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Locally Grown Foods Festival Friday February 19, 2010 If you missed this event and want to know more
Know your Farmer, Know your Food! Ever wonder how to find local vegetables, fruit, and meat all year? The answer is simple; attend the Locally-Grown Foods Festival, Friday, February 19 in Corning, NY. Meet dozens of Finger Lakes farmers and learn how and where to buy local products. Cornell Cooperative Extension cordially invites the public to a unique tasting experience. Sample locally produced meats, vegetables, fruits, cheese, wines, microbrews and other farm products! Get to know farmers from the region, like Robin and Andy Nistock, owners of Nistock Farms and producers of locally grown lamb and wool. Robin and Andy have been raising lamb in Steuben County for 10 years. Their customers can purchase individual cuts of lamb, wool, hand spinning fiber, sheepskins, and even lamb burger for pets with special dietary needs. Several other products will be available for sampling and purchasing, these include beef, pork, rabbit, poultry, wine, apple butter, assorted cheeses, maple, honey, and vegetables. This event will also feature a series of mini-classes on working with local butchers, how to join a Community Supported Agriculture cooperative, the benefits of buying local foods, and more. The Locally-Grown Foods Festival takes place Friday February 19 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at Union Hall, 100 Civic Center Plaza – next door to the Nasser Civic Center Skating Rink. Make an evening of it; consider hitting Market Street for the Gaffer District’s Cabin Fever event, featuring wine and craft beer tastings. The skating rink is also open to public from 8:00 to 10:00pm, so bring the family along and enjoy the evening in downtown Corning! Admission is $5 per individual/$10 per family. Credit, Debit and EBT cards accepted for product purchases. Contact Cornell Cooperative Extension at 607-664-2300 to register or register online at www.putknowledgetowork.com. Reservations are appreciated by February 17. Share Your
Meat with All Your Friends Optimizing a whole animal’s value by buying
all of its cuts isn’t new—a half century ago, it was
commonplace to buy a whole cow or pig from a neighbor and work
your way through the meat over a course of a few months.
Buy Local
- Your Health Will thank You! MORRISVILLE, N.Y. -- When I was younger, we preserved or processed most of the food we ate, right from our own farm or garden. Even our meat was usually something we “processed” with our own hands. Let’s just say our turkey or chicken was especially fresh. Our vegetables were canned or frozen from our garden and our potatoes, apples and carrots were from our root cellar. They were always great. Even the whipped cream on top of cake or pie was made from the cream skimmed off the top of the milk in the refrigerator. In fact, about all we needed from the grocer was flour, sugar, vanilla, spices, and other similar items. Today, very few of us eat food we preserve or process ourselves. We have become a nation no longer aware of who grows our food. We don’t have any idea how it was produced and, unfortunately, most of us are too busy to care. In fact, many of us don’t even eat food grown nearby. A study at Iowa State University in 2003 determined that the “weighted average source distance” (WASD) for locally grown produce to reach institutional markets was 56 miles, while conventional produce averaged nearly 1494 miles. Shipping our food means that we are not only consuming more energy and putting more emissions into the environment, but we are also more dependent on inspection systems to make sure it is safe. We trust the FDA, the USDA, and our state food safety regulators to ensure the food we buy at the grocery store is safe. But is it? Actually, these food regulatory agencies have done an outstanding job for many years. The food on the shelves of America’s grocers is undoubtedly the safest in the world. Unfortunately, our demand for fresh food year-round at the lowest possible price is challenging our inspection systems, threatening the safety of our food, and eroding our trust. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of imported foods are never examined or tested. The FDA only inspects about 1 percent of all imported food products. What it all boils down to is this:?Buying local is no longer just an issue of supporting our local economy -- it is a matter of health. More than 17 million shipments of imported food products come into the country each year. Our food imports now equal about $80 billion annually -- that’s 15 percent of our total food consumption. China now has more food facilities registered with the FDA than either Canada or Mexico. China is the third largest importer of food products into the U.S. market. Why should we care? China’s food export record would give you a stomach ache – literally. Just read the FDA “refusal reports” filed by U.S. inspectors. The most common reasons include filthy, unfit for human consumption, poisonous. China leads all exporters (by a large margin) for “food rejected.” While China is subject to more inspections because of its poor record, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, it is 25 times more likely than Canada to have an import to the United States rejected. Those are alarming statistics. Enter pesticides into the picture and the scenario grows worse. FDA data reports that Americans are three times more likely to be exposed to dangerous pesticide residues on imported foods than on domestic foods. According to the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention of the United Nations Environment Programme on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP’s), China is one of only three countries still producing DDT, a well-known synthetic pesticide which has been banned in the United States, (India and North Korea are the other two still producing it). China agreed to stop producing five of the 12 POP’s; however, in 2004 it requested immunity and was allowed to keep producing DDT (one of the POP’s) for another five years. Researchers in China have reported that DDT residues continue to be found in eight kinds of food items in the Guangdong province10 years after it was banned. The concentration of DDT in pine needles in China was 34 times higher than that of Sweden and 8 times higher than that of southern France. To make matters worse, according to internal Chinese documents, traces of DDT are still evident in some regions. A separate study designed to measure DDT contamination in the soils and waterways of China concluded that the spatial distribution patterns of DDT correlate well with the early and direct application of the pesticide. The report deduced, “Although it was assumed that the use of these chemicals was banned in the early 1980s, the current concentration levels appear to be too high to be mere residuals after 20 years degradation.” While this is alarming, there are ways you can protect yourself from food-borne illness. Whenever possible, buy local. This will not only provide you with safer food, but it will also improve the local economy and reduce your carbon footprint. Be vigilant. Even local foods can have problems, but most responsible growers welcome questions and site visits. Search for the Country of Origin Label (COOL). If a country has a bad record of food safety – avoid it. Unfortunately, individual ingredients don’t have to be COOL-labeled such as the melamine and glycol contamination problems that virtually poisoned many around the world. Be careful. Green beans grown in the U.S. and sent to China for canning will have “United States” as their country of origin. Meats don’t have to be labeled, so ask the meat counter staff about the origin of meats. Advocate for improved trade policies and safety inspection systems. Support the inclusion of “food safety” language in all future trade agreements and the modification of existing agreements. Give the FDA the power to reject all imports from a country with consistent problems – regardless of the level of our exports to that country. Avoid imported suspect foods. Fish and shellfish
from China have a very high FDA rejection rate – especially
shrimp. Sixty percent of apple juice made from concentrate and
50 percent of garlic typically comes from China and, unless it
says otherwise, avoid it.
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