Safe, local food: It's yours, at a price

The sheep doze in the sun, the chickens scratch and murmur in the soft spring grass: In this barnyard, the year could be 1850, 1900 or, thanks to George Page, 2007.

Puget Sound growers and retailers are fomenting a local food revolution, spurred by customers looking for a choice beyond a globalized, industrialized food chain.

"I look out in my front yard, and there are the goats and the chickens and the sheep, and I see exactly what they are eating," Page said. "We let the grass be grass, and the animals be animals."

The lust for cheap, fresh, convenient food in all seasons has come at a cost of confidence. Reports of tainted spinach, suspicious stuff in the dog dish and unpronounceable chemicals in hatchery salmon food have people asking just what they are really eating, and where it comes from.

Some worry about the environmental impact of food choices, use of pesticides in the field or fossil fuels in transport.

Enter Page, whose Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon Island caters to those with the money to buy confidence. His food is expensive — up to $8 a dozen for duck eggs, and about $20 for a 4-pound, pasture-raised chicken. But consider that when Page needs to supplement the chickens' diet of grass, he buys only the best feed — and tastes it to make sure it's OK. And despite his prices, Page routinely sells out at various farmers markets. Page thinks he knows why his local, pasture-raised meat and dairy products are a hit.

"I feel we are right in the throes of a food revolution," he said. "It feels almost like a religious revival. People are coming hungry for the gospel of good, local food. I joke about it because my father was a minister and he called himself Pastor Page. Well, I'm Pasture Page."

Information

100 mile diet: http://100milediet.org

BALLE Seattle: www.balleseattle.org

Farming & the Environment: www.farmingandtheenvironment.org

Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Markets: www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org

For some, money seems to be no object. "People complain about our prices occasionally, and I just smile and nod and say 'I don't care.' ... There are so many people that want it."

The Costco approach

But what about the rest of us, dead on our feet by dinner, trying to stretch every hour and dollar?

That explains the popularity of places like Costco with a kaleidoscope of fresh food year round, at bargain prices.

"Our customers vote at the cash register," said Jim Sinegal, co-founder and CEO of Costco, which has 510 stores worldwide, providing about 60 types of fresh produce in any season.

"We sell blueberries from any place we can get them," Sinegal said. "You are looking for quality, and you are looking for value." When that means a local supplier, all the better. But supplying what customers expect comes first.

When a freeze in California shut down supplies of citrus this winter, Costco produce buyers opened the spigots from Spain and Israel. The store engages double lines of supply in case of a hiccup like a freeze, said Frank Padilla, a top produce buyer.

The company also annually sends third-party inspectors to farms, packing sheds and manufacturers worldwide to ensure its direct suppliers adhere to minimum-age and wage laws and provide clean drinking water and bathrooms for workers.

"It's just responsible on our part," Padilla said. "We are just as diligent if it is Mexico, Yakima, Guatemala or Honduras. It's part of sustainability, if they aren't doing it right, we won't have that relationship very long. So we are not doing it on the cheap."

A few jitters

From Page's pricey poultry to Sinegal's bargain winter blueberries, Michael Sansolo, senior vice president of the Food Marketing Institute, an association of food retailers and wholesalers, sees a remarkable range of choice and value.

The average grocery carries 45,000 products, and the average American spends less disposable income — about 10 cents of every dollar — on food than anyone else in the world.

The U.S. food supply is also remarkably safe, Sansolo said.

"A lot of people only look at it when something goes wrong," Sansolo said. "An incredible number of meals are provided every day largely without incident."

And while local food may be fresher and tastier, food safety is always a matter of vigilance, no matter where it comes from. Any food can be contaminated by improper handling, including by the home cook.

"The food chain doesn't end with the person who sold it to you," Sansolo said.

But he also knows the mainstream grocery has suffered a loss of consumer confidence. A year ago, 85 percent of consumers surveyed by the trade association said they were mostly or completely satisfied in the safety of the food they buy in the supermarket. This year, 67 percent said so. "That's a huge drop," Sansolo said.

"It's real people"

Eaters in Pugetopia have it easier than most, thanks to a combination of climate, affluence and choice. Farmers markets provide an abundance of locally raised food. Customers can even subscribe to weekly supplies of vegetables from the farm. From big box to out of the box, we've got it all.

Consider this street corner on Queen Anne. Pizza Hut on one side, Safeway half a block up, and then there's the new kid on the block: Eat Local. Which to choose? For some, increasingly, it's the local guy.

Opened just three months ago, Greg Conner's own epiphany has proven wildly successful. A former consultant on sustainability, he found himself putting in long hours, then eating take-out or going out every night.

A light bulb went on. "I thought, I can't be the only one. ... I wanted locally grown, good food, but I didn't have two hours to cook it."

His business was born: Freezer cases full of everything from apricot-lentil soup with ginger essence to meatloaf, all cooked up mostly from locally sourced ingredients and sold frozen.

It's expensive — $13.48 for that quart of lentil soup — but usually cheaper than eating out. And, for those who want to know where their food comes from, Conner can tell them.

That's no small feat, Conner has learned. In the global food chain, it's easier and cheaper to buy apple juice from Chinese concentrate than cider pressed from apples in Wenatchee. It took his chefs dozens of phone calls to find the right rancher, for instance, providing Methow Valley beef raised on grass.

Why bother? Customers last week had their own answers.

"I am in there one to three times a week," said Shannon Garcia of Seattle, a graduate student who makes room in her budget for Conner's mac and cheese, at $16.98 for a two- to three-serving container. "I really like the idea of supporting the local economy and keeping the money in the community. And I don't get the same service in a big store."

She also likes that the food was produced close to home. "The hand farthest away is the one that benefits the least. I know with this, it's not someone working for $1, it's real people making real wages."

A local revolution

Cookbook author and food consultant Greg Atkinson of Bainbridge Island sees more people making local food a priority. "It sounds kind of woo-woo, but it's almost a spiritual thing, it's about being fully present in the moment. You need that genuine connection to the time and place where you are. That is our job on Earth, to be here and to be fully present."

Eating locally can be a revolutionary act. He remembers working with Canlis restaurant to make the menu more seasonally and regionally attuned.

"Their customers pride themselves on being able to access whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it," Atkinson said. "My job was to shift their consciousness that what was state-of-the-art half a century ago no longer is.

"They had to let go of their strawberries and Devonshire cream in December."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com