Good Food is Everybody's Business
Modern supermarkets are as sterile as hospitals, the produce is mostly hard as tennis balls and practically odorless and tasteless, and the staff is less than helpful when you have a question. They have very little connection to the food they put on the shelves. In contrast, the farmers you meet at your local farmers market are directly connected to the food they raise and the land on which it is grown.
The E. coli outbreak reported yesterday (August 8) linked to Oregon-grown strawberries shows how food safety is a becoming a problem for local growers. It has been reported that as many as 16 people have been sickened by eating the strawberries grown on a 35-acre farm, Jaquith Strawberry Farm in rural northwest Oregon, and 1 person has died.
From its picturesque location at the end of Washington’s State Route 532, things are looking good at Camano Island Coffee Roasters (CICR). Founded in 1999 by Jeff Ericson and his nephew Dan, it all started with a one-pound roaster in a barn.
Bill Marler, a nationally recognized food safety attorney, says “It really is long past time to put me out of business.” Listen to his comments on the audio.
This time last year we were reeling from the recall of 550,000,000 eggs and 2000 people got sick. This week 36,000,000 pounds of ground turkey made 76 people sick and killed one. What is our industrial food system doing to us?
Kevin Christenson, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill, talks about his part in the local food economy. He works with farmers, bakers, and chefs to create a network based on trust and personal relationships.
Organically grown, local, whole, affordable, planetary stewardship, food justice, sustainably farmed, humanely raised and slaughtered, slow cooked and seasonally eaten, nutritionism, vegan, healthy lifestyle; these are just some of the words that come to mind around the elite conversation of How, What, When and Where we eat these days. There is so much to talk about, and these words do not exist in isolation of one another.
OK folks, I’ll admit it; I certainly thought the shiny red tomatoes and strawberries in the plastic clam shell boxes seemed to taste less and less like those I remember as a kid. I thought it was just the idealistic glow around childhood memories. But no; it turns out that our conventional fruits and vegetables really are losing some of their nutritive value.
