Pemmican, an endurance food: Past and present.

Pemmican is a meat product principally comprised of dried meat and fat that has served as a source of sustenance in cold, harsh climates and/or a means of preservation of meat for some Indigenous peoples, fur traders, polar explorers, military and police. Pemmican is acclaimed for its high nutrient density and long shelf life. However, for a meat product that has historically played a significant role and is often cited as the ultimate endurance food, there is a surprising paucity of scientific literature. The present study aims to review the literature to document the history of pemmican, its preparation, nutritional evaluation and additional use in the diet of animals. In view of food security and crisis situations in the world today, meat science may have a role to play in reviving, reformulating and potentially developing new processing strategies for a product like pemmican as a culturally appropriate food, with extended use as emergency provisions or for endurance athletes.

Making choices: ethics and vegetarianism.

I was seventeen and taking an elective course in Earth and Environmental Science. We were learning about farming and the food system­genetic modification, land use, organic labeling­when our teacher assigned us an article about beef. The article explained the following process: the U.S. government subsidizes corn, so we feed it to our cows, because corn is cheap and fattens the cows up quickly. Cows are biologically designed to eat grass, so their livers are unable to process the corn. The cows' livers would actually explode if they were permitted to grow to full maturity, but we slaughter them first. This, combined with their living in close quarters and wading in their own feces, causes the cows to get ill often, so we feed them a con-stant stream of antibiotics, a practice that strengthens bacterial strains such as E. coli. Roughly 78 percent of cows raised for beef undergo this process. Similarly nauseating practices are used to raise chickens, turkeys, and pigs, 99 percent, 97 percent, and 95 percent of which, respectively, come from factory farms. Nowadays, these details are less than shocking. Movies such as Food, Inc. and Super Size Me, as well as books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation have raised consciousness, if not much action, on the topic of our food system. But, for me, it was a new story.

New series for agricultural prices in London, 1770­1914.

New annual series for the prices of major agricultural commodities sold in London markets between 1770 and 1914 are presented. These series are based on bimonthly observations drawn from newspaper market reports. The products covered are wheat, barley (grinding and malting), oats, potatoes, hay, butter, beef, mutton, and pork. Annual prices are calculated for both calendar and production years. The new series are compared to existing series.

Biofuel, dairy production and beef in Brazil: competing claims on land use in São Paulo state.

This paper examines the competing claims on land use resulting from the expansion of biofuel production. Sugarcane for biofuel drives agrarian change in So Paulo state, which has become the major ethanol-producing region in Brazil. We analyse how the expansion of sugarcane-based ethanol in So Paulo state has impacted dairy and beef production. Historical changes in land use, production technologies, and product and land prices are described, as well as how these are linked to changing policies in Brazil. We argue that sugarcane/biofuel expansion should be understood in the context of the dynamics of other agricultural sectors and the long-term national political economy rather than as solely due to recent global demand for biofuel. This argument is based on a meticulous analysis of changes in three important sectors - sugarcane, dairy farming, and beef production - and the mutual interactions between these sectors.

Meat products and consumption culture in the West.

Meat products and consumption culture in the West may be traced back for at least 2,500 years. The dominant cultural source was Greco-Roman, with evidence from archeology, surviving documents and the names of meat cuts. The initial uniformity of meat technology and language in the Roman Empire was lost as national boundaries and languages fragmented. More recently, however, there has been a strong trend back to uniformity in meat cutting and grading. This started in the USA to solve logistical problems associated with long-distance commerce and similar changes occurred with the formation of the EU. Issues such as meat inspection and animal transport have been strongly influenced by the effect of literature on public opinion, which then led to legislated improvements. Innovations in other areas such as meat distribution and preservation had military origins. Meat consumption culture was involved in the early development of language, social grouping and religions.

Meat products and consumption culture in the East.

Food consumption is a basic activity necessary for survival of the human race and evolved as an integral part of mankind's existence. This not only includes food consumption habits and styles but also food preparation methods, tool development for raw materials, harvesting and preservation as well as preparation of food dishes which are influenced by geographical localization, climatic conditions and abundance of the fauna and flora. Food preparation, trade and consumption have become leading factors shaping human behavior and developing a way of doing things that created tradition which has been passed from generation to generation making it unique for almost every human niche in the surface of the globe. Therefore, the success in understanding the culture of other countries or ethnic groups lies in understanding their rituals in food consumption customs. Meat consumption culture in the East has not been well developed by its characteristic environment, religion, history, and main food staples. However, recently, the amount of meat production and consumption of the Eastern countries has grown rapidly by the globalization of food industry and rapid economic growth of the countries. This manuscript introduces meat-based products and consumption culture in Asian countries. However, because the environments and cultures within Asia are too diverse to cover all food cultures, this manuscript focused mainly on three northeast Asian countries including China, Japan, and Korea (Republic of) and some southeast Asian countries including Vietnam and Thailand, which have similar environments and cultural interactions historically but retain their own characteristic food culture.

Prescribing pork in Israel.

Both Judaism and Islam have prohibited eating pork and its products for thousands of years. Scholars have proposed several reasons for the ban to which both religions almost totally adhere. Pork, and the refusal to eat it, possesses powerful cultural baggage for Jews. Israel has legislated two related laws: the Pork Law in 1962, that bans the rearing and slaughter of pigs across the country, and the Meat Law of 1994, prohibiting all imports of nonkosher meats into Israel. While not abounding, Israeli pork-eaters certainly exist, and a small number of pig-breeding farms operate in the country, mostly in Christian villages. The influx of Russian immigrants in the 1990s helped boost sales of pork, but the force of the taboo remains so powerful that many secular Israelis still eschew pork dishes, while willing to eat less charged nonkosher items such as shellfish. A porchetta feast recently held in the Muslim-Jewish town of Jaffa, defied the religious and cultural taboo. It was a celebration of a book by Dr. Eli Landau, The White Book, which is the first Hebrew-language collection of pork recipes. Fearing repercussions, Israeli publishers unanimously refused to publish it and the book chain stores declined to display it. As a result, Landau published it himself.

"Hop to the top with the Iowa Chop": the Iowa Porkettes and cultivating agrarian feminisms in the Midwest, 1964-1992.

Over the course of twenty-eight years, between 1964 and 1991, members of the Iowa Porkettes, the women's auxiliary to the Iowa Pork Producer's Association (IPPA), promoted pork products in order to assert their roles as agricultural producers. For the members of the Porkettes, technological change and the growth of agribusiness provided new opportunities to challenge patriarchal hierarchies in agricultural organizations. Over time, as the overall number of hog farmers declined and the agricultural marketplace increasingly demanded professional expertise, the Porkettes transformed a women's auxiliary into a female-led commodity organization. Initially, members participated in appropriately "feminine" activities including Pork Queen contests, lard-baking contests, consultations with high school home economics instructors, and the distribution of promotional materials. By the late 1970s, however, members began to employ a new rhetoric shaped by their labor on the farm to claim an important stake in the production and marketing of commodities. They took responsibility for large-scale advertising campaigns, managed a growing budget, and became leaders within the IPPA. Their experiences offer insight into broader developments of second wave agrarian feminisms that enabled farm women's organizations to renegotiate gendered divisions of labor, claim new public spaces for women, and demand greater recognition from male agricultural leaders.

[Tin bubble pots]. / A propos des pots à bouillon d'étain.

In the sixteenth century Ambroise Pard uses of an hermetic pewter pot to obtain a beef-tea as a medical therapy. He describes the protocol to prepare it and the way to ordain the beef-tea to patients. The same hermetic spheric pewter pot is always in use in the middle of nineteenth century. At that period the discovery of creatin confirms the usefulness of that medical pewter pot who seems to be an only French production.

Scientific conviction amidst scientific controversy in the transatlantic livestock and meat trade.

A century before the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Great Britain and North America grappled with pleuro-pneumonia - a disease in cattle that had equally maddening consequences. Towards the end of the 19th century, this condition was at the heart of a transatlantic trade dispute that lasted for decades and attracted the attention of livestock farmers, diplomats, shipping moguls, veterinarians, public health regulators and journalists the world over. Scientific controversy aggravated the situation when there were doubts about the scientific judgment of Privy Council veterinary officials, who were simultaneously conducting disease-diagnosis activities and pushing for tighter regulations at British ports. At this point, William Williams, principal of the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, waded into this troubled arena. His strong convictions spawned a long-running disagreement with the British Government over the diagnoses of pleuro-pneumonia in cattle imported from the USA and Canada.

The economics of sheep and goat husbandry in Norse Greenland.

Insight into the relative importance of sheep and goat herding and of the economic significance of each species (i.e., milk vs. meat vs. wool) in Medieval Greenland is obtained through the application of Halstead et al.'s (2002) criteria for the identification of adult ovicaprine mandibles to faunal assemblages from three Norse farmsteads: Sandnes, V52a, and Ø71S. The economic strategies identified are broadly comparable between the two species and the Eastern and Western Settlement sites examined, and are suggestive of the subsistence production of meat and milk. Comparison with farmsteads elsewhere in Greenland indicates that socio-economic status and/or farmstead size interacted with geographical location in determining the economic strategies employed by the Norse farmers. A broader use of resources and a more varied diet are evident at larger farmsteads in Greenland and this paper suggests that such sites would have been better able than their smaller counterparts to withstand environmental deterioration during the early Middle Ages. These analyses have also confirmed that goats were relatively more common in Norse sites in Greenland than in Norse sites in Iceland, Orkney, or Shetland.

A history of the traceability of animals and animal products.

The author presents a review of the history of traceability as applied to live animals and animal products from antiquity to the 19th Century. The evidence shows that livestock farmers, owners, and those in charge of animal production and health were concerned with traceability from a very early stage. With regard to live animals, individual identification by means of body markings has been practised for over 3,800 years (Code of Hammurabi). Branding with a red-hot iron, with or without a written record of animal characteristics, was employed in most ancient civilisations. This branding technique was principally used on valuable animals, in particular horses, in which case a written record was kept. Individual indelible branding was used on other species over the following centuries, for example, on swans belonging to the Kings of England as early as the 13th Century. Branding for disease control purposes commenced later, prompted by the major epizootics (rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, glanders and rabies). Marking of animals formed part of a series of very pragmatic measures, and the penalties in the event of violation were much more severe than is currently the case. Although modern traceability techniques were not available, our ancestors, as early as the 17th Century, practised indelible branding and strict health certification. Animal products were likewise closely monitored, particularly during the epidemics of human plague during the 14th Century. Some animal products could not be traded internationally unless accompanied by a certificate of origin guaranteeing safety. During the major epizootics of the 18th Century, some contaminated products (meat, hides) were cut up, slashed or covered with lime to indicate that the product was unfit for trade or consumption.