Would you like poop with that?

The U.S.D.A. just announced that it has approved an E. coli vaccine for cattle.  They say that like it’s a good thing.  But really, all this vaccine is doing is treating the symptoms rather than actually doing anything to solve the bigger issue of a food system gone completely awry.  It’s the equivalent of a restaurant in Mexico telling you to go ahead and eat the lettuce but giving you an Immodium A-D chaser, just in case.

Granted, the vaccine isn’t all bad if it leads to fewer E. coli infections, which affect 70,000 people each year in the U.S.  But really, the only true winners in this are the beef industry people who hope to make more money by telling us their beef is E. coli free.

What the vaccine does not do is get to the heart of the real problem, which is the American feedlot industry.  Feedlots handle about 88 percent of the beef that Americans buy, and feedlots just happen to be breeding grounds for E. coli.  Every cow has E. coli bacteria, but one strain, E. coli O-157, is the bad E. coli that makes humans sick.  It also happens to grow really well in the stomachs of cows who are fed grain, the staple diet at feedlots, as opposed to cows that eat a more natural  diet of grass.

Eating a cow that had E. coli O-157 in his belly won’t make you sick, unless for some reason you were actually eating fecal matter from said cow, or cow shit to put it bluntly.  That’s the other problem with feedlots.  Cows stand knee-deep (do cows have knees?) in poop at these places.  They go to the slaughterhouse covered in crap, and if they aren’t cleaned off real good, then poop gets into the beef, and if it’s E. coli infected poop, a lot of people are going to get really sick.

What really freaks me out about the vaccine, is what if it gives people at the slaughterhouses a false sense of security?  What if they think, “Well, hey, this poop isn’t going to kill anyone now, so if I don’t get the cow as clean as I used to, no biggie.”   To quote Betty Fussell in her book Raising Steaks:  “Sterilized shit is still shit.”

So lets review: The E. coli vaccine is merely a band-aid.  It is not a solution to the bigger problem, which is cattle raised on filthy feedlots.  The only winners in this scenario are the beef producers who are hoping to sell more beef because it’s “safe”.  The farmers don’t win, because they won’t get any more money for their cattle when they sell them to the feedlots.  The cattle sure don’t win, because they’re still living their miserable feedlot existence.  And consumers don’t win because the USDA just fed us a shit sandwich and called it a victory.

Finally, a President who gets it

So glad to wake up and see this, this morning:  President Obama has announced an overhaul of the FDA. 

I’m sure some people (and by some people I mean Republicans in Congress) are going to piss and moan that he’s making the government even bigger.  Really, though, and I’ll have to read more before I weigh in on this, it sounds like he wants to streamline things among several agencies in order to make sure our food is safe.

We’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid…

… so I find it kind of hard to blame a woman in Arkansas who accidentally served kids at her daycare windshield wiper fluid instead of Kool-Aid.  Of course, she can’t be the sharpest knife in the drawer if she’s stupid enough to put  wiper fluid in the fridge in the first place.

But still. Some of the Kool-Aid colors look positively radioactive.  I seem to remember one that was the color of antifreeze, so it seems entirely logical that one could mistake a household chemical for a kiddie cocktail.  And if an adult can make that mistake, how many clueless kids have been bamboozled?

If the color of some of these drinks doesn’t worry us, the names of the  flavors should at least give us pause: Purplesaurus Rex… Eerie Orange… Scary Black Cherry?  If you buy into that, you’re just asking for trouble.  Oh Yeah!

Springfield, MO: Center of the Culinary Universe

Just kidding.  But at least it is today.  I about fell over when I clicked to the NY Times food section today saw this article on Springfield-style cashew chicken. 

To those unbaptized in the oyster sauce gravy, this is a dish that unites Springfieldians culturally.  It’s basically fried chunks of chicken (all white, naturally), bathed in the aforementioned gravy and sprinkled with cashew nuts and chopped green onions.

I took this photo at Fire & Ice while I was in town visiting last summer.    This recipe is THE original SSCC.  Fire & Ice only serves this dish on Wednesdays and native Springfieldians pack the place to get a taste of  this particular cashew chicken because of its pedigree.  The then-chef at Fire & Ice was Wing Yee Leong, the son of David Leong who is the father of SSCC.

When I went back to Fire & Ice in January something was terribly wrong.  Someone had tinkered with the recipe.  I detected Chinese five spice in the batter and I was not pleased.  I looked around the restaurant’s open kitchen and noticed Wing Yee was not there.  Today’s NY Times article confirmed my suspicions. He left the restaurant in December. 

Even though SSCC isn’t authentic Chinese cuisine, its authenticity comes from its roots here in Springfield. And for people like me who cut their teeth on spare ribs at Leong’s Tea House and Gee’s East Wind, when you mess with the original recipe, you mess with perfection.

Kids in the Kitchen

It’s funny how every time I think everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket, there’s something to remind me that there’s still a lot of good in the world and that people do things for the right reasons.

Case in point: This past week there was a great article in Slate by Regina Schrambling about precocious kids who are being primed to be the next Escoffier, not that any of them would know who that is (Hint: He’s not on the Food Network).  Her article really put into focus why all the recent hype about these kinderchefs bothers me. 

I’m all for kids spending time in the kitchen and learning about food– in fact, I’d say not enough do.  But it really irked me that six year old “chefs” were becoming YouTube sensations and that a 12 year old was being touted as the next Craig Claiborne.  I thought perhaps I was  jealous of these kids with their newspaper columns and internet shows. Afterall, I am in my mid-30s and  in the process of re-inventing myself as a food writer after spending two years and a crapload of money to get a degree in Gastronomy.  But it turns out,  I’m not jealous of these kids, thanks to the insights in Schrambling’s article.  I am, however, completely annoyed by those in our society who, in fits of contextless celebrity worship, are mere minutes away from annointing the “next big thing” even if the “next big thing” knows next to nothing about which they speak.   And don’t even get me started on the parents who cashed in all their dreams to buy a McMansion in the ‘burbs and then had kids who are now just little mini-me’s living their parents lives instead of their own. 

That’s why I was so heartened to see this story on CBS Sunday morning today about a boy named Aaron Ware who started a baking business.  He didn’t go into business to earn fame and fortune, although he’s had some time in the spotlight lately, and deservedly so.  He started baking, something he loved to do, as a way to deal with his grief after the death of his twin brother.   He gives the proceeds to the organizations that helped his family during his brother’s illness.  Aaron’s just being a kid, doing a kid thing and we can learn a lot more about food from him than we can any of those celebrated kinderchefs who are actually trying to teach us something.