Scratching Post

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am managing the sudden increase in Vitamin D production; no overdoses yet. Sure I had gotten a few minutes while walking along the canal at lunch the past week. However, it was nothing like an entire day in the garden at Flying Dirt Farms. We are way behind. I had bundled up for a few Saturdays and gotten the perennials set out; arms very protected with SPF sweatshirt and a knit hat pulled low on my head to protect the tips of my ears. Now, it is time to get the bi-weekly rotations started. The winter rye has to be tilled under. Potatoes, onions and peas oh my. Dirt is flying everywhere.

Speaking of walking along the canal at lunch time, it is bittersweet. The realization that you have allowed the educational system to bundle up your eight and nine year old put them on a bus and sent them to a downtown greenscape, is nice. They get to see western history at the Eiteljorg museum. They can jump up and try to climb the mastodon sculpture outside the Indiana  State Museum. Or maybe they are aping the orangutans at the zoo as they careen into my path and shatter the peace and quiet of my daily walk. It is a wonder that any eight and nine year olds ever reach mature adulthood. But we manage to hover, to watch, and to chaperone them until they can exhibit some manifestations of self preservation. Plus, I have plenty of time for peace and quiet on those January days when the high temperature was - 5 degrees.

I must admit to a bit of a mean streak when I mention the following. This is for all of the helicopter parents who look at your young’s inability to manifest self preservation tendencies and decide to protect them from all possible harm and or hardship. The ones who buy hand sanitizer by the boat load and then fret when you hear that the lack of germs suppresses their little immune systems so you make them eat probiotic yogurt by the tub full. This is for you. Your children while wondering around this beautiful greenscape; chasing one another, knocking one another down trying to get to a makeshift ball rolling across the ground are doing so in about an inch of goose poop. 

Yes, the geese have been walking around on this three acres of green space for the past two months. The surrounding buildings provided protection from the wind and held a bit more heat. The canal provided a good source of water without any alligators to eat the geese. And about three acres of slowly growing grass to provide nutrition. And where you have goose nutrition, you also have goose poop. Because, geese poop right where they eat. I have no idea why. Maybe it is a circle of life kind of thing, or maybe they have little tiny brains on top of a really long neck and they are just stupid. But they are pooping all over the place and your children are having the time of their lives frolicking in it. So helicopter parents have an nice day doing your Lucy VanPelt imitation.

Speaking of bird poop, causing havoc with somewhat compromised immune systems, we are finally emerging from two separate huge food scares. With the first, our federal government was so flummoxed by where the romaine lettuce came from that was poisoning us that they were actually in my garden trying to recall my home grown heads of romaine. Any romaine grown any where? How can you lose track of the food supply so completely? But it would appear that we don’t know where romaine lettuce originates from and that it is commingled in huge vats of lettuce mix so throw it all out.

The second incident involved 200,000,000 eggs from one farm in North Carolina. The owner of the farm, Rose Acres an egg conglomerate, is headquartered right here in Indiana. Makes you proud doesn’t it. The eggs went to seven states and were sold wherever cheap eggs can be found. It appears that eggs are tracked better than heads of romaine lettuce so they have lot numbers and know the point of sale by state and stores. 200 million eggs is a lot of eggs. I am mind boggled just a little bit by the size of the pile that would have to be to throw all of those away; not to mention the 16,666,666 egg cartons. That is a mountain of yolks, folks. The king is going to have to get more men to put that one back together.

I took the opportunity to look a bit further into these already impressive stats. The farm has 2.3 million hens and they lay about 2 million eggs a day. This tells me that Mrs. McGreedy of Chicken Run has some culling to do. Chickens should lay one egg a day. Sure some days are going to be missed from time to time but a 15% rate would seem to me to be a bit high. Get ready for some really cheap pot pies. So 2 million eggs a day and 200 million eggs recalled that means we have eggs out there that are three months old. The seems a bit old to me. That is quite a long time for salmonella to get its tentacles into a moist, protein rich, environment and multiply even if it is in cold storage.

Thankfully the media dug into the issue and provided clarity and an explanation. A couple of weeks ago the Indianapolis Star interrupted my work day with the following headline:

FDA inspectors found rodents, filth and butt-scratching workers at farm tied to egg recall

You newspaper people crack me up. Sure there was some “touching of the inter-gluteal cleft” without subsequent hand washing going on according to the inspector’s report. Do you realize how much touching of the inter-gluteal cleft would have to go on to contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. Let’s just say some one may want to have a doctor look at that. No the problem here lies in the fact that the workers continually wiped the sanitizing solution from the eggs before the prescribed time on a regular basis. Let’s face it chickens produce two things; poop and eggs, and probably more of the former than the latter. Also not to put too fine a point on it, they use the same vent for both operations. 

You need to leave the sanitizer on the eggs for the proscribed period of time. That was the problem. It is described elsewhere in the FDA report. Also the report is only describing conditions as they existed prior to the outbreak. It had little ability to assess the actual source of the bacteria that made so many people ill. However, that doesn’t sell papers like butt scratchers. I know there are newspaper people out there screaming right now “but touching the inter-gluteal cleft is butt scratching.” Yes, but it doesn’t contaminate 200,000,000 eggs. It only drives page views and clicks.

In the end, (pun intended) understanding food safety in an landscape dominated by huge agribusiness concerns whose interests are served by cutting corners with the few minutes it takes to leave the eggs in the sanitizer for the proscribed time is too important an issue to have the news media just scratch the surface.

Take care and enjoy the sunny side up.

Roger