Beef Overload, Farm Bill Woes, Peak Oil

Where's the beef?  Everywhere.  The news just keeps on rolling about last week's announced beef recall that marks the largest such food recall in U.S. history.  Yesterday at USA Today Julie Schmidt reported that while much of the beef, as earlier noted, was sold to school lunch programs, much was also sold into downstream processes that make it very difficult to actually identify the meat that needs to be destroyed.  From her article:  "The recall's scope is unprecedented, says the Grocery Manufacturers Association. The value of foods affected — including soups, sauces, burritos and bouillon cubes — could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, a senior GMA official says."  Which just goes to reinforce the importance of not only sourcing your meats sustainably and locally (thank goodness we have multiple sources even here in West Tennessee) but also that derivative items you need to complete your menus, including things such as sauces and stock, need to be made in your house, on your stove.  Else you have little clue where the inputs may have come from.  In other meaty news, Tom Philpott rounds up stories from a variety of sources on the state of our food system at Grist, including his take on the recent recall mess.  He also points to his worthy op-ed piece at The Guardian where he answers the question "What are the chances of finding meat from a "downer cow" in your next Big Mac?"  And for those of you who still haven't had enough meat in this post (you know who you are), Ragan Sutterfield chimes in at Plenty pointing out that no matter what the outcome of the current recall, the real issue is the structure of a system that can never be made to work.  From her post:  "You cannot fix an absolutely broken industry through better inspections. There is no way to properly inspect hundreds of cows per hour. It’s gruesome work, and certainly not something a low paid government employee wants to do. So many inspectors spend most of their time in their office, making sure the paper work is in order.  To fix the problem of food safety and create a humane slaughter system we need to change the scale and proximity of slaughter. What if instead of a few large-scale slaughterhouses centered in remote towns we had many small-scale slaughterhouses close to cities and the consumers who buy from them?"  Better yet, we could feed them grass on pastures and allow them to lead pleasant lives until they come to natural maturity. . . you know, right outside town.

Can you say "2009 Farm Bill"?  Aghast and appalled we note that the bobble-heads in Washington are now indicating that the Farm Bill formerly known as "2007," then begrudgingly bequeathed the moniker "2008," is now beginning to take on the mantle of "2009."  This from reliable sources at The Rural Blog.  Pointing to an exclusive interview with Senate Ag Committee Tom Harkin posted at Brownfield Network (an otherwise unseemly place to be found), the post notes that an impasse with the White House, despite what appears to be conciliatory language in the media, is likely to shut progress down.  "I’d say at this time, at this point, an extension of the present farm bill is probably the most likely scenario right now.  We’ll just have to wait until we get a new Secretary, a new President in the White House, and maybe we’ll have a little bit better chance of a new President understanding the needs we have in agriculture," said Harkin.  While the current version of the bill is light on reform and heavy on status quo, it was nonetheless a bi-partisan compromise in both the House and the Senate, according to Harkin.  And it would have been even more bi-partisan had the current slate of presidential candidates considered the issue worthy of their presence in Washington, where they might have participated had they believed the landmark agricultural legislation to be important to the health and welfare of the American people.  Again, aghast and appalled at the whole ordeal.

I saw the news today, oh boy.  If you have been paying attention to the news lately, you're beginning to hear the phrase "peak oil" creep into the mouths of some folks that never would have been caught dead mentioning it only a few years ago.  No less than oil maven Boone Pickens is now talking about wind due to the long-term instability of our oil reliance, and "green technologies" are the name of the game.  So, if you are not fully schooled on what peak oil is and why it should be changing your lifestyle, visit Energy Bulletin for a comprehensive, handy-dandy curriculum.  Good for high schoolers and late-bloomers alike, the information, originally available at The Oil Drum, promises to bring you up to speed in no time.  Well, OK.  Maybe in a few hours.

The Ethicurean announces its first-ever caption contest, wherein you will want to read the comments to get a taste of what Locavores nation-wide have up their sleeves.  Jonathan at Wasted Food grapples with the challenges of indoor composting.  Finally, Andy posts the newest issue of the Ladybug Letter, meditating on Jack's beanstalk as well as the favas they spawn.

photo courtesey of Mundoo at flickr and is shared under a Creative Commons license.