FOOD FRIDAY: Gut check
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 75
FOOD FRIDAY DEP'T.
FOOD FRIDAY: Stop the Insanitary!
THE CHICKEN IS germy and it's going to stay germy, thanks to the Trump administration, as we learned on this morning's podcast. The turkey, as we further learned, is apparently even germier than the chicken:
Let's start in the poultry aisle, where the Associated Press reported yesterday “the Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat. The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. The rule,” the AP goes on to say, “would have required poultry companies to keep levels of salmonella bacteria under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six strains most associated with illness, including three found in turkey and three in chicken. If the levels exceeded the standard or any of those strains were found, the poultry couldn't be sold and would be subject to recall, the proposal had said. The plan aimed to reduce an estimated 125,000 salmonella infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year, according to USDA. Overall, salmonella causes 1.35 million infections a year, most through food, and about 420 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Turkey's share of the infections there seems pretty high. It looks like, according to numbers from the National Chicken Council, Americans' per capita consumption of chicken last year was 102.6 pounds, to 13.8 pounds of turkey. That would mean Americans ate only about 13.5 percent as much turkey as they ate chicken, while turkey accounted for 34.4 percent as many salmonella infections as chicken. Are turkeys or turkey processors that much filthier? Is that why the six strains that cause the most illness in people are evenly divided between chickens and turkeys, despite the chickens being much more numerous? Does turkey’s relative rarity mean that people are more incompetent at cooking it when they take their one whack a year at cooking one at Thanksgiving?
Trump's Food and Drug Administration has also suspended its certification program for testing milk, though a representative of the American Dairy Foods Association told the Washington Post that "[d]airy facilities and milk continue to be regularly tested and inspected by regulatory authorities (state and federal) as required by the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, which has ensured milk safety for over 100 years"; suspended its "quality control work around lab testing for the parasite Cyclospora in spinach or the pesticide glyphosate in barley, among other tests," according to Reuters; and suspended "efforts to improve its bird flu testing of milk, cheese and pet food due to massive staff cuts at the agency." The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has been laying off employees who would monitor the spread of bird flu in livestock.
The food is always coming for you. It's supposedly coming for me even more, because I'm on immunosuppressive meds, but I haven't really noticed it yet, beyond the fact that on the prevention side I'm not supposed to eat raw oysters. We're in line for there to be more sewage in the oysters, anyway, thanks to the Supreme Court. And I take the dire warnings about not eating uncooked batter more seriously than I used to, which was originally not at all, but as people kept on talking about salmonella or E. coli in the flour over time I got incrementally less appetized by the spatula. Public health messaging works, eventually, even if you didn't want to hear it!
The one I really don't know how to deal with is the scallions. Scallions definitely make people sick. And I have personally, once, had the horrifying experience of chopping up a scallion and realizing there was full-on black soil inside it, in the hollow tube of the scallion. I don't know how that possibly happened, but it did. It was my most destabilizing experience with produce since the time I got asparagus that turned out, at eating time, to have had grit packed deep down under the flat scaly leaves on the stalk. That transformed asparagus from just about the easiest vegetable to cook into one of the most annoying, because ever since I've had to trim off every one of those stupid leaves so as never to feel that scraping sensation on my teeth again. But there's almost nothing to be done about the prospect of dirt inside the scallion, least of all the possible subtle and unnoticeable dirt that the one episode of blatant dirt implied. For the majority of uses—improving a green salad, garnishing short ribs, perking up a tuna salad or an egg salad—the scallions have to be raw. You just have to hope the odds are on your side, even as the government makes the odds worse.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, April 24, 2025
★★★★ The light lay prettily on the grid of the unattractive iron balcony table. Pollen smothered the shine of the parked cars. Desultory but persistent trumpet practice carried through the open windows from somewhere nearby. The warmth of the sun was overlaid on the gentle coolness of the morning like the faint haze was overlaid on the cloudless blue. A bee hovered against the sky in the noon hour. The shadow of the honeylocust trade was still dendritic on the roadway, its new leaves too small to fill in the spaces yet. Old acorns fell from the loose soil of the spider plant on its way into a bigger pot. An insistent breeze pushed uphill from the Park. Down by the Pool a squirrel jumped up to tear at low-growing leaves and then rolled around on them on the ground. Faint lines of blue appeared across the already faint patches of thin, blurry cloud. The air was a tiny bit hard to breathe; the water had a fishy smell—tiny imperfections only noticeable after the flawlessness of the days before.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
CLICK ON THIS box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
VISUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEP'T.
Easter Candy
More consciousness at Instagram. We detest the new rectangular-images grid.
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Prague Chapter Book Of Recipes, compiled by Marie Paidar and Blanche Kammerer, published in 1922, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
VEAL SANDWICHES—One-half pound finely chopped roast veal, one chopped apple, one heart celery chopped fine, six walnuts chopped fine. Salad dressing to make a smooth paste. Mix and spread between thin slices of bread. CECELIA BARTA.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
