http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/business/20artisan.html?_r=1&src=me
Kelli Estrella, a farmer and award-winning cheesemaker, has become a symbol in a national debate over how much the government should regulate small farmers. More Photos » MONTESANO, Wash. — The foodies raved. The feds raided. And now Kelli Estrella, a farmer and award-winning cheesemaker whose pastureland is tucked into a bend of the Wynoochee River here, has become a potent symbol in a contentious national debate over the safety of food produced by small farmers and how much the government should regulate it. To her devotees, Ms. Estrella is a homespun diva of local food. With her husband and six adopted children from Liberia, she makes tasty artisan cheeses from the milk of her 36 cows and 40 goats and sells it at farmers’ markets. Some even winds up on tables at fancy restaurants in Manhattan and Los Angeles. But to the federal government, Ms. Estrella is a defiant businesswoman unable to keep dangerous bacteria out of her products. Last month, the Food and Drug Administrationmoved to shut down her business, Estrella Family Creamery, after tests found listeria in some of her cheese and she refused to agree to a broad recall of her products. Although no illnesses have been linked to Ms. Estrella’s cheese, listeria is a sometimes deadly bacteria that is especially hazardous for the very young and the very old. Pregnant women who become infected can have miscarriages or stillbirths. Issues of food safety and small food producers were at the fore in Washington, D.C., this week as senators struck a deal that would exempt small producers from some of the rules that would be imposed by a sweeping food safety bill. A vote is expected after Thanksgiving on the long-awaited legislation. “They really need to go after the industrial producers,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, who pushed for the exemption. “The level of risk is far less with the little guy than it is with the big guy.” There is fuel for all sides in Ms. Estrella’s predicament: it shows that even food from a revered artisan producer can pose risks, while demonstrating the pitfalls for regulators who may be viewed as heavy-handed. Ms. Estrella’s case has drawn visceral reaction from foodies because the allegations threaten a core belief of what has come to be known as the locavore movement: that food from small, local producers is inherently better and safer than food made by large, faceless corporations. Her supporters cast her as a David fighting a two-headed Goliath of Big Food and Big Government. “She’s an incredible craftsperson and one of the best cheesemakers in the country,” said Tia Keenan, a New York restaurant consultant who specializes in cheese. “The laws regarding food safety are really meant to regulate large-scale, corporate, industrial food production, and small food producers really suffer under those guidelines.” Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, say they have very real concerns about the safety of cheese, especially softer varieties like brie and mozzarella that are more likely to harbor listeria. The F.D.A. began in April to test soft-cheese makers for listeria, visiting 102 facilities, large and small, and found the bacteria in 24 of them. While the list of facilities where listeria was found included some large factories, more than half of the makers were artisanal producers. Regulators say that safety, not size, is what’s important. “When you’ve got people that make good cheese, you want them to be successful,” said Claudia Coles, the food safety program manager for the Washington State Department of Agriculture. “But our first premise is, we don’t want people marketing an unsafe product.” William Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer, said it was clear that regulators tried to work with Ms. Estrella and that he was puzzled by the attitude that Ms. Estrella’s supporters appear to have toward the F.D.A. “I just don’t know how they make the leap from the government trying to do the right thing for public health to ‘they’re food Nazis in the pocket of big agribusiness.’ ” At least nine artisan cheesemakers have had recalls this year. Most involved listeria in soft cheeses, but this month, a California cheesemaker, Bravo Farms, recalled a gouda, a semi-hard cheese, from Costco stores after it was linked to an E. coli outbreak that sickened 37 people. Artisan cheese is made by hand in small batches, often using raw milk that is not pasteurized to kill bacteria (raw-milk cheeses must be aged 60 days to make them safer). In recent years, the number of artisan cheesemakers has grown rapidly. Washington State now has 34, up from about 18 in 2005. Vermont, another hot spot, has 48, up from 27 in 2005. Ms. Estrella’s problems began in February, when state tests found listeria in her cheese and throughout the farm building where she makes and ages it. The bacteria was even in a humidifier that officials said blew it around the facility. Ms. Estrella recalled some cheese and did a vigorous cleaning and renovation. But in August, F.D.A. inspectors again found the bacteria in her facility and cheese. In early September, they asked her to recall all of her products. Ms. Estrella said no, a rare act of defiance by any food maker. She argued that the F.D.A. had found listeria only in her soft cheeses and that hundreds of wheels of hard cheese were safe. She estimated the value of the cheese the government wanted destroyed at more than $100,000. Last month, the F.D.A., which does not have the power to order a recall (the food safety bill in the Senate would give it that authority), went to court, saying the “persistent presence” of listeria meant all of Ms. Estrella’s cheese should be considered contaminated. In response, a federal judge sent marshals to effectively impound the cheese, preventing her from doing business. The F.D.A. declined to discuss Ms. Estrella’s case because of the litigation. But a spokeswoman, Siobhan DeLancey, said, “When we find a pathogen in a facility, especially one that can kill or cause miscarriages, we’re going to take action.” Ms. Estrella plans to fight back in court. “Where’s the balance here?” she said on a recent afternoon as she stood in one of the aging rooms on her farm, surrounded by wheels of cheese she is forbidden to sell. “Let’s work together. Let’s not just put cheesemakers out of business.” She says she believes that the F.D.A.’s crackdown is part of a larger campaign against raw milk, and she is fighting for her customers’ right to eat whatever they choose. “I don’t think this issue is about bacteria and it’s not about cheese,” she said. “I think that we’re losing our freedom.” The F.D.A. said it was not targeting artisan cheesemakers or those who use raw milk, and its listeria testing had included producers across the spectrum. While cheesemakers acknowledge the need for good sanitation, some supporters question the agency’s approach. “If the F.D.A. wanted to shut down the U.S. artisan cheese industry, all they’d have to do is do this environmental surveillance and the odds of finding a pathogen would be pretty great,” said Catherine W. Donnelly, co-director of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheeseof the University of Vermont, referring to the listeria testing at cheese plants. “Is our role to shut these places down or help them?” Ms. Estrella has received support from loyal customers, retailers and other artisan producers. Fueling that support is the fact that no cases of illness have been linked to her cheese. Dr. Anthony Marfin, Washington State’s epidemiologist for communicable diseases, said it was possible the contamination was relatively low, so no severe illnesses were reported. Mild listeria infections can cause flulike symptoms or nausea. But he said that once the organism was in a food, it could grow to harmful concentrations. Kurt Beecher Dammeier, owner of Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, an artisan cheesemaker and retailer in Seattle, said the F.D.A. needed to work harder to understand artisans like Ms. Estrella. “The F.D.A. comes from an industrial, zero-defect, highly processed, repeatable perspective, and she comes from a more ancient time of creating with what she gets,” he said. “I’m not sure they can really even have a conversation.”
Karen Ducey for The New York Times By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: November 19, 2010
Multimedia
Related
As Cheesemaking Blooms, So Can Listeria (November 20, 2010)
Multimedia
Related
As Cheesemaking Blooms, So Can Listeria (November 20, 2010)
A version of this article appeared in print on November 20, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/time-to-end-war-against-...
Time to end war against the earth
Vandana Shiva
November 4, 2010
When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits - limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.
A handful of corporations and of powerful countries seeks to control the earth's resources and transform the planet into a supermarket in which everything is for sale. They want to sell our water, genes, cells, organs, knowledge, cultures and future.
The continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and onwards are not only about "blood for oil". As they unfold, we will see that they are about blood for food, blood for genes and biodiversity and blood for water.
The war mentality underlying military-industrial agriculture is evident from the names of Monsanto's herbicides - ''Round-Up'', ''Machete'', ''Lasso''. American Home Products, which has merged with Monsanto, gives its herbicides similarly aggressive names, including ''Pentagon'' and ''Squadron''.This is the language of war. Sustainability is based on peace with the earth.
The war against the earth begins in the mind. Violent thoughts shape violent actions. Violent categories construct violent tools. And nowhere is this more vivid than in the metaphors and methods on which industrial, agricultural and food production is based. Factories that produced poisons and explosives to kill people during wars were transformed into factories producing agri-chemicals after the wars.
The year 1984 woke me up to the fact that something was terribly wrong with the way food was produced. With the violence in Punjab and the disaster in Bhopal, agriculture looked like war. That is when I wrote The Violence of the Green Revolution and why I started Navdanya as a movement for an agriculture free of poisons and toxics.
Pesticides, which started as war chemicals, have failed to control pests. Genetic engineering was supposed to provide an alternative to toxic chemicals. Instead, it has led to increased use of pesticides and herbicides and unleashed a war against farmers.
The high-cost feeds and high-cost chemicals are trapping farmers in debt - and the debt trap is pushing farmers to suicide. According to official data, more than 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.
Making peace with the earth was always an ethical and ecological imperative. It has now become a survival imperative for our species.
Violence to the soil, to biodiversity, to water, to atmosphere, to farms and farmers produces a warlike food system that is unable to feed people. One billion people are hungry. Two billion suffer food-related diseases - obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cancers.
There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites.
When every aspect of life is commercialised, living becomes more costly, and people are poor, even if they earn more than a dollar a day. On the other hand, people can be affluent in material terms, even without the money economy, if they have access to land, their soils are fertile, their rivers flow clean, their cultures are rich and carry traditions of producing beautiful homes and clothing and delicious food, and there is social cohesion, solidarity and spirit of community.
The elevation of the domain of the market, and money as man-made capital, to the position of the highest organising principle for societies and the only measure of our well-being has led to the undermining of the processes that maintain and sustain life in nature and society.
The richer we get, the poorer we become ecologically and culturally. The growth of affluence, measured in money, is leading to a growth in poverty at the material, cultural, ecological and spiritual levels.
The real currency of life is life itself and this view raises questions: how do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making and resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end?
I believe that ''earth democracy'' enables us to envision and create living democracies based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures - a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources, and sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources.
Earth democracy protects the ecological processes that maintain life and the fundamental human rights that are the basis of the right to life, including the right to water, food, health, education, jobs and livelihoods.
We have to make a choice. Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaia's laws for maintenance of the earth's ecosystems and the diversity of its beings?
People's need for food and water can be met only if nature's capacity to provide food and water is protected. Dead soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water.
Defending the rights of Mother Earth is therefore the most important human rights and social justice struggle. It is the broadest peace movement of our times.
Dr Vandana Shiva is an Indian physicist, environmentalist and recipient of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. This is an edited version of her speech at the Sydney Opera House last night.
http://www.japanesefoodreport.com/2010/11/video-grilling-lesson-with-che.html
This past week, something remarkable happened: More than forty of Japanese greatest chefs descended on the Napa Valley for the Culinary Institute of America's Japan: Flavors of Culture conference. It was the largest, most in-depth -- most mind-blowing -- gathering ever held in America devoted to understanding Japanese cuisine. I served as a moderator for a number of presentations (thanks for the gracious invite, CIA!) and had the chance to soak up so many new insignts at this remarkable event. Case in point, Chef Yoshihiro Takahashi's grilling lesson, with the author Hiroko Shimbo moderating. Takahashi-san is the chef/owner of Hyotei in Kyoto, a legendary 400-year-old kaiseki restaurant where I had the honor to train for a month this past summer. Takahashi-san served his grilled tai (sea bream) with a delicious wari dashi, which is easy to prepare: Combine in a container 200 ml dashi, 50 ml all-purpose soy sauce (koikuchi), 50 ml thin soy sauce (usukuchi) and the juice of 4 lemons and limes (he used 1 yuzu and 3 sudachi, but you can substitute with lemon and lime). Let the sauce sit in the fridge at least one night for the flavors to mingle. Serve on the side, dip grilled fish in it to eat. Check out the videos below, and do your own soaking up:Posted by Harris Salat in Grilling
Collages by Stephanie Davidson: http://www.stephd.biz/
Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book 6
Diana Rigg/The Avengers (Touch of Brimstone) Postcard (via La Contessa)
Coney Island 
Audrey Hepbern,New York, January, 1967.
Karnak, Francis Frith
April 2, 8:48 PM - Philadelphia Restaurant Examiner - Lindsay Lovier
Fig and flatbread pizza...toss it on the grill, open a bottle of wine & presto!
by STEAMYKITCHEN on OCTOBER 29, 2008 · 50 COMMENTS
(See below for link to a set of 9 additional step-by-step photos on how I got this money shot)
Whole Foods Market Bows to OCA Pressure--Promises to Sell Significantly More Organics in 2010
John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods, admitted shoppers had been let down by filling his shelves with fat-laden products Photo: PA
Frida Kahlo with a monkey
David Bowie & Liz Taylor (FL sez: "I can see where Boy George got his post Culture Club look.")
Tactical corsets: a corset that's bulletproof, comes with pistol holster, pepper spray holster, and an "interrogation pouch."
