Cookaholics Bulletin Board

yikes!

Suddenly my $2.95/lb farmers market chicken is seeming like an even better idea than it did before.

I watched the documentary Food Inc the other night. It was disturbing and reaffirmed my commitment to buy the hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed beef and free range chickens from my local farmers market vendors (last day is this Saturday so I am stocking up). I have also sourced a farmer who raises heritage breed pigs without growth hormones or antibiotics, pasture fed only. It's more expensive, but we will eat less to compensate.

This was prompted for me by our E. coli outbreak from Costco steaks through mechanical tenderization. After writing the minister of agriculture about my concerns that little has been done to protect the consumer (other than to suggest that voluntary labeling be considered by those set to lose profit if they do, and to tell us to cook all cuts of beef to 161F until they are done their investigation, which will be....never), I got forwarded to the minister of health, and then to Health Canada, who wrote me a letter back 4 months later essentially indicating that....you guessed it, they are toothless in the face of the agrifood lobby. Profit trumps public safety every time if external regulation is not in place.

I'm going to go eat my granola and put on my Birkenstocks now.

Eye-opening, no?
I'll be more selective in buying chicken in the future, for sure.

It is interesting that other parts of the world have almost zero Salmonella but we have such problems with it in our factory farms. In Japan the eat raw (torisashi) and almost raw (toriwasa) chicken routinely without fear.

Now, that sounds horribly squicky to me, but I am a product of the US and our "cook it til it is dead because it it will kill you otherwise" culture.

--Lisa

Well, zero-salmonella chicken is probably not that hard to achieve, technically speaking, but would come with an increase in cost; probably a substantial one. IMO, meat is too cheap anyway, and probably almost all of society would be better off if it were more expensive, but the voting public is not generally in agreement with me.

Well, yet another validation of my dietary choices ...

I just made Zuni's roast chicken - if it kills me, I will die a happy person.