The reason for the repeal of COOL was that our northern and southern neighbors complained that the labeling was hurting their exports of beef and pork to the US. Not so much at the consumer level but at the packing houses. The large packers didn't want to buy foreign livestock because they didn't want the cost and burden of separating the Canadian animals from domestic animals. So the Canadians and Mexicans were not making as much money selling livestock into US markets.
This past Wednesday, Congress voted to repeal the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) requirement for imported meat. This was used to identify where the animals were born, raised, and slaughtered. The meat from those animals was then labeled with the country of origin label.
The reason for the repeal of COOL was that our northern and southern neighbors complained that the labeling was hurting their exports of beef and pork to the US. Not so much at the consumer level but at the packing houses. The large packers didn't want to buy foreign livestock because they didn't want the cost and burden of separating the Canadian animals from domestic animals. So the Canadians and Mexicans were not making as much money selling livestock into US markets.
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Today's post is by Erin Vogt
Much like the flavor of pasture-raised meats is tough to beat, the flavor of butter made with fresh cream from freely grazing sheep or cows is incomparable to those boxes of butter you can purchase at the store. Making butter at home is much easier than you might think, and the flavor possibilities are seemingly endless. Not only can you control the amount (and type) of salt used, but it’s easy to make sweet and savory butters to accompany many different foods. Plus, you get buttermilk which is perfect for making creamy homemade salad dressings, pancakes, and more! While just about any type of heavy cream will work for making butter, raw or pasteurized (NOT ultra-pasteurized) creams yield the best results, both for taste and for health. Ask around at your local farmer’s markets and health food stores for cream sources. When considering amounts, keep in mind that the cream to butter ratio is approximately 2:1. In other words, two cups of cream will yield approximately 1 cup of butter. I make butter once a month or so. It takes me about an hour to make two or three pounds of butter and nearly a quart of buttermilk. I have made butter in my stand mixer, my food processor, and even a Mason jar (great activity for the kids!). My preferred method, however, is to use my blender. It’s faster and less messy. My blender is nothing fancy, just a basic Ninja, so no special equipment is required! Today's post is a guest post by Erin Vogt
In this day of pre-packaged convenience foods, it’s no wonder that folks often ask us why on earth they would choose to purchase a whole bird rather than individual pieces. Obviously there are recipes that call for specific cuts of meat and do not lend themselves well to substitutions. For my busy family, cooking a whole chicken (or two) once a week feeds us several times, which is a huge time-saver for me. From quick quesadillas to chicken salad, to soups made with homemade bone broth (more on that soon!) to chilled shredded chicken and homemade hummus on warm summer nights, the recipes I can make with pre-cooked chicken are seemingly endless. Of course, flavorful whole roasters with seasoned, crispy skin are still served on my table from time to time. But when it comes to cooking chicken, my crock pot has all but taken the place of my oven, and the results are wonderful. And if you are eating whole foods on a budget, whole chickens cost less per pound than those conveniently cut chicken parts! Bonus! Before I reveal my incredibly easy, super quick technique for preparing whole chicken for the crock pot, I would first like to suggest that you keep a zip top plastic bag in your freezer in which to collect vegetable scraps. Whenever I cut carrot and celery sticks for my children or cut onions and garlic for dinner, I set aside the tops, peels, papers, and other various scraps and toss them into the freezer bag to be used in bone broth at a later date. Stockpiling these scraps will save you time in the kitchen later, and hey! Every minute counts these days! We will come back to these scraps when I share with you a favorite homemade broth recipe of mine. It’s so good that I haven’t purchased canned or boxed broth in years! Now onto the recipe for incredibly flavorful, moist and tender chicken… As I was growing up my Uncle use to call me "dirt farmer". It was a little joke of his and to this day when he sees me he will through that moniker on me. I have never asked why he called me that, likely because I spent a lot of time outside in the dirt. One can only guess. Maybe I should ask.
Now that I'm older, I actually like the title. I am a dirt farmer in the truest sense. If every farmer would stop and think for a moment, that is truly what we all are. The soil is the key to every farm. From the small grain farmer to the beef farmer, the vegetable farmer to the hog farmer, and every farmer in between, we all rely heavily on the soil. Without it farming dies. Soil is not inert matter. Healthy farms have vibrant life living underneath those rows of tall green crops and lush pastures. Millions and even billions of organisms live there feeding each other and off of each other. Minerals are being used and replenished through the cycle of life and death. There is nothing lifeless about it.
It was a frigid morning, and the sun had not yet poked over the ridge. The girls, about half of our twenty-four ewe herd, stood staring at me waiting for me to fill their bunk with feed. They were eager to get started this morning. Maybe the cold air had made them hungry or maybe they were finally getting use to the routine of milking, either way they were ready for the milk to flow.
This has been a familiar scene around the world for multiple millennia. The dairy farmer, the herder, the milch maid whatever the name given there has been a person tending to cattle, sheep, or goats for milk. Our farm at one point was a dairy. And we have toyed with the idea of going back to keeping some dairy animals on the farm for milk production. This year we gave a short go at it with our sheep just to get a feel for the routine and how it might fit with what we already do. But an article I read this week may push us to really consider becoming a raw milk dairy. The article told about two bioengineers that are planning to start production next year on milk that was made without cows. They call it Muufri (pronounced Moo Free). That's not a typo, cow free milk. A few weeks ago I sent out our monthly newsletter. In it I mentioned the story of the ant and the grasshopper. Most all of us are familiar with one version or another of this Aesop fable. I think it would do our culture some good if we stopped and meditated on some of these old fables. They hold a lot of truths that we could stand to be reminded of. We have a culture of go, go, go, and consume, consume, consume. Rarely do we stop to think about the future. We act like the grasshopper. We go about life as if the time of plenty will never end. But it does come to an end. Winter is coming, and the way the weathermen and Farmers Almanac are predicting it will be quite the winter this year, yet many have given little thought to it. We tend to treat farms and farmers markets like the grocery store. We act like there is one continuous growing season. Yet, In just a few weeks the last of the summer vegetables will be harvested. By the middle of October we will process the last of our free-range chickens. Have you stored up? I love what I do. Farming is in my blood. I love the land, the chickens, the hogs, and the sheep. I enjoy immensely almost every aspect of what I do. I could not imagine waking up tomorrow and not having the option to tend to our livestock and land. Anthony Bavuso of Seaford Oyster has a similar love for the Chesapeake Bay and the oysters he grows there. Anthony grew up on the Chesapeake and speaks of his love for that piece of water. Since 2010 he has been growing and selling oysters from the bay. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy about what Anthony is doing. It may be that he could wake up one morning and all he has worked for could be gone. The passion that he has chased and the love he has for the Bay could have a cold bucket of water thrown on it. He points out in a promotional video that the growing of oysters in the bay is very beneficial to the ecosystem. His little farm on the water is helping to clean the bay up for future generation and providing awesome oysters to locals, restaurants and folks in the surrounding states. What could be so bad about that? Anthony has been tenaciously fighting to keep Seaford Oyster open. In 2011 he was informed he needed a permit to operate by the county. So, to play nice, he applied for the permit to operate his oyster farm. He was denied by the county. In 2012 Anthony took the county to court arguing that he did not need a permit to operate his oyster farm due to the fact that his land was zoned for agriculture. He won his circuit court case but lost, on a split decision, when the county appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court. While his case was making its way through the courts the Virginia legislature passed a bill clarifying that aquaculture IS agriculture (as if that really needed to be defined). You would think this would bring an end to this nightmare for a man who just wants to make a living off of the water he loves, but no. No, the county asked that the bill have a delay amended to it so they could come into compliance with it. Instead they have decided to use the delay in-order to zone him out of business. The York County Board of Supervisors has decided that they don't need farmers, of any sort, in their county. They have made a proposal to basically eliminate agriculture from nearly all of their zoning (I wonder if they are familiar with the word overkill?). Some of the other options would extremely limit it and all of them would put Seaford Oyster out of business. In-spite of all this he has continued to farm. On March 27th of this year he was served with an injunction ordering him to stop farming. In the spirit of Ol' Virginia, where we take action against tyrants, he sued them. He claims that they have no legal grounds to require him to have a permit. Seeing that the lower courts have ruled in his favor before, lets hope they do again. The frighting aspect of all of this is that on a whim a group of public "servants" could strip you of your property rights. The York County Board of Supervisors have decided to toy with a man's future. As if he were their vassal upon their fief. It is frightening to think that one small group of people can wield that much destructive power. If you live east of Salem, Va. I hope you will consider buying some oysters from Seaford Oyster Company. According to his website he can overnight them anywhere east of Salem, and Anthony could use all the support he can get. And you will get a nice box of delicious Chesapeake Bay oysters. I hope to meet up with him later this month and that is exactly what I am doing. I am also going to sign the petition to let the York County Board of Supervisors know just how foolish they look. So, who is up for some fresh raw oysters? UPDATE: York County Moves Forward With its Re-Zoning Proposals. Question: What would you do? Do you think the York County Board of Supervisors is with in their rights? Let me know in the comments. Recently I was helping a customer of ours with their hog. He decided to do the job himself, and I volunteered to help. I have been a hunter since my teenage years and am not a stranger to processing larger animals. I think I was about 16 years old when I harvested my first deer. I have skinned, eviscerated, and cut up a fair number of deer since then. I had not been involved in the processing of a hog, though, since I was a teenager. Even then my assistance was only cursory. To be quite honest, I was a bit intimidated by the 250 pound plus hog hanging in my friend’s garage. In January many farmers, including myself, tried to get a piece of legislation through the Virginia House of Delegates. As I wrote here our attempt was shot down. The Agriculture Subcommittee tabled the bill. But just because they shot it down, that does not mean that we are throwing in the towel. Some of the farmers that made the trip to Richmond have been asked to be part of a work group to try and make the bill better. I am optimistic that good will come out of this work group and the legislation and move forward to free farmers and consumers alike. In the mean time we are also working to have the political parties in each county to put pressure on our delegates to pass the legislation. Last week I was able to attend the Republican party meeting in my county. They passed a resolution to support the Food Freedom Act and to also inform our representatives that they support the legislation. That may seem small but can you imagine what Richmond would think if every political unit, in each county across the state, did likewise? Food Freedom is not just a Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative or liberal issue. Food freedom is an issue that effects everyone. We all have to eat and no one wants to be told what they can or cannot eat. Just ask what a New Yorker thinks of Mayor Bloomberg's limits on salt and soda. People will only take so much of someone telling them what they can and cannot do. Especially when it come to food and drink. If you are interested in trying to get the parties in your county to take up the cause of food freedom please let me know. You can contact me through the contact form at this link. I would gladly pass the information along to you and give you instructions on how to present it to your local parties. There is also a petition you can sign to show your support for this legislation by going here. Read more about the Food Freedom Act - One Food Bill That Could Revolutionize Virginia Farms
Read my response to objections to the Food Freedom Act - Four Reasons Why Critics Are Wrong About Small Farm Food Safety For a generation now industrial agriculture has been demonizing small farms and independent operations like ours. We have been referred to as dangerous, not really farmers, and incapable of feeding the world. Small farmers, like ourselves, have been fighting against the picture agribusiness groups paint of us. Slowly we are changing the public's view that small farmers are unsafe and are reliable sources of high quality food. The biggest hurdle we have is a lack of funding. The agribusiness groups (In our state these are Virginia Cattlemen's Association, Virginia Poultry Grower's Association, Virginia Dairyman's Association, Virginia Farm Bureau, Virginia Food and Beverage Association, et al.) have deep pockets to both fund propaganda and to buy off legislators in-order to reduce the choices of consumers. Extra money for large scale advertising isn't something a radical fringe farmer like myself has lying around. But over the last couple of decades or so some companies and restaurants have taken a position that they will support small direct sales farms with high ethical standards and quality. One such restaurant is the fast food chain Chipotle. Chipotle made it part of their business model to purchase as much of their ingredients as possible from producers that meet their high standards. They found that folks were willing to pay a little extra to have their chicken burrito with antibiotic free chicken on it and with pork that was raised outdoors. Chipotle is now a 3.3 billion dollar business that purchases primarily from farmers not packing houses like Tyson and Smithfield. The Agribusiness community was cool with this arrangement until Chipotle started making waves. In 2011 Chipotle, which had not made much use of traditional advertising, made a short ad called "Back To The Start" that primarily ran on YouTube. It featured a farmer who questioned the changes that had come to agriculture in his life time and made a change on his own farm. Then came the "Scarecrow" ad. This one questioned the idea of marketing food as "Farm Fresh" when most supermarket food is hardly that at all. This one caused a stir. But their most recent media release has many in the Agribusiness world furious. Monday was the premier of their new series on Hulu, "Farmed And Dangerous". This time Chipotle put $1 million on the line to take a satirical look at food production and manipulation of public perception of our current system. The show's antagonist is Buck Marshall who runs a company, I.F.I.B.(get it? I fib), that does damage control for Animoil, an industrial food producer. The show is complete fiction but that hasn't occurred to many in the agribusiness world. I personally find all the cries of foul as funny. As I pointed out earlier, farmers like myself have not had a voice for a long time. Now there is someone out there firing shots over the bow of industrial Agriculture, and they don't like it. One farmer and representative for the Montana Stock Growers, Ryan Goodman, said that Chipotle should have talked to real farmers if they had concerns about production practices and not just those producing food the way Chipotle and their customers want. Goodman tweeted that he found no humor in the Chipotle series: He wasn't the only representative from the Agribusiness world to express outrage. The problem I have with all of this "outrage" is that groups like Stock Growers, Cattlemen, and Poultry Growers Associations et al. have been selling fear for generations now. I experienced it first hand when I went to Richmond a few weeks ago.
I will agree with Goodman in one area, it isn't fun to be thrown under the bus. Maybe some of these Agribusiness Associations will realize that now and take steps to represent farmers like myself and quit their own selling of fear. But I won't hold my breath on that one. What do you think? Did Chipotle go too far or not far enough? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. |
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