(USDA photo)

If you’ve ever fallen ill with a case of food poisoning, Big Food would like you to know that it’s probably your fault.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued new safety compliance guidelines for the poultry industry. They’re notable for several reasons: they drastically reduce the allowable levels of salmonella present and, for the first time, they address the issue of campylobacter, the second leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States after salmonella.

Current standards, for example, allow for up to 20 percent of poultry carcasses to carry salmonella. If adopted, the new guidelines — they’re in the public comment phase right now — will reduce that figure to 7.5 percent, or no more than 5 positive sample tests out of 51.

Want to hear some more encouraging news? The country’s poultry producers are, for the most part, beating those standards by coming in with an average contamination rate of 7.1 percent — according to the industry’s leading trade and advocacy group, at any rate.

Organizations such as the National Chicken Council and the American Meat Institute are adamant that little more can be done to reduce the levels of pathogen infection in animals because bugs such as salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7 are “naturally occurring.” When they suggest it’s up to consumers to reduce the risk of becoming ill by avoiding cross-contamination or cooking to specific temperatures, they’re performing a very delicate balancing act.

Yes, one should avoid cross-contamination of raw meats with other foods, particularly those that are meant to be served raw or are cooked already, but they’re deftly avoiding the deeper issue. Cross-contamination and lower cooking temperatures wouldn’t be such issues if the foods we were buying weren’t so contaminated already. The chances of pathogen-free food becoming contaminated in consumers’ kitchens, assuming consumers follow basic hygiene rules, are virtually nil. Chicken and ground beef don’t have to be crapshoots.

Last year, Consumers Union published its now-notorious study of contamination levels in commercially produced poultry carcasses. What they found was as startling as it was encouraging. While most of the conventionally produced poultry sold in the United States was infected with salmonella, one large-scale producer — Perdue — managed significantly lower levels of contamination than competitors Tyson and Foster Farms. And several organic producers were selling chickens free of both salmonella and campylobacter.

In other words, it is possible to raise chicken free of these pathogens.

Those improved numbers mean something a little less encouraging, however, according to the National Chicken Council.  When I was working on a story about the new guidelines for Food Safety News last month, NCC Communications Director Richard Lobb told me the low-hanging fruit has pretty much been picked. In other words — and I am, admittedly, projecting here — the country’s largest poultry producers are quite content to leave things as they are unless they’re pushed to do more.

The new guidelines are not “a federal rule,” said Lobb, “but they might as well be.”

Meanwhile, the country’s beef and other meat producers are coming out against proposed legislation by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that would add six more strains of Escherichia coli to the list of pathogens for which producers must test. They already test for E. coli O157:H7 and, as far as they seem to be concerned, that’s plenty.

“We do not believe that declaring non-O157 STECS to be adulterants will enhance the food safety system,” the American Meat Institute said in a statement published on its website, “and we think that application of such a policy could consume resources that could be better spent elsewhere to achieve meaningful food safety progress.”

The poultry industry feels pretty much the same way.

“Twenty years ago you’d say one-third of chickens had salmonella, and now it’s consistently under 10 percent,” Lobb said. “The contamination level is considered fairly low.”

Corporate interests would dearly love for “fairly low” to be the new “acceptable.” Throughout the raging debates over food safety during the past decade, the almost constant refrain of the country’s industrial food producers has been that food safety lies, ultimately, with the consumer. To some degree, I have to agree. A few fairly basic practices, for example, would go a long way toward eliminating or at least decreasing food-borne illnesses. Hand washing, for instance, and cooking and storing food properly. (You know the rule, “Keep cold foods cold and hot foods hot.”) People make dumb judgment calls about food all the time, but that isn’t really the issue here.

As long as Big Food is allowed to pin the blame on consumers, it will continue to produce food that is tainted at “acceptable levels” because it costs them less to do so, and as the industry insists, people’s primary interest is cheap food. However, consumers end up paying the costs of unsafe meat: not only financially but, often, with their health — and occasionally with their lives.

I’m tired of the government interfering in my life. I want less government. I want smaller government.

Oh yeah, and I’d like someone to oversee the use of words like “natural” on processed food labels and limit the amount of sodium in them.

That’s the schizophrenic message being sent by the average American, new food-industry polls reveal. Americans’ faith in Congress’ ability to solve the country’s problems is at an all-time low: about 20 percent, according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. Meanwhile, a poll released last month by FoodMinds, a marketing analysis firm based in Chicago, reported that most Americans still believe the government has an important role in food safety and protecting consumer interests: 72 percent said they had a “fair amount” of trust in the USDA, the FDA, and the Federal Trade Commission. (The FDA, however, has seen a serious decline in public esteem, according to Pew.) Seventy-seven percent said they want government warnings about less healthy food choices, and 86 percent said they wanted front-of-pack labeling about calories and other information.

“Within this environment, consumers are looking for real assistance in helping them make better choices at the grocery store,” FoodMinds said in its summary of the study. “The majority of Americans believe it is their personal responsibility to make the right choices. However, grocery shoppers also seem to indicate that if the industry isn’t able or willing, then they are happy to have the government step in and help.”

The increasing volume of public calls for reform at almost every level of food production, “from farm to fork” as many agtivist groups like to say, has ushered in an era of what FoodMinds is calling “Food Temperance.” Although this may conjure up images of Carrie Nation hacking away at the service counter of a McDonalds, other evidence in the same study demonstrates that, while Americans are eager to ensure their food is safe, they frequently lack the vocabulary or knowledge to influence decisions about food.

Restaurant trade journal QSR recently published an interesting piece about growing consumer interest in both locally grown and organic foods. Many restaurants, the story said, have been working hard to meet those demands and, in several cases, new restaurants have sprung up that cater exclusively to those demands. The problem? Customers don’t always know the difference and frequently assume one label means the product is both organic and locally grown.

“Now that ‘locally grown’ is getting so much attention and people are learning about it, I often hear, ‘Oh I thought locally grown was organic,’” Matt Saline, president and CEO of Mambo Sprouts, a marketing firm focusing on natural and organic products, told QSR. “There’s a huge perception problem there.”

What we have here, of course, is a failure to communicate, but it’s a failure that plays nicely into the hands of those who would take advantage of the situation. With voters lashing out at people in power rather than at specific policies or individuals, we face once again the prospect of a Republican resurgence in Washington. More to the point, we face the possibility that many of those with strong ties to Big Ag and Industrial Food will slow down or put the kibosh on efforts at food reform. 

Remember Kellogg’s effort last year to label Rice Krispies cereal as an immunity booster? A single serving of 35 grams — or one cup — of that immunity-boosting breakfast food contains 14 grams of sugar. Kellogg, meanwhile, insisted its recent increases in vitamin content warranted the claims. While that effort was quickly quashed, thanks to San Francisco’s district attorney Dennis Herrera, there have been too many other similar incidents that indicate the corporate world won’t police itself.

Why should a person know that a product labeled as “natural” or “healthy” might not be either? Isn’t that what all these regulations are for?

Even when labeling clearly works in favor of the consumer, however, consumers don’t always understand the information they’re getting. Take, for example, the controversy over trans fats a few years back. Trans fats were implicated in heart disease because of their unfortunate penchant for raising bad cholesterol levels while simultaneously lowering good cholesterol. The industry news site NutraIngredients-usa.com reported that “where consumers do associate trans fats with a health risk, the concerns most typically cited are heart disease and weight gain, although the association remains ‘weak and murky.”‘

People have to filter an enormous amount of information every day, and much of it is seemingly contradictory — hell, much of it is contradictory. Keeping up with findings and changes in food safety, as well as nutrition, is a lot to ask of anyone, particularly when it goes against accepted wisdom or customs. Particularly, too, when corporations, sensing major losses, begin putting out misleading advertising to counteract the truth.

Until voters realize that the contradictory message they’re sending Washington isn’t going to result in information that will help them make better decisions regarding their health, we can expect to see more campaigns like the Corn Refiners Association’s one for high fructose corn syrup, “You’re in for a sweet surprise.” There’s plenty of money waiting to be spent, to buy more ads, to support more candidates who will vote for Big Food’s business interests at the expense of public health.

Meanwhile the eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them. When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’

Christians among readers of Grist will recognize the preceding passage as the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20), Jesus’s call to spread his message to the world. Religion, of course, takes many forms, but its most interesting form to date is food. Many folks, it seems, have embraced food, or food activism, as a new religion.

I don’t toss this out lightly: I’m religious myself—I’m involved in a ministerial training program at the Buddhist temple of which I am a member—and having converted from one faith to another, I think I’m fairly adept at recognizing others who share my affliction. Zealotry, passion, conviction, and a touch of self-righteousness in many cases, are all markers of religious faith.

None of this is surprising, really. How many among us are chasing after miracle foods, downing gallons of pomegranate juice, or wolfing down goji or açaí berries, convinced they’ll somehow give us health and happiness and, perhaps, make us sexier to boot? I remember a smirking Twitter posting I saw months ago: “I’m having goji berries and green tea.” Had the poster been in reach, I might have given him a wedgie…just because.

Others throw themselves into food fads or specialized diets: locavores, vegans, low carbs, wheat free, dairy free, raw milk—the list is very long. There are, often enough, sound bases for many of these decisions: actual allergies, for example, or other health concerns. I am a firm believer that buying local is better, and buying organic when feasible is a smarter choice.

With the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc., I was astounded at the number of people who announced the film had changed their lives in an almost Pauline-road-to-Damascus kind of way. It was, absolutely, a very good movie and like past food-industry exposés—Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is the obvious example—it brought a level of awareness to the public that has and will continue to improve conditions not only for people who eat, but for farm workers, farmers, and slaughterhouse employees, as well as the animals we raise for food.

Food, Inc. and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, on which the film is heavily based, have inspired a new religion that might be called born-again carnivorism, as exemplified by a post on Food Inc’s Facebook page from a woman excited by her discovery of a farm that raises organic chickens on actual pasture. And as with all religions, old and new, there are sects that insist on a very different path to salvation. The woman’s post elicited some strident replies from vegans, some as self-righteous as anti-abortion activists. Promoting organic meat is “like saying that its [sic] ok to keep slaves as long as they are feed [sic] well!” wrote one respondent. “How about raising your children to be compassionate, not just ‘organic’?”

I am the last person to decry anyone who has made food a pillar of their lives. I cook professionally. As a journalist, I cover food safety and sustainability. As a food writer, I write about cooking. Clearly, food is something about which I am passionate. There is little doubt, as well, that our food system is desperately in need of an overhaul and that, in too many cases, profit has been put well before the needs of the public. I am heartened by the numbers of people who are willing to work for, and to make, those changes.

But we must remember that many of the changes we are working for, many of our goals as activists and consumers, are vulnerable to new developments in technology or, simply, changes in societal tastes and priorities. Just as many of the advances made in agriculture over the past half century have ultimately been found to come with costs that outweigh their perceived value, it seems quite reasonable to suggest that some of our own goals may prove to have been not quite what we had hoped. To draw on a core teaching of my own faith, change is inevitable and that includes changes in what we know and believe. There are no ten commandments for food.

Food is so many things: it is vital to life, it is a source of nourishment and of pleasure as well as an outlet for creativity. It fosters cultural identity and comforts those far from home. But no matter how ethical it may be, or how many antioxidants it contains, it will not save us. When we season our food with dogma and self-righteousness, we give it an unhealthy power over our ability to rationally consider its already vital place in our lives. If what you eat has become your religion, take care to serve up your message peacefully and palatably.

Because it’s just food. 

How green are those Cheerios? Well, no — you’re right — Cheerios shouldn’t be green, but I mean green green. Increasingly, restaurants and food service companies are weighing the need to green their operations and products but the results are often not what they anticipated.

According to stories in this week’s issues of two food service industry magazines, QSR and Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN), greening up the kitchen is an effort fraught with as many potential pitfalls as it is possible benefits. Equally as frustrating to customers as it can be for the companies attempting to clean up their acts, many companies that are greening themselves aren’t seeing the payback or the recognition for which they’d hoped. In the worst cases, others are getting credit — a lot, in one case — they simply don’t deserve. More encouraging is that many food service companies are looking at green alternatives to current practices from an ethical viewpoint and not just profit motives.

“Restaurateurs say an ethical obligation to go green, as well as a desire to reap the benefits of good public relations from eco-friendly moves, drive their decisions to embrace green strategies more so than expectations for solid returns on investment,” according to NRN.

In a joint NRN/Retail Systems Research poll, 66 percent of restaurateurs surveyed said they believed going green would make their products more appealing to consumers, but nearly as many — 63 percent — said they felt an ethical responsibility to improve their company’s sustainability as well. Another 63 percent hoped going green would boost the public’s perception of their company as being industry leaders. While 54 percent of those polled hoped they would see some sort of return on their green investment, nearly half — 47 percent — said they didn’t know whether they would or even expect any such return.

From a business and a green perspective, these are encouraging numbers. Sure, they’re not as high as they could be but they do demonstrate a solid movement in the right direction. Except, except … research conducted by Chicago business consultants Maddock Douglas, and Climate Counts, an organization which tracks the impact of corporate doings on the climate, demonstrates a huge disconnect between what companies are actually doing and the public’s perception of those efforts. Maddock Douglas’ research actually extends into 10 different business categories, but two of those categories are concerned with food.

Many companies have proven quite successful in promoting their products as sustainable, but their actual practices are — gasp! — quite the opposite. In the Maddock Douglas survey of 2,032 U.S. adults, General Mills — the maker of brands ranging from Hamburger Helper to Muir Glen — ranked highest among companies in the food and beverage sector scoring 81 out of 100 possible points in public perception. However, General Mills, which also makes Cheerios, scored only 49 points based upon their actual practices.

At the other end, Stoneyfield Farm and Unilever scored well below General Mills in public perception — in fact they ranked below Pepsico, Kellogg, and Kraft — but came in at 81 and 79 points respectively for their actual sustainability practices. Uniliver, incidently, produces Bertolli, Slim-Fast, and Knorr brands in addition to numerous others. Stoneyfield, of course, produces yogurt, milk, and ice cream and — by the way — helps to fund Climate Counts.

Even in the food services industry, those perceptions are misleading. Wendy’s International — you know, the hamburger chain — scored highest among fast food chains in customer perceptions at a healthy 65 points. In actual sustainability, Wendy’s came in at 2. Yes. Two points. In the meanwhile, Starbucks pulled a 51-point ranking for their sustainability practices but scored only 48 for public perception. Burger King received 49 points for perceived greenness, but in practice they’re only eight points above Wendy’s, coming in at 10 points.

Perception, of course, is just as important as practice. For the companies that are working to decrease their footprint — whether it’s in their kitchen or yours — recognition is vital for a couple of reasons. Looking good never hurts the bottom line, but when doing good goes unrecognized, it will hit the bottom line eventually as customers go to other companies they perceive — perhaps incorrectly — as being more environmentally or socially responsible.

Other than that piddling little issue of ethical responsibility, why should a company sink that much money into an effort that won’t be rewarded, especially when they see competitors raking it in without making any sacrifices? Even more important, how will those companies who are trying to do the right thing survive if all their customers are going to those companies that aren’t?

Future rancher of America?

That was my first reaction, anyway, to news that the search to produce animal-less sources for meat are moving, if not right along, at least in the direction of progress. The story I read is actually an editorial in Capital Press, an agricultural newspaper published for farmers in the western United States.  “[T]he landmark experiments Dutch scientists are undertaking could open the door to a brave new world of food production,” the editorial states.

In other words, test-tube meat: it could soon be what’s for dinner. 

As someone who likes food and frequently eats it, I’m not sure this is a direction about which I’m particularly enthusiastic. As it happens, I was discussing this very thing with another cook a couple of days ago at a catering function we were working just outside Berkeley.

“It certainly puts the matter of veganism into a different perspective,” or something to that effect, said Jay, slicing dried figs into quarters to be added to salad. I was slicing kumquats into eighths, and then seeding them. Really.

Already, he continued, the growth of the grass-fed cattle industry — free from many of the blights that plague Big Agriculture meat production — undermines many of the arguments vegans and vegetarians (but mostly vegans) use against consuming meat. Of course, those grass-fed cows — lolling happily on green fields and given only the occasional antibiotic should they actually become ill — are still doomed and will eventually end up as the main course on someone’s barbecue grill, charring next to a chicken leg or hot dog, I assume. That, of course, does little to dissuade very many vegans.

As an omnivore, however, I am interested in humanely produced meat. I’d like for it to have come from animals that lead healthy, reasonably contented — admittedly short — lives. It would be kind of nice if it didn’t pollute the environment, while we’re at it. I don’t eat as much meat as I used to because when I decided to switch to eating only sustainably raised meat, it also meant spending much more on less. I’m fine with that. No one except the Inuit really need to eat that much animal protein anyway.

But at the crux of the vegan argument is the fact that animals are killed so that I can enjoy the occasional expensive hamburger or barbecued tri-trip. And, yes, I’m OK with that, too. I don’t mean to imply that I’m comfortable with other beings dying, but I do understand that another being died so that I can eat. I grew up on a small family farm in Arkansas where we raised cattle, pigs, and chickens for our own consumption. Even as a kid, I was under no illusion as to where our dinner came from. As it happened, it came from the steer we had named Shelly (after a cousin; long story) or any number of other critters.

The idea of eating food produced in a lab, whether it’s starch or meat, has very little appeal largely because — and I am basing this solely on my experience eating laboratory-produced starches — it hasn’t any flavor. I suspect, and I may be wrong, that meat produced in a laboratory will taste something sort of like meat, meat-ish, but I can only wonder at the idea that a food removed from the necessary environmental inputs — think terroir — could possibly taste good. Velveeta doesn’t taste good. Twinkies don’t taste good — well, OK, they do, sort of. But when you come down to it, grass, flowers, dirt, bugs, even the characteristics peculiar to the breed of the animal, all combine to make a pork loin tasty.

That can’t be duplicated in a lab. At least not in any form I’d care to eat.

I’m looking at sodium content not because I’m watching my salt intake–although that’s hardly a bad idea–but because I wanted to see exactly what the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (the name brings a smile to my face every time I read it) is up to. In case you haven’t heard, the agency–along with more than 40 other government agencies and health organizations–issued a call Monday for the nation’s food producers to reduce sodium levels in their products by 25 percent by 2015. The 43 entities have joined together in an effort they’re calling the National Salt Reduction Initiative.

They have their work cut out for them.

Salt, of course, is everywhere. It’s a vital component of life; it’s a preservative for food. Most notably, it brings out the flavors of the food we eat. Given the ersatz nature of many of those products–I’m reluctant to call some of them “food”–salt plays an even bigger role, not just in enhancing flavor, but in providing it. Take the bright yellow container of Velveeta Shells & Cheese immediately to my left. It contains 640 milligrams of sodium; that’s 27 percent of the recommended daily allowance of salt based on a 2,000 calorie diet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, suggest that 1,500 milligrams is probably the most reasonable amount for most adults. Americans consume almost twice that each day. We really only require about 500 milligrams, or roughly half a teaspoon.

Rich in such ingredients as glycerol monostearate, an emulsifier, acetylated monoglyceride, another emulsifier, and modified food starch, Kraft’s microwaveable cheese food product and pasta needs plenty of back up to boost what little real flavor it might actually have.

There is also a can of Cambell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, featuring 25 percent less sodium than their regular chicken soup. That’s good news until you read the label: it still contains 660 milligrams of sodium, or 28 percent of the RDA. Even more startling is that those are the levels per serving. The label says there are two-and-a-half servings per can. Eat the whole thing, as most folks will, and you’ve overshot the CDC’s recommendations by 150 milligrams and that’s assuming you’re not eating a sandwich or dressed salad along with it.

Sodium itself, of course, appears in probably thousands of guises. The salt we encounter most frequently is sodium chloride, or common table salt. Look at the label on that can of soup again. Salt appears in at least five different forms: lower sodium natural sea salt (“contains less sodium than regular salt”), salt, monosodium glutamate, yeast extract (another name for MSG), and sodium phosphate. That last ingredient isn’t there for flavor; it’s being used as an emulsifier (it also works as a leavening agent).

Is the New York health department being realistic? Corporate responses seem to be slow in coming, although both Cambell Soup Company and Con-Agra have responded by reiterating their own sodium reduction campaigns.

“Their [New York City's] sodium reduction vision is laudable,” said Chor-San Khoo, vice president of Campbell’s Global Nutrition and Health, in a release.”However the targets proposed are quite aggressive and difficult to achieve, particularly in the recommended timeframes.”

And particularly when so much of today’s food depends upon salt, instead of wholesome ingredients, for flavor.