→ October 27, 2012
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Saturday five, 10/27/12.

I’ve been tied up this week working on the top 50 free agents ranking, and will probably be doing the same most of this upcoming week. I will be at Salt River Fields next Saturday for the Arizona Fall League’s Rising Stars Game, and hope to see some of you there.

* Adding to my link from two weeks ago about GM crops and California’s Prop 37, check out this French study that claims that rats fed Monsanto-modified corn developed tumors and died earlier than other rats. They found similar results with rats fed amounts of the herbicide Roundup that are permissible under U.S. law. (EDIT: Reader Dennis points out why this study might be a load of crap. And here’s a somewhat balanced look at the problems with the study and the need for follow-up.)

* Don’t buy or eat shrimp from Vietnam. Or any seafood from there, really. Or from China. Maybe this is why Bruce and his fellow sharks say fish are friends, not food.

* Former minor league pitcher John Dillinger comes out of the closet. I remember his name well, for obvious reasons, but never saw him pitch. This is a great read, especially his belief that an active player who chose to come out would meet with a friendly or at least non-hostile reception.

* Not that I want to be kind or gentle to the troll by giving her attention, but I thought this response from a man with Down Syndrome was spectacular.

* “The Island Where People Forget to Die” tells of the remarkable longevity of residents of Ikaria. One of their secrets is a heavily plant-based diet with virtually no processed foods, heavy on olive oil, legumes, and wine.

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→ October 13, 2012
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Saturday links, 10/13/12.

Fall League coverage has tied me up all week, but I’m stuck around the house today waiting for a mechanic to finish $1500 in repairs to my car’s A/C, radiator, and catalytic converter assembly (the latter rather important with an emissions test looming), so here’s a mess of links I’ve collected over the last three weeks. Enjoy.

  • Monsanto and other major manufacturers of synthetic pesticides are spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat California’s Prop 37, which would require that genetically modified foods be labeled as such. Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Nestle are also listed on the Yes on Prop 37 site among companies that have spent at least $1 million to defeat this basic pro-consumer law, which doesn’t ban genetically modified foods, but merely enables consumers to make informed choices.
  • With the Orioles’ unlikely season ending yesterday, it’s a good time to revisit Wire creator David Simon’s podcast with Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitsch. Speaking of Simon, he also did an interview with Salon a few days before that podcast in which he revealed that HBO turned down a Wire spinoff that would have followed Tommy Carcetti’s career in a new series.
  • Yahoo!’s Jeff Passan wrote a great piece on former A’s prospect Grant Desme, who retired from baseball to join a seminary after a breakout Arizona Fall League performance in 2009. I didn’t see Desme as a potential star or even a solid regular, but that doesn’t make his story any less interesting.
  • What your beer says about your politics. More fun than meaningful, although I think in my specific case it’s pretty spot on.
  • Via mental_floss: Why does sex make men sleepy? Amazing how you can explain things with science.
  • Bill Shaikin of the LA Times did a wide-ranging Q&A with Bud Selig. I’m having a hard time seeing the distinction between the Dodgers’ and Padres’ situations that Selig tries to make.
  • I haven’t tried this recipe yet, but I did bookmark it because it sounds and looks so good: crackly banana bread, using whole wheat flour and whole-grain millet to add a crunchy texture.
  • Michael Ruhlman on the fallacy of “follow your passion” advice. He meanders a bit before getting to the crux of the post, but I enjoyed following his train of thought, and I certainly agree that passion and $2 will get you a cup of coffee.
  • I usually avoid straight politics here, but I’m linking to this David Leonhardt piece on ”Obamanomics” because I like the underlying story of how a poor evaluation at the start of a rebuild can negatively affect policies for several years afterwards and lead to further incorrect evaluations that support the first erroneous conclusion. It could just as easily apply to teams like Houston and Colorado at the beginning of long rebuilding processes, to teams like Pittsburgh and Baltimore that had unexpected successes this year based partly on individual performances that aren’t likely to recur.
  • Maybe self-esteem is the wrong buzzword for improving happiness – experimental social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson argues that self-compassion is the real key. I first came across her writing in this July piece on success that argues (I admit without much evidence in the article) that believing in your own ability to learn and improve is a key to increasing job performance and finding happiness in your work.
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→ August 1, 2012
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Tucson eats (and trade analysis links).

I blogged about every major trade from the past few days, combining some smaller ones into longer posts, which you can find here:

Today’s podcast is all prospect talk with Kevin Goldstein chatting with me about prospects from those trades and top 100 prospects who’ve disappointed so far this year.
—

I’ve been to Tuscon a handful of times this year and had some mixed success with food. My favorite spot to hit is actually a postgame stop right by the U of A campus – Allegro, a gelateria founded by two natives of Morbegna, Italy, offering a great mix of traditional flavors and more modern ones, the latter category including the best sea salt caramel gelato I’ve had (with a strong butter flavor), as well as saffron, fig, anise, and pineapple basil. It’s comparable in quality to the best gelato I’ve had in the Phoenix area, where Frost (actually based in Tucson) edges out Angel Sweet.

As for food in Tucson, the best I’ve found is probably Feast, run by local-celebrity chef Doug Levy, who actually seated me and chatted for a little while when he noticed I was reading a Michael Ruhlman book. The “date plate” starter – grilled crostini with hummus on one half and a Manchego-stuffed, pancetta-wrapped date on the other – was delicious if a little weird; I didn’t get the interplay between the two toppings, although, really, dates wrapped in bacon, people. Unfortunately, the execution of my entree, a special including achiote shrimp over jasmine rice, was poor; the shrimp weren’t hot and the dish included four hidden whole black peppercorns, which I discovered when I ended up biting into three of them at once. I need to try them again because I can tell the emphasis on fresh ingredients and inventive combinations is there, but that wasn’t the first impression I was hoping to get.

Feast’s culinary vibe and philosophy put them ahead of Kingfisher for me, even though the latter, focusing on fresh seafood, had better execution. I had a salad from their seasonal specials menu, grilled black mission figs with mixed greens and ricotta salata, with a perfect balance of sweet, sour, bitter (from the greens and radicchio), and salty. The pumpkin seed-crusted scallops in my entree were slightly overcooked and, because they were covered with the breading all the way around, didn’t have that slight sweetness that scallops develop when they are seared and allowed to brown on the exterior. The poblano aioli (with the consistency of a crema and a bright green color) and corn salsa on the plate were also somewhat overpowering, but would be great with a stronger-flavored fish like salmon. With black beans and soft jasmine rice, it was an enormous amount of food, but the delicacy of the scallops ended up overwhelmed by other elements.

I went to the tapas restaurant Casa Vicente back in March but apparently never wrote about it. Casa Vicente offers authentic Spanish tapas, heavy on seafood options. I don’t remember the meal clearly enough to give a quality review here; I remember finding it solid, with the “plaza mayor”-style fried calamari and the patatas bravas (fried potato chunks, served with a spicy red vinegar sauce and a garlic aioli) both successful.

Finally, I haven’t been to Beyond Bread this summer, but should mention it as one of my favorite sandwich places anywhere, primarily because their bread is so good. They have three locations in Tucson and are open late enough (8 pm) for you to grab something before heading to a night game at Hi Corbett Field or Kino Veterans Park.

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→ July 7, 2012
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Saturday five, 7/7/12.

I’ll be part of ESPN2’s broadcast of the MLB Futures Game on Sunday starting at 5 pm Eastern. If you’re going to be at the game, I’ll try to be available between BP and the first pitch up on the concourse behind home plate. My most recent preview piece on the game went up Friday.

* This made the rounds on Twitter this morning – a Times story titled ”The Worst Marriage in Georgetown,” featuring not only a bad marriage, but intrigue, fraud, and murder, all in one exceptionally well-written article.

* Outstanding journalism by NPR’s Kelly McEvers, examining the effects of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, from demonstrating that official reports are understating civilian casualties to examining the question of whether such efforts are merely creating more militants than they’re eliminating.

* Friend of the dish Ken Trem… er, Michael Schur talks to TV Guide about season 5 of the best comedy on television, Parks and Recreation.

* This Smithsonian slideshow on the 20 best food trucks in the U.S. is from February, although I just came across it last week. I haven’t tried the lone Phoenix entry, a crème brulee truck called Torched Goodness.

* Mental Floss delivers again with a piece from last month on twelve famous novelists who answered a teenager’s questions back in 1963 on whether symbolism in their work was intentional.

* Finally, I mentioned this baseball-themed dance routine from So You Think You Can Dance, my wife’s new favorite show, on the podcast earlier this week. The best part is the first 15-20 seconds of the routine, when the dancer in the faux-Texas uniform does this robot-like technique that defies belief, after which it pretty much lost me.

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→ June 9, 2012
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Ray Bradbury + the Saturday five.

Ray Bradbury died this week at the age of 91, leaving behind an enormous legacy in literature, one that I fear will be excessively defined as a canon of science fiction, rather than merely of great writing.

My favorite Bradbury novel is the gothic horror story Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I ranked at #28 on my list of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s a brilliant thriller, one that relies on implied fear rather than graphic violence, but it is also a wonderfully written work that includes one of my favorite lines in all of the novels I’ve ever read:

He laughed, then stopped.
For he though he heard a soft tread
Off in the subterranean vaults.
But it was only his laughter
walking back
through the deep stacks
on panther feet.

That last sentence has stuck with me for over a decade since I first read the novel. Not only is the idea of walking “on panther feet” a phenomenal, evocative image, but there’s poetry in the sentence itself: The rhyme between “back” and “stacks;” the assonance with those two words, “laughter,” and “panther;” the way the sound recedes as you read (or say) the sentence, almost like the words are descending a staircase away from you. It’s just one line in a 200-page book, not even a critical line in the story, but it’s one bit of evidence that Bradbury was more than just a great writer of speculative fiction – he was a great writer of prose.

To the links…

First, my own content:

* American League draft recaps.
* National League draft recaps.
* My day one recap.
* My June 5th chat, which took place during rounds 2 and 3.
* Where each team’s top drafted prospect ranks in their farm system.
* Podcasts: Thursday and Tuesday, plus my Tuesday hit with Colin Cowherd.

And from others…

* Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat, by Michael Ruhlman. I’m on board with all of this except the quotes from the farmer about the animals being “good with it.” If they had that kind of cognitive ability, we wouldn’t eat them at all, right?

* The New Neuroscience of Choking, by the superb Jonah Lehrer. I have two main problems with applying that study to the question of whether clutch or un-clutch players exist in MLB. The larger one is that the subjects were not highly trained since youth to perform the task they were then asked to perform with the reward promised to them. The smaller one is that my longtime argument about choking isn’t really addressed here – that players who are unable to perform under pressure would likely be weeded out long before reaching the majors, because pressure situations exist at all levels of baseball, and merely playing baseball at all in front of a crowd, knowing that your career hinges to some extent on your performances in front of scouts and your statistics, is in and of itself a pressure situation. That stance, of which I believe Occam would approve, is fully compatible with the study’s findings.

* To Grow A Craft Beer Business, The Secret’s In The Water, from NPR. Have they stepped up their coverage of food/drink subjects, or was I just behind the curve in noticing it?

* Cuisines Mastered as Acquired Tastes. Are non-native chefs who learn “ethnic” cuisines somehow at an advantage because they are more willing – or able – to think outside of the box?

* McSweeney’s Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Very witty but with some useful tips in here … including some I should probably try myself.

* Bonus link: An interesting infographic on how healthful, local food creates jobs. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the report and data behind it, though.

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→ May 26, 2012
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Ludivine in Oklahoma City + the Saturday five.

I was only in Oklahoma City for about 36 hours, as everything that could have gone wrong for me on Wednesday did, but I at least salvaged the day with an outstanding experience at Ludivine, a farm-to-table restaurant in downtown OKC.

Ludivine’s menu changes daily depending on what ingredients they’ve acquired, with everything except seafood and a few cheeses sourced locally. The dishes are highly creative in the way they layer flavors and use ingredients in unconventional ways, such as the rabbit liver vinaigrette on my salad, or the blueberry thyme bread pudding served with the crispy sweetbread (which I didn’t try).

I started with a charcuterie plate – they make most of it in-house, and I spotted Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie on their bookshelf – including their pork rillette, duck speck, and house-cured salmon. The rillette was very tender, held together with bacon fat, but a little underseasoned for me, so it needed help from the whole-grain mustard and homemade pickles provided on the plate. The paper-thin salmon needed nothing else, not even the hit of acid I usually crave when I eat cured or smoked salmon, among the best dishes of its kind I’ve had. Speck is a smoked product usually made from the pig’s hind leg or thigh, like prosciutto, but Ludivine uses duck breast instead; the resulting product was salty and very smoky, pairing well with the blackberry-tarragon “marmalade” also provided on the platter but too strong to eat on its own. (Nitpick: It’s not marmalade without citrus rind, unless we’re speaking a language other than English.)

The aforementioned salad had the freshest mustard greens and arugula I’ve ever had from any place other than my own gardens – they defined the color “green” – as well as half-inch wide lardons (chunks of bacon) that had been quickly fried to crisp them up and a generous shaving of grana Padano cheese (Parmiggiano-Reggiano that was made in the Padua region, so it must go by another name). The rabbit-liver dressing had a peculiar texture, not grainy, almost muddy, but it may have simply stood out because I’d never had a dressing like it before. The flavor was very subtle, and next to the bacon, cheese, and two peppery greens, the vinaigrette was just a background note.

I went with another starter rather than a full entree, trying bone marrow for the first time – which means I have nothing to which to compare the dish. The marrow bone was cut in half the long way, roasted to brown the top but leave the interior pink, and served with more whole-grain mustard and a lightly pickled shallot; the marrow meat was luxuriously soft, obviously fatty, but bright and mild in flavor, more like a fresh butter than a heavy meat. I have no idea if this was a great marrow dish or not, however, only that I enjoyed it.

For dessert, the salted caramel crème brulee was tempting, but even I have my limits when it comes to saturated fat, and went instead for the fresh strawberries (lightly sugared) and blueberries … served in fresh cream, of course. The strawberries were good, but the blueberries were perfect, and that cream was a reminder that the stuff we get in paper cartons in the store is a mere facsimile of the genuine article. (Organic Valley’s pasture-raised cream comes fairly close, though.)

I’ll give Ludivine bonus points for that bookshelf as well, since it also included The Flavor Bible and my friend Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I felt like my own cookbook collection was partially validated.

Total cost of the meal was around $50 including tip but no drink (I was too tired for alcohol), well worth it between the meal and the chance to support the local food industry. This is real food, sourced right and prepared right.

—

To the links…

A WSJ piece on the rising use of “spent grains,”, the solid matter left over during the brewing process after the wort is strained. They apparently make excellent bread.

From the New York Times, a mini-memoir piece called “All I Wanted Was for Alice Waters to Feed Me,” excerpted from author Daniel Duane’s new cooking memoir.

Slate’s Josh Levin argues (correctly) that colleges shouldn’t be allowed to yank athletic scholarships.

TIME‘s Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians and one of the two minds behind their top 100 novels list in 2005, argues that genre fiction is disruptive technology, in an essay of which I think Jasper Fforde would approve. Indeed, Wilkie Collins was among the earliest practicioners of what is now called genre fiction, and his mentor was none other than Charles Dickens.

Should a university – or anyone, for that matter – be allowed to patent a cut of steak? Obviously not, although I find it more galling that a public university is trying to do it. Then again, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been busy approving nonsense patents for about fifteen years, so I’m not optimistic that they’ll reject this one.

Bonus link, from my friend Rene Saggiadi: ten “Italian” food facts that aren’t authentically Italian. I didn’t know about the Feast of the Seven Fishes, but we also didn’t have that tradition in my family.

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→ May 19, 2012
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Too Big to Fail + the Saturday Five.

I posted some notes on Red Sox and Cleveland high-A prospects yesterday (from a game on Wednesday), and my first mock draft of 2012 went up on Tuesday. I also chatted on Thursday.

I finally finished the audiobook of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail, an exhaustively researched look at the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of executives inside the various investment banks that were teetering on the brink of collapse, as well as the perspectives of the various government executives trying to stave off a depression. It is an outstanding work of investigation, compiled from what I assume is an enormous number of sources, but the result did very little to explain the causes of the crisis (as in, how did these very bright bankers end up in such stupid positions?) and was a very dull, clinical listen.

By comparison, I listened to an audio version of Michael Lewis’ first book on the subject, The Big Short, which looked at the crisis from the perspectives of several investors who saw it coming and reaped huge rewards, and while it’s not as thorough and is significantly shorter, it was far more entertaining and yet also went more into the causes of the meltdown. Lewis is a fantastic prose writer, and even if that book shared some of the, um, sharpening tendencies he showed in Moneyball (the book, not the film), making his villains a little too villanous (even Lewis’ mother says of her son, “he never lies, but he tends to exaggerate a little”), it did more to at least start to explore some of the questions around how these large investment banks and AIG ended up in a state of virtual default. (Lewis’ heroes, and others like them, made the disaster more disastrous by betting on its inevitability, so their heroism is probably up for debate.)

Sorkin’s book concerns itself more with the egos of the players atop the major investment banks as they’re collapsing – Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, even commercial banks like Wachovia – and the quick, if not always perfect, thinking of Tim Geithner (then President of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve) and Henry “Hank” Paulsen (then Secretary of the Treasury, later succeeded by Geithner). I can’t fathom the amount of work that went into reconstructing all of these meetings and conversations … but the result is so clinical that it kept losing my attention. Sorkin’s retelling took some very dramatic events and made them feel drawn-out and dry. Maybe that’s a function of his prose; I’m more inclined to think we ended up with more detail than we needed.

The links…

Can you call a 9-year-old a psychopath? That piece, from the New York Times, might be one of the best articles I’ll read all year. Terrifying in its implications, yet thorough and quite neutral in its approach.

Preparing fugu, or blowfish, the deadly Japanese fish dish which most of you probably know from an early Simpsons episode. Japan is easing the requirements for chefs to earn licenses to prepare it.

This Tuesday’s special edition of the BBC Newshour podcast – the only podcast to which I subscribe – focused on the Bo Xilai affair, and it is a tremendous work of impartial analysis with enough context to get you up to speed. (Link is to the mp3 file itself.)

I had the debut of the Food Network series Restaurant Stakeout, featuring my favorite Vegas restaurant, Firefly, saved on the DVR, but after watching it for 20 minutes last weekend I turned it off in disgust. Turns out I had good reason to dislike the show, as there are serious allegations that the ‘reality’ show is largely staged.

I’m excited about Freshpaper, a small sheet of paper that naturally inhibits the growth of fungi on fresh produce, but its backstory is also quite interesting. Buying fresh berries, even in this dry climate, usually means eating half of it and throwing the other half in the compost bin. I just placed a small order and will report back on how it works.

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→ May 12, 2012
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Saturday five, 5/12/12.

Reminder: My first first-round projection for the 2012 Rule 4 Draft goes up on Tuesday. This should be interesting, with the first overall pick still very much up in the air.

Several folks have asked about the homemade chipotle mayo recipe I mentioned as my favorite sauce for fried foods; it’s just the mayonnaise recipe from Ruhlman’s Twenty (also found in his earlier book Ratio), with one or two chipotle peppers, pureed with 1-3 tsp of the adobo sauce from the can, blended into it. I love this on everything from French fries to quinoa fritters.

Two albums I’ve been listening to over the last week: Of Monsters and Men’s full-length debut My Head Is An Animal (currently $5 through that amazon link) and Portugal. The Man’s In The Mountain In The Cloud (in spite of one of the worst band names I’ve ever heard).

To the five six links…

* Massachusetts wants to outlaw food waste – at least, putting it in the trash. First restaurants and eventually residences will have to either compost or recycle it for use in biogas facilities. I’m sympathetic to the philosophy, but the cost to implement this is going to be huge – and the risk of spreading disease, especially in the summer, is substantial.

* This is old, but showed up on my Twitter feed this week: Kenji over at Serious Eats’ Food Lab says you can caramelize onions in fifteen minutes. It may just be the lighting, but those last two photos look like the onions started to burn. If any of you have tried this method, I’d be curious to hear how you fared.

* The New Yorker had one of the most even-handed takes on Obama’s public support of marriage equality this week. I doubt this is any surprise to anyone here, but I fully support equal rights for all Americans regardless of sexual orientation or gender identification.

* The distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge is, according to this op ed, a fiction.

* An NPR story on the restored vegetable gardens at Monticello, thanks in part to painstaking research into what Jefferson (an avid gardener and vegetable eater) actually grew.

* An interview with Phoenix food icon Chris Bianco. I’ve met Chris once, chatted for two or three minutes, and this interview is pretty much what he sounded like in person. “The whole point is to have fucking fun.” Amen, brother.

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→ May 5, 2012
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Saturday five … er, eleven, 5/5/12.

I chatted on Friday, and wrote a piece on the Royals’ poor start on Tuesday and on the Yankees’ next move after Rivera’s injury yesterday. My top 100 rankings for this year’s draft will go up on Tuesday, May 8th, with a first-round projection to follow on the 15th.

Since I couldn’t post a Saturday five last week (I was barely online all weekend), here are eleven links of note for the week:

* The New Yorker on close, or too-close, ties between Stanford and Silicon Valley, and on the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch.

* Ernest Hemingway writes to F. Scott Fitzgerald after reading one of my all-time favorite novels, Tender is the Night.

* No, there is no ”Curse of Chief Wahoo”, but this overtly racist image – and the racist team nickname that goes along with it – should be retired as relics of an intolerant age best relegated to the historical dustbin.

* An excerpt from Jeff Himmelman’s upcoming book about whether Woodward and Bernstein used a grand juror as one of their sources on the Watergate scandal.

* I’m not comfortable with an athletics staffer at a state university actively campaigning for discrimination against members of the LGBT community. Fortunately, neither is my colleague Gene Wojciechowski, who wrote a piece about Nebraska’s assistant football coach, Ron Brown. The Kansas City Star has also weighed in with a similar yet more pointed op ed ahead of Brown’s anticipated testimony Monday against an anti-discrimination bill.

* Another interview with the Days of Wonder guys about putting Ticket to Ride on the iPad.

* Over 100 major California chefs have signed a petition opposing the state’s upcoming foie gras ban, while proposing more humane standards for raising geese and ducks for foie gras production. I think Alton Brown said it best on Twitter:

And he didn’t mention all the unnecessary, “prophylactic” antibiotics we shove down animals’ throats.

* NPR weighs in, rationally, on the small controversy over ”tuna scrape,”, responsible for over 200 cases of salmonella over the last two weeks. My issue with tuna scrape, and spicy tuna rolls in general, is that you’re not getting high-quality fish. The point of sushi and sashimi is to appreciate the fish itself; in spicy tuna rolls or similar preparations, the fish can be of very low quality and you’ll never know the difference. Don’t trust any meat item where the cook can hide substandard product under other ingredients, like a spicy sauce.

* Mark Bittman of the New York Times weighs in on the brewing fight over school-provided breakfasts, and how Big Food wants to further enrich itself by delivering junk food to food-insecure schoolchildren.

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→ April 21, 2012
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Saturday five, 4/21/12.

My Tuesday column this week was on six relievers who should be starters, and I played the host to guest Chris Sprow on Wednesday’s Baseball Today podcast. And there’s the transcript to his week’s Klawchat. My post on Charleston and West Virginia prospects should be up this afternoon.

* Bob Woodward on investigative journalism and the Internet. I’d say I found this shocking, but the students in question were Yalies, after all. On a more serious note, though, I think this speaks, albeit in an overdramatic way, to the importance of old-school, first-person journalism, and perhaps an excessive faith in the cult of the amateur online.

* Amazon’s pricing war with publishers over e-books. Of course, I prefer dead trees, but I’m also a big amazon proponent, so some of what I read here was dismaying.

* The fight to preseve 35mm in a film industry increasingly pushing towards digital recording. Boogie Nights called this fifteen years ago.

* Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel takes the NCAA to task over transfer bans. Frankly, the idea that a player has to sit out a year when transferring bothers me more than anything else. They’re not employees bound by non-competes. They’re not employees, period, according to the NCAA.

* Animal Antibiotics: FDA Asks Drug Companies To Limit Overuse Amid Health Concerns. I’ve got a better idea: Stop buying antibiotic-fed meat. If demand drops, or if demand for antibiotic-free meat rises (supporting higher prices), we’ll see a reduction in their use – and factory farms depend on antibiotics to allow them to crowd their animals in unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

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