ColumnArtisanal ice cream gone wrong.

Salted caramel ice cream. Orange coriander ice cream. Sweet summer corn buttermilk sherbert.

The whole put-anything-you-can-find-and-see-if-it-works-in-ice-cream-trend is tasty at times, edgy at best, but has become so ubiquitous that off-color flavors rarely merit a reaction.

That was until I saw the geoduck ice cream sign.

I was driving home to my parents’ house, a big yellow house nestled somewhere between some trees and a few salt water bays in the Puget Sound. I had taken the backroads to avoid traffic, which entailed driving through a quaint, waterfront town of Allyn. There is a knitting store that we go to in the winter, a burger joint in the summer and a small dock to walk on. A good afternoon excursion on the days when you need to spice up country life.

Windows down, music blaring I slowed down to the required 35 miles per hour and took in the sea salt air of home. I was going slow enough that the sign was hard to miss.

“Geo Duck Ice Cream.” Right below the “Fresh Peach Sunda.” Who needs the “y” anyway?

I’m sorry… what?

I was tired of driving and didn’t have the energy to turn around, but I was so shocked that anyone would ever dare make ice cream out of Washington State’s most treasured/hated shellfish that I made a mental note of the sign, and told myself that before the week was up I would have to return.

For those who aren’t well versed on the geoduck, it’s a shellfish that happens to be the largest bivalve along Puget Sound. In laymen’s terms: it has a three foot-long neck and looks pretty gross. But we kind of have a thing for them up in Washington. A sort of love/hate affair. The Chinese certainly love them, which means they’re good for the economy, and Evergreen State College thinks they’re so great that they’ve even made mascot status.

A Washington native, I had personally never tried one. But this was the summer of “just say yes” policy. It’s a travel policy that I try to stick to, even when travel means returning to my home state. And of course, even when it means tasting geoduck ice cream. Fortunately my good friend Dave had come up for the weekend, and as my regular co-host of dinner parties and lover of all things food related, I knew he had to be up for the challenge.

“I am so glad you wanted to go do this with me,” I said, after parking in Allyn and walking up to the small Olympic Mountain Ice Cream shop.

“I didn’t say I wanted to do this,” he responded.

Right.

It should be noted that when you walk into an ice cream shop featuring geoduck ice cream with two cameras in hand, it’s sort of obvious what you want to order.

“Oh, there’s the cream kind and a sorbet,” I said, wondering why in God’s name you would make two variations of the stuff.

“Well, the cream based one is a stronger one. A really strong geoduck taste with butter. That’s what we recommend for people that really like geoduck.” said the young woman working behind the ice cream counter. I tried hard not to visibly shudder. “The other one has a really good lime taste and is a little lighter because it’s a sorbet,” she continued. “You really should test both.”

And that was how Dave and I came to be standing with test spoons of geoduck ice cream and sorbet.

A normal person would of course try the samples, pat themselves on the back, kindly say “that was interesting, but I think I am good,” and continue on their merry way. Not in my case. I was just off a week of picking backyard blackberries, muddling them with basil simple syrup and baking almond, cardamom, red currant scones for breakfast. I had to switch things up. You can only go the mason jar and sea salt route for so long.

“Well, we have to get a full scoop… it is what we came here to do,” I looked at Dave somehow trying to coax some encouragement from him.

“Ok, fine, a cup,” he said.

$2.71 later and we had ourselves a styrofoam (I know, I know) cup of lime geoduck sorbet. The things you do for a culinary experience.

If you’re wondering what geoduck sorbet tastes like, it’s simple: a delightful, zesty dose of sweet lemon, lime flavor, followed by a really weird infusion of chewy geoduck, which really just tastes like a bad clam. No really, it’s sorbet with small pieces of geoduck in it. As Dave put it after we both agreed that despite our hatred of food waste, we simply couldn’t finish the thing, “I only had one meal, I really should have been able to eat more of that.”

Appropriate solution to geoduck sorbet? Big Bubba’s Burgers of course, an institution in the town of Allyn. As we walked, I spit out a piece of geoduck that had lodged itself in my teeth. Traveling is a funny thing, causing even the most devoted kale and quinoa addict to  order a sorbet and then opt to follow up with the “Western,” a burger with barbecue sauce, fried onions and pepperjack. Dave added bacon. We got a small order of fries.

We walked down to the water and took in the salt air.

“Geoduck sorbet followed by this? I am totally going to puke later,” I said.

“Yeah, but at least you’ll have a column,” he responded.

And a renewed sense of why I don’t like shellfish in my ice cream, or sorbet for that matter, but a reminder of why I love coming home. It’s real. Not upscale. Not serving a new crazy dish because that’s what they read on about on a food blog. Just sort of off-the-wall local food that’s worth eating at least once in life, because it gives you a sense of the place. The kind of thing that we’re all somehow looking for, right?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

The post Foodie Underground: Would You Like a Scoop of Geoduck Ice Cream? appeared first on EcoSalon.

On the heels of the devastating article in the New York Times about a young woman who paid dearly for the horrifying practices and lack of oversight in the meat industry, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a list of the top 10 riskiest foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Some of your favorite foods are on this list, including ice cream, berries and leafy greens, with tuna being the most surprising culprit. Though meat contains some of the most virulent contaminants, like the strain of E. coli that almost killed Stephanie Smith, it’s missing from the list, because it isn’t regulated by the FDA. It’s regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Confused yet?

Thousands of people are dying every year from food-borne illness and we have a confusing morass of regulations and agencies charged with enforcing them. Clearly we need a better system, but how to sort out the mess?

There’s a lot of action happening now in the realm of food safety. We can only hope that despite the tangled web of Congressional bills, consumer and industry lobbying, cooperation agreements between the FDA and the USDA and crazy-making sideshows like the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, we will actually end up with safer food, and hopefully not to the detriment of small-scale organic farmers.

Join me for a quick rundown on the most important recent developments in the world of food safety and their possible risks to small farmers.

Congressional Bills:

The House has already passed HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act, and the Senate is considering Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act.

But funny things sometimes happen on the way to a bill becoming law – compromises and deal brokering and exemptions and loopholes. The people and industries in power usually get more say than small farmers or consumers.

Both bills only deal with the FDA’s sphere of authority, giving meat and some other fresh agricultural products a pass for now, with the exception of some foods that are processed on site on smaller farms.

Value added products, like pickles, jams and preserves will be required to comply with some FDA regulations. This has small farm and good food activists picking up their pitchforks.

Thankfully, this administration’s appointees within the USDA and FDA, like Deputy Secretary of the USDA, Kathleen Merrigan, seem more inclined to listen to the concerns of consumers and small farmers. The final House bill included language to protect small producers from onerous regulations and we ended up with an ok bill.

With food borne illness victims testifying in Congress and demanding a final bill before the holidays, things are sure to heat up. Let’s hope victim testimony and articles like the one in the New York Times that put faces to the tragedy of tainted food, will influence Congress to attempt real reform in the final bill.

Cooperation Agreement Between USDA and FDA:

Also this week, it was announced that the FDA would begin working in concert with the USDA to regulate the safety of our food system. At first glance, it seems like a good thing for two food related departments within the government to work together to increase food safety.

Not necessarily. The FDA is charged with inspecting the food supply for safety (among other things), and the USDA is charged with helping farmers market their products (among other things). Can two agencies with very different mandates work together to protect consumers?

We’ve talked about the shenanigans and overlapping jurisdictions of the FDA and the USDA before here on EcoSalon, but prior to delving even deeper into the question of these agencies regulating food safety, it’s important to understand what the two agencies were designed to do.

The FDA was created in 1906 to administer The Pure Food, Drinks and Drug Act. The act was a legislative reaction to the horrors uncovered by Upton Sinclair in his expose of the meat industry, The Jungle, as well as discoveries about common practices in the food industry at the time, such as the use of heavy metals to color and preserve foods. It worked for awhile, but now we are in the midst of our own Jungle-like horror.

The FDA is responsible for food safety as it relates to processed food products (ironically excluding meat) pet and animal feed and imports. This agency is also responsible for regulating drugs, vaccines, cosmetics and dietary supplements. Its labeling jurisdiction extends to nutrition and health claims, nutrition information, and ingredient labeling.

President Lincoln created the USDA at the height of the Civil War. The stated purpose of the department was to serve the people that were involved in agriculture at the time – more than half the population. It inspired legislation like The Morrill Land-Grant College Act, authorizing public land grants to create agricultural colleges. The Act required the establishment of such colleges in all U.S. states and territories and the District of Columbia.

The USDA is responsible for regulating, inspecting and recalling raw agricultural products like meat (including processed and packaged meat products, like hot dogs) poultry and eggs. This gives the USDA jurisdiction over labeling claims about farming and production practices (marketing language) while the FDA regulates labeling claims that relate to ingredients. The USDA created and administers The National Organic Program (NOP). The USDA also administers the Farm Bill and its programs.

For a good rundown on why the dual role of the USDA in regulating raw agricultural products and helping to market them is problematic, look to this article in Grist.

This dual role is one of the reasons experts like Marion Nestle advocate for a single agency whose sole responsibility is regulating the safety of the food supply.

The Leafy Green Marketing Agreement:

Bear with me here if this doesn’t sound like a food safety measure. Recall the spinach debacle of 2006? The one in which E. coli was found in bagged spinach? This article talks about why small, independent farmers weren’t affected (which is why I wasn’t afraid to eat the spinach that came in my CSA box the week of the outbreak). The article also hints at the future Leafy Green Marketing agreement in the following passage.

“Next week, the FDA will also be reviewing voluntary guidelines offered by the produce industry to ensure agricultural and processing practices with spinach – and other leafy greens.”

The proposed guidelines would cover “the three Ws” of potential contamination – water, workforce and wildlife, says Thomas Nassif, president of Western Growers, which represents some 3,000 farmers and shippers in California and Arizona. These farmers produce about half of all the fresh produce in the country.

His group wants to keep the guidelines voluntary. “Obviously, the industry and most of the regulators would like to see us handle it,” Nassif said.

These voluntary guidelines are in effect now in California and Arizona, which is bad news for those very small farmers who weren’t part of the problem.

The reason the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement is in the news again is because the industry now wants to take the agreement national. The proposed marketing agreement would allow leafy green handlers to attach a USDA-backed “food safety seal” to lettuce, spinach, cabbage and other vegetables. The agreement would be voluntary for handlers, but since the big handlers control the industry, any small farmers who want to have the chance to expand their markets would have to comply.

Complying with the regulations requires excluding wildlife from the farm ecosystem (never mind that E. Coli comes from cows), leading to sterile farms devoid of wildlife, hedgerows, cover crops and all those other characteristics that make up a biologically diverse, ecologically sound farming system. So smaller farmers would have the choice of either sterilizing their farms, scaling up and becoming just like industrial growers, or staying small and appealing to a niche audience.

A marketing agreement does not a food safety regulation make. I don’t think consumers want to have to look for a seal on their food to assure themselves it’s safe to eat. I think most people would agree that food safety is careful handling practices, inspection, enforcement – you know, food safety, not marketing.

For a truly chilling, eyewitness account of what it actually looks like when industry writes its own rules with the help of the USDA, check out Elanor Starmer’s posts on the Ethicurean. She sat in the hearing rooms for three days straight so this is truly eyewitness. Day One, Day Two, Day three.

The president has said he’s committed to safer food. With all of the other issues on the agenda, it’s hard to tell where food safety on the urgency scale, but articles like that one in the New York Times definitely force momentum. If you want to keep up with breaking news in the realm of food safety there are two good resources, The President’s Food Safety Working Group and Food Safety News. Stay informed and whenever possible, buy whole foods from farmers you know.

Image: qmnonic

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

The post A Primer on Current Food Safety Politics for Non Policy Geeks appeared first on EcoSalon.