What's in a name?

Researcher Brian Wansink has written about how test restaurants clearly show that adding a description to a menu item can dramatically increase sales. People don't just want a fish; they want a wild Eskimo line-caught fish. And often people want to feel good about what they are eating when it comes to meat and fish. I'm sure you've noticed how pervasive a practice it has become for restaurants to add the name of the farm before a cut of beef, pork or chicken. The problem, is that people are being tricked. The idea is that you're getting meat raised on a small farm, perhaps a local farm, where the animal is fed a healthy diet, maybe sees a lot of grass, is slaughtered humanely, and so forth. Maybe these don't all go through your head, but that's the general idea. The problem is that we're judging these farms based on nothing and we're really eating in the dark.

I often have the problem of wanting to eat meat only from small farms that raise their animals on pastures. Seeing that something comes from such and such farm in Wisconsin is somewhat reasuring, but how can I tell? You can ask the waiter, who will ask the chef, who will usually say (from my experience) that he isn't sure. And sometimes things are just down right misleading. A friend of mine recently recommended a Mexican restaurant near me called Fuego. They have organic fish, "Amish chicken" and White Marble Farms pork chops. Pretty smart description. I'm sure it ups sales on that item and it might have gotten me to order it. Thanksfully I viewed it in front of a computer and found that White Marble Farms is a division of Cargill and sold through Sysco -- one of the largest food processors and food sellers in the world, respectively. Reports on White Marble Farms indicate that the pigs are confined to industrial farm-like quarters, have their tails painfully "trimmed" and their diet includes the unpiglike diet of corn and soybeans, in addition to pig byproducts: yummy blood plasma and white grease. (Another report is here.) Needless to say, I wouldn't go near this product and it makes me sad just knowing it exists.

After all, it exists to trick you. Cargill knows that consumers will pay more for a product that appears to be more then a simple pork chop, and that restaurants want to be able to say something nice on the menu. Sysco helps sell the lie to restaurants as was shown in the above-cited article where Sysco pitched White Marble Farms to a San Fran restaurant that specifically tried to carry sustainable and natural products. Consumers cannot be expected to pull out their internet devices and google every product. And the minute companies know they are doing that the PR curtain would be pulled over our heads in any event. It is up to restaurants, chefs, advocacy groups and others who can be in the middle to keep us from being tricked everywhere we turn. I fear that this trend will continue, perhaps with large producers buying up some small farms and then using their established name on tens of thousands of confined animals. Or more of these made up names that sound so innocent.