Cooking Cheap

I’m a skeptic, so when foodies go blog wild, I’m just skeptical. Read the post and the comments and click though to the various links they provide. Web surfing the old way! I’m not a foodie to the degree they are. They may be correct about this or that or not and I might care or not. I buy from the cheapest mega mart and I’m fine with my dispassionate status. I’m not saying organic or free range is better or worse. Price per pound, I have my opinion of better and you can have yours.

I know you won’t click all those links. I didn’t click them all either. When the conspiracy mindset becomes dominant, the topic is off limits for rational discussion. Here’s my summary. The USDA wants to track all meat from the supermarket back to the source – to the farms and what they were fed and the veterinary practices and so on. The have a new scheme I gather called NAIS which as described would be difficult for small producers to comply with. The degree of difficulty depends on the details and emotion is running too high to dig into those pesky details.

I used to work for the agra-biz, and they implemented a computer system 15 years ago to track their feed lot cattle. Whether those systems work, I can’t say, but it was big deal for them and those who did the worl. A small division of the company but boy did they care about tracking. That’s well before NAFTA and the supremacy of Trial Lawyers as deities in our food chain. Their tracking system had to serve many goals. The big ones:

1. They wanted to know what practices and feed would be best (for them of course – but profit is multi-dimensional)
2. They wanted to be able to recall before something got out of hand. (and fix the problem – there’s no profit in recalling all product. Ask the pet food companies. Actually, you should think about how well that recall worked.

Big business was way ahead of the USDA on this. That should surprise no one. Now we get to the conspiracy, like profit or happiness, conspiracy is multi-dimensional and some folks live in dimensions others don’t. Under attack the emotional catch phrases erupt “destroying the family farm”. Just as the big military-industruial complex was directed by the Illuminati back in 1966 or 1666 or 1466 or way back to 666 A.D.

From what I’ve read, NAIS is a bad bit of rule writing, IF EVER IMPLEMENTED. It could be worse, the DIA could have written it for Cheney’s amusement. That would be worse. If you need a vast conspiracy of evil doers to get your heart thumping and emotions racing, the “death of the family farm” is one bugle call. Just ask first if small scale farming was ever monetarily profitable in the last few hundred years. Ever. And if so, how? If so, how? If the answer is all about foodie virtues of quality at any price (take a hint, raise prices) or old Americana nostalgia, or vast conspiracies to do something vastly evil, you might want to find a successful farmer for some perspective. Just flag down his banker in the next Toyota you see and ask.

Did that old romantic world ever exist? If so, how? Why? Should it exist forever? Before you flame, remember that the Taliban want that old world back too. Those good old days are really good. Bring them back.