Since he started hunting for chile peppers, more than 40 years ago, Gary Paul Nabhan has followed them into dozens of rugged, tough-to-reach places. He’s hiked deep into the volcanic belt of southern Mexico, into caves that contained the oldest evidence of human use of chile pepper. He’s been mule-kicked, wounded by thornscrub, and bucked around while floating the Rio Grande through . But mostly Nabhan has logged countless blistering miles in the and Deserts, dodging storms, rattlesnakes, and citizen militias.

The Sonoran Desert, Nabhan’s adopted backyard, is one of the harshest environments in North America. Daytime temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees. Sometimes the weather shifts and the temperature plummets 50 degrees in a few hours. It gets little rain, and much of what it does get falls during just a few months each summer. Nabhan calls his corner of Sonora “a military zone,” one that’s occupied mostly by migrants, border patrol, and armed patriots.

Which makes it a hard place for Nabhan’s quarry: the wild chiltepin, the . The pepper isn’t just flavorful: it might offer a clue as to how plants can survive in dry, hot climates—like those we may see more of in the future. Chiltepines need more moisture and shade than the average Sonoran real estate can provide, so they have found a way to adapt: they grow under what are called nurse plants—vegetation that gives chiltepines shelter from the sun, wind, floods, desert creatures, and other dangers. Mesquite, ironwood, and hackberry are the most common nurse plants for chiltepines. They create spaces where moisture can gather and a chiltepin seed can germinate. For the rest of their lives, the branches, roots, trunk, thorns, and fruit of the nurse plant will shield, protect, and fertilize the pepper.

Most chiltepin plants are found in Mexico and Central America, though some have been found as far south as Peru. On the northern boundary, wild chiltepines grow in Texas, near Big Bend, and the Arizona borderlands about an hour south of Nabhan’s house outside Tucson.

Nabhan grew up in Gary, Indiana, which is not the sort of place you’d expect a love of peppers to form. Nabhan ate his first jalapeño in 1970, when he was an 18-year-old working on a railroad crew composed mostly of Mexican immigrants. After work, the crew would go to the International Wetbacks of the Americas Club, a Mexican restaurant in Gary’s red light district, where Nabhan once competed against a rabbit in a chile-eating contest. (Nabhan won.)

Though Nabhan remained an enthusiast, it wasn’t until he moved to Arizona that his obsession fully took hold. He arrived in 1972, when he transferred from Cornell College, in Iowa, to Prescott College. He stuck around after graduating in 1974 and began noticing that wild ancestors of cultivated crops—like corn and beans and chile—continued to be used. “I was in the , near the U.S. and Mexico border, and noticed that they were selling wild chiltepines in little packages,” Nabhan says.

Thousands of years ago, indigenous groups were using the chiltepin in their food. Over time, they began planting the seeds closer to their homes and breeding them to add spice and flavor. But wild chiltepines continue to grow without human help. The wild pepper is intensely hot. The first bite feels like an ember dropping onto your tongue—but then the fire quickly subsides. “You are left with the lingering taste of minerals, the thirsty desert earth itself,” Nabhan writes in , his thirtieth book. So when Nabhan first encountered them that day in 1977, he wanted to know where the owner of the store got them. “Back in the canyon behind the gift shop,” she said.

He mentioned the canyon to botanist Jack Kaiser, who said, “Yeah, I know about that stash.” A few days later, Kaiser took him to the chiltepin patch. At the time, Nabhan was a grad student at working on a master’s degree he received in 1978, the same year he was crowned as the wild chile–eating champion of Tucson. He earned a doctorate from ASU in 1983, all the while leading enthusiasts through the borderlands to visit the chiltepines—which are notoriously hard to spot, especially when they’re hiding beneath a nurse plant. It’s only during a short window in late summer, when the bushes blaze with lipstick-red pods, their tips pointing upward to the sky, that chiltepines are easily found.

As Nabhan learned more about the plant, he began to believe it was possible to “make sense of the world through the lens of the chile pepper,” forging folklore, archaeology, geography, ecology, and food into his studies. His current focus is observing how chiltepines respond and adapt to climate change, which involves getting as detailed a map of chiltepin populations as possible.

In 1990, Nabhan won a . Nine years later, he and botanist Jack Kaiser were able to convince the U.S. Forest Service to designate a 2,500-acre stretch of rugged Tumacacori Highlands, in the Sonoran Desert, as the . “It’s the first botanical reserve for a wild ancestor of a cultivated crop,” he says. (It also encompasses the very canyon where Nabhan first encountered chiltepines.) In 2014, he convened a group of scholars and field workers to identify where and when the chile was first domesticated: near Puebla, Mexico, some 6,000 years ago.

In recent years, people north of the border seem to be catching on, too. “Chiltepines are undergoing a renewed popularity among chefs and bartenders and food providers,” says Nabhan. They are indispensable ingredients in the desert terroir that Nabhan , many of which, not surprisingly, have been about chiles. “A variety of shrubs used in mixed drinks have chiltepin in the syrup. I run into chiltepin margaritas every two or three months in Tucson, Santa Fe, or El Paso.” In Mexico, chiltepines are often paired with fish, where the quickly passing heat is reminiscent of wasabi, something that has caught on with chefs north of the border.

Like any wild-foraged plant, though, finding chiltepines can be tough, particularly when entire populations can be damaged during extreme weather events. “In 2001 and 2002, we had catastrophic freezes that killed a lot of their nurse plants,” says Nabhan. “Then wildfires came through and burned many of the areas they were in.” To top it all off, a drought from 2007 to 2013 devastated habitat on both sides of the border.

But the chiltepin is a resilient plant. “With the last two years of very good rains in the borderlands, we’ve seen the wild harvest return to nearly what it was 20 years ago,” Nabhan says. Not only that, but Nabhan also believes that the plant is better-traveled than botanists have given it credit for. In April, he will be taking an exploratory trip to Baja to put the local chiltepines on the map. There are no official records of the plant in the region yet, but Nabhan knows it is there.

“I’ve eaten them,” he says. “I’ve seen enough bowls of them on tables. And the old men know where they are. I just have to find an old man to show me.”

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Walmart, already one of the country’s largest distributors of organic foods, will gobble up additional market share this summer, thanks to a deal it struck with Wild Oats to carry more than 100 of the natural-food chain’s house-branded products.

The agreement, coming on the heels of , which is 40 percent organic, marks a new era. One obvious benefit is that prices for organic foods should drop nationwide as production increases and competitors are forced to match big-box discounts.

But the supersizing of organic comes at a cost. When the term first gained traction, in the 1980s, it was mainly used by small farms supplying local markets. In 2000, when the Department of Agriculture created the USDA Organic label, its standards included a list of roughly 100 substances, including some synthetic chemicals, that would be allowed in the farming process. The list is picked over incessantly, but in September of last year, the USDA made it more difficult to remove pesticides and herbicides it had already approved.

All of which means that, for consumers, shopping is more complex than ever.

Straight Talk on the Organic Frenzy

“It’s better for you”
Not necessarily. Thousands of studies show on the nutritional benefits of organic over conventional foods. However, fewer pesticide residues and fewer antibiotic-resistant bacteria in organic foods.

“It’s better for the environment”
True. that organically farmed soil has greater microbial diversity, in large part because of crop rotation, cover crops, and the use of compost, required for certification. Organic crops usually have .

“It’s better for the animals”
Probably. There is no conclusive evidence that organic meat or dairy is healthier, but most animals are required to have access to pasture and are exposed to far fewer antibiotics.

“It’s better for the farmers”
Definitely. Laborers on conventional farms are exposed to hundreds more agrichemicals than those on organic farms. Consequences range from headaches to birth defects to cancer.

The Local-Versus-Organic Question
In terms of nutrient value, fresh almost always trumps organic, which is why local is usually better. But a local farmer could be spraying his crops with every chemical in the book. Don’t stress out about which chemicals to avoid. Find a farmer you can trust and ask if the produce is certified organic. If he says yes but his stand isn’t labeled, be skeptical. If he says no but is eager to talk about how he grows his crops, that’s probably the best indicator. The is time consuming and expensive, and many local vendors skip it.

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If you’ve ever packed a bottle of wine into the boondocks, you know the hazards and the rewards. Some of the negatives, like broken glass, or a wine spill in your backpack, hopefully stayed hypothetical. But there’s no way around the fact that half a bottle of wine’s weight is packaging. The empty bottle takes up precious room in your bag, and a lot of energy to transport.

Savvy campers have known for years that boxed wine’s packaging handles these problems. But the quality of boxed was known, correctly, to suck. Luckily those days are long gone, and it’s an accepted fact that there is nothing inherent in Bladder in Box technology or BiB, as the packaging is called, that hurts the quality of wine. In fact, thanks to the one-way valve and collapsible bladder, no oxygen is allowed inside. This means that, unlike with a bottle, BiB wine doesn’t start to age the minute you tap it.

As the volume of wine shrinks, the bladder inside the box shrinks with it, snuggly containing the dwindling volume of wine inside. Most BiBs are guaranteed a six-week lifespan once opened, while an opened bottle’s lifespan is a matter of days.

One advantage that bottles have over BiB regards the long-term storage, a.k.a. cellaring, of wine. BiB packaging is not conducive to that, and accordingly, the wines that are packaged in BiBs aren’t designed to be aged. So if you’re in the one percent of oenophiles that can afford to keep wine as a hobby, you should probably stick to bottles.

But a full 99 percent of wine consumption is for within six months of purchasing it, according to the BiB-positive website , which is owned by The Wine Group, the U.S.’s third largest wine company. The Wine Group owns the iconic Franzia label of boxes, as well as several higher-end boxed labels, and has been an industry leader in the switch from bottle to box packaging. According to the website, if the 99 percent all drank BiB wine, that would be the equivalent in carbon savings of taking a quarter million cars off the road, while eliminating 941 million tons of glass.

The environmental savings also translate into financial savings, which are being generously passed along to the consumer. The packaging in one three-liter box is much cheaper than four bottles would be, and one box is much lighter, more compact, and of a shape more amenable to shipping than four bottles. This is a big reason why there are some very, very drinkable wines available at $20 or less for a three-liter box, which works out to $5 a bottle for some pretty good stuff.

Back when boxes were where bad wines went to die, outdoorsy oenophiles had to decant the good stuff into plastic jugs or botas of Spanish leather. Now that good wine comes in square packages, bringing it into the backcountry is all return, and no more risk. That might not always be a good thing, but with wine we’ll take it.

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10 Great Red Meat Recipes

• Chimichurri
• Churrasco
• Fruity Meat
• Wild Mushroom Sauce
• Plov
• Halfsies
• Garlic and Oyster Sauce
• Steak Tartare
• Over Wood Coals
• The Final Ingredient

Red Meat Recipes: Chimichurri

Some meat cooks love their marinades. But I say, invest in the meat, not the marinade. If the meat is good, there’s no need to cover it up.

If anything, I’ll serve my meat simply seasoned but with a nice sauce, like this Argentine chimichurri, a garlic-and-herb vinaigrette. Serving meat with sauce puts the diner in control of how strongly seasoned their meat is.

Chimichurri is best prepared at least a day ahead so the flavors can develop. It will continue to age nicely for a few days in the fridge. Applied to fire-cooked meat, the spicy, oily, acidic fragrance of the chimichurri interacts with the lightly charred, crispy, smoky exterior of the meat to create a lovely contrast.

To make chimichurri, dissolve one teaspoon of coarse salt into a half-cup of water. Chop a head of garlic, a cup of fresh parsley, and 1/4 cup fresh or dried oregano (or marjoram), and add it all to a blender, along with 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Blend, adding 1/4 cup red wine vinegar and then 1/2 cup olive oil. Finally, blend in the salt water. Transfer to a jar with a tight-fitting lid and keep it in the refrigerator.

Red Meat Recipes: Churrasco

I tasted my first churrasco, or Brazilian BBQ, across the street from the Sao Paolo bus station. As my buddy and I slouched in front of an endless parade of sword-skewered meat, the whole scene felt both so wrong and so right. Arguably, making like Jabba wasn’t the healthiest way to recover from a 10-hour ride from Florianapolis. On the other hand, after that meal I was so bloated with meat that our next leg, a 20-hour ride to Porto Seguro, seemed about the only thing I was capable of doing. The meal cost about what both bus tickets were combined, but it was worth it. Sanity is priceless.

Since then I’ve watched the march of the churrascarias, as the gaucho-style grilled meat has charmed hearts and bellies across North America. And while the array of lower price-point decoys like salad, sides, and desert can be quite impressive and distracting, the meat is why we go.

There are many styles of churrasco, and they all involve a mix of garlic, salt, and oil. And there are many ways for these ingredients to be combined with meat. I like to salt the meat directly, setting it aside and then treating it with freshly crushed garlic oil before—and during—cooking.

Use coarse salt, ideally sea salt. Sprinkle the meat on both sides, about a 1/2 teaspoon per steak. Don’t rub in the salt, just let it fall on the meat, and leave it at room temperature while you do the following:

Chop a head of garlic and then mash it with a mortar and pestle—or run it all through a garlic press, or whatever you have to do to thoroughly mash the garlic. Mix the garlic with a half-cup of olive oil. (I pour the oil into the mortar and crush it together, but I’ve got a stone mortar that’s so big they wouldn’t let me carry it on the plane home from Bangkok, so I can do that.)

Right around the time you get your fire going, brush, pour, or otherwise apply the garlic oil to the salted meat. When the grill is ready, add the meat. Baste lightly if you wish, but not so much the oil drips onto the coals and flares up, burning your meat.

Red Meat Recipes: Fruity Meat

From duck a l’orange to wine and steak to good ole’ pork chops and applesauce, there are innumerable ways for fruit and meat to mingle deliciously. In that spirit, I have a generalized recipe for cooking meat with fruit that can be used with most any kind of meat and most any kind of fruit.

The technique works for duck and pork, apples and oranges, although I employ it the most with stone fruits like peaches, apricots, cherries, and plums. No flavor of meat I’ve attempted with the technique has disappointed.

I’ll present the recipe in terms of beef and plums, but feel free to substitute other meats and fruits, and play around with seasonings.

Cut meat into one- to two-inch chunks. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dredge in breadcrumbs or Japanese panko flakes. Fry slowly in butter, turning as necessary so that all sides develop a light brown crisp. When the brown starts to darken, add the peeled cloves of a head of garlic.

Resist the temptation to bail on the recipe and just start eating the fried, breaded meat. Instead, add pitted plums, either whole or chopped, and roughly twice the amount as meat by weight, to the sizzling, savory pan. The fruit can be frozen, dried, canned, or fresh. (If using dried, use less by weight.) After letting the fruit cook for a spell, add enough stock (veggie or chicken) to cover the whole business, and half a cup of sherry, Madeira, or white wine. Bake with the lid on at 300 degrees until the meat is spoon tender—the tougher the cut, the longer this will take.

Check your meat every 30 minutes or so, adding more stock or wine as necessary to keep it at least half covered. When it’s almost done, adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Don’t add any more liquid, and allow the jus that remains in the baking dish to reduce to about an inch. Your fruity meat is ready to serve.

Red Meat Recipes: Wild Mushroom Sauce

Given the price, you might not be buying a lot of fresh wild mushrooms from the store. But you want that wild fungus on your meat.

There are some simple ways to get those complex forest umami flavors onto your table and still leave enough leftover to buy that grass-fed t-bone. One trick, used by nearly any chef that promises you wild mushrooms on their menu, is to cut the wild mushrooms with cultured button mushrooms and other domestics. If you use three times the amount of domestic to forest gathered caps, the dish will still taste impressively wild.

Another option is to become adept at cooking with dried mushrooms, which are available all season and are more affordable. They actually cost more per pound than fresh, but when they’re re-hydrated they weigh a lot more. And dried mushrooms can hang onto their flavors impressively. I’ve still got gallons of dried morels I brought back from a picking adventure in Alaska in 2006, and they are not any worse for wear than when I first dried them.

The trick with using dried mushrooms is to properly rehydrate them. And by the time you finish this simple sauce recipe, meant to be served alongside meat, you’ll know how it’s done. I usually make it with morels, but dried chanterelles, porcini, and most any other will work too, as well as some buttons to cut them with.

Heat up some water or stock—about a half-cup of liquid per cup of dried morels. When it’s simmering, toss in your dried mushrooms. Simmer for 30 seconds and then turn off the heat and let them sit, covered, for at least an hour, gently stirring occasionally to ensure even contact between mushrooms and liquid.

A common mistake is to soak dried mushrooms in too much liquid, which pulls most of the flavors into the water, which is then discarded. Instead, you want to use just enough soaking liquid so that there’s only a small puddle of it on the bottom of the pan. If there’s no liquid at all, that means the mushrooms soaked it all up, and could probably take more.

Depending on their size and your preference, slice the mushrooms or leave them whole. Sauté them in butter with chopped yellow shallots or onions, which you can add at the same time as the mushrooms. Now is also the time to add supplementary button mushrooms if you’re augmenting.

The mushrooms and onions will initially give off a bit of water. Keep cooking, and as the water dries up begin adding sherry, and more butter if you wish. Every time the pan starts to dry out, add more sherry, stirring constantly. You can do this for a long time: as long as nothing burns, you can’t really overcook a morel.

Season with salt, pepper, and pinches of nutmeg until you can almost taste it. For a heavier, French variation, add heavy cream and lemon at the end, two minutes before removing from heat. Serve the wild mushroom sauce directly with your meat. Alternatively, toss it into wild rice with crushed almonds for a hearty side dish.

Red Meat Recipes: Plov

Plov, the root of pilaf, is a Central Asian dish of meat, carrot, garlic, onion, and rice. Traditionally its preparation was the exclusive province of men, and a recent informal survey suggests that remains the case. A Tajik college student I spoke with told me she thought women wouldn’t add enough meat if they were in charge of plov. An Uzbek man named Hosiljon Rakmonor turned my question around so effortlessly that women making plov seem no more possible than man making baby.

“Can women make plov as well as men?” I asked Rakmonor. He folded his hands behind his back. “If a woman wants to eat man’s plov” he said, “they must order their husband or their brother to make it. That way, they can eat with pleasure. If you want to eat something that is prepared perfectly, you must have the master prepare it. Man is the master of plov.”

I’m skeptical of this idea, for what it’s worth, and invite women everywhere to see what they can do in the plov department. And to bring me samples.

Of the meats typically sold in stores, “stew meat” is usually the toughest, and that is tender enough for this recipe. If you’re using a truly tough cut of meat, braise it ahead of time so that it’s soft before proceeding.

Soak two cups of long grain brown or white rice in a pot of water. Fry a pound of meat, cut into chunks, in olive oil on medium heat. When the meat is crispy all around, add an onion, minced, and a chopped head of garlic, and carrots that have been chopped into whatever size you wish. Stir occasionally, seasoning with salt, pepper, and spices like clove, nutmeg, and coriander if you wish. When the onions are caramelized, pour the water off the rice you have soaking, and spoon the soaked rice onto the meat and veggies. Don’t mix it in, just add the rice on top. Then add water to the pot so it just covers the rice, and then add a cup more of water.

Cook on low until the rice is done, adding more water if necessary. When the water is gone from the pot, and the rice on top is cooked, turn off the heat and let the plov rest for 20 minutes. Invert the pot onto a plate, so the meat and goodies are on top, and serve.

Red Meat Recipes: Halfsies

You should never be afraid or unwilling to cut meat in half. Knowing how well the meat is done in the center must take priority over the meat’s unblemished presentation. A meat thermometer would do the trick too, if you have one. But truth be told, I enjoy cutting meat in half.

My halfsies technique is ideal for hefty cuts of tender meat that you start cooking and then suddenly freak out about overcooking. But halfsies can also be your plan from the get-go. It’s a technique that allows you to slow the pace when necessary, and then speed it up when it’s time to eat. And it works in any steak cooking context, be it grill, broiler, or pan. With halfsies, the meat will be perfectly done, exactly when you want it to be, and already be cut into pieces.

Start with a steak, ideally one that’s at least two inches thick. I cook with a lot of wild game cuts that are often mound or tube-shaped, but most any shape will work. Rub the meat with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper (or use any other marinade or rub you wish). Place the meat in your cooking context—pan, grill, or broiler—on low/medium heat. When the meat looks done on the outside, cut it in half.

Inspect the cut side for doneness. After the first cut it should be mostly raw red inside surrounded by a thin browned crust like a piece of seared tuna. Place the two cut sides facing the heat. When the raw, cut sides appear cooked, cut each piece in half again, checking the cut sides for doneness, and orienting them so the four cut sides all face the heat. Repeat as necessary.

With each cut, the revealed flesh will progressively change from dark red to pink. When the cuts reveal meat that’s almost done to your liking all the way through, remove from heat. It will continue to cook until you eat it, so it’s important to remove the meat a hair early.

The halfsies technique is ideal for situations where you’re alone or with guests who are comfortable around each other and beyond any pretense of fanciness. In fact, it’s often employed while standing around a grill, or pan, with a glass of wine in one hand and a jar of your favorite steak sauce on the counter. All the cutting creates many opportunities for sampling the goods, when the meat is both perfectly done and perfectly hot.

Red Meat Recipes: Garlic and Oyster Sauce

Oyster sauce is a brilliantly conceived ingredient that, more often than not, is poorly produced. Traditionally made by simmering oysters in water to extract their deep umami flavors, today all but the most expensive or homemade recipes of oyster sauce contain shortcuts devised to create a similar flavor and effect more cheaply. Sugar, cornstarch, and MSG are making up for quality or the amount of actual oyster product in the sauce. At the very least, look for brands in which these three are as far down the ingredients list as possible. Or maybe you can find the good stuff, pregnant with the distilled essence of the ocean’s nooks and crannies.

Oyster sauce with meat and garlic, and usually something green like broccoli or snow peas, is a classic and elegantly simple Chinese dish. It’s most often made with beef, but can be made with lamb, wild game, and non-red meats like chicken or bacon.

Cut the meat into chunks or dominos and brown them in the oil with the heat on low/medium, stirring as necessary. When the meat is browned, toss in the prepped greens—florets, pods, cabbage, asparagus, whatever you got. Carrots work too. After adding the veggies, pour 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sherry or other white wine or water into the pan to deglaze it, and stir around the meat and veggies along with the fond scraped from the bottom.

Put a lid on the pan to steam the greens. Let them steam just a minute or two, then add minced garlic and lots of black pepper. Stir it around, and finally add the oyster sauce—about 2 or 3 tablespoons per pound of meat. At this time you can also add fresh basil leaves and some kind of chile or hot sauce, if desired. There should still be a shallow, rapidly evaporating puddle of liquid in the pan. If not, add another heavy splash of wine or water. Stir again, making sure the oyster sauce is evenly dissolved and everything is coated with the sauce, and put the lid back on the pan and turn off the heat. Let it rest for five minutes before serving, with rice.

Red Meat Recipes: Steak Tartare

When war correspondent and author Thomas “the Turk” Goltz isn’t in the trenches of Chechnya or the presidential palace in Tbilisi, he’s at home in Livingston, Montana, where he likes to eat meat and keep his drinking muscles in shape. A haven for writers and epicureans alike, Livingston, and Goltz’s house in particular, was a great place to spend my birthday a few years back. Before the guests arrived, Goltz taught me his steak tartare recipe.

A multi-generation Montanan, Goltz eschews beef for passionately held ethical reasons. Luckily, there are many other tasty animals running around the area that he has no problem eating. That day we used deer. I’ve made this steak tartare with all kinds of red meat since, but I still like deer the best.

Whichever meat is used, it should be frozen first as a precaution against parasites—two weeks in the deep freeze is a good rule of thumb. If you’re buying your meat, it should be as fresh and high quality as possible.

Mince or grate a tender cut of meat that’s partially thawed but still mostly frozen. For every pound of meat, mix in a tablespoon of minced capers, a tablespoon of horseradish or mustard, a tablespoon of paprika, a shot of brandy, salt, pepper, and a yolk from a good egg. Mash together, taste, and adjust the seasonings. The paprika gives the tartare an extra bright redness, which seems appropriate to this very raw meat.

Plate the tartare on a bed of thinly-sliced onions, with a garnish of parsley, and serve with crackers or toast.

Red Meat Recipes: Over Wood Coals

Cooking steak over wood coals is romantic. It’s authentic. It’s elemental. It’s simple. It’s also very easy to screw up. A common rookie maneuver is to put the meat over a fire that hasn’t burned down to coals. This exposes your meat to licking flames that will likely char the food beyond where it’s a good thing. And the smoke from freshly burning wood is more bitter than from coals. Both smoke and charring add flavor and complexity to meat, but too much charring or smoke and that’s all you taste. You want these flavors to be team players.

The choice of wood makes a big difference in how hot and quickly it burns, and how the smoke tastes. In general, hardwoods are better for cooking over than soft woods. Apple is perhaps the king of woods. It burns hot without too much flame, and has sweet smoke. Cherry is up there with apple. Alder burns more quickly and with less heat, but has good flavor.

Assuming you’re using wood of roughly two-inch diameter, a good rule of thumb when cooking over wood is to start the fire about 45 minutes before you want to cook. When the wood burns down to coals, spread them evenly under your grill grate and wait for them to cover over with ash.

While the fire is burning its way down to coals, salt a room temperature steak, and let it sit.

The grill should be three to four inches above the coals. You should be able to hold your hand at grill level for about two seconds before the heat forces it away. Grease the grill with a piece of fat or oil. The meat should sizzle softly when you set it down. After five minutes rotate the steak 90 degrees to make a crosshatch pattern. After four more minutes turn over the steak and repeat the process, turning it 90 degrees after five minutes. After that turning, an inch and a half thick steak will need roughly another two minutes to be medium rare inside. (or take away the guesswork by using the Halfsies technique).

Red Meat Recipes: The Final Ingredient

One could argue that a glass of red wine would be a good companion to all of these aforementioned dishes. And to be honest, the glass was there as I tested them. While I ate the meat, the wine was in my mouth. So in the spirit of full disclosure, there was a silent ingredient in my versions of these dishes as well. And this final recipe is for that sauce.

You’re either on board that mayonnaise is awesome, or not. And if you’re not, then do us both a favor and stop reading now. You’re hardly alone, so go find some of your own people to play with.

If you’re still reading, then you know what’s up with mayo. And maybe you’re like me, and put it on everything. Below, I’ll share my recipe for homemade mayonnaise, but first I have to get something off my chest. I prefer my brand of store-bought mayo to my totally awesome homemade mayo.

Not only that, but my preferred brand is not even real mayonnaise. It’s an egg-free vegan brand called Vegenaise. I know it sounds crazy, but every one of my recipes was enjoyed with a dollop of this white creamy goodness, this deliciously inviting fake mayonnaise.

I understand that can be a lot to handle, even for the hard cores, but there you go. And now, for those who don’t believe me, my homemade recipe. Most mayo is made with just the egg yolks. This recipe is more of a “camp mayo,” not as thick as some, but way less of a hassle.

Crack two whole eggs into a blender, along with a teaspoon of mustard and 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and blend for one minute. With the blender going, slowly add a cup of oil (I like olive or sunflower), beginning with just a thin stream. As it starts to thicken, you can increase the flow of pouring oil. When the juice runs out, and the motor is still running, quickly add 4 tablespoons of lemon juice and vinegar (2 tablespoons each). Turn off the motor as soon as it’s blended. Stir in other seasonings you may desire, such as pressed garlic. Store the unspoken final ingredient in the fridge, and put it on everything.

Remember: raw eggs may contain salmonella microbes. As a precaution, you should rinse the outside of the eggs before you crack them. If you have a depressed immune system, you might want to avoid homemade mayo, as well as homemade eggnog, or even sunny-side up eggs—which they no longer serve in nursing homes for this reason.

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A bird that’s run around the yard, dug for bugs, had chicken fights, and made chicken love will have a lot more texture to its flesh than a bird raised in something like a packed subway train. That factory-farmed chicken meat is so tender you can basically heat-and-serve, and cut it with a spoon. But the flesh of many a happy chicken has been far less cooperative. Rubber, climbing rope, and a variety of titanium alloys have been used to describe the texture of a truly free-range chicken.

There are ways around the toughness, and when that toughness is conquered it becomes an asset, because there is flavor in those muscles.

So here are two general rules for cooking properly raised—a.k.a. tough as hell—chicken, followed by a less general recipe for coq au vin, which is French for “cook the old bastard in wine.”

RULE #1
Don’t cook a freshly killed chicken on the day of death, especially if you killed it yourself. And if you are going to kill it yourself, take away its food 24 hours before slaughter, so its bowels are empty.

You want to wait this period so the meat can relax, and let the rigor mortis fade away. If you are the killer, you will want to give yourself a little time as well, to clean up the blood and feathers at the slaughter area and get the smell of chicken death out of your fingers and hair. Waiting a day allows both chicken and eater to come to the table recovered. I like to include an overnight soak in brine in that process. Then drain, rinse, pat dry, and let rest in the fridge for a few hours.

RULE #2
Don’t stop cooking the coq until the meat falls off the bone. It’s really that simple. And always stay mindful of liquid level during long cooks like this, replenishing the jus with wine or water as soon as the liquid drops below an inch deep.

And that, in a nutshell, is my coq au vin recipe. It’s about 30 steps simpler than , and thinner, without flour and butter. We both use bacon, although if you don’t have bacon don’t sweat it.

Julia’s recipe, which she gave to ABC’s in 1995, instructs to “simmer [the chicken] slowly 20 minutes, or until the chicken is tender when pressed.” For reference, the last rooster I simmered slowly like that took about two hours. Julia’s audience was a pre-foodie crowd that rarely wondered why the chicken was so soft.

Coq au vin, a.k.a. rooster in wine, doesn’t require a bonafide male chicken in order to be authentic. In my book, if I had a book, I would at least require a tough chicken. But in truth it’s probably a bit more satisfying if it is a real rooster, and not a hen—especially if was a mean rooster. The hen is that loving maternal nester that gives us her eggs and raises the baby chicks. You don’t want to kill the hens.

COQ AU VIN
This recipe is best made the day before you’ll need it, for the simple fact that you don’t know how long it’s going to take for the bird to get tender. And it benefits from a night in the fridge.

Rub the formerly happy bird with olive oil and herbs, like thyme, oregano, or de provence, and sprinkle with garlic powder and salt. Bake uncovered at 350 for about 45 minutes. It will be nice and brown and crispy on the outside, even if the inside is still tougher than a $2 steak.

While it bakes, gather and prepare the following: chunks of carrot, parsnip, and potato; whole garlic cloves; chopped onions; whole or sliced mushrooms; thyme; chopped pork fat (or bacon, or not). Toss the assembled items together with olive oil.

When the chicken is browned, remove it from its pan, leaving the grease behind, and put the chicken on a plate to cool. Add the assembled items to the now empty, greasy pan, stir it all together, and put the pan back in the oven.

When the chicken is cool enough, cut or tear it into at least five-10 pieces. Add the torn up chicken—skin, bones, and all—to a baking dish with a tight-fitting lid, covered with an equal mix of water and red wine—ideally burgundy—and a few bay leaves. Put the chicken in the oven to braise, covered, alongside the other baking pan.

Frequently stir the pan with the bacon and onions until the onions are fully caramelized and just starting to brown. At that point remove that pan from the oven and set it aside. Keep testing the chicken, and cook until it’s truly tender, adding more water and wine as necessary. When the chicken’s tender, add it to the other pan, wine and all, and stir it all together. Add more water/wine to cover the whole business.  Put the pan back into the oven and keep baking. As it cooks, season with salt and pepper, and maintain the liquid level with additional water and wine as necessary. The longer you cook it, the thicker the sauce gets, as everything merges together.

Coaxed by the wine, fatty flavors leech from the cartilage and bone. Everything, especially the potatoes, begins to disintegrate, which thickens the sauce in lieu of flour. When in doubt, just add more wine and keep cooking. Take your time; you’re not serving it until tomorrow anyway. Pick out the bones and skin when it’s done. Let the pot cool to room temp, and then place in the fridge.

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Before he breaks his daily fast, Martin Berkhan does some heavy lifting—simple stuff like squats, presses, pull-ups, dips, all with added weight. Power lifting in the fasted state, he believes, is key to directing the body’s hormonal currents in a way that optimizes an anabolic, or muscle-building state. Then he proceeds, basically, to pig out for the rest of the day.

When Berkhan entered the strength and conditioning scene, he told me via email, the prevailing diet dogma at the time was characterized by certain unbreakable rules, such as: “Always eat breakfast to kickstart metabolism and to keep your muscles from falling off. Always eat a small meal every two to three hours to stoke metabolism, prevent starvation mode and stave off catabolism.”

He went along with it for years, eating breakfast against his body’s desire. Eventually he began poring over scientific and medical literature, concluding the path he’d been following was, “simply put, complete and utter bullshit, with a complete lack of scientific support to justify the obsessive adherence to the make-believe rules of the practices it preached.”

The term “intermittent fasting” first appeared in the scientific literature in a 1946 paper, “” (PDF). The study offered experimental evidence that intermittent fasting—wherein regular, short fasts are part of the eating pattern—might somehow prolong life. Since then, studies have demonstrated a positive effect of IF, as it’s often called, on several other health markers for cardiovascular health, cognitive function, glucose regulation, disease prevention, and neuronal health.

Back when Berkhan followed the six-meals-a-day dogma, fasting was something insane people who didn’t mind losing muscle mass did. Now he sees muscle building largely in terms of tilting the hormonal playing field the right way. In the early stages of a fast, growth hormone is naturally released. This is good for losing fat and gaining muscle. Berkhan believes this is a powerful window that opens before the dreaded muscle loss of starvation mode sets in, where the body is primed to make the most of exercise.

On his blog, Berkhan has laid out a template for a fasted training routine in which each 24-hour day is carved into an eight-hour feeding window and a 16-hour fasting window. A night owl by nature, Berkhan will often end his eating window late at night, and not eat again until the following afternoon.

His fast is broken with the biggest meal of the day, which consists, basically, of whatever the hell you want it to, and protein.

“I encourage a healthy diet, and certain common sense practices that serve a function. But I’m also miles away from having any rigid rules that I enforce on people. Hell, you’re talking with someone who eats six-pound cheesecakes and doesn’t mind a drink or two—or 10—or whatever you’re offering.” He’s also not too stressed about a few calories of milk or sugar in your coffee. He’s generally not too concerned about avoiding foods, like processed carbohydrates or sugar. He told me that the paleo crowd, many of whom follow and like him, are mostly “nutters.”

I pressed Berkhan about a popular paleo goal, the metabolic state called ketosis, in which rapid weight-loss can occur. That, to him, is the real-life equivalent of the dreaded starvation mode that even small fasts were once associated with. At this point, our email exchange became awkward, and never fully recovered, though we had our moments. Berkhan is clearly something of a pioneer, perhaps a genius, but with the patience of a two-year-old and a Lebron-sized ego, a cocktail that clashed with the limitations in my understanding of human physiology and my preconceived notions about fasted training and intermittent fasting. I could feel his frustration building.

For my part, I was at once put off by his attitude but fascinated with his approach and impressed with his results. I’ve been following his 16/8 plan for months, with undeniable results. Following the schedule, for me, has been quite easy, because I, too, hate breakfast.

One of Berkhan’s posts last year explored a phenomena that many people, including some of his clients, complain about as they approach their weight goals (in other words, reasonably fit people). Between 30 minutes and two hours after breakfast, many are hungry again. Berkhan’s hypothesis is that because levels of the hormone cortisol are naturally high in the morning, this creates a physiological environment that doesn’t quite know what to do with breakfast.

He doesn’t go as far as to say that everyone should skip breakfast, but if you’re following his 16/8 plan it would take some dedication. You’d have to finish eating early in the evening the day before in order for the start of your feeding window to coincide with the breakfast hours.

While the long-term effects of fasted training are anabolic activity—i.e., muscle-building—Berkhan believes there is also a small amount of catabolic activity—muscle breakdown—that can happen while you’re actually training. This has led to the only exception he makes to a literal interpretation of fasted training: the consumption of 10 grams of branch-chain amino acids, in shake form, before the big pre-meal workout. This tweaking of his program was unveiled as part of his to the 2009 paper “Increased p70s6k Phosphorylation During Intake of a Protein–Carbohydrate Drink Following Resistance Exercise in the Fasted State.”

This paper was exciting to Berkhan because it offered scientific credibility to his ideas on fasted training. What’s more, the study was on humans, rather than mice or lab-grown sections of muscle. Using an established marker for muscle growth— the activity known as phosphorylation of p70s6k—the study compared the physiology of people working in fasted and fed states. The fasted group had double the marker levels for muscle building as the fed group. After summarizing what the paper means in the lean gains context, Berkhan gives this directive:

For fasted sessions, ingest 10g branched chain amino acids (BCAA) shortly prior (five-15 minutes) to your training session. This does not count toward the eight-hour feeding window that I advocate post-workout; that starts with your post-workout meal. By ingesting BCAA pre-workout, we can sidestep the increased protein breakdown of fasted training while still reaping the benefits of the increased anabolic response as seen in this . Not only that, BCAAs actually increase phosphorylation of p70s6k when ingested in the fasted state prior to training. So by training fasted, with BCAA intake prior to sessions, we get a double whammy of increased p70s6k phosphorylation that should create a very favorable environment for muscle growth in the post-workout period.

Before Berkhan quit emailing me back I asked him his favorite sources of BCAA. “Xtend and beef flank Steak,” he replied. The suggestion that flank steak might be a suitable substitute for a commercial powder as a source of concentrated BCAA piqued my interest. I wondered if flank was a particularly good source of BCAA, or just his favorite cut of beef. So I asked for clarification on why flank steak? As Martin often did, he answered without really answering. “Because it’s fucking awesome.”

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In the last two years, the annual has become a gathering point for a group that could loosely be called the paleo crowd. This past year’s event, held at Harvard Law School August 8-11, included presentations by icons in the movement like Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, and S. Boyd Eaton, who co-wrote a 1985 article in the New England Journal of Medicine that, by most accounts, got the paleo ball rolling.

With that being said, a good percentage of those I spoke with at the event would object to being called paleo. Many have ditched a strict adherence to the Paleolithic era in particular in favor of their own custom-mixed paleo/primal/ancestral hybrid lifestyle. Others think paleo, in its many flavors, is partial or complete bullshit.

The , which orchestrates the event, describes itself as a group of “scientists, health care professionals, and laypersons who study and communicate about health from an evolutionary perspective.” It seeks “…to develop solutions to our modern health challenges,” including the many so-called diseases of civilization.

It was, largely, a fit-looking and likeable group of idiosyncratic nerds getting nerdy together about health and evolution. Many a conversation was embellished with personal “n=1” research data.

There were carnivores, crusaders, academics, bloggers, booksellers, barefoot runners, a lot of skeptics, hardly any reporters, and about as many opinions on carbohydrate and starch as there were attendees. Based on a casual survey of T-shirt messages, there were a surprising number of Mixed Martial Arts enthusiasts. I spoke to a bearded fighter from Quebec who told me “there is a philosophical crossover between paleo, MMA, and libertarianism.” Another fighter explained that fighting, like hunting, is in our DNA.

EVOLUTIONARY HEALTH IS A broad framework. It encompasses exercise, mental health, social interactions, medicine, and, of course, diet—an area where, at least at the Ancestral Health Symposium, people were the most focused, and often most heated.

“Paleo, primal, ancestral, let’s call the whole thing off,” joked Mark Sisson, author of and the blog. He, along with Robb Wolf, author of and co-producer of the Paleo Solution podcast, was part of a two-man “Paleo Q&A” panel one morning.

Despite their competing books, buzzwords, and online niches, the differences between Sisson’s and Wolf’s responses to the questions were often technical and nuanced, like two descriptions of the same mountain by climbers on different routes.

Both men are athletes—Sisson a former elite triathlete, Wolf a former power-lifting champion—and both have active consulting businesses. The paleo/primal/ancestral kool-aid drinkers were in heaven. The discussion included diet questions, of course, as well as topics like icing vs. heating, sleep, and dietary supplements.

A woman asked about the fact that females seem to hold more fat on their bodies than males. “Should we be trying to be as lean as the men?” she asked.d

“Women tend to hit a plateau before men,” Sisson said. “You’re not happy because you’re not Victoria’s Secret cover material, but that plateau is your body’s way of saying, I like what you’ve done with the place. It’s about reclaiming health more than looking good naked.”

“Give your scale to someone you hate,” Wolf added. “The scale tells us nothing.”

ALL THINGS PALEO HAVE ballooned in recent years, and both Wolf’s and Sisson’s services are in high demand, even as the theoretical underpinnings of the basic concept they built their empires upon have been eroded by the genetic record. Wolf told me by phone after the symposium that the human genome has changed rapidly since the Paleolithic Era, perhaps as much as 100 times faster than it was changing prior, according a widely respected 2007 paper by Dr. John Hawks, “.” This acceleration of genetic change was largely in response to the complexities that the Neolithic era brought to human life, Wolf said. We aren’t, it turns out, simply unfrozen cavemen.

On the other hand, Wolf continued, just because our bodies have adapted—or have started to adapt—to new foods like cow’s milk and various grains doesn’t mean we’re better off eating them. Some of us are clearly better than others at handling various Neolithic foods like grains, dairy, and legumes. In the end, he said, it’s about figuring out what’s right for an individual now, not then.

A FREQUENT TOPIC AT AHS was the metabolic state known as ketosis. Being in ketosis means the body’s cells are running primarily on ketones— small, water-soluble compounds created in the breakdown of fat—rather than glucose. Pursuing a ketogenic state, as it’s called, for weight-loss purposes was long ago dubbed the “.”

To a community that generally prefers to get its calories from fat, rather than starch and sugar, getting your body into “fat-burning” mode has obvious appeal.

Nora Gedgaudas, author of , calls ketosis “the Holy Grail of primal health.” In her presentation at the symposium, she likened starch and sugar consumption to keeping a fire going with paper, kindling, and lighter fluid, rather than slow-burning logs. “You could heat your house that way,” she said. “But you’d have a constant preoccupation with where your next twig is coming from.” And that is exactly what we see with carbohydrate addiction, as she calls it.

Many, both within and outside of the AHS community, have told me they think that ketosis—at least as a dietary ideology—is ridiculous, that zero-carb diets are dangerous and unhealthy, that you will lose muscle mass, and that going ketogenic should only be considered for the handful of diseases that it has been shown to treat effectively.

Fat burning aside, some of the more promising applications of a ketogenic diet are in the treatment of chronic diseases. , director of the Pediatric Epilepsy program at , said that nearly all child epilepsy patients respond well to a ketogenic diet, with one-third going into full remission. , a professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College, has been treating her own degenerative multiple sclerosis with a nutrient-dense ketogenic diet that includes rarely cooked meat and sprouted nuts. Five years into her n=1 research, Wahls is out of her wheelchair, riding her bike to work and practicing Taekwondo kicks. It’s only when sugars and starch tempt her off of the ketogenic wagon, she said in her presentation, that things go awry.

Several cancer researchers presented on the effectiveness of a ketogenic diet on various tumors. Ketogenic diets were also mentioned as being effective in treating Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as well as metabolic syndrome, the feedback loop of high blood pressure, obesity, high blood lipids, and diabetes.

Stephan Guyenet, a neurobiologist at the University of Washington who presented at AHS, told me he thinks there’s promise in some therapeutic uses of ketosis, but is far less convinced it should be everyone’s metabolic goal. For that matter, he’s not convinced of many of paleo’s sacred cows. He even eats grains, while respecting the energy-dense flours they can be processed into.

Being anti-grain and anti-starch is pretty much the first rule of paleo/primal/ancestral living, but, paradoxically, despite this and other glaring infractions, Guyenet is somehow widely liked and respected in AHS circles. Except, as we found out in Los Angeles two years back, when he’s not.

Guyenet’s research looks at the neurologic roots of hunger and fat regulation. It’s a much different approach than obsessing over macronutrient categories like carbohydrates, and led to a showdown at AHS2011 against none other than Gary Taubes—a hero to many for his takedown of the dietary fat theory of heart disease. Taubes took the mic during the Q&A portion of Guyenet’s talk on food palatability and satiation, and went on the offensive.

A video of the exchange was posted to . A limited-edition commemorative T-shirt was printed. And the drama was dissected in countless , if you want the full, sordid details.

This year, Guyenet was again challenged in the Q&A portion of his talk, and again by a lion in the AHS movement. Despite having chosen what seemed a relatively non-inflammatory topic—the role microbial balance in your gut plays in obesity and digestive health—the mild-mannered potato-eater nonetheless found himself facing Robert Lustig, perhaps the world’s leading anti-sugar advocate.

Lustig had given his (convincing) talk earlier in the day on just how awful and toxic sugar is. He praised Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban in New York City, and pined for more intervention. “All you libertarians out there, eat my dust,” he had thundered.

Lustig—being Lustig—took the mic after Guyenet’s talk on microbes and chided him for not mentioning the role of fructose in gut microbial ecology. Later, Guyenet told me he thought Lustig’s point was fair, as was his call for government intervention. “The paleo crowd is dominated by libertarians,” he said. “I think people who are willing to break with conventional ideas on diet are also people who want to be self-directed in other areas of their lives. But honestly, I agree that we need regulation, because the fact is, if you rely on personal responsibility to change this, it ain’t gonna happen.”

THERE WERE A LOT of different dietary opinions presented at AHS2012, but one creed with no visible followers was vegetarianism. The vegan holdout Denise Minger, whose appearance at AHS 2011 left many confused, no longer avoids eating things with faces. In fact, the face is now her favorite part.

In light of the ancestral health community’s love of flesh, Chris Kresser used his presentation to emphasize that roughly 20 percent of humans are genetically prone to accumulate excess iron in their bodies, which can lead to serious health concerns. So it’s worth being tested for high iron, he said. And if your iron panel or ferritin comes back high, consider blood-letting (a.k.a. donating).

Along with meat, fat and vegetables form the core of the typical diet (the Saturday lunch was a bun-free burger bar). This core, coupled with the general longing to be as earthy, clean, and natural as possible, has created an alliance between the ancestral health community and small, locavore-oriented farmers and livestock growers. These types of farms happen to supply what the paleos want—animal products and vegetables—and not what they don’t want, like fields of wheat or corn. To put it bluntly, someone’s got to make the bacon, and the bacon has to be good. This paleocavore synergy was evident throughout the symposium, starting with the opening day’s keynote address by Joel Salatin, rock star farmer.

Judging by the blog posts and tweets (#AHS12), perhaps the most popular event of the symposium took place at a farm in Carlisle, outside of Boston. There, in a rustic barn, a contingent from the symposium enjoyed pickle juice martinis, grass-fed lamb, and vegetables raised by local farmers.

While the paleocavore alliance is a natural evolution, it also seems to be another nail in the paleo coffin—at least in terms of a literal interpretation of paleo. After all, agriculture is what brought the Paleolithic Era to an end. By embracing this most Neolithic of practices, perhaps the ancestral health community’s center of gravity is shifting. It’s a greener shade of paleo, but still paleo—largely because nobody’s been able to come up with a catchier name.

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In August 2008, heavy rain fell in western Panama, damaging a fish farm by a trout stream that flows out of Parque Nacional Volcan Baru. The fish inside were Atlantic salmon genetically engineered to grow faster than typical farmed salmon—twice as fast, according to its producer .

The fish, called AquAdvantage salmon, were created at a facility on Canada’s Prince Edward Island when milt from GE males fertilized eggs of non-GE Atlantic Salmon. The fertilized eggs were transferred to the Panama grow-out center near the headwaters of the Rio Caldera, about 60 miles from the Pacific. AquaBounty intends to sell these eggs to other fish farms.

Although the AquAdvantage salmon is produced in Canada and grown elsewhere, the operation is under Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regulation because the United States is the intended market. If approved, the AquAdvantage salmon would be the first GE animal allowed for human consumption. This has made the fish’s approval process especially contentious, and caused it to drag on since 1996, when the application was first filed.

In 2008, the company was raising its first commercial-sized batch of fish even though it had yet to receive permission to sell them. AquaBounty believed FDA approval was imminent, and planned to use these fish for test-marketing and PR work when they reached full size. That plan was derailed by “an unusually severe storm” in Panama, as AquaBounty revealed in an August 15, 2008, recently uncovered by the consumer protection group .

According to the letter, damage from this storm caused the water inlet system to fail during the night: “[A]ll of these fish were lost. It was intended that the fish, subject to regulatory approval, would be marketed during the first half of 2009.”

Nearly four years later, that approval has not come, and the FDA has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident. Representatives of the agency have told me that they can’t answer any questions regarding the application because it’s still pending.

Dr. Anne Kapuscinski is a professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College. She has a background in salmon conservation, and specializes in environmental risk assessment in aquaculture systems. She told me that she has serious concerns with the scientific rigor of the environmental risk assessment generated by AquaBounty that the FDA is considering for approval of the AquAdvantage salmon.

“There were a lot of things in the way they presented their approach to risk assessment and a lot of what we saw in the Environmental Assessment that was released to the public [that] suggested that they are not on the cutting edge of the state of the art of risk assessment science,” she said. “They need to be on that cutting edge when we’re dealing with a precedent-setting case, and one that is challenging because we’re dealing with an animal that’s barely domesticated. Any salmon that escapes from human control, if it’s in habitat that it can survive in, is going to continue to live. And we know that farmed salmon is a global commodity. Let’s imagine that tomorrow the FDA approved this application. The company is not going to make a profit by simply growing small numbers of salmon in Panama. That’s just a proof of concept facility. This company is going to make money by selling millions upon millions of eggs to big salmon farms all over the place.”

Historical data from a weather station near the Panamanian facility suggest that, contrary to what the company told its investors, there was nothing “unusually severe” about the storm. In fact, it isn’t clear which storm the memo is even referring to. There were several precipitation events in late July and early August, as is common that time of year. That saw 36 inches of rain. In , by comparison, over 61 inches of rain fell.

Susan Turner, spokesman for AquaBounty, told me via email that the damage in August 2008 was not caused by flooding. It happened when a tree fell on an intake pipe, which interrupted the supply of fresh water, which caused the fish to suffocate. She had no comment on why the memo blamed the failure on an “unusually severe storm.”

Turner told me the Panama facility is located “…on top of a mountain and is intentionally far from any waterways, so there is no possibility of escape.”

This, according to the FDA’s literature, is false. A for a meeting of the FDA’s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee, or VMAC, held in September 2010, mentions an “adjacent” river that “runs next to the facility,” and states, “should escape of AquAdvantage Salmon occur in Panama, survival is only expected in the vicinity of the grow-out facility and upper watershed of the adjacent river.”

The possibility of ecological damage by escaped salmon near the grow-out facility was also investigated by the Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama (ARAP) in late 2009, and there was talk of ordering the next batch of fish destroyed for both legal and environmental reasons. Proper paperwork had not been filed, and according to , the ARAP’s research director, Ana Luisa Garcia, warned that if these fish are accidentally released into a natural habitat, like the “stream that runs near the area where the [fish] pools lie, it would cause ecological problems due to the predatory nature of the salmon.”

Tim Schwab, of Food and Water Watch, agrees. “Scientists have noted the myriad ways in which GE salmon could have a negative impact on aquatic life, but the FDA really hasn’t investigated this issue, in part because the agency doesn’t have the necessary expertise,” he said. “The FDA should have been consulting with other regulatory bodies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Fish and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, all along. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been happening and legislators are working hard to compel the FDA to do its due diligence on GE salmon.”

Alaskan lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are acting on their constituents’ fears that GE salmon threaten the state’s fishing industry. Senate bill 1717, “,” was introduced by Mark Begich (Dem-AK) last year. It seeks to ban GE salmon from interstate commerce and defund all FDA activities to consider approving it. The bill has the support of Begich’s Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski, who on May 17 of this year filed an to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that would require the NOAA to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the environmental and economic impacts of GE fish before approving it. (Murkowski’s amendment failed in Senate on May 24.)

While legislators were working on these bills, a petition was filed in February by a consortium of environmental and consumer groups asking the FDA to regulate the salmon as a food. This might seem like common sense, as the whole point of growing these salmon is to feed people. But the FDA chose to review AquAdvantage as an , rather than a human food. In the FDA’s view, the refashioned DNA that is in every cell of the fish’s body is considered a drug, and that’s what the agency is regulating. If approved, the AquAdvantage salmon would not only be the first GE animal approved for human consumption, but the first animal drug that’s theoretically capable of swimming off into the ocean and reproducing.

AquaBounty claims there are multiple barriers in place to prevent gene escape, including temperatures near the river’s mouth that are considered intolerably hot to Atlantic salmon. Also, the fish are screened to be all-female, and are sterilized, so that in the unlikely event of an escape the genes would have no way of spreading to the wild salmon population, the company has said.

The sterilization techniques are not 100 percent effective, however, which means that some fertile females could get through. This bug in the process was the basis for a $500,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) last October to improve the company’s sterilization procedure. The grant was later cancelled after public outcry.

With regard to the idea that warm water near the river’s mouth would create a barrier to salmon escape, Kapuscinski finds the evidence that’s been presented thin scientifically. It’s true that dissolved oxygen levels in water go down as temperature goes up, and salmon are sensitive to dissolved oxygen, she said. But there are many variables, such as seasonal variation in water temperatures, and differences in salmon temperature tolerance created by genetic modification.

A key step in the approval process was the September 2010 meeting of the FDA’s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC), which convened to discuss the human and environmental dangers posed by AquAdvantage salmon.

While the overall mood of the meeting was that the fish are probably safe for human consumption and not a threat to the environment (an idea many have ), several of the scientists there, including Kapuscinski, detailed their objections to the lack of rigor that had gone into the studies thus far. Problems with the studies included insufficient sample size data, sample sizes too small to be statistically significant, and absence of standard statistical methods that would be expected for such a precedent-setting decision. “We’re really worried that this sets the bar too low,” Kapuscinski told me.

At the VMAC meeting, Kapuscinski again addressed the assumption that warm water temperatures downstream from the Panamanian grow-out facility provided a barrier for escape. “The assessment suggests that water temperatures in the lower reaches of the Panamanian river and Pacific Ocean will be lethal to these transgenic fish but has their thermal tolerance been measured?” she asked. “Published on coho salmon shows an increased thermal tolerance resulted after growth-transgenesis.”

In layman’s terms, research has shown that coho salmon genetically modified to grow faster are not as sensitive to changes in water temperature as wild type coho salmon. Such tests need to be done on the AquAdvantage salmon, she urged.

Her comments were cut short at the meeting due to time constraints, but she emailed me her full statement, which concluded: “Any failure of a multiple confinement system means that, once AquAdvantage salmon escape, the release cannot be undone because these fish are mobile organisms with very low but not zero likelihood of having some fertile escapees. We urge the FDA to require a transparent Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that completes genetic and ecological risk assessment for the two proposed facilities and other commercial facilities likely to buy AquAdvantage Salmon eggs in the foreseeable future.”

Though Kapuscinski and others had hoped for the more rigorous EIS, the VMAC ended up recommending that the FDA revise its Environmental Assessment. And that seems to be what it is doing, according to a rare public statement on a pending case made by FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg. An EA will be released “very soon,” she told the .

Those who are concerned at the prospect of this technology gaining FDA approval might be even more alarmed at the possibility that, if that approval doesn’t come soon, the technology behind the AquAdvantage salmon might move to where the FDA has no say in the matter at all.

After nearly two decades of waiting for permission to market its only product, AquaBounty is . This AquaBounty has run into difficulties, but it might be the last. The company is already being carved up.

In a March 22 meeting this year, AquaBounty shareholders approved the sale of the Prince Edward Island hatchery to the company’s major shareholder, Linneaus Capital Partners (technically, to its wholly-owned subsidiary, Tethys), in an effort to trim operating costs. Shareholders also approved a private sale of additional stock shares to raise enough money to cover an additional 10 months of expenses. That money will run out in January.

Linneaus Capital Partners controls the means to produce the AquAdvantage salmon eggs, and Linneaus is controlled by a Georgian businessman named Kakha Bendukidze. A free-market libertarian who was once Georgia’s finance minister, Bendukidze is credited with making the country more business friendly, in part by gutting its regulatory industry—including its food safety and inspection services.

If FDA approval is denied or delayed, there doesn’t appear to be much stopping Bendukidze, who did not respond to requests for comment, from seeking alternative markets for the technology. Perhaps his home country

Linneaus also controls several in the Mediterranean and North Seas, as well as a venture called . AquaBounty is hoping its Panama facility can demonstrate the profits to be had with inland fish farming.

“They’re saying that they’re going to be land-based,” Kapuscinski told me. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Right now all the capital in the salmon farming industry is invested in cage culture, for some good reasons, because that’s much easier to make financially viable.”

“At the end of the day, economics will win,” Bendukidze recently told the . And it was economics, he said, that brought him into the industry in the first place. “I had no idea of aquaculture. I was just looking for some diversified investments.”

The AquAdvantage salmon is one of an unknown number of GE fish and animals being developed around the world. It would be impossible to track down every lab on earth, especially those that are independently funded and not applying for patents or approvals. It’s possible that gene escapes have already happened, or that GE fish are secretly being grown somewhere and fed to us.

At the VMAC meeting FDA fisheries biologist Eric Silberhorn admitted that if GE fish were being imported, they probably wouldn’t be detected. He also alluded to reports of GE shrimp already in the food supply, before cutting himself off.

Silberhorn is on the team that’s overseeing AquaBounty’s consideration under NADA, the New Animal Drug Application. But he wears many hats at the agency, and presented on three separate occasions at the . A discussion about the possibility of inadvertently importing GE fish to the U.S. included this exchange:

Dr. McKean: What percentage of the salmon do you test coming into the United States?
Dr. Silberhorn: A fairly low percentage.
Dr. McKean: That is what I expected.
Dr. Silberhorn: I mean, I will be honest with you; there are reports that there are transgenic shrimp in—there are all kinds. But we won’t go there.
Dr. McKean: Don’t muddy the water for me please.

Reached by email, Silberhorn declined to elaborate on the transgenic shrimp he referred to, saying he can’t comment on anything related to the still-pending AquAdvantage decision.

“I know that there’s some research going on,” Kapuscinski said, “but I’m not aware of any transgenic shrimp, a viable line of them having been developed with a trait that’s worth culturing them commercially. But it’s possible. It’s plausible.”

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Native to high-volume river systems across the U.S., the fish can reach well over 100 pounds and has long been a favorite of anglers who like to do battle with the big bottom-dwellers. Paddlefish live on plankton and thus have no interest in traditional bait. So anglers use heavy surfcasting gear to huck burly treble hooks into the river, then jerk them through the water in hopes of snagging a fish and dragging it to shore. Once hooked, paddlefish are legendary for giving it the old Jurassic try. “It’s a good fight, if you can get one on,” says fisherman Earl Kelsey, of Basin, Wyoming.

For years, anglers typically cleaned their fish on the riverbanks, leaving the roe to rot with the gut piles. But it turns out that the paddlefish produces excellent caviar. And at $18 per ounce, it sells for about 85 percent less than that of its distant cousin, the sturgeon.

“Paddlefish caviar is smaller, with a creamy feel and a nutty, grassy taste,” says Frenchman Gabriel Kruether, executive chef at Manhattan’s the Modern, a French restaurant that serves Yellowstone caviar. “But if it is handled well, it matches Caspian caviar in quality.” And with the worldwide sturgeon population down about 90 percent over the past 20 years, Kruether says he’s happy to go with paddlefish. “A total ban on sturgeon for some years is the best thing that can happen,” he says.

The paddlefish may not think so. Decimated by dams, silt, and years of overfishing, only a handful of healthy populations remain. The largest is in Montana’s Yellowstone River—the longest undammed river in the United States—where paddlefish season runs from May 15 to June 30 or until the 1,000th fish is caught. Since 1990, the nonprofit Yellowstone Caviar Project, based in Glendive, Montana, has offered free fish cleaning in exchange for any roe it finds, which is sold to restaurants around the world. Proceeds benefit community recreation projects and paddlefish-research programs. “Everybody’s a winner,” says Jim Culver, who heads the project. “Sportsmen get the thrill of the catch, caviar connoisseurs get a top-grade treat, and the paddlefish are protected.”

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