You're Sure You Want to Eat That?

A couple of weeks ago, the folks I follow on Twitter (a terrific bunch of CSR and social enterprise experts) were all abuzz about a New York Times article that told the story of a young woman from Minnesota. What was all the fuss?

Well, it turns out that this woman, 22 year-old Stephanie Smith, ate a bad hamburger – made from E.coli-laden beef – and it paralyzed her.

We’ve all heard about E.coli and the illness it causes, but Stephanie’s story was shocking in its seriousness. While her case is extreme, she’s actually just one out of tens of thousands of people who have been sickened by 16 different E.coli outbreaks in just the last three years alone.

In addition to the article, the NY Times made a 9-minute video that chronicles her story – although I wasn’t able to embed it here, you can visit their site and watch it yourself (I highly recommend it).

This story hit home for me on a few different levels.

On a professional level, I am very interested in sustainability and specifically the ways in which businesses can demonstrate their commitment to corporate citizenship through positive environmental action. Given the fact that livestock production is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in America, I have spent quite a bit of time considering just how broken this system of production really is, as well as what can be done to reduce the industry’s environmental impact going forward.

On a personal level, however, food production is important to me because I want to be conscious of what I put in my body. Marketers know that consumers (especially those labeled “green”) are most concerned with products that go “in me, on me or around me” – and food definitely falls into this category. Thus I try to be as educated as I can about where my food comes from, and use my wallet to show support of businesses that operate in ways that align with my values.

Interestingly, on an academic level, this story was also very relevant. One of my MBA courses this semester focuses on corporate governance, accountability and ethics – an area of interest that’s now increasingly important in the wake of last year’s financial crisis.

In fact, Stephanie’s story serves as a real-life example of irresponsible corporate governance gone unchecked.

In class I’ve learned that good governance is related to two important concepts: leadership and accountability. These are two factors that seem to be largely undervalued not only in Stephanie’s case but in our meat industry as a whole.

Cargill, the company that sold the infected meat to Stephanie and other consumers, is America’s largest private company. The fact that it is private is crucially important: Unlike its public counterparts, Cargill is not required to disclose information about its governance structure nor its financial health to the general public. Why does this matter? Plenty of companies are private, right? Sure – but when the company in question is responsible for providing food to millions of Americans, the issue becomes more concerning.

What about Cargill’s meat suppliers? In Stephanie’s case, four different companies supplied meat products to Cargill, including one in Uruguay! As the NY Times article found, not only are standards for hygiene and safety often very lax at these places, but management at these companies often have unwritten agreements not to test their product for food-borne illness for fear of losing business!

And where is the USDA in all of this? It turns out that in many cases the USDA knew that Cargill was violating safety standards but did nothing about it.

Ok, this is the point at which I must admit that a lot of my information is based on this one article about this one woman. How can I assume that this one example of irresponsible and reckless behavior is indicative of the entire beef industry, its suppliers and even the USDA? Well, I can’t.

What I can say is that, after learning more about where our food comes from, and the ways in which animals are treated in this production system – well, it really doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

Plus, couldn’t we argue that just one example of egregious misconduct on the part of these entities is enough of an example of corporate governance, accountability and leadership gone awry? If this can happen to one woman, isn’t that enough?

In my opinion, Cargill and its industry colleagues sit atop an unsafe, irresponsible supply chain that puts profits and mass production ahead of consumer safety and ethical production.

Many questions remain for me: Who really is steering the ship at Cargill, and to whom are they accountable? What is the incentive for Cargill and its suppliers to act in ways that protect consumers and mitigate the risk of lawsuits and other legal actions? And, if the USDA cannot enforce a set of standards for safety in meat, what other harmful substances are making their way into the foods we eat? How can consumers possibly protect themselves?

For Stephanie Smith, though, the answers are clear: “In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known”[i].

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[i] “E.Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection,” published online 10/3/09 by www.nytimes.com. Retrieved online 10/3/09.

Defining Local

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

As I’ve started to learn more and more about our food and agriculture systems in the U.S., I’ve noticed the word “local” popping up a lot. Have you noticed it too? In truth, I think you’d have to be living under a rock not to notice the fact that everyone seems to be talking about local these days. But what exactly does local mean? And is it really all that important? (The answer, in my opinion, is yes – and no. But we’ll get to that in a bit)

So first, what do people mean when they talk about local?

There are a number of definitions floating out there in cyberspace. Search “Local Food” on Wikipedia and you find that local could mean within city limits or within state limits – depending on who you ask. Whole Foods says local is anything that has traveled less than 7 hours by car or truck, and this local coop in New York City backs that up by saying local is up to 500 miles, or one day’s worth of driving.

Making matters worse, where the food is grown/raised isn’t the only issue:

Where local food is determined by the distance it has traveled, the wholesale distribution system can confuse the calculations. Fresh food that is grown very near to where it will be purchased may still travel hundreds of miles out of the area through the industrial system before arriving back at a local store.

Yikes, this is complicated.

Funny enough, my mom even asked her neighborhood grocer in California about fruit that was labeled local, yet came from Florida – and the store manager told her that the U.S.A. was local! Obviously, everyone has their own definition of what local really means.

It turns out that I’m not the only one trying to get to the bottom of this question. A number of bloggers have chronicled their attempts at eating locally. Inspired by Vermont’s recent “Eat Local Challenge,”  Every Kitchen Table decided to try his hand at one week of eating foods produced within 100 miles of his home. Two bloggers in British Columbia decided to spend a year eating food grown within 100 miles, but soon ran into big problems:

First was the expense. We used to eat a nearly vegan diet at home – our dwindling bank accounts emphasized how much cheaper [vegan] beans, rice and tofu are than wild oysters and organic boutique cheeses. Then, we wasted away. We were unable to find any locally grown grains  - no more bread, pasta, or rice. The only starch left to us was the potato. Between us, we lost about 15 pounds in six weeks. Then there was a lack of variety. From March 21 until the farmers' markets started in mid-May, the only locally grown vegetables available were humble fare like kale, cabbage, turnip, rutabaga, parsnip and leeks.

That doesn't sound like fun!

Perhaps the best example of someone trying to eat local is No Impact Man, aka Colin Beavan, a New Yorker who managed to convince his wife (and by extension their small child) that a year of living “no impact lives” – including eating only what they could find at farmer’s markets – was a good idea (to see the trailer for Colin’s fabulous documentary, check out my recent blog post). He manages to make eating locally look realistically challenging, yet intriguing at the same time - surely no small feat.

So now it’s time for me to throw my hat in the ring. While I’m certainly not an expert, I’ve found that my increasing awareness about food and sustainability issues makes for an incredibly depressing weekly trip to the grocery store. Everywhere I turn, even at the most eco-friendly and neighborhood grocery stores (like Russo’s, a favorite of mine that does cultivate relationships with local farms), I’m confronted with questions about where every potential piece of food has come from.

For an everyday consumer trying to make conscious, responsible choices with her food purchases, navigating the maze of the grocery aisles to find local food is a really tough and overwhelming assignment.

 Ok, so we know that local means a lot of things. Does this matter? If we can’t define it, should we really care about eating local?

Over the course of the last few weeks, my husband and I have been spending a lot of time talking about this very question – challenging ourselves to define how we will make food choices that sit right with our “inner compass”. And we’ve come up with two key takeaways.

1) Local is Seasonal: Instead of spending all this time on what’s local (inevitably raising questions not just about how far away something was grown but how far it travelled to reach your dinner table), ask yourself: what should I be eating right now, at this time of year? What naturally grows in abundance this month, or this season? We’ve thought a lot about this and it seems to us that when you think seasonally, you end up thinking locally.

There are a number of resources out there to help you find seasonal produce, including this Vegetable Seasonality Chart and another Seasonality Chart put together by New Jersey growers. Originally I had wanted to create a pretty diagram for you to click on and print out, but here’s the kicker: each region/state has different access to different seasonal food, which means there is no gold standard for what to eat when. Your first best bet is to Google “Seasonal Food” and “Your Town” and see what comes up.

I’m convinced, though, that by eating seasonally, you’ll actually be eating locally.

2) The Practical Impact Jablows: After seeing the documentary about No Impact Man’s year-long experiment, Dan and I talked about whether we could change our habits and lifestyles to the extent that Colin and his family did. While I’m impressed and inspired by the actions they took, I know that not all of them are feasible (going without a refrigerator) or appealing (using cloth toilet paper – seriously). That said, there’s no reason that we can’t do our part to be practical about our food choices (not to mention other areas like energy consumption).

With that, we’ve labeled ourselves The Practical Impact Jablows – perhaps not as snazzy a title as No Impact Man, but it sums us up pretty well. Do we want to eat locally and seasonally? Yes. We believe it’s better for our health, our taste buds, and our souls (and maybe even our wallets). Will we always be able to enforce this seasonal-only policy? No, of course not. In the end, we want to be proud of the choices we’re making, and if that means 80-90% of the time we’re able to adhere to our seasonal goals, we’ll be ok with that.

After all, how many apples can one woman eat?!

In the end, each of us has different ideas about what’s ok to eat. What’s local to me may seem too far away for you. And that’s ok. What matters is that we’re eating food that, as Josh Viertel from Slow Food USA says, has a story that we’re proud to tell. All food has a history – and for some of us, being connected to that history provides the deeper meaning we’ve been looking for.

My Journey for Sustainable Food

Last winter, my husband Dan and I noticed we were beginning to struggle in our quest for fresh, local food. As a Californian learning to endure my first Boston winter, I wanted more variety in our produce. At the same time Dan, a culinary school student, was learning more and more about the role of things like corn syrup and stabilizers in processed food. Between the two of us, we often ended up wondering what we could do to ensure that what we put into our bodies was healthy, fresh and ultimately unprocessed. So we took up cooking more and expanded our repertoire to include items like homemade bread, chicken stock, ice cream and others. Still, in hindsight we relied more often than we would have liked on cheap meat, poultry and dairy – often because it was what we could afford.

All of this came full circle recently in the sustainability class I took a few weeks ago. The day we talked about global food production – including factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs) in the U.S. – I felt like the world opened up and swallowed me with it.

(Ashley’s Note: CAFOs are hugely depressing operations, in my opinion. For your sake and mine, I am not going to recount just how unhealthy and harmful these farms are for animals, for humans, for our economy and for our environment. I’ll just say that for a brief intro, google “Factory Farm” and see what comes up…)

Anyway, I had always wanted to believe that factory farming wasn’t my problem. Sure, Dan and I would buy our meat at big grocery stores and not really ever give any thought to where it came from. But, hey, this kind of farming was going on somewhere far away – so we couldn’t really see it. Plus, we were starving students and the meat was cheap. Right? Wrong.

In fact these are all really lame excuses.

As soon as I heard the food lecture I knew we had been fooling ourselves. This was our problem. Our meat purchases at big grocery chains had unknowingly given a vote of confidence to Perdue and Tyson and all the other CAFO operators that their way of doing business was ok with us. But it wasn’t.

The day after our class ended, I woke up ready for action. Convinced there had to be a way for me to find locally and sustainably-raised meat, poultry and dairy in Boston, I got to work doing research. I planned my route, put on my walking shoes, grabbed my grocery cart and reusable grocery bags, and set out on my adventure. 

Courtesy: Google Maps. Distance: 4.6 miles (Note: start and end point located at point E).

I would first hit Savenor’s in Cambridge, a local favorite with well-known ties to sustainable farms. Surely they would have plenty of “free-range/grass-fed/happy animal” meat to buy. Knowing I might need a back-up plan, I figured that worst case I could go to Whole Foods, just a short walk away from Savenor’s. They may be pricey, I thought, but at least they’ll have a selection.

Four hours and almost five miles later, I ended up at the Shaw’s Market near my house feeling defeated and depressed. I did go to Savenor’s, but was dismayed to see that much of their meat was unlabeled and therefore gave no indication of where it had come from. When I asked a salesman the origins of a particular pork loin, he simply said, “Iowa”. While this may not have immediately signaled “CAFO,” his comment still concerned me because of the issue of how far this pork had to travel in order to reach the market. Surely, I thought, there are farms closer to Boston that raise pigs?

Next I went to Whole Foods, prepared to hand over what little money I had in the name of sustainable farming. Unfortunately here, though, the prices were just so amazingly steep that I actually couldn’t rationalize paying for food, no matter how free-range the animals were.

At this point, I was exhausted, dehydrated and completely without a Plan C. And the worst part was that I still needed groceries! So I surrendered and slowly made my way to the Shaw’s near my house. While Shaw’s is certainly not a terrible market, to me it signified my failed attempt to find and support local, sustainable food production in my own backyard.

That evening, I came home with my full cart of groceries and got to work thinking about solutions. My pilgrimage around Cambridge had taught me that finding responsibly-raised meat would be harder than I thought.

But I was convinced that I could find a way to eat healthy and locally, while also supporting the right kind of farms.

In the end, after considerable discussion, Dan and I decided to sign up for a share in a local CSA farm. Community Supported Agriculture represents “a shared commitment to building a more local and equitable agricultural system, one that allows growers to focus on land stewardship and still maintain productive and profitable small farms”[i]. Stillman's Farm, located in Hardwick, MA, is a CSA that raises its animals according to its own “Conscientiously Grown Philosophy”:

Our farm offers conscientiously raised, grass-fed and pastured, hormone-free meats and poultry. We believe in raising our animals in a manner that is humane and respectful, a respect that extends not only to our animals but to our land as well. Our sustainable, more holistic approach to animal husbandry yields better tasting, safer, and more nutritious meats and poultry.

I had considered the idea of a CSA for produce in the past, but I did not know that meat CSAs existed until a few weeks ago. Given the fact that neither Dan nor I plan to become vegetarians anytime soon, the CSA meat share seemed like a smart, responsible way to use our wallets to support something we believe in.

We pick up our first share in late October and we cannot wait to start cooking!

Interestingly, this little experiment (plus all of the research I have done into the U.S. farm industry) has really informed how I look at all of my purchase decisions – from food, to consumer goods, to energy and water consumption. And it has gotten me talking to everyone else about what I learned. The education and awareness I have recently gained has now been passed on to other people in my life – a true ripple-effect that has started impacting how my friends and loved ones relate to and understand their food.

This is perhaps the most profound learning of all: when it comes to an industry as powerful and far-reaching as factory farming, it is easy to assume that one person can’t make a difference. In my lowest moments, I worried that there was no way that I alone could take a meaningful stand against this kind of production.

But the last few weeks have shown to me that, in fact, one person standing up is all it takes to get people talking - and acting.

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[i] USDA National Agriculture Library. Retrieved September 11, 2009 from http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csadef.shtml