Chews Wise

Were photos of Mexican swine CAFO sensationalistic?

Ethicurean posted the pictures of the factory swine farm near where the first case of flu was reported then thought better of it. The blog posted a lengthy comment by a Vermont pig farmer who said the pictures circulating in Mexico and Europe were much ado about nothing -- this from someone who doesn't love CAFOs. So were they sensationalistic? Check them out and you decide but I tend to side with the farmer on this one. Hat tip to Ethicurean on posting the point-counterpoint.

More on the pig front, this piece from Wired is worth reading about the relationship if not the direct causality between CAFOs and flu. The quote by this researcher caught my eye:

“We haven’t found evidence of infected pigs,” said Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist and member of the World Health Organization’s surveillance network. “But even if we never find that smoking pig, we can surmise that this is probably where it came from.”

My only problem with that quote is that I often think of smoking pig in a much different and tastier light.
- Samuel Fromartz

Did the Swine Flu Come From a Factory Pig Farm?

While the net is buzzing with talk that the swine flu originated from a factory pig farm, the evidence thus far has been compelling but inconclusive. As Grist's Tom Philpott asks: "...could the swine-flu outbreak have originated literally in the shadows of Granjas Carroll’s hog confinements, and not have some tie to intensive hog farming? That’s a question that health authorities have to vigorously pursue."

Although the Mexican government is testing a million pig farm in Perote, in Veracruz State, so far it has not come up with a smoking gun. The first case of the flu, however, originated in the same area.

The Times reports:

Mexico’s first known swine flu case, which was later confirmed, was from Perote, according to Health Minister José Ángel Córdova. The case involved a 5-year-old boy who recovered. 

But a spokesman for the plant said the boy was not related to a plant worker, that none of its workers were sick and that its hogs were vaccinated against flu.

The After-Shock of Contaminated Spinach

If you're interested in what happened after contaminated spinach sickened people across the country two years ago, hop over to this must read by my friend Barry Estabrook at Gourmet magazine.

I've covered aspects of the spinach crisis before, but Barry goes further and looks into the environmental aftershock that has occurred from farmers seeking to put a protective shield around their fields, with no evidence that they're addressing the root cause of the problem.

In the name of food safety, they have scraped 30-foot-wide borders of bare dirt around the edges of fields, set up poison-bait stations for ground squirrels and mice, installed eight-foot-high fences to exclude deer and other wildlife, ripped vegetation from creeks and ditches, and drained ponds and lakes or treated them with chemicals that kill every living thing in them. Creeks flowing into the Salinas River run brown with silty water polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Piles of bleached, bonelike tree trunks and roots have replaced wooded groves.

“The science isn’t there to prove that deer are a factor, but farmers are being required to moonscape the habitat around their fields in the name of food safety,” says Bob Martin, general manager of Rio Farms, a 6,000-acre operation. “That’s amputating a person’s leg because they have a hangnail.”

I'd heard about these draconian measures from wildlife and small farm groups and knew it was ripe for a deeper look. Luckily, Barry did too. His article makes you think twice about what "food safety" really means, when it's regulated with a bulldozer.  Here's another observation:

Of the 12 recorded E. coli outbreaks attributed to California leafy greens since 1999, 10 have been traced to mechanically harvested greens bagged in large production facilities. The source of two outbreaks has yet to be determined. None have been linked to small farms selling to local markets.

After the jump are Barry's tips for avoiding pathogens:

The Bad Taste of Tainted Meat

“My promise to our customers has always been the same: to consistently provide the industry’s highest quality, best tasting beef with a commitment to environmentally sound practices, humane animal treatment and personal integrity. I stand behind this commitment the best way I know — by putting my name on everything we sell.”
- Robert E. Meyer, Founder and Owner, Meyer Natural Angus

So did Meyer Natural Angus live up to those words?

The company has been at the center of a hamburger recall at Whole Foods Markets. The beef in question was sold under the Coleman Natural brand -- a storied name that pioneered the natural meat business in this country but which has been sold at least twice and now is associated with tainted meat.

Coleman, to my knowledge, never had an e coli recall under its previous ownership. I interviewed Mel Coleman Jr. -- son of the founder -- and my impression was that food safety, as with no antibiotics and hormones, was at the forefront of its concerns.

So what happened? Meyer Natural Angus bought Coleman's beef business in April, leaving the Coleman company with its other meat and poultry operations. Just a few months earlier, Meyer Natural Angus had bought Laura's Lean Beef Co., another natural beef company in the East.

Meyer then switched slaughtering operations to the infamous Nebraska Beef plant that had received multiple citations from the Agriculture Department and which has had two recalls of ground beef this summer. (More background on the plant and what happened in a Washington Post article here.)

The Times pointed out that "most of the beef was sold at grocers other than Whole Foods and recalled this summer. An additional 1.2 million pounds were recalled on Friday by the processor after illnesses in several states were tentatively linked to ground beef sold at Whole Foods and other stores."

What's surprising is that Whole Foods didn't know Meyer Natural Angus had switched processing plants. This isn't a simple oversight, since Whole Foods has long audited the slaughterhouse facilities from which it is supplied. To switch plants without being informed would undermine its quality control system (and potentially its protocols on humane animal treatment). As the Times said:

Whole Foods acknowledged that a code stamped on beef packages arriving at its stores accurately reflected the change in processing plants. But the grocery chain said it had no procedures in place to watch the codes on arriving meat packages, and therefore failed to notice it was getting beef from a packing plant it had never approved.

Whole Foods will immediately institute new procedures to detect such a change in the future, the chain said.

The recall comes at a particularly bad time for the natural and organic retailer, which is facing a double-whammy of slower growth and a renewed FTC investigation into its purchase of Wild Oats. It also comes just as Whole Foods rolls out of its humane meat  ratings program -- on which it has been working for at least five years.

Past food safety incidents have shown that concentration increases the risk of tainted food -- in this case, in a processing plant with a known history of e. coli recalls and at a fast-growing meat company integrating multiple acquisitions. Indeed, it's difficult to see how Meyer Natural Angus could have hoped to stay true to its words while relying on Nebraska Beef for processing.

Quick Bites - Alaska Quits MSC?

(Updated) Alaska Quitting MSC? -  The state of Alaska wants another party to arrange sustainable fish certification for its salmon fisheries with the Marine Stewardship Council, Sustainable Food News reports ($-sub). The state Department of Fish and Game has been the client which arranged for this service -- a rare role for a government body. Now,it is hoping another group, such as a fisheries industry body, takes over the role. Alaska is the largest certified sustainable fishery in US waters, if not the world. Fisheries pay fees to get certified by the MSC, which independently reviews fish populations, catches, management and fishing methods. But the state feels it has a higher standard than even MSC. More on this item over at seafoodnews.com.

You Can Go Home Again - Vancouver celebrated the first return of a sockeye salmon to a lake in 100 years. "Seeing that first fish, it almost made us cry," George Chaffee, a councillor with the Kwikwetlem band, said.

Holy Jalapeno! - Turns out tomatoes weren't the culprit in the recent outbreak of salmonella. Instead the FDA has turned its attentions to jalapeno peppers. Tomato growers predictably were angry. "They will never say that tomatoes were not implicated, because to do so would [imply] they caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damages for nothing," Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, told the WSJ. The salmonella outbreak sickened 1,200 people across 42 states.

unHappy Meals - The WSJ also has an item on Los Angeles city council member's attempt to ban junk food in an area of the city with high obesity rates. The 32-square-mile chunk of the city is home to some 400 fast-food restaurants, where 30% of adults are obese, compared with about 21% in the rest of the city.

Water Bottle Watch: Canada Scrapping BPA

Canada is expected this week to become the first country to ban a potentially toxic chemical used in packaging, known as bisphenol A (BPA), while a US government report for the first time linked the substance with cancer. BPA is found in the liners of cans, in hard plastic containers and infant formula packaging. The Toronto Globe and Mail Reports:

Major retailers across the country yesterday began clearing their shelves of products made with a compound that Health Canada is expected to declare a potentially dangerous chemical as early as today.

Canada's imminent action contrasts with the US government, which until now seen little risk from the substance. But a report by the National Toxicology Program acknowledged for the first time that the chemical, detected in the urine of 93 percent of the population over 6 years of age, may be linked with cancer and other diseases. Advocacy groups such as EWG have been warning about the substance, but companies such as Nalgene - the water bottle maker - insist it is safe. The Globe writes:

Governments are reviewing the safety of BPA because its molecular shape is similar to estrogen, which allows it to mimic the female hormone in living things. It is also biologically active at extremely low concentrations, just like natural hormones, leading to concerns that the tiny amounts leaching from food and beverage containers could be a health threat.

Dozens of studies by independent researchers have linked low exposure to BPA in animal and test-tube experiments to illnesses, such as cancer, that are thought to have an origin in hormone imbalances, although industry-funded studies haven't been able to find the same effects.

WaPo has a piece on how to avoid exposure to BPA, noting "recycling code #7 may mean the product contains BPA." And this family health blog offers a cheat sheet on BPA-free bottles and sippy cups.

Macabre Medical Mystery at Minnesota Meat Plant

The Times had a truly weird medical story today on a disease affecting workers at a Minnesota pork plant, apparently caused by a high-pressure air hose blasting the brains out of pig skulls. No, it's not mad cow. But you wouldn't want this neurological illness. The stuff you find out when you begin to look at the food system is beyond bizarre. (Thanks Clare for the "heads up" - so to speak).

Another View of China

Jeff Yang had an insightful Op-Ed in the Washington Post this weekend, about the spillover effect of rising concern over Chinese food imports. There's a tinge of xenophobia. Check out "A Taste of Racism in the Chinese Food Scare."

China Culinary Conundrum

From Rob Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opinion pages.

China Organics

The New York Sun has an interesting piece raising the right questions about organic food from China. It's short on answers, however.