The Sustainable Kitchen - Statistics
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Okay. I'm not ashamed to confess that 20 years ago I dropped my college statistics and probabilities class. Why? Well first, I questioned whether I really wanted to be a business major. Second, and here's an insight to a college student's mind, it was my only Friday class that semester. And third, there's a famous mark Twain quote, "There are only three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies and statistics." Who was I to argue with that kind of logic. More and more however I realized dropping stats was a mistake. Recent food news drove home the point. What are the odds that there would be three major U. S. Food recalls in a matter of days? But there they were Kroger recalling thousands of its private selection brand beef roasts for possible listeria contamination, Vincent Giordano corporation, the Pennsylvania company recalling 52,000 pounds of its ready to eat pastrami, corned beef and roast beef. And Hormel, the spam king, recalling some canned beef products because of plastic contamination. But the real farm and food statistical mind bender came as usual from the government. More precisely from the chief food traffic cop, Secretary of Agriculture Benjamin Lenderman. In his informal remarks to the full Senate Agricultural committee Tuesday January 27th, Linderman said consumers need not worry about the USDA's poor success in tracking the Canadian animals that accompanied this nation's first mad cow out break back in the United States in 2001. According to the secretary, the reason is as simple as statistics. Bear with me for one moment. Linderman said and I quote, "we focused much of our efforts on 81 animals that we know came from the Canadian birth heard but international standards also tell us that animals of special significance are those born within a year before or after the positive animal. We have now determined that there are 25 of the 81 animals that fit in the two year window. Based upon statistical examination of cooling rates. We would have to expect to find that only 11 of those 25 animals would still be found alive. In fact, we found 14 of those 25 animals of significance. So from a statistical standpoint, our tracing efforts to date have been remarkable. Even in the case of those animals that are not found, we would not expect them to pose a significant risk to the public health or animal health. Voila 81 turns into 25 than the USDA's magic wand turned 25 cows into 14." But wait, there's more. On January 28 the USDA announced it had found 28 of the original 81 head it was looking for. That's 34.5% of the herd mates. 28 is actually double the number of 14 Linderman padded USDA and the back four. Therefore through the miracle of statistics, it can be proven that the USDA actually did a doubly remarkable job and there's nothing to worry about after all. Maybe I didn't need that statistics class after all. If my cooking gig fails, I can always go into government work or politics. For sustainable kitchen, this is Chef Stuart Stein.