Oh, good grief. Check out this statement in a piece about grass-fed beef in today's New York Times:

Today all cattle are typically raised on grass in the early months of their lives. But in the 1950s, cattle raisers hoping to cut costs and improve efficiency of beef production began to ship the animals to feed lots, where they could be fattened more quickly on inexpensive and high-calorie grains.

Sort of true. Kind of. IF we change "1950s" to, oh, I dunno, 1820s? 1780s? How about 1720s? (The use of "feed lots" dates at least to the 1840s, if not earlier. Feeding corn for fattening, however, goes back at least a century earlier.) And, more to the point, if we delete the word "Today" and instead note that Americans have "started" beef on grass since, oh, the 1820s. (The first great utilization of the prairies and plains was grazing cattle on its grasses.) In fact, as these two sentences read they a) don't make much sense (since we don't know at what point the "cattle raisers" allegedly began shipping the animals to feed lots; and b) is riddled with inaccuracies. Flip snarkiness aside, a minimum acquaintance with facts would have been useful, especially since the piece is about a  fundamental --- and contentious --- subject: food. As a result, what we got with this bit is yet another hunk of misinformation with which to cloud the debate about food. Just sayin'.

Sam Fromartz, author of the excellent Organic, Inc. (which I've mentioned here before and plan to keep mentioning until I can persuade everyone to read it) has weighed in on the anti-Alice-Waters essay I mentioned in my previous post.

You can read his take at his blog, Chews Wise. Definitely worth reading. He and I land on opposite sides of the fence on this issue, but I think his critique is more pointed than others I've read. Oddly, he criticizes Waters for precisely the same reason I criticized the essayist at Civil Eats. (Eg, let's not confuse food policy with educational policy.) I think we can conclude that using gardens-in-the-school as either a route to or criticism of educational policy in general doesn't work.

Or something like that.) (Not being terribly coherent here: am trying to keep my brain focused on writing the  middle third of the new book. That means not letting myself get distracted by other juicy brain-fodder.)

The current issue of Atlantic magazine has a fascinating essay by Caitlin Flanagan who criticizes the "school garden" movement launched by restaurateur/food "guru" Alice Waters. (*1)

The whole school-gardening thing has bugged me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why, until I read this essay. And then I started nodding my head. Yep, that's the problem. Yep.

In the interest of fairness, of course, I also direct you to a thoughtful, smart rebuttal at the website Civil Eats. And make sure there to read the comments. I think the essayist at Civil Eats (an Iowa chef named Kurt  Michael Friese) makes good points.

But I also think his own critique smooshes the dividing line between Flanagan's critique of the garden movement with his own critique of the current educational system in the United States. He'dve been better off sticking to one topic. In any case, both essays are worth reading.

Although, cough cough, both of course manage to take a fairly tiny part of the "food debate" and inflate it into Something Monumental. In the general scheme of things, Waters' idea is fairly small potatoes (no pun intended). Still, it's indicative of the extent to which there is a debate and there is conflict about food in America that such a seemingly small matter can take on a life of its own.

____________

*1: Full disclosure at the outset: I'm not a big fan of Waters, if only because of what I think of as nearly narcissistic hypocrisy on her part. She claims to care about food, nutrition, etc. But according to everything I've ever heard and read, including an adulatory biography (*2) that came out a few years ago, waste is no problem with her. If a bunch of spinach, for example, is not perfect --- and I do mean perfect --- it gets tossed. Not just the bad leaves; the entire bunch. Hello? I mean, I could see not serving squished leaves on a plate when the restaurant is charging $30 for the plate of salad, but to toss the entire bunch? Hello??

*2: The biography, written by Thomas McNamee, is quite good: well-written and researched, lively, engaging. But it does lean toward the adulatory, so much so that the irony of Waters' attitude toward wasting food is lost on McNamee. Still, it's a good book and I recommend it.

There was a nice piece in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, in which food writer Russ Parsons urges both sides of the "food fight" to aim for civility (which is only another way of saying "Could ya stop yammering and start listening?).

I'm sure he's not the only one hoping for more discussion and less lunacy, but unlike others, he offers a specific, practical list of assumptions both sides need to dump. It's worth reading, if only because it's more pragmatic and substantive than most of what's out there.

Not, mind you, that I see much hope any time soon for a) civil debate; or b) informed debate. Sadly, most of those doing the talking (shouting? yammering?) argue (if you can call it that) their case based on muddle-headed assumptions, which (you can see this coming, right?) stem from lack of knowledge about the history of American agriculture, and especially the history of federal farm policies.

Anyway, worth a read if you have the time. Tip o' the mug in this case to Tom Philpott, who blogs at Grist and who wrote his own response to Parsons' essay. (Also worth reading if only because it's a near-perfect example of the "Big Ag is the devil" side of the debate.)

There's a ton of garbage written about the American food system. (No pun intended. Really.) Inaccurate. Misleading. Muddle-headed. Etc.

Indeed, there aren't many food writers to recommend, but one I do read regularly is Tom Philpott. I don't always agree with him --- indeed, most of the time I don't --- but he works hard to present facts and argument rather than blather and nonsense.

A fine example of his work is in his most recent post at Grist. Good reading from a smart guy. (Although the historian in me must note that he's off about about fifty years in his comment about an "official" policy of cheap/affordable food.) So, if you're interested, take a look. Better still, bookmark the Grist site. (Tom is also at twitter as @tomphilpott.)

If you've read this blog for more than two minutes, you know that I'm all in favor of informed discussion and debate, which means I'm all in favor of what are usually dismissed as "scholars." You know: those pointy-head types who spend inordinate amounts of time studying a subject so that when they open their mouths to discuss their subject, what comes out is substance rather than fluff.

However, I adore scholars who then make the effort to share what they know with the rest of us. (The alternative being to remain closeted in their university offices, sharing knowledge only with other scholars.) People like that used to be called "public intellectuals," but I think of them as benefactors. Or saints, depending on my mood.

Anyway, that's why I'm a fan of Chris Raines. Chris is a professor in the Department of Dairy and Animal Science at Penn State. He's the model of a new kind of scholar: one who is not afraid of blogs, Twitter, and, gasp, making connections with ordinary people like me.

His blog, Meat Is Neat, epitomizes what scholars can (and, in my opinion, should) be doing with their expertise: sharing it in simple language that non-experts like me can understand. A prime example (no pun intended) is his recent entry on e-coli and grass-fed beef. If you have any interest in the current debate about food, food safety, and environmentalism, you should take a gander. (Hoof it over there? Paw through it?)

Chris is also a master of what Twitter can and should be. He's there as @iTweetMeat. Enjoy!

It always amazes me when anyone notices this blog. I mean, I obviously hope for that --- I am, after all, running a business --- but it's a big, bloggy world out there. Anyway, some more local food folks showed up to comment (thanks!) on one of  my previous posts and that seems like a good enough reason to direct you to their sites: One is from a site called Small Footprint Family (complete with advertisements for Chevrolet!) (That whacked my funny bone.) ( Been a long day.) The other is from a site called Hyperlocavore. Check 'em out.

Think of this as a follow-up to an earlier post about "local" slaughtering: An interesting and thoughtful essay over at Grist written by the typically thoughtful  Tom Laskaway. The subtitle could be something like "You're Damned if You Do, and You're Damned if You Don't." 'Cause, really, there's just no pleasing the "pro-food," "sustainable," "eat local" folks. No way. No how. Don't get me wrong.  I'm all for change. I've made that clear here over and over again, to the point of being a bore. (*1)  But moving toward  a new future requires taking the present into account and understanding why things are as they are now. Any carpenter will tell you that you can't start remodeling until you know something about the underlying structure of what's already there. The "local" folks don't get that it's impossible to return to a society that's "local" in its orientation. (Barring, of course, some kind of nuclear holocaust that leaves us singing "Wooden Ships.") (In which case, eating "locally" is gonna be the least of our problems.) Put another way, we Americans live in an urban society with national markets and highly specialized agriculture (eg, Flordians grow citrus, and Kansans wheat) because specialization and national markets are the most the most efficient way to feed millions of people, the vast majority of whom live in cities (and therefore don't produce their own food). (*2) That means, for better or worse, we must also live with federal regulations. The whole point of the USDA is to create a national food system that is fair and safe for everyone, not just for a few. The reason that the USDA spends so much time negotiating with large corporations is because those corporations "own" the infrastructure necessary to produce and transport the food. Americans created that national food system a century ago. The effort began more or less randomly, as entrepreneurs responded to astonishingly rapid urban growth by creating corporate structures for moving food from one region of the country to another (eg, oranges from Florida to New York). Over the course of several decades, Americans  figured out how to moderate that system of private enterprise with a dollop of  federal oversight, the goal being to keep food prices in line and the food itself safe. The system, which provided inexpensive, abundant, and yes, safe, food in every state, not just a few, took decades to create because it took Americans that long to understand that they were no longer living in a "local" world. So there's a reason for the infrastructure. Yank it out from under the dinner table --- take away the large corporations that process and move millions of pounds of foodstuffs; take away the USDA ---  and we'll be back where we were 120 years ago: With unsafe food and a screwy hodgepodge of food laws that differ from city to city and state to state. Again, I'm all for change. I believe that, yes, we can. But let's move forward, not  backward. _____________ *1: Remember my historian's mantra: if we know that the past is different from the present, then it follows that the future is ours to shape.) *2: Yes, I understand that the "profood" people are most bothered by the fact that our food system is national and agriculture is specialized. But so far, none of them have offered an alternative --- other than spending summers gardening and canning --- that would support an urban society. Now if their end goal is to dismantle the cities and have all of us move to the countryside, well. . . okay. But they need to say so.

Nice article here  about the realities of trying to make "local" and "high-quality" meat. It's also a near-perfect illustration of the way in which short-term perspective skews the story. (Or, put another way, it illustrates the way in which long-term perspective can enrich the story.) Here's the money quote:

 Despite the fees they charge the farmer (which can account for as much as half of the cost of the final product), small-scale meat processing is no wildly profitable business. And, because they can’t afford to pay a lot, it’s hard to attract staff for the difficult, unpleasant work.

The fees need to be put into context. Yes, a small slaughterhouse charges high prices, and that in turn creates high prices at the wholesale/retail end, far higher than is charged by a "regular" slaughterhouse that operates on a large scale. Why can't a smaller house compete with a larger facility? Because small slaughterhouses  don't have access to the one thing that pays the bills at large slaughterhouses: (literally) tons of leavings (bone, hides, blood, etc.) Byproducts subsidize the cost of dressing the carcass and shipping the meat to large markets. If packing houses relied only on the profits from selling the meat (especially beef), they'd fail. And fast. Put another way, if someone wants to run a small-scale "local" slaughterhouse, the owner is catering to a tiny audience of livestock producers who can and will pay the high fees for slaughtering. But they're also relying on a tiny audience of people who can afford to pay $25.00 a pound for steak that comes out of the small slaughtering house. (*1) The other money quote:

The state’s landscape is ideally suited for smallscale, pasture-based livestock. 

Um, not so much. Sure the soil and terrain may be "ideal," but it doesn't follow that it's financially ideal. Indeed, New York livestock producers stopped using that "ideal" land for raising stock for food well over a century ago. Why? Because they couldn't compete with midwestern and western producers who had access to cheaper land. As important, however, they couldn't compete with other demands for that land --- especially from dairy producers who raised cattle for milk (for the great urban complex in the southern part of the state.) (Milk is more perishable than meat; economics dictate that it be produced fairly close to the retail market.) I made the  mistake of mentioning a short version of all of this on Twitter, and was immediately told that the problem is "consolidation" that's destroyed the "diversity" of the marketplace. Again, not so much. The American meat industry "consolidated" more than a century ago. The impetus was two-fold. First, Americans demanded, and I mean demanded, inexpensive meat. But second, and as important, American urbanites, who made up the bulk of the population, demanded that  meat processing be stashed away in large facilities far away from the markets where that meat would be sold. They wanted their meat out of sight, out of mind. So livestock production and meat processing moved to the center of the country. The only way to move the meat back to the urban centers was to ship it. And the only way to keep expenses low was by, you guessed it, using every single part of the animal: the byproducts paid the tab for keeping American tables piled with meat. So --- more power to these people who want high-quality meats. But I wish they'd look past the allure of the "new"economy and the grooviness of the "local" for a larger perspective on the issues at hand. ___________ *1: By the way, I can't think any better way to reduce the amount of meat consumed in the U.S. than to switch to "local" slaughterhouses. Few people would be able to afford to eat meat. Voila! Meat consumption drops and, in theory, the climate improves. Two fer one.

Indeed, nitwittery may end up sending me screaming right over the edge. Or maybe today I just like the word "nitwittery." In any case, breathless excitement today in the "profood" world over a new report that livestock (read: cattle) and therefore meat-eaters are to blame for all the world's woes. The short version is here. But please, see this for a more balanced, nuanced view. Guess which version is gonna set the world afire?

As you may have noticed, posts have been few/far between because I'm immersed in writing the new book (and my poor brain has balked at being spread so thin). But I can't let this go past unnoticed. "This" being a post over at Sam Fromartz's ChewsWise blog. (*1)

Although the blog is Fromartz's,  this particular blog entry was written by Lisa M. Hamilton, who is the author of Deeply Rooted.

A bit of background: The midwest has had an exceptionally wet October. Here in Iowa, October was one of the wettest months on record. This is bad news for farmers because they can't harvest crops in wet weather. When the weather stays wet and the crops stay in the ground, they run the risk of losing those crops.

According to Hamilton, the problem is not the weather, but that modern farming

relies on a precise set of conditions: cheap fuel, ample water, stable climate . . .

The implication is that, bare minimum, this "unstable" weather has caused the system to go haywire.

Really? Weather is by nature (no pun intended) unstable and generally cyclical. Has this been a wet fall? Yep. Has it happened before? Yep. Is there a chance that soon we'll have a too-dry summer, which will also wreak havoc in the fields? Yep.

Because that's what weather does. That's what weather always does: it runs in cycles. I can rattle off examples of disastrous crop years past, when farmers scrambled to figure out how to cope with too much rain, too little rain, rain at the wrong time.

Moreover, she shows a short-sighted knowledge of the history of crop breeding. She writes that

Rather than focus solely on yield or specific items such as drought-tolerance or herbicide resistance, we need varieties that can flex along with whatever conditions they encounter.

I don't think Hamilton understands that for the past two centuries, American farmers have bred corn and wheat varieties for climate, soil, terrain, and just about anything else you can think of that might affect it, including drought and excessive moisture.

Yes, you read that correctly: several centuries.

American farmers today use herbicides and pesticides and  various patented seeds. But those tools are just contemporary examples of the long, long  history of crop experimentation and manipulation. For two centuries, farmers have designed crops that will "flex with whatever conditions they encounter" --- precisely because they encountered different sets of conditions.

Of course crop breeding isn't perfect, and farmers have no choice but to aim at averages: What is the climate in, say, South Carolina, usually like? What kinds of wheat will grow in Kansas? In general, what kind of climate can we expect in Iowa? How can I make a variety of corn or wheat that will grow well in most years?

Farmers can't, however, manage  cycles of weather that happen, well, cyclically. No, I'm not saying there's not a climate crisis. I'm saying, based on fifty-plus years of living in the midwest, that weather follows clear and regular cycles. Farmers know that. They expect it. They plan accordingly. But they can't nail the mark every time. They can't adjust corn varieties fast enough to adjust to short-term weather patterns or even odd patterns like the one we're experiencing this year. Nor, obviously, can they know when the cycle will shift, at least not with any great precision.

Put another way, I suspect many people will blame this result's of this year's (likely) bad harvest on "corporate" and "industrial" farming --- and they'll do so because they haven't taken the time to look at the long view of the big picture of farming's history.

I reiterate what I've said here before: I'm not anti-good food. I'm not pro-"Corporate Farming." I am, however, a supporter of clear thinking, reason, and knowledge. And I tend to be a Ranty McPanty when it comes to ill-informed "information." Hamilton's essay, which is otherwise well-written, is yet another example of gross generalization and hasty thinking that marks so much of what's being tossed around these days in the name of  the "food crisis."

____________

*1: Sam is the author of  Organic, Inc., a superb book that has not gotten the attention it deserves, especially not from the "locavore/profood" community.

There's really not much new under the sun, as evidenced by this article. (Warning: If you're squeamish, you may want to take a pass.)

Nineteenth-century Americans routinely sold, bought, and ate "bob veal." Many people regarded it as a delicacy; others were horrified at the idea. In either case, outrage over the notion of "bob veal" surfaced with yawn-inducing regularity. As it has, apparently, right in the here and now of the twenty-first century.

And it's not just bob veal that got Americans cranked up. Every so often, someone would launch a crusade about slaughterhouse cruelty, about its impact on animals and humans. Etc.

Remember the uproar in early 2008 about "inhumane" practices at a California slaughterhouse? (I commented on it at the time. You can read that here and here.) As I noted then, there's nothing new there. Dig around in nineteenth century newspapers, you'll find hundreds of examples of that same story.

It all comes down to choices: If you want meat, well, there's a price to pay. And there's no way to produce affordable meat without, well, skinning a few calves. (Yes, for those who are wondering, I do eat meat.)

Tip o' the mug to Chris Raines for pointing me toward this story. He blogs here. Follow him on Twitter, too: @ITweetMeat.

This is the kind of crap that drives me batty. The other day I was reading something (can't remember now what it was) that led me to The Kitchen Garden Network. According to the site's "About" page, the people at KGN are focused on

the politics and economic forces that influence what reaches the food outlets where we shop for what we eat.

Okay. Fine. If they'd stopped there, I wouldn't have had the urge to bang my head against the wall. Instead, the site's founder goes on to note that

Up until the 1970’s a large portion of our food came from local sources . . . ’   Roadside stands, farmer’s markets, local co-ops and the like were a given. Organic produce had not yet become commonly available. By the 1980’s everything changed. The political climate altered the agricultural landscape in many dramatic and detrimental ways. Many farmers went out of business and farms began to be sold off at a rapid pace.

Oh. Ohhhh..... My aching head. Where should I start to correct the errors? (*1)

Should I begin by changing "1970s" to "1870"? Or explain that prior to the 1970s, few Americans bought their food at "roadside stands, farmer's markets [or] local co-ops"? Or dissect the claim that somehow in the 1980s, "everything changed"?

Or just explain that when I read stuff such uninformed nonsense, first I cringe, and then I worry? Because the current debate about food is being fueled by this kind of inane, inaccurate "information." Worse, substantive discussion about the global food system, climate change, and the like is in danger of being derailed by a lack of insight, context, and history.

It drives historians like me crazy. And frankly, it scares the crap out of me. (If too many cooks ruin the soup,  too many ignorant minds and chattering mouths destroy the debate.) So --- maybe I should choose door number three and get back to work on my current project. Because  the "food fight" needs a historian's input.

___________________

*1:  Mind you, I'm not picking on the people at Kitchen Garden Network. I could have used dozens of other, similar examples. This one just happened to be handy.

If I weren't so hellbent, obsessed, and otherwise focused on finishing this chapter, I'd come up with a response to the (mostly idiotic) "food" edition of last Sunday's New York Times magazine. Or I'd say something about this, this, or this (the last one  is a bit unnerving in its, um, nannystate-ism).

But . . . I am hellbent, obsessed, and otherwise focused on finishing this chapter. So I won't. Read the stuff for yourself and, I dunno, talk amongst yourselves.

This via Jacob Grier on the demise of Gourmet magazine. (Again the Jacob Grier thing. Apparently his brain and mine ruminate along parallel tracks).

I've  never heard of Grant McCracken. (Okaaayyy. The rest of you are rolling your eyes wondering where the hell I've been. I have no idea who the guy is.)(*1) (And no, I had not read a copy of Gourmet in years and years because it had nothing to do with my life.)

But I agree with McCracken's take on cooking v. food. I already "knew" the point he makes. It's been rammed home the past few months as my husband and I have laid the groundwork for remodeling our kitchen. (Okay. MY kitchen.) I've spent hours reading books about remodeling and magazines about kitchen remodeling in particular.

And come away from reading all this stuff about what-I-must-have-now in my kitchen thinking "Jayzuz gawd. Clearly no one actually uses these kitchens." 'Cause most of what passes for kitchen design and kitchen appliances these days is unusuable by anyone who, ya know, actually cooks. And I don't mean someone who futzes endlessly fixing "gourmet" meals. I mean someone (like me) who actually prepares the food her family eats. (For more on this from me, check the "In the Kitchen" category in the archives box on the left of your screen.)

As I've noted here before, my household rarely goes out to eat. Whatever we eat, I chop, mix, dice, and cook right there in the kitchen.(*2) So my kitchen in a workspace. Not some wowzy, glitzy joint where people gather in front of their $2,000 stainless steel (do you have ANY idea how hard that is to keep clean?) refrigerators and drink groovy chardonnays while the host/hostess dish up take-out.

Anyway. I disagree with McCracken's last point. He says that Americans

know more about food and they care more about food, but they are spending less time working with food.

I disagree. I think the bizarre state of the American kitchen is evidence that Americans don't care about food. If they did, they sure as well wouldn't spend money on crap like "pot filler faucets," refrigerator drawers, and central-island cooktops.

Seriously. What sane cook wants the cooktop out in the middle of the kitchen with a gawking audience directly opposite, watching --- and feeling --- as the grease, steam, and heat wash over their faces?

Anyway. Nothing to do with anything. Just needed an outlet after a day in which I wrote 2300 words and read a large chunks of a monograph on anti-trust and a dissertation about the global nature of the nineteenth-century American livestock industry. Because that's how I spend my days.

_________

*1: Actually, his name rings a bell, but I think last time I heard it was a zillion years ago in grad school.

*2: Should you somehow have a mad craving to know more about my view about cooking, etc., by all means read my five-part rant on the subject. (I know. I know. NO ONE reads long blog entries. What can I say? It's my way of justifying my existence.)

Part One ---     Part Two

Put another way: people who shop at Sam’s Club for “inexpensive” meat are saving nothing. They could buy fresh beef at their local grocery store and pay the same price. They only need to add the labor of shaping the meat into burgers.

But many Americans, maybe even most of us, don’t think that way. We’d rather shop for a “bargain,” even if that bargain is wrapped in expensive three-color printed cardboard and a lot of plastic. (I’m assuming the meat itself was shrink-wrapped in plastic before being placed in its cardboard container.) Cargill knows that Americans love bargains and that they love convenience. (“Look! Someone else has already shaped this meat into patties. Whew! I don’t have to do that job.”)

But Cargill also knows that Americans rarely want to pay the true price for convenience; that is, the price of labor and materials that make "convenience" possible. Still, that's what Americans want and so that's what Cargill provides: “convenient” meat at the same price as in the grocery store.

But the only way to do that --- I repeat: the ONLY WAY TO DO THAT --- is by cutting costs on the product. Where to cut the price? By cobbling together enough “ground beef” from whichever vendor will sell its wastes to Cargill. Put another way: When someone picks up a package of pre-formed hamburgers at Sam’s Club and looks at the price, do they honestly believe they’re getting high-quality meat? Any person with any kind of intelligence --- any kind of intelligence --- would have to know that packaged meat that costs the same as unpackage fresh meat isn’t the same meat.

My point is this: Cargill is selling what Americans want to buy. I am saddened by the story of what happened to this young woman. I don’t blame her for being angry. (*1)

Americans need to stop lying to themselves about their food. We want inexpensive food, but we don’t want to pay full price. It’s too easy to blame greedy corporate bastards and/or farmers and/of the government. Or all three. My guess is that if Americans actually started paying for high-quality, safe food, and the price of hamburger rose to its real price --- somewhere between $15 and $20 dollars a pound --- the screaming over that situation would drown out the moaning we’re hearing over this tale of woe in the New York Times.

____________

*1: It is a measure of both her youth and her anger that her response to what happened is, literally, “Why me?” (Her words, quoted in the news story.) The implication is that it would have been okay if it had happened to someone else.

Part One

The Times article noted that Cargill and other “big” suppliers of pre-packaged meat try to keep the price of the meat as low as possible. In this case, Cargill paid about $1 a pound for the beef,

or about 30 cents less than . . . it would cost for ground beef made from whole cuts of meat

and then sold it in a package of eighteen pre-formed, frozen beef patties (one-third of a pound each). I visited the Sam’s Club site to see if I could find that specific brand. I did not, but I found a similar item. (That’s how Sam’s Club works, by the way: What’s for sale at the store at any given moment is whatever they found that met the company’s price expectations, which means the brands change often.) By my calculations, the six pounds of meat in the package works out to $2.30 per pound. I buy ground beef at my local grocery store for the same price: typically $2.30 per pound. (Sometimes it’s on sale, but the normal price is about $2.30, depending on wholesale prices and market conditions.) The difference is that

• if I were to use it for burgers, I’d supply the labor to turn a lump of ground meat into burgers; and
• the beef is ground from the trimmings at the store where I buy it. None of it comes from Uruguay or wherever. (Yes, my grocery store’s meat comes from “factory farms,” presumably in the midwest.)
• And the meat is fresh, not frozen.

So --- why does the fresh meat I buy cost the same per pound as the supposedly “cheaper” meat that Cargill packaged and sold in convenient pre-formed patties? After all, Cargill spent $1 per pound for the original meat.

The other $1.30 cents is easily accounted for. First, Cargill needs to earn a profit. (Don’t EVEN bother to email me telling me that Cargill doesn’t deserve to earn a profit. Don’t bother.) (Oh, and before you get all bent out of shape about “greedy corporate America,” please take a look at your mutual fund holdings.)

Second, Cargill used equipment and labor to grind the meat and form it into patties. Third, and probably most expensive, Cargill paid someone to design the package, and paid for the plastic and cardboard in which the meat was wrapped. That last alone likely cost, what?, thirty cents per package? At least?

Next: The high cost of cheap and convenient.

Last Sunday’s New York Times contained a long report about e-coli bacteria in beef. The story focuses on a young woman who ate some tainted beef and is now paralyzed. The reporter uses traces the beef she ate to point out how and why tainted beef is sold in American grocery stores.

No surprise, the story’s point is that tainted meat enters the food supply system because of failures of government oversight and because of greed.

I think there’s more to the story.

First let me say that what follows is in no way an attempt to minimize the suffering the woman has endured, or that I am blaming her or her family for what happened. (So don’t send me any snarky emails claiming that’s my intent. It’s not. Period.)

The Times report traces the origin of the meat in a package of frozen beef patties. The meat was packaged by Cargill, and sold at Sam’s Club as “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” In this case, consumers were obviously misled: The package is labeled “Angus Beef,” but as the Times story notes, the patties contain little, if any, “angus” beef.

. . . confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

According to the report, this scenario is common in the U.S.: large corporations that sell pre-packaged frozen beef often buy from multiple suppliers, but there’s no way to check for sources of e-coli. The article does not say, but implies, that the problem is with pre-packaged, “factory”-packaged ground beef, rather than fresh beef ground on-site at grocery stores.

No surprise, the Times story has provoked outrage and hand-wringing and attacks on the FDA and Big Corporate Food and farmers (who somehow always manage to get blamed when something goes wrong with food.) (A few weeks back, I read a blog entry whose author blamed farmers for the national “obesity epidemic.” Go figure.)

Okay. Fine. I’d like to point out another side of the story: Americans are getting precisely the kind of meat they want, because what Americans want is cheap, convenient food; indeed, I’d go so far as to say that Americans DEMAND cheap, convenient food.

Next: The price of "convenient" and "cheap."

. . . read this, perhaps the best essay I've read yet about the culture clash between the "profood" and "profarm" contingents unfolding in the US today.

It's a bit wordy (as Frederick the Great said to Mozart after hearing one of his symphonies: "Too many notes") but he's definitely made a concerted effort to explain the otherwise inexplicable animosity and wrath the profooders have unleashed upon their targets.

Gee whiz, but this is, um, so not new. SO not new. Shades of 1885. No difference. At all. Seriously, I could take his text and simply dump it into the chapter I'm writing at the moment. Ya know: The more things change, the more they stay the same. (How's that for a cliche?)