(image courtesy of R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, via lolpresident)
But what’s his food policy? Congrats to Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama. A few weeks ago, an interview regarding his agriculture policies was posted to the Tufts Comfood listserv. Jill Richardson, aka orangeclouds115 of Daily Kos, dissects his answers over at Golden Apple Press.
You say tomato…The great 08 tomato recall has expanded to the entire country, with 228 sickened by salmonella in 23 states. While Mexico tries to figure out what to do with all those leftover tomatoes, Slate asks how it got there. Dr. David Acheson of the FDA says: “[t]he goal is to trace it back to the farm and try to find out what went wrong.” Uh, yeah. Tough though, with a broken supply system.
S. Koreans have a serious beef The high school kids who questioned the US beef supply probably never guessed that their efforts would blossom into a massive movement against new president Lee Myung-bak, whose entire cabinet has since offered to step down. Check out these photos.
Brasilians fired up, too Activists have been on the move all week in Brasil, peacefully protesting monocropping, skyrocketing food prices and multinational control of agriculture. On Wednesday, protesters who stormed a WalMart-owned supermarket in Sao Paulo were met with rubber bullets and tear gas. Earlier that day, Via Campesina farmers briefly took over a eucalyptus plantation in Santa Maria. (AP)
Ok, seriously As if we needed another reason to condemn question the use of corn ethanol, Treehugger reports that scientists have linked the biofuel boom to what is expected to be a record-breaking dead zone in the Gulf this summer.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Dagny McKinley // Jun 15, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Wow! What a string of great news. The problem with corn for fuel is it’s causing food shortages around the world. Anything that is grown in too large a quantity for a supply it can’t fill is going to have environmental repercussions.
Dagny McKinley
http://www.onnotextiles.com
organic appparel
2 Frederick Mills // Jun 16, 2008 at 2:09 am
This seemed like the best place to jump in regarding the matter of finding organic beef.
In the past three or four years I’ve been traveling from Olympia, WA to Houston, Texas where my two oldest sons are located.
While in Texas over the holidays last year I was surprised to learn how easy it was to obtain organic meat and wild fish as compared to Olympia. In the small town where my oldest son lives in Conroe, Texas (about 40 miles north of Houston) organic meat was available in two of the major stores in that area.
When I returned to Olympia, WA I found it was practically impossible to obtain local organic meat, other than chicken or turkey (and even that wasn’t very available), from the mainstream markets. I had a mindset that just because I lived in the northwest that such things would be readily available. Not so, in Olympia, WA at least.
In order to turn that around I did discuss the problem with local Olympia markets and maybe that will eventually make a difference.
3 leslie // Jun 16, 2008 at 11:19 am
Thanks for the comments!
Dagny, I agree that growing corn for fuel when we are facing a food shortage is not the best idea, but it’s also problematic for other reasons, including the fact that producing it requires more energy than the end product generates. Here are a couple of good links:
http://blog.eatwellguide.org/2008/05/guest-dish-food-vs-fuel-round-one/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/july05/ethanol.toocostly.ssl.html
And Fred–
Have you tried searching the Eat Well Guide? Click on “Find Good Food” in the upper nav here. Funny that you’d have a tough time finding organic beef in Oly (I used to live there–Fred is a friend of mine) since it’s such a progressive town with a great market. Surely the farmers’ market has got it going on.
Another thing–organic is definitely not the end-all, be-all with beef. When I indulge, I’m much more concerned with whether my meat was raised on pasture than whether it was organic–factory farms can feed cattle organic corn, but it’s still not good for the cattle or you, because ruminants are not meant to digest corn and often develop E. coli as a result of a corn-based diet, and the meat contains an inverse relation of bad-to-good fats (too few Omega 3s, too many Omega 6s).
Anyway, before you leave Oly, you ought to get out to one of those pasture-raised farms in the area, get some nice lean beef and have a BBQ!
4 Frederick Mills // Jun 17, 2008 at 12:08 am
When I was in Texas the last time (I’m on my way back there as we speak) I did go to Eat Well Guide and found several organic meat sources in the area. Its a great resource. It wasn’t that I couldn’t go on line and find it when I was in Oly, what was surprising to me was the fact that organic meat was readily available in the Texas markets without my having to go on line, and not so in Oly.
I’m sorry if I conveyed the impression to folks that Olympia was devoid of Organic food (including meat). Definitely not so. I just found it interesting that local markets did not have organic meat, especially in a town that is supposedly so forward looking.
When I threw a St. Patricks Day dinner at my place in Oly last March I called around and finally found some Organic Corned Beef in McKenna at Stewarts Meats. And good point about checking out how the beef was raised. This I did not do and I’m totally with you on that score.
On the upside the managers I talked to in the Oly local marekets regarding this subject are slowly (governed by the demand) going to introduce more organic meats in the near future.
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