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Obama’s Food Safety Plans

For the first time since 1906, in the wake of Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, there’s a proposal by the Obama administration to completely reorganize food safety enforcement in the US.  Since countries all over the world will likely adopt the basic principles behind any such a reorganization, it’s an issue that affects us all.

You can read the text of the proposed bill here.  The US Senate is considering a slightly different version that can be found by searching the Internet.

One of the strange things about this bill is the nearly complete lack of response from any mainstream news sources, or even many of the more well known food blogs.  It seems Obama has stunned everyone into silence, and everyone is afraid to take a stand on the issue.  Given the implications of this kind of change, I think it’s a little funny so few people have an opinion.

In the wake of recent food contaminations and the large numbers of people sickened by food contamination in the US and elsewhere, something urgently needs to be done.  The real question at hand is if this bill is taking the right approach, and in my opinion there are a lot of good things going for it.  There are however some problems and omissions as well.

A few of the comments I’ve encountered suggest it’s a measure intended to benefit large companies like Monsanto and Dow.  In my opinion, this isn’t true.  It’s a bill aimed as food processing and production, in other words companies that make something you put into your mouth and eat.  Companies like Monsanto and Dow produce seeds and chemicals, and are simply not affected by this one way or another, which can be a good or bad thing of course.  It’s clearly an omission that someone like Monsanto or Dow are allowed to introduce contaminants into our food, and it not be regulated.  Maybe however this is a battle for another day.

I’ve also heard arguments along the lines of it takes power from the states, or places burdens on them.  I must admit, when I read the text of the bill I don’t see horrible impending changes that are going to destroy the boundaries between the federal and local governments.

It will certainly be possible under the terms of what’s being proposed to outsource the entire food safety management to the food producers themselves, which of course is a situation not unlike what we have now.

The bill is certainly lacking clear definitions of what it means to be a food production facility, and it could potentially mean a home garden or someone’s kitchen.  I don’t see any specific attacks on organic or small CSA/farms, but there are also no clear exemptions for them.  In my opinion this is a problem that has to be addressed.  This is really the right time to formally legalize the on site slaughtering of animals by small farms.

This bill has some pretty cumbersome ‘paperwork’ associated with it, requiring food production facilities to track every additive and input of the process, very reminiscent of organic farm certification.  This is a very unfair burden for small and family run farms, who should be exempt from these provisions.

There is also a provision to allow victims of food contamination to file lawsuits for compensation.  While this is obviously a great thing involving serious and large scale contaminations, again it’s not so great in terms of more frivolous lawsuits against small farms and CSAa, which I think also need to be exempted from this or a federal insurance fund needs to be created to handle these cases of compensation.

What is clear is it’s the intention of these bills to put thousands more food inspectors into the field, and empower them to act when they encounter dangerous situations.

The idea behind these changes gets my qualified approval, but I’ll be watching what happens as these bills are debated and amended.

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Latest Aspartame News

If you’ve been around long enough, you may remember a series of posts I made last year about efforts in Hawaii to ban aspartame, the sweetener that’s commonly used in diet or light soft drinks and manufactured with the assistance of GM microorganisms.

If you want to learn more on the subject, an excellent video can be found here:  Sweet Misery.

Stephen Fox recently sent me an email update as to where things currently stand in the battle to get it properly labelled as a carcinogen or banned in the US:

New Mexico Senate President sides with World’s Largest Neurotoxic Carcinogenic Artificial Sweetener Maker, Ajinomoto, to Kill Consumer Protection Request of FDA to Rescind Aspartame

It saddens me to inform your readers that Wednesday morning Senator Tim Jennings cast the vote that killed a vital consumer protection measure in Senate Rules Committee. That was Senate Memorial 9 of Gerald Ortiz y Pino which asked the FDA to take this carcinogenic and neurotoxic artificial sweetener off the market, since it is still found in 6000 products, from food to pharmaceuticals.

This chemical was patented by G.D. Searle, which back in 1966 was investigating peptic ulcer drugs; the story from Searle is that the chemist licked his finger, and discovered that it was 200 times as sweet as sugar, profit lights went off in the chandelier in the corporate board’s cerebelum, but the FDA turned them down for approval for 15 years because of concerns over the methyl ester in aspartame becoming methanol then formaldehyde, and causing harm to the consumer. Jennings mentioned in the committee that he had had problems with acid reflux and would vote against the Memorial which he did (as if it still had something to do with peptic ulcer drugs!); I wonder if that was apparently all he had read of the Memorial, the first sentence: but I pointed out as politely as I could muster, that it had been considered as a peptic ulcer drug 46 years ago, but that was kind of like talking with Rip Van Winkel after his 300 year nap.

[Try to picture a Roswell rancher, a little overweight, impeccably dressed, with a dry scratchy voice, kind of populist appeal, like a New Mexico version of Will Rogers, homespun, witty, with a long background in Senate Finance, given the position as Pro Tem after the last one died suddenly, then elected in a fierce struggle between progressive/liberals and Republicans/Conservative Democrats. (Guess who won?)]

With all due respect to the Senate Pro Tem, Jennings ought to have been somewhat alarmed when the word “carcinogen” comes up in any serious legislative context, having just lost his wife at the age of 53 to a long ordeal with cancer. If he were genuinely concerned for the health of New Mexicans rather than just capitulating to the phalanx of corporate lobbyists speaking against it, he would have helped to pass it.

This is truly New Mexico’s deep and avoidable loss, as California is moving forward with consideration of aspartame as a carcinogen under Proposition 65, which allows them to label it as “a chemical known by the state of California to cause cancer,” and to even sue the manufacturers and corporate users, like Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Wrigley’s Gum. The California Attorney General, Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., is already doing this in suits against Whole Foods for knowingly including a different carcinogen (1-4-5 Dioxane) in their 365 lines of Organic Soaps and Body Products, and then basically concealing it. Mark my word, these suits will come for aspartame and they will resemble the Tobacco Suits of the 1990’s, which resulted in judgments of $235 Billion.

The legislators love to spend that money now, but back in the early 1990’s, as then-Attorney General now-U.S. Senator Tom Udall told me many years ago, the Legislature would not contribute 50 cents to help fund the lawsuits, because of corporate lobbyists opposing such allocations by the Legislature. Similarly, these legislators who would not ask the FDA to take it off the market, will want to spend the proceeds of the aspartame suits. Ludicrous!

The Ministry of Education in British Columbia Canada recently agreed to remove ALL artificial sweeteners from the elementary and middle schools, as a result of parents’ demands, in spite of Health Canada, the equivalent of our FDA, still parroting the corporate line that aspartame/methanol/formaldehyde/diketopiperazine was somehow acceptable,especially for diabetic children and overweight children.

This is the real world regarding aspartame. Tim Jennings’ vote was not part of the real world. He asked after voting “do not pass,” for more copies of the studies proving it causes cancer, and I should have said then (but didn’t out of deference to the committee) that “I have been bringing you those same studies since 2004, like the Ramazzini report, when I first talked with you, Senator, about the dangers of this artificial sweetener, and it looks like you never read them!” Three years ago, I brought Jennings (and most of the legislature) at my expense an outstanding DVD, SWEET MISERY, on Aspartame’s proven medical effects, but he must never have watched it. [You can see it now free, on-line, and I recommend it strongly. Just google SWEET MISERY].

Truly I always liked Tim Jennings until today’s performance in Senate Rules. There was a group of Senior Senators who guzzle the stuff still, even though one of them died, one resigned because of “old age,” (what could make you age faster than consuming formaldehyde?), and two got clobbered in the 2008 elections and they are I hope permanently gone (they was the worst obstructionists of them all). Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez is trying to quit, he says. The bottling companies bring dolly’s full of cases to the legislature in order to ingratiate the legislators and legitimize their products.

I really don’t know if Tim Jennings is among the diet soda guzzlers still. If he has quit, he did so out of concern for his own health. If he DIDN’T quit consuming aspartame, he certainly is in no real position to be deciding such things for the rest of the state, especially since it was only a Memorial REQUESTING the FDA to taken it off the market, and to vote from a position of such a total lack of accurate medical information is absolutely shocking to me.

The world’s largest Aspartame maker, Ajinomoto of Japan, hired slick and powerful lobbyists as well as the state’s largest lawfirm, the Rodey Firm; in 2005 and in 2006 knocked down and prevented both the Board of Pharmacy and the Environmental Improvement Board from considering getting rid of aspartame in medicines and food products, respectively, by threatening them with lawsuits.

Ajinomoto manipulated the Governor by hiring two of his good friends (one of these was Michael Stratton, who has subsequently been tied to the pay-for-play Federal Grand Jury investigation that unfortunately caused Richardson to choose to step down from being Obama’s first choice for Commerce Secretary—I still think he would have excelled at that job!) as lobbyists to influence him to renege on his prior strong support for the EIB hearings, and those EIB hearings, without the Governor’s support and the assurance from Patsy Madrid that they didn’t have to worry about such threats, crumbled.

Thus, now Ajinomoto has manipulated the Legislative Branch into obsequious acquiescence. Quite a score, eh? 3 out of 3! What’s next? Put a pro-aspartame lobbyist on the New Mexico Supreme Court? After all, another aspartame maker from back in the 80’s and 90’s, Monsanto, got their own former corporate lawyers appointed as Supreme Court Justice (Clarence Thomas) and as US Attorney General, John Ashcroft.

Fortunately, the Rules Committee Chair, Senator Linda Lopez, and Rules Member/Senate Public Affairs Chair, Dede Feldman, had the sense to vote for the Memorial. The three Republicans voted against it, I think, just because both Ortiz y Pino and I mentioned the unavoidable historic fact that Donald Rumsfeld forced the approval for aspartame in 1981, even thought the FDA had turned them down for the prior 15 years! Maybe Rules member Stuart Ingle gave them “marching orders” to vote against it; he is the Minority Leader in the Senate.

But you might say, “But wait! Rummy’s gone, out of the picture,” but those Republicans apparently see some residual partisan pride in drinking formaldehyde, and for you and your children to do so, and never question the miserable ethics of Rumsfeld for his role in that matter! He made $12-15 million on the deal, and what was good for his bank account must still be good for America!?

It is sickening when you really examine the corporate manipulation and control of government at all levels, especially in the regulatory branches. I am sad to conclude today that Tim Jennings is part of that mess, rather than part of the real solution. Roswell’s other Senator, Republican Rod Adair, always sided with activists on this issue, and even cosigned as cosponsor some earlier related measures introduced in 2006, truly “reaching across the aisle,” as they are so fond of saying.

This really is not what a Senate President Pro Tem should be doing, siding with every Tom, Dick, and Harry corporate lobbyist who comes along. He should be helping to educate the vast lot of New Mexicans who still naively believe the FDA is there to protect them.

If you drink Diet Sodas or chew sugarless gum or consume Equal, and if you come down with migraine headaches, epilepsy, brain tumors, blindness, or any of the other 92 symptoms recognized by the FDA as caused by aspartame, remember Tim Jennings’ vote today in Senate Rules to deny a request of the FDA to take this proven poison off the market.

In the USA, products like asbestos, Thalidomide, leaded gasoline, cigarettes with horrible additives, Vioxx, Celebrex…(the list goes on and on), stay on the market because of the efforts of corporate lobbyists and obstructionist corporate lawyers. The USA only responds when one of two things happens:

1. the bodies of victims pile up

2. the lawsuits from the dead bodies and their heirs pile up.

Otherwise, you will see legislatures and regulatory boards and Governors and lobbyists from Ajinomoto, Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Monsanto, Equal, etc., sweep the dead bodies and the maimed and the impaired youth under the rug, until there is so much death and suffering under the rug, some nation will simply throw out the rug, and the health of that nation’s citizens will be the better for it.

Could that Nation ever be the United States? Doubtful, but if enough people communicated to Obama, to HHS Secretary Sebelius and to the next, as yet unappointed FDA Commissioner and Surgeon General, it could very well be the USA that takes aspartame off the market first.

After all, California took a mighty step in that direction just last Friday, regarding aspartame and Proposition 65. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there is here an equation at work:

Lung Cancer and Emphysema/Tobacco suits in the 1990’s= Neurodegenerative Illnesses/Aspartame suits in the 2010’s!

Respectfully,

Stephen Fox, Editor, New Mexico Sun News, Santa Fe, New Mexico

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The Great British Food Fight

Free-Range Chickens

Since I’m pretty much vegetarian, an issue like free-range chickens doesn’t often get my attention.  Honestly, animal welfare is always in the back of my head somewhere, but not a top priority.  Free-range or no, there’s little chance of me eating a chicken, unless it was raised by a friend, but really I’m not very likely to eat chicken at all.

In fact, I should make clear to people reading this who don’t already know, the term ‘free-range’ has very little meaning when it comes to chickens.  Here in the Netherlands free-range is exactly the same as standard factory farm chickens except for half of the life of the chicken, it has to have the ability to walk outside if it wants to.  So free-range chickens have the benefit of a little door on the side of their factory farm enclosure, but the breed of chicken involved is not predisposed to wanting to go outside anyway.  Even if it did, the area outside is generally only large enough for a very small percentage of the birds, should a number of them choose to go outside all at once.  Not really a big improvement over standard chickens, and not a reason in my opinion to pay any extra for.

In fact, during bird flu outbreaks, all chickens here are required to be kept indoors, so the doors on these free-range farms have to be kept closed.  In order to protect the ‘investments’ of farmers who maintain free-range farms, these chickens are allowed to be labelled and sold as free-range chickens even though they are never allowed outside!

Bird Flu

I’ve posted before a couple of times about bird flu, in 2007 and 2008.  The most important thing to understand about bird flu is the public is being lied to and given a distorted picture of the situation.

We are all told that wild migrating birds and privately held small outdoor flocks of chickens and other fowl are to blame for the bird flu problem, as they are what causes the spread of bird flu.  These outdoor birds are quickly targeted during bird flu outbreaks, as a means to contain the situation.  Especially in developing countries, small farmers and families trying to support themselves often pay a heavy price as their flocks are destroyed without any compensation paid.

The truth of the matter is large factory chicken farms are very unsanitary, and breeding grounds for diseases like bird flu.  Not only has nearly every outbreak of bird flu been tied to a particular factory farm, but once an outbreak occurs the logistics of managing it are mind boggling.  Bird flu spreads very quickly, and factory farms can have in excess of 100,000 chickens.  Once a farm becomes infected, these birds have to be killed and destroyed in order to prevent further spreading to animals and people.  Killing this many birds so quickly is a huge undertaking, and is very dangerous for the workers involved.  This generally involves burning the birds, which can have a big impact on nearby air quality.  In all it’s a dangerous, tragic and wasteful situation that no one wants.

The Food Fight

As we come up on bird flu season again this year, there’s a really interesting battle taking place in the UK.  Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall, himself a celebrity chef and chicken raiser, has teamed up with other celebrity chefs in the UK to try to get the worst factory farm chickens out of the supermarkets.  He is proposing the minimum standard for supermarket chickens should be that set by the British RSPCA.  Hugh himself admits he would not eat chickens raised to the RSPCA standard, and it’s only a little better than standard factory farm chickens, but besides quality the cost difference to the consumer is not great and farmers are better paid for this type of bird.  The RSPCA standard is undeniably an improvement, and an important place to start.

Last year Hugh was successful in getting most of the large UK supermarkets to stop carrying the worst of the factory farm chickens, with one important exception.  The largest UK supermarket chain Tesco continues to offer their so-called Value line of chickens.

Tesco’s position is basically they feel many of their customers want inexpensive chickens, and so are serving their customers wishes.  Hugh has pointed out a number of problems with this argument, for example when their stores offer alternative products they are often sold out, Tesco’s marketing of the chickens includes things like a picture of a farmer standing outdoors and the company has a policy statement on animal welfare that is inconsistent with the way their Value line of chickens is raised.  How can consumers express their preference for the type of chicken they buy when there are no alternatives and there isn’t accurate information available?

For more than a year now Hugh has been trying to arrange various meetings and on camera interviews with people at Tesco, but this has met with very limited success.  Finally he used a technique apparently borrowed from Michael Moore, someone I greatly admire, and Hugh purchased 1 share of Tesco stock.  This gave Hugh access to the shareholders meeting.

Further, after obtaining the signatures of 100 other shareholders, he was able to oblige Tesco to hold a special vote on a proposal of Hugh’s.  Hugh proposed Tesco should either stop selling their Value line of chickens, or change their animal welfare statement to accurately reflect how these chickens are raised.

Tesco put a couple of last minute obstacles in his way.  They said he would both have to get a 75% yes vote for the measure to pass, and he would have to pay the equivalent to about US$100,000 for the cost of mailing the voting materials to the shareholders.  Tesco gave Hugh two days to raise the money.  While Hugh could have paid for part of the costs himself, he launched an Internet appeal and raised all the money from personal donations.

Hugh lost the vote, getting roughly 10% saying yes.  Since a further 10% abstained, this left 20% of shareholders refusing to back the position of the company.  This was a large enough figure that Hugh finally got Tesco’s attention, and the meeting he’s been trying to arrange for more than a year now has been scheduled.  Tesco is finally willing to talk to Hugh!

To sign up as a supporter and/or view some the of the past episodes online, have a look at Hugh’s Chicken Out website.

Even if you aren’t interested in UK chickens, this whole debacle offers fascinating insight into the unsavory business practices of food giants like Tesco, and is really an excellent example of the true price of cheap supermarket foods.  Every country has their own Tesco, in the US Walmart could be compared to them.  Understanding how these retail giants work is important for everyone.

If you live in the UK, think twice about shopping at Tesco!

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Yacón Tubers and Growing Tips

Yacon Tuber

I’ve posted a couple of times about the yacon plants I grew this year with stem tubers from my friend Frank in Belgium.  Of all of my Lost Crops of the Incas, this may have turned out to be the most interesting.

In the picture above you see the large tuber on the right, weighing in at about a kilogram.  The white things you see on the left are ‘yacón chips’, made by slicing the tuber thinly and drying the pieces in the dehydrator.  The small thing on the bottom right is a small cluster of three stem tubers, one of which has started growing already.

This plant is incredibly productive.  Supposedly it’s three times as productive as potatoes in the same space, and each plant yields about 10Kg of tubers!  Partly as a result, the plants take up a lot of space in the garden.  Each plant needs 90-100cm is all directions.  The tops of the plants are quite large as well, and can shade other nearby plants.  Growing the plants in a block, can help them provide support for one another, and in any case some extra support may be needed.  In my garden they grew to about 1.5m in height.

The basic procedure is to start growing the stem tuber indoors in February, then plant out after the last frost date.  When starting them indoors, keep in mind the plants will grow pretty quickly, so be sure to give them a large enough pot.  The first frost in the fall will kill the tops of the plants, which are quite frost tender, and they will shrivel soon afterwards.  You can then cut the stem at about 20cm from the ground and carefully dig up the roots.  The roots are very easily damaged, so be careful when digging them.  If you don’t get a frost before the winter solstice, you should probably dig the plants around then anyway.

After digging up the plant, place it in a wooden or plastic container with some holes at the bottom to let water drain.  It’s probably best not to disturb the tubers by washing them.  Place the plants in a root cellar or unheated room, protected from frost.  Leave uncovered and don’t eat for at least the first month, because in this time the tubers will become sweeter.  After the first month, you can cover the tubers with sand or peat if you want, but I didn’t find this necessary.  In any case you do need to keep them from drying out too much, and I did this by covering them loosely with a damp towel.  Simply eat tubers over the course of the winter as desired, and in February harvest the stem tubers for next years plants.

Eating

The taste is nice, but not really outstanding.  In fact the biggest problem I had was Steph doesn’t care for it at all, so I was stuck eating both of the plants I grew on my own, and that was just too much for me.  I’ve still only eaten about half of what I grew, but it’s still storing well.  I’ve even given some of it away already.

It’s a bit of a problem that most of the tubers seem to weigh more than a kilo, too much for just me to eat, and they don’t store well after being cut open.

The skin is a little bitter, so I think most people will prefer to peel it.  It is nice raw, crispy juicy with the taste of a melon but not so intense.  It is very high in sugar, but not ordinary sugars.

It can also be sauteed in butter, until the sugar carmelizes a bit.  This is probably my favorite way to eat it.

I understand it can also be added to stirfrys, but I haven’t tried this.  I don’t like sweet things in my stirfrys, and since Steph won’t eat it I would have to make a one person stirfry, which I don’t do often anyway.

You can make yacón chips, like in the picture above by putting it in a dehydrator.  I didn’t pretreat the yacón before drying it, just sliced it thinly.  The taste of the chips is similar to dried fruit, perhaps well suited as an exotic party snack.  The taste becomes more intense after drying.  Time will tell if I still like eating the chips in a few months…

Beyond this you can make yacón wine, and there are some companies selling yacón syrup.  I understand in theory at least, it has the potential to be a good plant to make biofuel from, because the sugars can easily be converted to alcohol.

Because the sugar is not ‘real’ sugar, it tends to leave you a little unsatisfied after eating it.  I understand the special sugars can also give you wind if you eat too much, but I don’t seem to have that problem.  Eating too much can give you a real empty/full feeling.

Tubers Available!

Okay, so if after reading this you are convinced you want to try growing it, you’re in luck because I have some stem tubers available.

I’m a little concerned about making an offer like this, because among other things there’s been lots of interest expressed over the Internet and a lot of people are looking for tubers.  Real Seeds in the UK just reported they had a crop failure this year, so I seem to be the only source in Europe at the moment!  I don’t have enough to send out hundreds and hundreds of stem tubers, and I’m probably going to disappoint a lot of you who ask for some.  I probably only have 30 or 40 in total, and I’ll probably send most people who ask 2 of them.

At this point I don’t know for sure how many I have, and I don’t think I’ll know for sure until I start cutting the stem tubers off in a couple of weeks.  I would like to start collecting a list of people who are interested, so if you want some please send me an email now.  In the email please be sure to give me your address.  One way or another I will get back to you and let you know.

I’ve already promised a number of people I would send them tubers, and they have first priority.  After this, I will give priority to people who are closest to me geographically and/or express an intent to reoffer tubers next year via the Blogger Seed Network.  After this, I’ll give people who participate in this blog with comments or links from their own blogs.  After that it will be first come first served.

If I’ve already talked to you and said I would send you some tubers, I will send you an email in the next day or two.  If you don’t get an email, please get in touch.  My memory for this kind of thing is not very good!

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‘t Arendsnest

't Arendsnest

Cafe ‘t Arendsnest, Herengracht 90, Amsterdam

Besides complaining about everything all the time going on in the rest of the world, I like to post sometimes about local businesses.  Sometimes I have nice things to say, and sometimes not so nice.  In this case, Steph and I found a really nice local brewpub a few weeks ago, specialising in Dutch beers.

The thought of a cold frosty Dutch beer might send shivers through some of us, especially the more well known ones like Heineken or Amstel.  You will find these on the menu here, but much more interestingly you’ll also find a beer or two from each of the other 50 or so Dutch breweries.  In the Belgian tradition, many of the beers are sold in their own special glasses.

The menu is in English and Dutch, with descriptions of most of the beers, together with lots of general information about the beers and the cafe itself.  The beers are clearly organized into large and small breweries, so there won’t be the problem of ordering a mass market beer by mistake. Among the beers they have on tap, 9 of the taps are set aside for ‘guest beers’, so you are likely to find some special brews made in small batches here.

Many of the beers are from parts of the country far from Amsterdam, like Friesland or Limburg.  These places have very different cultures, and drinking their beers can be a nice way of connecting to these places.

There are also lots of other interesting drinks on offer (alcoholic and non), not all of them local, but there is a clear emphasis of high quality and interesting in the list.

One of the nicest surprises was the cost of the beer.  As many of us are aware, brewpubs serving hand crafted beers are not always known to be the cheapest places to go.  While not unusually cheap, their prices were very fair and in line with other mainstream bars in the city.  When you consider this place has one of the hotest locations in the city, they don’t take advantage of this for purposes of over-charging.  Watch out, as this can always change over time.

If you are a tourist, wary of walking into a foreign bar for fear of either being taken advantage of or lost in a sea of locals, you don’t have to worry about either of those things here.  It has a nice multi-cultural atmosphere.  By my count, the evening I was there, about half the customers were English speaking.  The staff not only speaks perfect English, but they have gone to some trouble to translate the menu into English in a way that’s easier to understand from a cultural standpoint.  Sometimes when you read translated Dutch it doesn’t make a lot of sense, because it’s just word for word translated or summarized and cultural differences aren’t explained.  Their menu on the other hand reads a little differently in the two languages, the English is pretty close to what would come from a native speaker and the information is very complete.

You may be tempted to go to a Belgian beerpub instead of a Dutch one, as there are a number of those around the city and Belgian beer is better known among beer geeks.  One of the problems these days is there has been a lot of consolidation among Belgian breweries and most are now owned by large corporations.  It’s very hard to know any more what’s really a hand crafted Belgian beer.  A decade or two ago the situation was the other way around, as the larger breweries were in Holland and the hand crafted beer was in Belgium, but times have changed.

One final word of warning.  Not all the beers combine well with respect to hangovers!  Consider just enjoying a few at a time, and come back another time to try some more.