Ikea Meatballs — Now With Horsemeat!

Sweden-based Ikea has 332 stores in 38 countries. Primarily known for assemble-yourself furniture, the firm also sells food products. Swedish Meatballs (köttbullar) are pretty famous, and IKEA’s are too, now that some were discovered to contain horsemeat.

Ikea’s equine meatballs were made in Sweden but first detected in the Czech Republic. The firm has reined in sales in 21 European countries.

Related: New catalog!

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Image (“Swedish Dala Horse Meatballs“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Urban Eggs

Backyard Chickens are the new status symbol in hipster neighborhoods and upscale suburbs, a way to have pretty feathered pets and go green with local, fresh organic eggs. What’s not to like? Okay, aside from the noise and the odors and the expense and the cats and the authorities and the parasites and the thieves and  Avian Flu?

Plenty.

EU Food Imports from China

“Many Germans only realized how much of the food on their plates is harvested and produced in China when thousands of schoolchildren in eastern Germany were afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting two weeks ago in an epidemic thought to have been triggered by Chinese strawberries contaminated with norovirus..”

“…by last Friday, 262 reports on Chinese products had been received in Brussels for 2012 alone. They included noodles infested with maggots, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, foul-smelling peanuts and candied fruit with an excessively high sulfur content (see graphic).”

Chinese Food: Special VIP Menu

“There are few issues more deeply and universally felt in China than the safety of its food; after years of scandals on cooking oil sifted from gutters, glow-in-the-dark pork, deadly infant formula, and so on …. So it was grim news last fall when Chinese reporters uncovered a network of ‘special farms’ dedicated to providing Party leaders with top-quality vegetables, chicken, pork, rice, beef, fish, and tea oil. In the province of Zhejiang, for instance, forty ‘high-class eco-farms’ were said to have been earmarked to supply the land-resource department, water conservancy, agricultural units, and other government offices. (What are we to make of the fact that the offices receiving special food are exactly the ones overseeing the public’s supply?)”

 – “Is a Clue to China’s Future on Its Dinner Tables?” Evan Osnos, New Yorker

 

Restaurant Hygiene Ratings

A recent expedition to Manhattan Island revealed that New York City Health Department inspectors now grade the sanitary condition of restaurants. In order to guide potential customers, each eatery is required to display its grade in its front window.  Here is the range of grades:

Food Safety in China

Only three years after a poisoned baby food scandal, the Food Industry Council of China has instituted strict measures that will award grades to food and wine companies. Presumably, executives of companies that poison people will now have to stay after school.

The Economic Observer article by Zhang Xiangdong is summarized here. 

Related: “‘Gutter oil’ dirties China’s food reality,” Li Hongmei, Xinhuanet English News

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Something Rotten is Banned in Denmark

Denmark has banned Marmite – not because it’s made from British brewery waste, but because it’s artificially fortified with vitamins to back up dubious health claims. Danish authorities have also banned Ovaltine,  Special K, and Rice Krispies for the same reason.

Denmark’s reasons don’t matter in the UK, where the yeasty brown gunk is an iconic product, a cherished symbol of the Empire. The British are responding with anger if not fury.

Big Border Bologna Bust!

In a stunning security coup, agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service seized 385 pounds of bologna sausage at the New Mexico border last week. Officials bagged the bologna bandit as he sought to smuggle illicit lunchmeat into sleepy Santa Teresa, NM (population 2607).  The contraband cold cuts, with a street value of $2,700, were seized and destroyed before they reached the lunchboxes of innocent American schoolchildren.

Yet, for each bologna bagged at the border, surely six salamis slither across. Mr. President: where is our Border Wall?

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Can Our Food Be Made Safe From Republicans?

President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law yesterday. The legislation improves the security and safety of America’s food supply, allowing the Food and Drug Administration to protect us from foodborne illness and contaminated comestibles, both foreign and domestic. That’s something to everyone’s taste.

Unless they’re Republican. The GOP is defending the rights of toxic bacteria to have access to your digestive tract.  To do that, Republican lawmakers will try to starve the FDA of the funds needed to enforce effective food safety regulation.

The Congressional Budget Office puts the expense of enforcing the law at $1.4 billion over five years, with most costs offset by fees, but spending must still be approved by the majority-Republican House. The cost of treating foodborne illness instead of preventing it: $152 billion a year.  Costs over five years: $1.4 billion if we enforce the law, $760 billion if we don’t.

Each year 48 million Americans get sick from eating something; 128,000 of them are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. Every year. Apparently, that’s OK with the GOP.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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White House Soup

President Obama was in Chicago this week; Mrs. Obama was in Spain. Perhaps the President ate the Spring Pea Bisque at the Graham Elliot restaurant; maybe the Missus had a nice healthy gazpacho in Marbella. 

The staff at the Executive Mansion back in Washington has access to Mrs. Obama’s organic vegetable garden. What was the White House Soup of the Day on Thursday? Chili.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.