Things I have eaten since I moved back to a larger city...

[blue_lotus13]

Since I have moved, I have explored many different cuisines which were not available to me in Grande Prairie.

On this list are Thai food, Indian food and Vietnamese food. I also ate at a vegetarian cafe that specializes in ethical and local food. I also enjoyed very good pasta prepared by [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]

Oh large cities! How I have missed you!

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I now receive agri-news from Reuters and have become very interested in the concept of food recycling in Japan. Since animal feed and fertilizer prices are high, the Japanese have started taking their food waste and using it as animal feed and fertilizer. The recycled feed is about 50 % cheaper. Food being recycled include rice balls, sandwiches and milk discarded by 7-11 stores. This food is now turned into feed for pigs and chickens, but cannot be used to feed cows and chickens due to Mad Cow regulations. The Japanese are now recycling 70% of their food industry and convenience store waste. They generally dispose of about 20 million tonnes of food waste a year, which is five times as much as world food aid to the poor in 2007.

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Here's a question for my readers in the UK. Do you eat beef? Does the threat of mad cow prevent you from doing so?

Comments

[eclexys.livejournal.com]

Hee, I have an article coming out soon in an SF webzine on the Mad Cow demos in Korea -- don't know if you've been following my posts on them, but there's a lot of concern here, probably largely unfounded, but it's their right to worry. :)

Anyway, Korea also does this, and has been doing it for I don't know how long, but at least six years. One worrisome thing is that all foor garbage ends up together -- meat, vegetables, bread, rotten stuff from the back of the fridge... whatever people don't use. The food garbage bins here are, in many places, horribly filthy, because cleaning them is a horrible idea, and nobody ever bothers to buy new ones. It also becomes pig feed here, as far as I know. The pigs must be used to very spicy food.

Though, oddly, certain pig farms feed their pigs "green tea" -- not sure if that's what the pigs eat, ie. the plant, or drink -- and the meat is sold as "well-being good" (ie. health food).

[blue-lotus.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look like they use household garbage in Japan; it seems to be more of an industry thing. Still, very interesting to me. Thanks for the info.

[eclexys.livejournal.com]

That makes me wonder whether it's also an industry thing here, too.

Frankly, the small business usage leads to, uh, upright trash bins on the sidewalk outside of Mom & Pop restaurants that sometimes stink to high heaven. Reminds me a bit of the way trash collection days in Montreal were... uh... gross?

[stellastarstruk.livejournal.com]

Not sure if you are interested or not, but Japan has also had BSE found in its cows.

Now, what they do at restaurants that sell a lot of beef like Yakiniku restaurants (Korean barbecue) is at the front of the store they have the "serial number" of the animal available. Customers can take down the number of the animal and check it's health/background on line. I believe that they also do that for pork as well.


Family restaurants have started putting up signs saying which countries their ingredients come from. For example - potatoes from the US or Canada, beef from Australia, etc.

Because Japan has to import so much food, it's really interesting to know where it all comes from.