Why is it that meat is the food of choice of wealthy nations? Is it a sign of success, the ability to eat meat? Does it convey some sense of dominance to be able to eat another animal–primal and crude, but true? Is it the result of marketing to the nations that are growing at a substantial speed? Does meat become a more feasible food source, in terms of production and shipping, once a country becomes wealthier?
America has long been the biggest meat eating country in the world. According to The Humane Society, we consumed a projected 222 pounds per person of meat in this country. That number has increased every year for the last 40 years. As our nation has become wealthier, we have bought and devoured more meat.
Now, however, China, a country that is growing at staggering speed, has chosen meat as it’s new food of the new incomes as well. The Guardian U.K. is doing a series on the effects of China’s new love of meat. Reporter Jonathan Watts talks with Zhang Xiuwen, a man who grew up hungry on a rural farm. Now, living in the city, and working as a tennis instructor, Zhang eats meat almost everyday with his family. The article is a illuminating look into hos much life has changed in China in the past 10 years. But it also look at what it means that China is eating more meat. James Rice, who is chief of operations in China for Tyson foods, says in the article that this will be the last year China will be self sufficient. After that, they will have to import goods. Western supermarket chains have already planted themselves in China, well-positioned to supply the growing country. What does this mean? Most likely it will mean a rise in demand for meat, and a continuing rise in cost. Particularly as the cost of ingredients (wheat, rice, grains) in the feed for our cattle rises as well.
Most products that come from pigs are not favorites of mine. Ham I can do without. Pork chops I steer clear of. Pork Loin not my cup of tea. But bacon–well, bacon is different. Bacon is the paragon of salty, crispy meat. It enhances almost every food, breaks down the barrier between breakfast and dinner, between I-hop cholesterol injections and fine dining. Bacon it could be argued is one of the most versatile, or at least adapted, foods out there.
Staying true to this versatility there are two uses of bacon that should be mentioned. They are both concepts, really, uses of bacon that attempt to herald a new dawn combining, in varying degrees, bacon, and the other favorite food, chocolate. The first reaction is to cringe, but once that fades, the sense that bacon, a salty, crunchy pork fat, and chocolate an intoxicating and exotic concoction belong together is hard to ignore.
Voges is a chocolate company based in Chicago with several stores in New York City. One of their chocolate bars is called Mo’s Bacon Bar and has in it Applewood smoked bacon, Alderwood smoked salt, and 41-percent cacao milk chocolate.
The other inventive combination of bacon and chocolate tilts the ratio coating bacon in chocolate. That snack like product is being sold by Marini’s in Santa Cruz, CA (not for sale on the web site). The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly paper did a short piece about it.
An odd story and a video posted on the New York Times web site about a small West African berry called The Miracle Fruit plant that numbs the sour receptors on the tongue. The result: all things taste sweet, and, of course, someone has found an opportunity to parlay this into a party theme. But everyone has a great time.
The company that hosts the parties also happens to have a wordpress blog.
The Associated Foreign Press reported yesterday that U.S. beef is not welcome in South Korea, still. U.S. beef has been banned from import in South Korea since 2003, for fears of Mad Cow disease, but recently an agreement has been struck between the governments which will allow importing to resume.
South Korean citizens protested the agreement, up to 7000 took to the streets, and 37 were arrested. For now, the agreement rests in limbo, until South Korea finalizes the go ahead. The White house says it is confident imports will be allowed again, pushing aside South Korea’s concerns that the U.S. has not done enough to resolve the problems believed to cause Mad Cow disease.
Mad Cow disease it is believed is caused by feeding cows with the recycled bones and meat form infected cows.
In the New York Times today there is a quirky little essay about one woman’s wish for a pot that can cook anything. Laura Vapnyar is pushed by her teacher when she young. Wouldn’t she rather wish for work peace? No, she wanted a pot that can cook anything. What sounds like the entry to a children’s book turns to an essay on the the disappointment of cheesecake tasted for the first tine, on the literary dreaming of oysters, and the eventual enlightening experience of eating them for the first time.
As promised President Bush vetoed the 290 billion dollar Farm Bill that would include subsidies for farmers, (rich and poor), and food stamps for the underprivileged. Anticipating the move by Bush, their mouths salivating with temptation, the Democrat-controlled House won the majority vote needed to overturn the veto. But when the Bill was readied to send to on to the Senate (who was expected to mimic the House’s vote), it was realized that a 34-page section was somehow omitted from the version Bush had vetoed. This may put the entire Bill back to square one, as it appears Bush vetoed a bill that differed from that of the House’s.
Bush’s reason for vetoing the Bill came down to it providing too many subsidies to already wealthy farmers. This reasoning, however, failed to dawn on Bush as over the past eight years he repeatedly gave huge tax cuts to his rich, corporate friends and associates.
Some of the items included in the Bill are as follows, including one item, the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) which I have written about previously on this blog (COOL has been stalled three times already by Bush, mostly due to powerful meat industry lobbyists):
About two-thirds of the bill would pay for nutrition programs such as food stamps, about $40 billion is for farm subsidies and additional $30 billion would go to farmers to idle their land and to other environmental programs.
It would also boost nutrition programs by more than $10 billion over 10 years and expand a program to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren.
Cut a per-gallon ethanol tax credit for refiners from 51 cents to 45 cents. The credit supports the blending of fuel with the corn-based additive. More money would go to cellulosic ethanol, made from plant matter.
Require that meats and other fresh foods carry labels with their country of origin.
There have been many many stories lately about how the prices of food are rising beyond the means of those who could barely afford it to begin with. But the New York Times wrote yesterday about how this rise is coinciding with a depression in aid and support of third world countries. In the past twenty years the world has experienced food surpluses in most developed nations, leading to cheap food costs. But while this occurred, aid and finance was being cut across the board. It could be said it was believed the work was done, we can feed everyone, why keep paying scientist and researchers to experiment with our food supply. This proved to be nearsighted as the major institutions, such as the International Rice Research Institute, have seen an utter dissemination of there funding and staff in the past twenty years. The institution is the world’s main storage facility of rice seeds and information about various genetic species of rice. In the 1980s they boasted a staff of 200 with five entomologists, now they employ one entomologist and a staff of eight.
Overall, aid to poor farming countries from wealthy nations, through agencies like the Agency for International Development, has been cut repeatedly. And now, as these poorest nations experience food shortages, they lack the money to farm themselves. They are falling victim to pests and parasitic insects. The leading agricultural research institutions have the strains of certain crops that are tolerant but they do not have the funding to get it to the starved nations.
NPR’s Weekend Edition reports that Bangladesh, a small country to the east of India located in the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, is working to genetically engineer new types of rice which will be more resistant to the severe flooding the country experiences. Bangladesh’s agricultural land is some of the lowest lying in the world, at most points only nosing 39 feet above sea level, and frequent monsoons and flooding rivers have ruined rice crops for decades. So much so, that, as the report states, the people of Bangladesh have come to know an entirely new season called Monga, or the hunger season. But now rice farmers, who in Bangladesh are at the forefront of rice crop varieties, are working to engineer a new strain of rice which will taste better and grow better, preventing the starvation that has so battered the country in the past. The rice farmers are aware of of all the rice varieties such as IR-8, a high-yield rice that came from the Philippines and changed the Asian continents way of growing rice. But now the Bangladeshi farmers have two new varieties which they say are even better, BR-11 and BR-29.
It is being reported in the Guardian U.K. this week that Afghans, who continue to be tapped in to the world market supply/demand chain, are now growing wheat instead of poppies to profit from the world shortage of wheat.
“The cost of a tonne of wheat in Afghanistan has almost trebled this year, causing serious shortages, while the global price of heroin has fallen. The changeover to wheat has begun in key regions, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation reports.”
Of course this wheat is being grown for profit pruposes and to balance out the food economy again, not becuase growing wheat can be better for a society than growing the plant that produces heroin.
There has been some talk recently about a new brand of vitamin-like water to come out, much like all the others at your local grocery store, except this one would have meat in it. Yes, meat. The item is called Meatwater by no stretch of the marketing imagination and it even has a Web site set up which boasts of its release on May 1. The only problem is it hasn’t been released and the whole thing stinks of consumerist mockery meant to seduce those who will pay attention. Many bloggers have already pointed out that the whole thing is a hoax and is the work of an artists named Till Krautkramer. Needless to say the list of flavors is hilarious: Beef Jerky, Hungarian Goulash, Peking Duck, and many more. It is all too reminiscent however of the idea my friends and I had years ago, meat flavored cereals. That’s right, it’s only a matter of time before Count Porkula is lining shelves.
