The session, titled “Food Safety: Best Practices for Farmers Markets and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)” was listed on the schedule in both Spanish and English, and translators interpreted for several people in the audience. Participants heard recommendations for direct selling on the farm, at farmers’ markets and through community-supported agriculture subscriptions.

“We want your farms to be safe, not just for your customers but for you, too,” Diane Eggert of the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York, told the group. “Because we don’t want you to lose revenue.”

“These recommendations are good for food safety, but they’re good marketing, too,” said Amanda Rae Root from Jefferson County Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE). “If you show that you care about food safety, that will reflect well on you.”

With funding from a USDA Agriculture Marketing Service grant, The Farmers’ Market Federation and Jefferson County CCE spent a year developing the curriculum and sought input from a committee that included Betsy Bihn, the National GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) administrator, John Lukor from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Food Safety Division, market managers, and other business community members with a vested interest in the success of farm retailing.

The training curriculum that resulted — Food Safety Recommendations for Farm Direct Marketing Activities — addresses food safety issues in agritourism, on farm sales, farmers markets, and CSAs and covers as many different direct marketing configurations as possible: u-pick, farm stands and farmers markets. All aspects of operations are reviewed, from storage to display; crisis communication tips are also included.

The authors say the recommendations are based on sound science, and compliant with state and federal regulations. Produce handling recommendations follow GAPs guidelines. Overall, the goal was to make the advice farmer friendly, so that people can easily incorporate the principles into their operations.

The Farmers’ Market Federation began distributing materials in December, hosting two webinars advertised on the national listserv for the Farmers Market Coalition, and other portals, such as the national eXtension website. People from surrounding states, and western and southern states, too, have participated in the webinars or shown interest in the recommendations.

Eggert and Root have also conducted workshops for extension agents in the state of New York, and plan a few more.

“We want you to use these guidelines as a tool in analyzing your own operation,” Eggert said. As an example, she said the recommendations suggest farmers markets exclude dogs. However, because markets need to look at their individual communities and do what is best for them, banning dogs might not be the best strategy in a dog-loving community.

At the workshop, talk of personal hygiene, and how consumers connect the seller to the food, naturally led to a discussion on consumer hygiene.

“How do you prevent contamination from your consumers?” asked Eggert. “You don’t want to discourage people from interacting with your food, but be vigilant. Watch your table. Watch your product. If you notice somebody with filthy hands pawing through your peppers, maybe remove the fruit and wash it.”

Other topics of discussion included tents or canopies to minimize risk from birds, and the potential for cross-contamination in locations that sell both produce and meat. Posting information for the safe handling of foods at home was also recommended.

Regarding farm stores, the recommendations state that foods should be stored off the floor, and light fixtures should be covered to protect food in case a bulb bursts.

“Look around your building and think very critically,” advised Eggert. “What are the sources of problems, and how can I minimize risk?”

Being aware of potential hazards and how to address them is the goal. Specific examples include: Don’t reuse bags from the grocery store when packing customer’s produce at the stand or stall; the bags could contaminate your goods. When packing boxes for CSA shares, segregate potentially hazardous foods, and keep boxes covered. CSA drop off locations should be protected from weather, and farmers should consider including a clause in the season’s agreement so that the customer provides a cool spot for safe delivery of food.

Bathroom facilities are an issue, especially for farmers markets. “Deny people the opportunity to use the bathroom and they’re going to leave. Especially if they have little kids,” said Eggert. So providing hand-washing stations should be a consideration.

Food sampling and cooking demonstrations are regulated at many levels, Root said, so check with local and state health departments to make sure you know what’s expected.

As far as sharing recipes and information on food preparation, Eggert noted that you assume responsibility for whatever you provide. Rather than offering advice on canning techniques, it may be best to refer customers to the Cooperative Extension service or a professional. Recipes for preparing meats should follow either state or federal safe-cooking temperature guidelines, which Eggert noted can vary.

A farmer in the audience took issue with this. He sells grass-fed meats, which he tells customers to cook to 135° F. However, the USDA says the safe cooking temperature for beef steaks and roasts is 145° F (and 160° F for ground beef.)

“Do I recommend my customers cook according to USDA, or according to how grass-fed beef should be handled?” he asked. “I lose a customer if the food is overcooked.”

“So put a disclaimer on it if you want to use that” lower temperature, Eggert replied. “But if a customer gets sick and they decide it was because of your recommendation, that comes back to you.”

One farmer expressed concern that too much of the food-safety burden falls on a producer’s shoulders, and asked, “Why should we have to tell adults to put food in the fridge?”

“These are suggestions we give you,” Eggert responded. “You’re right, we do put too much responsibility on us. Think about what you can do for yourself and your customers.”

Some participants asked if the Farmers’ Market Federation conducts informal inspections, and were referred to their local extension agents. They were told that if extension agents don’t provide the service, they could likely recommend someone who does.

People voiced fears that regulations would eventually hamper their ability to conduct business.

“Regulations are going to happen,” Eggert said, adding that the food-safety training might avoid the need for rules that are burdensome.

The Food Safety Training Curriculum is available on the website for the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York. The material is free, but a name and email address must be submitted to access it.

“I was surprised to hear that it affected growers as far north as Burlington, (Vermont),” said Courtens, whose farm runs on a community supported agriculture (CSA) subscription model and serves 1,100 members in New York City and upstate New York.

Courtens feels fortunate in the aftermath, yet the 300-acre Roxbury Farm has lost a lot of food, with no crop insurance to cover it. The farm’s fields are half upland and half lowland, and many of the lower fields flooded. Even food from the lower, unflooded fields is lost. 

“The advice is to destroy any food that came in contact with floodwater.  We’re going to follow that advice, even the stuff (on the lower areas) that wasn’t flooded, we’re calling it condemned,” he said because “you have to go through contaminated fields to get to them.”

This scene is being repeated throughout the path of the storm, which flattened cornfields, waterlogged pumpkins and squash, and knocked fruit to the ground. Crops that were nearing fall harvest are now submerged, or have been submerged, in floodwaters that could possibly contain pathogens and toxins. The uncertainty alone creates food safety concerns.

“We don’t really know much about the microbiological quality of the waters,” said John E. Rushing, who is retired from the Food Sciences Department at North Carolina State University. “We also don’t know what has washed onto the land.  Is it pesticides from a cotton crop?”

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, floodwater can carry sewage, chemicals, heavy metals, pathogenic microorganisms or other contaminants. The  FDA’s notice on handling food from flooded fields explains:

“If the edible portion of a crop is exposed to flood waters, it is considered adulterated and should not enter human food channels. There is no practical method of reconditioning the edible portion of a crop that will provide a reasonable assurance of human food safety.”

Extension agents are assembling information and distributing fact sheets on food safety advice, like the one for home gardeners from the University of Wisconsin-Extension, “Safety Using Produce from Flooded Gardens.”

Ginger Nickerson works on extension at University of Vermont, and her advice for commercial growers is being circulated to farmers in that state and surrounding states as well. One guideline:  “Leave a 30-foot buffer between flooded areas of fields and adjacent areas to be harvested for human consumption; this is to accommodate a generous turn-around distance for equipment to prevent contact with flooded soil and avoid cross-contamination of non-flooded ground.”

Other recommendations include wearing protective clothing in flooded areas, and not feeding livestock crops that came in contact with floodwaters because “the plants could have pesticides, pathogens, mycotoxins or other contaminants.”

Steve Reiners, associate professor at Cornell University, put together “Dealing with Flooded Vegetable Fields,” which deals with plant survival under water and flooding and soil fertility, as well as flooding and food safety.

“There are two types of flooding,” wrote Reiners. “The first is more typical and occurs after a heavy downpour when fields become saturated and water pools on the soil surface.  This type of flooding can reduce yields and even kill plants but usually will not result in contamination of produce with human pathogens.” 

The second type of flooding, from rising creeks and rising rivers rather than a deluge of rainwater, is affecting many farmers in the aftermath of Irene, although some farms might be dealing with both types of storm water.

“Unless you are absolutely sure that flooding is not from streams and surface water, do not use fruits and vegetables that were at or near harvest at the time of flooding,” he writes.

He notes that produce that such as melons, eggplant, sweet corn, or winter squash may be contaminated on the surface, but for melons “this is a major concern as pathogens on the surface are moved to the edible part as the product is sliced and eaten raw.”

Reiners details how to properly wash produce to reduce post-harvest losses. But he adds says vegetables that have come in contact with stream and river overflows should not be harvested or consumed, adding that, “Chlorinated wash water will not eliminate likely human pathogens on their surface.”

Each farmer has several different assessments to make based on fields, water and the type of crop. These assessments are informed, at times, by consulting with extension agents.  Some farmers also have training as part of certification for the Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) Program.

“With the food safety emphasis that’s been going on, some of them have been through trainings and have a much better idea of what risk assessment looks like from a food safety perspective,” noted Elizabeth Bihn, coordinator for the National GAPs program, and a Senior Extension Associate at Cornell.

Ginger Nickerson, in addition to her work at cooperative extension, is an outreach coordinator for GAPs, and finds her outreach work in this crisis dovetailing with other GAPs efforts.

“Even though not all of the growers in the state are GAPs-certified,” she said, “they’re all wondering what do I need to do to handle my crops appropriately in this situation.”

In many cases in Vermont, Nickerson said, the water did not touch the edible parts of the plant, or the edible part of the plant hadn’t yet emerged.  These foods will likely be edible and saleable.  

Still, Vernon Grubinger, also of University of Vermont’s extension, estimated the total loss at millions statewide.  “Few growers have insurance,” he noted.

Farmers are being encouraged to document and report damage to the Farm Service Agency, regardless of whether they have insurance.  The information is being collected in case it may be possible to gather emergency grants or loans.

Bihn said she didn’t yet have a clear picture of the extent of the damage. 

“I know where I’m getting questions from, and I know where we’ve heard reports (about) flooding, but I don’t have in my head who exactly is affected,” she said.  She is hearing mostly from extension agents, who are fielding questions from farmers. “In the next week or so I think I will have a better handle on exactly who and how many people are underwater, and what crops are most affected.” 

Asked to comment on flooding and food safety, she said, “The flooding does represent risk, and understanding where the risks are coming from, whether they be microbial or chemical.” While it’s important to assess that risk, she said to have such a storm inundate fields is simply “awful.” 

“All the time, all the energy, all the seed, all the protective sprays,” continued Bihn. “To lose it in the end is awful.
“

Wash produce in cool running water, advises Laura McDermott, agricultural specialist who works in the Small Fruit and Vegetable Program with Cornell Cooperative Extension in upstate New York.

“Keeping produce in a cooler for an extended period of time is probably not a good idea,” she said. “The quality is going to be much better if it goes straight in the refrigerator.”

Bruised and pierced fruits and vegetables can harbor bacteria. Common sense applies – send those wilted and yellowed greens to the compost pile, not the salad bowl.

Cooperative extension offices around the country are now in high gear, educating people about gardening and home food preparation. Master gardeners and master food preservers are setting up tables at county fairs and weekend festivals, distributing literature and doing demonstrations. Daily newspapers and rural advertising circulars run articles from extension advising on gardening food safety, and publicizing classes on canning offered at extension offices.

Many fact sheets are available from extension online, offering guidance on all stages of the food process. One topic covered is the application of manure and compost. Some advice follows the details outlined in GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices), measures that farmers are encouraged and sometimes mandated by retailers to adopt.

The cooperative extension arm of Washington State University has a good web resource summarizing the pathogen risks of manure use and how to avoid contamination. Allowing 120 days between the application of raw manure and harvest on root crops, leafy greens and strawberries is advised, and 90 days for other crops.  Aged – meaning year-old – manure should be used at least 60 days prior to harvest.  “Never apply fresh manure after the garden is planted,” states the site.

“I definitely would encourage home gardeners not to use compost tea,” adds Laura McDermott, who now works with commercial growers but helped home gardeners for years.  “In many home compost situations the temperature does not get high enough to kill off organisms. When you add water to possibly not heat-treated compost, you have a really good environment for pathogens.” Compost tea is tricky because it is applied, at times, to the leaves of plants.  If those leaves are edible and commonly eaten raw, like spinach, you’ve got a recipe for potential illness.

When in doubt about the safety of your compost, leave it out.  Pet manure should not be used on food gardens, and neither should pig waste.

These issues are generally covered in composting and vegetable gardening classes, and surface in individual calls to extension during the growing season. Generally, extension offices have a food safety hotline — it might be just an answering machine, but workers will return calls quickly — open to field food preservation questions. 

Facebook is another tool people are using to get out the word about home food safety.  The Master Food Preservers Alliance of Lane County, Oregon has a broad following on Facebook.

This alliance formed when funding for the Master Food Preserver program was cut from the county extension budget.

“Eugene is a very foodie place,” said Laura Hinrichs, who is organizing efforts. (Eugene is the largest city in the county.) “We have a lot of people who are interested in food, buying and growing and preserving. We have public functions at least once a month, sometimes more.”

Volunteers who were certified Master Food Preservers urged the university to give them an extension staff to oversee their efforts, and their call was answered. Agent Nellie Oehlar came back from retirement to work one day a week with the volunteers, who also do demonstrations on how to use foods available at food banks and pantries.

During canning season, once a month these volunteers are at the county extension offices, selling pectin and checking gauges on pressure canners. Word of mouth is one way news of these dates travels – another way is Facebook.

A particular food safety matter at this time of year, as people harvest garlic crops, is garlic in oil.

Fred Breidt, USDA/ARS Microbiologist at North Carolina, recalls an early television cook advising people to put raw garlic in olive oil and leave it at room temperature.

“It made big news later because basically that’s a recipe for botulism,” he said.  “If you don’t refrigerate the stuff you can have problems, and even if you do it’s like Russian roulette.”

Chopped garlic in oil is a common supermarket product. The difference is the garlic is acidified prior to being put in oil. Manufacturers take the garlic and soak it in phosphoric acid, or citric acid. The goal is to get the ph below 4.6, where the organism that causes botulism — Clostridium botulinum — can’t grow.    

“Without doing that first, you have the garlic clove underneath the oil, where there’s no air, no oxygen, and the botulism only grows when there’s not oxygen,” said Breidt. “If there happens to be a spore of this Clostridium botulinum present, in or on the garlic clove, it can possibly germinate and grow, and when it germinates and grows it produces a deadly neurotoxin, which can kill you even in very, very tiny amounts.”

Botulism poisoning is also of concern in home canning, especially low-acid foods. Green beans, for instance, must be canned in a pressure cooker because the high-pressure steam is needed to kill the spores. 

“Anything you’re going to put inside of a sealed jar where there’s no oxygen, you have to be very careful about,” said Breidt. “Canned green beans have caused a lot of problems for people, because they don’t kill their spores with processing. They end up storing them at room temperature for long periods of time. Eventually spores germinate, it only takes one, really. If a ph is above 4.6, if there’s no air, if there’s water, if there’s nutrients — look out.”

These spores are everywhere in the world, Breidt notes.  

“We eat them all the time,” he said. “And it doesn’t hurt to eat them.They’re not going to grow in our intestinal tract because all the bacteria there keep that from happening.”

However, if the botulism toxin develops before you eat a food, gut bacteria offer no protection. For that reason, potatoes baked in foil – homegrown or store bought – can pose problems.

“If you wrap a potato in foil and bake it, and you pull it out of the oven, and stick it on the counter and leave it there for a couple days, you have a potential botulism incubator,” said Breidt. 

The spore could be on or inside the potato, pushed in by a puncture or a bug bite. Oven temperatures don’t push the internal temperature of the potato high enough to kill the spores.

“Put
it in the fridge as soon a
s possible with the foil open,” elaborated Fletcher Arritt, who works with Extension at North Carolina State University. “The foil not only is conducive to an anaerobic environment but it also insulates and slows cooling. Also, cutting the potato open will help to more rapidly cool and help in preventing an anaerobic environment.”

The potato doesn’t need to cool before it goes into the refrigerator.

As reported earlier, cattle and pork producers are not pleased about the agreement, with the National Pork Producer’s Council saying such proposal would take away “producers’ freedom to operate in a way that’s best for their animals …”

Some animal welfare groups and their volunteers are delighted at the prospect of change.

High schooler Kitty Jones had gathered more than 10,000 signatures to get an initiative on the Washington state ballot that would have kept hens out of stacked or confining cages. The Yes On 1130 campaign attracted the largest number of signatures ever collected in any HSUS project, according to Paul Shapiro, director of the national Humane Society’s Farm Animal Protection. In remarks posted on the organization’s website, Jones said she was “indescribably proud” of the impact of what has happened.

David Shirk, a fellow volunteer, agreed. “I think it’s amazing,” he said. “We all thought we working to help just six and a half million animals and we ended up getting the chance to help all of the egg laying hens in the entire country.”

Those hens number 280 million, and their welfare has been the focus of other groups, too.  The ASPCA and The Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association supported the now abandoned ballot initiative in Washington, and there was veterinary endorsement for a similar  ballot initiative in Oregon.

Both of those measures sought greater freedoms for laying hens than laws passed this year by the Oregon and Washington state legislatures.

The Oregon Humane Society, which is distinct from the national group, was actually at odds with the planned Oregon initiative, which was supported by HSUS.  The Oregon Humane Society worked hard for SB 805, which HSUS said did not go far enough. The measure’s critics saw it as too weak on the industry for a variety of reasons, such as exemptions for liquid and dried egg products.

Now, Sharon Harmon of the Oregon Humane Society is cautiously optimistic about the national agreement, calling it a great start. The goal for it to become federal law in 2011 is ambitious, she notes, and if the proposed standards become law later than this year, that will delay the timeline for implementation of the new law in Oregon.

“Hopefully this provision for all finished egg products will survive the federal law-making process,” continued Harmon.  “We did not feel our bill would succeed with these products regulated under the welfare standards, given the influence of the food product industry.”

Compassion Over Killing (COK) is another animal rights group that saluted the agreement.  COK has fought for better conditions for animals since 1995; their efforts for laying hens include battles over labeling.

“If it’s enacted, it will be the first time there will be federal legislation for animals raised for food while living on the farm,” said Erica Meier, director. “And another really important component of the agreement is mandatory labeling.  When consumers go to the grocery store they are bombarded with phrases and imagery.  For example, you’ll often (see an image of) a laying hen on a nest, and this is far-fetched from the reality of the situation.  We’re glad to see that mandatory labeling, in addition to standards for care — this is a very good step forward.”

COK’s on-farm investigations into claims of “Animal Care Certified” — a term printed on UEP egg cartons — led to filing a federal-rulemaking petition with the FDA, USDA, and FTC.  In the fall of 2006, the FTC ruled that UEP could no longer use the term.  However, the phrasing still appears.

Labeling is addressed in the landmark agreement between UEP and HSUS, mandating labeling for all shell and liquid egg cartons nationwide.  While some critics of the agreement are dubious of the ability to pass uniform regulations, given the current government climate, when and if the agreement results in legislation, ironing out the definition and terms for labeling is going to remain a tricky issue.

Understanding egg cartons in supermarkets already requires significant deciphering.  There’s at least one app for that, provided by the World Society for the Protection of Animals. (Eggs are just one food the Eat Humane app decodes.)

Animal rights groups aren’t the only ones paying attention to laying hens. Researchers, both government and industry funded scientists, are studying a variety of housing options.

The HSUS-UEP agreement will phase in so-called enriched cages over 15 years.  Enriched cages, also called colony or furnished cages, give birds more room than the industry standard barren battery cages now in use, but are still confinement systems.

The average commercial laying hen now has 67 square inches, or less than the size of a sheet of paper. Battery cages have been the standard shape for hen housing since the 1950s. Cages are generally two feet by two feet, and home to many birds.

There is not universal agreement among those who study hens and the egg industry that any hen housing system is the preferred method, for either bird health or food safety.

“There’s a lot of conflicting information out there in regards to the level of Salmonella contamination risk in birds that are laying eggs in cage-free systems,” said Candace Croney, of the Ohio State University School of Veterinary Medicine. “One of the concerns of many of our animal health experts and the folks who are involved in egg production is we don’t want to be necessarily committing a large percentage to cage-free systems if we’re not really clear what the risks are in terms of Salmonella and other forms of contamination both for the birds and their products.”

Until now, most of the research on cage-free and alternative hen housing situations has been conducted in Europe.

“Many of those systems are inadequately tested in the United States,” Croney continued.  “Several of the animal activist groups will say that’s just an excuse not to do anything different, but there are genuine concerns there.” 

One issue Croney identified is evidence of broken bones in birds housed in aviaries, where the birds have freedom to fly up and down.  Another issue is that in an uncaged system, birds come in contact with fecal matter on the floor, and so do eggs.

“One of the big factors for putting birds in cages in the first place was to get them off the ground and away from their feces,” said Peter Holt, recently retired from the USDA ARS Experiment Station in Watkinsville, GA. “This helped to reduce a number of infectious disease problems.  Some recent studies have shown an increase in bird mortality and disease in ground-raised birds.  Interestingly, this did not seem to include Salmonella.  I think the jury is still out on this issue.”

Holt, whose opinions do not represent the USDA or the Agricultural Research Service, is pleased by the collaboration between UEP and HSUS.  However, in an email exchange prior to the announcement, he said he felt that alternatives to battery cages were being pursued before there’s a clear understanding of what is best for animal welfare and food safety.

One of the projects underwa
y in Georgia is a four-yea
r study of alternative housing systems for laying hens.  Three 50,000 bird houses – traditional, furnished and aviary – are being evaluated for bird welfare, environmental impact and food safety.

Last year’s Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting identified the social sustainability of egg production as an emerging issue, and four papers presented at the meeting are available on the group’s website.  One white paper studied the impact of different housing systems on egg safety and quality, but did not come up with a conclusive recommendation beyond calling for the egg industry and government to provide resources to study the implications of the various housing options.

Patricia Hester from the Department of Animal Sciences at Purdue was part of a group that worked on a paper on hen welfare in different housing systems.

“The review of past science shows that conventional cages, enriched colony housing units (enriched cages), non-cage systems, and outdoor systems for egg laying hens each have their advantages and disadvantages,” said Hester.  “There is no perfect housing system for laying hens.”

Hester noted that the egg industry is proactive in evaluating alternatives to conventional cages, pointing to a website that shows a live view of hens in enriched colony housing units at JS West and Companies.

A commercial scale study of alternative hen housing systems is underway to try to generate some data.  The Center for Food Integrity is facilitating the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply.  Food industry giants such as UEP, McDonald’s, Bob Evans, Sysco and others are teaming up with universities, including Michigan State and University of California-Davis.

They are studying  cage-free, enriched, and battery cages with regard to hen health, food safety, worker safety, the environment and also, food affordability.

So can one’s nose be trusted to detect whether food is good or bad?  

“It’s a learned response to know whether food is spoiled,” said Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation.  “Does cheese smell so bad because it’s spoiled or is that the way cheese is supposed to smell?”

Food authority Harold McGee concurs, writing in his book “On Food and Cooking” that, “our attitude toward smells and tastes is molded by social custom, opportunity, and often private associations with pleasant or painful moments.  Even our disgust at rotting food, which would have a protective advantage, appears to be learned at some point in childhood — how or why remains mysterious — and is not shared by our mammalian relatives.”

Three or four percent of our genes, Hirsch notes, are related to smell.  The amount is indicative of the importance of smell to the evolution of our species.  

“We had to be able to smell if food was bad or not.  Otherwise we would get sick and die from it,” said Hirsch.

Smell is one of the senses that people who source their food from Dumpsters and call themselves Freegans rely on when deciding what might make a meal and what is truly waste.

That may sound extreme, but prior to the 1998 implementation of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system, U.S.Department of Agriculture officials used the “poke and sniff” method in slaughterhouses to investigate the meat being handled.

The senses can discern some obvious signs of decay. 

“Food spoilage organisms including yeasts, molds and bacteria can give off odors warning you that they are present. While food spoilage organisms are not harmful to consume, they do change the quality of the food in such a way that makes it very unappetizing,” said Carol Schlitt of Safe & Savory Solutions.  Off flavors or colors, slimy coatings and fuzzy mold can warn of more dangerous bacteria that you can’t see, taste or smell.

But our senses are not equipped to detect pathogenic bacteria, hence the abandonment of the “poke and sniff” method.  These changes to the USDA’s meat monitoring practices followed E. coli outbreaks in the early 1990s, yet a fail-safe system is not in place.  Thus USDA inspected meat was traced to a March salmonella outbreak found in sausage served at a fundraising breakfast in Thurmont, Maryland.  The salmonella was undetectable to those who cooked, served or ate the contaminated food.

That’s not to say we should disregard the input we receive from our noses.  People who have lost their sense of smell face a higher risk of food poisoning, often requiring hospitalization. Beyond safety measures, the nose is vital to our experience of taste.  Ninety percent of our sense of taste is smell.  

“It’s retronasal smell,” explained Dr. Hirsch.  “Smells come in through the mouth go to the back of the throat and the top of the nose.  This retronasal smell is what people call taste.”

The nose’s receptor cells transmit information directly to the olfactory bulb, which is part of the brain’s limbic system.  The limbic system processes emotions, and explains the deep connection between memories and scents.  The proximity might also explain the strong feelings provoked by odorous foods.  Limburger cheese or lutefisk could dissolve otherwise solid marriages.    

In the case of fermented foods, how can you tell if powerful odors mean danger?  This question occurs to people who are experimenting with fermenting foods at home, a habit that is becoming popular as more people explore home food production.  Many learn the process through the tutelage of fermentation expert Sandor Katz, who teaches and has written books on the topic.

“There’s fresh food and there’s rotten food, but in between there is food which has been preserved,” said Katz.  “In the case of fermentation that preservation involves some of the same kinds of biomolecules that appear when something is rotting.”

Fermented foods exist along a continuum, Katz explained.  Many fermented foods that are fine at some stage of their development, may become unappealing, if the process of fermentation is left uninterrupted.

“Bacteria exist in succession,” he said.  “So sometimes in a later succession you could get more putrefying bacteria rather than acidifying bacteria.  There is a large amount of cultural subjectivity, cultural relativism that exists in terms of what people deem appropriate to put in their mouths.”

That subjectivity is part and parcel with acculturation to certain foods, such as fish aged for months in pits in the Arctic.  While people who have grown up eating this food develop the microbes in their digestive tract to tolerate it, outsiders may grow ill from eating it.  Does that mean the food is poisonous?  Not quite.

The process of fermenting vegetables involves using salt to facilitate the production of lactic acid.  Salted cabbage produces its own brine, while other vegetables, such as cucumbers, are placed in a brine solution. The acidification functions as a safety mechanism.  The lactic acid bacteria acidify the vegetables and their environment, making it impossible for other bacteria to survive.  

Katz said that because of this, fermented vegetables are safer than raw vegetables.  Fred Breidt, of the USDA’s Food Science Research Unit at North Carolina State University, has studied this issue and recently published a paper on the survival of E. coli 0157 in cucumber fermentation brines.  

“The presence of live growing cells of lactic acid bacteria, which are the ones that ferment pickles and cheese and a lot of things, actually in competition cause E. coli to die off rather quickly, because they produce things other than just the acid, that’s in the fermented foods,” said Breidt.  “Lactic acid bacteria are highly efficient killers of other bacteria, and they do a marvelous job. This is why vegetable fermentations pretty much always works.  It’s been working for thousands of years.  It’s one of the oldest technologies known to man and it always works, and the reason is these lactic acid bacteria are very good at what they do, and we take advantage of that as a technology.”

Breidt’s paper was number 373 produced at the research station, which has been studying fermentation and acidifying vegetables since the 1930s.  All of their published research is available at http://ncsu.edu/foodscience/USDAARS/html/Fflbiblio1.htm.

There are no known cases of people getting ill from properly fermented products, said Breidt.  The risk of people making themselves ill from home fermenting vegetables is pretty low.  He advised people to get a recipe from their extension office or from a book in the public library.  

Still, a book or even a how to video won’t tell you when to be in doubt of your hom
emade sauerkraut. 

“If you have putrefying bacteria developing rather than acidifying bacteria, you can smell that, it smells horrible.  But if you have botulism in your canned string beans there’s no way to taste that,” Katz said.  “I would never say don’t trust your nose, because anyone who gets involved in the arts of fermentation, up to a degree, has to trust their nose — because you can smell when it’s going to the right direction and when it’s going in the wrong direction.”

The law became effective in January 2006, but producers were given a year to get equipment ready to be in compliance by January 2007.

The cider industry in New York has now been operating under these rules for five years, enough time to offer a window into how broad food safety regulations affect small processors and farmers.

First, a bit of background on raw juices. The practice of using “drops,” apples that have fallen from the tree and are harvested from the ground, had been common in cider-making before it was understood that dangerous bacteria like E. coli could survive in acidic juices. The low pH of apple and even orange juice was once assumed to protect against the presence or growth of pathogens.

Then, in 1996, E. coli-tainted, unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice caused one death and 66 illnesses, including 14 cases of the potentially lethal complication that attacks the kidneys — hemolytic uremic syndrome. By 1999, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required labels on raw fruit and vegetable juices, warning that the product was not pasteurized and could contain bacteria that could be harmful, especially to children, the elderly or people with weakened immune systems.

The FDA continued to consider requiring pasteurization but stopped short of that, and in 2005 published guidance to help processors achieve a mandatory 5-log reduction of pathogens in juices.

These requirements for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems to identify food safety hazards and reduce pathogens did not, however, extend to all producers. The warning label remained sufficient for cider producers selling directly to customers. New York’s legislation was the first and only to mandate pasteurization for all apple cider made in the state.

“For our board of directors at the time it was a unanimous decision, and a fairly easy one, to support mandatory pasteurization.  We felt that our industry would be otherwise too vulnerable if an outbreak were to occur from unpasteurized cider.  It would injure our industry and cost us consumer confidence and sales,” said Peter Gregg, spokesman for the New York Apple Association.

New York has 700 apple growers and about 200 cider makers, according to the New York State Apple Association. The state’s Department of Agriculture & Markets has different figures, however, and currently counts only 120 licensed cider producers.

Apple growers know well the damage food safety concerns can do to sales. The 1989 Alar scare dampened demand for apples and apple juice for years.

Still, this did not make the industry-driven move to mandate pasteurization universally popular.  Small producers, such as Jim Perry of Perry’s Orchards, thought that purchasing equipment for either pasteurization or ultraviolet treatment would be too expensive.  Prices for small ultraviolet processing units range from $10-15,000.  Small pasteurization units can cost $30,0000.

Perry started a petition against the proposal. Although he received editorial support for his stance from The Bennington Banner, a newspaper across the border in Vermont, his efforts against the mandate were unsuccessful.

Opponents also claimed that taste and nutrition would be negatively impacted by pasteurization, but the cost of compliance was the main reason farmers stopped making cider after the legislation passed.

Stetkar Orchards in Saratoga Springs was one of those.

After the farm could no longer market unpasteurized cider — a very popular item at its small store on site — its income dropped drastically, said Justin Clough, who took over the farm from his grandparents.

Clough said five of the farm’s 115 acres are orchards. While the family still retails apples, squash and pumpkins, Clough is looking for another way to sell apples that will provide income comparable to what the cider brought in without a significant investment in equipment.

For others, the investment was worth it.

“When the FDA first initiated pasteurization requirements, we were among the first to decide that (in) the cost-benefit analysis, we had to move into pasteurization,” said Mark Nicholson of Red Jacket Orchards, a fruit farm of 600-acres, half of which is devoted to apples.  “Our legislature voted on the side of protecting the consumer, and had enough support in the industry to do that. I think that’s what legislators are paid to balance, the economic question versus the public safety.”

Red Jacket handles fruit in a recently built 23,000 square-foot processing facility, and produces about a million gallons of juice a year. An early adopter of flash pasteurization, the company had long been pasteurizing by the time of the mandate, Nicholson said. At the same time, he acknowledges that cost is a barrier.

“We started as small producers,” noted Nicholson, who runs a third-generation operation.  “On the grand scheme of things we’re on the smaller side, so we understand that any additional cost and legislation is a challenge for small producers.  But at the same time, when you’re talking about something as dangerous as foodborne pathogens that are risks in our products, then it just seems hard to me to comprehend not making the investment to guarantee that the product is safe.”

Michigan, another state that ranks high in cider production, decided to educate, rather than legislate, after the 2004 outbreak in New York. Jim Koan of Almar Orchards in Flushing recalls the era.

“I was already pasteurizing, but I was concerned that small volume people couldn’t afford the pasteurizer,” said Koan, who helped form the Cider Makers Guild to give voice to small-scale producers.  “We need to get a lot of different styles of cider, and a lot of that beverage out there for people to sample.  We need all those ambassadors out there making cider and selling it at farmers markets and roadside stands, we can’t afford to lose any cider makers.  They’re all good for the apple industry.”

As New York considered a mandate, members of the Cider Makers Guild, the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Michigan State University, and the Michigan Apple Association considered their options.

“What everybody in the group ended up saying was, there’s no silver bullet to this,” said Denise Donohue, director of the Michigan Apple Association. Pasteurization, she said, would not have remedied all the problems that led to the outbreak in Peru, where apples were stored outside prior to pressing, and birds were flying in and out of the area where empty bottles were being held.

“We wanted something much more comprehensive,” said Donohue.

The industry already had, in the late 1990s, put together a Cider Safety Task Force, which worked with the Michigan Department of Agrigulture and came up with Good Manufacturing Practices to address safety in cider. The 2004 outbreak in New York inspired the Cider Safety Task Force to meet again to update and strengthen their GMPs.

“There’re 50 different points that when Michigan Department of Agriculture goes into license and inspect the cider mill they’re looking for all of those things,” explained Donohue.

Michigan added another layer of cider safety through education. The goal of that program is to educate cider makers on the risks, so that they understand what good sanitary operating techniques are, and put those in practice.

“Every cider mill must have one employee who has been through a certified food safety program,” said Donohue.  “Servsafe would work, and a lot of counties and universities were already teaching that, but we also offered our own cider-specific training, and that training is good for five years. When the Michigan Department of Agriculture inspector comes they need to see the certificate that says you’ve completed a food safety program.”

Michigan’s cider record is very clean.  While one case of E.coli infection was linked to cider about a decade ago, there has not been a cider-related outbreak of foodborne illness.

New York’s approach is more focused on technology. Cider processors are inspected once a year by the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, and pasteurization is required for cider sold onsite and off. After the outbreak in 2004, the New York Apple Association sought the help of food microbiologist Randy Worobo, who works at Cornell University and its Geneva Experiment Station.

Worobo came to Cornell University in 1997 and began working on technology to help the apple industry shortly thereafter.

“New York has the largest number of cider producers in the United States,” said Worobo. “It represented a big issue in terms of the economic viability for the cider industry in NY as well as the apple industry, so I started investigating less expensive but as effective technologies.”

By 2005, it was determined that ultraviolet treatment could achieve the necessary 5-log reduction for cider pathogens E. coli and cryptosporidium.  Worobo recommended UV treatment to the Apple Association, which in turn requested the legislation.

“It was an industry-driven regulation,” Worobo said, “So I think it shows a proactive approach to the safety and the viability of their industry as a whole, and I give them credit.”

What the different approaches taken by Michigan and New York mean to the cider industry is difficult to determine, given that there is discrepancy between the numbers of producers recorded by the industry associations and the state licensing agencies.  The states combine cider sellers with other juice makers, so there is no way to separate out cider-specific numbers.

In 2005, there were 120 licensed cider makers in Michigan, and now there are 113.  In 2005, there were 181 cider producers in New York, as opposed to 120 licensed cider processors in 2011. However, the New York Apple Association says that number is too low, and counts 200 producers in its database.

If there has been a decline, New York state Department of Agriculture and Markets spokeswoman Jessica Ziehm suggested that the pressure from trying to meet the 2004 federal HACCP juice guidance and the effect of the state mandate could both be responsible.

Although slaughterhouses aren’t always close or available when farmers need them, there are efforts being made to address that, and resources to help small-scale meat and poultry producers meet the growing demand for food fresh from the farm. 

The Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, or NMPAN, is connecting people across the country with information, tools and each other. The organization is part of the Cooperative Extension System’s eXtension, an Internet-based collaborative learning service that consolidates the resources of the land grant universities.

Co-coordinators Lauren Gwin and Arion Thiboumery launched NMPAN three years ago.  As a doctoral candidate, Gwin studied barriers to local grassfed and organic meat production and supply chains.

“I was working for University of California Cooperative Extension, and processing kept coming up as an issue,” said Gwin, who is now at Oregon State University and works with meat producers and processors in Oregon.  “I found myself being the person keeping track of what different people in different parts of the state were doing on the processing question, how they could get access to processing, the venues needed. I realized it would be very valuable to have a network (of people) around the country who were also looking at this.”

Arion Thiboumery, vice president of Lorentz Meats, a processor in Minnesota and an Extension Associate at Iowa State, had been working with small processors in Iowa for a number of years when Gwin contacted him. The two put together an advisory board, got a starter grant from Heifer International, and began posting information online about small processing. They also recruited affiliates in different states.

These affiliates are now available in almost 40 states, and allow the co-coordinators to link people who need help with those who can offer it, such as extension staff members, state departments of agriculture and markets with experience in small meat processing.

“We’re trying to coordinate information and kind of act like that conduit hub, with the webinars and the resources on line, the listserve, some of the e-updates,” said Thiboumery of the network’s efforts.  “We respond to emails and phone calls, and cross-pollinate that information.”

Information takes different shapes on NMPAN’s site.

There are case studies, such as one that focuses on Smucker’s Meats, a small USDA-inspected, family-owned slaughtering plant in Pennsylvania that handles about 45 head of cattle, five bison, 5-10 hogs and occasionally sheep and goats each week.  

A detailed portrait of the company offers information about its services, prices and experiences as an example to others who might want to expand their own operations or start a facility from scratch.  A Q&A conversation with Smucker’s owners illustrates how farmers and the facilities they rely upon can best help each other and coordinate their efforts.

The listserve is very active, pooling traffic from regulators, people who work for non-profits that serve the sector, academics, and people working in plants. Other NMPAN materials include a newsletter that goes to a list of 400 and is forwarded to at least another 100 people.

Gwin said an affiliate printed out 50 copies of a recently published business plan and guide book, written for those who want to start a processing business or revamp an existing one.  NMPAN also offers live and archived webinars. 

“We really try in those webinars to be as concrete and applied as one can be,” said Thiboumery, “acknowledging that you’re talking over a computer to people all across the country.  You’re not hands-on with somebody right in front of you.  We continue to get very positive feedback.”

Hands-on help is fostered through NMPAN’s affiliates.

“There are people who can help with HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) planning, and people who can help you think about the processes you’re going to use at your plant,” said Gwin.

State by state, efforts to help develop small scale meat processors are taking shape, as consumers increasingly seek alternatives to the supermarket.

Montana is trying to harmonize regulations that affect small processors. North Carolina was the site of the recent Carolina Meat Conference, which brought together local processors, regulators and others to address the needs of this growing segment of the meat industry.

NMPAN strives to fill in the gaps between what trade associations, like the American Association of Meat Processors, and regulators such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service offer processors. Currently, NMPAN is focusing on the business end of matters, trying to develop tools to help processors become more financially stable.

“One of the things we talk about is we need more processors,” said Gwin, “and in some parts of the country that’s actually true. But in some parts of the country small processors are struggling just to stay afloat because it’s a very difficult industry to be in. We’re just trying to keep putting together tools and get them out there that will help small processors do what they do, and will help producers find and work with existing processors and, when necessary, help them build facilities.”

The Center for Agricultural Development and Entrepreneurship, or CADE, is a regional organization located in central New York State supporting small scale meat processors. CADE’s director, Chris Harmon, is also a livestock farmer.

“When I became the executive director,” said Harmon, “I recognized there were some gaps in the areas of slaughterhouses, (but) that does not necessarily mean that we need a lot more slaughterhouses.”

One issue is seasonality.  When most farmers want to get their animals processed in the fall, the slaughterhouses are full.

“We don’t want to feed them through the wintertime, and their condition is really great at that point,” said Harmon. “Many slaughterhouses suffer from a lack of work from about February through June.  So there’s a need to develop markets where animals are taken in on a weekly basis, regardless of the season.”

CADE was established in 1991 to address the issue of vanishing family farms in central New York.  While the group’s work has often focused on developing value-added products and businsees to support dairy farmers, Harmon’s expertise is put to use in livestock operations.

Since 2009, CADE has been working with the New York Farm Viability Institute to build the capacity of livestock processing in that region. For a time the work was interrupted by state budget problems, but because CADE gathered local resources, work was able to proceed.  One notable example of its efforts is Larry’s Custom Meats, which just received its USDA license at a new facility.

Larry Althiser has a quarter century of experience as a butcher, and since 2002 ran a USDA custom exempt plant in the town of Hartwick. Farmers use this type of processor when customers buy an animal, or a portion of an animal, such as a half side of b
eef. Because the plant was n
ot USDA-certified, however, farmers could not use it to prepare and package meats for sale to restaurants or grocery stores, or for direct sales at farmers markets.  Althiser decided to address this limit when his septic system started to fail.

He purchased 60 acres across the road from his plant and started to build a larger, USDA-licensed slaughterhouse. Now his three daughters are interested in carrying on the family business. One already works with him, and the other two are planning to study animal science. 

CADE provided Althiser technical assistance in business planning, designing the plant, securing loans, food safety planning, working with USDA inspectors, and more.  His new 6,000 square-foot facility can handle up to 5,000 animals per year, and there are now over 30 farmers on a waiting list to use it.

The work with Althiser is not done, however.  CADE leveraged funding from the NYS Farm Viability Institute to win a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) for meat marketing.

“Now that we’ve helped build the infrastructure and capacity of the slaughterhouses and the ability to process, then what you really need to do is ensure that you have farmers who have solid markets for years to come,” said Harmon.

 “That’s the goal, to develop the meat marketing end of it, and they’ll start to increase sizes of their herds with the increased processing capacity. The final key is to start to access more of the 3 million acres of fallow land in upstate New York. There’s a lot of ag land out there that’s not in production that could be used to raise beef and sheep to be processed in these facilities. You’ve got New York City and Boston, and the whole Eastern seaboard — you’ve got a tremendous demand for local products, regional products.  So you’ve got this demand, and you’ve got this land, the question is how you facilitate all that.”

Neither NMPAN nor CADE, however, have the muscle to wrestle another major challenge that Lauren Gwin has identified, which is the cost to consumers of pasture-raised meat and poultry.

“The meats that producers are putting into local and regional food systems tend to be more expensive, so that’s always a challenge,” said Gwin. “As long as people can buy cheap meat, that’s going to be a challenge in the marketplace.”

The contest invited schools around the nation to submit entries in three categories: whole grains, dark green and orange vegetables, and dry beans and peas.  School teams — to include a chef, a school nutrition professional, a community member and a student — could enter up to three recipes each.

The schools whose recipes made it into the semi-finals are being visited by judges, and online voting for the Popular Choice award closes May 31, so I decided to try out and sample some of the entries and report.

Home testing for some of these recipes was tough. Not many people have access to ingredients like USDA Tomato Sauce or French Dressing Reduced Fat.  If you don’t believe in onion powder, well, you better aim for one of the other 340 submissions. 

The first night I made Tasty Tots, Hippie Stix and Hoppin John Cakes w/Kickin Sauce, and the meal was not satisfying. But given my tendency toward kitchen improvisation, the results may or may not have resembled the originals.

The next night, I got smart and went to the store to get all the ingredients listed for Porcupine Sliders. This included whole wheat buns, ground turkey, celery, dried cranberries, a smidge of garlic and onions, and spinach. I had the brown rice the recipe required, cooked and in the fridge.

I was tempted to amp up the seasonings — one clove of garlic for a meal seemed little enough to be insignificant — but I obeyed the recipe directions this time, even carefully measuring out ¾ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce.  (The odd measurement is a result of downsizing the recipe for home sampling; entries are cafeteria-sized, made for school cooks to work with 50 servings.) 

My family ate up the Porcupine Sliders without complaint. The burgers had a surprising amount of flavor for something with so little seasoning.  The recipe said nothing about whether we should skip the condiments, so we dressed our burgers with homemade ketchup and mustard. 

There were no leftovers, but would I make them again? No. They were filling, but not stunning.  When stretching ground meat into patties, I’d rather follow my whims.

The next night, I made Red & Black Chili Pot Pie, which was submitted by Brooklyn New School, P.S. 146.

Once again, I was tempted to stray from the instructions and add more garlic and onions, but I didn’t.  I followed the recipe closely, and this one was a hit — a bean chili topped with a corn grits (polenta) crust that everyone, except my pickiest eater, loved.  The seasonings were balanced enough so that no one ran for the hot sauce.  (I think they just forgot we owned any.)  The topping on mine was more dumpling-like than the picture, but I’m going to use this method — nestling polenta with cheese in a flavorful stew — again.

Looking through the entries got me curious to hear how school cooks tackle healthy eating, so I talked to the cook at my son’s school.

Deirdre Kelly has fed approximately 60 students and staff members breakfast and lunch at The Albany Free School for the last five years. She faces budget constraints, and the challenges of cooking for many different palates and a wide range of ages.

“I’ve figured out how to keep things simple,” she said.  One of her tricks is making really good basics, like rice, whether it’s brown or white, with butter and salt.  If you’re going to make black beans, use enough salt, she says.

Another tip: “I try not to have both things cooked.  If I make a cooked vegetable, I’ll serve raw fruit,” she said.  “I’ll serve salad for lunch, and apple crisp.”

Oven baked potato fries are in her repertoire.  She serves lots of carrot sticks, cucumbers, cut oranges, and plain tomatoes.

“Kids aren’t stupid.  They like food,” she said.  “They aren’t cartoon characters, and they don’t need to be tricked into eating.”

Kelly acknowledged that the size of her meal count is a luxury and says she is awed by people who tackle healthy eating for hundreds every day.  Me too!

Her statement about keeping things simple stuck with me as I thought about what my picky eater likes to eat, and considered the recipes I made.  Regardless of my inability to follow directions the first night I cooked with these recipes, I am not a fan of the methods because they don’t let food be food.

The Tasty Tots recipe tucked chickpeas into yams. Hiding food is not high on my to-do list, and I have a kid who eats foods that are mostly bland and/or white.  Even this boy loves sweet potato fries, cut up and oven-baked. However, he was offended by the Hippie Stix, which were also baked and then tossed with cinnamon but no salt seasoning.  Sweet potatoes are already sweet.  Why mess them up with cinnamon?

The goal of the Healthy Kids Recipe competition is “to create tasty, healthy, exciting new recipes for inclusion on school lunch menus across the country”  — school food that kids will actually eat.

As commendable as this effort is, maybe recipes are not what we need to teach kids how to eat.  Maybe we just need to let food be naked, and speak for itself. A stalk of celery is a stalk of celery. An apple is an apple. 

Of course, this is naïve.  Advertising speaks so much louder than food, as demonstrated by the new ad campaign from the baby carrot marketers.  “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food,” is the trademarked command. 

For the school teams competing in the Recipes for Healthy Kids challange, $12,000 in prizes will be shared.  If you’re wondering what’s for dinner this week, take a gander at the recipes. Voting for the popular choice winner lasts through the month. 

——————————-    

Image from USDA: Porcupine Sliders submitted by South Education Center Alternative school in Richfield, MN. 

Gardening is wildly popular again and canning is, too.  But how is the need for education on safely canning at home being met?  A combination of grassroots, government-sponsored and industry initiatives is meeting the increased interest in canning head-on with demos, tools and instructions.  

Jarden Home Brands, the parent company of Ball canning books and equipment, experienced double digit growth in the first years of the recession.  The company capitalized on the trend by offering a Home Canning Discovery Kit, which has all the tools needed to make a three pint batch in a boiling water bath, using a stock pot that might be found in any kitchen.

“We also continue to do more education programs, increasing our presence with the extension service offices,” said Brenda Schmidt, brand manager at Jarden Home Brands.  

Publisher of “The Ball Blue Book,” long the standard of safe home canning, Jarden partners with cooperative extension offices throughout the country, supplying samples, coupons and literature to the food preservation specialists who teach home canning to consumers.

A program called House Party is designed to get people interested in canning and learn it with friends and families at home, with the help of guided literature and the videos provided to the party host, explained Schmidt.  This year the company is also partnering with the Canning Across America organization, which has proclaimed Aug. 13 “Can It Forward” day.

Canning Across America includes cooks, food lovers and gardeners bound by their desire to revive the lost art of canning.  Determined to do so safely, the group emphasizes specific techniques and often uses Master Food Preservers in demonstrations.

“We talk about pH and what you can safely can in a water bath, what you need to can in a pressure cooker,” said founder Kim O’Donnel, food writer and author of “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Cookbook.”

“I learned on the spot by practicing over and over again, but going very slowly, because I wanted to understand, ‘so why is it that you have to sterilize a jar?’  All these little things are equally important to get the proper seal.  (And things like not) Dating your jar — that’s a very common mistake of first-time canners.  A year is about as long as you want to hang on to something.”

The group came together in 2009 when O’Donnel heard about canning classes in the San Francisco Bay area.  In Seattle, she Twittered about the event, and proposed a series of days to focus on Americans canning.  Now in its third year, Canning Across America connects canners live and online, and Jarden will be very involved in events on Aug. 13, especially at The Pike Place Market.  Webcasts will draw in people who don’t have events in their locale.  

The Internet is an important stage for presenting resources on home canning.  Jarden, Canning Across America, and the National Center for Home Food Preservation feature how-to videos and documents on their sites.  

The National Center for Home Food Preservation represents a decade of USDA-funded research carried out at the University of Georgia.

The USDA has offered home canning and other home food preservation recommendations since the early 1900s.  By the end of the century, it was time to review what was available.  Extension agents on faculty at the University of Georgia applied for and received two grants that ran five years to cover the topic.  

“We were asked to do a literature review of a lot of the research that happened since the last major work at USDA, and determine some needs to do some more product development for their canning guides,” said Elizabeth Andress, professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist.  “We developed probably 30-plus new canning recommendations, and we produced a video series.  We produced the website, and the offerings on that include a free online course, and various outreach methods to help get out information from the USDA recommendations, also.”

They updated and revised the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, which is available in print and online at multiple sites.  December 2009 is the most current version.  

These recommendations are followed closely as Ball develops new recipes based on consumer interests.  In its own test kitchen and using offsite labs, too, Jarden looks at elements like pH, canner size, jar size, and how to prep ingredients.  Additionally, it has labs analyze the processes.     

“What we do is collect data, and that’s just heat penetration data to ensure that the time it takes to heat the product, the coolest spot in the jar is achieved and it’s hot enough and kept at the temperature long enough to kill the target microorganisms,” said Lauren Devine, Test Kitchen Scientist.  Her name appears on some Ball titles. “We have to make sure that we’re killing the target microorganisms, as well as removing the air from the jar so you can essentially get a vacuum seal, and everything inside has been killed.”

Tools like Ball’s cookbooks and the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning offer concrete directions through a process that can seem mystifying.  Saving food in a jar is almost magical, allowing you to have a piece of June in January.  However, organizations like Canning Across America emphasize the importance of learning the process without getting swept away by the wonder of the transformative act.  

“You can add basil to your strawberry jam and that’s wonderful, but that’s not how you should be learning to can.  You should be focusing on the methodology,” said Kim O’Donnel.

Another organization that’s taking on the business of teaching people to safely can is Seattle Tilth, a gardening education group that is now offering a Master Food Preserver Course.

Extension offices stopped offering Master Food Preserver courses in Western Washington, and Seattle Tilth got permission to use the term, and offer its own certification.  A pilot course last year was successful. 

“The class maxes out at 20 because we’re in a teaching kitchen and we want to be able to have everyone do hands-on learning.  Also we’re doing teach-backs because this certification is meant as a training for people who want to teach canning and food preservation in their community,” said Carey Thornton, who co-teaches the classes, adding that the curriculum includes instruction on how to be an educator.

This is a unique arrangement.  Traditionally, Cooperative Extension Services offer “master” programs through state or county-run offices.

“Extension sees a master program as volunteer development,” explained Elizabeth Andress.  “In exchange for this intensive training and constant updating and ed
ucation, we consider the people w
e train as volunteers who will then give something back to extension, whether it be manning exhibits, writing newspaper columns, taking phone calls in the office or whatever.”

Andress sees the expectations of the master programs as one of a kind, in that the volunteers are invested in sharing their information and developing community knowledge on the subject.  She understands why, because of budget constraints, many extension offices are dropping their Master Food Preservers certification programs.  

“You can’t run a Master Food Preserver program in your state if you don’t have the expertise to back it up and answer people’s questions and train them appropriately,” she said.  Her state has 159 counties, but only 35 family and consumer science agent positions serving them.  

“I have lots of individuals calling me, (and saying) our extension office no longer offers Master Food Preserver, or there’s no agent in our county, so I’m teaching classes, which I think is great and shows the interest,” said Andress.  “Sometimes I’m a little bit concerned about what they’re teaching because obviously, me being in the job I’m in, I really care that people teach the best practices with some research-based recommendations and don’t just proliferate what people did 80 years ago.”   

Funding is an issue at The National Center for Home Food Preservation.  The grant period ended last August.  While faculty are keeping the website up to date, there’s not the same activity involved as over the last decade.  Announcement of a round of funding for USDA food safety programs came last week, and though the RFP is not yet available, Andress is optimistic.

“I just hoping there’s going to be a category in there that supports this kind of work we’ve been doing, as well as applied research and outreach to consumers,” she said.

Announcing the two events simultaneously was not coincidence, but part of a plan to build collaboration between agriculture and economic development efforts within the state.

Agriculture is a $3.6 billion industry in New York.  The state ranks high in the nation in a number of agricultural areas — second in apples and third in dairy production.  The state ranks third also in the production of grapes, wine, maple syrup and cauliflower.

Capitalizing on and developing the success of such crops and commodities is the new commissioner’s goal.

“Really there is a major, major role to be played by the agricultural community in economic development in New York State,” said Aubertine in an interview with Food Safety News about his new post.  “I believe this administration, (and) to his credit Governor Cuomo, has really recognized the role that agriculture is going to play.”

The new commissioner served on the Senate Agriculture and Rural Resources Committees in his previous post, representing the 48th Senate District from 2008-2010.  Aubertine served in the Assembly for five years prior to the Senate.  A sixth generation farmer, his agricultural foundation is strong, as are relations with the state’s agricultural organizations such as The New York State Farm Bureau, which welcomed his appointment.

“Farmers and our organization have had a great relationship with him through the years, and look forward to his leadership at a critical time in the food and agriculture sector in New York,” said Dean Norton, president of the New York Farm Bureau.

“I think the economic development support we can lend to farmers and small businesses comes from our ability to develop a good working relationship with Economic Development here in New York State, and I think we’re off to a good start,” said Aubertine.  “I certainly look forward to working with him (Commissioner Kenneth Adams) on economic development issues that will benefit large and small farms, farms across the state but also small businesses and large businesses as well, be they processing or retailing or trucking or any of the other components that touch the agricultural industry.”

The commissioner said he wants the department to improve services to the agricultural community and to consumers.  He said he’s encouraged that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is tightening up its regulation of imported foods, because 70 percent of the recalls within New York are for imported foods.  If the state spends less time on those recalls, oversight efforts can focus more on domestic products.

Prior to the commissioner’s arrival, then Governor Paterson changed how kosher inspections were handled, transferring responsibilities of the Division of Kosher Law Enforcement to the general pool of 85 food safety inspectors.  The shift saves the state nearly $1 million in annual costs, but the move was not popular with those relying on the certification, who felt state inspectors might not understand the details involved. 

“I’m trying to be proactive by educating all of our food inspectors on aspects of kosher,” said Aubertine.  “At the end of the day we will have a workforce of inspectors who are familiar with kosher, and I think we will be able to do as good a job if not better than we were doing in the past. I think there are some things that we can and are doing to advance the agenda of food safety here in New York.”

In discussing the agricultural arm of the department’s work, the commissioner spoke about the support the state’s dairy industry lends other farm interests.

“Dairy farming, just by virtue of the fact that it’s the largest sector of the agricultural economy of New York State really is the framework, if you will, that the other niche markets — specialty crops, maple syrup, honey, (and) all the other commodities that are produced in this state — actually take advantage of,” said Aubertine.  “They’re able to access that framework, and by that I mean equipment dealerships, seed, feed, fertilizer, and all the infrastructure that supports any sector of agriculture in large part is supported by dairy.”

However large, the dairy industry is not stable due to a number of factors, especially the volatility of pricing.  The state lost 23 percent of its dairy farms between 2002 and 2007.  Milk prices can fall below production costs even when fuel and feed expenses are low.  Now that both are soaring, there’s an acknowledgement of the need to help dairy farmers, and U.S. Sen. Kristin Gillibrand has recently proposed strategies to provide immediate support.

“There are any number of things we can do at Ag and Markets to help, not the least of which is to advocate at the federal level,” said Aubertine, a former dairy farmer himself.  “There’s several pieces of legislation out there that relate to dairy.”

Within the department’s realm, he notes, the state can provide a venue for co-ops and individual producers.  However, he said, not just dairy deserves the state’s support.

“We can be supportive of really all commodities produced here in New York State, be it apples or some of the specialty crops, and again as I mentioned earlier, maple and honey, which I think all too often are overlooked,” said the commissioner.

A significant agenda item is gathering input from farmers and farming advocates for the 2012 Farm Bill.  Over the next month or more, a dozen or more forums will be held at the New York State fairgrounds focusing on different sectors of the ag community. 

“We invite people to discuss their issues in any given segment of the farm bill, with the idea of putting together a comprehensive look from each of the different segments,” said Aubertine.

Information collected will be brought to a regional meeting of state agricultural leaders that will take place in Vermont in early June.  

Opel has been discovering this kind of road food for over 30 years.  The habit began when he was in his twenties and a pheasant collided with his car.

“Here’s this completely fresh, healthy bird,” he recalls thinking at the time, “and if it stays here it’s just going to rot, and if it comes home with me it will be dinner.”

Preparing that pheasant was the first time he’d ever dressed a bird.  Over time, he’s developed his own rules for taking roadkill.  Winter, he thinks, is a good season because the animal is immediately refrigerated. During the summer he is warier of what he might take.  Because he’s not doing it for subsistence, he’s liberal about what he rejects.

The practice of eating roadkill is part of a waste-not, want-not philosophy that drives other people, some of them previously vegans, to scavenge meat in a fashion that is almost sanctioned by PETA, which says on the subject:

“If people must eat animal carcasses, roadkill is a superior option to the neatly shrink-wrapped plastic packages of meat in the supermarket.” 

People who eat roadkill might be hunters who know their way around a dead animal, or people who call themselves freegans, and are used to eating from unregulated sources, like Dumpsters.  Some practitioners have written how-to guides, such as the zine quoted in Sandor Ellix Katz’s book about America’s underground food movements, “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.”

State by state rules vary on the legality of taking home roadkill.  In many states, one can actually get on the local game warden’s list and wait for a call.

In Vermont, Iliana Filby got a 157-pound doe, which had been hit by a car but not killed outright.  The warden phoned her and asked if she wanted the deer, and she met him at the site where he had dispatched the wounded animal.  She took the carcass to deer shed, and enlisted the help of several friends to deconstruct the animal.  In the end, the Vermonter got 60 to 70 pounds of meat for her freezer. An ambitious cook, she’s been learning how to butcher farmed animals, and looks forward to using her skills again. “I was on the list for this winter and I haven’t gotten one yet,” she said.  “Eventually I’ll get another one.”

All roadkill in Alaska belongs to the state.  Troopers will take the hit animal to volunteers that will butcher and process the meat for distribution to charities.  In New York, motorists can claim roadkilled deer, moose and bear once a uniformed officer investigates the scene and issues a tag.

Food safety issues regarding roadkill are not widely discussed in traditional food safety circles.  Still, a few people were willing to speculate on possible risks in a roadkill situation.

“When you’re a hunter you control the scenario, it’s so very different than finding something and having to deal with the unknown questions,” said Deb Cherney, of Cherney Microbiological Services in Green Bay, WI.

 “When you hunt it’s a stalk and kill process, and you handle the animal in a timely fashion.  You harvest it and you eviscerate the animal, you process it properly and deal with it in its prime condition.”

An experienced hunter herself, she elaborated on the differences between game and roadkill.  Obviously, with roadkill you don’t know if you’re harvesting a healthy animal, Cheney noted.  Whether you or someone else struck the animal may be a safety consideration.  For example, before you recovered the animal, what could have happened to it?  Did the animal walk with open wounds, possibly picking up opportunistic pathogens?   

While Cheney has never handled roadkill herself, 45,000 carcasses are annually salvaged or removed from roads because of car/deer collisions in the state of Wisconsin.  Most of these accidents occur during the deer breeding season, in October and November, and the fawning season, in May and June.  People claim the deer by contacting local officials to secure a tag.

Susan Vaughn Grooters, director of Research and Education
 at S.T.O.P., Safe Tables Our Priority, also drew parallels between hunting and roadkill. 

“The risks that exists with roadkill will be similar from a foodborne illness perspective as those from hunting wild game,” said Grooters. “So with deer as road kill, one would want to consider risks that already exist in consuming venison, meaning chronic wasting disease, toxoplasmosis gondii, and other infections. Zoonoses are species specific, so other roadkill, say squirrel or raccoon, will have disease associations unique to their species.”

Grooters also pointed to other risks.  Game meat has not been raised under the care of veterinarians.  Animals that go to slaughter, in many situations, have a food safety inspector on site.  E. coli O157 is found in ruminants, such as moose, deer and elk. Given the nature of vehicular collisions, the chance for bacterial contamination would be a concern because of gut spillage from a ruptured bladder or torn intestines.

“If the animal has endured internal damage there can be other risks,” said Grooters.  “If an animal was hit, the force of being hit by a car can cause internal damage that being shot through the head or the heart — that killing with a gun — wouldn’t cause.”

While roadkill education courses are hard to find, hunter education courses are mandatory in every state.  Safe animal handling practices, among other topics, are covered in these classes.

The Michigan Hunting and Trapping Digest, which hunters get along with their licenses, has a section on handling and processing deer and other wild game.

Each fall, the state of Michigan’s Department of Agriculture and Department of Natural Resources and Environment issue a press release to remind hunters and others about food safety processing guidelines.  The state has a venison-processing booklet available online and in print for people who want to process on their own.  The state advises that those who want help should select a certified deer processor.

They also get other advice. Last season, hunters in Cahoun and Kalamazoo counties were warned not to eat liver from deer or elk because of a significant oil spill on the Kalamazoo River.

Similarly, hunters in Vermont are routinely advised not to eat the liver from moose or deer because of high cadmium levels.

Vermont has about 280 certified hunter education instructors and people seeking hunting licenses in Vermont go through at least a 12-hour course, said Chris Saunders, the hunter education coordinator for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.  The instructors teach approximately 250 classes a year, and about 5,000 new hunters are certified annually. 

Not every class gets to takes apart an animal, said Saunders, but if possible instructors try to get a roadkilled deer from the local game warden to demonstrate the proper ways to field dress game. The class manual and most state extension offices also provide infor
mation on safe handling
of wild game.

Saunders said many students are young to middle adolescents, often from hunting families,

although the training program is seeing more adults because of the interest in free range meat. While they might only have an interest in hunting, perhaps a few may be interested in turning to roadkill as well.

Just how many backyards are becoming food gardens is hard to enumerate, but the American Community Gardening Association estimates there are now more than 18,000 community gardens in the United States and Canada.

While many community gardens exist in rural areas — such as one in Cambridge, New York, on the site of a former trial garden for the Asgrow Seed Company — community gardens are also urban endeavors. 

In either setting, soil toxicity can be an issue. Rural areas might suffer from agriculture exposure, such as orchards where the residue of lead arsenate applications can remain in soils.

“(For) urban gardeners the main contaminant of concern is going to be lead, which is fairly common because of lead paint chipping off houses and becoming airborne, and from lead used in gasoline up until the 1970s,” said Scott Kellogg, educational director at The Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, New York. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), lead poisoning affects more than 1 million children in the country.  Most of these cases are from exposure to lead paint in homes or from lead-contaminated house dust or soil. Kids may ingest or inhale contaminated soil in gardens, playgrounds or yards. Lead may also affect vegetables, particularly root crops or leafy greens. 

But lead is not the only potential problem with urban soils. Petroleum and waste oils, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), pesticides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and metals can also be present.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its brownfields program is a starting place for people and groups looking to deal with contaminated soils.

Last week, the 14th annual Brownfields Conference was held in Philadelphia.  A joint effort of the EPA and the International City/County Management Association, this year’s conference was the largest ever, with almost 6,000 people in attendance.  Nine out of more than a hundred sessions focused on urban agriculture, school gardens, composting and the importance of safe soils.  

The free, three-day event attracted environmental professionals, states, tribes, community groups, brownfield grantees and communities interested in seeking brownfield grants. 

“We also welcomed architects, law firms and legal experts as well as public health practitioners, environmental justice and community advocates, and students from five Philadelphia area universities and colleges who organized design charrettes on area sites, providing new community visions for those locations,” said a spokesman from the EPA.

The conference inspired a pop-up art event with scientific roots called the Soil Kitchen.  From April 1-6, members of the artist group Futurefarmers served soup in exchange for soil samples, and hosted a number of educational events, too.  By April 5, 300 samples had been collected, reaching the capacity of the EPA’s mobile soil-testing lab.  Results of the tests will be used to create the Philadelphia Brownfields Map and Soil Archive.

The conference was an opportunity to spread the word about an urban agriculture website launched last September by the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER), the sector of the EPA that handles brownfields. The website is a clearinghouse for information on soil testing, applying for grants and issues pertinent to urban agriculture.  The assistant administrator of OSWER, Mathy Stanislaus, has made urban agriculture one of his priorities for land revitalization, particularly in underserved communities.  

Across the country, $1.5 billion in federal funding has gone to clean up brownfields sites since the mid 1990s. Brownfields grants are used to assess and remediate land. Certain contaminants on some sites are addressed by phytotechnologies, using plants to achieve environmental cleanup.

According to the EPA, several communities are looking at how they can include community gardens or urban agriculture projects as part of their brownfields revitalization planning. The agency funds Kansas State University to provide support and technical assistance to communities planning gardens.

In many instances, groups employ brownfields funds to remediate sites prior to creating gardens. Others, like a longtime community garden in Fremont, CA, are cleaned up after being discovered to be contaminated with PAHs, lead and pesticides.

Community and state initiatives are studying and attacking the issue of soil toxicity, too.  

“My position here at Cornell Waste Management Institute really came out of the fact that we were getting an increasing number of questions from gardeners who were wondering if they should be concerned about contaminants,” said Hannah Shayler, who is working on the Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities research project.  

Funded by the National Institute of Health, the project involves Cornell University, Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York City, the New York State Department of Health and GreenThumb, the arm of the NYC Parks Department that handles community gardening. 

People calling Cornell wondered if they should test their soils, how to test them, and how to interpret whatever results they found.

“All of that really led us to the understanding that there were some pieces to be filled in and there was a need for a broader research program to get some science-based answers to these questions so that then we have more information to share with people,” said Shayler.

The four-year project began field work last summer, and focused on testing soils last year, largely from 75 different gardens in New York City.  This year they will interview as many gardeners as possible, and test produce.  As the project gathers data, it is also engaging in outreach such as workshops and discussion groups to try to educate the public on what is known about growing food on potentially contaminated or contaminated land.  

“The last thing we want to do is have people avoid gardening or stop gardening because of concerns about the soil,” said Shayler.  Yet discussing the research can elevate concerns, and so people involved in the grant are sure to distribute information on how to handle soils and food.

Raised beds are good choices in some sites, and mulching around plants and between vegetable beds minimizes dust that can distribute lead and other contaminants.  Washing produce and washing hands is advocated, as is keeping soil healthy and ph neutral, because lead in acid soils is more bioavailable. 

“In instances of extreme contamination, the dig and dump method (is used),” said Scott Kellogg of The Radix Ecologial Sustainability Center.  “For really low level contamination, sometimes what’s done is you add compost to the soil.  By adding more clean material you’re reducing the concentration of contaminants.”

If that clean material is compost, Kellogg said, the lead is essentially locked up in the structure of the compost itself.  This reduces the bioavailabity of the lead, which makes it less apt to be taken up by plants.  Also, if accidentally ingested, the lead is more likely to pass t
hrough your body rather th
an to bind to some receptor site in your brain or in your body tissues.

Toxic Soil Busters works on soil in Worcester, MA. The youth-run cooperative began in 2001 as an all-volunteer effort, and by 2005 the young workers, ages 14-19, were paid employees.  Currently, 17 youths are working part time to educate people in the city on contamination in soils, and work to mitigate those problems with a variety of strategies.  The group is experimenting with phytotechnologies, using plants such as geraniums, sunflowers and Indian mustards to take up contaminants in affected areas.

Operating as contractors for HUD and for private homeowners, the Toxic Soil Busters remediate affected yards. The group uses physical barriers like landscape fabric and mulch to separate the contaminated soil from contact with people and plants. Adding clean soils dilutes the concentration of lead, and raised beds are also employed.

Toxic Soil Busters presents workshops at high schools and community events, like an annual block party. The very motivated youth workers create skits, videos and other media messages to deliver information about lead and other contaminants.  

This summer, the workers will tackle 7-12 yards.  This fall, the organization will celebrate 10 years in operation.   

Contamination of the Hudson by these persistent, possibly carcinogenic compounds created the largest superfund site in the nation.  To clean up the PCBs, dredging of a 40-mile stretch of the Hudson River between the Fort Edward and Troy dams began in 2009.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) banned commercial and recreational fishing on the upper Hudson River in 1976, and banned commercial fishing from the lower Hudson at the same time.  While some of the bans have been lifted, the commercial fishery on the Hudson is a thing of the past.

Today, despite DEC recommendations that fish from a significant portion of the river should not be eaten, some people simply do not know about the potential risks from PCB contamination, says Regina Keenan, coordinator for the Hudson River Fish Advisory Outreach Project.  “The DEC has a regulation that you can fish, but you cannot take it home, and that’s actually because of contamination that’s been found there.  At the Troy dam a lot of the contamination is held back.”

That’s where Keenan’s efforts come in.

The Outreach Project will enter its third year of funding in June.  The New York State Department of Health began the 20-year program in 2008, and awards grants to agencies that conduct outreach about the advisories regarding fish from the Hudson River.

The outreach project puts materials and money in the hands of community partners to deliver information to the public.  Four groups initially received funding, including two Cornell Cooperative Extensions, one in Rockland County and one in Dutchess County.  Now, those two entities are still working with NYS DOH, as well as another initial fundee, Hudson Basin River Watch and Watershed Assessment Associates.

“Our most important message for the project is that women who are of childbearing age under 50 and children under age 15 should not be eating fish from the Hudson River, at least until after it’s been cleaned up,” said Keenan. Studies have shown that exposure to high levels of PCBs may be associated with low birth weight as well as nervous and immune system disorders.

Beyond that high-risk group, Keenan said, “then it depends on who you are, where you’re fishing and what you catch   …  Close to our office here — we’re in Troy — the fish are pretty highly contaminated.  There’s only four species that men and women over the age of 50 are advised to eat once a month.  As you go further down the river there’s less contamination and you can eat a number of species up to once a month, and then some fish you can eat once a week.”

Fish PCB levels decrease downstream from the city of Troy, but that doesn’t mean the fish are safe.  Also, in those lower Hudson areas further from the much-contested and publicized dredging, the public is not as aware of potential problems with fish.  Last but not least, cadmium is an issue with crabs in the Hudson, and it concentrates in the tamale of crabs (the gelatinous mass in the heads), which will leech into cooking water if not removed.

Hence the need for widespread educational efforts, such as the recent distribution of signage to 200 food banks that serve people along the nearly 200-mile stretch of river that is affected.

The outreach groups are teaching people about the fish advisory through home visits, at health clinics, and in schools.  DOH also partners with others to help deliver their message.  The brochures have been made available at Nory Point Environmental Center and other DEC facilities. The Hudson River Fishermen’s Association is having a family day, and DOH staff will attend.

Rockland County Cornell Cooperative Extension has a strong environmental program, and they use Americorps volunteers in their fish advisory outreach.

Students go out and talk to people on the river,” said Keenan.  “(They) developed their own brochure.  They developed some signs. They did a bus ad, which was great, and worked with the department of health in Rockland County.”

Proprietor of River Haggie Outdoors and environmental educator Fran Martino contracts with the Hudson Basin River Watch to do outreach for the DOH, working in schools in a number of counties.

“I include some type of an art craft project, and I explain to the children that they’re going to take home a few things after my visit, snapshot of the advisory,” said Martino, who sends kids home from school with a fish magnet printed with the DOH phone number.

At a recent visit, Martino used a rubber fish to explain fish anatomy, which helps kids discuss what kinds of fish they or their parents might be catching.  The same fish is used in the art project.  Kids paint it and make Japanese-style fish prints.

Talking with kids is important because they can influence their parents’ behavior, said Martino.  Budget-strapped schools value the free visits.  She also attends summer camps and fairs with fish advisory materials.

Creating materials in other languages is another tactic of the DOH.

“You have immigrants who have moved here from other parts of the world,” said Keenan.  “These chemicals are not something you can smell, taste or in any other way sense, so we have to try and get the message across to them.

A diagram in the materials helps illustrate the fatty areas in the fish where PCBs can accumulate.  By removing the skin and the fat of the fish, and filleting the fish, it’s possible to reduce the PCB levels by about half.

“We recognize we’re not giving people a substitute meal,” said Keenan.  “We’re not in the position to do that, unfortunately.  We’re at least letting people know that if they prepare it a certain way they can get a lot less PCBs in a meal, which is helpful advice.”

Information on New York State Department of Health’s fish advisories can be found at http://nyhealth.gov/fish.  Note the brevity of the address — just another attempt by DOH staff to float their information to the public as easily as possible.

Titled “The Ordinance to Protect the Health and Integrity of the Local Food System,” Sedgwick’s four-page document invokes the town’s right to self-governance, and states that local producers and processors may sell food to consumers without licensing.  

“We have faith in our citizens’ ability to educate themselves and make informed decisions,” reads the ordinance, which was adopted unanimously March 5 at a meeting of about 100 residents. “We hold that federal and state regulations impede local food production and constitute a usurpation of our citizens’ right to foods of their choice.”

Maine’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources is taking a wait-and-see attitude on Sedgwick’s self rule. Newly appointed Ag Commissioner Walter Whitcomb said he was aware of the initiative. Prior to assuming his new position, he had toured the area and met proponents of the ordinance.

“The Agriculture Department has not been aggressive on this subject, in part because these areas are currently before the state legislature,” said Commissioner Whitcomb about inspection and food processing concerns addressed by both the Sedgwick ordinance and two bills.  “Our staff has been dealing with these concerns for several years, but they’ve come to a head this year.  We kind of wanted that to work through the process before we became more active in enforcement.”

If approved, these two bills — LD 366 and LD 330 —  would further ease regulation of raw milk sales, and exempt farm and homemade food products from certain licensing requirements.  Agriculture department officials are preparing testimony on the proposed measures to present once hearings are scheduled. 

Sedgwick residents aren’t waiting for the state to grant more local control, they’ve seized it. “The [town] ordinance codifies the way that people have been doing food business for a very long time,” said Sedgwick farmer Bob St. Peters, who celebrated the passage of the ordinance by starting a home-based cookie business. If the enterprise is successful, his family can scale up their processing accordingly. The cottage industry route, he argues, avoids a big initial investment.  

“The direct relationship creates transparency and accountability and all the things you need to ensure a safe food system, and it’s been the way things have operated,” he explains.  “The certifications of home kitchens, the trend toward licensing and bureaucracy has really put a damper on small cottage industries and small farm businesses, and I think this is going to have the opposite effect.”

St. Peters said the Sedgwick ordinance grew out of a controversy over poultry, and a request from small farms slaughtering fewer than 1,000 birds to do so without having to use an indoor processing facility. There was a lot of back and forth debate but, in the end, the small poultry processors’ bid was denied.

“We felt like we, as farmers and farm patrons, presented a really good case to the state and they said we can’t help you because our state funding is at stake,” said St. Peters, referring to the state’s fear that it could lose federal funding for its meat inspection program if small producers were exempt from inspection.

“So we discussed other avenues,” St. Peters continued, “and some of us were familiar with different local ordinances, some that had passed in Maine regarding GMOs, others that had passed elsewhere regarding corporate personhood.  We felt that dealing with this on a town level was the way to go.”   

New England’s strong populist tradition is evident in ordinances banning GMO crops in certain areas. 

“I think there is a fair amount of authority in a New England town meeting process,” said Commissioner Whitcomb.  “State to state, it’s a little different.  It’s a citizen’s gathering and they have the absolute legislative authority on matters of finance, but they’re also kind of a populist event.

 “And sending a letter from the state telling a town they can and cannot do something inspires, probably, the opposite reaction.”

When a federal animal identification program, to track livestock in the event of an animal disease outbreak, was being discussed in Hancock County, a state representative got a pie of manure in his face. 

Whitcomb said the state Attorney General’s office is investigating the issue of local food regulation, and is drafting a formal legal response to the town.  Among the concerns to be raised are whether food produced in Sedgwick could be sold out of town or whether the town would have to notify consumers or face liability if food safety problems occurred.

“We haven’t found anything in the statute that says that the town can supersede the state on food safety,” Whitcomb said.  

Don Huber, plant pathologist and a professor emeritus from Purdue University, sent his letter (posted last Friday on the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance’s website) a week before Vilsack deregulated genetically modified alfalfa. The letter’s public release has generated renewed calls for the government to reverse course on the unrestricted cultivation of GM crops.

Huber coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens Committee of the American Phytopathological Society as part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System.  He has researched glyphosate, the active chemical in Roundup, for two decades and is a longtime critic of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops that are genetically modified to make them resistant to the herbicide.

In his letter, Huber said the research findings were at an “early stage,” but wrote that this “electron microscopic pathogen appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings” and likely is connected to glyphosate.

Huber described the pathogen as appearing to be a micro-fungal organism found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distiller’s meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

He said laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of the organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility.

He did not provide details about the tests or who is pursuing the research.

“The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%,” Huber wrote. He did not cite the source of the statistics.

Monsanto says it has addressed Huber’s concerns in the past. The company’s website references research that found no negative consequences to soil and plant health connected with glyphosate; the research refutes information Huber published on the website of The Institute for Responsible Technology, an advocacy group opposed to GMOs.

“Monsanto is not aware of any reliable studies that demonstrate Roundup Ready crops are more susceptible to certain diseases or that the application of glyphosate to Roundup Ready crops increases a plant’s susceptibility to diseases,” the company said in response to the Huber letter.

In a phone interview, Huber said the purpose of his letter was to get the resources and scientific base behind it to research the pathogen, “to really sort everything out, because it’s becoming a crisis for us.”  He added, “We have veterinarians very concerned about enough animals, just replacement animals, for our beef and dairy herds.”

The USDA, contacted for this article, confirmed that the Huber letter had been received and is being reviewed, but a spokesperson said the department will respond to Huber directly, not through the media. 

Although Roundup has been identified as one of the less dangerous pesticides in agricultural use, Huber provided this reporter with a list of over 100 references to research that linked glyphosate to various adverse effects, but none related to the newly discovered pathogen he wants researched.

Last year, researchers in Argentina published data claiming glyphosate contributed to problems with chicken and frog embryos. Their research was inspired by clinical data on birth defects in the children of agricultural workers in fields that use Roundup. 

Huber and Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, said glyphosate inhibits the uptake of nutrients in plants, and has been linked to reduced nutrient efficiency. They said animals that eat GM soy and corn have exhibited mineral deficiencies, which can lead to problems with everything from the immune system to reproduction. Huber says glyphosate is also implicated in more than 30 plant diseases.  

Agronomic issues have been at the center of some objections raised last year during the comment period on GM alfalfa, although most of the objections to the proposed deregulation focused on the potential contamination of organic crops and products through cross-pollination. With Huber’s letter, GM opponents are also resurfacing the debate around health issues.  

The battle amounts to a question of whose research is factual. In a Feb. 13 op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Doug Gurian-Sherman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, points to the challenges scientists have in accessing seeds for research purposes, because Monsanto and other companies own and patent the seeds, and restrict research on them. “To ensure that agricultural science serves the public, Congress should change patent law and create a clear exemption for agricultural research,” Gurian-Sherman wrote. 

In his letter, Huber warned that if Roundup does facilitate a pathogen linked to plant disease and health problems for farm animals, “this is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies.”

The Institute of Responsible Technology’s Smith said,  “Dr. Huber is qualified to state that this is an emergency. The USDA, FDA, and EPA have thus far ignored serious risks of GMOs. This is a big test to see if even in an emergency they will acknowledge the risks and deploy appropriate resources. It’s too early to determine causation, but the risks are so high, they must delay deployment of Roundup Ready alfalfa and put a substantial team of experts onto this right away.”

“In Oregon the only way for you to legally sell a processed chicken is to have it processed in your own state-inspected facility, which you have to build to specs and is allowed under the 20,000-bird exemption, which is part of federal law,” said Kendra Kimbirauskas, president of Friends of Family Farmers, a statewide organization.

“That facility could cost up to 100K, (according to) some producers that we’ve talked to in the state that have actually gone ahead and done this.  Or you can process your birds in a USDA facility,” she explained, adding that there is only one USDA facility in Oregon, and it just came online in the last few months.

Trying to understand the lace of federal regulations regarding poultry slaughter is not simple, but a glance at the industry’s history offers some perspective.

In the early 20th century, consumers processed their own birds, whether they raised the animals themselves or bought them live.  In the 1930s, the custom of selling birds “New York dressed” arose, which meant that the birds were bled and feathered.  In the years following World War II, demand for ready-to-cook birds vastly expanded the poultry industry.

Congress first introduced federal legislation on poultry processing in 1957 as the Wholesome Poultry Products Act. Also known The Poultry Products Inspection Act, the law provided standards for USDA continuous bird-by-bird inspection to ensure that chickens were handled safely en route to interstate or foreign commerce.  Amendments in 1967 and 1968 set rules for handling poultry bound for customers within a state, and established a number of exemptions from the daily federal inspection that was initially required.

Among these exemptions is the 20,000 bird limit, which Oregon currently follows.  The number refers to the amount of birds a single grower can process in one calendar year; processing must take place in a state-inspected, brick-and-mortar facility owned by the producer/grower.

The proposed legislation seeks to align Oregon with another exemption that allows producer/growers to process up to one thousand birds per calendar year.  The processing must be done on farm, and the poultry must be sold on farm.

“These bills are nearly identical and provide for small grower/producers to raise no more than 1,000 poultry — chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and guineas — for slaughter and intrastate sale without being licensed or inspected,” said Jim Postlewait of the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Division.  “The poultry grower must slaughter and store poultry while protecting from adulteration (such as) dust, insects, etc.”

Many states currently allow poultry growers to use this exemption, but nothing makes dressing a chicken, let alone hundreds of chickens, simple or easy. Farmers have various solutions to this problem, including hiring help for slaughter days, and building or purchasing equipment, new or used, to simplify the many tasks involved.  In efforts to make processing possible for smaller scale poultry farms, mobile slaughter and processing facilities, also known as MSUs, have been developed and are in use.

“MSUs for poultry tend to be used by farmers operating under the 20,000 bird limit,” said Lauren Gwin, co-coordinator of the Niche Meat Processor Assistant Network.  “Federal law allows the MSU to be used by a set of farmers, each of whom does up to 20K birds per year, as long as each farmer does this on his/her own farm and follows all the other rules of that exemption.”

One such model was built in 2001 in Kentucky, a state that does not allow the federal exemption that Oregon is seeking.  The MSU is run by Kentucky State University and can process up to 400 birds in a day.  The mobile unit is not entirely mobile as it must be docked at a station to handle poultry, because of wastewater and other sanitary considerations.  The unit can also process aquaculture onsite where the fish are grown.

The result of a joint project of Heifer International, Kentucky State University, Partners for Family Farms and the National Center for Appropriate Technology, this MSU was partially funded by a USDA SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) grant.

In other states, MSUs and MPPU (mobile poultry processing units) are truly mobile, available for rental for farms to use on site, with or without the guiding labor of a skilled processor.  The facilities are owned by a variety of private and public groups, and subject to either state or federal inspection.

Some mobile processing units are aimed at farmers who operate under the thousand-bird exemption, such as one built and used in south central New York State.  This model facility is meant to be used for one year as farmers gear up to build their own units.

In all of these instances, educational materials on safe processing in general and safe processing within a mobile slaughter environment are often provided through extension agencies, in the form of guides, webinars, and live classes.

A group that offers such services and serves small and mid-sized meat and poultry processors is the aforementioned national Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network (NMPAN).  Lauren Gwin and colleague Garry Stephenson are among the professionals in support of the legislation in Oregon.

“If the bill becomes law, there will be no formal inspection of farmers operating under this exemption,” said Gwin, who is also on the faculty Oregon State University in a research and extension appointment.  “However, they still have to follow the USDA basic rules, as written in the bill and explained in our letter. And USDA can pop in at any time, for example, if there is a complaint to make sure that the farmer isn’t breaking those rules, e.g. doing 2,000 birds/year, not keeping sales records, or creating an unsanitary cesspool of blood & feathers.”

The 38 year-old Buffalo, New York-born doctor is an acknowledged leader in health care as the field retools itself. The former attending physician at Bellevue Health Center in Manhattan was also associate investigator at the Geisinger Center for Health Research in Pennsylvania, and taught at the School of Medicine at NYU.  His skills in evaluating hospitals and health care systems will be applied as he works with the state’s newly created Medicaid Redesign Team.

The Medicaid Redesign Team is composed of 27 people, including Dr. Shah, legislators, and the representatives of many health care organizations. The group was established to reduce Medicaid costs for the 2011-2012 budget, and the task just got tougher. Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced budget cuts of 10 billion dollars across the state, charging the Medicaid team with cutting $2.85 billion from the budget they are currently formulating. That amount would eliminate federal matching funds, and result in $5.9 billion fewer dollars.

Daniel Sisto, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State and member of the team, noted that the proposed cuts amount to approximately $15 billion over two years. 

“HANYS wants to be explicitly clear that hospitals and other providers in New York State cannot absorb these cuts, provide quality care to our citizens, and transform health care delivery all at the same time,” Sisto said in response to the governor.

The new commissioner has not issued a statement regarding the financial demands, but told a reporter the work was “going well.”

Representatives from the Department of Health could not comment on how the budget cuts might affect food safety. However, Michael Cambridge, director for the Bureau of Community Environmental Health and Food Protection, stepped out of meetings to explain his bureau’s work.

The Department of Health develops and implements food safety standards and regulations for places where food is served. Restaurants, schools, mobile food vendor carts, and temporary food stands are among the eateries covered. Working with county health departments in New York City and district offices throughout the state, the bureau trains sanitarians in how to complete inspections and handle identified hazards.   

“We have approximately 100,000 facilities across the state that we visit each year. We have inspection frequencies set up based on the type of foods that are served. Let’s say you have a large banquet facility where 1000 people are served all at once. There’s a lot of preparation in that place, a lot of holding of hot foods. Those kind of places we like to inspect more often than a place such as a corner bar that has an occasional sandwich served,” said Cambridge.

Field staff is also trained in how to conduct an investigation in the case of an outbreak.

“We work with our disease control epidemiologists and watch for any kind of reported illness,” said Cambridge. “(We) start going back to those individuals asking questions–where’d you eat in the last seven days, where did you go–to see if they can pinpoint what’s causing the problem. We work with our public health laboratory, the Wadsworth Center, (give them) food samples and patient samples and look for specific pathogens.”

When a problem is identified, DOH staff makes sure the people who are ill get treated properly. Staff also follows up with the facility, to make sure whatever they did wrong has been corrected, and that any hazards have been removed. In instances where the commercial food chain is involved, the department works with its federal partners, the FDA and the CDC. 

The Department of Health also works closely with the Department of Agriculture and Markets on food safety. Ag & Markets inspects the roughly 28,000 retail and production sites in the state, including grocery stores, convenience stores, bodegas, food processors and warehouses. Farms are inspected as their products become a part of the food chain, and the department also oversees plant nurseries.  

“For example we do an extensive survey for plum pox virus, a disease of stone fruit (that) doesn’t make it inedible, but debilitates the tree and makes the fruit unsalable for fresh market.  We have been actively trying to get rid of that disease in New York State, and we’re the last state in the U.S. that has it.  However Canada does have it. It’s not necessarily a food safety issue but a production and quality issue that has economic consequences to farmers,” said Jessica Ziehm, communications director with the Department of Agriculture & Markets.

The department also regulates what kinds of potatoes can be planted in Western New York and on Long Island, where the golden nematode is a problem. Only varieties that are resistant are allowed. These measures help ensure a farm’s viability, which in turn ensures that farm’s ability to maintain good standards with regard to safely handling food.  

Anytime Ag & Markets finds a problem with a product sold in a store, or with an animal inspection, they communicate with the Department of Health, and the two arenas are in contact by email or phone almost daily. 

Regarding budget concerns, Ziehm noted that all state agencies would be affected. However, the department has been evaluating operations with regard to its core mission, which is to protect public health and safety.   

“Therefore, those food safety inspections, the animal health inspections that we conduct, we are doing all that we can to minimize the impact the budget implications to those core functions,” said Ziehm.  “We’ve been able to do that by identifying other areas of responsibilities that we’ve picked up over the years, whether it’s marketing, or for example dog licensing.”

The state returned dog-licensing control back to the towns, freeing up more resources to focus on regulatory functions.  

The two-day food safety intensive began a day before the conference, and was titled “GAPs Is a Four-Letter Word, But So Are Safe and Food.”  This workshop has run a dozen times across the state over the last few years, though not usually in an organic setting.  Led by a team of food safety experts from Cornell Cooperative Extension and the State Department of Agriculture and Markets, the workshops educate produce growers on minimizing food safety risks and building a food safety plan to incorporate into a GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) audit.

“Even if you don’t need an audit, even if no one is looking for a food safety plan, make one,” Betsy Bihn, National GAPs Program Coordinator at Cornell, told 25 people at the workshop.  “Organic producers are doing a lot of record keeping already. In many instances you just need to tweak the records you’re already keeping.”  

Bihn addressed a mixed crowd that included growers, a farmers market organization, and the chef, buyer and sustainability coordinator from nearby Skidmore College. The three were interested in buying local, and curious, among other things, about what kind of food safety documentation they might seek from potential suppliers. 

Wegman’s was the first supermarket in New York State to require food safety certification from its vendors, and other chains have followed suit.  The GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) program, established in 1999, is an audit system operated by USDA trained inspectors.  Wholesale purchasers, such as Wegman’s, now ask their suppliers for GAPs certification, which is renewed annually. 

In New York state the process of educating growers is well-organized, with support from Cornell such as online and live workshops. Participants receive a day of training on food safety in the field and in handling methods, and leave with a bag of materials, including signs to post onsite, a food safety DVD, photo novellas, and coloring books in Spanish and English. The state offers relatively inexpensive inspections from USDA-trained auditors through the Department of Agriculture and Markets. (Two auditors were at the workshop to explain the GAPs guidelines and what they look for in an audit.)

Despite this system, small produce growers and handlers feel harassed by the idea of more paperwork and government interventions.  

“We’ve done some programs where the mood was so hostile, people spent a day venting,” said Robert Hadad, who also led the workshop and is the Regional Fresh Market Specialist from Cornell Cooperative Extension in Niagara County.  “We’ve moved to a two-day program so we can spend one day talking and one day making plans.”

The second day of the NOFA workshop was the first day of the conference, with sessions on farming business and agricultural practices.  Attendance was lighter at the food safety workshop, but 10 people attached jumpdrives to laptops and used templates to devise food safety plans. As people wrote their food safety plans, the auditors and educators were available to help.

“I’ve been taking notes, to see what we have to address,” said Martha Johnson of Slack Hollow Farm, a vegetable producer in Argyle that wholesales to Honest Weight Food Coop, a large cooperative grocery story serving the state’s Capital District. “Some of it is things we’ve been thinking about, so we can apply this. Some of the stuff we’ve been already doing because we’re organic, like testing the water.”

Gayle Faulkner from J. Faulkner Farms, a diversified vegetable grower from Olean, New York, found the workshop very helpful, and had a good start on her food safety plan. She didn’t plan on scheduling an audit because her farm doesn’t yet have buyers who request the certification, but she was happy to be prepared.

People from Community Markets worked on a document to help highlight food safety for the growers who sell at the farmers markets they develop and manage in New York City and surrounding counties. 

“We want to honor the trust that the shopper has put into us and our vendors. We want to encourage the farmers and producers that sell at our markets to develop and implement food safety plans. We want to be able to speak honestly with the public about the safety of the food we’re providing,” said Jon Zeltsman, co-director of Community Markets.

Zeltsman noted that the food safety information was helpful, too, in terms of addressing food safety at their market sites, for cooking demonstrations and sampling.

“Growers are independent business people,” Bihn explained as the room emptied for lunch.  She likes people who ask questions and don’t accept all the information as given. They may be skeptical in the workshop, but likely will go home, look at their practices, and apply what they have learned. “The goal of this course is to get people aware of risks. You want your growers thinking about food safety. It’s a risk reduction thing.”