Co-written with Lindsay-Jean Hard and Corinna Borden
I made a big mistake awhile ago. (True story.)
My dad called me up, really excited about a deal he got on ribs at the superstore, and invited my husband, my sister, and I over for dinner. Nice, right? Instead of a polite yes or no, I completely failed to repress the urge to enlighten my father as to why he should never buy super-sale ribs at the superstore again.
"But Dad, those pigs are given antibiotics, and growth hormones, and the meat is artificially cheap because of subsidies in the feed, and the waste builds up, and it can't be emptied into the environment effectively, so it ends up in our water systems, and...." when I finally came up for a breath, there was silence on the phone.
"Okay, good to know," my dad says, "so do you still want to come to dinner?"
I tell you this story, not just to completely embarrass myself, but because I think it's a good lesson for a couple of reasons. First of all, I want to help change the way people eat, but I'm not going to accomplish that by shaming them. Changing the way people eat can only happen by engaging people in a non-judgmental, fun, and meaningful way. Also, it clearly illustrates one of the biggest problems facing our food system to date -- lack of transparency.
We assume our food system has somehow taken care of itself. The aisles of perfectly aligned boxes, and perfectly stacked produce reflect a food system where a tomato is a tomato is a tomato, or an egg is an egg is an egg. Food is a commodity and it's all the same.
But it's not.
Eggs come from chickens eating many different things, from grass and grubs to feed with antibiotics and arsenic, and raised in different ways, from pecking on pastures to packed into indoor cages with tight quarters. Regardless of our buying preferences, I think we can all agree we have a right to the information from an unbiased source.
That's what my husband, Karl Rosaen, former senior engineer for Google's Android, and our team set out to do with Real Time Farms. Given the opaqueness of our food system and our confusion with labels, we wondered if it was possible to always trace your food back to the farm. By knowing the farm, you would know the food. Rather than being prescriptive, we could simply give consumers the complete picture, so they could decide for themselves.
Of course documenting the entire food system is no small goal. That's over two million farms in the United States alone, along with every food artisan, fisherman, distributor, retail location, restaurant, farmers market, food co-op, grocery store... Plus we want to document all of these components in a meaningful way; with pictures, growing practices, video, seasonality, and more.
Clearly we can't accomplish this alone, and we wouldn't want to. Like Wikipedia, everyone can contribute to the data. We are creating a voice for farmers and eaters alike. As you are reading this, people are taking and posting pictures from their farmers market or from their trip to the orchard with their family. They are telling us if the cows are grass-fed, if the chickens are in the pasture, or if there are GMOs in the feed. We are uncovering the information that was previously hidden -- together.
Cooking tonight? Want to find ingredients you feel good about? Soon, you'll be able to search Real Time Farms and find food based on your own preferences: grass-fed beef or tomatoes grown using only organically approved pesticides and fertilizers.
Driving by a sign on my local I-94 recently, I saw a McDonald's ad saying "We serve Michigan eggs." As we are increasingly bombarded with "local," "sustainable" and other ambiguous terms, we need a way as consumers to know what this really means and hold the system accountable.
Eating out? We created software for restaurants to use to trace every ingredient back to a farm. These tools answer diners' questions before sitting down: "what do you mean by 'local' or 'sustainable'?", "is this antibiotic-free meat?", "what pesticides, if any, were used to grow this tomato?" The National Restaurant Association's most recent survey of 1800 chefs found that local sourcing was the top trend for 2012.
This software enables eateries across the world to plug into the publicly-generated guide of farms and artisans, and share the story of their food with an interactive, farm-linked menu on the restaurant's website (example).
Follow Cara Rosaen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/realtimefarms
Unfortunately, most restaurants are supplied by the corporate and factory farmers, and they are unlikely to want to advertise their sources.
I hope this idea can expand to a significant percentage of the food supply. Good is better than cheap but pressuring the cheap to become good, or at least better would be a real achievement.
"Eggs come from chickens eating many different things, from grass and grubs to feed with antibiotics and arsenic, and raised in different ways, from pecking on pastures to packed into indoor cages with tight quarters. Regardless of our buying preferences, I think we can all agree we have a right to the information from an unbiased source. "
Why do you present this misinformation this way? Egg producers do not use antibiotics or arsenic. If you are trying to enlighten people, we deserve thr truth from you, not BS.
Thank you now please correct your article.
"Antibiotics have been used on poultry in large quantities since the 1940s, when it was found that the byproducts of antibiotic production, fed because the antibiotic-producing mold had a high level of vitamin B12 after the antibiotics were removed, produced higher growth than could be accounted for by the vitamin B12 alone. Eventually it was discovered that the trace amounts of antibiotics remaining in the byproducts accounted for this growth....
Chicken feed can also include Roxarsone, an antimicrobial drug that also promotes growth. Roxarsone was used as a broiler starter by about 70% of the broiler growers between 1995 to 2000. The drug has generated controversy because it contains arsenic, which is highly toxic to humans. This arsenic could be transmitted through run-off from the poultry yards. A 2004 study by the U.S. magazine Consumer Reports reported "no detectable arsenic in our samples of muscle" but found "A few of our chicken-liver samples has an amount that according to EPA standards could cause neurological problems in a child who ate 2 ounces of cooked liver per week or in an adult who ate 5.5 ounces per week.""
Also antibiotics not given as normal course of business. we have used them once in twenty years.
I am an egg farmer and I know this to be fact.
If you want a reason to eat healthier watch "Forks Over Knives" it will change your life and the way you feel about eating animal protein at all. Did you know that milk and dairy products have a chemical called cassene which causes your bones to let off calcium in order to nutrilize the chemical. Osteoparosis instances increase with an increased dairy intake. Eat well all.
An egg is definitely not an egg. I get eggs from friends who have chickens in their backyards which are fed wholesome diets and cared for (and loved) properly. These eggs, with their hard-to-crack shells, deep orange yolks and rich taste differ greatly from the crappy ones at the store. Same goes for the tomatoes I grow in my backyard versus the ones offered at the market.
Great idea, I'll be sure to pass this post on.
I'm sorry, I do not understand what you mean by that comment.
From the example provided, one thing I would like to see more of is the animal welfare standards of each farm. I see things like "grass fed" and "free-range", but we know that it's easy for a lot of farms to say their product is "free range" or "humane" with that often being far from the case. Often, these terms are more about making the consumer feel good, not the animals. We can't allow labels and fancy terms to delude consumers. Perhaps a check list like "each animal is given X amount of space" and "Castration Y/N?" and "debeaked Y/N?". I think WF has animal welfare scale. Maybe a good starting point?
And as for pictures, couldn't anybody just upload a picture of a couple pigs playing in a field and say it's their farm when in reality the animals are kept close in confinement and ankle-deep in feces?
Another example, is that even chickens on alleged free range and organic farms can come from chick hatcheries were the male chicks are ground up or thrown away because being male they have no value. This is something that many consumers are concerned about in addition to GMOs, hormones, pesticides etc.