Power to the Parents! – That’s the rallying cry at the first New York City school to adopt Meatless Mondays. Up next?  A Bake-in at City Hall March 18.

Subsidies for Slop – Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Brooklyn community organizer Mark Winston Griffith talked to Brian Lehrer this week about ending food deserts. Stringer startled Lehrer with the truly gross revelation that City tax incentives continue to subsidize fast food outlets including – count ‘em – six McDonalds in Manhattan alone!

Cootie Crops – An Arkansas farmer who sued Bayer for GMO contamination of his crops has been awarded more than $1 million in damages in a decision that will doubtless be appealed.

CAFOs Spawning Civil War – Rural residents of Pennsylvania have been fighting their own elected representatives in their desire to stave off the toxic effects of factory farms. This week, many of them took their fight to the state capitol.

Ag Monopoly – A series of highly anticipated Department of Justice hearings into antitrust issues raised by the concentration of business in agriculture kicks off today in Ankeny, Iowa with a look at problems faced by crop farmers, including the effects of GMO seeds and vertical integration.  The hearings are being held in conjunction with USDA.  With both Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder scheduled to speak, media scrutiny and public attention should be intense. One indication of the high level of interest is the fact that more than 15,000 pre-hearing comments have been received from farmers, consumers, academics, elected officials, and industry groups. Here is a related story from the NY Times.

Borlaug Passes The “father of the green revolution” recently died at 95.  The NY Times focused primarily on his achievements in this obituary, while Paula Crossfield examined his legacy a bit more critically.

Worse than Rocket Fuel? The Times continues its “Toxic Waters” series, this time with dire news about the fouling of local wells from the irresponsible application of CAFO waste to fields in Wisconsin.

Soda Sips = Straight to Your Hips The city of New York recently launched a gruesome campaign against sugary drinks.  Meanwhile, health commissioner Thomas Farley announced new health plans, making it easier for New Yorkers to get their exercise on.

But the Price is Right It may be “Food Desert Month” but Tom Laskawy likens some of our nation’s neighborhoods to “food swamps,” noting how cheap bad food really is.

$20 billion food security initiative announced at G8 World leaders dug a little deeper than expected today, pledging an extra $5 billion in food aid to poor countries.  A new focus on promoting agriculture is exciting, but given Hillary Clinton’s recent love letter to biotech, sustainable food advocates like our friend Paula at Civil Eats are wary of the role genetic engineering might play in this initiative.

There’s gotta be a better way Through an interview with GE expert  Doug Gurian-Sherman, Elanor at the Ethicurean presents one.

Whole Foods goes investigative The natural food giant has announced plans to begin testing private label foods for genetically modified ingredients.  COOL.

Oh no, Nestle The E. coli tainting of one of America’s most trusted brands has grown to 74 sickened in 32 states and it gets worse — as it turns out, Nestle refused to turn over pest control reports and other pertinent documents from 2004 – 2007.

Where’s the beef, indeed With barbecue season in full swing, Bill Marler thinks the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) ought to abide by its own rules and fill the public in on where all that tainted beef went. Uh, yeah.

Second pick, even better than the first LA-based Food Forward hosted their second “Big Pick” and managed to harvest a whopping 8,000 pounds of fresh oranges to be distributed to local food pantries.

Swine flu takes Wimbledon Three “relatively unknown” doubles players left Wimbledon after taking ill from H1N1, also known as swine flu.  28 Wimbledon staff members have also been sent home with flu symptoms.

Tipping the scales Riffing off an AP report on a new obesity study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Tom Laskawy points out the links between obesity and health care and the cost of healthful food.  Could it be that cheap food is costing us in the long run?  Signs point to yes.

Global hunger tops 1 billion This from the FAO, which reports the “biggest ever year-on-year increase” in hunger and blames the poor global economy and high food prices for the jump.

Food security more complex than income and demand Science Daily has a preview of a new report on food security in Asia, which ends with a recommendation to look at not only efficiency in food production (what we’ve been looking at) but also sustainability. Sounds good.

Getting Permacultured Jen M. at the Ethicurean reports on her enviable trip to George Jones Memorial Farm in Oberlin, Ohio.

Vilsack on CAFOs, swine flu H1N1 Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stood up for industrial livestock operations, saying that the “‘vast, vast, vast majority of farmers who are raising livestock are very sensitive’ to the need to be careful about the management of their animals,” going on to reiterate the food safety point he made earlier this year about peanut butter, that the industry would gain nothing by killing their market. At Beyond Green, Tom Laskawy points out Vilsack’s refusal to talk swine flu.

Speaking of swine flu Tom Philpott reports at Grist that scientists from the Biotechnology Institute (a Big Pharma front group) are heading to La Gloria, where the outbreak first occurred, likely to try to pin the virus on backyard hogs, rather than those raised at the nearby Smithfield operation. The Mexican government is also investigating but we’ll just echo Tom here: Where’s the WHO with an independent follow up to the test Smithfield ran on hand-picked hogs?

NYC’s new food strategy Bloomberg, Paterson and Quinn have announced new strategies to get more grocery stores into underserved neighborhoods in the Big Apple.

FDA, BPA lobby in bed cozy Kudos to the unnamed investigative reporters who gained access to emails and attachments between the BPA lobby and FDA officials, the gist of which was that the FDA relied on the lobbyists to offset evidence of health risks associated with the substance.

A who’s who in food policy On Tuesday, Food & Water Watch’s Elanor Starner (also of Ethicurean fame) presented at the first of Civil Eats’ new Kitchen Table Talks series. We wish they were being held closer to us but are pleased just to get the rundown with this hugely helpful overview of the USDA.

Dear Oprah, can I have mine pasture-raised? The internet nearly exploded this week with the launch of Oprah’s “gift” in the form of a download-able KFC coupon for “un-fried” chicken. In the blogosphere, sustainable agriculture and animal welfare advocates came out heavy on this one, and in the real world, riots ensued. (Or did they?). NPR calls the shenanigan the “James Frey of fast food.” (Hat tip to Edible SF.)

Gleaning wisdom Highly talented photographer-turned-community organizer/urban gleaner Rick Nahmias has a wonderfully inspirational post up at Huffington this week about LA-area Food Forward, a group that is harvesting from abandoned trees and giving the fruits of their labor to food banks.

All around the world, same Smithfield song If your heart can take it, check out this in-depth piece in the NY Times, which outlines what I’ll call the “Smithfield effect” in Eastern Europe, where it has played out largely as it has in the U.S., with historic levels of pollution and a 90% decrease in the number of hog farmers.

The one who got away On a lighter note, the Times also reports this week on Molly, the calf who escaped from a Queens slaughterhouse, to subsequently be taken in on an organic farm outside of the Hamptons.

(Slow) Food fight. Fourth graders in Madison WI planned a boycott of the unhealthy food served in their cafeteria last Friday. It was canceled when parents alerted by school officials with concerns over food allergies, supervision and media.

Egg wavin’ New Haven. As urban livestock becomes more popular in cities across the country, legislation has been introduced in New Haven that will allow residents to raise hens.

Capitol Hill chowdown. Next Tuesday, congressional leaders from across the country will take part in a lunch prepared by Chicago high schoolers who want to introduce healthy foods in schools. Urge your local leader to join the feast here.

A US export? The Humane Society points to CDC documentation of similar flu bugs first identified over 10 years ago in North Carolina.

Big Ag as the Grim Reaper? Regina Weiss brings the Smithfield connection to the mainstream press via an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer on behalf of our friends at Sustainable Table (and in doing so, advocates for the residents of Peach Bottom, PA, who may soon find out what it’s like to live next door to a CAFO).

Links galore Livable Future blog has a comprehensive roundup of stories so far.

What’s in a name? In last night’s press conference, President Obama called the strain of influenza by its scientific name, in a likely attempt to take some heat off the pork industry, which is taking some major hits on this one in spite of officials’ insistence that eating pork is as safe as ever. Others, however, have coined the terms NAFTA flu and factory farm flu.

Could Google have caught it sooner? Wired thinks so.

Laying (and taking) blame Elissa Altman of PoorMansFeast.com blames cheap food and those who eat and promote it — herself included — for the outbreak.

Mobile updates If you’re not getting enough swine flu info via your computer, you can sign up for SMS updates at cellphones.org.

Wednesday afternoon, near the end of the conference, I started feeling feverish and headachy and my “allergies” theory began to wear thin. I took some aspirin and though I hated to, I ducked out of the after-dinner socializing hours earlier than I normally would have. The next morning I woke with a ragingly stuffy head and there was no denying that I was sick. As one who cringes at others who even sniffle on planes, I started feeling guilty about the afternoon’s flights home, in the recycled air, next to some unsuspecting stranger.

Saturday, as the news broke about the swine flu, the Facebook pages of friends I saw at the conference started mentioning that they were sick, too. As I pushed back nagging questions about whether or not the incubation period of this flu meant it could be much more widespread than suspected, perhaps enough to have infected us, it became clear that whatever we did all have was contagious.

As public health authorities around the world began to sound the alarm about the swine flu I was busy convincing myself I didn’t have, so too did the crowd I’d been rubbing shoulders with in California, issuing forth a flurry of emails with links to evidence that pointed to industrial pork production practices as the likely cause of the outbreak. Tom Philpott of Grist cites the Mexican newspaper La Marcha, which in an April 15th article names a likely suspect in the hog farms run by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of Smithfield, the largest pork processor in the world and the subject of the 2006 Rolling Stone article Boss Hog (which points to Smithfield, among other things, as one of the worst polluters on the globe.)

Here’s the connection: if a commercial flight is a prime breeding ground for airborne infectious disease, consider the digs of modern hogs. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms, bring together tens of thousands of animals in quarters that make a sold-out 747 look spacious. Keeping a cap on disease in such conditions has risen to a sort of macabre art form involving the use of antibiotics (including the “non-therapeutic” use, which means that they feed the animals antibiotics as a preventative measure) to ward off the infectious diseases you might expect to thrive in such a place. This practice has been linked to the spread of drug-resistant MRSA bacteria, but is not likely the cause of the influenza outbreak. Manure lagoons, the gigantic receptors for the millions of gallons of excrement expelled by the thousands of animals, may be the more likely culprit. To quote Tom Philpott’s “rough translation” of the La Marcha article published back on April 15:

The article goes on to say that area residents have long complained of “fetid odors” in the air and water, and swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons. Like their counterparts who live in CAFO-heavy U.S. areas, they also complain of respiratory ailments. Now, with 30 percent of the area’s residents now infected with the virulent flu bug, people are demanding that state and federal authorities inspect hog operations there.

The Guardian, which is now reporting that 60 per cent of La Gloria’s population have fallen ill, backs up the CAFO connection thusly:

In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.

Smithfield released a statement Sunday denying the evidence of swine flu in its Mexican operations. Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the pandemic threat level from 3 to 4 on a scale of 6, and today they say it “can no longer be contained,” with confirmed cases throughout Asia, in Israel and New Zealand. Authorities around the globe seem to share my airport worries, as surgical masks sell out and travelers are screened and quarantined. In the meantime, many governments have placed emergency bans on North American pork products, Smithfield’s stock has taken a dive, and the American mainstream media are blowing up with breaking information but so far, few have reported on the Smithfield connection except to repeat the company’s denial of responsibility or the drop in stock prices (CNN Money and The New York Times have touched on but not delved into the subject).

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was quick to point out early on that consumers are still safe to eat pork, but the statement begs the questions, who wants to eat meat from animals who are jammed in together the majority of their lives, their excrement at best degrading waterways and polluting the air and at worst, the cause of a global influenza pandemic?

Eddie Gehman Kohan is reminding readers at Obama Foodorama that “[l]ocal and regional food sourcing is also a better model in terms of general food safety (we currently are capable of inspecting less than one percent of our own imported foods),” and although in the face of this public health crisis, eating local might seem a laughable solution, it seems abundantly clear that industrial agriculture practices leave animals, workers, the general public and the environment at risk in ways that localized systems may not, and that the mainstream media (and while we’re at it, international health officials) should be taking a long hard look at the laws that allow for such practices and the companies that profit on account of them.

As for me, my cough is hanging on but my fever broke days ago and I doubt it was the swine flu. I hope it wasn’t because if it was, we’re a lot worse off than authorities expect, and the fact that I spent time in four different airports last week means that I likely infected many more people, in spite of my best efforts to wash my hands, cover my mouth and nose while sneezing and coughing.

Imagine how many pigs I could have infected if I’d spent last week in a CAFO.

Related links:

The Humane Society’s Factory Farming Campaign

David Kirby on The Huffington Post

A roundup of online resources for tracking the swine flu at CNET

The Pew Commission’s Occupational and Community Public Health Impacts of Industrial Farm Animal Production (PDF — see pg 13 for info on the generation of novel viruses)

Failure to yield That’s the name of a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists on yield increases in Bt cotton and corn, which Elanor at The Ethicurean calls “stunningly lame.” Meanwhile, NPR reports that the so-called Green Revolution has resulted, for India, in an agriculture system that is unprofitable, unsustainable and on the brink of collapse.

Plastic making kids fat? Researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center have found a link between plastics and childhood obesity.  In a study of 400 young girls, levels of phthalates (an endocrine-disruptor found in many types of plastic) in urine corresponded directly with weight, meaning that the girls with the highest levels of phthalates were also the heaviest.

Gendreck veg, for real Germany has banned the selling and planting of Monsanto’s Bt corn. German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner made the announcement this week, saying that she had legitimate reasons to believe MON 810 could put the environment at risk.

Faces of a grass-fed movement The Ethicurean’s Bonnie Powell and her husband Bart have put together a fantastic slide show of attendees of last year’s Food & Society conference.

Au contrarian Livable Future blog responds to an op-ed from last Friday’s NY Times, where one James McWilliams paints free-range pork as more likely than its pent-up counterpart to harbor trichinosis, pointing out what he fails to mention — namely, that the study he cites was sponsored by the National Pork Board and that the hogs didn’t test positive for trichinosis, but for antibodies against it.