9 ms·

At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction

100 points by neurobuddha 11y ago

PedroBatista 11y ago
I'm not familiar with US laws, but isn't this fraud?
- brianwawok 11y ago
  Something like 30% of fish sold isn't the fish on the label. Being illegal and being able to do something about it? No always the same. Sure if your swap killed a bunch of people, you would get caught. Who is going to instantly die form eating a GMO though?
  - PedroBatista 11y ago
    Isn't the some kind of Government Agency that buys random stuff from supermarkets/suppliers, tests the food and inspects the label? The same for restaurant inspections? Its not that expensive and it sends a clear message to these people.
    - monknomo 11y ago
      I don't believe anybody does that, let alone the government. Restaurant inspections check to make sure the restaurants are hygienic and safe, not that the food matches the label.
    - bradleyjg 11y ago
      From the article: For 40,000-some Florida restaurants, 191 inspectors from the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation oversee them all for safety, sanitation and — occasionally — lies. By comparison, Georgia, with about half the population, has 300 inspectors. Ohio has 637 for about 22,000 restaurants. In the past two years, Florida inspectors found roughly 750 food misrepresentation violations. Of them, 123 restaurants were fined, with an average fine for first-time offenders between $150 and $300. The state could beef up the number of inspectors and the fines. Should they? I'm not sure. Certainly I don't support lying to consumers, but it isn't exactly the crime of the century. I'd be much more concerned about safety and sanitation, though some mislabeling has safety implications (e.g. whether nuts are used). There's a concept in false advertising law called "puffery" under which obviously exaggerated representations are not considered false advertising. Think "best chicken in the world". This isn't exactly that, but you really should know that your $11 Caesar salad with shrimp isn't using local, sustainable caught shrimp that goes for around ~$1/shrimp wholesale.
      - uremog 11y ago
        Even just from an economic standpoint, I think such fines should be far higher. Sometimes it takes lab tests to determine fakes from real foods. Also, I disagree - consumers shouldn't have to know the market. One could argue that they should, but they should not have to.
umanwizard 11y ago
I've never understood what "farm-to-table" means. Doesn't all food come from a farm? Is it supposed to mean "farm owned by a stereotypical farmer, not by a corporation?" If so, that's pretty vague and subjective.
- hayksaakian 11y ago
  it's super subjective until the government defines it and regulates it (read penalize mis-labeling).
  - crispyambulance 11y ago
    You're right about that. The same thing happened with the name "organic". Sadly, some restaurateurs have been taking advantage of the "farm-to-table" terminology. In France and Italy some foods and wines have AOC/DOC designations meaning that the food item's name means was produced in a geographically defined place, usually with traditional methods and NOT from some random factory in another country. There are penalties in place for people that attempt to label a product with a controlled name. "Farm-to-table" has a different definition than AOC/DOC, but there's a lot in common in spirit. AOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%C3%B4l%C3%A9e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%... DOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_controllata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_contr...
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    it's super subjective until the government defines it and regulates it (read penalize mis-labeling). reply Yeah, once the government gets involved, it'll still be all lies, but it'll be legal because somebody paid off the right regulator, or because the regulator owns shares in the restaurant, etc. And then this kind of thing will be used as a weapon to inhibit the entry of new competitors into the market, to the benefit of the entrenched players.
    - smacktoward 11y ago
      You're overly cynical. Nobody in the United States worries about buying adulterated milk, or medications that are actually mixtures of flavored syrup and radium, or bread that uses sawdust as a cheap filler, because there's clear standards for what something labeled as "milk" or "bread" means and regulators with the power to enforce those standards. Lots of other countries don't have those things, which is how things like this happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
wyldfire 11y ago
> “It’s really hard to find non-GMO produce,” Moran said. Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO." Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?
- smelendez 11y ago
  I'm not an expert, but one criticism I've seen is that a lot of genetic modification is used to either get plants to produce pesticides or be immune to commonly used weed-killers, like Roundup. Some critics worry that lets farmers basically saturate their fields in herbicides to eliminate weeds, and that some of them are toxic to humans, other animals and plants near to the farm. Another issue is that most genetic modification work is done by massive companies, which then patent their results. If they develop cheaper-to-grow crops, farmers may essentially have no choice but to license their IP to stay competitive. That gives those big companies a lot of clout over farmers and probably advantages giant farming operations, who can negotiate to buy GMO seeds cheaper than small farmers can. Some people also worry that there will be "bugs" in the genetic code introduced into plants that will have unforeseen consequences. On some level, plant genetics always been a software problem, but now we're potentially deploying updates in the (literal) field much faster. If new corn seeds distributed en masse accidentally produce toxins, or are unusually conducive to harmful bacteria, or just don't grow properly in some areas, what does it mean for farmers and consumers? I think it's a lot of the usual technology-upends-formerly-slow-moving-industry issues, but that's especially frightening for a lot of people when it comes to things we're putting in our bodies.
  - hibikir 11y ago
    In this case, the problem is that there's a huge difference between public perception and reality. For instance, you talk about herbicides: A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically speaking, than something that doesn't come from big agribusiness. I can irradiate my seeds to create mutations to use then on traditional breeding, and call myself organic afterwards! As far as growing well in an area or not, that's why there is testing. Selling a seed that yields poorly to a region would lead to a major economic damage to whichever company is selling those seeds, so everything we can find at a seed store from a major manufacturer, whether GMO or not, will have more than enough agronomic information to make a farmer's decision easy. And besides, I don't know how many farmers you've talked to, but they tend to be a pretty conservative bunch, as far as making sure that they don't bet a lot of hectares on tech that they haven't tested first in a smaller part of their fields, and only plant everywhere if they expect a significant profit. When yields are already very good, and grain is cheap, expensive seeds just sell less across the board. You don't get much opposition to GMOs among farmers: they just go with what is more profitable for them. Same thing for industrial companies that use the GMOs products to feed cattle or make biodiesel. It all comes down to people that are afraid of what they don't understand, and just choose to be afraid in ways that work well with their political affiliations. If we were REALLY afraid of food being dangerous, and with untested genetics, we'd actually ban the organics, because there's a lot more genetic variation that is unaccounted for in traditional farming products than in something that comes from agribusiness.
jcoffland 11y ago
This is super common. My wife and I live in Sonoma County. She operates a floral design business where she only sources locally grown flowers. To our frustration many of her competitors also claim to use local flowers. However, my wife knows nearly all of the local flower growers personally and they tell her that these same competitors give them very little to no business. Instead they buy nearly all of their flowers from the SF flower market which in turn gets most of it's flowers from South America. It's amazing how many businesses have no problem flat out lying to their customers.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > It's amazing how many businesses have no problem flat out lying to their customers. It has been ever thus. This is where regulation comes from.
- kbenson 11y ago
  What shop? I'm also in the area and would prefer to know of a shop that I could assign a bit more trust to, since I'm getting married in the next year or so.
  - jcoffland 11y ago
    My wife's business is called Chloris Floral.
jly 11y ago
You can tell what's probably NOT 'farm to table' by the pricing of dishes. Many restaurants would not be in business selling food at the prices they do if were actually farm to table direct from local farmers who uses the growing/raising practices the restaurants claim. If you buy meat or veggies of this quality, you already know - it costs a LOT.
- soundwave106 11y ago
  I think a better potential "red flag" is more things present that are clearly out of season, as some restaurants clearly use trendy market jargon like "farm to table" simply to boost prices and/or for marketing. Central Florida's season for vegetables is the winter. Summer is too hot for growing most things, the main things in Central Florida that are in season during that time are citrus. Some vegetables and fruits don't really grow here at all. Some do grow but do kind of poorly. Sure, a climate controlled indoor hydroponic farm can grow produce that is an "exception to the rule", but the Tampa area only has a couple (one?) of those. Definitely not enough to cater for all the restaurants that claim "farm to table". So seeing out of season "farm to table" vegetables would be a bit of a red flag. The same with animals. For instance the trout mentioned in the article would be a potential red flag of sorts, as Florida doesn't have rainbow trout. Florida does have "spotted sea trout" but that's a different species of fish, and the commercial harvest of that in Florida is rather limited. You can apply this rule to other climates, of course.
alva 11y ago
A great bit of journalism here, hopefully it reaches a lot of eyes. I think that the fines levied on restaurants that are knowingly deceiving their customers should be much higher. The articles states $300 is the fine for first-time offenders, this is hardly much of a deterrence considering the premiums placed on 'locally sourced' dishes. If you want to get a good feel of how much proper locally grown food is, pop in to a butchers. It costs £15/$21 for a single t-bone, but man is it worth it. I think we are too used to eating sub-standard meats/fish as we want to consume it more often.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  yes, it is worth it, and ... the cost of a high quality steak reflects how often you should probably be eating steak. i.e. not very often.
  - mod 11y ago
    I don't agree that the cost of food reflects how often we should eat it. See: seafood, rare spices, berries, nuts.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - uremog 11y ago
    Not to be mean, but I don't recall hearing that in economics.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      you're not being mean, you just mistook my sarcastic observation of human behavior at the meat counter with some kind of economic theory. you're real popular at parties, i bet.
mwnz 11y ago
Great article. Not hacker news.
- _da_ 11y ago
  I disagree. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I think many hackers (myself included) find this interesting.
  - thecity2 11y ago
    Me too!
Overtonwindow 11y ago
Totally expected. Our current food model, and the American conditioned mindset, is bigger is better, cheaper is better, and when selling food you must maximize profits, while reducing costs - no exceptions. Americans need to be brought down a peg or two (myself included!) that size and cost does not equality quality, cleanliness, or health.
- massysett 11y ago
  I thought the whole point of the "local" movement is that cheaper is not better and bigger is not better, as people are willing to pay more for less food because it is supposedly "local".
ilaksh 11y ago
If we are really serious about local food then we need a much more significant set of changes. I have integrated some ideas into this site: http://tinyvillages.org http://tinyvillages.org
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
All these things get gamed. If you don't know something about your supplier, its probably getting gamed. My Sister sells chocolate. She gets it from Winan's from Ohio. Knows the supplier folk; visits the place they make all the stuff. Knows their supplier. They get chocolate in liquid form from their plantation in Nicaragua. Folks there grow it, process it and ship the liquor to Ohio. So verified fair trade. Also, its healthier. Imported beans (like everybody else) have to be fumigated upon import. Agricultural product. But the liquor is a finished product; no fumigation! SO that makes some people happier. Anway she only knows all this (and trusts it) because she knows the Winans personally, and visits the plant regularly.

100 points by neurobuddha 11y ago

PedroBatista 11y ago

I'm not familiar with US laws, but isn't this fraud?

brianwawok 11y ago
Something like 30% of fish sold isn't the fish on the label. Being illegal and being able to do something about it? No always the same. Sure if your swap killed a bunch of people, you would get caught. Who is going to instantly die form eating a GMO though?
- PedroBatista 11y ago
  Isn't the some kind of Government Agency that buys random stuff from supermarkets/suppliers, tests the food and inspects the label? The same for restaurant inspections? Its not that expensive and it sends a clear message to these people.
  - monknomo 11y ago
    I don't believe anybody does that, let alone the government. Restaurant inspections check to make sure the restaurants are hygienic and safe, not that the food matches the label.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    From the article: For 40,000-some Florida restaurants, 191 inspectors from the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation oversee them all for safety, sanitation and — occasionally — lies. By comparison, Georgia, with about half the population, has 300 inspectors. Ohio has 637 for about 22,000 restaurants. In the past two years, Florida inspectors found roughly 750 food misrepresentation violations. Of them, 123 restaurants were fined, with an average fine for first-time offenders between $150 and $300. The state could beef up the number of inspectors and the fines. Should they? I'm not sure. Certainly I don't support lying to consumers, but it isn't exactly the crime of the century. I'd be much more concerned about safety and sanitation, though some mislabeling has safety implications (e.g. whether nuts are used). There's a concept in false advertising law called "puffery" under which obviously exaggerated representations are not considered false advertising. Think "best chicken in the world". This isn't exactly that, but you really should know that your $11 Caesar salad with shrimp isn't using local, sustainable caught shrimp that goes for around ~$1/shrimp wholesale.
    - uremog 11y ago
      Even just from an economic standpoint, I think such fines should be far higher. Sometimes it takes lab tests to determine fakes from real foods. Also, I disagree - consumers shouldn't have to know the market. One could argue that they should, but they should not have to.

umanwizard 11y ago

I've never understood what "farm-to-table" means. Doesn't all food come from a farm? Is it supposed to mean "farm owned by a stereotypical farmer, not by a corporation?" If so, that's pretty vague and subjective.

hayksaakian 11y ago
it's super subjective until the government defines it and regulates it (read penalize mis-labeling).
- crispyambulance 11y ago
  You're right about that. The same thing happened with the name "organic". Sadly, some restaurateurs have been taking advantage of the "farm-to-table" terminology. In France and Italy some foods and wines have AOC/DOC designations meaning that the food item's name means was produced in a geographically defined place, usually with traditional methods and NOT from some random factory in another country. There are penalties in place for people that attempt to label a product with a controlled name. "Farm-to-table" has a different definition than AOC/DOC, but there's a lot in common in spirit. AOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%C3%B4l%C3%A9e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%... DOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_controllata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_contr...
- mindcrime 11y ago
  it's super subjective until the government defines it and regulates it (read penalize mis-labeling). reply Yeah, once the government gets involved, it'll still be all lies, but it'll be legal because somebody paid off the right regulator, or because the regulator owns shares in the restaurant, etc. And then this kind of thing will be used as a weapon to inhibit the entry of new competitors into the market, to the benefit of the entrenched players.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    You're overly cynical. Nobody in the United States worries about buying adulterated milk, or medications that are actually mixtures of flavored syrup and radium, or bread that uses sawdust as a cheap filler, because there's clear standards for what something labeled as "milk" or "bread" means and regulators with the power to enforce those standards. Lots of other countries don't have those things, which is how things like this happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

wyldfire 11y ago

> “It’s really hard to find non-GMO produce,” Moran said. Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO." Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?

smelendez 11y ago
I'm not an expert, but one criticism I've seen is that a lot of genetic modification is used to either get plants to produce pesticides or be immune to commonly used weed-killers, like Roundup. Some critics worry that lets farmers basically saturate their fields in herbicides to eliminate weeds, and that some of them are toxic to humans, other animals and plants near to the farm. Another issue is that most genetic modification work is done by massive companies, which then patent their results. If they develop cheaper-to-grow crops, farmers may essentially have no choice but to license their IP to stay competitive. That gives those big companies a lot of clout over farmers and probably advantages giant farming operations, who can negotiate to buy GMO seeds cheaper than small farmers can. Some people also worry that there will be "bugs" in the genetic code introduced into plants that will have unforeseen consequences. On some level, plant genetics always been a software problem, but now we're potentially deploying updates in the (literal) field much faster. If new corn seeds distributed en masse accidentally produce toxins, or are unusually conducive to harmful bacteria, or just don't grow properly in some areas, what does it mean for farmers and consumers? I think it's a lot of the usual technology-upends-formerly-slow-moving-industry issues, but that's especially frightening for a lot of people when it comes to things we're putting in our bodies.
- hibikir 11y ago
  In this case, the problem is that there's a huge difference between public perception and reality. For instance, you talk about herbicides: A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically speaking, than something that doesn't come from big agribusiness. I can irradiate my seeds to create mutations to use then on traditional breeding, and call myself organic afterwards! As far as growing well in an area or not, that's why there is testing. Selling a seed that yields poorly to a region would lead to a major economic damage to whichever company is selling those seeds, so everything we can find at a seed store from a major manufacturer, whether GMO or not, will have more than enough agronomic information to make a farmer's decision easy. And besides, I don't know how many farmers you've talked to, but they tend to be a pretty conservative bunch, as far as making sure that they don't bet a lot of hectares on tech that they haven't tested first in a smaller part of their fields, and only plant everywhere if they expect a significant profit. When yields are already very good, and grain is cheap, expensive seeds just sell less across the board. You don't get much opposition to GMOs among farmers: they just go with what is more profitable for them. Same thing for industrial companies that use the GMOs products to feed cattle or make biodiesel. It all comes down to people that are afraid of what they don't understand, and just choose to be afraid in ways that work well with their political affiliations. If we were REALLY afraid of food being dangerous, and with untested genetics, we'd actually ban the organics, because there's a lot more genetic variation that is unaccounted for in traditional farming products than in something that comes from agribusiness.

jcoffland 11y ago

This is super common. My wife and I live in Sonoma County. She operates a floral design business where she only sources locally grown flowers. To our frustration many of her competitors also claim to use local flowers. However, my wife knows nearly all of the local flower growers personally and they tell her that these same competitors give them very little to no business. Instead they buy nearly all of their flowers from the SF flower market which in turn gets most of it's flowers from South America. It's amazing how many businesses have no problem flat out lying to their customers.

smacktoward 11y ago
> It's amazing how many businesses have no problem flat out lying to their customers. It has been ever thus. This is where regulation comes from.
kbenson 11y ago
What shop? I'm also in the area and would prefer to know of a shop that I could assign a bit more trust to, since I'm getting married in the next year or so.
- jcoffland 11y ago
  My wife's business is called Chloris Floral.

jly 11y ago

You can tell what's probably NOT 'farm to table' by the pricing of dishes. Many restaurants would not be in business selling food at the prices they do if were actually farm to table direct from local farmers who uses the growing/raising practices the restaurants claim. If you buy meat or veggies of this quality, you already know - it costs a LOT.

soundwave106 11y ago
I think a better potential "red flag" is more things present that are clearly out of season, as some restaurants clearly use trendy market jargon like "farm to table" simply to boost prices and/or for marketing. Central Florida's season for vegetables is the winter. Summer is too hot for growing most things, the main things in Central Florida that are in season during that time are citrus. Some vegetables and fruits don't really grow here at all. Some do grow but do kind of poorly. Sure, a climate controlled indoor hydroponic farm can grow produce that is an "exception to the rule", but the Tampa area only has a couple (one?) of those. Definitely not enough to cater for all the restaurants that claim "farm to table". So seeing out of season "farm to table" vegetables would be a bit of a red flag. The same with animals. For instance the trout mentioned in the article would be a potential red flag of sorts, as Florida doesn't have rainbow trout. Florida does have "spotted sea trout" but that's a different species of fish, and the commercial harvest of that in Florida is rather limited. You can apply this rule to other climates, of course.

alva 11y ago

A great bit of journalism here, hopefully it reaches a lot of eyes. I think that the fines levied on restaurants that are knowingly deceiving their customers should be much higher. The articles states $300 is the fine for first-time offenders, this is hardly much of a deterrence considering the premiums placed on 'locally sourced' dishes. If you want to get a good feel of how much proper locally grown food is, pop in to a butchers. It costs £15/$21 for a single t-bone, but man is it worth it. I think we are too used to eating sub-standard meats/fish as we want to consume it more often.

beachstartup 11y ago
yes, it is worth it, and ... the cost of a high quality steak reflects how often you should probably be eating steak. i.e. not very often.
- mod 11y ago
  I don't agree that the cost of food reflects how often we should eat it. See: seafood, rare spices, berries, nuts.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- uremog 11y ago
  Not to be mean, but I don't recall hearing that in economics.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    you're not being mean, you just mistook my sarcastic observation of human behavior at the meat counter with some kind of economic theory. you're real popular at parties, i bet.

mwnz 11y ago

Great article. Not hacker news.

_da_ 11y ago
I disagree. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. I think many hackers (myself included) find this interesting.
- thecity2 11y ago
  Me too!

Overtonwindow 11y ago

Totally expected. Our current food model, and the American conditioned mindset, is bigger is better, cheaper is better, and when selling food you must maximize profits, while reducing costs - no exceptions. Americans need to be brought down a peg or two (myself included!) that size and cost does not equality quality, cleanliness, or health.

massysett 11y ago
I thought the whole point of the "local" movement is that cheaper is not better and bigger is not better, as people are willing to pay more for less food because it is supposedly "local".

ilaksh 11y ago

If we are really serious about local food then we need a much more significant set of changes. I have integrated some ideas into this site: http://tinyvillages.org http://tinyvillages.org

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

All these things get gamed. If you don't know something about your supplier, its probably getting gamed. My Sister sells chocolate. She gets it from Winan's from Ohio. Knows the supplier folk; visits the place they make all the stuff. Knows their supplier. They get chocolate in liquid form from their plantation in Nicaragua. Folks there grow it, process it and ship the liquor to Ohio. So verified fair trade. Also, its healthier. Imported beans (like everybody else) have to be fumigated upon import. Agricultural product. But the liquor is a finished product; no fumigation! SO that makes some people happier. Anway she only knows all this (and trusts it) because she knows the Winans personally, and visits the plant regularly.