Goodbye Tipping, Hello Living Wage: The Changing Face of Progressive Restaurants

A new message appearing at the top of the menu at Camino, a high-end restaurant in Oakland, California, declares the end of an age-old American practice. “No more tips!” it reads. “Our prices now include service so we can pay our employees a living wage.”

The new prices—which have gone up 22 percent, and which now range from $29 to $37—and the restaurant’s corresponding tipping policy went into effect earlier this year, around the time the city’s minimum wage rose 36 percent to $12.25. And the two are related. While the new policy probably won’t put more into pockets of Camino’s decently paid servers, it will do something quietly revolutionary: it will help them offer a living wage to their (traditionally underpaid) cooks, dishwashers, and bussers. Read more on Civil Eats.

Just Because Your Chicken Is Organic Doesn't Mean It Was Raised Humanely

Do you ever wonder why so much organic food also carries animal welfare labels?

The short answer is that while the US Department of Agriculture's organic standards are very precise about pesticides and other growing practices for the crops that people and animals eat, it doesn't include very many specific instructions about the way the animals themselves are raised.

"When people pick up organic milk, they're expecting that the cows are out on pasture most of the time," says Luke Meerman, one of the farmers behind Michigan-based Grassfields Cheese. And he's right. In a phone survey conducted for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 68 percent of the consumers contacted said they expected that animals raised on organic farms "have access to outdoor pasture and fresh air throughout the day." Similarly, 67 percent said they believe "animals have significantly more space to move than on non-organic farms." Read more on Mother Jones.

This Chef and Seed-Saver are Resurrecting the Flavors of the South

Sean Brock and Anson Mills on their unique partnership.

Like every rural kid who has ever worked in their grandparents’ garden, Sean Brock took for granted the local, home-grown food that surrounded him as a child growing up in Southern Virginia.

“I had no idea how lucky I was to grow up poor in the middle of nowhere,” says Brock. “I wanted to do all the stuff I saw on TV and didn’t want to work in the Goddamn garden. Then it was all I wanted to do, all I gave a shit about.” Read more on Civil Eats.

Saving America’s Citrus: Can it be Done Without GMOs?

Ben McLean is oddly optimistic for someone fighting, daily, to save his company. The Florida farmer and vice president of Uncle Matt’s Organic says he has seen the fruit on around a third of his citrus trees turn green, hard, and inedible.

McLean’s losses mirror the rest of the state’s citrus industry, which has lost an estimated $4.5 billion to “huanglongbing” (HLB) or Citrus Greening Disease. But as an organic farmer, he can’t spray synthetic pesticides to kill the tiny, scaly insects called the Asian citrus psyllids, known for transmitting Candidatus Liberibacter, the pathogen that causes the disease. In the last year, he has had to approach the problem with a lot of creativity and perseverance. But McLean doesn’t think he’s any worse off than his conventional counterparts.

Much of the coverage of Citrus Greening Disease–including this widely discussed New York Times article from July 2013–has pointed to early trials of a genetically engineered (GE) orange tree bred to be resistant to HLB as the only real solution. But McLean isn’t so sure.

Read more.

What a Difference a Cage Makes: California’s Humane Egg Battle

Update: The 6-state lawsuit mentioned in this piece has since been thrown out by a U.S. District judge.

Ed Olivera is making a sizable investment in his San Jose, California-based egg operation this year. And just in time. He and other egg producers in the state now have less than four months to meet new, more humane standards for laying hens set to go into effect on January 1, 2015.

Olivera is “taking out partitions,” between the battery cages many of his laying hens live in, making the remaining cages larger. He’s also putting in a brand new building filled with an “enriched colony system,” or enriched cages, which will house 200,000 hens. The standard battery cage is only 67 square inches (see the photo to the right), and has a footprint smaller than a letter-sized piece of paper, but the new cages hold more birds and allow around twice as much space (116 square inches) per bird. Now the legal standard for all laying hens in Europe, enriched cages are still a new concept in the U.S. (See an example from the EU below.)

Read more.

To Locavores’ Dismay, a Humane Meat Processor is Put Out to Pasture

In recent years, there has been a local meat renaissance going on in Wisconsin. At the center of the movement was a business called Black Earth Meats. The operation, owned by Bartlett Durand, or the Zen Butcher, included a retail space, a buyers club and a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription service, as well as a U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected slaughterhouse.

Black Earth Meats served as an important support for nearly 200 farmers, most of whom raised animals in small numbers on pasture, free of antibiotics and hormones. After moving into a local slaughterhouse in the 1,500-person town of Black Earth seven years ago, the company grew considerably, allowing the “good meat” economy in the area to scale up alongside it. “We took the plant from 70 beef a week to 140-150 a week, supplying the local food scene,” says Durand.

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Has this chef cracked the code to waste-free takeout?

Do you avoid ordering takeout because you can’t bear throwing away the inevitable pile of to-go boxes, bags, and containers that go with it?

Kelsie Kerr understands. That’s why the Oakland, California-based chef is trying something a little different with Standard Fare Kitchen and Pantry: She’s selling meals to take home in reusable ceramic containers.

Read more.

What would it take to make kelp the new kale?

Brendan Smith is on what you might call a seaweed crusade. The owner/operator of Branford, Connecticut’s Thimble Island Oyster Company has been farming his own shellfish for nearly a decade in what he calls a “diverse, 3-D system” in the Long Island Sound. Edible kelp has been part of Smith’s vertical, multi-trophic system for a while now. The sea vegetable grows with mussels and scallops along a series of long trellis-like lines just beneath the surface, while clams and oysters grow in cages below. Recently, however, he’s come to view what he calls “sea greens” as more and more crucial—not only for his business, but for oceans and their ecosystems. Read more on TakePart.

Tree adoption program helps eaters support a small farm and stock up on summer fruit

Photo by James Collier. 

What do you get when you cross a U-pick and a CSA (community supported agriculture) membership? The Masumoto Family Farm adopt-a-tree program. For the last nine years, peach and nectarine lovers in California have filled out “adoption forms,” paid $600, and made the trip to this Fresno-based organic farm for two consecutive summer weekends to harvest between 350 to 450 pounds of fruit from their adopted tree.

The adopt-a-tree concept arose because the family had several acres of old-growth Elberta peaches, which were just too fragile to sell into the wholesale market. Rather than start selling the fruit at farmers’ markets, they decided to invite eaters out to the farm. Read more on Civil Eats.

What if food labels served as warning signs instead of marketing devices?

Photo: lioneggfarms.co.uk

How would our food choices be different if labels had to provide a more transparent view of the production systems behind the products? If, for example, food labels were used to disclose the kinds or amount of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer that were used to grow the food, whether the workers had been exploited, or how animals were treated? And instead of being seen as some special, elite option, organic, fair trade, and antibiotic-free food came to be seen as the less complicated options?

It might sound unrealistic, but get this: In the case of eggs, this type of labeling has been going on in the European Union since 2004. In the E.U., all eggs that appear in stores must be labeled with one of three choices: “eggs from caged hens”; “barn eggs,” which come from hens we call “cage-free” here in the U.S. (i.e. they’re still raised in big indoor facilities); and “free-range.” They also stamp a number, in ascending order from more desired to least, on the eggs themselves (0 is code for organic eggs and 3 is code for eggs from caged hens). Read more on TakePart.