Salmonella... and hope for the future!

As you may have heard, egg producer Wright County Egg in Iowa has issued a recall on something like 380 million eggs do to hundreds of people being infected by the Salmonella bacteria.

yuck. Really. Salmonella is a bacteria that can live in the guts of a chicken and never show any symptoms. The infected chicken poos out a pile of salmonella, which can then spread all over the place, including on the eggs, the chicken's body, and all the other hens that most likely are only a few inches away at anytime (considering your average conditions inside a chicken factory). The bacteria spreads from hen to hen, and then before you know it, millions of eggs and chickens are covered in these human-gut-busting bad guys. Scientists are now noticing that the bacteria can even grow inside the egg, rendering the average chicken factory's sterilization methods much less effective (though I hate to think what else might be living on factory-produced eggshells...).

Okay, so how does this tie in to my topic of sustainability? Well... as we are beginning to acknowledge (and as ecologists, animal rights folks, and health inspectors have been saying for decades), raising animals in factory settings is not a healthy way to produce food. The close proximity of the animals, combined with unsanitary living conditions (most food animals; chickens, cows, pigs, etc. spend a significant amount of time during their day standing around in their own, and their neighbors feces), combined with regular doses of antibiotics has led to some interestingly mutated diseases (anyone remember swine flu?). Also important to note are many other effects of factory food production, but I'll spare my readers the details on that. (though if you want more info, check out www.themeatrix.com, Food Inc., Upton Sinclair, and PETA)

What I would like to instead focus on is the hopeful alternative to disease producing animal abuse that some people call farming. I'd like to draw attention to a personal hero of mine, Michael Pollan. In his book, Omnivore's Dilemma, he spends some time on a farm in Virginia called PolyFace Farm (http://www.polyfacefarms.com). Joel Salatin, the farmer at Polyface, puts his chicken to pasture. He even wrote a book about in in '93 called Pastured Poultry Profits. Joel uses a system of different animals on what he calls his 'grass farm.' He'll graze the cattle over a section of pasture until they eat it down to a certain point, then he'll move them on, and bring in the birds. In nature, on grasslands, birds have always been associated with grazers. The birds will follow a herd of animals across the plains, or grasslands, or savannas, and they feast on the bugs that are either unearthed by the animals, or that are attracted to the manure. Salatin does the same at Polyface Farm. He usually waits a couple days before releasing his hens on the recently grazed pasture. He says that way, the fly larvae have grown up to a size that makes them delicious and highly nutritious to the chickens, and the chooks eat them all, eliminating the fly problem. The chickens also spread the manure around the field, distributing the nutrients and the magic bacteria that live in cow-pies. Economically, Joel says this method saves him about $0.20 per dozen eggs produced from all that they can eat from the recently grazed pasture. His methods, which I highly recommend learning more about (Joel Salatin will even be teaching at Channel Rock for a Food Security Workshop at the end of September! Check it out here!) has brought him healthy land, healthy family, healthy community, and a healthy wallet (though his eggs do sell for a meager $2.20 or so per dozen!).

Here is where I get to the good part. Using these methods, Joel has never had anyone report any kind of salmonella poisoning, or any other kind of food-borne illness from his farm. Not only that, but from his 100-acre 'grass farm' he is able to produce annually:

30,000 dozen eggs (360,000 eggs)
10,000 broilers (chickens for eating)
800 stewing hens
25,000 lbs of beef
25,000 lbs of pork
1,000 turkeys
500 rabbits

So, in order to produce an equivalent in eggs that have been recalled to Iowa (where I don't even want to think about what they're going to do with that many eggs... giant pancakes anyone?), there would have to be about 1,000 polyface farms out there. While that does seem like a lot, remember that the eggs are only one part of the system which is producing thousands of pounds of healthy food. Personally, I'd be a much happier person if I could see thousands of Polyface Farms opening up across the country. Heck, I'll take any. Any food-production facility which actually creates benefit to the land where it resides, is in my estimation, highly preferable to a factory for diseases like salmonella, greenhouse gasses, water pollution, suffering, oh, and some 'meat' too.

May we all read news articles like this one from the Associated Press as reasons to hope for, and create change in our world. The guiding examples for how to feed ourselves sustainably are out there! Lets start focusing on them, and announce news like this egg recall as secondary. Lets put those industrial food producers in the place they deserve, shame. In a world where there are successful, healthy, profitable, and beneficial ways to produce our food, the only news should be commending those who do it right and hinting to those still behind in the dark ages that its time to catch up!

Thats my rant for today

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