Don't Breathe the Popcorn! ...and Don't Inhale the McNuggets.

On April 26, 2002 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) noted in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) that eight workers had developed a "respiratory illness resembling bronchiolitis obliterans" after working for 8-9 years at the same popcorn factory in Missouri. This was a 5- to 11-fold increase over expected rates of respiratory problems in workers attributable to exposure to toxins in the work place. The air in the plant was tested for diacetyl, "a ketone with butter-flavor characteristics," and found to range from 18 ppm to 1.3 ppm in the parts of the plant where the affected patients had worked. (There are no guidelines as to safe levels.) Obviously, causation is difficult to establish with certainty. But wouldn't you think someone in the agency that recommended "half-face, non-powered respirators equipped with P-100 filters and organic vapor cartridges" to protect workers at that popcorn plant in 2002 might have thought to ask the question whether consumers should be warned not to breathe deeply as they pull apart the corners of the microwave popcorn bag to let the steam escape? How many ppm of diacetyl are in that steam? Anyone care to measure?

Thanks to David Michaels (The Pump Handle), the world now knows that Dr. Cecile Rose, the chief occupational and environmental medicine physician at National Jewish Medical and Research Center, informed the FDA, CDC, EPA and OSHA--because they cannot, or will not, connect the dots themselves--that there might be a danger to consumers as well as workers.

Why is there diacetyl in Tumbledown's popcorn? Because there is no butter or salt in Tumbledown's house? No. Because diacetyl is required to preserve the popcorn in the waxed paper bag inside the plastic cover inside the cardboard box from spoiling before Tumbledown eats it? No. Given the modern wonders of the microwave oven, you could leave that popcorn in its husk on the cob for a very long time, a year and more, until you put it in a dish in the microwave. You could pop the corn right off that cob if you really wanted to--no additives, no preservatives. The diacetyl is simply there to fool Tumbledown into thinking that the popcorn is "buttery." It is there to provide the generic "butter-like" taste that makes the corn addictive. It is there to make the popcorn "More Buttery!" In other words, the diacetyl is there to legitimate the $31.60 price of a box of Pop Secret. (Pop Secret Popcorn, Jumbo Butter, 6-Count Packages, Pack of 8, corn for which the farmer may receive $3 per bushel.) Silly Tumbledown. He thought the diacetyl might have a legitimate function. So much for "value added."

The same could be said for the tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) and the dimethylpolysiloxene in Chicken McNuggets. (See Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which set off an internet furor over the comment that McNuggets contain "a form of butane.") Maybe these things will not kill you, at least not immediately or in such minuscule quantities, but do you really want them added to your food on purpose? (The ultimate purpose in these cases being to enhance the corporation's bottom line, not to enhance the health-improving qualities of the eater's meal [nor even to improve that dubious category known as value-added taste].) Of course McDonald's Inc. wouldn't poison us on purpose, but do you really want to assume that they've thoroughly tested the "health benefits" of all the chemicals they add? (You can't properly call them "ingredients" when they've never before been used for food in the history of humankind.) No. Of course McDonald's doesn't test every chemical independently. They depend on the FDA, CDC, EPA and OSHA for that. Is it labeled "nontoxic" and without a limit for exposure or consumption? Then it must be good enough to eat!

Yes, Tumbledown knows that every bite of tomato he ate this summer was loaded with "chemicals." Thankfully, they weren't chemicals that Tumbledown sprinkled on. There was no need to improve the taste of 'maters fresh from the vine. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my food au naturel. ...more or less.

Tumbledown Farm

Melamine Cuisine: If Pet Food be Poison, What of Human Food?

OK, you didn't hear it here first, but you knew Tumbledown couldn't let this topic go without comment, especially as the evidence for potential food contamination piled up. First, there was the epidemic of pet deaths. Then, on March 30, the FDA cleared the pet food companies of augmenting their pet food with rat poison (aminopterin), and charged them instead with using contaminated wheat flour (mistakenly identified as wheat gluten) to make their doggy biscuits. The flour (a.k.a. gluten) had been supplemented with a melamine additive, a "food supplement" if you will, by crooked Chinese providers who were trying to spike the protein and nitrogen content of their product. (See Brenda Goodman's March 31 NYTimes article, "Pet Food Contained Chemical Found in Plastic, F.D.A. Says." Cyanuric acid has also been identified as a possible culprit.) But pardon my ignorance, aren't "doggy bones," ...well, bones? Ok, maybe dogs like biscuits and donuts too. And don't dogs eat chopped meat? In Tumbledown's humble opinion (ITHO), the whole fiasco is the end result of seeing food--either for humans or for our pets--as "simply" a combination of the various chemicals known to be necessary for life. (The source of those chemicals? ...who really cares?) Of course, chemistry will always be important to farming and gardening, and to food production, preparation, and consumption, but food should always be more than the sum of its chemical parts. Cooking should always be more than mere chemistry. (Don't worry, Tumbledown does get the importance of soil chemistry for growing nutritious food.)

One result of this pet food scare has been an increase in home cooking for pets. So, riddle me this: if the food you are cooking for your favorite pet (or for yourself) comes from Brazil, or China, or California, how is that a whole lot better than buying the manufactured food? But forget the harm to Fido and Snowflake (16 deaths? 32? hundreds?) caused by the "manufacture" of their food, how about trying these newly fabricated tasty people-treats: Anyone hungry for Melamine-roasted Capon? or Chicken Breasts with Creamy Melamine Gravy? Not hungry for chicken? What about pork? I could recommend Ham Steak Melamine or Spicy Melamine Sausage or a nicely breaded Melamine Pork Tenderloin. Yummy! Prefer fish? What about Catfish with Melamine Sauce? or what about a good ole Southern-Style Melamine-encrusted Fish Fry? (See Sarah Abruzzese's New York Times article, April 25, 2007. "F.D.A. Says Livestock Were Fed Pet Food With Suspect Chemical," for a plausible summary of how the melamine-tainted pet food could have entered the human food chain, as the tainted pet food was treated in a "business as usual" fashion: they take "pet food that does not meet quality standards and reconstitute it into livestock feed." Now, that must be reassuring to anyone who was hoping that better [consolidated] government oversight and inspection might protect our food supply. According to a New York Times article by Barboza, the F.D.A. thinks that the levels of toxins in farm-fresh fish fed meal with melamine and other contaminants, "was probably too low to harm anyone who ate the fish." "Probably," now there's confidence!)

Melamine has been used in the manufacture of eating utensils and some fertilizers, without knowing or caring about its potential toxicity, so it shouldn't surprise us when it shows up in food. Tumbledown knows that the adage "you are what you eat" doesn't mean we'll all become melamine cereal bowls. (Remember those? Melmac, all the rage in the 50's and 60's; indestructible, until the microwave warped and burned and chipped them. They were hardly "microwave safe"! Tumbledown still remembers with pleasure and more than a little nostalgia those bowls filled with fresh peaches or strawberries and cream or homemade ice cream during the halcyon days of youth.) But maybe you'll forgive Tumbledown if he doesn't trust the green light now being offered by the food safety police. Is it really OK now to eat animals who have ingested melamine-laced feed? The assurances of the food protectors ring hollow. But (I know what you'll say), Tumbledown, they've been so right on everything else, you should probably just trust them on this one. (NOT!)

The F.D.A. assured the public quickly--too quickly?--that "they did not believe the contaminated wheat gluten had entered the human food supply," despite the fact that 13% of the U.S. supply of wheat gluten now comes (or did until the scare) from the country where the melamine-laced flour (alias, gluten) originated. Other food safety police hastened to add that melamine is not a "known toxin." (See Goodman.) Such assurances are belied by the limits of human knowledge, and the problem is not just human ignorance, but even moreso human greed and duplicity. The Chinese manufacturer knew that he was cheating, gaming the system at least, by adding melamine to gluten.

So, what is the solution? Tumbledown repeats: localized, diversified production of food. Grow your own, eat what is in season (or will store) in your locale, get to know and support a local farmer. Can a suburbanite on one acre support feed a whole family this way? Maybe not, but you would be surprised what can be grown and eaten from one acre without provoking a riot by the neighborhood association. (Maybe pork or mutton would be too much to ask!) Does it mean eating dandylion greens, or a fresh dandelion and chive salad in March and April in Indiana?

Maybe, but only if you really like dandelions better than melamine. And in late May or early June, there is already an abundance! Spinach, lettuce, radishes and rhubarb, onions and berries!

Oh, my, my, my! Fresh garden berries. Where are those "melamac" cereal bowls when you need them?

Tumbledown Farm

E. coli redivivus: Deja vu all over again in the city

Spinach anyone? Or perhaps you would prefer California scallions and green onions, or iceberg lettuce? As of today (12/14/2006), the FDA (citing CDC data) is reporting a total of 71 cases of E. coli infection in five states, with 53 hospitalizations in the latest outbreak. This time, rather than the fresh iceberg lettuce sold in bags at the grocery store, the agency for dissemination appears to have been the prepared entres of the fast food chain Taco Bell.

While not as large or devastating (yet, in terms of death) as the September outbreak in Spinach, this lettuce mess is another reminder that industrialized, centralized food production and distribution is a tragedy waiting to happen...yet again. (See Eric Schlosser's NYTimes editorial, "Has Politics Contaminated the Food Supply?" though his argument for an increase, and yet more centralization, in the bureaucratic regulation, inspection and oversight of our food--instead of a real solution, like returning to highly diversified, local food production--is short sighted.)

For Tumbledown's analysis of the causes and cures for this public health menace, see the previous five entries under "food safety."

Finally, Tumbledown has a bone to pick with the NYTimes guest blogger Steven Johnson (The Link Between Cities and Terror). Tumbledown tried to respond to Johnson's entry, but instead of being edited down, Tumbledown was edited out. So, here's the essence of the response: The solution to the problem posed by Johnson is the same as the solution to the increased industrialization and centralization of food production and distribution. Move (back) to the farm! ...but that's a solution Johnson has already dismissed as impractical or impossible. Too bad it is the only real solution proposed by any reader to Johnson's appeal for conversation.

In an earlier blog, Steven Johnson twice claimed that city dwellers subsidize the existence of farmers. ("[I]t is an undeniable fact that the big cities are footing the bill for the residents of so-called 'real America.' Blue states consistently pay more in taxes than they receive in federal assistance; the opposite is true for the red states." And "[i]t’s another thing for city dwellers to be lectured about urban depravity and the 'heartland' way of life, when cities are partially subsidizing that way of life." Real America, November 20, 2006)

Even if Johnson's numbers are accurate, the statistic lies. (The truth always depends on what you count and what you value.) For example, it does not "cost" much to drive a car, until you start to factor the cost of carbon emissions. (What will be the cost of keeping New York dry--or, more timely, post-Katrina New Orleans--when the waters start to rise from global warming?) Johnson forgets that in a debate about what is "real," food always wins. As Gene Logsdon says, "there's a difference between money growth and biological growth." (Living at Nature's Pace, "Traditional Farming," p. 86.) Crops do not grow at the same (exponential) rate as money. Or, to say it yet another way, real things do not grow at the pace of virtual reality. Real food for city people is subsidized because we do not "count" the costs of rural decline due to the industrialization of food production, or the real cost that "inputs" like fuel and chemical fertilizer extract from our environment. City food today is subsidized to a tune far greater than the difference between tax receipts and the government dole to states. It is subsidized, not by tax receipts from the city, but by borrowing from our future. People who live in cities cannot produce their own food--and they cannot live without it. So, what's the "real" value of stable rural towns and villages?

Let Tumbledown know when you city folk get hungry. Perhaps we country folk will be able to spare a green bean or two. ...just don't all come to dinner at once, please.

Tumbledown Farm

Food Wants to be Free (like the network)

Today's NYT editorial touting the consolidation of food safety from 15 federal agencies to 1 is short sighted. It is precisely the sort of bureaucratic (and administrative, and technological) short term fix that addresses the symptom ("The single source of our food has been contaminated, so how do we stop the contaminated batch of spinach before it reaches everyone in the U.S.?") rather than targeting the real source and root cause of the problem (and the larger issue--"Why is there only one source of U.S. spinach, when spinach can be grown across the U.S.?"--i.e., the consolidation and specialization of industrial food production). A single federal agency with real POWER (in the language of the editorial, "the powers and authority it needs to control the American food supply"; emphasis mine), is a nightmare waiting to happen to small, diverse, local producers of farm food. Already, they are marginalized. Already, the only voices being heard in Washington are the voices that can pay to play. They are the large, consolidated agribusinesses. Their motive is profit and congress is all too willing to take their money and do their bidding. Tumbledown is not too happy with the way things are now, but consolidation of the bureaucracy into a single, powerful agency seems a singularly bad way to address these problems. It could lead to greater, not less, consolidation among food producers (only those large enough to comply--or to pay to write the regs--will survive). And it in no way addresses the fundamentals of the situation.

Where does the heavy hand of government regulation need to be felt today? Tumbledown thinks he knows: in the support of net neutrality. In other words, in insuring that the big boys stay out of the way of the little guy. Insuring that the little guy's voice continues to be heard and that the fees for the infrastructure are neutral, rather than advantageous to the big guy.

If food neutrality were the only aim of the one (1) proposed food safety bureaucracy, food might become both safe and free, and locally grown.

Naaah! It will never happen. But for a second, Tumbledown was living in a dream world!

Finger Prints on the Smoking Cow?

Yesterday Tumbledown learned that the FDA and State of California have now confirmed test-positive that samples of cattle feces gathered from a ranch some 2 miles from the farm where contaminated spinach was grown contains E. coli with "matching genetic fingerprints" for the same strain of E.coli O157:H7 that earlier sickened 199 people. Officials continue to caution against jumping to conclusions, but it is becoming more difficult to escape the obvious: the cow did it. With its poop print on the murder weapon, it'll be hard for the defense to make its case. The question for Tumbledown is now whether these were pasture-fed cows (doubtful) or whether they were cows of the grain-fed, manure-lagoon-producing type (more likely). It is encouraging to hear health officials admit that the growing history of "outbreaks linked to leafy greens indicates an ongoing problem," but Tumbledown is not sanguine that our state and federal officials will produce solutions that move beyond technological quick fixes. (See yesterday's post.) Not likely that nature's counterintuitive (to industrial agriculture) and permanent fix--to place more, diverse, animals (and more poop, more widely scattered) on farms that also grow a greater diversity of plants--will attract a following. After all, that would require farmers who are generalists and officials who are localists. And everyone today is a specialist and internationalist. And we like it that way. (Not T.!)

Will the Real Farmer Please Stand Up?

Tumbledown was incensed again to read Lew Middleton's comment that "Today's farmers are specialists, not generalists." (The Hoosier Farmer, Fall 2006, p. 1) When Middleton went on to claim that such specialization is "all aimed at creating the safest" and "healthiest" environment for the livestock, Tumbledown nearly let loose an expletive. Specialization is driven by corporate insatiability, by the profit motive. Specialization in livestock farming is not "friendly to the environment." It is the most likely source of the E. coli in our spinach, just ask Michael Pollan. (Op ed in today's NYT Magazine, "The Vegetable-Industrial Complex," joined a growing chorus of people who are refusing to ignore the obvious.) Pollan quotes Wendell Berry's old saw that we have taken nature's elegant solution in which "crops feed animals and animals’ waste feeds crops" and, by becoming specialists in either crop production or animal production (but never proficient in both), we have turned nature's solution into two very real problems: "a fertility problem on the farm, and a pollution problem on the feedlot."

The solution that is eventually proposed for our E. coli problem is not likely to be a real solution (that is, a radical solution, that fixes the root problem of specialization) like nature's solution, but a technological quick fix, like the "high-tech" agriculture touted in the most recent Hoosier Farmer. (The irony is, of course, that the magazine cover sported dairy cows on pasture, not beef cattle and sows in confined operations.) At any rate, Pollan is right, look for the politicos and their trough-filling K-street fat cats to start touting programs to irradiate the entire food supply. Don't look anytime soon for a return to real farms where everyone raises, "some corn, some wheat, some soybeans, a few milk cows, a few pigs, maybe some beef cows. And, of course, a big garden to help feed a growing family." (Hoosier Farmer)

Tumbledown did get a little good news this week in the story about Denise O’Brien, the organic farmer and Democratic candidate to become Iowa's secretary of agriculture. Denise is a real farmer. For Iowa's sake, and for ours, Tumbledown is praying that she wins.

No Real Farmers

On the heels of yesterday's news about the likely source of the E. coli outbreak--manure lagoons from massive dairy and cattle operations (see previous post)--Tumbledown learned today that "real" farmers (the "janitors in confinement barns") are about to increase their presence in the "industry" again, as Smithfield Foods buys Premium Standard Farms. (NYTimes editorial, September 23, 2006, "The Ultimate Efficiency") Independent farmers, already squeezed, are about to have even fewer places to market their hogs. It may seem a small thing that pigs are no longer slaughtered and butchered close to home, where both the farmer and butcher are resident members of the community who will eat the pork. And it may seem that the threats to food safety from producer consolidation (single source) and massive warehousing of animals can be managed and regulated. But regulations to "protect our health" make it extremely difficult for the small farmer or butcher to stay in business, and in effect the regulations that now exist simply "protect the wealth" of the large corporations. Every effort should be made to encourage local production (raising and packaging) of food. Regulation should be simplified and compliance made easy for local producers. We had monopolies once, to very grave effect. Why would we want to travel that road again?

E. coli in California. Why Sick in Indiana? (And Why Must Immigrants Pick Pears?)

Tumbledown thinks it only obvious that there must be a better way.

According to the FDA today (09/21/2006), "157 cases of illness due to E. coli infection have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including 27 cases of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), 83 hospitalizations, and one death." Eight (8) of these illnesses were reported in Indiana. Though the FDA continues to investigate the source of the outbreak, this much is already clear: these eight (8) Indiana residents did not contract the illness from spinach grown in Indiana. In fact, the "fresh" spinach in question was grown, picked and packed in California. ("The FDA, in working closely with the CDC and the State of California, has determined that the spinach implicated in the outbreak was grown in the following California counties: Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara.")

Why does our spinach come from California? Is Indiana not suitable for growing spinach this time of year? Can Indiana not produce its own "fresh" spinach in sufficient quantities to feed its own population in mid- to late September? Of course it could. Tumbledown has mixed greens ready for picking in his own garden at this very moment, and none of it is infected with E. coli O157:H7.

According to the FDA, the "major source of microbial contamination with fresh produce is associated with human or animal feces." Worker hygiene is clearly a concern, as is any unsafe or malfunctioning septic system. But such human contamination is far less likely the culprit in this instance, especially direct contact with human or animal feces. More likely, the spinach (or other fruit, vegetable, or leafy green) has come into contact with contaminated water. And the source of that contaminated water may be "factory farms" and their "manure lagoons." (See Nina Planck's September 21 NYTimes Op-Ed, Leafy Green Sewage. Note: Tumbledown is not convinced [yet] about Planck's animal chemistry connection, acidic stomach and all that. The author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why may have her own axe to grind, but pasture farming on more, smaller, diversified, local farms is certainly an all around better--not more efficient, because efficiency is not the highest good--way of producing food.) The FDA urges the industry to "manage closely" the storage and use of animal manure and biosolid wastes, but accepts the status quo of animal finishing in humongous feedlots--and monstrously large dairies--and their concentrations of feces as a necessary price of food production. Meanwhile the local sale of raw milk is prohibited or overregulated beyond reason.

Is it really necessary to produce spinach (and beef and dairy) in California for sale 2281.7 miles away in Indiana? Tell that to eight (8) sick hoosiers, in a state that could produce its own, easily, safely. (BTW: Indiana has its own manure lagoons. And as long as they exist, they will overflow.) Or tell it to the people of Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Iceland, who also eat "fresh" Californian spinach.

A seemingly unrelated story also says a lot about what's wrong with "real farming" today. (Gene Logsdon, "I'm Glad I'm Not a 'Real' Farmer," in Living at Nature's Pace.) And in this case, a picture shouts a thousand words. Julia Preston's September 22, 2006, NYTimes article, "Pickers are Few, and Growers Blame Congress," is headed by a photo of a dejected farmer, Toni Sculli, standing in front of tons of perishing Northern California pears. Perishing for lack of pickers. Labor has always been the #1 problem faced by farmers, but that problem is now exacerbated by monocrop farming in huge quantities. Surplus fruit on a diversified farm--even unpicked, falling off the trees--can be eaten by sheep grazing below, or used to supplement a hog's diet. But on a farm that grows only pears, and in quantities too great for the community to pick, to send to Indiana (where pears grow just fine, thank you) and to India, and Japan, the surplus is catastrophic.

There must be a better way. And there is, if we will but take it. And to take it, we must teach the majority of our children to farm. The growing, picking, and packing cannot be left to those outside our local communities.