I split mine into two, fifteen-minute walks, which leaves me over twenty-three hours ever day to do whatever I want. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

How would you spend your twenty-three-plus hours?

The question is whether that consolidation is really a risk factor for salmonella. And you’ll find people on both sides of that who will argue the case that either having it be at large places where you can actually do really good biocontrol is more safe, you have people who would argue that having many small farms is more safe. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet.
-Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, in an interview with NPR’s Newshour

Um. No.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the 1,300 reported cases of salmonella poisoning traced back to two Iowa farms. Perhaps some eggs in your refrigerator are some of the over 550 million eggs recalled over the last month. Perhaps you or someone you know has gotten sick from salmonella poisoning. Or perhaps you buy your eggs from a guy down the street.

When people like Elizabeth Weise claim the jury is still out over which is safer, giant factory farms or locally sourced goods, they miss two major points: reach and market enforcement.

First, let’s consider the reach. Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms are two massive, factory laying environments producing well over a billion eggs every year. That’s billion. The local farmer down at the farmer’s market has 100 dozen eggs (and that’s being generous) every Wednesday, for a grand total of 62,400 eggs per year. His customer count is also in the dozens, give or take, with maybe some local restaurants buying up some additional eggs. He doesn’t make his living from eggs alone, but they’re a good subsidy for the hot months when it’s hard to grow vegetables around here (or the cold months up where you live).

He can’t poison 1,300 people, even if he smeared his eggs in cow shit and dunked them in cyanide. He gets 100–200 people, tops, and news of it spreads pretty fast. Whether or not one method is safer–and I’ll wager here that for the small farmer the health of each chicken is pretty important, as opposed to some giant warehouse where chickens are kept in small laying cages, mostly in the dark, and owned by some small group of executives thousands of miles away. So whether or not one method is safer seems immaterial in the face of such numbers.

Ms. Weise’s comment also doesn’t account for enforcement. It’s no secret that government regulation has been neutered over the past eighty years, with huge cuts in funding and new laws removing more powers in the 1980′s and the 2000′s. It makes it harder and harder for government to protect its citizens when things go awry at giant factory farms. But a small market corrects itself pretty quickly. The local farmer simply can’t afford to poison his customers. If he does, chances are he won’t make it back to sell on a Wednesday, and the customers he has will find a new egg source at the market.

Think of it this way: let’s say you find the eggs in your fridge are part of the recall. You get rid of them, then decide to get a different brand. How do you know the new brand isn’t from the same farm? Industrial farms often produce eggs for a number of different brands. At last check, 36 brands are listed as possibly tainted and slated for recall. The guy at the market sells his own eggs, maybe some eggs from his neighbor, and that’s it. You can be pretty selective and be an informed consumer when you’re dealing with one or two people. People who you could go visit if they pissed you off enough.

I’m not about to say one method has been empirically shown to be safer than another, and I don’t disparage Ms. Weise’s comments on that front.  However, when we’re talking about one of the things we need to live, we should probably take a look at it in a more nuanced manner.

Nathan Myhrvold, cookbook author

Nathan Myhrvold, ex-Microsoftie and founder of an invention company called Intellectual Ventures, is also really interested in food, so much so that he’s writing a monster cookbook (currently ~1500 pages) about the science of cooking.

In another discovery of culinary heat transfer physics, Dr. Myhrvold said the bulbous shape and black color of Weber grills were wrong. To achieve an even cooking temperature across the cooking grate, the inside of the grill should be vertical and shiny to reflect the heat. That can be fixed by adding an aluminum insert to the grill. “So we have directions for that,” Dr. Myhrvold said.

You may remember reading about Myhrvold and IV in Malcolm Gladwell’s piece on the nature of invention last year.

Two things: I’m not sure we need another cookbook on the science of cooking, especially one already over the 1,500 page mark. Harold McGee already wrote the amazing On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. If you’ve read any of it, you know Alton Brown owes much of his success to McGee’s work. Indeed, any cook worth his salt should send a thank-you note to McGee some time today.

More concerning is Myhrvold’s mistake. In examining hardware, he forgot about cooking. The Weber grill is masterfully designed because it allows for very specific heat regulation and air circulation. When grilling, you don’t want even heat distribution. The things you’re cooking should and will cook at different rates.

Picture this: the bulbous Weber with coals piled on one side in the bottom. Near that edge, the food is very close to the heat, perfect for quick grilling vegetables or searing thin meat cuts. On the other side, you’d have a relatively cool temperature, perfect for slow-cooking ribs or pork loin.

The review doesn’t call Myhrvold on his mistakes, which go beyond the beloved Weber:

Confit doesn’t impart a unique flavor, it’s a method of preservation

The book sounds audacious, and I’m sure will include some interesting bits of knowledge for those operating at the bleeding edge of food and cooking. But to claim something’s just wrong without proper context is just sloppy cooking. Journalism, too.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Things like this make me excited about food and cooking. Makes me realize, too, how long it’s been since I spent serious time in the kitchen (or on the couch doing prep work).