[D]uring this first outing by members of the newly formed Congressional Food Safety Caucus, there was pointed disagreement among the legislators about how much change was needed to ensure that no more children die of meat poisoning, and even about whether that was a realistic goal.

Whatever the travails of old farming communities of the Great Plains, with population decline and temperatures that swing 120 degrees from January to July, something about these places produces triple-digitarians even as people plug their arteries with sausage, strudel and dumplings soaked in gravy.

Survivors of scarlet fever and smallpox epidemics, the Dust Bowl and the Depression, they have been cracking 100 at least since 1950. The 2000 census found that McIntosh County, where Ashley is located, had the highest proportion of people 85 and older among the nation's 3,142 counties. North Dakota had the highest proportion among the states.

The census found that Florida, Pennsylvania and West Virginia had higher proportions of people 65 and older. But many of their elderly die in their 60's and 70's; North Dakotans tend to keep aging. The census found 162 North Dakotans 100 or older, also near the top among states in relation to the total population.

These North Dakotans may be biological artifacts, the recipes for their health beyond bottling or replication by baby-boom office dwellers in big cities and suburbs. Clean air; going slow; patience; a low-cost, low-stress economy for all but active younger farmers; decades of heavy lifting outdoors; keeping an eye out for one another; long stable marriages; an absence of sharp differences in income and wealth all may contribute, people here speculate.