Apparently, the City of Ottawa took issue with the St. Albert Cheese Co-operative, local producer of some of the squeakiest fresh cheese curds to grace a bowl of poutine, and the black and white dairy cow statue that sits above its Cheddar and Et Cetera storefront in Orleans.

The cow statue breaches a ban on "promotional object and banners above a store's roofline." But, after a 1500 signature petition was presented to the municipality, Ottawa's planning and environmental committee reversed its stance, ruling that the cow could remain until the end of 2010. CBC Ottawa reports the reprieve will allow the committee to discuss and reconsider the ban.

Meanwhile, the piece garnered a memorable comment that made me laugh:

Udderly preposterous. The ruling committee shouldn't have a cow over this; rather, they should take the bull by the horns, quit milking the issue, graduate to bovine university and have some common sense. These people need to be put out to pasture – honestly, what's the beef here?

Source: CBC Ottawa (MiguelSanchez from Wakaw, Saskatchewan)

You know what? I've visited that store before and I never looked upwards to see the cow. Then again, it took me a number of years to see the cow's head on the building above Saslove's Meat Market (1333 Wellington Street W.), Agave Grill (1331 Wellington Street W.) and Petit Bill's Bistro (1293 Wellington Street W.). I've lived in the neighbourhood 6 years now.

Look up...Waaaay up!

Flower Munching Cow

Dear City of Ottawa, don't mess with this cow either. Residents of Wellington West probably won't take it well...

Besides, it doesn't promote any udderlying businesses!

Particulars:
Cheddar Et Cetera
900 Watters Road,
Orleans, Ontario
(613)830-8850

St Albert Co-Op Cheese Factory
150 Saint Paul Street
St-Albert, Ontario
(613)987-2872

Before we begin, please note that sometime late Monday night, fire gutted a three-story apartment and commercial building on Eddy Street in the Hull sector of Gatineau. It made the 40 people, who were living in the residential portion section of the 95 Eddy Street building, homeless. Five businesses were destroyed, including De La Ghetto clothing Shop, Blanchisserie Eddy laundromat and La petite cuisine de Tony.

95 Eddy Street, courtesy of Google Maps
The Ottawa Citizen (a local Ottawa newspaper) reports that there were no injuries caused by the 6:02 pm blaze.

According to the Gatineau police, the Canadian Red Cross quickly mobilized to help displaced residents. With the spat of fires razing apartment buildings in both Ottawa and Gatineau of late, we at foodiePrints have made another donation to the Red Cross. We encourage readers to do so as well. Here is a link to options for donating: Options. Here is a link for donating online: Donate Online.

Now, why is an apartment fire on a food blog? Two reasons. Firstly, I work in Gatineau and have frequented the family-owned and run restaurant, La petite cuisine de Tony. They made a decent Lebanese fatayer. Secondly, I am slightly troubled by how CBC Ottawa reported the incident. My concern stems from an American survey I came across last night via the PR Squared blog.

The survey, conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations came up with, what was for me, a startling finding:

...an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories. Among the journalists surveyed, 89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.

Cision however added the following caveat:

...it's also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors' and reporters' reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism.

Indeed, as many have no doubt observed, the speed with which a lead becomes a story and is reported has increased. Most local news concerns in Ottawa even have twitter accounts. I have seen both @CTVOttawa and @OttawaCitizen request pictures or accounts from witnesses of events.

At 8:30 AM (EST) this morning, CBC Ottawa's website reported the fire with a photo that had the caption "The fire destroyed 16 apartments and five businesses, including a bakery and a dry cleaner." The report read that a brick building at 88 Eddy Street had been the site of the blaze and has since been torn down. A friend of mine graciously provided me a screen capture of the report as it was originally posted:

CBC Ottawa's Original Report
He had it cached on his phone from when I told him that the wonderful little Portuguese bakery and sandwich shop I introduced him to two weeks ago may have burned down. The shop's green awning is in the picture from the original report.

The shop, called Estoril, is situated at 89 Eddy Street. I am particularly fond of it and its owners, visiting the eatery twice a month since I first discovered it last June.

Well, there are some problems with CBC Ottawa's story as it was originally reported. First, the building at 88 Eddy Street is across the street from Estoril. The building at 89 Eddy Street cannot possibly hold 16 apartments.

89 Eddy Street, courtesy of Google Maps
There is also no dry cleaner. Such is readily apparent from Google Maps.

At 10:30 AM (EST), CBC Ottawa updated its story to change the address to 95 Eddy Street.

CBC Ottawa's Updated Report
The update also added several accounts of the fire and a photo of the torn down building, taken by CBC's Chad Pawson.

At 12:37 PM (EST), CBC Ottawa updated its story again to change the number of apartments in the building to 12, forgetting to change the caption next to the paragraph. The caption still read 16.

To CBC Ottawa, may I suggest you take a little time to verify facts before you post a story, especially a headlining one? This includes getting addresses straight. If you can find the time to dispatch someone to the scene to take a picture and attach a Google Map to the online report, you can find the time to demonstrate that fast-paced journalism doesn't have to be sloppy journalism.

For instance, as I just found out by walking down Eddy, judging from the layer of ice on the building, Estoril did suffer water damage from the firefighters putting out the fire in the adjacent building. Estoril is presently closed, but I saw one of the concerned owners go in and out. It has not been torn down. However, the City of Gatineau is co-ordinating cleanup of of the torn down buidling and Gatineau police is re-directing car and pedestrian traffic as needed.

During the weekend, one tweet seemed to be spreading amongst Ottawa tweeps like wildfire. It involved news, reported by the news desk of a free commuter newspaper called Metro, of unionized workers at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), voting 93% in favour of striking if bargaining with the Crown retailer head fails.

RT: @metroottawa LCBO workers vote in favour of strike http://tinyurl.com/oau27r Dang -- time to stock up.

Corresponding pieces at the Ottawa Citizen, CTV Ottawa, and CBC Ottawa followed. Here is Metro's news release from the weekend:

Workers at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario have voted in favour of striking if necessary as the union and the Crown retailer head to the bargaining table on Tuesday.

About 6,000 workers, who are members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, have been without a contract since the end of March.

More than 3,600 people cast ballots in the three day strike vote, with 93 per cent voting in favour of taking strike action if contract talks fail.

Randy Robinson, a union spokesman, says he expects the possibility of a strike won?t arise for several weeks because negotiations are ongoing.

The union says the main issue is a declining number of full-time positions in favour of lowering paying part-time and contract work with little job security.

Liquor store employees joined the public service union in 2005.

Source: Metro News Canada

Liquor in Ontario can only be purchased either at LCBO stores or Beer stores. The former sells spirits and the like. The latter, beer and sometimes hard apple cider. With an impending strike, I am going to heed the tweet and plan on stocking up on cooking liquor. Even though I work in close proximity of an SAQ (Gatineau's equivalent of the LCBO) store, I've a feeling traffic to Quebec for alcohol will multiply in the case of a strike occurring.

Sometime after work today, I will ask the following question to the tweeps following me: "What liquor will you stock up on in the wake of the potential LCBO strike and a fast approaching summer?"

For me, I plan on picking up a case of honey brown, a new bottle of Russian vodka, some dark rum, and a dry sherry, all destined for a dish or two this coming summer. At the moment, I'm thinking banana's foster...

Yesterday, both the Globe and Mail newspaper and the CBC published separate stories on Health Canada being encouraged to allow more food producers to fortify their products. While Globe and Mail's Carly Weeks starts by mentioning "cheese puffs with added vitamin D", CBC includes a picture of gingerbread men.

Accordingly, there are mandatory fortification programs that add vitamins like D and C (folic acid) to milk and flour respectively. These policies however restrict other members of the food producing industry from doing the same. In 2005, a proposal was made to permit manufacturers to add thiamine, beta-carotene, vitamin D, and calcium to such products as frozen dinners or packaged snacks. Foods that naturally contain vitamins and minerals, such as fruits, vegetables, pasta, meat, and breakfast cereal would be excluded.

On Wednesday (May 13, 2009), the Food and Consumer Products of Canada industry group begun actively lobbying the federal government to make a decision on the proposal. According to FCPC president and CEO Nancy Croituru, the intention is not for deregulation, but "smarter regulation" so that manufacturers can provide Canadians with "the healthy products that are now available out there."

In response, health and nutrition groups are pushing Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq to scrap the proposal. They fear that fortifying processed foods will be used as a marketing gimmick by companies to sell products with little nutritional value. This in turn, could lead to more consumption of processed food and worsen already unhealthy eating habits. According to them "fortification does not affect existing levels of sugar, fat, calories or sodium, which can already be quite high."

In the open market, where marketing seems to be the weapon of choice to fight for consumer dollars, manufacturers have been known to actively pursue labeling their products as healthy.

General Mills Inc., for instance, is currently in contention with the American equivalent of Health Canada, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The U.S. already permits many of its processed products to be fortified thereby allowing manufacturers to advertise health benefits. In the case of General Mills, the FDA has taken issue with their labeling boxes of Cheerios with "clinically proven to lower cholesterol." According to the FDA, promoting such makes the breakfast cereal a drug. This is because the product is "intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease."

Another example is the knee-jerk reaction of manufacturers to a study from the Journal of Clinical Investigation that resulted in a study group that consumed drinks, sweetened with fructose, having more visceral fat, higher levels of LDL cholesterol, and lower insulin sensitivity. Visceral fat adheres to organs and is associated with heightened risk for such diseases as cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes. As a result, PepsiCo, Pizza Hut, Kraft Foods, and ConAgra have publicly changed their sweeteners from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to more "natural" ones, including blends of cane and beet. Slate Magazine's Daniel Engber takes them to task in his piece entitled, "The Delcine and Fall of High-Fructose corn Syrup." Firstly, HFCS is only slightly higher in fructose than cane sugar (sucrose). The study from the Journal of Clinical Investigation states in its conclusion that further study is required to determine what levels of sugars (HFCS or sucrose) can be associated with adverse effects. It does not differentiate between the two as the study only tested drinks sweetened with either fructose or glucose. Secondly, Australia, whose primary sweetener is cane sugar, has similar obesity rates as the US. Thirdly, the FDA itself ruled that HFCS can be considered "natural."

Since manufacturers aim to fortify processed foods and continue to sweeten foods with sugars in quantities that have not been demonstrated to be anymore healthy, I would like to enter the fray with the following food product:

Felt Shawarma
Source: Squid Wool blog

This product is made with felt. No sugars were added. It can easily be fortified by stuffing it with a couple Flintstones chewable vitamins. Sounds ludicrous? Do what manufacturers want to accomplish sound that much different?

Update: I just came across a corollary piece by New York Times' Marc Bittman, entitled "Food Companies Try, but Can?t Guarantee Safety".

While manufacturers seem perfectly willing to add stuff to their products, they have started putting instructions on frozen dinners recommending they not be heated in a microwave and they be tested with a probe thermometer to ensure that the food reaches 165F. It seems that, in the wake of large scale cases of food born contamination, manufacturers want to offload liability to consumers...

Unfortunately, this is no April Fool's joke. If it were, I'd be seriously unhappy about being made cautious about two of my favourite foods solely for someone's entertainment. I normally have a cache of smoked salmon in the freezer for dinner parties. Pistachios are one of my guilty pleasures, having sworn off other junk snack food like potato chips.

News of the pistachio recall broke yesterday in the United States when a California pistachio processor, Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., released information about potential salmonella contamination. The voluntarily recalled pistachios were shipped on or after Sept. 1, 2008.

Setton recalled specific lots of bulk roasted shelled pistachios and roasted unshelled pistachios in 2,000-pound, 1,800-pound, 1,700-pound and 1,000-pound bags sold to wholesale customers. Setton is also recalling its Setton Farms brand roasted salted shelled pistachios in nine-ounce bags with a ?Best Before? date between Jan. 6, 2010 and Jan. 19, 2010, distributed in seven American states.

Unfortunately, since the pistachios were also used as ingredients in a variety of foods, the recall impacts composite products. The FDA has yet to recall composite products.

The FDA, however, counseled that consumers avoid eating pistachio products until further information. Today, it's Canadian equivalent, the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency (CRIA) and snack food giant Frito Lay Canada , have recalled Munchies brand Pistachios because they contain recalled pistachios. According to the CFIA website,

the recalled product is sold in 50 g packages, bearing UPC 0 60410 04595 4, and a date between 04AUG09 and 15DEC09. The date is located on the front of each package.

More information is available from the Globe and Mail website.

Regarding smoked salmon, the CRIA and Niagara Smoked Fish Ltd. have recalled several smoked salmon and gravlox products in Canada over concerns they may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. According to the CRIA website, the recalled products follow:

• Strubs branded Bagelox Norwegian Style Sliced Smoked Steelhead Salmon (56 g with UPC 0 71217 69999 8 and 300 g with UPC 0 71217 69997 4)
• Strubs Scottish Style Sliced Smoked Atlantic Salmon (300 g with UPC 0 71217 69975 2)
• Strubs Danish Style Sliced Smoked Grav-Lox Steelhead Salmon (300 g with UPC 0 71217 69991 2)
• Niagara Smoked Fish Ltd. Steelhead Salmon Cold Smoked Sliced (454 g with UPC 6 28063 04457 3)
• Niagara Smoked Fish Ltd. Steelhead Salmon (300 g with UPC 6 28063 04300 2)
• Niagara Smoked Fish Ltd. Atlantic Salmon (85 g with UPC 6 28063 01003 5 and 454 g with UPC 6 28063 01016 5)
• Ocean Jewel Smoked Atlantic Salmon, sliced (party pack) (300 g wiht UPC 0 59371 77)

These products have been distributed in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. Again, more information is available from the Globe and Mail website.