food museum blog

Slaughtering News From All Over, Plus, A Teapot Scandal?

Grateful that I do not have 150 feet of intestines tucked inside, as do manatees, I see that the current crop of free healthy product magazines are recommending a huge roster of "cleansing" items this winter, none of which would be needed if the magazines' audience were eating as advised in the first place, right?

But I digress---a slaughterhouse video from Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, CA, has prompted Los Angeles schools to withhold meat products from a company called Westland that buys meat from Hallmark, on the grounds that the "downer" cattle unable to walk towards their deaths were being dragged or pushed in, and thus might be suffering from diseases that could render their meat iffy for human consumption. Westland provides ground beef to the USDA's National School Lunch Program.  Many school systems around the US have chosen to reject meat from Westland, including some in Oregon and Florida.

( Meanwhile, rival groups in Kenya have been killing one another not only machetes, but also with bows and arrows. )

Japanese whalers, despite concentrated efforts to stop them, continue to slaughter whales with impunity, though Australian authorities now claim the video evidence they have will bolster their case against the spurious legal claim of the Japanese that they are taking whales for "research purposes."

Apparently The Teapot Museum of Sparta, NC, was the recipient of a $500,000 grant from the Federal Transportation office back in 2006, a fact now revealed to all and sundry with great derision. This report from 2007 says the planned new museum idea has been scrapped. Now as one who applauds any museum effort directed however tangentially at the subject of food, the stuff that sustains us, rather than at yet another monument to war and destruction, I must say that chunk of change would have been a fine first step towards the creation of the National Museum of Food & Farm on the Mall in Washington, DC. Read more about The FOOD Museum's proposal here.

If Nobody Made Money From War, Would We Be Having One?

War is such a jolly thing for so many purveyors of supplies, isn't it? It's often a chance to charge more for ordinary things, like food for the troops. An Army marches on its stomach, yes--the food supply chain is utterly vital. ( Apparently there was little money to be made from armor, either for soldiers or their vehicles, though that may be changing.)

According to the NYTimes, "... investigators from the Justice and Defense Departments are examining deals that the Sara Lee Corporation, ConAgra Foods Inc. and other American companies made to supply the military, officials said.

The inquiry centers on whether the companies overcharged the Army’s principal food supplier for the war zones, a Kuwait-based company called the Public Warehousing Company. Investigators are also looking into whether Public Warehousing improperly took payments from the food companies.

Public Warehousing, which supplies enormous amounts of fruits, vegetables and meats for more than 160,000 troops in combat zones, said in a statement that it had done nothing wrong and was fully cooperating. "

Public Warehousing feeds troops in both Kuwait and Iraq, apparently. And operates on many levels globally. ( I saw no mention of Halliburton on its website, but there is much to read there. )

Block Cheese--The New WMD

According to an AP report, over the past several weeks persons not as yet identified have been stopped at US airports and their bizarre belongings found in checked bags seized.

A Transportation Security Administration bulletin indicated that "the seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included "wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances," including block cheese, the bulletin said. "The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern."

Authorities apparently are concerned that would-be terrorists are "practicing" future heinous acts.

Note to criminals:  If my plane is going to be blown to bits, please let it be via a decent extra sharp cheddar, not Velveeta!

UPDATE: Apparently the "practice run" story was a false alarm, allegedly put out by the FBI. ( I cannot confirm that.) A TSA spokesperson said that the bulletin examples ( block cheese) were just a warning, not actual fact. “I think it's really crucial to focus on the fact that there is no specific credible threat related to this information. It is simply just part of an overall environment of being alert.”

Food, Lies and War--Ethiopia

Food aid for hundreds of thousands of people in the eastern Somali-border area of Ethiopia known as Ogaden is being cut off by the government in order to squeeze what they view a rebel forces opposed to the regime. At the same time food as well as money  is being siphoned off and reallocated by members of the Ethiopian military.

According to the NYTimes, ..."food aid is embezzled in two stages. First, soldiers skim sacks of grain, tins of vegetable oil and bricks of high-energy biscuits from food warehouses to sell at local markets.

“The cash is distributed among security officers and regional officers,” a former government administrator from the Ogaden region said in a recent telephone interview on condition of anonymity because he still works with government officials.

Then the remaining food is hauled out to rural areas where the soldiers divert part of it to local gunmen and informers as a reward for helping them fight the rebels. The former administrator said he also knew of specific cases in which army officers stole food from warehouses and gave it to the families of women whom their soldiers had raped, as compensation.

Several Western humanitarian officials estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the donor countries’ food aid to the Ogaden — aid that last year was valued at more than $70 million — routinely disappears this way. To cover their tracks, the soldiers and the government administrators who work with them tell the aid agencies that the food has spoiled, or has been stolen or hijacked by the rebels, humanitarian officials said."

War, and The Fear of Going Without Baskin-Robbins

Aside from the obvious need we all have for basic sustenance, most everyone on the planet finds food a comfort, even fun, a simple pleasure that makes the unendurable bearable.

So let's see--in recent days the usual number of Iraqis were blown up in a market, and also a cafe--both places where typically one goes in order to buy food, or, as chaos surrounds you, to chat with a friend over tea and some pastry.

At the same time, the usual air and truck delivery of American food and drink and Baskin-Robbins ice cream to the 1000 Americans working under seige at the US Embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone, a Foreign Service hardship post, was delayed. ( Every morsel that enters the Zone is from the USA.)

Much of this comes through Kuwait and weather issues were initially blamed for the holdup...But as embassy workers currently are being urged to avoid certain outdoor areas of their compound, according to this piece in The Washington Post, and to wear helmets and flak jackets when they do tiptoe out for a breath of air, one wonders if perhaps "a breakdown in security" is a reason for the delayed food delivery.

On Monday embassy personnel ( 3000 other people, locals and contractors, also are affected by the food delay) received this email:  "Due to an unspecified convoy problem, it may not be possible to offer the dishes you are used to seeing at each meal. Fresh fruits or salad bar items will also be severely limited or unavailable."

"We've run out of some things,"  (embassy spokesman Dan) Sreebny said. "I miss my yogurt in the morning and my fresh-cut melon."

The embassy has three weeks of MRE's or Meals Ready to Eat stashed away, not that anyone really wants to go there. Apparently as The Post was filing the story, a few food trucks straggled in.

Food is damned important, isn't it? Reminds me of a little known event in the American Civil War. In March 1862 near Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, after a fight they had lost, Union forces destroyed all the food supplies, including animals, and fodder for those animals, that Confederate troops under Lt. Col. William Scurry had stored at a ranch. The supposed victors, utterly out of supplies, were forced to retreat to Santa Fe and then on back to Texas, the notion of a Rebel invasion of the Southwest over.

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend, all in the US.

What Does $456 Billion--The Cost of the Iraq War by September-- Buy?

From a photo feature at boston.com:

"According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.

At the upper range of those estimates, the $456 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world's poor for five and a half years."

There Isn't Greensburg, Kansas Anymore--and--Sustenance Over Violence, Please

Friday night a mile wide-tornado destroyed virtually all of Greensburg, Kansas, a town of 1500 people, many of them wheat and corn farmers.  Eight were confirmed dead. Back in 1888 the Kiowa County Signal described Greensburg  as " the liveliest town in the state today, for money, marbles or watermelons."  We'd love to know more about those watermelons.

( At left: Old fashioned soda fountain in Greensburg's Hunter Drug Store--no word as to whether it's still there. )

Meanwhile, in Iraq Sunday, more than 50 Iraqis died in a fruit and vegetable market when a truck blew up. People trying to feed themselves and their families have gone down one more time.  (Eight more hard-working, overstretched U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb as well.)

These repeated reports, about people dying in markets, or cafes, or bakeries, get little play lately--it's like the almost identical daily Beirut violence reports we used to hear on the radio when we lived in Belgium in the 1970's. Finally, after 15 years, the exhausted warring parties there called it quits. Much "never-again" lamentation and monument-building to the dead ensued.

Maybe the U.S. government should just announce victory, exemplified by the triumph of eliminating Saddam, and pull the troops out. Then maybe the Iraqis can get back to the business of sustenance.

"West Bank Story" Redux

Finally saw the Academy Award winner in the Short Live Action Film category, West Bank Story--I blogged about this battle of the falafel joints on February 27--and it's a gem.   Full of wit, lively music, un PC jokes, and sight gags, as well as bits stolen from West Side Story, the flick portrays the ( absurd) battle between the Kosher King Jewish deli and its rival Hummus Hut, both on the West Bank. ( Duh.) And the expected love affair between Fatima, the Palestinian cashier, and David, the Israeli soldier.

Watch the trailer here.

No Breakfast

At one point in Barbara Sonneborn's 1998 documentary film, Regret to Inform, a Vietnamese woman recounts the day more than 20 years before when she lost nine members of her family, all killed by American troops.  She was stoic until she recalled " they hadn't even had breakfast." At that moment she broke down, I broke down, and thus endeth my viewing of the film. 

Earlier that  evening I had watched the silent parade of recently killed American soldiers posted at the end of PBS's News Hour. So perhaps I was primed to be especially touched. Whether they had had breakfast before they departed the scene I do not know.

(The documentary is Sonneborn's first film and it records her visit to Vietnam, 20 years after her husband was killed there by a mortar. She includes the tales of many widows and survivors, both American and Vietnamese.)

Put A Chicken/Pig/Cow In Your Tank

While we're on the subject of liquid alternative fuels, at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago yesterday, Tyson Foods Inc. chief Richard Bond said his company is developing fat-based fuels for use in jet engines or diesel engines.

According to the Reuters report, "The largest U.S. meat company, which produces 2.3 billion pounds of fat a year as a byproduct of its operations, could potentially start production of the fuel by the end of the year, Bond said."

The notion of pouring fuel derived from the fat of  dead animals into our tanks may be be slightly less enticing than that of using the lightly citrus-scented ( !) fuel blogged about yesterday here...But hey, it's all renewable and that's great.

p.s. An expert I spoke with recently said that if all the money poured into Iraq had been put into developing alternatives fuels, the foreign-oil dependency problem would be solved by now.

(As for the Reuters Food Summit that ran from March 5-8,  even after viewing the company video purporting to answer the question "What Are Summits? " we are not exactly sure...)