Food notes

I recently ran across an article in The New York Times which profiled Armandino Batali, the owner of Salumi, a Seattle charcuterie. He is being given credit to be the first to cure culatellos, known as "the prince of hams," here in the United States.

I forwarded the article to my foodie friend Seth. (Seth, incidentally, was responsible for my lunchtime entree today: the tasty skirt steaks he procured from Travis, his meat supplier who has a booth at the weekly Crocker Galleria farmer's market.)

The Times article included this comment from food writer Edward Behr:

"The Italian government and the European Union," as Mr. Behr reported with disappointment, "threaten ever more stringent standards, usually in the guise of improved sanitation, and even when the costs of the changes aren't prohibitive, the new methods tend to eliminate the precise qualities that make the traditional products superior."

Seth had this to say about the article, and I thought his comments were worth passing on:

Perhaps they're (meaning the government, prompted by huge agribusiness) threatening more stringent standards precisely to shift the business from small family to huge agribusinesses, in an effort to eliminate a category of competitor. The debate gets focused on topics like clealiness, modernization, etc - never mind that there's plenty of evidence that the methods are safe (at least in the context that they are practiced e.g. not with industrially-raised animals). It's an artisanal product made with incredible attention to detail, pretty close to the opposite system of what is considered modern in our food business.

Sort of similar to the discussions advocating produce irradiation here - what family farm is going to be able to afford the gear to do it (or even the space for it)? A parallel to foie gras discussions, too - make the issue not about it being a delicacy or different by any other qualitative aspect, but rather about cruelty to the animal (neglecting to do any followup investigation like how cruel is it objectively, or relative to practices orders of magnitude more common and results widely consumed).

If Kraft had an opportunity to put out of business all the micro artisan cheesemakers in one fell swoop, wouldn't the folks at Kraft be obligated to make that effort, expanding potential future market share or some other maximizing-stockholder-value silliness? (I'm crossing my fingers Cowgirl and MarinFrenchCheeseCo stay below their radar.)

SPEAKING OF BIG AGRIBUSINESS, there has been evidence for some time that industrial farms, as well as other sources of organic pollutants, are having an adverse effect on wildlife: feminization of male organisms, changing ratios of male and female offspring, disrupted development, and declining populations. Now Scientific American reports that recent research is providing a new explanation for the dramatic rise in twin births in the United States: the use of growth hormone on cattle to increase their milk and meat yield. It seems that growth hormone in the diet increases the amount of insulin-like growth factor in the bloodstream, and that in turn, increases ovulation. Women who drink a single glass of milk a day from cows treated with growth hormone experience a 10% rise of the growth factor in their systems.

Concerned? Buy organic milk or milk that specifically states that it doesn't contain rBGH or rBST hormones.