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Or Not Many are disappointed by the results of the World Hunger Summit in Rome this week, where few leaders from wealthier countries showed up, and the leaders who did show up declined to commit to the FAO-recommended $44billion per year, or to pledge to end hunger by 2025.
Avoiding Pesticides? There’s an App for That It’s a new one from the Pesticide Action Network and it’s called What’s on My Food? and unlike the Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, (also a great app) this one breaks down exactly what kinds of chemicals are likely to be on different kinds of foods and explains their implications for personal health. (hat tip to Take Part).
Safety First If you have questions about how to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner safely, tune in to the Consumer Reports Safety blog Tuesday at 1pm eastern for a live chat with food safety expert Urvashi Ranvan.
Academy Award Dreams Food, Inc. is in the running for an Oscar nomination!
Jamie Oliver, Matchmaker The foodist formerly known as the Naked Chef is playing cupid with his new business venture — an online dating site for foodies.
Fishing for Answers As catfish farmers struggle to maintain control of US markets, the state of Alabama has banned untested fish imported from China and Vietnam after catfish from both of those countries were found to contain residues of banned antibiotics.
At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed “white-nose syndrome” in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn’t slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade.
This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, “We’re at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe.”
Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we’ll have an explosion of pests, including disease- carrying mosquitoes and agriculturally destructive beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other foes of the farmers, who may be forced to use more pesticides as a result.
Bat colonies in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont have averaged a shocking 94.5 percent decline since white-nose syndrome was first detected there in 2006, plummeting from 48,626 bats to 2,695. The disease’s spread “has been terrifyingly swift,” according to the Globe, starting in the Northeast and South Atlantic states and now infiltrating “caves and mines in Kentucky and Tennessee, and possibly North Carolina and Ohio.”
I’m not wild about cop shows on TV. Most are boring, the format is stale and story lines have become increasingly absurd. Also, I think it’s completely insane that there are so many different versions of CSI and Law & Order. Nonetheless, I was excited about two recent cop show episodes – because both featured plots involving industrial agriculture!
The shows (Bones and CSI: Miami) aren’t intended to be in-depth examinations of contemporary food production. But the stories include some good information about the ills of industrial ag – and we’re always glad when these issues percolate into the public consciousness.
Naturally, after viewing both programs, I felt compelled to pin them head-to-head in an epic showdown for the Best Industrial-Ag-Themed Cop Show Episode of 2009 Award.
Here’s the analysis:
Bones – “The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken Suit”
Synopsis: The operator of a chicken factory farm dies. The police suspect fowl play [insert groan]. View the episode.
Thumbs Up:
Factory Farms – Most people have never seen (or even heard of) factory farms. Big bonus points for giving the issue some exposure on a primetime TV show.
Animal Welfare – The episode includes footage of extremely crowded conditions in a chicken factory, and notes that each bird has less than 1/2 square foot of living space. Viewers also learn about debeaking, a standard factory farm practice that causes birds to suffer lasting pain.
Hydrogen Sulfide – The victim’s sinuses are deformed as a result of long-term exposure to this toxic gas. Indeed, H2S is among the most hazardous pollutants emitted by factory farms; even low concentrations can cause serious health problems.
Stench – The factory farm’s nasty odor is mentioned repeatedly. This is no exaggeration; the odor from factory farms is repulsive and surprisingly pervasive – and it’s not just an annoyance; odor damages human health, degrades surrounding communities, and causes local property values to plummet.
Workers – The episode touches on the plight of factory farm workers, who earn meager wages despite toiling in dangerous conditions.
Farm vs. Factory – A distinction is made between traditional farms and factory farms (the chicken CAFO is described as a “different beast,” bearing no resemblance to small, free-range farms). [Read more →]
Green Fork blogger Kerry Trueman landed an exclusive interview with author Jonathan Safran Foer for our friends at Healthy Monday. Check it out!
Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals is a thorough look at the ethical and environmental quandaries posed by America’s appetite for meat. His wish is to foster more mindful eating, whether we choose to forego animal-based foods or simply reduce their consumption. Foer graciously ruminated on my meat-y questions when I spoke with him by phone last week.
KT: Your book is making quite a splash; it seems like you have this huge potential to influence a lot of people who haven’t previously given this a whole lot of thought.
JSF: I hope so. I know the topic is not easy to approach. But I also know that if the conversation is had correctly, it’s a conversation Americans are not only willing to have, they want to have.
When I did “Ellen,” I looked at her audience – it’s not Berkeley granola-eaters. It’s people on a fixed income, it’s a lot of mothers, a lot of people who come there from the middle of America. And people care.
KT: The industrial meat industry is attempting to dismiss your critique of their operating methods in the same way they’ve attacked Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and all the others who’ve written exposes of factory farming. You presumably expected some backlash; has it been better or worse than you anticipated?
JSF: Infinitely better. The book’s now been reviewed, I don’t know, a hundred times or whatever it is, and there are enough people who think I’m an jerk, there are enough people who think the style is annoying. But there has not been a single argument in defense of factory farming, or against the premise of the book. Not even a whiff of it.
KT: Let me ask you, is the term “conscientious carnivore” an oxymoron?
JSF: No, and I think that points to something important, which is that these words “carnivore” and “vegetarian” do a real disservice to the conversation. They imply an on/off switch rather than a spectrum. When it’s framed as an all-or-nothing, people who don’t feel like they can do everything sometimes think they should do nothing.
KT: Which is why I so like the Meatless Monday campaign. It’s all about moderation – start your week off right. Positive change. Speaking of positive change, I’ve always had this fantasy that factory farming could become obsolete in our lifetime.
JSF: I think it’s not a fantasy. Remember it only came into being during our parents’ lifetime. And you can rest assured it’s going to disappear. The only question is, is it going to disappear voluntarily or involuntarily?
KT: Glenn Beck and PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk recently ganged up on Al Gore, calling him a hypocrite for not adopting a vegetarian diet. If you happened to find yourself seated next to the former vice president at some gala or forum, what would you say to him on this topic?
JSF: He’s a very smart guy, and I’m sure he’s thought of this stuff before. He knows quite a bit more about the environment than Ingrid Newkirk or Glenn Beck. He has a role in the world, an enormously important role. If he were to declare his vegetarianism tomorrow, it’s conceivable that he wouldn’t be able to do his role in the same way. These are the realities of the world. It shouldn’t be, but it’s considered a fringe position. Yet things are changing. 18% of college students now follow a plant-based diet.
KT: Would you be willing to share your Thanksgiving menu with us?
JSF: I would if I knew it! You can probably guess what it won’t include. But I don’t yet know what it’s going to be. There’s some pressure on me to figure it out (laughs.)
KT: You might need to figure that out before you go on Martha Stewart.
JSF: Oh, maybe I’ll even prepare something with her. Wouldn’t that be funny?
Can’t Reach the Summit Only one G8 leader has confirmed attendance at next week’s Hunger Summit in Rome (Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, who’s hosting) and many stakeholders are not impressed.
GM Export Snafus The EU doesn’t want our GMO soy (or anything else) but that’s not stopping traces of it from winding up in the feedbins of European pigs, which is gumming up international trade.
No Pain, No Problem? Scientists are working on genetically engineering animals not to feel pain, so as to assuage meat eaters of animal welfare concerns, which of course would do nothing about the social and environmental problems with factory farms.
Giving Thanks, Getting Fair The Student/Farmworker Alliance is launching a National Supermarket Week of Action, encouraging ethical eaters to deliver letters to supermarket managers, asking them to consider workers’ rights.
You’re invited to a summit for civic leaders, family farmers, community gardeners, concerned citizens, activists, advocates, parents, food experts, policy makers, environmentalists, nutritionists, educators, urban planners, urban designers, community, business leaders, family farmers, educators, advocates, elected officials and city government leaders. The goal of this Summit is to increase awareness engagement and action around our food system’s role in climate problems and solutions. Featured speakers include Anna Lappé, Marion Nestle and US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
December 12, 2009
8:30a.m.-5:00p.m.
New York University
Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, NY, NY 10012
In one Brooklyn community, neighborhood residents are fighting to keep their farm. Bed-Stuy Farm, once a neighborhood garbage dump, was transformed into an urban oasis that produces over 7,000 lbs of fresh food every year, helping feed more than 4,000 people a month through the Brooklyn Rescue Mission.
The Farm is a source of community pride that has inspired neighborhood greening, backyard food gardening and food pantry agriculture projects. It is a constant reminder to residents that better nutrition and healthy eating are within our grasp. Now, though, the project is threatened by development.
Eating Animals, the searing indictment of factory farming that Jonathan Safran Foer spent three years painstakingly researching, has got the champions of cheap chuck circling their wagons and denouncing the celebrated novelist’s latest work as just another piece of fiction.
Chuck Jolley, writing for the Cattle News Network, even questions Foer’s very identity, describing him as “supposedly a critically acclaimed author of several books of fiction.”
Jolley, a freelance writer based in Kansas City, writes Foer off as part of a “chattering cabal of rarely-been-west-of-the-Hudson River or east-of-the-Cal-Berkeley- campus pseudo-experts who travel on the same midnight train to an eco- purgatory where all food is suspect, meat and poultry is particularly deadly, and the evils of factory farming will force us into an unsustainable, doomed lifestyle that will eventually kill our planet.”
Slice through the snark and Jolley is spot on, describing the dilemmas posed by industrial agriculture in a nutty nutshell.
Meanwhile, his fellow factory farm defender Gary Truitt over at Hoosier Ag Today bemoans the fact that Foer’s book is “being hyped on CNN and quoted widely in liberal newspapers.” Truitt takes issue with Foer’s claim that industrial ag’s excessive reliance on antibiotics–an inevitable by-product of the unhealthy living conditions that are the norm in factory farm operations–is contributing to the rise of drug-resistant pathogens:
The arguments in this book are the same old tired accusations that have been made for decades: modern livestock practices are bad, farmers overmedicate their animals, and this will lead to bacteria that are resistant to drugs. These “super bugs” will then infect humans and kill us all. You would think a fiction writer could come up with something more original.
Kai Olson-Sawyer is program manager for H2O Conserve, a program of GRACE.
On Tuesday November 10th, New York State Department of Conservation (DEC) will host an important public hearing about the threat posed by natural gas drilling to New York City’s drinking water. The Catskill-Delaware watershed, which provides pristine drinking water for the city, is known as one of the largest and finest unfiltered supplies in the world. However, much of New York State’s lower tier, including the Catskill-Delaware watershed, also sits on the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale that extends from Tennessee through Pennsylvania to New York.
In dispute is whether the specialized method of drilling, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for short, should be conducted in the heart of New York City’s watershed, putting its drinking water supply in danger. Besides the chemical-laden fracking fluid that goes into the ground, wastewater that is pulled up contains naturally occurring carcinogens like cadmium and benzene, as well as a gritty mixture of salt and minerals called Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), which can decimate aquatic life in high quantities. This fluid is then shot at high pressure through a borehole in the ground to crack the bedrock and shale layers and release the natural gas. Fracking fluids can go from hundreds to thousands of feet underground to get to gas pockets. Some of the fluids and chemicals remain underground, potentially contaminating groundwater that flows into the New York City water system. Even more disturbing are findings in recent DEC tests that show unsafe levels of radioactive elements present in the wastewater .
New York City drinking water is pure as it travels unfiltered from the watershed to the tap. Any contamination in the watershed could necessitate a water filtration plant that carries a price tag of at least $10 billion (PDF) according to the NYS Department of Health . Many New Yorkers want to avoid a water filtration plant and the higher taxes and water rates that would be incurred.
Two major demands are expected to be made at Tuesday’s hearing by public officials concerned about the safety of the NYC drinking water supply:
• The DEC should extend the commenting period on the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) from 60 days to 120 days in order to for concerned citizens to absorb the material and raise concerns over the 800-page technical document (more DEC information here).
• A ban on fracking in the Catskill-Delaware watershed which could be ordered by New York Governor Paterson and the DEC.
Through the draft SGEIS, the DEC has issued more environmental regulations on natural gas drilling than any other state, like requiring gas drillers to reveal the fracking fluid chemicals and creating 1,000-foot buffer zones around reservoirs and other water bodies in the watershed. However, many problems and questions remain. [Read more →]
The global Meatless Monday movement continues to gain momentum. Britain, Brazil, Holland, Finland and Taiwan have already launched their programs. Now, we’d like to welcome the wonderful people of Canada and congratulate them as they begin their own Meatless Monday!
The Canadian Meatless Monday launched at this year’s Taste of Health convention in Vancouver, Canada. Taste of Health is an opportunity for those concerned with healthy, environmentally friendly food to come together. The convention’s 6,000 attendees welcomed Meatless Monday with open arms.
Nancy Callan, a member of the Board of Directors of Earthsave, and a Meatless Monday advocate, urges Canadians to join the movement:
Unlike many of the solutions to global warming that require government action, Meatless Monday is a tangible personal action that every Canadian can easily embrace. More greenhouse gasses can be prevented by going meatless one day a week than by eating locally seven days a week.
Meatless Monday is quickly gaining popularity in Canada and all Canadians can be part of it! Encourage your friends, family and local restaurants to go meatless on Monday. You can also get involved by contacting the campaign. Remember too that it’s easy to have a Meatless Monday no matter where you live! Sign up for the Meatless Monday pledge to improve both your health and that of the planet!
Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we’ll have an explosion of pests, including disease- carrying mosquitoes and agriculturally destructive beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other foes of the farmers, who may be forced to use more pesticides as a result.
