Uh-Oh Indeed! 15 million pounds of Spaghetti-Os are being recalled after a cooker malfunction left uncooked meat in the mix.  Ewwww!  On a serious note, please forward this information to anyone you know who might use this product (which is marketed to children).  Undercooked canned meat is no laughing matter.

But Wait, There’s More Speaking of which, imported canned meat (from Brazil) tainted with Ivermectin, a veterinary drug, has caused a halt on imports, but the USDA has failed to recall products which made it into the US prior to the ban.  Food & Water Watch is on the case.

Rounding Up Monsanto We missed this back in May, but activists in the Netherlands shut down Monsanto’s main plant there by chaining themselves to the entrance, barring employees from entering.  Most likely to avoid negative publicity, Monsanto did not file any charges.

Gay-friendly Golden Arches in Gay Paree McDonald’s COO Don Thompson is under fire for remarks he made about their new LGBT-friendly ads airing in Europe, the gist of which was that those ads would never fly stateside.

Silver Lining! Eat to Save Seafood If you’re like me, you may have shed some tears over the dead sperm whale in the Gulf, but if you can bring yourself to channel the Walrus and the Carpenter and eat through the tears, do a favor to Gulf-based fishers and foragers and throw your sustainable seafood principles to the wind — Grist’s Bonnie Powell shows us how.

Leveling the Field The USDA announced today a new proposed rule that would provide enhanced protections for livestock and poultry farmers.

Chesapeake v CAFOs Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin (D) and Rep. Elijah Cummings are calling on the Farm Bureau not to block a new bill that would help protect the Bay.

Oh What a Tangled Web The Humane Society and MADD have joined forces to sue the astroturf organization, Center for Consumer Freedom, a long-time front group for industries seeking to stave off meaningful regulations of potentially dangerous products (like booze, high fructose corn syrup and industrially-produced meat), of failing to register as lobbyists.

“Beef Throat” Spills It — and You Can, Too  Investigative reporters at The Faster Times are trying to trace organic ground beef, on a tip that some companies may be passing off old dairy cows as beef cattle.  You can help them, check it out.

Presidential Peas  Our good friend Kim O’Donnel was one of several hundred celebrity chefs from around the country to earn an invite to the White House to peruse the organic garden and talk school lunch.  Eat up her account here.

In Which Smelling Fishy is Good  As opposed to smelling oily, at least.  Experts apply the “sniff test” to seafood from the Gulf.

The End of Endosulfan  In the face of new data indicating that its risks are even more grave than previously suspected, he DDT-like pesticide has once again been banned.

Organic for the Birds? Word on the street is that birds prefer “conventional” seed, but hamsters like organic food and pesticides are linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in small humans.

Untested Catfish US catfish farmers want tighter regulations on catfish imports, of which the FDA only inspects 20% (and 20% of that tests positive for chemicals or drugs currently banned in the US).  The USDA was supposed to begin inspecting catfish imports after the 2008 Farm Bill, but still hasn’t.

Bad (Hot) Dog From the department of You Don’t Say, a new study finds that eating processed meat increases risk of heart disease and diabetes.

GOOD Lunch Oil spill/hotdogs being bad for you/ADHD got you down?  Meatless Monday’s Tami O’Neil reports on positive happenings in school lunchrooms in Baltimore and Oakland at GOOD Magazine.

Soda Tax Fizzles in DC Diabetes may be at an all-time high in the nation’s capital, but if a soda tax is the way to fix that, Washington’s City Council doesn’t think so.

Getting Real US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack talked in Tampa this week about the need  for comprehensive immigration reform from an agricultural perspective.

Big Bounties, Small Surprises Writers at Sojourners Magazine (free registration required) undertook a small scientific study of yields from over 300 farms, organic vs. non, and found that done right, it doesn’t take a lot of land to grow a lot of food.  (Hat tip to Parke Wilde of US Food Policy Blog.)

Retire Ko Ou La When the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture refused their offer of genetically modified seed donations, Monsanto changed up their offer to chemical-doused hybrids (it’s recommended that people who handle plants from these varieties where protective clothing when doing so), but Haitian farmers say they would sooner burn them.

Where Have All the Slaughterhouses Gone? The number of federal and state-inspected slaughterhouses has been shrinking for years (which is one of the challenges facing small livestock producers), and of those who remain, many small meat processors’ fear that new food safety regulations might put them out of business.  The USDA is mapping the gaps.

High Stakes at Portland Pork Cook-off Foodies in Portland, Oregon are serious!  A fistfight broke out after a recent pork cookoff, ostensibly over the winning chef’s use of a hog from Iowa.

Highway to the Safety Zone Yesterday, the USDA’s new rolling food safety project, the USDA Food Safety Discovery Zone, made its debut on the national mall. Maybe it’s coming to your town!

Pinkwashing, too? Environmentalists have been complaining about “greenwashing” (you’re welcome) for years, and now KFC’s new breast cancer awareness campaign has health advocates fired up about “pinkwashing.”  Marion Nestle plays a cameo as the voice of reason.

And CAGE-WASHING? The Animal Welfare Institute takes Perdue to task for misleading consumers. Perdue continues to label their products in ways that sort of acknowledge the problems with their actual production methods, while covering those production methods up with feel-good, made-up terms.

Because Subsidizing Corn Has Worked Wonders The Obama Administration announced Tuesday its plans to fight childhood obesity by increasing food stamp enrollment and subsidizing fruit and vegetable production (ostensibly, encouraging more farmers to ditch unhealthy commodities and opt for growing healthier edibles).  Ag Committee Chairman Colin Petersen doesn’t think it’s going to work.

No Funny Intro “Sweatfield” doesn’t have quite the ring to it that “sweatshop” does, but the new study from Human Rights Watch finds that between 300,000 and 400,000 kids work on farms in the United States, under labor laws that haven’t changed since the 1930s.  Most gross but least shocking?  The Farm Bureau’s “meh” response.

Water, Water, Not Around… New Mexico has never had a lot of water to go around, but what they do have is being used up and tainted by the dairy industry, the nation’s 9th largest.

Last week NYSERDA (the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority) and the Pace Law School Energy and Climate Center released the long-awaited New York Renewable Fuels Roadmap, a study on the state’s potential for the development of a biofuels industry. Despite the positive tone of the press release (with the title “New York Sources of Sustainable Biofuel Could Help Decrease Greenhouse Gas Pollution, Create Jobs, and Increase Energy Security”), a closer look at the report reveals, in fact, the need for extreme caution.

The Roadmap grew out of a recommendation by Governor David Paterson’s 2008 Renewable Energy Task Force to evaluate the effects of increasing biofuels production to help guide state policy in this area. More than a year ago, a group of industry, environmental and institutional stakeholders outlined the following goals for 2030, among others:
- New York would have a vibrant, world-class biofuels industry that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and oil imports, improving environmental quality;
- The state would be a leader in biofuels education and technology research;
- The emerging biofuels industry would help revitalize the state’s economy;
- Biomass feedstocks would be used in the most sustainable manner possible, providing a reliable fuel supply for all New Yorkers.

Who could disagree with such worthwhile aspirations? The problem is that, unfortunately, biofuels are not the solution everyone is looking for.

Optimistically, the Roadmap concludes that biofuels produced in New York have the potential to:
- Replace up to 16 percent of gasoline consumption;
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85 percent;
- Create up to 14,000 jobs and generate as much as $1.8 billion per year.

But these conclusions are based on the theoretical development of a biofuels industry based on cellulosic feedstocks, such as switchgrass, rather than corn, the primary plant that has been used to make biofuels to date. However, a cellulosic biofuels industry does not currently exist anywhere in the world and, by the Roadmap’s own reckoning, is at least five to 10 years away from commercial development. Moreover, the scenarios developed under the Roadmap are based on switching about 30 percent of New York’s existing cropland over to biofuels feedstock production, a move, the study concluded, that may not gain support from the small land owners who comprise much of New York’s agricultural landscape. These are serious uncertainties for an industry that carries the expectation of solving so many problems.

A close reading of the Roadmap also raises grave concerns about potential pollution from biofuels development. (Credit should be given to the authors and coordinators for their unwavering consideration of sustainability.) First, the Roadmap indicates that while certain air pollutants would be reduced under some biofuels production scenarios, other air pollutants would increase. These tradeoffs, the Roadmap concludes, would increase public health problems. In addition, the authors found that the projected expansion of biofuels in New York could cause “soil erosion, impaired water quality, acidification of water and soil, eutrophication of bodies of water [the killing off of a body of water through nutrient run-off that, in turn, causes an over-abundance of algae and other plants, removing all oxygen from the water and choking out life], damage to plants and animals, reduced biodiversity, and loss of habitat.” (The effects on water quality are yet another reminder that water and energy planning and policymaking must be developed together given the strong interconnections between the two.)

At the national level, biofuels production from corn feedstock has already proven to cause these same environmentally devastating consequences. Yet, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack continues to obliviously laud biofuels, now under a catchy three-B’s slogan.

While the sustainable production of biofuels may be possible under rigorous best practices and limited production scenarios, it’s impossible for biofuels to live up to broad energy independence and economic revitalization goals without causing serious environmental problems. The rational behind touting biofuels as a silver bullet solution – farm lobbying and subsidy largesse aside – is one of “petroleum replacement.”

But the rhetoric of substituting the oil fields of the Mideast with the corn fields of the Midwest has already shown to be a disastrous formula, degrading soil and water, while failing to accomplish its replacement promise. New York should instead focus on energy efficiency and conservation, the low-hanging, very ripe fruit of a sustainable energy policy suited to the 21st Century and beyond. State policymakers should also focus on encouraging the use of efficient cars, incentivize car pooling and bike riding, promoting smart urban planning, and promoting investments in public transportation. Instead of three B’s, we need an alphabet soup of diverse policies for energy conservation and efficiency that will result in real benefits for New York’s environment and economy.

A Roundup Roundup The herbicide glysophate, known commercially as Roundup, is losing ground to superweeds on farms around the country.  The New York Times reported, then asked the experts, including Michael Pollan and Anna Lappe.

Oil’s No Good for Cows, Either All eyes are on seafood in the Gulf right now, but cattle are at risk of oil coming ashore, too.

Turning the Food Journalism Table Columbia Journalism Review shines a light this week on our good friend and colleague Tom Philpott of Grist, who is usually the one asking the questions.

Local Food Good for Local Economies Who’d have thought?  Iowa State’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports that the Midwest could benefit by moving away from commodity crops and toward edible food crops, to the tune of over $800 million in sales and over 9,000 jobs.

A Humane Application The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has put together an iPhone app for eating humanely.

Thyme is on Your Side Thyme may help stop the spread of MRSA.

Hellman’s Light Got Realer, in February Not sure how we missed this, but back in February, Hellman’s (that’s Best Foods to those on the West Coast) announced plans to use only cage-free eggs in their “light” mayo, and hopes to extend the practice to other products as more cage-free eggs become available.

Roundup Ready Alfalfa Hits the Supreme Court Monsanto has taken a ruling against the deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa (pending the results of an environmental impact study, which sounds pretty reasonable) to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the case by the end of June.  Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has recused himself from the case because his brother, a judge in San Francisco, issued the initial ruling, but Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who worked as a lawyer for Monsanto back in the 1970s, apparently didn’t feel that was a conflict of interest.

Bring the Heat! No, Don’t! A few friends of ours, including Family Farm Defenders and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, have put together a damning report that outlines industrial agriculture’s role in climate change, calling out industry giants like Dean Foods, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and Monsanto for their (gigantic) contributions to the problem.

Industrial Food vs Military Industry, on the Playground Kate Adamick, a home-cooked school lunch consultant, brings a fresh look at school lunch to The Atlantic.  My favorite quote: “In other words, the industrial food complex is threatening the military industrial complex, and, as a result, the commoditization of our food supply may be forced to take a back seat to the commoditization of our children.”  Oy.

Viva la (Food) Revolucion! IATP’s Food and Society Fellows took a trip down to Cuba awhile back and released a report on their trip last week.  Deb Eschmeyer investigates the state of school food in Havana and don’t miss Roger Doiron’s video on the history of food, both local and imported, in Cuba.

Food Safety Killed vs Local Farmers? Salon ponders the effects of proposed testing regulations on small producers.

Move Over Greenwashing, Enter Hungerwashing In one of the most mind-boggling publicity stunts of all time, KFC will donate the buns they replaced with slabs of fried chicken in their artery-clogging Double Down to food pantries.  In other words, you can feel better about ingesting an entire day’s worth of animal-derived protein (the USDA’s DRI for men ages 19-70 is 56, for women it’s 46, the sandwich contains 53) in one sandwich because hungry folks around the country are getting an extra dose of refined flour.

In Case You Can’t Find a Pepsi Vendor This week, Foursquare, the location-based social networking platform, announced plans to partner with Pepsi.  According to the New York Times, Foursquare’s GPS program would notify Pepsi when a user was in the vicinity of a business where its products were sold and in turn, push discount notifications to the user as part of its “loyalty program.”  Sounds pretty creepy.

Don’t Know Your Farmer A couple of United States senators (hi Saxby Chambliss, John McCain and Pat Roberts) have issued a letter to USDA secretary Tom Vilsack, condemning the agency’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program.

Where’s the Trust? New antitrust rules are on their way for the meat industry.  Will they have teeth?  Stay tuned to find out.

Natural Growth Organics outpaced other sectors of food market growth — again — last year.

Show Them the Money! Still no justice for black farmers who won a class action lawsuit against the USDA back in February.

Land Ho…No A troubling new survey from the Natural Resources Inventory reports that millions of acres of prime farmland were lost over a 25-year span (1982 – 2007).  The losses were felt in every state in the union.

Episode 1 is a conversation with Mother Jones Magazine reporter Josh Harkinson, who has written extensively about water availability issues in California’s Central Valley, including The New Dust Bowl, an article on how water scarcity is affecting farm workers in Mendota.

Episode 2 is a conversation with Susana de Anda, co-director and co-founder of the Community Water Center, an advocacy organization that works to promote community access to safe, clean, and affordable water in California’s Central Valley.

“Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. …and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” – John Steinbeck, “The Grapes of Wrath”

In “The Grapes of Wrath” the Joad family went to California for the promise of jobs resulting from new irrigation projects. In the 1920s through the 1950s California’s newly built pipelines moved water south to arid land with fertile soil. Unfortunately, that infrastructure was designed around conditions that no longer exist.

California might be in a drought or we may be seeing a new – significantly lower – “normal” for precipitation in the state. It could be that the type, amount and location of rain and snowfall no longer match California’s infrastructure. In any case, I have to wonder why we are growing rice and cotton on land that receives such limited rainfall, regardless of how fertile the soil is.

Those whose lives and livelihoods depend on California water and agriculture are stuck in the middle of this debate. If you’re dependent on fields receiving water in order to pay back loans and feed your family, the distinction between drought and a “new normal” isn’t as important as knowing that water will get to the fields. Lately, due to various forces of nature and human activity the water hasn’t been getting there.

Recent rainfalls notwithstanding, we have engineered a system in California that won’t survive unless we change the ways we use water. People point fingers at who is to blame or who has control or whose facts are more accurate than others, but the reality is that Americans have come to rely on water-intensive California agriculture. In addition, California’s water crisis is fueled by poor water management and explosive population growth and sprawl. Now the governor has proposed a massive bond measure to add to the state’s infrastructure and exploit new water sources, but the measure has received only mixed support and a fair amount of opposition.

Water rates are (or are supposed to be) set to cover the cost of the infrastructure built to treat and move the water; however, rates don’t typically include a cost for the actual water itself and water for agriculture is often subsidized significantly below market value. In addition, prior appropriation water rights typically have a “use it or lose it” feature that discourage efficiency and conservation in agriculture.

The rest of the nation should closely watch the results of that bond vote in November because the problems in California have an awful lot to do with our expectations as a nation. We expect that California produce will be there when we want it and water will keep flowing as it has for the past 80 years.

Of course there may always be water flowing in California, but “normal” is definitely in flux and we can’t control the weather. Before we construct massive new water delivery systems that encourage waste and consume large amounts of energy, perhaps we should consider adjusting our expectations about what can realistically be grown, when and where. Maybe it’s time to stop creating fruits that are too expensive or too complicated to be eaten in good conscience.

On the Move Deb Eschmeyer reports back from the White House Childhood Obesity Summit.  In other Let’s Move news, our food-savvy First Lady toured a community garden run by international refugees in San Diego and called it “a model for the nation, for the world.”

Auditing Our Inspection Process USA Today reports on a federal audit which found major problems with the way government agencies test (or don’t test, as it were) meat for chemical contamination.  If you thought testing was lax on the disease front, you’ve got to read this.

Let Them Eat Low-Carbon New restaurant Otarian, due to open next week in NYC, boasts a strong focus on green eating, but The Village Voice has dug up some dirt on founder Radhika Oswal and her husband, Pankaj Oswal, owner of Burrup Fertilisers.  Apparently, the two are building a $70 million home in Australia, to include a gymnasium and hair salon.  Don’t worry, they’ve banned the construction crew from eating meat.

Hedging their Health Care Bets? A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health reports that many life and health insurance companies have invested heavily in fast food companies.  (hat tip to Meredith Modelewski)

McDonald’s Says No to Cage Free The McDonald’s board is encouraging share holders to vote against requiring the chain to source 5% of their eggs from cage-free producers.

Raising the (Green) Roof in NY There is a movement underfoot — or put more aptly, overhead — to green roofs in NYC and around the state.

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One A new study by the National Research Council suggests that genetically modified crops (when compared to the conventional crops they’ve replaced) provide benefits in the form of increased yields and decreased pesticide use, but that those gains can be and are being compromised by over usage.

In her books The Comfort Table and The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions, Lee makes a tasty case for “conscious consumption.” You’ll find her on CBS’s Early Morning Show whipping up fresh foods with ingredients your Grandma (and hers) would find reassuringly familiar–not like the slop that got Jamie Oliver so distraught when he descended on Huntington.

Lee is proof positive that back in the day, people in West Virginia knew how to make wholesome meals from scratch and took the time to sit down to savor them with friends and family. And so did the rest of us. What’s truly extraordinary about the people of Huntington is really how ordinary they are, a microcosm of the rest of the country, by and large (as it were.) I asked Lee if she would share her thoughts with me about her hometown and her passion for good food, and she graciously obliged:

KT: What was your first thought when you heard that Jamie Oliver had chosen your hometown of Huntington, West Virginia in which to launch ‘his’ Food Revolution?

KL: I met Jamie in London last summer, just a few months before he launched his revolution. A mutual friend, chef Adam Perry Lang, introduced us when he realized I was from the Huntington area. As a long time fan of Jamie Oliver, I was so thrilled to hear he was taking his ideas of healthy living that had worked so well in the UK and bringing them to my hometown.

Listening to him speak so passionately about his ideas was very inspiring. Huntington may be statistically the most unhealthy city in America, but it’s not far off from most areas in our country. I think it’s an opportunity for people in Huntington to not only get healthy, but also be role models for the rest of the country.

KT: Can you tell us how the food that Jamie’s show depicts the folks there eating now compares to how you ate as a child?

KL: I was very blessed to grow up in a family that appreciated good food. My mom and I lived in the same neighborhood as my grandparents, my great grandmother and my great aunt and uncle. My grandfather had a green thumb and grew all kinds of vegetables, he had a cousin that raised cows, and a cousin that raised pigs and everyone shared their food. At any given time, you could go in my grandma’s kitchen and find her cooking up something delicious.

We had a handful of fast food restaurants in the area, but more “mom and pop” local restaurants that served home-style food. It wasn’t necessarily low-fat, but it was real. It wasn’t the processed crap that you get in a drive-thru. People cooked at home more, too.

Nowadays, most of those locally run restaurants are nowhere to be found, replaced by one junky fast food restaurant or chain after another. I watched cafeteria food change while I was growing up too — while in elementary the cooks actually cooked and by the time I got to high school, the cooks were reheating frozen chicken nuggets and pizza.

It really makes me sad. I believe everyone can cook if they set their minds to it, and their lives would be enriched by it.

KT: What did your friends and family have to say about Jamie and his show when you went home for the holidays last week?

KL: Jamie’s revolution is the talk of the town. It was in the local newspaper every day that I was there. I think the feelings on the premise of the show are mixed — some people really believe he can help the town, others think it’s impossible to change, much like Rod the DJ. I was so incredibly disappointed when I watched that first episode and saw Rod’s reaction. Jamie is there with the best of intentions and it’s important to be open-minded.

I was in Huntington for the taping of the final episode and Jamie had a street fair. People were out and about, enjoying eating healthy food and celebrating the revolution. I’m hoping as the show progresses, we will see more people like Rod have a change of heart.

KT: Given that you’re known for your prize-winning Logan County Burger (which is really more of a patty melt) and your meatloaf recipe, it might come as a shock to some people to hear that you were once a vegetarian. What role does meat play in your meals these days?

KL: Yes, the burger queen was once a vegetarian! I went meat-free for about five years, during high school and part of college. As you might imagine, I caught some grief in high school, as I was the only vegetarian in our class.

I do eat meat now, and I enjoy it very much, but I am very conscious of where I get my meat and how it was raised. My diet is not meat-heavy, so when I am cooking meat I seek out the highest quality.

I also participate in Meat-Free or Meatless Mondays, an initiative to not eat meat one day a week. Going without meat just one day can make a huge environmental impact.

KT: Your pug Fionula is quite the lucky pup–you make all her food from scratch. What inspired you to start making your own dog food?

KL: I started making much of Fionula’s food because she got pancreatitis a few months ago. I’ve always been very strict with her diet, only feeding her organic dog food, but after her sickness I decided to cook her food myself. She eats mostly organic chicken, rice and veggies.

KT: Your definition of comfort food is based on the notion that since we are what we eat, we ought to know what we’re eating. Would it be fair to describe you as a kind of homegrown cross between Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver? A populist Michael Pollan? A 21st century Edna Lewis? A lean Paula Deen? All of the above?

KL: All of the people you mentioned are people I greatly admire for what they have accomplished. The world of food is so consuming that there is room for all different opinions and personalities. I always think that comfort food starts at the source. To be truly comforted by your food, you need to know where it comes from and be comfortable with the way it was raised and how it got to your plate. I believe in eating healthy, real food and being comfortable.