This may cause you to reconsider...

http://consumerist.com/2013/06/03/heres ... nch-today/

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“Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.”
― Joe Garagiola

Seems like something out of "Waiting."

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Per Mare, Per Terras
KC

Things like this are so stupid. Yes it is disgusting but I hate how people try to act like it is somehow representative of a whole company. Something like this could happen in any place where someone else makes your food, no matter how classy or trashy the place is.

x2, I read on FB they ended up firing the employee over this.

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Per Mare, Per Terras
KC

The only way you can be completely safe is to grow your vegetables and feed your livestock using water you yourself have purified and air you yourself have filtered, and the cook everything yourself.

Living in China, where there are A LOT of food safety issues, we have been eating out less and less, but even that doesn't protect us, because the meat, fruit and vegetables we have to buy and prepare are all being grown in toxic fields.

Kinda sucks.

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

Speaking of food safety, check out this article my wife just forwarded to me

asian WSJ

Good summary of the challenges we face.

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

It occurs to me that a possible solution is not to bring the farms to the city, so to speak, but to retrain and work with rural farmers and food producers. When we first moved to Chile, they fed all their cattle and chickens fish meal primarily, because they have so much shoreline and so much fish. It was probably good for the animals, but the meat and chicken tasted like fish. Cant tell you how many times we would take a bite of the meat, and get up and throw it in the trash. Fish flavored bacon is something you don't want to ever eat.

On the other hand, all fruits and vegetables are grown organically. The produce just burst with flavor. I remember marvelling at the taste of a carrot. It tasted like a sweet carrot, not cardboard. We would go weekly to the feria (open air market) and get between 20-25 pounds of produce. The cost? About $5-7 US. It wasn't just apples and oranges. Avacadoes, tomatoes, mangos, raspberries, blackberries, asparagus, apricots, peaches, etc. All the pricey items here. Point is, organic doesnt have to be expensive.

I then read that a program had started where US and Eurpoean agricultural agents were coming to work with the Chileans on ways to remove the fish residue while still keeping costs to produce reasonable. The solution was to continue the fish meal until 3-4 months before slaughter, and then switch to grain/other non-fish meal. It worked thankfully.

While I don't know a lot about the ag industry there, surely they can find ways to produce food without the toxins, in a safer manner without significanty increasing the costs. If the Chinese are willing to pay up to 4 times the cost on certain items that are imported, then a slight increase on domestic would surely work. It may be a matter of changing the mindset, but clearly something has to change. I dont understand how these practices ever got started- who said lets just use product X even though its poisionous? Was it just purely profit driven?
On my trip to China in 2010, there were a couple of restaurants that we returned the food. I was traveling with a good friend who is Chinese, so we didn't eat at any touristy type places. In fact, most times I was the only American in the place. In one, the entire restaurant went silent when I walked in! Then the drinks started flowing to our table, and lots of toasts were being thrown our way since I was most likely one of the few Americans they had ever seen. Very gracious people in general. Also had trouble actually walking on the Great Wall b/c people kept wanting me to stop and pose with them. We were in a remote spot of the wall, well away from the area where any foreigners would normally have visited.
Point of this rant is, there are always options, and maybe the Chinese officials need to look to other countries for how they operate instead of city dwellers having to become defacto farmers.

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"Grit Happens"
YBC-Dog, DBBP

"There's NO Crying in Baseball"
Tom Hanks- "A League of Their Own"

The intense flavor is because what you are were buying is fresh, not because it was grown using organic methods. Our food isn't grown for flavor, it is grown for yield and ability to travel.

We did some urban gardening for a while and the carrots were amazing if you ate them fresh. If you let them sit a couple days most of the flavor would be lost.

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Per Mare, Per Terras
KC

Guess it's not just the food. Looking forward to the day we see you back in Arizona fulltime.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013 ... /?mod=e2fb

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“Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.”
― Joe Garagiola

Epic Meltdown by Chinese official in airport

Narrated Version

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

22 Tons of Fake Beef Seized in China

http://firstwefeast.com/eat/20000-kilos ... ian-china/

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“Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.”
― Joe Garagiola

Brings new meaning to, "Where's the beef?"

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Per Mare, Per Terras
KC

Fake beef--it's what's for dinner.

Pretty creative huh?

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

Sow+salted wax = Cow, creativity Mary Shelley style.

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There's no success like failure
And failure's no success at all

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStor ... a-23798241

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“Baseball is drama with an endless run and an ever-changing cast.”
― Joe Garagiola

You should see how much food from China is in USA supermarkets

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/05/21/why-americans-should-worry-about-chinas-food-safety-problems/

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Good depth often has to come from within, in the form of younger talent. Depth is hard to build overnight, but it’s easy to deplete. Jeff Sullivan

That isn't beef you are eating...

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Per Mare, Per Terras
KC