Farmer: Germ-free food not always good for you

By JOHN HOLLAND
jholland@modbee.com
and J.M. HIRSCH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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A farmer from Virginia dropped by Turlock on Monday to sing the praises of chickens that eat bugs.

Joel Salatin, who produces eggs and meat with few synthetic inputs, said his birds get protein and improve the soil as they peck their way through his pastures.

His talk was part of Slow Food Nation, a four-day event held mainly in San Francisco and devoted to the idea that food should be raised with care and consumed with pleasure.

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Salatin spoke to nearly 300 people at California State University, Stanislaus, including a busload from the Bay Area who toured the Burroughs family's organic dairy farm east of Denair.

He said much of mainstream agriculture excludes wildlife and the general public in the belief that they could compromise food safety. But microbes are essential to soil fertility, and they are everywhere, including the human gut, he said.

"We are sterile nuts in our culture today," he said. "We don't understand that we live in a bacterial bath."

Salatin's operation, Polyface Farms, is nothing like the single-purpose dairy farms and poultry houses in the San Joaquin Valley. His chickens feed in pastures after cows have grazed. His pigs root through the vegetation and manure in cattle bedding, helping it decompose. Much of his land is forest, which yields lumber, firewood and clean water.

"What we want to do is diversify the landscape, have as much plant and animal life as possible in order to stimulate the checks and balances that nature put there," he said.

Salatin welcomes people to visit the farm. He said this attitude is opposite that of mainstream food production, where the consumer is involved mainly at meal time.

"It's like a one-night stand," he said. "Where's the romance? Where's the courtship?"

Slow Food Nation, which concluded Monday, drew tens of thousands of people to several venues. It's a gustatory effort to persuade people to reject fast, cheap food and embrace organic, local agriculture and a return to the kitchen.

"A lot of people don't like to cook. They like to nuke," said John Fiscalini, an exhibitor from Fiscalini Cheese Co. of Modesto. "We do live in a society where our time is so valuable that we don't sit and enjoy meals like our forefathers did."

Slow Food Nation marks the first major event for Slow Food USA, the U.S. branch of an Italian-born organization. But popular appeal has been minimal, in part because, unlike in Europe, here it has been mostly co-opted by the wine-and-cheese set.

But this weekend's event saw the launch of a strategy for the growing coalition of food reform and social justice groups that form the backbone of Slow Food, a strategy they hope can remake the movement's image and re-energize its members.

On Thursday, they released their "Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture," a 12-point plan they hope can be used as a blueprint for remaking the federal farm bill, the $300 billion measure that influences virtually every aspect of the U.S. food system.

Critics long have complained that the farm bill favors industrial agriculture and undermines efforts to promote sustainable, organic and family-based farming. The declaration also encourages greater clarity in food labeling and better treatment and pay for food and farm workers.

"The farm bill is making very, very few people successful," said Michael Dimock, president of Roots of Change. "The vast majority are hurting. The big commodity regions of the country are becoming poorer and poorer. We have to reverse that."

To comment, click on the link with this story at www.modbee.com. Bee staff writer John Holland can be reached at jholland@modbee.com or 578-2385.