Editors won't press beloved chefs on antibiotics

A workman appeared this morning at Euclid and Prospect avenues in Hackensnack, where potholes were marked with chalk, below, apparently to designate those that will be repaired weeks after they appeared.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Another slow-news Sunday and another weird story on Page 1 of The Record today, celebrating "health-conscious American consumers" who grow or raise their own food, including eggs from hens they keep in the backyard. 

Consumers, the story claims, are "increasingly crying foul about the antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, herbicides [and] genetic engineering" in the food they eat (A-1).

But why is the small minority who raise their own egg-laying chickens getting such big play on the front page when the paper's own food editor and food writers choose to ignore all the bad things factory farms do to food in the name of quick profits? 

Free ride

Rarely does Food Editor Esther Davidowitz or Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung ever mention all of the harmful additives in the food that restaurant chefs serve, denying concerned consumers the ability to make informed decisions.

On the paper's expense account, Ung has swooned over the "funk" from aged hunks of beef for $40, $50 or $60 without ever saying whether the animals were grass fed or raised naturally.

God forbid that during the weekly "COFFEE WITH ..." feature in Better Living (BL-2), a chef is asked about how the food he serves is raised or grown, instead of the weirdest thing a customer asked for. 

Mixed messages

And the paper's monthly survey of supermarket prices -- which runs in the Business section -- doesn't include organic or naturally raised or grown food.

Today's story on chicken-raising suburbanites might remind newsroom veterans, present and former, of the wonderfully fresh eggs copy desk supervisor Vinny Byrne brought into work for copy editors from chickens he raised at home more than a decade ago.

Euclid and Prospect avenues before the work began, above.

An employee of the private contractor, M. Ingannamorte & Son of Tenafly, said he believes only potholes on Prospect Avenue are being patched, above, meaning others on the block of Euclid between Prospect and Summit avenues are not slated for repair now.