Reawakening

I own a business that makes the same food week after week, month after month, and year after year. The ingredients change seasonally, but the menu basically stays the same. So it's a big deal when we introduce a new menu item.



This past fall we started selling beef tamales. We'd been selling only vegetarian tamales for years, in fact, our entire menu had been completely vegetarian until we introduced a beef chili in an effort to limit competition at the Jubilee Farm pumpkin patch event. (They were talking about bringing in a burger vendor for the omnivores.) The chili was really tasty, but it was more work than we'd anticipated and it just didn't sell well.

The beef tamales however, were an instant hit. Once we introduced them at all of our markets, we quickly began selling more of them than of both of the vegetarian varieties combined. There were a couple of pissed off vegans, but not nearly as many as we'd expected. Ironic as it may sound, I felt like it was a step in the right direction as far as my big picture objective of encouraging folks to eat less meat. There's an ounce of beef in a beef tamale. If someone chooses to eat one along with a big pile of locally grown vegetables on the side instead of eating a burger or a hot dog, I feel like I'm making a difference.

We began buying our meat from Crown S Ranch, in Winthrop. My household has been enjoying their fine products for years, and they gave us a great deal on some overstocked meat that had been shaped into hamburger patties. We did some mutually beneficial cross marketing.

I drove out to visit the farm in late October. As the author of two vegan cookbooks, I wanted to be able to tell customers that I'd visited the farm that was raising the animals that went into my tamales, and I felt good about using their products.

It was a magical place. Jennifer and Louis, the owners, are both engineers and they've designed a wealth of technologies and systems --some simple, some complex--to make the most of natural cycles and synergies, and raise tasty, healthy animals. At one point Jennifer was showing me around and explaining some of the systems, and she stopped in mid-sentence, gestured at a nearby cow, and said, "Let's move away a bit. I'm talking too loud, and I'm stressing her out."

By the end of the visit, we'd brainstormed all kinds of ways we could collaborate. To start with, I agreed to make tamales using their beef and pork, for them to sell in their farm store and distribute to their wholesale accounts. They'd provide the meat, and I'd charge them a wholesale price that didn't include marking up the most expensive ingredient.

She ordered more than 700 tamales, and I made them and froze them for a pick-up in a couple of weeks. A week later, she sent me an email regarding a much smaller batch of tamales I'd brought to the farm store when I visited. Customers were asking whether I was using GMO corn and she was curious about the answer.

The GMO issue has always been a tricky one for me. On the one hand, I want good, clean food as much as the next person. On the other hand, I have a great working relationship with the Mexican distributor who suppliers my masa and corn husks, and their products make wonderful tamales. I could get a non-GMO masa from the behemoth natural foods distributor, but I have to drive far to get it, and they don't treat me like they value my business. I'm also not as happy with the way the tamales come out when I use that masa.

And yet Jennifer's email was so friendly and non-judgemental that I found myself revisiting the issue. I researched prices, tried thinking outside the box, and made a sample batch. I found myself liking them more.

But I still had more than 700 tamales in the freezer made with the GMO corn. I offered her an out. I'd been using this masa for many years, and I knew I'd be able to sell these tamales. If she wanted to wait until I could use all non-GMO ingredients, that wasn't a problem for me: I'd simply pay for the meat that she'd provided.


She bought them anyway, saying that she'd just treat them as a transitional batch. In the meantime, I went ahead placed an order with the behemoth natural foods distributor for quite a bit of the non-GMO masa. I've even found parchment paper "corn husks" that have the look and feel of the real thing.

Once I got started, I began revisiting all of my other ingredients as well. I've always been comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction, and I believe that incremental change can be as effective as all-or-nothing dogmatism. I use plenty of clean, local, organic ingredients, but I also use GMO masa and cheap, industrial cheese. I've never set out to provide an absolutely wholesome product. Instead, I've aimed to create a reasonably wholesome product that's a great value.

For the most part, the few customers who have called me out about these inferior ingredients over the years have seemed smug and self-righteous, and that kind of attitude makes me want to dig in more than it makes me want to change. But Jennifer's attitude about the tamales was sensible and easygoing, and it really got me thinking.

Corn Conundrum

This week I had two customers ask me within a day of each other whether I use organic corn in my tamales. I don't, and it's safe to assume these days that most inorganic corn is genetically modified. I'm surprised that people don't ask more often, in fact, I can't remember anyone asking for years.

I started making and selling tamales 12 years ago, before genetically modified foods were on our collective radar screen. From time to time I experiment with organic products that are sold and labelled as "masa," but the tamales have never turned out right. Either the flour is too finely ground, or it doesn't set in the same way as the stuff I've always used. I'd happily pay more for organic masa that makes great tamales, but I haven't been able to find any.

I did an internet search recently looking for organic masa, and found some heroic stories of people grinding their own organic corn. That's not an option for my company.

I buy my masa in 50 lb. bags from a Mexican distributor in White Center. I haven't discussed this issue with them because I don't feel that it's my place to tell them what kind of corn they should use.

I'm certainly disturbed by the way genetically modified foods have infiltrated the food supply, but I don't vet every food I eat to make sure it doesn't contain them. Once you start thinking about it, every industrial product that contains corn or soy probably has genetically modified ingredients. Mainstream meat and dairy products come from animals that have probably been eating genetically modified foods. An organic farmer overheard one of the exchanges I had with a customer about the issue, and she pointed out that the compostable cups that everyone thinks are so great probably come from genetically modified crops as well.

Making a product and selling it to the public involves a different level of responsibility than choosing what to put in my own body. I've been in denial about the fact that this product is not consistent with my values, and I've been able to continue in this mode because so few people have taken me to task about it.

So after hearing from the second customer I did what I always do when I face a moral dilemma in the course of running my business: I discussed it openly with my employees. They weren't even aware of the issue, so it was an opportunity to explain. Now I'm writing this post, because I want to be open about it. I'll keep looking for a better product. But I probably won't stop making tamales and selling them, even if I don't find a better alternative. There are so many things about the food system that aren't the way I want them to be. We each pick our battles and struggle with our own contradictions.

Drought Resistant Rice

A group of researchers were honored earlier this month with a Department of Agriculture award recognizing their work in developing a flood resistant strain of rice that could go a long way towards alleviating hunger in parts of Asia.

The scientists developed the rice strain using a technique called "precision breeding." The US Food Policy blog pointed out that this development is particularly exciting because the approach used no GMO technology.

I was especially interested to read this, because I'd read a book this past summer co-authored by one of the recipients, Pamela Ronald, which discussed the potential benefits of genetic engineering as a way to develop flood resistant strains of rice and fight hunger. Could it be that she was able to develop a beneficial strain without the use of this controversial technology?

Tomorrow's Table

I don't get to read much over the summer, but I just got through a fascinating book written by a husband and wife, an organic farmer and a plant geneticist who does biotech research.

She makes a compelling case for the environmental benefits of genetically engineered foods, judiciously cultivated. These crops do, in fact, have the potential to reduce pesticide use and increase agricultural productivity, especially in developing nations where food security is an particularly urgent issue. I found it much easier to hear these arguments from a university researcher who eats a vegetarian diet of mostly organic foods and works with international nonprofit organizations than from marketing materials produced by secretive, sinister multinational corporations.

The book starts off with alternating chapters by the two authors on organic farming and bio-engineering, but most of the subsequent chapters are written by Pamela, the researcher. I couldn't help feeling that Ronald's chapters were mostly there to give her arguments credibility with the sustainable food community. Still, on some level this strategy worked, and I was more willing to accept her point of view because she clearly had a solid grasp of the tenets of organic agriculture.

And yet I wished that she wasn't quite so dismissive of the arguments of anti-GMO activists. Even though there are clearly some potential benefits to cultivating genetically engineered food, much of the research and patenting has been done by companies interested more in financial gain than in the common good. Given the fact that these foods have been introduced to the food supply in sneaky, secretive ways, it's understandable that folks distrust them. This suspicion isn't just an irrational fear of the unknown, it's a reasonable reaction to a powerful new technology in the hands of the folks who brought us toxic pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, artificial trans fats, chemical preservatives...

Frankenbeets

This spring American farmers will start planting a strain of genetically modified sugar beets, which will be resistant to the pesticide Roundup, coincidentally manufactured by Monsanto, the very company behind the sugar beet seeds.

Most of the table sugar manufactured in this country comes from sugar beets, rather than sugar cane. The sugar extracted from the two plants is chemically identical by the time it's processed into the white powder we know so well, although bakers insist that the two substances behave quite differently.

These beets will be the first new genetically modified food crop introduced in the United States since the 1990's. Years ago candy companies such as Mars and Hershey's balked at the idea of using GMO sugar in their products because they feared consumer reaction, but now they've somehow gotten the impression that consumers don't care as much as they did a few years ago.

It's true that during the past few years we haven't been hearing the uproar over genetically engineered crops that regularly made news headlines eight or ten years ago. Perhaps that's because no new GMO crops have been introduced lately, at least until this sugar beet venture.

I think Monsanto and the beet growers are going to be in for a expensive surprise. There has already been a lawsuit filed by the Organic Seed Alliance and a group of other plaintiffs against the USDA for insufficient oversight. I know that when I use table sugar, I'll be looking for brands that are made from cane, rather than beets, at least until they start genetically modifying that, as well.