Results tagged “agriculture”

While the NY Times' story on a Harlem charter school's kindergarten visit to the Queens County Farm Museum might just seem like a human interest story, there's actually a serious reason behind it: The state's English and math tests seem biased towards kids with knowledge of farms. There are "several questions each year about livestock, crops and the other staples of the rural experience that some educators say flummox city children, whose knowledge of nature might begin and end at Central Park. On the state English test this year, for instance, third graders were asked questions relating to chickens and eggs. In math, they had to count sheep and horses." Oh no!!!

For decades, residents of low-income neighborhoods under-served by supermarket chains have been getting their hands on produce the old fashioned way: By growing it in their own gardens. In recent years, outer-borough farmers have taken urban agriculture a step further by selling their mostly organic haul at well-organized community markets.

The California based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company is recalling all its raw and frozen beef products distributed since Feb. 1, 2006 – a total of 143 million pounds of ground beef. The largest beef recall in history was announced after an undercover Humane Society video showed workers kicking sick cows, jabbing them in the eyes and using forklifts to force them to walk to slaughter. (See the video here.)

After the Humane Society revealed a tape of mistreatment of cows at the nation's "No. 2 supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program," burgers and other beef products were temporarily yanked off NYC schools' menus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had put an "administrative hold" on all products from Hallmark Meat Packing Packing in Chino, CA and asked all schools to stop using products from Westland/Hallmark Meat.

THEATER: The fall theater season gets curiouser and curiouser with the start of The Alice in Wonderland Puppet Festival at HERE. (The festival, which is not recommended for children under twelve, will feature a tea party after every show.) Tonight curiouser & curiouser fuses text from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s diary entries and his muse Alice Liddell’s memoirs to try to decipher what destroyed their unique friendship. - John Del Signore

FESTIVAL: Conflux 2007 has arrived. Starting tonight and running through Sunday, their "annual New York City festival for contemporary psychogeography" will help re-imagine urban spaces with a series of events, lectures, workshops, installations, parties and so much more. Get all the info and schedules you need, here.

Photo courtesy of Daily Candy.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bicyclist was struck on 72nd St. and Park Ave. in Manhattan, shots were fired on Halsey St. in Brooklyn, and there was a suspicious death at Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens.
• A dozing violinist awoke to jump onto an arriving subway train at the Clark St. station, but left his valuable "Scarampella" violin on the platform in Brooklyn. Have you seen it? UPDATE: the violin was turned into the MTA's lost and found. It's a July 4th miracle!
• The nocturnal cat-eating New Jersey chupacabra. Pet owners beware!
• The Gowanus Lounge notes the quick vandalism and destruction of a new bus shelter in Gerritsen Beach.
• The next time a developer decides to renovate a brownstone or an apartment building, we hope they can spare some time to do something like Houston's Tunnel House.
• A guide to Community Supported Agriculture in NYC, connecting farmers with New York residents.
• The city will cut the number of pedicabs allowed on New York's streets from 500 to 325 this fall.

One can hear plenty of trees falling in the forest in Staten Island these days, as the Parks Dept. is on a massive tree-killing spree after the notice of a few dozen Asian longhorned beetles. The insect is a scourge and first appeared in Greenpoint, Brooklyn about a decade ago, after possibly being imported in a wooden packing crate from China. The female of the species lays its eggs in a tree and the larva burrow their way towards the center of the plant. Once grown, the beetle chews its way out, leaving a large hole that can be lethal to trees when repeated enough times.

May 3: Cheezapolooza III: Naked vs Cooked

The good news is that the FDA didn't find rat poison (aka aminopterin) in pet food samples from Menu Foods, which is what NY State authorities found last week. The bad - very bad - news is that traces of melamine were found in the pet food, and apparently melamine-contaminated wheat gluten was also sent to a dry food manufacturer. From the AP:

Cornell University scientists also found melamine — used to produce plastic kitchen wares and used in Asia as a fertilizer — in the urine of sick cats, as well as in the kidney of one cat that died after eating the company’s wet food...

Continue reading "FDA Finds Plastics Chemicals in Recalled Pet Food"

Halloween is looking to be scarier than usual for New Jersey's pumpkin farmers this year. A hot summer with heavy rains in June and late August have left the 1,500-odd acres of pumpkin patches in Jersey ripe for soil fungi that love to devour orange gourds. Farmers are reporting losing anywhere form 50-90% of their crops this year, forcing many to import pumpkins in "from as far away as Michigan and Canada."

Since the e. coli scare began, our spinach and leafy green consumption has gone from zero servings a day to, well, zero servings a day. But our more herbivorous readers may be sad to see that officials still haven't found how a bacteria that normally romps around our bowels made its way to our favorite iron-filled flora. The Times reports that the outbreak of the past few weeks, which may have killed as many as three people and poisoned almost 200 others (including plenty of kids and 11 New Yorkers), is currently without a clear source and may always remain without one. This is in spite of the fact that officials have localized the center of the outbreak to the California counties of Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara.

At the farmer’s market you’re entranced. The stalls swell with the season’s natural bounty—corn, tomatoes, peaches, peppers—all the foods that taste right only when eaten at this time of year. You buy pounds and lug the harvest home. But as the shortening days slip by, those special $2 bags of veggies risk going to rot in your fridge. It’s enough to make a gourmet’s heart sink. What do you do? Can it. That’s what some people in the city are learning to do. It may seem like a lost art, but canning could be coming into a revival. “Putting up” food has an old-fashioned homey appeal, not unlike that of knitting, another noble homestead craft that has spurred a recent craze. This summer the Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights threw a couple “jam sessions,” and the Park Slope CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group gave a tutorial for members last week. If you’re a believer in the importance of buying locally, canning gives you a way to have your cake and eat it too. Stock up on berries now, cook them into jam, and eat them in January without any guilt. Preserving food at home can even feel a little revolutionary in this era when industrially produced food is the norm.

Gothamist has never had a taste for foie gras (although, some of us do) as we can't get past the fact that we're eating liver, but animal rights activists are trying to get the delicacy banned entirely. In an appeal to the state legislature, groups including the Humane Society asked the state's Department of Agriculture and Markets to label foie gras as an "adulterated" food, which is defined as food that is "diseased, contaminated, filthy, putrid or decomposed." This would give the agriculture commissioner the option of banning foie gras. The Times gets what could be the best quote regarding this issue from Eric Ripert, the executive chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin who sighs and then says:

We can criticize how foie gras is produced and be concerned about the health of the duck and blah, blah, blah, O.K., fine.

Can you imagine the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus without elephants? The fight between Ringling Bros. and various animal advocacy groups, including the ASPCA, the Humane Society, and Animal Protection Institute, may be closer to a trial after six years of various lawsuits and court orders between the two sides. The animal groups claim that Ringling Bros. abuses its elephants, using sharp hooks and chairs for training, and separating babies from mother elephants, while Ringling Bros. claims their practices are, in fact, humane. The AP summarizes some of the issues, including how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (who knew that agency regulated elephants) did find that the circus failed to comply with the Animal Welfare Act, but Ringling Bros. managed to get out of being "formally classified as a violator"; on the other side, a Texas A&M professor who traveled with the circus never saw "overt cruelty."

March 31: A Short Introduction to Wine

Catholics love hearing the words "special dispensation" and who doesn't loving hearing the word, "beef"? It all comes together tomorrow, as the Archdiocese of New York (and the surrounding areas, as well as other parts of the country) is allowing Catholics to eat beef on tomorrow. For all you non-Catholics, on Friday during Lent, plus Ash Wednesday, Catholics aren't allowed to eat meat (fish is okay - sorry fishmongers!). But this is special: The Archdiocese of New York explained to AM New York, "Because St. Patrick is the patron saint of the diocese, the day should be celebrated as a feast day." A feast of beer and corned beef - and shamrock shakes! Here's a list of Irish bars in the city - let us know your suggestions.

February review: Lots of temperature swings as the atmospheric circulation pattern shifted mid-month. Central Park temperatures wound up slightly above average for the month. Precipitation was slightly below normal but more than an average amount of snow fell. All in one storm.

"This was not a situation where somebody was trying to hide something. Quite the opposite happened," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, noting the boxes were correctly labeled but violated Japan's unique rules.

Continue reading "Thanks to Brooklyn, Japan Doesn't Want American Beef Anymore"

Yesterday we were browsing Delicious, and someone had linked this very interesting page explaining New York's dog bite laws. Our problems run more to bites of the feline variety, but if you have a poochey pal, you'll definitely want to know the rules just in case Fido goes Cujo on someone at the dog run:

Dunh dunh DUNH! The Parks Department has found the Asian longhorned beetle in a tree at East 70th-71st Streets and Fifth Avenue in Central Park, joining 47 other trees in the NY area. The Asian longhorned beetle is no friend of trees, their larvae will hatch and end up infesting and destroying trees. And the beetle is such a menace that the U.S. Department of Agricultural Farm Service sends people to inspect the trees. The Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe is begging people to call 311 if they see the beetle, or else the beetles might destroy ALL THE TREES IN NEW YORK! There may have been the CBS TV movie, Locusts, but that would be nothing compared to Asian Longhorned Beetles! The Central Park tree will be "will be chopped down, chopped up, chipped up, then incinerated."

This morning as I was getting ready for work I found myself looking into the beady eyes of a humungous cockroach. After some squealing and donning of rubber yellow gloves I managed to kill the roach with a hammer. There must be a better and cleaner way to exterminate roaches. What options do I have? Also, what is an acceptable level of cohabitation with these buggers? Is it realistic to believe that if the right steps were taken my apartment could be 100% roach free? This is the first cockroach I have ever seen during my 8 months in this apartment.

Here a few Chisholm quotes, and heris Chisholm's bio from Congress. You can also try to order her book, Unbought and Unbossed, from Amazon, and on March 1 of this year, a DVD about her will be released.

Today's New York Times Dining & Wine section sounds the death knell for the Bronx Terminal Market, once a thriving hub of trade in locally-grown produce. Squeezed out of the wholesale market by cheaper, more plentiful imports and lower transportation costs, and too big to profitably tour the Greenmarket circuit, many of the region's medium- to large-scale farmers are on the out-and-out. And discontent has been simmering in the food world over the declining quality and ethics of the Greenmarket system. What's a New Yorker who cares about fresh food and supporting local farmers to do?

The first case of mad cow disease is announced the U.S. Americans freak out, other countries smirk and ban U.S. beef. Take that, U.S.A., for banning our food, like Mad Cow: UK Edition, Asian bird flu, and foot and mouth disease.