Support our Turkeys, Support our President

Yes, the President is pardoning some turkeys today – and no, that does not mean he’s pardoning most of his cabinet. Tradition dictates that the President pardon a few lucky Meleagris gallopavo each year. The turkey, it seems, receive the type of treatment that many of our returning veterans do not.

The two 20-week-old, 45-pound white turkeys were escorted up a red carpet by Willard bellmen, who pushed the birds on a cart through the lobby and up to Room 726… The Turkey Suite was sectioned off by baby gates, keeping the birds in the foyer, which was protected with plastic, paper and sawdust. They also won’t be sleeping alone — their trainer, Peter Gruel, will be staying in the adjoining room.

But while they couldn’t sit on the couch, the turkeys did have some perks. Chef Neall Bailey prepared “turkey treats” for them, made of cracked corn, soybeans, roasted hazelnuts, oats and raisins.

And the birds had better get a good night’s sleep, for after their visit to the White House, they will fly first class on United Airlines to Los Angeles, where one of them will be the grand marshal in Thursday’s Disneyland Thanksgiving Day Parade.

You Eat What The Cow Eats

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And in this case, the cow has been eating mostly corn…

If you thought you were eating mostly grass-fed beef when you bit into a Big Mac, think again: The bulk of a fast-food hamburger from McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s is made from cows that eat primarily corn, or so says a new study of the chemical composition of more than 480 fast-food burgers from across the nation.

Eating a diet of meat from corn-fed animals hasn’t been linked to any specific health effects in humans. But it has resulted in widespread environmental degradation, including drained water supplies, degraded soils, and reliance on fossil fuels for fertilizer, pesticides and farm machinery fuel…

Feeding so much corn to cows is bad for the environment, bad for the cows, and potentially bad for you. So, this is a very straightforward case of industrial farming leading to potential health hazards, animal mistreatment, and low-quality meat. It’s good to know that when you buy “grass-fed” beef, you’re getting something more than peace of mind.

The solution should be to eat less meat, though. Switching cows over to grass does not solve the larger problems of unbalanced food supplies and overconsumption.

It’s Like John Madden Threw Up In My Mouth, And Everyone’s Invited!

Patton Oswald puts into words what we’re all thinking about the KFC’s “Failure Pile in a Sadness Bowl”:

(Post title courtesy of: Truck J. Shann)

Vote For America’s Meat

We need a better culinary heritage to export than fast food

(The Burger King in the Green Zone of Iraq)

Vote Good Meat

Meat Should Be Expensive

Ezra Klein takes a long look at the extraordinarily dumb and hopefully collapsing system of meat production in the United States.

Overconsumption of meat imposes huge costs on both the environment and on public health. And that’s to say nothing of the indefensible cruelty that characterizes CAFO operations. Yet we spend billions to subsidize ever cheaper meat. And billions more to treat the ill health that results from our meat-heavy diets. And we will pay billions, even trillions, more, to handle the environmental damage that eventually results from these policies. It’s an incredibly odd state of affairs, like paying someone to touch up your house with lead paint.

I recently paid $6.99 for a frozen package of five chicken fingers from Whole Foods (review coming). Does this make me particularly happy? No. Because I’m used to having the equivalent of five chicken fingers of meat for probably half of my meals in a week, and that expectation is both unrealistic and increasingly harmful. Remember that in a market economy, you can pay for something with more than money: time, political capital, dead bodies, etc. We’ve been buying our meat on environmental and societal credit, and the interest charges are about to go way up.

(H/T: Andrew Sullivan)

Eat Your Pets, NYC

British street artist Banksy has set up what can only be described as a bizarre and enthralling storefront art project in Greenwich Village. The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill uses animatronics, found art and multimedia to question just about every assumption we make about animals: how we live with them, how we live with eating them and how they live like us.

Some people seem to think this is a vegetarian protest project , but of course it’s far more subtle than that. Even for people who adore meat, there is an internal contradiction when they spend a day doing nothing but playing catch with their dog. Most of us can live with this contradiction; but most of us are not confronted with it so strikingly. Your reactions may very when you see a hotdog where a hamster should be. Whatever Banksy means, you gotta go see his store. The exhibit runs through Oct 31.

(Photos by TJ and Gothamist)

The Grassy LOL (i.e. the Vast Chicken Wing Conspiracy)

Honestly, the title has little to do with this post. But I thought of it and I couldn’t NOT write it.

When I first saw posters for the Grass Fed Party in NYC, I got excited, because I thought I was going to be going to a big beef-eating jamboree. Then I went to their website and got even more excited because I realized it was a political party. From the preamble to their party platform:

The Grass-fed Party believes that it is time in America for a revival of traditional ranching practices to help the smaller communities thrive, to help preserve and enrich range lands, and to help cows eat according to their natural diets while giving them access to clean air and water.

Of course, like any third party, they already have a slightly kooky leader, a rancher from Montana. But as the old saying goes, you can tell a man’s character by the way he treats his beef.

How serious are they? Well, they regularly update their blog, have a weekly drawing for four strip steaks, and have an online action center. Unfortunately they also seem to heavily promote their leader’s own meat products, with a link to his online store. But then again, you can buy Obama beanies on Obama’s site, right?

This Bacon’s Gonna Blow!

…but not in the way you would expect.  It seems some morons at Rep. John Boehner’s congressional office couldn’t decipher the humorous origin of the package of pork product that showed up in their mailroom days after passing a larded-up bailout bill.  Rest assured that if you send any bacon to Chomposaurus’s offices, we won’t call the cops unless we’re inviting them to our barbeque.

Sunday Protein: High Meat Prices Here to Stay?

Chef David Chang has a good take on what we’ll eat in the 21st century.

But guess what? The machinery that’s pumped so much meat into our lives over the last half century was never built to last, and now it’s breaking down big-time. Feed is more expensive. Gasoline is more expensive. Milk, rice, butter, corn–it’s all going through the roof. And for the foreseeable future, it’s not coming back down.