WASHINGTON — Federal food regulators took a tentative step Monday toward banning a common use of penicillin and tetracycline in the water and feed given cattle, chickens and pigs in hopes of slowing the growing scourge of killer bacteria.
But the Food and Drug Administration has tried without success for more than three decades to ban such uses. In the past, Congress has stepped in at the urging of agricultural interests and stopped the agency from acting. In the battle between public health and agriculture, the guys with the cowboy hats generally win. The F.D.A. released a policy document stating that agricultural uses of antibiotics should be limited to assuring animal health, and that veterinarians should be involved in the drugs’ uses. While doing nothing to change the present oversight of antibiotics, the document is the first signal in years that the agency intends to rejoin the battle to crack down on agricultural uses of antibiotics that many infectious disease experts oppose. Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the agency’s principal deputy commissioner, refused at a news conference to give details about when the agency would take more concrete steps. “We believe this is a public health issue of some urgency,” Dr. Sharfstein said. “We’re looking to see some progress soon.” About 100,000 people die every year from hospital-acquired infections caused by bacteria that, because of overuse of antibiotics, have developed resistance to the usual remedies and cannot be killed with them. Many others die from superbugs contracted outside hospitals. How many deaths can be attributed to agricultural uses of antibiotics? “I don’t think anyone knows that number,” said Dr. James Johnson, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, “but I think it’s substantial.” Antibiotics are used in agriculture for three reasons: to promote animal growth, prevent illness and treat sickness. How antibiotics in feed and water help to fatten animals is not entirely clear. The industrialization of animal husbandry has increased processors’ dependence on antibiotics because factory farm animals tend to be sicker and feed-lot diets can encourage bacterial infections. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated in 2001 that 84 percent of all antibiotics were used in agriculture and that 70 percent were used simply to promote animal growth, not to treat or prevent illness. The Animal Health Institute, a trade association, estimated that 13 percent of agricultural antibiotics were used to promote growth. Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, said most agricultural antibiotics were given to healthy animals not to promote growth but to prevent illness. The distinction is important because F.D.A. officials said they were mostly concerned with the use of antibiotics to promote growth — not to prevent or treat illnesses. If the agency some day bans growth promotion as a use, there is a chance producers would simply relabel such uses as preventative. Mr. Warner said his organization opposed the F.D.A.’s guidance. “We think this guidance could lead to the elimination or costly review of previously approved animal health products,” he said. The Animal Health Institute said in a statement that it welcomed the guidance and had “long supported efforts to promote judicious use of antibiotics.” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, said the F.D.A. had “not gone far enough or moved fast enough.” Ms. Slaughter has proposed legislation banning nontherapeutic uses of some classes of antibiotics. By GARDINER HARRIS Published: June 28, 2010
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The Emmaus building at the center of the "swingers club" controversy is again up for grabs, and business owners appear more determined than ever to lure a new tenant.
Narinder Garg, owner of the 302 Main St. property, said his talks with an East Stroudsburg man who wanted to lease the property for a social club are dead and that he's already beginning to show the building to other prospective tenants. "That's a done deal," Garg said of his previous talks with David Mayi Jr., who proposed the Vault Social Club for the location. "It's finished. They're not going to come." Garg's decision to seek another tenant makes it unlikely that Mayi would be able to appeal last week's decision by the Zoning Hearing Board denying a permit for the club at that location. Teri Madison, executive director of the Emmaus Main Street Program, said the Vault proposal was a "wake-up call" for the borough and business community that she says is now determined to fill the property, which has been vacant for more than a year. "Had [the Vault] slipped under the wire, we would have had this business in town," said Madison, whose group opposed the club's approval. "We want to get together and really do some searching to find the right business." Business owners' concerns weren't limited to the belief that the Vault would become a swingers hangout. Gene Clock, president of the Main Street Program's board of directors, said he would like to see a business that is open six days a week, rather than the two days proposed by the Vault. Garg planned to show the three-story property to a prospective tenant Monday and said he welcomes discussions with the Main Street group. He said he had considered withdrawing the zoning appeal filed by Mayi, a move that would have effectively made last Thursday night's public hearing moot, but decided against it after consulting with an attorney. Garg of King of Prussia, Montgomery County, had said he was unaware of the rumors swirling about a possible swingers club at his property and the fact the social club had been advertised in the online swinging community after he began lease talks with Mayi. He said he wanted nothing to do with a business where sex might be involved. Mayi said during last week's hearing that he had a verbal agreement to lease the building. He said the verbal deal called for a one-year lease, at $4,000 per month, with an option for four more years. Mayi acknowledged during three hours of grilling that swingers would be members of his club, but claimed it was not a swingers club. He wouldn't say after the hearing whether he'd appeal the decision or seek another site. He did not return multiple messages Friday and Monday. Garg said he would be "tickled to death" if the downtown business community aided him in his search for a tenant, saying he would like to find something that would "fit in the neighborhood" and create "more harmony" in the borough. The property was most recently the Palace of India, which occupied the site for about eight years beginning in 1999. The property had previously been home to Marcel's Old Country Inn. Garg, who has owned the building since 1998, said he'd like to fill it with a new restaurant, but that he's open to other ideas. Madison said she would like to see a restaurant there as well. "I would like to bring [Garg] up here and sit down with him and see where he's coming from," she said. patrick.lester@mcall.com HANOI, Vietnam—As the Gulf Coast oil spill continues to gush, U.S. seafood suppliers are turning to Asia to ensure Americans have enough shrimp for their gumbos, Creoles and cocktails this summer, but some of those overseas cupboards are low themselves. Several countries in the world's top shrimp-producing region are struggling to satisfy their own appetites for shrimp because of disease, drought and the economic crisis. The oil spill is one more factor driving prices skyward, sending a worldwide ripple through an already tight shrimp market.
The price of plump black tiger shrimp is at a 10-year high in Vietnam, selling for around $13.50 per kilogram ($6.14 per pound), said Bui Dung, a manager at Minh Phu, Vietnam's biggest shrimp exporter in the southern Mekong delta province of Ca Mau. He said heat waves along with disease outbreaks have led to smaller yields on farms. Domestic consumption has remained high, nibbling away at cold stocks normally available for export prior to August harvests. "The demand, particularly from the U.S., is huge," Dung said. "We receive order requests from U.S. importers almost everyday, but we cannot meet all their demands." Americans have an insatiable craving for shrimp, eating about 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) a year. And while wild Gulf shrimp provides only about 7 to 9 percent of that supply, the oil spill will likely send some U.S. restaurants and super markets into a short-term frenzy, said Fatima Ferdouse, chief Advertisement yld_mgr.place_ad_here("adPosBox"); of trade promotion at Infofish, an intergovernmental organization for the Asia-Pacific fishery industry based in Malaysia. "It backfired because in the American market, they planned to sell ... this much domestic shrimp from the Gulf for summer, which they're not getting now," she said by phone. "So they have to fill in the gap. They panic and then the easy way to get it is to go through import—they don't have any other choice." According to Infofish, wholesale shrimp prices have risen by about 15 to 20 percent since a BP-operated oil rig exploded 10 weeks ago, causing an undersea blowout that has spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for the U.S.-based National Fisheries Institute, a trade group, said Americans might see a price increase on their plates in the short term, but he's hopeful Asian production will pick back up to keep consumers from feeling a prolonged pinch. "It's the No. 1 most consumed seafood in America," he said. "People eat more shrimp than they do canned tuna." Ecuador is the only country among the top five U.S. importers located outside of Asia. More than a third of the nearly 550,000 tons of shrimp imported by the U.S. last year came from Thailand, the top shipper, according to Infofish. Thailand has remained a stable supplier, largely unaffected by a virus that has crippled stocks in Bangladesh and Indonesia, the second top supplier to the U.S. last year. For the January-April period before the Gulf oil spill, U.S. imports of Indonesia shrimp were down 30 percent from a year earlier. Imports from Thailand were up about 17 percent over the same period, Infofish data reported. Last year was the first time the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimated a drop in worldwide shrimp aquaculture production, following the global economic crisis which forced many farmers out of business. But now, prior to the peak summer shrimp-eating season, it's a sellers' market. Larger shrimp are in short supply, pushing prices to the highest level in two years, according to Infofish. Demand for the black tiger shrimp, which is very popular in Japan, has been particularly high, with prices increasing $1 a pound ($ 0.50 a kilogram) since early June. "The demand worldwide is quite strong. The economic crisis seems to be over, especially the U.S. and Japanese markets are really demanding a lot of shrimp," said Helga Josupeit, a fishery industry officer at GLOBEFISH, an FAO program in Rome that tracks international fish trade and publishes price reports. "If anyone wants to invest in a shrimp farm, they probably will make some money." Some farmers say it's ironic that the U.S. is now forced to lean more on overseas suppliers to help meet demand. In 2004, the same Gulf Coast shrimpers affected by the oil spill successfully lobbied Washington to slap antidumping tariffs on Vietnam, Thailand, India, Ecuador, Brazil and China, accusing them of flooding the U.S. market with artificially low priced shrimp. "It's good to see U.S. shrimp importers are coming back to Vietnam," said farmer Nguyen Tat Thang. "But I care more about how much profit I earn from the farm, which I am not seeing increase because of rising production costs." One unlikely result of the recent financial crisis is a swell of ex-bankers trying their hands at running quick serves. By Jordan Melnick
Amid the global financial crisis, with the world’s largest banks reporting losses in the billions of dollars, Duane Clark, a 24-year veteran of the commercial banking industry, did something he never expected to do: He opened a smoothie shop. “I always swore I would never go into the restaurant business,” Clark says. “I always called it the beast. You live it, you drink it, you eat it—that’s your life.” But in October of 2009, Clark opened a Tropical Smoothie Café in Panama City Beach, Florida. On June 12, he opened a second location further north along the Sunshine State panhandle in Pensacola. At AmSouth Bank (now Regions Bank), Clark had helped Tropical Smoothie Café, which is based in Destin, Florida, get financing to open several locations. Over the years, he met the company’s corporate officers and gained a nuanced understanding of how Tropical Smoothie operated. As a banker, Clark knew how to evaluate an investment, and he concluded that a concept offering low-priced food and smoothies was a winner in a down economy. He also liked Tropical Smoothie’s young, health-conscious customer base. But above all, Clark was looking for something steady after one of the most chaotic years in the history of global finance, when giant banks teetered and some, like Lehman Brothers, toppled. “The draw was the stability, and that quick service has shown such growth trends,” Clark says. With a money background, Clark says he avoided a common mistake of the upstart restaurant operator: incorrectly assessing costs. “Most people getting into it don’t understand the financing, and financing is crucial,” he says. “They don’t know how to manage their cash.” Patrice Rice, whose firm recruits for the hospitality industry, including Yum! Brands and Arby’s, understands the appeal of the restaurant industry in the wake of the financial crisis. “People with money are looking for ways to invest that can create income rather than gambling on the stability of the stock market,” Rice says. “They are buying restaurant franchises because it is a stable industry.” Quick service in particular is an attractive investment, Rice says, because of the low start-up and build-out costs, limited menus, and the potential to capture the breakfast, lunch, and dinner markets. While a finance background may help operators, restaurants and banks are very different animals and, Rice says, “You have to be smart enough to know what you don’t know.” “If you’re going to invest that money,” she says, “invest it in a strong director of operations who can tell you what needs to be done to be successful in this business.” John Cassity, a former commercial lender with J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America, bought the first of his six Einstein Bros. Bagels in Colorado’s Western Slope in 2008. He says it was a coincidence that he left the financial industry on the eve of catastrophe. “We laugh about how I got out at the right time,” he says. “But that was not planned at all.” As a banker, Cassity had worked with several quick serves, including Einstein Bros., and had a detailed understanding of the business before he became a franchisee himself. “We peeled back the layers of the onion with every restaurant relationship that we had in order to understand the business as well or better than the operators themselves,” he says. “We knew the space that they operated in, the trends that were going on, the greatest risks they faced, and the relationship between the franchisor and the franchisees. If you’re going to invest that money, invest it in a strong director of operations who can tell you what needs to be done to be successful in this business.” “It was very intimate,” Cassity says, “and it gave me a tremendous insight as to how I would operate my stores.” Of all his restaurant clients, Cassity says he chose Einstein Bros. because of the “integrity of its brand.” While his banking background helps him as a franchisee, he says he has sometimes leveraged his financial acumen “to a fault” by scrutinizing food costs too closely. “There’s a level where you have to have some breathing room and leeway, so that you don’t micromanage to the point that it’s affecting the customer’s experience,” Cassity says. Overall, Cassity says his past life in the demanding financial world prepared him well for the high stress of the restaurant business. “In the financial industry, there is a lot of pressure from senior management,” he says. “There are a lot of goals, a lot of pressure, a lot of tasks. So you have the right caliber of person who can handle what goes on in restaurant operations.” Ryan Achterhoff managed six banks in Northwest Iowa before joining Hull, Iowa–based Pizza Ranch at the corporate level in 2002 and becoming a franchisee a year ago. He agrees that experience managing cash and stress makes financial professionals uniquely suited to running restaurants. But that isn’t the main reason he left banking behind. “When people go out to eat, they’re in a great mood,” he says. “Compare that to the medical industry, for example, where you tend to see people on their worst day. We’re seeing people on their best day. “So a big part of it is, it’s a fun industry,” Achterhoff says. “You have a chance to serve people and give back to communities and create communities, which is why I wanted to be involved.” Susan Spicer did not intend to be the face of the restaurant rebellion against BP over its role in the Gulf oil spill. But that’s what can happen when you file a lawsuit.
Ms. Spicer, long a respected New Orleans chef, spent most of Monday huddled with her lawyers, trying to map out a strategy after word got out that she was suing BP and several other companies on behalf of Gulf restaurant owners and seafood suppliers. “I just hope that my motivations will not be misinterpreted,” she said from her restaurant Bayona in her first interview since the suit was filed Friday. “It’s more about solidarity in this region than about getting my piece of the pie. I can’t say I expect to see a dollar out of this thing. I am just angry.” Ms. Spicer’s attorney, Serena Pollack, filed the suit in New Orleans federal court late Friday asking that the court grant class-action status for restaurants and seafood sellers who have suffered in the wake of the April 20 drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The lawyers are arguing that Ms. Spicer and other chefs in Louisiana and the region have built a reputation and a business using fresh, local seafood that is specific to the Gulf of Mexico. Since the oil rig accident, that seafood has either become unavailable or significantly more expensive. In addition, customers are and will continue to be unwilling to pay higher prices or won’t want to eat what is available for fear of contamination from petroleum or the chemicals used to manage the spill, the suit said. Ms. Spicer decided to step forward not because her restaurant is about to go under but because other businesses are. “I really do believe there are people that are certainly more in need than Bayona will be,” she said, adding that there is plenty of good seafood coming from Lake Pontchartrain and unaffected parts of the shoreline. But some places are being hit harder than others, she said. “We are already seeing casualties right and left, human casualities, business casualties, cultural casualties,” she said. Ms. Spicer, whose company is the lead plaintiff, opened Bayona in 1990 and quickly established herself as a chef who respected the New Orleans culinary canon but was not going to be held hostage by it. At Bayona, she offers global food and serves ahi tuna and Pacific salmon. But her longtime signature dish is grilled Gulf shrimp and black bean cake, and she usually serves Gulf oysters, often stuffed with Italian sausage, spinach and fennel. Her recent cookbook, Crescent City Cooking, has dozens of recipes based on Gulf seafood. Earlier this month she opened Mondo, a casual, pan-cultural restaurant that is as likely to serve plantains as beignets. She has also recently gained some popular cultural currency, both as a Top Chef judge and as the inspiration for the chef in the HBO series Treme who struggles to hold onto her restaurant in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ms. Spicer is a culinary consultant for the show. Ms. Spicer said she was taken aback by the attention the suit is getting, particularly from bloggers and journalists who have argued that she doesn’t serve that much local seafood or that she is in it for the money. “I was a little blindsided by all of this,” she said. “But I think it needs to be done and I hope more people will join.” It’s not clear how wide-ranging support for the suit will be. Frank Brigtsen, who runs two restaurants, would not comment on the suit. Emeril Lagasse said he was not joining at this time. “We are continuing to closely monitor the situation and the oil leak’s impact on Emeril’s restaurant business,” Jeff Hinson, Mr. Lagasse’s public relations manager, wrote in an e-mail message to the Times. But the movement was getting some support from smaller businesses. Franky and Johnny’s, a neighborhood po’ boy and seafood restaurant, has signed on. And JoAnn Clevenger, who for nearly 30 years has run the Upperline Restaurant, plans to jump in, too. She wasn’t surprised larger restaurants weren’t. “Susan is an entrepreneurial chef. She is not big business like Emeril. For her and for other owner-operated businesses, what else are we going to do?” she said. After Hurricane Katrina, small business owners felt like they could pick up the pieces, rebuild and pitch in to help others. That’s not the case with the oil spill. “That can-do spirit has been quashed,” she said. “But what Susan is doing can give us that spirit back.” The suit is designed to include restaurant owners and retailers of seafood that is marketed and sold as local or from Louisiana or the Gulf of Mexico. That means the suit could extend to chefs and seafood shops in all five Gulf states, some of whom have already filed separate suits. The next step is a hearing scheduled for July 27, when a federal panel of judges meets in Boise, Idaho, to decide whether all the claims relating to the oil spill will be consolidated and put into the hands of a special master. The panel is also expected to decide where litigation about the oil spill will be held if it is consolidated. Plaintiffs are fighting to keep it from being consolidated in Houston, where many oil companies are headquartered. By KIM SEVERSON 1. If you have to eat in a hurry, eat a salad, difficult as that might be.
2. Food wrapped in plastic or Styrofoam is ethical only if you're an astronaut. 3. Know how the animal you eat was raised. You can lead an unexamined life, but your food cannot. 4. Transform your front lawn into a garden. (Be prepared for neighbors to consider you a fruitcake—or worse, a European.) 5. Unless your mom cooks from scratch, she has no business telling you what to eat.6. Nobody's health ever declined from eating unadvertised products. 7. Consider vegans a warning sign of ethical eating run amok. 8. Buying eleven-grain bread instead of seven-grain bread does not make you a better person.9. The $4.99 all-you-can-eat pancake special at IHOP is not an ethical meal, even without bacon. 10. If you have to eat in airports, don't. (But you already knew that.) From "Eat No Evil," Alan Richman's account of thirty days spent trying to dine ethically in GQ's July 2010 issue "Re: Gourmet. They're reviving the brand, not the magazine," Ruth Reichl said on Twitter. "Pity." Women's Wear Daily broke news today of Condé Nast's new digital venture, called Gourmet Live. "Will have cooking, travel. Attempt to attract new readers, via the ipad." The company announced the "immersive and interactive content experience built on an ever-expanding collection of articles, menus, photos, videos and more, encouraging social connectivity and sharing, and game play" today. If that sounds like it means "dumping our entire archives into an app and then adding Facebook Connect," you could be right. Watch the culty video preview below, then wait to download at the end of 2010.
The Obama administration proposed new rules on Friday seeking to increase competition and rein in potentially unfair practices by large meatpackers and poultry processors. The move is aimed at helping small livestock and poultry farmers survive in an industry dominated by corporate giants.
The rules could give farmers and ranchers new leverage in suing meat companies that they believe have treated them unfairly. They would end practices among cattle and hog buyers that may lower prices paid to farmers and feedlot owners. And they would set new protections for poultry farmers, who often must go deeply into debt to build the chicken houses needed to win contracts from processors. “As this market has become more consolidated and vertically integrated for efficiency’s sake it lends itself to unfair practices and practices that are not particularly transparent,” the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said in an interview. The goal, he said, is to promote “a fair and more transparent relationship between the folks on the farm and the businesses that are packing and processing what’s raised on the farm.” Mr. Vilsack said the rules could increase the payments farmers receive for their livestock or poultry, but added that those higher costs would not necessarily be passed on to consumers, who might benefit from increased competition. The regulatory move comes as the Agriculture and Justice Departments have been holding a series of public workshops to discuss allegations of anticompetitive behavior in agriculture. The rules apply largely to how the Agriculture Department enforces the Packers and Stockyards Act, a 1921 law governing the livestock and poultry industry. The U.S.D.A. will evaluate public comment before issuing a final set of rules, which could take many months. Groups representing the meat industry criticized the proposed rules. “These rules would require a packer to treat everybody the same regardless of capability, regardless of quality of product,” said Mark Dopp, a senior vice president and the general counsel of the American Meat Institute, which represents the meatpacking industry. “We’re afraid this is going to stifle the progress and innovation we’ve seen over the last 20 or 30 years.” Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, which represents poultry processors, said the new rules would “open the floodgates to litigation.” “We believe the majority of growers are satisfied with the way the system is set up now,” he said. “Clearly there are some who are not but we think they are in the minority and this set of regulations is clearly aimed at that minority.” In the past, farmers have been stymied in efforts to sue meat processors for unfair practices as judges have ruled in several cases that they must prove that a packers’ actions harm not just individual producers but also stifle competition on a broader scale. In an outline of the proposed rules, the U.S.D.A. said the courts had set an unreasonable standard. It called for “judicial re-examination” of the issue in light of specific examples of unfair practices spelled out in the new rules. “We’ve been fighting this bear forever and we finally got a breakthrough,” said Fred Stokes, executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a group that advocates for small farmers and livestock producers. The new rules would also change industry practices. They would bar cattle dealers from acting as exclusive buyers for more than one meat packer in order to keep packers from sharing information on pricing, which could lead to collusion to keep prices down. They would enhance market transparency by requiring processors to submit to the U.S.D.A. samples of contracts they offer producers. And they address the concerns of many poultry growers that they must go deeply into debt to build poultry houses required by processors. The rules would require that processors give growers contracts that last long enough for them to recoup 80 percent of their capital investment. In describing the consolidation in the livestock industry, the U.S.D.A. said the number of hog farms in the United States had fallen to 71,000 today, from 666,000 in 1980. A hog farmer today is paid on average 25 percent of the retail value of a hog, which is half of what farmers received 30 years ago, the department said. In the cattle industry, the number of farms, ranches and feedlots has dropped to 950,000 from 1.6 million in 1980, according to the department. It said that cattle farmers received 43 percent of the retail value of a steer, compared with 62 percent in 1980. While the trend toward consolidation was clear, “the difficulty is always to separate what is happening due to efficiency and what is happening due to market power,” according to Richard Sexton, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis. “There’s probably no question that these things that have happened have streamlined the sector, squeezed costs out of it and made it more efficient, but in the process, people get left behind and many of the people getting left behind are the small producers.” On your way home from the shore, it is impossible to miss all the fresh fruit and vegetable stands lining the back roads, but what is challenging for many people is how they'll use all that great produce when they get home before it goes bad. One local chef has some unique ideas.
Executive chef of the Joseph Ambler Inn Todd Blackney says if you haven't already, it's time to put some of that fruit on the grill! With peaches, he suggests a charred peach compote: "They are going to take their nice fresh peaches, peel them, pull the pit out and then they are going to soak them in a little simple syrup. Then they are going to take those and on a nice clean grill, medium heat because you don't want all the sugar to burn right away. They are just going to slowly cook those on both sides." Once the peaches are slightly charred, chop them up add a pinch of salt and a bit of orange zest: "And that's going to be so delicious. That would go great over ice cream. That's going to go over great over a nice chicken breast." Here are the recipes: Brown Sugar Grilled Plums with Lemon Sorbet Ingredients Cooking Spray 2 tablespoons butter, melted 2 teaspoons brown sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 4 large or 8 small halved and pitted plums 2 cups lemon sorbet Candied peanuts and fresh mint for garnish, optional Directions: Coat outdoor grill with cooking spray and preheat to medium high In a small bowl, whisk together melted butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Brush mixture all over flesh side of plums. Grill plums, flesh side down, 5 minutes until soft. Serve plums with lemon sorbet. Garnish with candied peanuts and mint, if desired. Grilled Peach Compote Ingredients Cooking Spray 6 ripe peaches, peeled, halved and depitted 1 cup simple syrup (below) Juice and zest from one naval orange 1 pinch kosher salt Directions: Soak peach halves in simple syrup for 30 minutes Coat outdoor grill with cooking spray and preheat to medium high Grill peach half halves on both sides for 5 to 6 minutes and remove from grill Coarsely chop grilled peaches and place in small mixing bowl. Mix in orange juice, zest and salt with peaches. Simple Syrup Recipe 2 cups granulated sugar 1 cup water 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice Combine all ingredients in small sauce pan. Heat and simmer until ingredients are reduced by 1/3. Hold at room temperature. Serve Grill Peach Compote over ice cream, or with grill chicken or fish. by KYW's Michelle Durham For other great ideas from Chef Todd, listen to podcast at the right. The liquor landscape may soon be changing in New Jersey. Fox 29's Sean Tobin spoke with some mom and pop shops that say it would be detrimental to business.
"We think it's a disaster that will cost this state--hundreds of thousands of jobs--" says Johnny Canal. Johnny Canal's family has run this Canal's liquor store in Pennsauken, NJ for nearly five decades. He says the system the state has in place currently is working for them, well. Canal says the current state law allows for healthy competition among him and other liquor store owners. He says, "You can only have two licenses in your name, or in your company name." But, there is a movement in Trenton to increase that two license limit. Canal explains, "The reason they want to change that is for the grocery stores." Grocery store chains---like Wegman's and others are interested in getting in on the alcohol business. Canal says they'd be un-doing what the government did years ago. "In the 30's or 40's the state put these license limitations into effect for a reason--because someone was trying to monopolize, and it was a grocery store chain," he says. Canal's assessment of why this proposed change is gaining traction in Trenton is simple, "Mayors around the state are broke and they're looking to get some short term revenue for this years budget." Canal thinks that removing the two license limit would completely change the liquor landscape in it's current form, and, not in a positive way. "If they go through with this bill, we're going to see Target and Wal-Mart being the only ones selling liquor in this state," he predicts. |
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