What will we be eating if TTIP* were to become a reality?

With GMO and cloning laws becoming more lenient to suit larger corporations,
the two-headed porker may become a food of the future.
As crazy as it sounds, gobbling up twice as much feed means that he also fattens up
twice as fast, making him extremely efficient to rear. Now that’s what you call cheap meat! Yum?!

SO what could we be eating in the future? Lets take the humble porker as our example:

1.   Cloning will be a reality. These cloned porkers will be reared for efficiency, and will never see the day light as they will be reared indoors in crowded and distressing surroundings, breaking all British welfare standards we have worked so hard to maintain. The aim is to have more, more, more food, and at a cheaper price, and this will come at larger costs.

2.   Animals reared for meat will be pumped full of antibiotics that will act as a growth promoters. The only way these animals can grow to the abnormal size they do, is if they are pumped full of antibiotics, so that their bodies can’t react to infections caused by the fast rate of growth. This also puts us, the consumers of this meat, at risk of becoming antibiotic resistant. This has the potential for larger health problems to develop.

3.   The demand for GMOs will grow. Currently even conventionally reared meat in the UK is fed GMO grains and soy, but the demand for this will grow immensely as pork production grows. This will put pressure on our natural environment, leading to further destruction of fragile rainforests that will be replaced by miles and miles of mono cropping. Cash crops on this scale go hand in hand with speculation buying, making the market more vulnerable to price fluctuations. GMOs are also known to cause defected growth in young piglets.

4.   Small and medium sized UK Farmers will be pushed out of the market. Competition will open up, and there will be no space for small-scale pig farmers. The mega farm will dominate the market. This will put many rare breed farmers out of business, and will put pressure on medium sized businesses to lower their standards and upscale. This will be disastrous to the rural economy as well as the rural environment.

5.   Bigger porkers, bigger portions, bigger consumers. Cheaper food will have further health implications for the consumer. Although everyone will be able to afford to eat pork everyday, the meat will lack essential natural nutrients found in outdoor reared and organic pork. Lower food standards will also make us more susceptible to MRSA, often found in poorer quality US pork.

This is just the T-TIP of the iceberg. Make you’re voice heard here: http://www.nottip.org.uk/

*TTIP: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a secret trade talk taking place between the EU and the US. Leaked document and the history of trade deals can help us speculate what the outcome of these talks will be. The ultimate aim, is to have freer trade between both parties, which will include deregulating and removing trade barriers (which are currently there for a reason – mainly due to health, safety and consumer protection). These talks will only favour policies that benefit large corporations, leaving the state and the consumer powerless.

Resources:

http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/trade-justice/more/inform/18262-ttip-resources

http://www.iatp.org/documents/10-reasons-ttip-is-bad-for-good-food-and-farming

http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/tags/ttip

Protein Politics

I really like the idea of looking into the future and seeing what situations we may find our selves in regarding our gluttonous relationship with food. Our over dependance on foreign imports has made me think about how Britain may have to come to compromising terms with this. Again, i have set these spoof newspapers in a scenario of WWIII, as this would be a forced change in our food culture... it's just something to think about really... please click on the newspapers to enlarge and have a read.

FOOD WEEKLY

I design and wrote a spoof front page for a newspaper called Food Weekly. It's a look at what could happen during a future WWIII, regarding food and imports in the UK. Click on the image for a larger version to read...

HAPPY FOOD

I designed a poster for a concept website where people can get recipes for umami sauces, depending on their region (locally sourced/grown food), seasonality and choice of ingredients. The aim is for people to realise the variety of flavours there are out there and the ways they can make their food more interesting by using the taste of umami, even with limited ingredients.

WHO’S U-MAMI SAUCE

So with all my research into the umami flavour, I wanted to great a sauce that could be used in cooking as a way of enhancing or bringing out the natural flavour of ingredients when used in small amounts. When used in larger amounts, the flavour of the sauce would mask any nasty tastes of unpleasant foods, that would be eaten for nutritional value (eg, brussel sprouts, soya, offal).

I looked into ingredients that could be found in England, and suitable ways of preserving them. Making a sauce seemed the most convenient. Most of the ingredients used are easily preserved in their state, but I had a few cherry tomatoes which was given to me by a friend who has started growing indoors.

Ingredients:
Soy Extract (umami ingredient)
Mushroom Extract (umami ingredient)
Cherry Tomato Puree (umami ingredient)
Anchovies (umami ingredient)
Shallots
Garlic
Scotch Bonnet
Szechuan Pepper
Molasses
White wine vinegar

Method:
I started by frying off 4 garlic gloves, 4 shallots, 2 scotch bonnets and a table spoon of Szechuan pepper, until the oil was flavoured. I then added Mushroom extract and soy extract and let simmer on a low heat for about 10 minuets.


I removed the whole ingredients, and let the concentrate cool. The whole shallots, chillies and garlic could be saved and used in future cooking. As the umami flavours of the soy and mushrooms would have been absorbed, the shallots, garlic, and chillies can be used in other dishes to enhance flavour.


In another pan, I started by frying off a few fillets of anchovies. Once melted, I added my cherry tomato puree. I stirred in the soy and mushroom concentrate, added a couple of table spoons molasses and two table spoons white wine vinegar then left the sauce to simmer for an hour. Once cooled. I poured into my bottle.

I made a label to stick on my bottle:



I spread some of my special sauce on toast before grilling with cheese on top. It’s a delicious sauce, with complex, deep flavours. It gives simpler dishes a fuller flavour. Only very little has to be used as the glutamate levels exceeds roughly about 600mg/100mg from my calculations. This is seven times more then cheddar cheese, and half as much as marmite.

I developed this idea as a sure guarantee of having a tasty meal in the case of a poor harvests, unavailability of certain ingredients, and a way of preserving. If we were to become self sufficient, simple solutions like these would help keep people creative in the kitchen.

POP-AGANDA!

So, I’ve been really interested in a supposed World War 3 situation, and how we would cope with it. The reduction of imports would mean exotic ingredients wouldn’t be so readily available. Our dependence on locally grown, seasonal and preserved foods would grow. Government propaganda would also surround us, encouraging us to support the choice of war. As you can imagine, a WWIII would be significantly more devastating compared to previous wars. With nuclear weapons and chemical war fare destroying cities with a simple touch of a button. I’m pretty sure, a war on this scale would last for many years, with the consequences being way bigger then ever seen before.

So with all this horror, I came up with a subversive product which the British Government could realise: Popaganda. A lollypop, which bought by kids, would encourage and condition them for war. The lollypop shaped like am army man, would be handed out to kids as a treat. Maybe this sugary treat would lift the moods of children, whilst also being a pre-training for war.

I looked into different flavour combinations, and from reading an extract by Edmund and Dixon, American food writers from the 1800s, I found the combination of rhubarb and strawberries, created a mock Pineapple flavour. This flavour combination could be used in other possible foods and drinks from tarts to cocktails.



I needed to make a casting, so I could make a lollypop shaped like a solider. So I got my mould of a solider from a toy army man. I stood him up on a plinth….



I covered him in a box of clear acrylic. (It wasn’t a perfect box by any means, so I needed to seal up any gaps with some plastering.)



I filled it up with rubber silicon and let him set for a good hour. Once removed from the over, I broke of the acrylic, cut down the sides, so to create the male and female parts of the mould. I filled it up with my sugary rhubarb and strawberry mixture (This was very difficult, as I made the mixture without using a sugar thermometer. I do highly recommend getting one if making any kind of sugar craft). I let it set for 20 minuets, and then removed from mould.



I also made a wrapper to go with it. I used the net, of old ice-lolly wrappers. They seemed well suited. I was in a bit of a debate, as to weather I should have called the flavour pineapple, or Rhubarb and Strawberry, but in the end, as the colour I chose was red, I decided to stick with the latter. I also came up with a few other possible typical English flavours like sherbet and strawberry & cream.