thanks to backwards laws

For those of you who don't know Kokopelli, they're a French-based seedsaver organisation who maintain 2500 varieties of rare and endangered vegetables and run several charitable initiatives in developing countries. Their work is vital and indefatiguable. Unfortunately it's also illegal, due to the preposterously backward seed laws in Europe, and this has now resulted in them being clobbered with a €35,000 fine. The gist of it is that Kokopelli were hounded through the courts by a commercial seed company, Baumaux (shame and damnation on them) because their catalogue of thousands of unique heirloom vegetables gave them an "unfair trading advantage". I won't subject you to the language that came spouting out of me when I read that but it's a truly insidious example of what happens when big business gets waaaaaay too much control of our garden seeds and our food chain. And it sounds a danger signal for the future of biodiversity in Europe.

I'm not really a libertarian, but I think this is a good example of how you have to be careful about giving the government too much control over food.

Do California greens really count as vegetarian?

CSI: Critter Salad

Mechanical harvesting= mangled mouse-thing in your salad.

Reminds me of this great article, Tainted Greens, which is about the atrocity that is industrial California agriculture. In the name of food safety, the presence of wildlife is being actively discouraged. Yes, that means tearing up habitat. It's true that some wildlife harbor E. coli O157, but they didn't get it magically. The real source has and always will be concentrated animal-feeding operations.

Money quote: "We don't like to see animals in a field of lettuce. We don't think people like the idea"- Jim Lugg, senior food safety scientist with Fresh Express.

Support a farm that integrates with the natural landscape instead of paving it over with monoculture. Last week I spent time at Anathoth Community Farm in Wisconsin. The fields where produce was grown were surrounded by a beautiful healthy north-woods forest. I was impressed.

Small farms are not the source of produce-related outbreaks, perfectly illustrated by the fact that when the produce industry instituted strict self-regulation in 2007, there were no more outbreaks. Hmmm.

Here in Central Illinois, early spinach is already available. You do have to wash it yourself, but that's a small price to pay.

Like a man, the farm is headed
for the woods. the wild
is already veined in it
everywhere, its thriving.
To love these things one did not
intend to is to be a friend
to the beginning and the end.
- Wendell Berry, Work Song

Reading List: Mad Sheep by Linda Faillace

Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm by Linda Faillace

The USDA is charged with both regulating and promoting US agriculture. Obviously, these goals conflict and the end result is that the USDA often functions as a powerful guardian of industrial agricultural interests.

If they made an X-files about agriculture, it would resemble Mad Sheep. Scary government agents in sunglasses torment this family and seize their sheep without giving them much chance to defend themselves. It seems that this action was less about a disease than about protecting the interests of the cattle industry. Even if these sheep did harbor a disease, the USDA's actions are like shooting a mouse with a machine gun.

Subsidies V. Local Food

My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

Farmer finds out that growing vegetables on government-subsidized farms has a high price. I guess the government would rather have you chug high-fructose corn syrup than eat a juicy tomato. Not having subsidies is an obvious solution, but even politically palatable solutions like farm flex, which would allow farmers to grow produce without being penalized, have gone nowhere. I'm glad to see this in the NYT. Rural lobbies obviously have the biggest voice in the Farm Bill debates, but this illustrates perfectly why urban arugula-munching consumers should care too.

Your Fun Corporate Welfare News

The government is unfortunately charged with both protecting agriculture and regulating it, two missions that often conflict. Lately I've been researching the new proposed Leafy Greens legislation, a response to all the food poisoning outbreaks tied to leafy greens. I'm not really a fan of e. coli, but the Western Growers Association guidelines that will probably be the foundation for any new regulations are awfully focused on blaming wildlife.

Yes, Bambi and friends do carry E. coli O157:H7, but it's very unlikely it originated in their populations. From what I've read, 1% of wildlife carry strains of e.coli that are pathogenic to humans, but the prevalence in cattle ranges from 2.6% to 55%(!!). In wildlife, E.coli is most common in deer that live near...cattle ranches. Futhermore, cattle are more likely to shed the disease in feces, spreading it into the environment. Studies have shown that it's much worse in cattle fed corn (I.E. feedlot cattle), rather then grass, which is what ruminants evolved to eat.

But no, we wouldn't want to have to blame CAFOs. Instead, the regulations encourage tearing up vegetation that harbors wildlife, including vegetated buffers, which are known to filter out pathogens quite effectively. My prediction? Sterile fields aren't going to prevent outbreaks. In fact, sterile soil makes it easier for pathogenic bacteria to move in. If these proposed guidelines become mandatory they will hurt small producers, who are not the source of these outbreaks. I'm more than a little bothered that the industry that is to blame is the one writing the rules.

Personally, no more bagged greens from giant California industrial farms for me. I'm just glad that local growers (who oppose these guidelines and benefited greatly from the public's skepticism of bagged greens after the 2006 outbreak) are going to be selling spinach again soon as the weather gets warmer.

Also fun Spraying a questionable pesticide all over the San Franciso urban area . Why? To protect California agriculture from an invasive moth (thanks globalism!). It's probable that this pesticide, like most pesticides, is low-risk, but that doesn't mean no-risk. In an urban area "rare" side effects are going to manifest themselves because there are so many people in the spray area. Maybe this spraying is a reasonable response to the threat, but the state's response to concerns has been insensitive at best.

Finally, more Yellowstone buffalo sent to slaughter for OMG not obeying park boundaries. I guess bison can't read maps? Maybe they should build flashing signs? Why kill them for leaving? The very rare chance that they might spread a cattle disease called brucellosis, a disease that originated in domesticated livestock. Thankfully the state helps out their friends, the wealthy ranchers, with a program to kill the trespassing buffalo off. Opponents include animal rights activists and Native Americans, who oppose the slaughter for religious reasons.

Currants: The forbidden fruit?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you get to the farmer's market late, you will find that all the most ruby red strawberries and the crispiest heads of lettuce are gone. Perhaps that is why college students like me, a late-night late-morning breed, are not that common at such markets. That is also why I generally like to buck that trend and be one of the first ones there, before there is a long line to weigh and buy the nice snap peas (which are sadly out of season now).

However, a couple of weeks ago I did sleep late and found the time hovering around 11 am, a late hour in the world of farmers. I raced to the market and found that all the raspberries, cherries, and blueberries had vanished.

But aha…here were some berry-looking thingamajigs. Currants, both black and red, and gooseberries, were still available. I am not usually in the mood for making complicated preserves and I don’t really have a real kitchen, so I asked the farmer whether or not they could be snacked on raw. She said yes, but she told me that most people don’t like them that way since gooseberries are sour and she said black currants have an indescribable and pungent taste most people find unpleasant. I tasted some and bought them anyway.

The farmer told me that she couldn’t really describe the taste of black currants. After a week of eating them I can say it’s a gamey nearly wild taste that milds out as the berries ripen. That is what makes them a good accompaniment as a sauce for meat dishes.

Both berries also are wild for another reason: their fruit to seed ratio. Open one up and the pulp that comes out is inundated with seeds. Also, if you eat them raw you spend a rather long time removing the stems. Strawberries, blueberries, and cherries do have seeds and stems, but they are much easier to deal with which probably accounts for the fact they are so much more popular than currants and other menus of the genus ribes. The latter fruits have been bred to be bigger and easier to eat, but no one has bothered to truly domesticate the currant.

However, the currants are worth trying if only for their unique tastes and beauty and if you are willing to cook you can do some really interesting things with them. They are also supposed to be high in a group of potent antioxidants called anthocyanins, which is thought to be more concentrated due to the small size of the berries.

If you are committed to eating local in a climate where fruit output is not high, they can be an important source of vitamin C. During WWII in Britain when imported vitamin-C rich fruits were difficult to obtain, the popularity of blackcurrants soared and the government encouraged their cultivation.

An interesting anecdote for the lack of popularity of blackcurrants in the US is that in the 18th and 19th century they were banned in several states because they were thought to be a vector for spreading a disease called blister rust to white pines, which threatened the nascent logging industry. Because of this, they were banned in the United States in 1911. It wasn’t until 1966 that the nationwide ban was shifted to state jurisdiction and even now they are still banned in several states. I suspect these bans will be challenged since rust-resistant varieties of currants are available and many farmers want to break into the market for specialty crops.

I never suspected a late morning would lead into a story about law. Here is a fascinating NYT article on the subject.