This Week at Smart Markets Reston Farmers' Market

Several of our vendors are taking time off this week for their own summer vacations. Chef Eloy’s Salsa, Sweet Nuna, and Fun Country Kettle Corn will all be away for at least one week. Also, Joie de Vivre will no longer be at the market due to family obligations. Anne wanted me to thank all of her customers for their patronage. She can still be contacted through her websiteif you want to order her salad dressings. We do hope to see her at our Oakton market this winter.

Nevin Hostetter of Heritage Farm and Kitchen also wanted to thank you for your response to his sausage special. It will be in effect until the end of the month. If you buy three packages of any kind of sausage, you will receive a free ham steak. This is a great way to try Nevin’s ham so that you will know what you are getting if you want to purchase a ham roast this fall. We also have several recipes for grilled ham steak at the HF&K stand and one for for Creamy Summer Succotash that is a great side with the steak.

Read about beef additives on our blog and then avoid all of that bad stuff and unpleasant images by visiting Doug Linton at Angelic Beef. My family loves his beef, and just this past Saturday a shopper at our Oakton market was singing its praises. The Piedmontese breed Doug sells is lower in fat and cholesterol, and you do not experience a leaden feeling after eating your steak or burger. Your system does not have to work so hard to digest this beef, and Doug’s customer reported that she actually felt as if she could work out after eating it, which she could never do after eating force-fattened beef.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

It must be the lazy, hazy days of summer getting to me, but I was at a loss for subject matter for this post when the day began. Then I sat down to read The Wall Street Journal and was reminded once again why we cannot trust our commercial meat industry to care about the the health of the animals they process. And we have no good research (that has been made public) that addresses how eating unhealthy animals may affect our long-term health.

Last week, one of the drug makers that supplies additives to the meat industry withdrew a feed additive from the market that is fed to beef cattle to increase lean-muscle weight gain in the final weeks before slaughter. Tyson Foods had previously announced to cattle suppliers that it would no longer buy cattle for processing that had been fed a feed containing the same additive, known as Zilmax. This is just one of many chemicals added to cattle and other animal feed to prevent disease and enhance growth.

At the same time that the meat industry is pushing through legislation at all levels to make it a criminal offense to surreptitiously film what goes on in a meat-processing facility, the drug makers and their biggest U.S. customer are stepping in to address the issue.

The WSJ article opened with:

A growing number of cattle arriving for slaughter at U.S. meatpacking plants have recently shown unusual signs of distress. Some walked stiffly, while others had trouble moving. A few even sat down in strange positions, looking more like dogs than cows.

According to the story by Jesse Newman and Kelsey Gee, drug-maker Merck & Co. will now perform a new “study of the drug’s effects on cattle, with an animal-health advisory board made up of company-appointed researchers who will design the study.”

What I would like to see is a study done by an independent group of scientists of the drug’s long-term affects on humans who eat the beef. I have a feeling that if they did not care enough about the cows to take a couple of years to study their reaction to this additive, they haven’t done anything to look at its effects on our own health. And even if they had, should we believe them?

We now have choices both in the grocery store and at the farmers’ market. Beef, pork, lamb and chicken are all available at markets from farmers who do not feed additives to their animals. The animals are free to roam and eat what they choose.

Even at slightly higher prices for free-range, additive-free, and grass-fed beef, it’s worth the money to know what you are eating and what your body is absorbing from those steaks on the grill. You can just eat a little less meat to stay within your food budget and keep your family safe.