Keep it Simple On Thanksgiving Day

Is Uninspected Food Safe?

If you've been to our website or farm store, you probably know we’ve chosen to circumvent governmental oversight rather than comply. If the state and county food oversight bureaucracies had their druthers, we would have a raw milk permit to sell raw milk, a licensed and inspected kitchen in which to make homemade canned goods, an inspected processing facility to process our pastured meat chickens, a retail food facility license in order to sell to you, and all our red meat would be processed in a USDA facility. Fortunately, we’ve been able to circumvent the food police to where they allow us to operate as a private farm who only caters directly to consumers (no restaurants, hotels, or retail stores). That said, our stance could be interpreted as careless, lackadaisical, or, depending on your view of governmental food oversight, straight-up foolish. But there are two sides to the coin. Here’s why we take the position we do: We, more than anyone, want a safe food system, but in our view, all of the above-named licenses and permits do not necessarily serve that cause. Rather, they incentivize centralization and corporate-scale food establishments. A centralized food system is by nature unsafe. It is unsafe food-safety-wise because far more animals and crops are amalgamated to central processing mega-facilities where, if you have a pathogen outbreak, it quickly spreads out of control. But it’s also unsafe nationally, because—as it now stands—if someone wanted to cripple America, they could, for example, destroy or disable 4-6 industrial meat plants and we would have meat shortages for at least eighteen months and a doubling of meat prices—similar to what we saw in the spring of 2020. At Pasture to Fork, we want a safe food system, but compared to the current food regulatory authorities, have a very different vision of how to get there. They vie for centralization, control, and a big-business conglomerate food supply. We advocate for decentralization, freedom, and small-scale direct-to-consumer food acquisition.We care passionately about food safety but just don’t think government inspectors looking at thousands of chickens whizzing down an industrial processing line makes the chicken any cleaner or safer. Or that having a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture inspector come in once a year to measure freezer temperatures and eyeball our poultry processing room will help us to produce cleaner food.We’re more than willing to participate in a clean food system, if only the USDA or FDA were willing to set a threshold for what clean food is. We would love to submit our chicken for swabbing and compare it with chicken from the supermarket, if only they were to set a threshold (bacteria parts per million, or whatever). Please, just give me a threshold! We know we’ll far exceed it because to set a threshold would require a bar set low enough to allow industrialized processors to meet it. But the entrenched notion of food safety is whether or not one of USDA's own has seen the process, which we think is an illogical determination.Those of us who are small producers in a branded product take food safety very seriously, in part because we don’t have a bevy of Philadelphia attorneys on retainer to protect us from a bad food situation. We actually take it more seriously than the industry that has both the bureaucracy of inspectors and attorneys on retainer whose skirts they hide behind. For us, the direct relationship with the eater of our food creates a real-time daily audit, if you will. The direct connection with the people who actually use the food we produce invites direct blowback if the product is less than stellar. In the era of social media, we know producing an unacceptable product quickly smears our reputation when an unhappy customer posts it online. By catering to the end user, we make ourselves vulnerable, in a sense, but we welcome and desire that direct interaction.If we want people to exercise their discernment muscle to make better food decisions (yes, discernment is muscle that must be exercised just like your biceps or triceps) a direct relationship with the farmer or food producer is paramount in order to have a scenario in which to exercise discernment. In the supermarket setting—because everything has the official stamp already on it and the producer is a nameless faceless entity that may be thousands of miles away—that discernment muscle remains lethargic.If the only decision is whether or not it has the USDA blue check mark on it, there’s no decision going on. Because of this, society has become extremely ill-informed and lethargic in its ability to determine whether the food is any good or not, or whether it’s trustworthy or not. Nobody asks because government bureaucracy has essentially taken away the ability to weigh options, and it has not been for the betterment of food or society. As a nation, we no longer know how to actually vet our food and are at the mercy of a few bureaucrats making food decisions for us. I’m not saying direct-to-consumer producers want to pass the buck to the eater when bad food is produced, rather that if we depend on the government to tell us if our food is safe, we’re in a very precarious position due to the empirical nature of top-down regulation that is swayed by lobbying influence from the industry itself.If the goal is an educated savvy consumer, how do we get there? I suggest we get there by circumventing the plethora of federal and state regulations and allowing people the freedom to look around, sniff around, and ask around on real farms to see if they’re comfortable with what’s being offered. Food production should be aromatically and aesthetically pleasing, and even relatively uneducated people will quickly know whether or not what they’re seeing and sensing is pleasing or not. Let's be honest, the current plethora of regulation surrounding food production does nothing to improve the quality of the food aside from a supposed assurance of cleanliness. And even that is largely a myth when you look at where the biggest contaminated food breakouts occur, which is from the largest processors in the industry. Food regulation, for the most part, does not address antibiotics in animal agriculture, or GMO's in crop production, or consider the environment in which the animal or crop was raised. It simply comes down to whether or not the process and/or facilities were seen and approved by whatever bureaucratic agency is set to oversee that sector of the food supply. We beg to differ with this simplistic approach. We think it matters how the animal was raised or what the vegetables were sprayed with. We believe scale matters in processing. Dressing two hundred chickens one day out a week is vastly different than dressing five million chickens every day of the week operating around the clock. We believe food and farming is an inherently biological process regardless of how bent the industries have been on reducing it to science and widgets-in/widgets-out. And in biologics, scale matters. Interestingly enough, the FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service) has been known to brag about the efficiency of the largest meat plants they oversee, using pounds of meat processed per inspector hour as a measure. To me, this mentality is damning on its face. I should think the inspection service should be more concerned about whether or not something is overlooked by the inspector, but instead they measure their success in terms of how fast the process goes. By that measure, the speed of the chicken processing line should be increased even more, which is to say the 5 million-chickens-a-day are whizzing past the inspector even faster. At Pasture to Fork, we believe animals raised in their natural outdoor habitat will produce healthier meat or milk than their confined antibiotic-ridden-hormone-driven-GMO-fed counterparts. The same is true for produce in terms of compost grown versus chemical laden. When one arrives at this conclusion and puts effort into raising only the best of food quality, to subject it to the dumbed-down regulatory standards of the conventional food industry seems foolish. Even more so when you have a patron base who shares your values and harbors a growing distrust for the regulatory establishment, largely because the establishment has proven itself incompetent. What's more, to attempt compliance with this plethora of regulation robs one of the energies that could otherwise be put to good use in ensuring food quality, animal welfare, and soil building, not to mention customer relations or sales. To sum it up, we advocate for a food system that is regenerative in nature—in other words, farming and food production that leaves our nest better than we found it. One that is aromatically and aesthetically pleasing for both farmer and visitor. We believe food and farming should be decentralized—many family-scale farms and processing facilities across the nation in every town and region, serving savvy eaters wherever they may be. In order to have a readily accessible food supply we need thousands of farms who open themselves to an increasingly aware populace. And finally, we advocate for a food system that is relational in transaction—the eater has a direct connection with the producer and vice-versa, which creates a win-win for both eater and farmer. And that, is The View from the Country. Do you have a safe food supply? If not, how do you propose to attain one? Quotes worth Re-Quoting –“We don’t need a law against McDonald’s or a law against slaughterhouse abuse–we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse.”― Joel Salatin

The Folly Of the Calorie

At Pasture to Fork, we have plenty to say about Corporate Food’s sleazy labeling tricks. Labeling tricks that magically turn the pseudo food produced in corporate laboratories and food factories out to be not only desirable, but quite healthy as well. And I must say, even for a real-food-passionate person like me, a walk down grocery store aisles—especially at mealtime—instigates a level of desire for even the most processed items on the shelf (I too, grew up consuming these food-like substances and developed a palate memory for their allure). The greatest advantage Big Food enjoys—which allows their hiding behind glitzy labels and wordy claims—is the disconnect between the farm and the eater. While this is convenient and desirable to many consumers as well as farmers, more and more people are waking up to the fact that their food may be vastly compromised, and that increasingly we’re a weakened species for consuming it. Convenience is addictive, however, and determining to source food locally and directly requires dedicated effort, although I would suggest it also brings considerable satisfaction and empowerment. Direct-to-consumer farms like us, on the other hand, have little use for fancy labels. Perhaps the number one reason being that the consumer—in most cases—either visits the farm in person or browses our website seeking a trustworthy source. These are people who want to connect with the producer’s vision and philosophy. Food produced and marketed in this manner doesn’t need much of a label, only true in-person representation and quality packaging in order to preserve freshness and quality. Given the attitude of acceptance among many Americans, I continue to be amazed at how few years have elapsed since the advent of government control in the food sector. Most mandatory food laws in this country are quite young and have not proven themselves capable of adding value or benefiting society. For example, the Nutrition Fact label we now take for granted was not required until 1994. With this being 2024, that makes ’94 exactly thirty years ago. Not a long time! How did people possibly know how or what to eat prior to ’94? I’m sure people did know, and maybe, just maybe, were more in tune with their food for the lack of labeling and government direction. We believe most so-called “nutrition labeling”—especially the Nutrition Facts graph—offer less value than most of us know. For example, the measure of calories has almost no relation to real nutrition and may cause more distraction than assistance. Yet calories are listed first on the Nutrition Facts label, in bold print. If tracking calories is of such utmost importance—or of significant value—why are 2/3rds of Americans now overweight or obese? Clearly, this exemplifies how the count of calories does not equate food quality, with Americans being more overfed and undernourished than ever. But the food police are doubling down, with a new law enacted in 2018 where the FDA requires any restaurant with more than 20 locations to provide customers with a calorie-count on their menu items. Is this anything more than a perpetuation of nutrition distraction? As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” As you may know, I’m not a fan of government attempting to influence societal behavior. But what really bothers me about the government-mandated caloric rule is the fact that it assumes “a calorie is a calorie” regardless of its origin. If you ate 500 calories of soda and 500 calories of broccoli, would your body respond similarly? Of course not! They may be calorically the same but are a world apart nutritionally. Don’t think your body doesn’t know the difference. So, how is a calorie determined? Number one, it’s a unit of energy—the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a gram of water one degree Centigrade, to be exact. Or the modern version is simply 4.1868 joules of energy. That’s all, merely energy. Obviously, a calorie of gasoline energy will not serve my body like a calorie of pork chop will. Perhaps the foremost reason is because a calorie of pork chop also provides a lot of other value besides X amount of energy. Which brings home the point of the discussion; calories are such a tiny portion of the measure of food item that it’s practically unimportant. Perhaps the most disturbing part of all this is that it’s the best we can do in modern America. Is this really the brightest and best in food science? Please tell me it’s not. As a matter of fact, we know it’s not. Private sector doctors and nutritionists—and perhaps everyday people who take an interest in food and how it affects us—now know far more about food and nutrition than anything coming from the ivory towers of government. Or at least are willing to have the discussion and/or publish their findings. Goodness, we’re still using a nearly 150-year-old method to determine caloric content. Besides, are we as humans not more than test tubes? Do we not break down food in a far more complex manner than a bomb calorimeter, which is how calories per gram of food are determined? We digest food efficiently or inefficiently depending on stress, nutrient deficiency, digestive enzymes, composition of gut flora, timing of previous meal, and on and on. One day you may be able to digest 300 calories from a meal but only harness 200 calories from the same meal the next day based on your environment and individual state of being. There are so many different diets on the market because no one really knows what you should eat. There’s probably as many opinions and disagreements as there are dieticians and nutritionists. However, one thing almost universally agreed upon in the diet world is whole foods raised without chemicals and antibiotics. Eating clean whole foods come with a lot of advantages, and literally no disadvantages. When you switch from a processed food diet to whole foods, you don’t have to worry about counting calories because your body self-regulates. It works the way it’s designed to work. You stop over-eating because you are no longer blocking the hormonal signal that tells your body you are full. When I say whole foods, I’m not necessarily saying raw food—although that can be included. I'm saying food that has nothing in the ingredient list except that food—or very few other ingredients. Do yourself a favor and simply stop counting calories. Stop listening to governmental guidance as to what foods you should or shouldn’t eat. Don’t choose your food based on an inaccurate label that perpetuates the myth that all calories are the created equal. It’s simply not true. Let the stress of calorie counting go from your mind and body. Instead, invest in and enjoy clean whole foods—the food God intended for you to eat, and enjoy eating in a guilt-free state of mind without being all wound up about the number of calories you’re consuming. Your body recognizes whole foods and knows how to digest and metabolize them for your health and benefit. And that’s The View from the Country.

Climate Change

While we try to stay out of politics, occasionally we come to the point where a hot-button issue just needs to be talked about. Today, climate change is one of them. Because of the esoteric ideas surrounding this subject, much of the language used in political circles is lost on many people, which creates a vast demand for it to be discussed from an everyday common-sense let’s-solve-the-problem-realistically approach. Here’s where we are, the way I see it; the political left seemingly blames climate change for everything. From inflation to an unreliable supply chain to the price of gasoline, climate change is thrown into the word salad at every turn. It’s the burgeoning apocalypse that justifies massive spending plans (often with additional legislation silently piggybacked into it). At the same time the political right seems to completely downplay—even scoff—at the potential for human-induced climate factors and/or attempts to address it. Who’s right? I suggest somewhere between these two positions is where the truth resides, and that nuances to the discussion exist that are completely ignored by both sides in the scuffle for political power and influence. I’m not a scientist or any sort of climate change expert. What I am, though, is a farmer who studies nature, keeps his ear to the ground for truth and alternative opinions, and endeavors to find common-sense middle ground. Moving forward we’ll talk about the flawed science surrounding climate change, discuss some of the angles not mentioned in the over-politicized conversation, and how human activity affects the climate. Here goes: Flawed Science – None of the computer models used have been able to function in reverse. In other words, if the models used to measure the timeline until the apocalypse are run backwards, we’re all extinct 200 years ago. This, of course, raises questions about the ability of the models to make accurate predictions for the future. Perhaps it’s a reminder to pause in our hubris and remember that technology can only lead us so far. We must recognize that systems dependent upon information plugged in by fallible humans can come to flawed conclusions. That said, we know that some of the arctic glaciers are receding. For example, in Alaska there are now interstates where glaciers were only 40 years ago. The question, however, is whether or not it’s new. Has it ever happened before? We don’t know. And then there’s the argument about cows inducing climate change. We have literature suggesting—with some certainty—that the planet carried far more animal weight 1000 years ago than it does today, even with factory chicken houses and multi-thousand-cow feedlots. It should give us all pause to realize that earth’s abundance is not tied to modern machinery, thousands of acres of annual crops, or 10-10-10 fertilizer. It must be tied to something else. Is there a way we can resurrect—domestically regeneratively resurrect—that abundance? The herbivores that were here 1000 years ago only ate plants. They didn’t eat corn or soybeans (monoculture), and they didn’t eat fermented plants like silage or rendered processing waste (such as man have devised for feedlot cattle). Herbivores—having more than one stomach—essentially have a fermentation vat in their gut and when fed fermented feeds it acidifies the gut and doubles the methane produced. As you may know, cow farts—or burps (they haven’t decided which yet :)—are blamed for causing climate change, which many of us think sounds far-fetched. If indeed it does, feeding concentrated grain diets to herbivores exacerbates the problem. Viewpoints Climate Extremists Never Mention (and perhaps don’t know about) – A diversified plantscape (prairie) stimulates the production of a methanotrophic bacteria (yes, it’s real; you can look it up). This bacteria—in a healthy diversified ecosystem—absorbs methane equivalent to that which is produced by over 1000 cows per acre. The problem is, today very little acreage devoted to herbivores (livestock) is a healthy perennial prairie ecosystem, where herbivores prune and move according to the template provided in nature (wild herds chased by predators). Methanotrophic bacteria doesn’t grow under corn or monoculture, it doesn’t grow under overgrazed land, it doesn’t grow under asphalt, it doesn’t grow under feedlots or factory farms. It requires a diversified perennial landscape. This, once again, speaks to how nature always provides checks and balances in the ecosystem, if only we lay down our hubris long enough to notice. The problem is that the scientists who study these things study extremely dysfunctional ecosystems, and then extrapolate data based on this completely inappropriate dysfunctional database. Science often is not objective, but is approached with intent to prove a viewpoint. The Australian scientist, Walter Jennings—along with scientists around the world—have determined that the temperature regulator of the planet has little to do with greenhouse gases (GHG’s) which is what climate change “experts” have been fixated on for many years. Rather, it’s about water condensation. The truth is, only 5% of planetary temperature is regulated by GHG’s. 95% is the energy it’s takes to condense water. In order to condense, water must have a particle to condense on—it can’t just condense on nothing. The main thing it condenses on is bacteria, specifically the bacteria that’s an exudate from foliage. Have you ever noticed that in areas of heavy foliage—such as mountainous or heavily wooded areas—how in the early morning this cloud, or mist, rises and hangs heavy during the time of temperature inversion as the sun begins to heat the atmosphere? This is water, after marrying to bacteria, that’s now condensing and vaporizing into the atmosphere, which in turn creates clouds that bring rainfall, which cools the earth. This explains why in climate change the dry areas are getting drier and the wet areas are getting wetter. Even climate scientists are bewildered by this. But in Jennings’ condensation theory the planet is essentially a big radiator. The physics of the planet is that it wants to be balanced. So, if agriculture destroys vegetation in one area (via plowing or overgrazing) the planet must cool itself somewhere and does so in places where vegetation exists. There the moisture can condense because of the presence of bacteria from foliage, which vaporizes to form clouds and precipitation. In other words, the moisture is concentrated there. Does Human Activity Affect Climate (if so, how)? – In my opinion, it’s no longer a question whether or not if humans are affecting the climate. Allen Williams from the regenerative farming consulting group Understanding Ag, relates their experience in working with the 30,000-acre Las Damas ranch in the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico. The area gets only about 8 inches of rain a year—and still has horrible erosion. For as long as any living generations remember, the desert has grown rather than receded. Starting in 2010, Understanding Ag worked closely with the ranch to develop cattle water and fence in some of the worst areas of the ranch, essentially to expand the areas where vegetation exists. At the conference where he and I met last winter, Allen showed pictures of a decade of progress since they began working with this ranch. Not only has the amount of plant material increased dramatically—what was large areas of desert devoid of grass is now a sea of green. But more importantly, after only ten years they’re seeing changes to the micro climate to where Las Damas now gets rainfall that seems to follow the property line. In other words, they get more rain than the neighboring ranches do. This is due to the amount of grass and other plant material (think bacteria exudates from green foliage) on the ranch compared to their neighbors who are not using regenerative practices. I suggest that if the micro-climate can be influenced in a 30,000-acre region in a decade, then little doubt remains whether or not human activity can affect the overall climate of the earth. As of 2019, the USDA had recorded 897,400,000 acres of farmland in the US, which is nearly thirty X the acreage at Las Damas. Most of these acres are either in monocrop or in miserably mismanaged grazing land. Monocrop, by design, requires either tillage or heavy applications of chemicals—both of which destroys soil. The same is true for unmanaged grazing land—meaning not managed to prevent overgrazing or under-grazing, both of which have negative effects on the soil and water cycle and cause desertification. In the span of about 200 years, the soils of the American Midwest went from what we think was about 8% organic matter (which is carbon), to an average of 1.5%. Where did the carbon go? By and large, it was released into the atmosphere because humans uncovered the soil via tillage in order to grow annual monoculture crops. Not only are our soils down to bare bones, but our air is polluted with carbon that needs to be returned to the soil in order to have a healthy ecosystem. Never before in history have humans had the means of raping the soil to this extent—made possible by mechanically tilling the soil as well as chemical technology. What if all climate change funds and efforts were channeled into growing a managed diversified perennial plantscape on 70 percent of these nearly 900 million acres? Imagine how much carbon could be sequestered from the atmosphere, not to mention methanotrophic bacteria produced to sequester methane from the air. This may sound like a pipe dream. But maybe it isn’t in light of the fact that 70% of all grain grown in the US is to feed herbivores who are not designed to metabolize them. Although human induced climate change is a very real possibility, I don’t see it as a burgeoning apocalypse. However, it’s a very real threat to our domestic ability to feed ourselves. This is not a problem government can fix via massive spending bills. Yes, they could stop throwing taxpayer money around in the form of crop subsidies, which would take away the incentive for the overproduction of monocrops such as corn and soybeans. But government will not stop or even slow climate change by limiting the use of fossil fuels or eliminating animal agriculture. The solution must come from the people. Each of us has a responsibility to decrease or eliminate our own portion of the demand for annual-crop-based foods and create demand for regeneratively produced perennial-crop-based foods. If humans have created this problem, then humans will have it to fix. We don’t have to look to the ivory towers and the “experts” to do it. And that’s The View from the Country.

Keep it Simple On Thanksgiving Day

More from the blog

Is Uninspected Food Safe?

The Folly Of the Calorie

Climate Change

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