Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[Perris]

There is a story behind this. Several vegan associations were sollicitated and came up with a standard for EU they intended to become a law. This had been on the European parliament's tablets since almost 2010 actually! Then, ISO also came up with a standard that is closer to the food producer's wishes, ISO 23662. From what I can gather, the main point of disagreement is not about a minimum threshold as cross contamination is considered impossible to completely banish, but the associations include ethical criterias, such as that the producer firm should not participate in any animal testing, not only for said product. Vegan isn't only about food but about global treatment of animals. So I think counter lobbying is the reason why there is no legal regulation in the EU.

Very interesting; thank you. The trouble with minimum thresholds is they are barely or not policed or enforced, and provide an enormous loophole for anyone caught in the act. So food companies are very keen to ensure the thin end of that wedge gets into any relevant legislation, on the apparently reasonable grounds that cross contamination may happen.

In France government is much more worried about vegan products wrongly borrowing animal products name : it is forbidden to call a product almond milk, vegan butter or soy yogurt...than about it's content.

I wish ours took more interest in the abuse of language. It matters.

Right now for example they have a campaign regarding honey imported from China : testing showed that in average, there is less than 45% honey in the product and the rest is glucose syrup .

It's not just the Chinese; this from wikipedia:

According to the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations, any product labeled as "honey" or "pure honey" must be a wholly natural product, although labeling laws differ between countries.[32] In the United States, according to the National Honey Board, "Ensuring honey authenticity is one of the great challenges facing the honey industry today. Over the past half century, a number of honey testing methods have been developed to detect food fraud. To date, there is no single universal analytical method available which is capable of detecting all types of adulteration with adequate sensitivity.".[33]

Isotope ratio mass spectrometry can be used to detect addition of corn syrup and cane sugar by the carbon isotopic signature. Addition of sugars originating from corn or sugar cane (C4 plants, unlike the plants used by bees, and also sugar beet, which are predominantly C3 plants) skews the isotopic ratio of sugars present in honey,[33] but does not influence the isotopic ratio of proteins. In an unadulterated honey, the carbon isotopic ratios of sugars and proteins should match. Levels as low as 7% of addition can be detected.[33]

 

[BDutch]

In France government is much more worried about vegan products wrongly borrowing animal products name : it is forbidden to call a product almond milk, vegan butter or soy yogurt...than about it's content.

Quite different here.
The meat industry brought a factory (named de Vegetarian butcher) to court. This factory makes meat-alternatives with the taste of real meat. They sell (sold*) alternatives with lentils, soy, beets, lupine, etc., having names that resembles the real meat products. Like ‘Kipstuckjes instead of Kipstukjes (chicken pieces) And gehacktballetjes instead of gehaktballetjes (little meat balls).

The meat industry didn’t win because the package says it is vegetarian or vegan and it’s clear enough this is not a meat product.

In the Netherlands the supermarkets sell a lot of these easy alternatives with highly processed vegetarian and vegan food. Often too salt and with lots of preservatives to keep it ‘fresh’ for 3 weeks.

The advantage of these wanna-bee meat and easy to prepare alternatives is that lots of people eat way less meat from factory farming nowadays. Fyi: prices range from €1,50 to €5,00 for 2 portions.

* in the meanwhile Unilever took over the brand.

 

[RoyalChick]

Very interesting; thank you. The trouble with minimum thresholds is they are barely or not policed or enforced, and provide an enormous loophole for anyone caught in the act. So food companies are very keen to ensure the thin end of that wedge gets into any relevant legislation, on the apparently reasonable grounds that cross contamination may happen.

I wish ours took more interest in the abuse of language. It matters.

It's not just the Chinese; this from wikipedia:

According to the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations, any product labeled as "honey" or "pure honey" must be a wholly natural product, although labeling laws differ between countries.[32] In the United States, according to the National Honey Board, "Ensuring honey authenticity is one of the great challenges facing the honey industry today. Over the past half century, a number of honey testing methods have been developed to detect food fraud. To date, there is no single universal analytical method available which is capable of detecting all types of adulteration with adequate sensitivity.".[33]

Isotope ratio mass spectrometry can be used to detect addition of corn syrup and cane sugar by the carbon isotopic signature. Addition of sugars originating from corn or sugar cane (C4 plants, unlike the plants used by bees, and also sugar beet, which are predominantly C3 plants) skews the isotopic ratio of sugars present in honey,[33] but does not influence the isotopic ratio of proteins. In an unadulterated honey, the carbon isotopic ratios of sugars and proteins should match. Levels as low as 7% of addition can be detected.[33]

Thank goodness I don’t need to worry about honey as I have many neighbors with hives who sell it by the road. Also a friend who often gives me a pot.
I keep thinking I might like to keep bees and one reason I don’t is I seem to live in a honey-rich environment!

 

[Perris]

lucky you RC!

 

[BDutch]

Honey is a protected name here.
The definition (from our government) of honey: the natural sweet substance, prepared from flower nectar or from secretions of living parts of plants or secretions of plant sap-sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which raw materials are collected by the bee species Apis mellifera, processed by mixing with its own specific substances, deposited, dehydrated, and placed in the honeycombs stored and left to ripen.

The beekeepers here (organized) are active in protecting the name. They say the labeling of honey in supermarkets is often not correct. And claims on labels for health are not allowed.

In the Netherlands lots of bee keepers have problems with their hives.
The abundant use of insecticides in my country makes the bee hives vulnarable to parasites (varroa-mite). Someone we know in our town had 4 hives last year and 3 of them didn’t survive the winter. This is happening a lot. And it’s quite difficult to start a new hive.

Every con has its pro (famous quote of Johan Cruyf ) : there are less nasty insects likes mosquitoes . But enjoying not getting harassed by mosquitos, I certainly do not like this development.

 

[Perris]

I would like to move little by little to single producer/estate for products such as honey and olive oil. When I can find it, it's more expensive - usually only costs a little bit more, not a lot more than famous brands which (in supermarkets, where I do most of my shopping) are invariably blends - but the 'eat less of it, just better quality' works for a lot of foods, not just meat and fish.

Thanks to RC's post, I went to look at my current open packet of sultanas and noticed it also contains cotton seed oil. Several organic sultana suppliers do the same, and one's website explains it by saying "Lightly coated in cottonseed oil to moisten & prevent clumping." Wikipedia says it's used a lot in packaged goods because it is relatively stable, so promoting a long shelf life. Personally I would prefer to eat dry clumpy sultanas over having them tossed in this highly processed vegetable oil, and will be looking at those labels before I buy next time.

But the history of cotton seed oil there given is fascinating, and an example of exactly what we are talking about, back in the 19th century; and the non-food uses are relevant to the mite battle recently discussed:

"Cottonseed oil then began to be used illegally to fortify animal fats and lards.[41] Initially, meat packers secretly added cottonseed oil to the pure fats, but this practice was uncovered in 1884. Armour and Company, an American meatpacking and food processing company, sought to corner the lard market and realized that it had purchased more lard than the existing hog population could have produced.[41] A congressional investigation followed, and legislation was passed that required products fortified with cottonseed oil to be labeled as lard compound."[42] Similarly, cottonseed oil was often blended with olive oil. Once the practice was exposed, many countries put import tariffs on American olive oil and Italy banned the product completely in 1883.[42] ...

Procter and Gamble then found an edible use for cottonseed oil. Through patented technology, the brothers were able to hydrogenate cottonseed oil and develop a substance that closely resembled lard.[41] In 1911, Procter & Gamble launched an aggressive marketing campaign to publicize its new product, Crisco, a vegetable shortening that could be used in place of lard.[44] ... Over the next 30 years cottonseed oil became the predominant cooking oil in the United States.[41] ...

Cottonseed oil sold as an edible product must be processed and refined to eliminate specific components that could present as a food safety hazard, in particular gossypol, which can act as a toxin to humans, and can lead to infertility in men.[52] ... Cottonseed oil is most commonly extracted commercially via solvent extraction.[55] ... cottonseed oil is a popular frying oil for the restaurant and snack-food manufacturing industries.[57] ...

For agricultural applications, cottonseed oil generally has the greatest insecticide power among all the vegetable oils. It is traditionally used because of its effectiveness in hard to treat pest problems in fruit trees. Cottonseed oil can also be mixed with other insecticides to provide a broader spectrum and increased control on pests. Spider mites, whiteflies and young stages of scales are common pests that can be controlled using cottonseed oil.[59]

In an agricultural context, the toxicity of untreated cottonseed oil may be considered beneficial: Oils, including vegetable oils, have been used for centuries to control insect and mite pests.[60] "

 

[ManueB]

I would like to move little by little to single producer/estate for products such as honey and olive oil. When I can find it, it's more expensive - usually only costs a little bit more, not a lot more than famous brands which (in supermarkets, where I do most of my shopping) are invariably blends - but the 'eat less of it, just better quality' works for a lot of foods, not just meat and fish.

Thanks to RC's post, I went to look at my current open packet of sultanas and noticed it also contains cotton seed oil. Several organic sultana suppliers do the same, and one's website explains it by saying "Lightly coated in cottonseed oil to moisten & prevent clumping." Wikipedia says it's used a lot in packaged goods because it is relatively stable, so promoting a long shelf life. Personally I would prefer to eat dry clumpy sultanas over having them tossed in this highly processed vegetable oil, and will be looking at those labels before I buy next time.

But the history of cotton seed oil there given is fascinating, and an example of exactly what we are talking about, back in the 19th century; and the non-food uses are relevant to the mite battle recently discussed:

"Cottonseed oil then began to be used illegally to fortify animal fats and lards.[41] Initially, meat packers secretly added cottonseed oil to the pure fats, but this practice was uncovered in 1884. Armour and Company, an American meatpacking and food processing company, sought to corner the lard market and realized that it had purchased more lard than the existing hog population could have produced.[41] A congressional investigation followed, and legislation was passed that required products fortified with cottonseed oil to be labeled as lard compound."[42] Similarly, cottonseed oil was often blended with olive oil. Once the practice was exposed, many countries put import tariffs on American olive oil and Italy banned the product completely in 1883.[42] ...

Procter and Gamble then found an edible use for cottonseed oil. Through patented technology, the brothers were able to hydrogenate cottonseed oil and develop a substance that closely resembled lard.[41] In 1911, Procter & Gamble launched an aggressive marketing campaign to publicize its new product, Crisco, a vegetable shortening that could be used in place of lard.[44] ... Over the next 30 years cottonseed oil became the predominant cooking oil in the United States.[41] ...

Cottonseed oil sold as an edible product must be processed and refined to eliminate specific components that could present as a food safety hazard, in particular gossypol, which can act as a toxin to humans, and can lead to infertility in men.[52] ... Cottonseed oil is most commonly extracted commercially via solvent extraction.[55] ... cottonseed oil is a popular frying oil for the restaurant and snack-food manufacturing industries.[57] ...

For agricultural applications, cottonseed oil generally has the greatest insecticide power among all the vegetable oils. It is traditionally used because of its effectiveness in hard to treat pest problems in fruit trees. Cottonseed oil can also be mixed with other insecticides to provide a broader spectrum and increased control on pests. Spider mites, whiteflies and young stages of scales are common pests that can be controlled using cottonseed oil.[59]

In an agricultural context, the toxicity of untreated cottonseed oil may be considered beneficial: Oils, including vegetable oils, have been used for centuries to control insect and mite pests.[60] "

Just fascinating! I thought first it was a devilish idea...but then, I guess there's nothing new to processing food that isn't comestible as such, like cooking potatoes for example !

I always wondered what crisco was exactly! I see it in a lot of recipes and the closest we have to it here is margarine.
Cotton seed oil isn't used here that I know of. We usually use hydrogenated sunflower or rapeseed oil.

I'm lucky that we make our own honey. Or rather the bees make it for us and we tend to them. It is also getting very complicated for the reason you mention, @BDutch , and we will likely stop when out last hives die.
We are lucky also that my partner has a friend who produces olive oil- not in the quantity to sell in stores but sufficiently to sell to all his friends. We live in an olive region after all. We buy / trade 15 liters to him a year, he sells it ten euros a liter which is slightly less than what we would pay for Italian olive oil in the supermarket.
My parents also get olive oils from their olive trees. There is an association that collect their olives and gets them to be grinded, and gives them back half the oil. But it's course it's blended with all the olives from people around them.

@BDutch I think we have that type of simili carne here but it's just not marketed the same. I do actually eat some ultra-processed plant based food, mainly seasoned tofu, when it's something I couldn't make myself, like smoked tofu or lactic- fermented. I like the German brand taifun and the french brands sojami and tossolia. I always buy organic, just because otherwise the soy will likely come from Brasil, and I don't eat those often, maybe once or twice in a month. The price is similar to what you mention, maybe 3 or 3.50 euros for 200 grams.

 

[RoyalChick]

I would like to move little by little to single producer/estate for products such as honey and olive oil. When I can find it, it's more expensive - usually only costs a little bit more, not a lot more than famous brands which (in supermarkets, where I do most of my shopping) are invariably blends - but the 'eat less of it, just better quality' works for a lot of foods, not just meat and fish.

Thanks to RC's post, I went to look at my current open packet of sultanas and noticed it also contains cotton seed oil. Several organic sultana suppliers do the same, and one's website explains it by saying "Lightly coated in cottonseed oil to moisten & prevent clumping." Wikipedia says it's used a lot in packaged goods because it is relatively stable, so promoting a long shelf life. Personally I would prefer to eat dry clumpy sultanas over having them tossed in this highly processed vegetable oil, and will be looking at those labels before I buy next time.

But the history of cotton seed oil there given is fascinating, and an example of exactly what we are talking about, back in the 19th century; and the non-food uses are relevant to the mite battle recently discussed:

"Cottonseed oil then began to be used illegally to fortify animal fats and lards.[41] Initially, meat packers secretly added cottonseed oil to the pure fats, but this practice was uncovered in 1884. Armour and Company, an American meatpacking and food processing company, sought to corner the lard market and realized that it had purchased more lard than the existing hog population could have produced.[41] A congressional investigation followed, and legislation was passed that required products fortified with cottonseed oil to be labeled as lard compound."[42] Similarly, cottonseed oil was often blended with olive oil. Once the practice was exposed, many countries put import tariffs on American olive oil and Italy banned the product completely in 1883.[42] ...

Procter and Gamble then found an edible use for cottonseed oil. Through patented technology, the brothers were able to hydrogenate cottonseed oil and develop a substance that closely resembled lard.[41] In 1911, Procter & Gamble launched an aggressive marketing campaign to publicize its new product, Crisco, a vegetable shortening that could be used in place of lard.[44] ... Over the next 30 years cottonseed oil became the predominant cooking oil in the United States.[41] ...

Cottonseed oil sold as an edible product must be processed and refined to eliminate specific components that could present as a food safety hazard, in particular gossypol, which can act as a toxin to humans, and can lead to infertility in men.[52] ... Cottonseed oil is most commonly extracted commercially via solvent extraction.[55] ... cottonseed oil is a popular frying oil for the restaurant and snack-food manufacturing industries.[57] ...

For agricultural applications, cottonseed oil generally has the greatest insecticide power among all the vegetable oils. It is traditionally used because of its effectiveness in hard to treat pest problems in fruit trees. Cottonseed oil can also be mixed with other insecticides to provide a broader spectrum and increased control on pests. Spider mites, whiteflies and young stages of scales are common pests that can be controlled using cottonseed oil.[59]

In an agricultural context, the toxicity of untreated cottonseed oil may be considered beneficial: Oils, including vegetable oils, have been used for centuries to control insect and mite pests.[60] "

geez. The more you look the worse it gets!
I have now found raisins without oil and I like your ‘single malt’ approach to oil. I am already there for whisky and honey and will investigate olive oil next.

 

[GregnLety]

Thanks for explaining, I get it now. You do read labels then, but you need to jump to advanced level reading!

Raisins, like all dry fruits, are not all similar from one brand to another. In many you will find sulphur dioxide used as a conservative. Orange dried apricots ? Impossible without, they should be brown. Not that sulphur dioxide is harmful but I already get enough from the wine I drink . Almonds can have whitening agent...
Not processed doesn't mean without additives, think about conventional fruits and vegetables covered in chemicals and coating .

There is a story behind this. Several vegan associations were sollicitated and came up with a standard for EU they intended to become a law. This had been on the European parliament's tablets since almost 2010 actually! Then, ISO also came up with a standard that is closer to the food producer's wishes, ISO 23662. From what I can gather, the main point of disagreement is not about a minimum threshold as cross contamination is considered impossible to completely banish, but the associations include ethical criterias, such as that the producer firm should not participate in any animal testing, not only for said product. Vegan isn't only about food but about global treatment of animals. So I think counter lobbying is the reason why there is no legal regulation in the EU.

In France government is much more worried about vegan products wrongly borrowing animal products name : it is forbidden to call a product almond milk, vegan butter or soy yogurt...than about it's content.

Organic does make a difference I think in regards to the additives used.
But organic or not, ultra- processed is ultra-processed.
I donate to and follow a non profit organization named food watch which lobbies for more food security and tracks frauds. Right now for example they have a campaign regarding honey imported from China : testing showed that in average, there is less than 45% honey in the product and the rest is glucose syrup .

Mine too ! She is very pretty though and far too elegant for her name.

Years before we considered getting chickens my partner 's nickname for me was hen-whale. Hen because of my attitude to food, whale because of the size of my stomach .

When I was small my nickname was little pig, given my appetite. Eventually some of that good eating stuck. Now I am 6'3" and 300 pounds so my current name is Sasquatch,

 

[BDutch]

I always buy organic, just because otherwise the soy will likely come from Brasil, and I don't eat those often, maybe once or twice in a month. The price is similar to what you mention, maybe 3 or 3.50 euros for 200 grams.

Not necessarily . The soy for human consumption is restricted in toxicity. The GMO soy from Brazil (in general) contains too much toxins for human consumption by EU law.
Imo too much for animals too, but the EU law admits it as feed for factory farming and other animal feed.
Soy products without GMO for Soy milk and tofu, are often produced in Eu, Asia and other countries all over the world. (Hard to find good answers).

PS:
This info (translated) comes from a website/organisation largely paid by our government. https://mobiel.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/soja.aspx

Soy grown for soy products
The soy destined for soy products in shops, such as meat substitutes, is usually grown sustainably. Manufacturers of soy products choose to use soy from Europe or Canada, whether they choose organic soy, unmodified soy or otherwise certified "sustainable".

Soy drink has a lower environmental impact than milk in terms of greenhouse gases (two thirds less), land use and water use (half less). The energy consumption to make soy drink is slightly higher than that of milk. Soy-based meat substitutes have lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use than, for example, chicken.