All hail the Guberburger!

So I went to see the film Hamburger America at the Enzian Theater yesterday, along with This is My Cheesesteak. Both films were wonderful takes on food in America. I’m happy the Florida Film Festival included these films this year, because I am such a food lore geek, and I love hearing about the history of little mom & pop establishments, even if they’re serving up a bunch of meat I don’t eat.

This is My Cheesesteak focusing on the iconic Philly cheesesteak sandwich and a few of the sandwich shops and their owners who have made it such an institution in the city. It was a visual love letter to the authentic cheesesteak. My favourite scene was when the cheesesteak owners were shown sampling a Hot Pockets microwavable Philly cheesesteak… and all that were shown trying it spat the bite they took out! It was great. If you want to find out more about this film, the documentary has a website: www.thisismycheesesteak.com. There’s a schedule of other film festivals it will be appearing at, as well as a film trailer, and apparently you will be able to buy the DVD online soon. There’s also a listing of the steak shops featured in the film, with nearly all of them having their own website, so if you’re planning on making a visit to the city, you have your selection of cheesesteaks to try… unless you’re veg like me. Take photos at least, though, because these sort of establishments are a part of food history.

While This is My Cheesesteak showed American cuisine in one city, Hamburger America went all across the foodscape of American to tell these amazing stories about the small businesses and local chains that make up our food culture identity. It fascinated me how these little places scattered around the country are so unique in their history and also their take on the classic American hamburger. The film starts out in Memphis, Tennessee, with a burger whose burger meat is deep-fried, which should come as no surprise to the rest of the Southerners out there. The real kicker is that the meat is fried in grease that’s over 90 years old. The grease is strained and filtered, but essentially it’s still the same grease that was being used nearly a century ago.

As well as Wisconsin’s Butterburger, where a healthy(?) dollop of butter is added into the burger, New Mexico’s burger with chiles, Connecticut’s steamed meat patties (which I actually found more bizarre than the deep-fried burger patties… but then again, half of my heritage is from people raised on vitamin G–grease), there was a little place called the Wagon Weel out in some fly-over state that puts peanut butter on its hamburger patties. Ah yes, hence it’s known as the Guberburger. During the Q&A section with the director afterwards, someone had asked him which burger was his favourite, and he earnestly said he liked all of them, but he regularly makes the Guberburger at home because of its ease of replication: just add peanut butter.

This inspired me. Later on that evening, with the help of my wonderful friend Marie who bought me a few of the rather essential ingredients, I created a Southeast Asian/vegetarian hommage to the Guberburger. I put lettuce and a sliced-up cherry tomato on the bottom bun, then added some fresh basil leaves, then cooked up a veggie burger patty and plopped in on top. While it was still hot from the pan, I put on a layer of non-hydrogenated peanut butter (stir, stir), then sprinkled on some crunchy bean sprouts and squeezed a proper bit of lime on top of that and on the underside of the top bun as well. It was gorgeous! I forgot to take a photograph, as I was so caught up in wanting to know what it would taste like, but I’ll definitely include another entry of making it with a photograph for my Open Source Food profile. It will be brilliant.

If you missed out on the film, you can buy it on DVD from the Hamburger America website. In addition to the film, George Motz is putting out a book that will showcase more burger establishments in the United States. There’s also a Hamburger America blog, which should keep you up-to-date about the upcoming book tour in, as George Motz put it, the Burger Belt.

Praise the man or woman who came up with the concept of putting peanut butter on a hamburger, and praise films like this that champion the small establishments that contribute to America’s flavour.

The Big Beef Recall

My father told me about this, as I’ve been kind of out of it lately, but right now the United States is in the midst of the largest beef recall in this nation’s history.  143 million pounds of beef is being recalled from California company Westland/Hallmark, which has a plant in nearby Polk county.

Interestingly, there are some shoulder-shrugs, as much of the meat has already been eaten, per this BBC News article.  But still, “downer” cattle–cows that are visibly sick or ill and therefore unable to walk themselves to down the line to slaughter–are at a higher risk of BSE, aka mad cow disease.  Should one diseased animal get into the meat grinder, the meat from such an animal could infect an untold amount of processed and packaged foods consumed in homes, restaurants and school lunches.

If you are curious as to what exactly the video shows, you can watch it here (I’m having difficulty with the code… or with WordPress), although you have to know the video depicts very graphic scenes, including animals being shoved with forklifts, shocked with electrical prods and blasted with high-pressure water.  It is wrong on two counts: one for being inhumane, and another for being in your food.  I agree with Wayne Pacelle, president of the US Humane Society, who stated, “A recall of this staggering scale proves that it’s past time for Congress and the USDA to strengthen our laws for the sake of people and animals.”

Interestingly, the good folks at GOOD Magazine released their new March/April issue with a surprisingly apt feature on the American beef industry.  You can see a related video on their website: Happy Meal.

Send in the Clones!

For anyone who cares, the United States Food and Drug Administration has ruled the meat and milk from cloned animal to be safe to consume. From an article on NPR’s website, Cloned Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner?:

The Bryant Park Project, January 16, 2008 · Meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs and goats are just as safe as food from conventionally bred animals. That was the conclusion released Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in a 900-plus-page safety report.

After six years of intensive research on whether meat, muscle tissue and milk from cloned animals are fit for human consumption, the FDA says they “are as safe as food we eat every day.”
The stamp of approval from the FDA removes the last regulatory hurdle to mass-marketing cloned meat and milk products.

In late 2006, the FDA released a draft of its “animal clone safety assessment,” which reached the same conclusion. But a final decision was delayed by strong resistance from food safety and animal rights groups, as well as the U.S. dairy industry, which fears public aversion to cloning for consumption could hurt their image and their profits.

In December 2007, Congress passed a farm bill that included a measure requiring the FDA to delay its final ruling until further studies and an assessment of the possible domestic and foreign trade implications were completed.

U.S. producers were waiting for the FDA decision, too. They agreed back in 2001 to hold off on introducing products by cloned animals into the food supply until the FDA completed the safety report.

Even now that cloned products have the FDA stamp of approval, it remains unlikely they’ll hit supermarket shelves anytime soon. Public distrust of so-called Frankenfoods and the high cost of cloning animals for food production will likely keep them out of stores for the next few years.

In the meantime, the FDA is asking cloning companies like ViaGen Inc. and Trans Ova Genetics to continue the moratorium on cloning animals for food until consumers can adjust to the idea of eating meat that tarted in a Petri dish. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also called for a hold on the distribution of cloned animal foods for the time being, pending consultations on how they will be introduced into the arket.

When the engineered products do hit shelves, the food probably won’t come directly from a cloned animal. Those beasts are more likely to be used as high-quality breeding stock. But the offspring of a cloned cow could certainly end up on your bun.

Is anyone else weirded out by this news? Okay, so the FDA declares it safe. Isn’t this the same FDA that had some hoopla not too long ago over children’s cough medicine?

Full disclosure: I’m a vegetarian. But I do eat eggs and consume some dairy products like butter and cheese, and I’d really not like for those animal products to come from cloned animals, no matter how perfect the egg is. Like the ethics involved in eating animals–or anything, for that matter–one really ought to know what’s involved in providing that vacuum-sealed packet of chicken or slab of steak at the supermarket or grocery store.

In this manner, I would say I’m against cloning animals for meat and products, as this furthers the idea that some animals are here only to feed us and to provide us with what we need, not to live their own lives in freedom or at least in harmony with our own. The final sentence of the Church of Scotland’s article, Should We Clone Animals?, summarizes this idea: “[T]o manipulate animals to be born, grow and reach maturity for sale and slaughter at exactly the time we want them, to suit production schedules suggests one step too far in turning animals into mere commodities.” A related article titled Clothing, Ethics and Animal Welfare is also worth reading.

Although I don’t eat meat, I respect the efforts of places like Polyface Farm, which kills the animals on its farms in humane ways and treats them in a humane manner. Cloning livestock seems far from humane from me, and to introduce this practice in an agricultural system that focuses more on profit than animal welfare is adding more fuel to the fire. If the European Union doesn’t want cloned meat in their markets, then why should we?

“The group said that surrogates carrying cloned embryos could suffer and that some clones themselves experienced a high rate of disease and health problems that include increased weight, malformations, respiratory problems, enlarged livers, hemorrhaging and kidney abnormalities.”

It surprises me how the FDA is ready to deem that consumption of cloned animals and their products as safe, considering the low success rate of clones.

Another article for you to chew on: Cloned Meat is Totally A-OK. No worries. It’s from the Slow Food USA blog, Slow Food being an international organisation that’s “a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.” The statement for Slow Food USA is a little different, but I still agree with it wholeheartedly: Slow Food USA envisions a future food system that is based on the principles of high quality and taste, environmental sustainability, and social justice – in essence, a food system that is good, clean and fair.

Do you think cloned animals for meat production is good, clean and fair?