Hands off

Recent years have been good to fans of high quality, locally produced food. Across the country, farmers' markets are on the upswing as demand for better ingredients swells among foodies, hippies, yuppies, and health nuts alike. Words like "salsify," "ramps," and "geoduck" are appearing on lips and menus in greater numbers than ever before, and sometimes customers actually know what they mean. I'm relatively sure that even Denny's features an heirloom tomato, organic basil, and fresh mozzarella salad alongside its signature (and oh-so-wittily designated) Moons Over My Hammy®.

It's just too bad that our government actively screws us all for lobbyist support and political capital in the Iowa caucuses.

On Saturday, the New York Times published an Op-Ed by Minnesota farmer Jack Hedin lamenting the policies of the United States Department of Agriculture with regard to small producers. In short, Mr. Hedin discusses how big backers of the Department's commodity farm program forward legislation that seeks to protect agribusiness and so stifles competition from local producers, limiting their production and ultimately passing the costs on to the consumer.

Protectionist policies of this sort help no one except for those who least need it. Take, for instance, our nation's recent infatuation with corn-based ethanol. Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, socialist or neocon, there's nary a voice to be heard that hasn't fallen for her seductive charms. But like Mr. or Ms. Friday Night, she looks a whole lot worse in the light of day after those tequila shots have worn off.

Our government insists that we subsidize an energy "solution" that pays political capital in corn-producing states and among well-meaning environmentalists who haven't done their research, but is ultimately inefficient and wasteful. As some 17% of this subsidized corn goes to ethanol (the USDA anticipates some 31% of US corn will be used for ethanol by 2016), corn prices increase, which in turn increases prices in directly related products, from tortillas to beef. Meanwhile, a relative scarcity of other produce develops as incentives encourage farmers to turn to corn, and that other produce becomes more expensive as well.

As an added insult, we as American taxpayers are spending our own money to subsidize politically vested ethanol corporations to the detriment of small farmers, better environmental solutions, and our own grocery bills. These subsidies are terrible for independent growers, terrible for food lovers, and terrible for consumers--especially Americans of modest means and the poor worldwide, for whom food and gas costs are a much larger part of their budget--but miraculously great for the Agcos, Andersons, and Archer Daniels Midlands of the world. Through our fine, career-minded representatives, we are literally paying these corporations to increase our own food and fuel costs.

Some might argue that this is an acceptable course of action if it means access to a renewable fuel source. And it might be, if these costs weren't unnecessary and idiotic.

There is no shortage of environmentally responsible alternatives. Brazil produces primarily bagasse-based ethanol that has a net energy yield approximately eight times greater than our corn-based "solution." They've been developing their ethanol policy for nearly thirty years, and their product can be imported cheaply--or could be, if we didn't use subsidies and tariffs to protect large-scale sugar and corn producers in this country. Alternatively, wind, solar, and other biomass solutions widely used in Europe work cheaply and consistently, and non-food ethanol sources don't cause artificial increases in food prices or competitive costs for small farmers.

As people who care about what we eat, we share in the responsibility of holding our politicians accountable for these inane and harmful practices.

To think that a few years ago raw milk and foie gras bans were the worst of our food worries. Thanks a lot, Iowa.

Pass the Dolly, Please

At long last my dreams have come true. I can finally eat Dolly the sheep without breaking into the Royal Museum of Scotland.

Today, in a show of scientific hubris worthy of a Mary Shelley novel or Jerry Bruckheimer film, the FDA issued a release declaring that cloned animals and their offspring are safe to eat.

Which really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. While I'm no scientician, it makes a whole lot of sense that the process would be safe, given that a clone is by definition essentially an identical twin of the original animal.

Of course, that doesn't mean we won't be entering into outraged panic. And naturally, that panic has to an extent already begun. The New York Times reports Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union as one of the first. Hansen contends that the report “flies in the face of Congress’s wishes. It flies in the face of consumer wishes."

Never mind that this study has been going on for some seven years. Never mind that the National Academy of Sciences already came to the same conclusion in the hoary days of 2002, way back in that innocent, bygone era when Grand Theft Auto III was new and we didn't know that R. Kelly enjoyed urinating on young girls. And never mind that the studies involve peer-review by independent scientific experts in cloning and animal health. Some dude saw Episode II and doesn't want his lamb chops growing up to become a storm trooper.

I can't help but humbly reply.

To wit: keep your hands off my food, jerk.

Sadly, this isn't because I believe cloned animals will somehow improve society or taste better than their brethren who came from old-fashioned, inseminated-by-hand mommies. (Except for Dolly, of course. Historicity, after all, is the finest sauce.)

No, because of their difficulty to raise--and subsequent cost--cloned animals are largely intended for use as breeding animals through which desirable traits can be more quickly introduced than through conventional methods. In other words, it will allow large producers to continue doing what they've been doing even more efficiently, namely raising affordable, decent, and generally fine but unremarkable livestock.

If there's any danger at all, it is of increasing homogeneity within this arena, a homogeneity already well-established after thousands of years of animal husbandry. Grocery store cattle will be a little heartier, produce a little more meat, and taste largely the same, and I'll still suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as Fountain Prairie's bone-in ribeye continues to elude me.

The far greater risk, where lovers of good food should be concerned, is giving the government more control over what we are allowed to eat. This same FDA has already forbidden us from drinking raw milk and from eating young raw milk cheese. Chicago has banned foie gras, New York has prohibited cooking sous vide, and morels were briefly illegal in California. Wisconsin law has even forbidden joint ownership of cows, lest you dare to drink their unpasteurized milk. ("We never should have let them do it in the first place," said regulator Thomas Leitzke in 2003.) While no one questions the wisdom of sanitation or labeling, prohibition of food items is an absurdity. Give us the information and let us choose.

If there is one thing the history of gastronomy has taught us, it's that food will not be contained. Fugu breaks free, mold expands to new territory, and wild mushrooms crash through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously. And that's a good thing. Humble yeasts have given us our finest beers and wines, buried vegetables transform almost magically into kimchi, and one-time throwaways like oysters and pineal glands have become revered in the pantheon of cuisine. Food finds a way.

Still worried about that cloned pig? Don't be. I have it on good authority that Newman from Seinfeld is overseeing the computer systems at the FDA's testing facilities, virtually guaranteeing our safety. Besides, when irregularities arise in the cloning processes, geneticists are already splicing in West African frog DNA to fill any gaps in the genetic structure.

It's a foolproof plan, really, and I promise we'll be OK. Unless, of course, they figure out how to open doors.