Backyard butchers in Sydney

An investigation into suspected illegal meat manufacturers in Sydney has uncovered a range of products from dodgy backyard butchers.

Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan says the NSW Food Authority found 29 of the 80 meat products assessed were produced by unlicensed operators, adding,

"In some cases, these unregulated products are then sold to the public through small retail outlets, delis, restaurants, cafes and weekend farmers’ markets.”

The crackdown resulted in the issue of a number of enforcement actions, including 27 penalty notices, five improvement notices, four prohibition orders and ten warning letters.
 

Chickens banned in Calgary; food safety risk?

Chicken banned in the city sounds like the title of yet another bad Loverboy song (Canada has so much to apologize for in terms of bad music inflicted upon the world, see below; this song by Calgary’s Loverboy came on the radio while driving back from Nebraska and Phebus said he liked it; there’s no accounting for taste).

But that’s exactly what cow-town Calgary has done, and two local food activists who collect eggs from their pets responded Wednesday by vowing make it a human-rights issue in court.

A council committee voted 5-2 against allowing residential chicken coops, with members expressing concerns about everything from chicken-feline conflicts to livestock-borne disease.

Urban-hen advocates, picking up on a trend that’s spread throughout B.C. and gaining momentum elsewhere in Canada, have touted backyard egg-layers as a way to ensure food safety and nutrition.

Ald. John Mar rejected that notion, saying he’s fine buying quality fresh eggs — including free-range ones — at the supermarket.

Paul Hughes, longtime frontman for Calgary’s urban-chicken movement, said

"I don’t have salmonella. I don’t have avian flu. My eight-year-old handles these chickens every day of his life. You get chickenpox, but that doesn’t come from chickens."

Maybe. But I’m sure glad Hughes isn’t the medical officer of health for the entire city.

Backyard gardens supplying fancy restaurants in L.A.

During a visit to a large, international city, I was hanging out with a public health type, who pointed out some row housing visible from the building we were in, and each one seemed to have a decent-sized garden. He said those gardens supply a lot of the produce to the high-end restaurants in the city. And they all use night soil.

Human poop.

I wonder what kind of controls those fancy restaurants in Los Angeles are employing as the availability of backyard entrepreneurs for meat and produce increases.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times,

Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica.

A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce.

"Hi," said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. "I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It’s really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?"

A few feet away, chef de cuisine Ken Takayama glanced curiously at the lanky stranger in jeans and a worn plaid shirt. He’s heard this sort of pitch before (Takayama didn’t buy any).

"Every day, every week, it’s something new," Takayama said. "You name it, they have it."

Since the economy took a dive three years ago, Takayama and others say they’ve seen more and more people showing up unannounced at restaurants, local markets and small retailers, looking to sell what they’ve foraged or grown in their backyards.

No one keeps track of the number of people selling their homegrown bounty, but scores of ads have cropped up on Craigslist across the country, hawking local produce, home-filtered honey and backyard eggs.

Laura Lawson, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says the trend harkens back to the U.S. depression of 1893, when cities encouraged owners of empty lots to let unemployed people farm them and sell the excess produce.

She said that changed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when civic leaders, reluctant to create competition for struggling farmers, advocated gardening for food — not profit.

In Los Angeles, it’s unclear whether such entrepreneurship is legal: A 1946 zoning ordinance allowed "truck gardening" but didn’t define what that meant or identify what could be grown for sale in residential areas. Because of the ambiguity, the city has shut down some backyard enterprises, but not others.

An outcry by urban farming advocates last summer prompted Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti to introduce a motion dubbed the Food and Flowers Freedom Act, which would allow people to grow "berries, flowers, fruits, greens, herbs, ornamental plants, mushrooms, nuts, seedlings or vegetables for use on-site or sale or distribution off-site."

The city’s building and safety department has stopped enforcing the old ordinance for now. The City Council is expected to vote on the proposed ordinance Friday.

No mention of microbial food safety.

Australian state cracks down on backyard butchers

A New South Wales Food Authority crackdown on backyard butchers has caught unlicensed operators producing and selling smallgoods from homes in Sydney.

The NSW has been targeting illicit meat processors and confiscated almost 120 kilograms of homemade nem chua – a Vietnamese-style fermented pork.

The authority made 10 seizures of the product from illegal processors operating out of homes that were then selling the meat to butchers’ shops, restaurants and private consumers.

Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said the crackdown, which started in March, would continue.