How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [33]
Is Grain Sold as Seed or Animal Feed Safe to Eat?
Typically “seed” grain is treated with insecticides and fungicides, but “feed “grain is not. Any whole grain (without fillers, additives, or by-products) sold as animal feed is probably fit for human consumption, but don’t count on it. The FDA food-handling standards for human consumption generally don’t apply. Thus, there could be excess pesticides, insect parts, insect excreta, or other contamination, including mycotoxins. This is not to say that grains packed for human food are perfect—I’ve found much more than just chaff in the wheat that I bought from food-storage vendors over the years, including pebbles and small dirt clods—but at least the screening is more thorough with these grains than with animal feed. The only way to be sure about safety for human consumption is to check with the feed mill/packaging company for each product.
In the southern parts of the country there are more insect problems, so much of the seed wheat is treated with pesticides. The good news is that if you can smell, you will easily recognize the pesticides on the wheat. The feed variety of wheat isn’t cleaned as much as “triple-cleaned” wheat, which is normally what is sold for human consumption. Quality typically varies from one source to the next. Buy one bag to start with after telling the store owner you need nontreated wheat for animal feed. You could always winnow this out yourself if you so desired. It does offer a cheap alternative.
While animal feed at this time is not on a par with food-grade grain, these rules will be changing. The FDA is pressuring producers, storage facilities, and feed mills to bring their standards up to human-food-chain levels. We will see this transformation in the next three to five years as laws are brought forth to force the process.
A Little More on Corn
Corn is a valuable food to store, although it is not quite as versatile as wheat, nor does it store for nearly as long. Corn does store fairly well if its moisture content is low. Like wheat, once corn is cracked or ground, its nutritive value starts to drop rapidly. Therefore you should buy your storage corn whole, and then grind it into cornmeal in small batches as needed.
Corn stores best in whole kernels. Once it is cracked, the inner germ is exposed. This decreases its storage life and nutritive value by 80 percent. Running whole corn through a grain mill at a coarse setting to make cracked corn is quick and easy. A finer setting will yield cornmeal.
I’ve found that the least expensive place to buy whole-kernel corn is Walton Feed, in Montpelier, Idaho. Be careful about the moisture content—mold is the greatest bugaboo with bulk corn. Never, ever eat moldy corn. It can induce mycotoxin poisoning that is potentially deadly!
A Closer Look at Fats
An issue that is often overlooked in long-term survival/ preparedness planning is the necessity of fats and oils. I believe that fats and oils are consciously ignored by food-storage vendors, because vendors love to market their “complete” three-year and five-year food-storage packages. The problem is that those food assortments do not include the requisite multiple-year supply of essential fats and oils. These vendors are doing their customers a huge disservice with this omission. Fats and oils are a nutritional necessity.
For urban or suburban preppers who don’t hunt, don’t fish, don’t have the room to raise livestock, and don’t have the room to grow peanuts, olives, or sunflowers on a large scale, there are precious few options for long-term sources of fats and oils. The first option is expensive but viable: Continuously and completely rotate your supply. Donate the unused portion of your stored stock of cooking oil and shortening/lard to your