Is it time for Kentucky Damn Proud?

http://www.southsidermagazine.com/Articles-c-2010-01-26-91208.113117_COLUMN_Is_it_time_for_Kentucky_Damn_Proud.html

by Kara Keeton

I consider myself a locavore. At least, I try my best to be one.

Visit me in the summer and you will see my counters, table and usually my refrigerator overflowing with vegetables from my CSA basket or my own garden. I buy hundreds of pounds of berries from local producers to freeze and enjoy in the winter months. As for protein, all the meat in my freezer right now is from Kentucky processors or courtesy of my friends and family who enjoy deer hunting. Then there are the local jams, salsa, sorghum, apple cider vinegar, flour, cornmeal and a multitude of daily-use items in my cabinets that are made locally.

One might say that being a locavore makes me Kentucky Proud, which is true, but I want to go a step further. I'm trying to be Kentucky Damn Proud.

What is Kentucky Damn Proud, many of you might be asking? Kentucky Damn Proud is how many in Kentucky's agriculture community define a product that is completely grown, harvested, processed and packaged right here in Kentucky.

Having always understood that for a product to carry a Kentucky Proud label, it meant that the major ingredients were grown and/or processed in Kentucky, I was surprised at the outcry from readers last week who felt the new Kentucky Proud Angus beef product line should not qualify as a Kentucky Proud product.

While the finishing and processing of the animals used in the Kentucky Proud Angus beef line is taking place outside of Kentucky, the animals are bred, born and raised on Kentucky farms. Does this make the Kentucky Proud Angus line of beef "Kentucky Damn Proud?" No, but it is Kentucky Proud.

All Angus cattle in the Kentucky Proud Angus beef program must be born in Kentucky, meet all Certified Preconditioned Health (CPH) standards, and be USDA Process Verified Program (PVP) certified. The cattle will be sold from the farmer to PM Beef, the Minnesota-based company that is collaborating with the Kentucky Proud program on the Kentucky Proud beef line, at CPH sales across the state. Documentation and affidavits proving that the cattle were born and raised on a Kentucky farm, with the specific name of the family and farm location, will accompany each head purchased by PM Beef. Multiple levels of auditing will be done to assure the documentation is accurate and follows the cattle from farm to processing to distribution.

Ouita Michael, owner and chef at Holly Hill Inn in Midway, is known for incorporating Kentucky Proud products in her menus at Holly Hill Inn and her other restaurants in the area. While she was unsure about the Kentucky Proud Angus beef line when she first heard about it, she told me she now feels that the level of certification that will be put in place to ensure that the cattle are born and raised in Kentucky make it a great compromise to get Kentucky raised beef to the consumer.

"One of the things we are really great at in Kentucky is raising cattle, we have a lot of great cattle producers, but there is minimal processing available compared to the number of producers and the number of consumers that we have for Kentucky beef," said Michaels in an interview after the Kentucky Proud Advisory Council meeting on Monday. "So this project bridges that gap, and gives us a Kentucky Proud line of beef products."

Dr. Lee Meyer an economist with the UK College of Agriculture confirmed that Kentucky currently doesn't have a large facility in which to process the number of cattle that is needed to provide a consistent quantity to the market at the estimated demand for the Kentucky Proud Angus beef line. Meyer pointed out that Kentucky does have several USDA-certified processors dotting the state that are used by farmers to process cattle for the direct marketing of beef products to consumer. However, one of the problems or challenges that Kentucky's small processors face is the animal byproducts, Meyer said, which is not an issue for large-scale processors such as PM Beef.

"The byproducts are the hide and non-edible organs that remain when an animal is harvested and processed," explained Meyer. "For a large-scale processor that has a market for these products, this is an estimated $100 value per animal, but for our small processors, this is a $100 expense to have to dispose of the waste."

It is the economies of scale that PM Beef has as a large processor that makes it possible for Kentucky-born and raised cattle to be taken out of state to finish, harvest and process while still being able to distribute and market the product at a price point that is competitive.

There are already several great Kentucky Damn Proud beef brands that can be purchased a farmers' markets, on-farm markets, and in specialty retail outlets in the state. At this time though none of these brands have both the quantity and can meet the price points needed by large retail outlets and the food service industry in the state, the new Kentucky Proud Angus beef line does.

It is the fact that the Kentucky Proud Angus beef line of products are price competitive, quality Kentucky Proud products that have markets such a ValueMart and Kroger interested in putting them on their retail shelves.

At the Kentucky Proud Advisory Council meeting Bill Clary, director of public relations at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, said that in the perfect world the choice would not be to structure this project with the cattle going out of state for processing, but it is better than what existed before.

"The ultimate goal is that Kentuckians be able to feed themselves out of their fields and farms, but our infrastructure is nowhere near a point to make that happen," explained Clary. "Just because we aren't there yet it isn't an excuse to throw our hands up and say since this isn't perfect then let's not do anything at all. It is a work in progress."

Ouita agreed that not only is the infrastructure a work in progress, but so is the Kentucky Proud effort.

"Part of Kentucky Proud is processing and supporting food entrepreneurism and agriculture entrepreneurism and that is what the brand has been about," said Ouita in discussing the growth of the Kentucky Proud brand. "So if we are going to support agriculture development in the stat we have to support it at different levels, not just at the producer level but also at the processor level, the distribution level and at the retail level. All parts have to work for the producer to be protected so if it all works down the line we have a strong farm economy."

Kentucky Proud on a label doesn't guarantee that a product it all natural, organic, or that it is comprised of 100 percent Kentucky grown products. What it does guarantee is that the main ingredients of the product are grown or processed in Kentucky. This is what makes it possible for many of the value-added products in the state, from salsas to wines, carry the Kentucky Proud label.

I believe it is my responsibility as a consumer to not just buy a product based upon a label, but to take time to educate myself on the seasonal availability of local products in my area. I want to support the local farmers and processors and I work hard to be Kentucky Damn Proud in purchasing the food I serve to my family and friends.

While I feel it isn't fair to deny Kentucky cattle producers a chance to have a new market for their premium product, nor to deny consumers across Kentucky a chance to have the Kentucky Proud Angus beef line of products at a competitive price. Maybe it is time to make it a little easier for those that want to be Kentucky Damn Proud.

The Kentucky Proud Advisory Council discussed the possibility of creating a two tier labeling program to differentiate between regular Kentucky Proud products and those that are raised, harvested, and processed 100 percent in Kentucky. If you feel passionately about making sure the Kentucky Proud program continues, but recognizes those products that are Kentucky Damn Proud let your voice be heard.

Madison County Schools join Kentucky Proud

Madison County Schools join Kentucky Proud

http://www.richmondregister.com/localnews/local_story_025083848.html

By Tim Mandell
Register News Writer
Madison County Schools has long been committed to providing students with locally grown food products.

The school system now has taken it one step further, becoming Kentucky Proud, according to Erin Stewart, community education director for Madison County Schools.

Kentucky Proud is the “buy local” initiative of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture designed to help communities by keeping food dollars at home, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

“We’re basically joining forces with a lot of other people across the state who are trying to promote our local growers,” Stewart said. “We already use many local suppliers and we wanted to take the extra step and let everyone know.”

Madison County Schools will be displaying the Kentucky Proud logo and will continue to work with local growers as a food source, said Emily Agee, food service director for the school system.

“We are so proud to be part of the Kentucky Proud program” she said. “We certainly do and want to continue to be good partners with our local growers and help them continue to produce quality products.”

The Kentucky Department of Agriculture states that if an agricultural product is grown, raised, or processed in Kentucky the business is eligible to be Kentucky Proud.

There are 41 Madison County consumers listed on the Kentucky Proud Web site.

“Our food service department orders a wide variety of products and fruits and vegetables from specific companies and a lot of those companies use local fresh, farm produced goods,” Stewart said. “We also get some things from local farmers and those go straight to our students.”

There are 18 schools in the district.



Tim Mandell can be reached at tmandell@richmondregister.com or 623-1669 ext. 6696.

Farm unleashes cow power

Methane from animal waste being put to good use in various ways

By ROBYN L. MINOR, The Daily News, rminor@bgdailynews.com/783-3249
Monday, January 4, 2010 11:37 AM CST

Miranda Pederson/Daily News Organic Alchemy’s David Emmerich (from left), assistant Western Kentucky University farm manager David Newsom and Nathan DeKemper, a student farm worker, talk about the organic alchemy greenhouse at the farm.

An experiment at Western Kentucky University to reduce the odor from cow manure and find other uses for the waste could lead to a permanent facility that produces enough electricity to power most of the university’s farm.

Right now, farm workers take the manure from just two cows, mix it with water and put it into a digester, which circulates the liquid from a tank and through eight other containers floating in a pond below the bed of a greenhouse. After 21 days, the end product is something with little to no smell that can be sprayed on fields for fertilizer, according to David Emmerich of Organic Alchemy in Smiths Grove, who developed and patented the digester.

Now, the methane produced from the digesting process is burned off about once a month, but in a larger scale operation the gas could actually be used to produce electricity, Emmerich said.

On Thursday, the interior of the greenhouse was relatively warm - warm enough without electric-generated heat for winter plants. The circulation of the liquid waste through tanks warms the surrounding water to about 85 degrees, according to David Newsom, assistant farm manager for Western.

“We’ve got this warm pond, we may as well use it,” said Newsom, who would like to grow tilapia in the water. “Then we’d have a fish fry for farm workers.”

The end product from the manure has already been saving the farm money.

“They bought this organic fertilizer in Louisville for $200 and it lasted about 11 days,” he said. “They used this stuff all summer long for free.”

Newsom said they hooked up a drip irrigation system to rows of tomato plants, which turned out just as large and tasty as the tomatoes grown with the expensive stuff.

Emmerich sees endless potential for the system. Emmerich’s partners now are writing a business plan; then he and university representatives will look for grants to install a large scale model at the university that would process the manure of about 250 cows, about the size of its herd.

The greenhouse now stands 24 feet by 36 feet. One large enough to house the digestion system needed would be about 44 feet by 72 feet. A grid over the top of the pond could be used to place plants on.

“This could really extend the growing season,” he said.

Farmers with greenhouse operations now may not be able to use their houses year round because of the high cost of propane or other heat. But installing a digester could provide them heat for free, use up cow manure and produce an odorless fertilizer.

“And we think a digester the size we are talking about could supply enough electricity for what the farm uses, outside the expo center,” Emmerich said.

Blaine Ferrell, WKU’s dean of Ogden College of Science and Engineering, said the university has been talking to a Cynthiana tomato farmer who grossed about $250,000 a year from the fruit he grows in four greenhouses. Ferrell said there is a great potential for savings for him in using a large scale digester that would produce heat for the greenhouses and a product to fertilize them.

Emmerich said he wants to encourage cooperative arrangements between such growers and livestock farmers, so the cost of a system and its benefits could be shared.

“We are looking at a whole systemic approach to farming,” Ferrell said. “It’s nothing really new. But after it goes through the digester, the waste is pathogen free. We can separate the solids from the liquid and char the solids so they are totally inert. We want to develop a balanced nutrient approach to see what we need to mix to produce a marketable product.

“We are looking at using all parts of the waste. Once we get a larger system, we can show farmers how to make more money with each cow, so we will use this as a demonstration project. We want to try to do it in a cost-effective manner so any farmer can do it.”

With a larger digester, the university also may try to grow algae in the warmed water and then perform experiments to see how much oil can be extracted from the algae to ultimately produce energy.

“There are other digesters out there ... but what makes this one good is that it runs continuously and you don’t have to clean it out,” Ferrell said.

He thinks chances are good that grants can be found to fund the project.

“There is money out there right now,” he said. “We should know by the spring if we will get the money.”

At the same time working to install a large scale digester at Western, Emmerich said he hopes to work with a large scale dairy farmer in the area who already is using liquid manure in his farming operations.

“I think we can produce these for about $150,000,” he said. “That would make the payback in eight to 10 years.”

Newsom is excited about the potential for Western’s system.

“It can help fuel these other projects (including algae growing) and be a great demonstration project for farmers throughout the region or even nation,” Newsom said.

And there is the added benefit of being able to produce energy from cows, animals some say are a source of increased greenhouse gases through methane they release.

— For more information about the digester go to www.organic-alchemy.com

Farmers look to switchgrass as biofuel

The Associated Press

ASHLAND, Ky. -- Two Boyd County farmers look at switchgrass and see the color green -- the money they believe they can make by converting the crop into fuel for electric power.

The Ashland Daily Independent reports Glen Young and Danny Blevins are in the second year of a pilot project to grow the native prairie species and sell it as a biofuel that could be a more environmentally friendly alternative to coal, or at least a supplement.

"That's the age-old question for a farmer: Is it practical?" said Blevins, a retired teacher, environmentalist and conservationist who grows the grass on his family farm in Boyd County. "Can you make a profit? I think you can."

Among the most dominant grasses in the prairies that once covered the central plains, switchgrass is a perennial that grows to around six feet and can be harvested once or more per year for 10 years. It can survive extreme temperature swings and drought better than most traditional crops.

One advantage, Young says, is no special equipment is needed to grow or harvest it. He plants it with the same no-till drill he uses for grain, soybeans and other grasses and maintains it with the sprayers and harvesters found in his barn.

Even on marginal land, the grass has proven reliable. Even through dryness last year and excessive rainfall this year. Young and Blevins are among 20 farmers who are growing five-acre plots of the grass under a University of Kentucky test project.

Produce industry faces many challenges

Dec 4, 2009 10:12 AM, By Paul L. Hollis, Farm Press Editorial Staff

"Demands being made on the produce supply chain include quality assurance, traceability and third-party certification, with food safety being the primary factor in all of these demands."

The challenges facing the U.S. produce industry range from labor issues to the general state of the economy and everything in between, says Tim Woods, University of Kentucky.

“We continue to see the expansion of imported produce, and the supply chain situation with the consolidation of retailers continues to be a huge driving force for the produce industry,” says Woods.

Demands being made on the produce supply chain include quality assurance, traceability and third-party certification, with food safety being the primary factor in all of these demands, he says.

“Food safety is a driving force behind a lot of these things as consumers become more aware of these issues,” says Woods.

Looking back at the 2002 Ag Census, Woods says the distribution of produce acres in the United States has changed. “During that 10-year period up to the 2002 census, a lot of produce acres shifted out of the South, with the exception of Georgia. Since 2002, we continue to see a lot of movement of the really large-scale produce acreages out of the South. And a lot of the processing has moved either to other parts of the country or moved completely out of the United States,” he says.

For much of the past 20 years, the percentage of vegetables being imported into the United States market has risen, says Woods, with most of the produce coming from Mexico and also from Canada.

“This year, more than half of our bell peppers, about half of our tomatoes, more than half of our cucumbers, and about half of our squash was imported. This leads us to ask where we will be in the next 10 years,” he says. “How will this impact the opportunities for our producers?”

The markets are changing, and the sources of supply are changing, says Woods. Despite exchange rates that were going against them, Mexico continues to have a major impact on the produce market, and it’s due to the labor situation.

In Kentucky, says Woods, growers are looking at a wider variety of marketing options for their produce. “Kentucky is not a really big produce state, but we’re seeing this shift in a diversification of market channels for produce. We have a lot of emphasis on direct markets, farmer’s markets and on-farm retailing. We’ve had a fall-off in cooperatives and a resurgent interest in wholesaling.

“We’re seeing a lot of direct-to-grocery and direct-to-restaurant sales, in addition to produce auctions. Producers are looking for innovative ways to sell their produce. This is spinning out of the renewed interest in local products for local markets that we’re now seeing not just in produce, but in a lot of food products,” he says.

Many producers, he adds, are positioning their production systems and marketing programs to try and take advantage of the current opportunities to change consumers’ preferences.

“This demand for local products is certainly a major driver in our food system today. Looking at the attributes consumers assign to the preference with respect to the different types of food items, and ‘locally grown’ is at the top of their list. Those of us in Extension are working with chefs at restaurants in trying to help the industry make better connections with our growers,” says Woods.

This same trend is being seen in the grocery industry, he says, where big retailers are trying to establish a beachhead with the local producers of the products they need.

“It’s being done to an even greater extent by the smaller, independent chains that don’t have the massive supply chains. They actually have a competitive advantage in merchandizing these local products. They’re shaking up the traditional distribution system of a lot our large retailers.”

The latest surveys, he says, show a growth in direct market sales of fresh vegetables and melons. “We’ve seen growth in farmers’ markets, agrotourism and on-farm direct marketing. We Extension folks have all we can do to provide help with the marketing programs and quality assurance programs. We’ve had new legislation in Kentucky now for a few years that allows on-farm processing. Our farmers’ markets in Kentucky are expanding, and we’re seeing other products showing up in addition to fresh produce. Farmers’ markets are reverting to the old European-style markets that were popular a century ago.”

Another interesting phenomenon in the produce market, says Woods, is the emergence of produce auctions. “This is an interesting business model from the Amish Mennonite producers. They’ve done a great job. It’s like a cattle auction where relatively small-scale producers bring in their products three or four times a week and they’re auctioned off. You have restaurant buyers and on-farm retailers looking to supplement their inventory. We provide them with price reports on the products there and quality assurance information. Another business model — the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) — is also growing in popularity.”

When producers in Kentucky and throughout the South were asked about the major challenges facing the produce industry, labor management and labor availability are at the top of the list, says Woods. “Harvest labor is a chronic problem for our produce growers. We have a lot of labor-related problems throughout the South.”

Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches

By Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Anthony DeBarros, USA TODAY

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders— KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

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"We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants," says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. "We are not using those same standards."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt "the highest standards" for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that "the disparity would exist no more."

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department's minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers.

Morris, who used to run the USDA office that investigates food-borne illnesses, says the department's purchases of meat that doesn't satisfy higher-end commercial standards are especially worrisome because the meat goes to schools. It's not just that children are more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses because of their fledgling immune systems; it's also because there's less assurance that school cafeteria workers will cook the meat well enough to kill any pathogens that might slip through the USDA's less stringent safety checks.

USDA-purchased meat is donated to almost every school district in the country and served to 31 million students a day, 62% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals. President Obama noted earlier this year that, for many children, school lunches are "their most nutritious meal — sometimes their only meal — of the day."

Next year, Congress will revisit the Child Nutrition Act, which governs the lunch program.

"If there are higher quality and safety standards, the government should set them," says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. "Ensuring the safety of food in schools is something we'll look at closely."

Officials with the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the USDA agency that buys meat for the school lunch program, insist that schools get top-notch products.

AMS standards for meat sent to schools have been "extremely successful in protecting against food-borne pathogens," AMS Administrator Rayne Pegg says in a written statement. She notes that AMS oversight, inspections and tests of that meat exceed those required for meat sold to the general public.

The AMS also has a "zero-tolerance" policy that requires rejection of meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, pathogens that can cause serious illness or death.

Still, after USA TODAY presented USDA officials with its findings, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack promised an independent review of testing requirements for ground beef that the AMS sends to schools. The review, set for next year, is meant "to ensure the food served to our school children is as safe as possible," Vilsack says in a statement.

Tougher standards for school meat would better protect students, experts say. Today's AMS program "is a sort of snapshot of the way things were in (2000), whereas the industry has continued to clamp down," says James Marsden, a Kansas State University professor who advises the meat industry on safety. "It needs to be modernized."

The difference

USA TODAY examined about 150,000 tests on beef purchased by the AMS for the school lunch program. The agency buys more than 100 million pounds of beef a year for schools, and the vast majority of it would satisfy the standards of most commercial buyers. But USA TODAY also found cases in which the agency bought meat that retailers and fast-food chains would have rejected.

Like the AMS, many big commercial buyers reject meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7. But many fast-food chains and premium retailers set tougher limits than the AMS on so-called indicator bacteria. Although not necessarily dangerous themselves, high levels of the bacteria can suggest an increased likelihood that meat may have pathogens that tests might miss.

From 2005 to this year, the AMS purchased six orders of ground beef that exceeded the limits some commercial buyers set for indicator bacteria. The meat came from five companies: Beef Packers of Fresno, which filled two of the orders; Skylark Meats of Omaha; Duerson Foods of Pleasant Prairie, Wis.; N'Genuity Enterprises of Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Palo Duro Meat Processing of Amarillo, Texas.

Palo Duro is the largest provider of ground beef to schools. Beef Packers is one of the most troubled; it has been suspended as an AMS supplier three times, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called this week for the plant to be closed temporarily in the wake of two recalls.

From late November 2008 through January this year, the AMS bought nearly 500,000 pounds of ground beef from Beef Packers and Skylark with unusually high levels of an indicator bacteria known as "generic E. coli." The organism is considered an indicator of whether potential contaminants from the intestines of cattle have gotten into slaughtered meat — a source of the far more dangerous E. coli O157:H7.

The indicator bacteria are measured in CFUs, or colony-forming units. Jack in the Box, which pioneered many of the safety standards now used across the fast-food industry, won't accept beef with generic E. coli levels of more than 100 CFUs per gram. The AMS, on the other hand, will buy beef for the school lunch program with generic E. coli counts of up to 1,000 CFUs per gram — 10 times the Jack in the Box limit.

"That's a significant difference," says Marsden, the professor and beef industry adviser.

The shipments of beef that the AMS bought a year ago had generic E. coli levels up to four times higher than what Jack in the Box would accept. "Most higher-end companies certainly would reject that," Marsden says. Those bacteria levels "would be a yellow light (that) something's not right."

E. coli isn't the only indicator bacteria that the AMS allows at higher levels. The government also accepts beef with more than double the limit set by many fast-food chains for total coliform, which is used to assess whether a beef producer is minimizing fecal contamination in its meat.

"We look at those (measures) to gauge how a supplier is doing," says David Theno, who developed the safety program at Jack in the Box before retiring last year. If shipments regularly exceed the company's limits on indicator bacteria, "we'd stop doing business with them," he says.

AMS officials say the differences between the agency's bacteria limits and those of private industry are inconsequential. They note that there isn't even a requirement that beef sold in a typical grocery store has to be tested for the organisms.

"We remain confident, based upon past benchmarking activities, that our testing and standards are similar to or exceed those of most major large volume buyers," AMS chief Pegg says.

Suspect samples

The biggest disparity between the AMS and other big buyers of ground beef may not be in the levels of bacteria they allow but in the effort they make to detect such contamination.

On a given manufacturing day, AMS workers testing ground beef bound for schools sample the meat eight times, regardless of how long the production lines are running. Those samples are combined into a single composite sample for testing.

Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King and other more selective buyers sample the ground beef on their production lines every 15 minutes. Some, such as Jack in the Box, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every hour during the production run. Others, such as McDonald's and Burger King, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every two hours.

That means Jack in the Box would test at least 10 composite samples during a typical 10-hour production run, which could yield 100,000 pounds or more of ground beef. The AMS would test just one sample for the entire 100,000-pound run.

The AMS approach to sampling "is not robust enough to find anything," says Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle-based food safety consultant and microbiologist.

Fast-food chains aren't the only ones with better sampling. Other beef buyers, such as Costco and afa Foods, a Pennsylvania firm that supplies beef to restaurants, use similar programs.

AMS officials say the agency accounts for less frequent sampling by being more aggressive in rejecting meat that fails to meet its standards. When a test shows salmonella, for instance, the AMS rejects all the meat produced by that supplier during that production run — tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But the AMS approach doesn't resonate with some scientists.

"AMS is saying once they detect, they take drastic action," says Ewen Todd, a professor at Michigan State University, "but if they are less likely to detect, the risk is still higher."

Adds Theno: "If you do more sampling and you do it on smaller lots, you have a better chance of finding problems."

Theno helped pioneer the sampling and testing standards now used widely in the fast-food world after he arrived at Jack in the Box in the wake of the industry's most notorious safety lapse.

In 1993, an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 at Jack in the Box restaurants left hundreds sick and four children dead. Victims, most from the West, won more than $50 million from the company and its suppliers. Reverberations from the event rippled across the fast-food industry.

In the aftermath, Theno says, Jack in the Box asked him to build a food safety program that would "set a new (industry) standard."

Today, most fast-food companies and premium grocery chains have safety programs built on the same pillars Theno set up at Jack in the Box: frequent sampling requirements, tight limits on indicator bacteria, and zero tolerance for dangerous pathogens.

Food safety officials from fast-food chains and other big beef buyers share ideas and information about their programs, says Dane Bernard, vice president for food safety at Keystone Foods, a ground beef supplier to McDonald's. "Our testing programs are constantly evolving. We watch the science closely."

Raising the bar

The AMS could "very easily" raise the standards for federally purchased school lunch meat, says Barry Carpenter, a former AMS official who helped set up the current sampling and testing requirements in 2000. "If I was still at AMS, I'd say, 'Where are we (with today's rules) and where do we need to tighten them?' "

Carpenter, now head of the National Meat Association, notes that raising AMS standards "wouldn't cost much," and it would help combat perceptions that the school lunch program is "a market of last resort" for meat that can't pass muster with commercial buyers.

That perception could be reinforced by the reality of how AMS makes its purchasing decision: Contracts go to the lowest qualified bidders. Orders are placed on a computer system that can be accessed by all of the agency's suppliers — those certified as able to meet the special sampling and testing requirements set for school lunch food. When an order is placed, suppliers enter bids into the system, and the computer automatically awards contracts to low bidders.

Industry experts say tougher standards would not significantly add to the agency's costs for school meat. Theno says the safety requirements set by Jack in the Box added less than a penny a pound to its beef costs. Other big buyers outside the school program say it's a worthwhile investment in safety.

"It's not about transactional cost; it's about value," says Justin Malvick, a vice president at Keystone, the McDonald's supplier.

Carpenter says the meat industry that he now represents would have no problem with a decision to modernize — and toughen — AMS standards for school lunch meat.

Most major beef suppliers and processors already have procedures in place to ensure that their products can satisfy the tougher sampling and testing requirements set by many commercial buyers, he adds. If the AMS followed, he says, "I don't think the industry would have any hiccup at all."

Some lawmakers say a change is overdue. "Why are we even looking at giving (schools) … food that wouldn't be accepted by a restaurant?," asks Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. "That's absolutely crazy."

Contributing: Elizabeth Weise

Berry Urges Need for Local Economies of Farming and Forestry

Berry Urges Need for Local Economies of Farming and Forestry

December 7, 2009 — Speaking at the University of Virginia on Dec. 3, Wendell Berry, a poet and writer with a small farm in Kentucky, decried the industrialization of farming, forestry and mining that he said has damaged land and forest ecosystems and destroyed communities. He warned the present industrial systems cannot last.

An overflow crowd of more than 200 filled the auditorium of the Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature and Culture/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library to hear Berry's lecture, "Simple Solutions, Package Deals and a 50-Year Farm Bill." An estimated 200 more outside the library had to be turned away.

"Land, water and air cannot be healthful apart from a healthful human economy," said Berry, the author of more than 40 books, from poetry to essays on environmental topics such as the local food movement.

"It is becoming harder to remember – especially, it seems, for most economists – that our lives depend upon the economies of land use, and that the land-using economies depend, in turn, on the ecosphere."

He argued that too often we look for simple solutions instead of thinking about the consequences of choices.

"We like to believe that all choices are simple, as between an obvious good and an obvious evil. ... But in the economies of land use there are no simple choices and consequences that do not ramify perhaps endlessly," he said.

"The same interests and forces that have brought about our centralized, long-distance agricultural economy have also brought about a centralized, long-distance forest economy. The economic principle is everywhere the same: a domestic colonialism that extracts an immense wealth from our rural landscapes, returning as near nothing as possible ... or worse than nothing," said Berry, whose visit was sponsored by the Brown College Visiting Environmental Writers and Scholars Lecture Series.

Money doesn't produce goods, and consumption is not "as vital an economic activity as production," he said.

"We tolerate fabulous capitalists who think a bet on a debt is an asset."

Recent changes toward local economies are taking place because of individuals' and communities' decisions, not from top political leadership, Wall Street or the media, he noted.

"Given the growing demand for local food, and the increasing numbers of farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture farms, it is becoming possible to imagine the development of local farm and food economies in which communities and localities produce, process, market and consume local farm products, marketing any surpluses to outside demand," he said.

When communities primarily export local raw materials, they lose the jobs that would go with manufacturing the raw materials. It forces young people to move to where the jobs are, hence destroying the communities, he said.

He also pointed out that making the economy local would make it diverse. People would establish small businesses to take care of local needs, including those of farmers.

"If we attempt to make our versatile landscapes as responsive as possible to the diversity of local needs, then we would be solving, not one, but many problems," he said, mentioning the agrarian ideal of Thomas Jefferson.

Local economies promise "not luxury or extravagance for a few, but a modest, decent, sustainable prosperity for many. I doubt it would produce one billionaire," he said.

"We don't have to be consenting victims of agribusiness-as-usual," Berry said, describing a plan the Land Institute has proposed to the U.S. secretary of agriculture: a 50-year farm bill. The proposal would help restore health to the soil and land, and eventually farm communities, by increasing the acreage of perennial plants to produce pastures, forage crops and, in 10 years, grain crops.

Replacing annual monoculture farming of crops like corn and soybeans with perennial grasses and legumes would make the soil healthier, he said.

"It would take cattle, hogs and poultry out of the animal factories and put them back on farms, where they belong," Berry said. "Diversification would tend to reduce the size and increase the number of farms; it would bring more people into agriculture, where at least some of them belong."

He said he worried about how to get more people – "skilled in physical work, who have workable minds" – to choose farming and living in small communities. He would not want to see continued dependence on migrant workers. The "settled families" in communities should include "people of any race or origin who are willing to accept the actual responsibilities and do the actual work that go with the ownership and good use of land. The people who do the land's work should own the land."

The Brown College spring lineup of writers includes: Michael Lundblad (Feb. 4), an assistant professor of English at Colorado State University and director of animality studies, an interdisciplinary approach to studying the animal nature of humans and the cultural and literary treatment of animals; Rebecca Solnit (Feb. 23-26), a contributing editor at Orion Magazine and best-selling author of 10 books of essays, among them her latest, "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster"; and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder (April 13-14), whose writing blends nature, America's native past and Zen Buddhism.

— By Anne Bromley