I've finished my annotated bibliography and the website is done. I have an outline of what I'd like to say during my presentation. I just need to practice it a few times. I am in a very odd place. Because it feels like everything that is necessary is finished. But, I know I can still go farther with it. Nothing is ever truly finished. You discover that a lot with plays. I feel like I should keep researching, keep trying to find something new. We shall see.

Very Nearly There.

All right blog,
it's been a while but I have been very busy. I have taken all of my information and compiled it into a kind of faux app. It is organized by price and distance. I will also have it organized by farm distance on a separate page if people prefer to search by farm instead of by product.
This week I need to:
1. organize the farms page
2. Find the missing info. on a few of the products (carrot and orange)
3. Put together my annotated bib.
4. Decide what research I'm going to use in the presentation.
I would also like to find someone that may be interested in funding my app. maybe.
I need to have some one that knows things about graphic design to look at my iweb document and tell me if I've organized it in a sane and reasonable fashion.
I'm still wanting for a bit more research. My data shows that one can buy local produce at a reasonable price but why should they pay the extra 10 cents. I have a few answers but my WHY needs to be super strong!!impenetrable!!

Some Business.

New food saftey bill advances in congress http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-food-safety-20101117,0,7628729.story
because of the most recent egg-recall...yess the eggs have been recalled AGAIN http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-egg-recall-salmonella-20101109,0,5009507.story
Salmonilla is the cause once again. Salmonilla is found in the chicken's dietary tract, it comes from poop, and can be harmful if eggs are undercooked. http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/salmonella_enteritidis/#eggs
In the Omnivore's Dillemma, Micheal Pollan states that salmonilla out breaks are mostly caused by overcrowding and unclean hen houses. While  reading some Micheal Pollan articles I came across this one and was particularly grossed out http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/the-way-we-live-now-cattle-futures/ We feed our cows chicken litter? ekkkk.
This is another article where Micheal Pollan discusses how local food is better for us and the e. coli outbreak in 2006. He states that is wasn't afraid to eat the spinach sitting at his farmer's market while the whole country was panicking over the pre-washed bagged spinach in the store.

Contamination.

This is the website for the washington stae healt department http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/food/recall.htm
There are a number of thid that have been recalled in the past couple months. And while I was looking at the site I began to think about HOW food becomes contaminated. I know about salmonilla and E. coli. and that most of the time it's from over crowding. But, I wonder if I could look into the specific food and see if I can find the actual cause instead of just information about the disease. I'd like to look into that this week while continuing my previous proposal. I just really want to have research to back up WHY we should know where our food has been. I'm still working on finding research that backs up my claim that local food is healthier for you. I found this one about local food being less susceptable to bioterrorism. http://fogcity.blogs.com/jen/2005/06/buying_locally_.html It's a tinsy bit of a stretch. Still searching. This week I am going to be in DIRECTED STUDIES MODE. Nothing can stop me.

Why is this project important?
I've been reading articles on the peanut contamination debacle
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/us/29Peanut.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/16/peanut-butter-probe-expan_n_158689.html
These articles talk about the shabby conditions of the factory and how long it took to find which plant the infected product came from.
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/MajorProductRecalls/Peanut/default.htm
This is the FDA site with all of the contaminated products. There are actually new contaminated products added almost everyday.

What's happenin

This week I went to QFC and catalogued and compared various produces with the full circle farm produce.  By next week I really hope to go to Trader Joes and Madison Market and Whole foods to compare them as well. I also need to start looking into foods other than produce, such as meat and maybe even more processed foods. However I don't know how accomplishable these goals are because this week is tech week for American Clock. BUT I'm setting these goals in good hope that I may get at least one of them done. I still need to figure out how to present my research. I do have iweb, but it's a bit confusing. I'm going to work with it a little more today. If I am still at a complete loss I may be able to use photoshop or powerpoint instead, I'm also going to start carting my computer around with me in hopes of maybe doing some work during lunch and dinner breaks. I really feel that I will be able to kick it into gear once the show is over (Nov. 15th here I come!) But I will not let the show be an excuse to not get any work done. Gotta just keep on truckin!

The QFC

Organic Green Peppers 93120
Siri and Son
$2.19 each
187 mi


Green Peppers 4065
Pam Pak
1.69 each
924 mi


Ocean Mist Spinach 4090
1.79/ bunch
893 mi


Kroger Baby Carrots
3.29/ pound
Distibuted from Cincinnati, OH 2,327 mi


Organic Carrot Bunch 94094
Cal Organic
2.49/bunch
1,045 mi


Organic Green pears 94416
Ranier Org


2.49/lb
Distributed from Selah, WA 140 mi





D'Anjou Pears 
usapears.org
1.99/lb
128 mi
120 mi
152 mi
166 mi


Red Seedless Grapes 4499
2.99/pound
Fowler Packing Co
932 mi


Melissa's Dutch Yellow Potatoes
6.99/3 lbs
1,144 mi


Red Onion 4082
Hartley's Best
1.99/lb
815 mi


Walla Walla Sweet Onion
1.99/lbs
Peru