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.

Don’t worry — there will still be plenty of tips on how to green your fork, and we think you’ll appreciate our expanded focus.  And don’t worry about finding us, either — just meet us back here at greenfork.org and we will whisk you along to our new location.

Looking forward!
The Grace Team

The Eat Well Guide has partnered with the Presbyterian Hunger Program and their agrarian road trip to help them find good food along the way to the US Social Forum! They will begin their journey in Louisville, Kentucky and arrive in Detroit, well-fed, having made lots of sustainable stops along the way. Check out the Eat Well Guide map tracking their events and offering up suggestions of farmers markets, farmers, CSAs, restaurants and more to find sustainable food in every city! Read on for more from the Presbyterian Hunger Program about their trip…

The Heaven on Earth Agrarian Road Trip (HEART) is 15 adventurous individuals from around the country who will be exploring local food and food justice initiatives in eight states. These are gallant efforts to rebuild local/regional food supplies that are more equitable, more just for farmers and farm workers, more secure, and more sustainable for the future. At the end of the journey, HEART will join some 17,000 people in Detroit – “Ground Zero for Urban Farming and Renewal” – for the 2nd US Social Forum, where Food Justice will be a powerful theme.

WHY HEART? Vibrant local/regional food economies are needed in the United States AND everywhere – especially in impoverished nations whose farming has been weakened by international trade rules, foreign “assistance” policies, and the dumping of subsidized crops on their economies.

Road Trippers have experienced these problems in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and will highlight these issues along the way. But the main focus will be to explore, celebrate and broadcast to the wider church the great things happening to address these systemic problems in our food and farm systems – by starting in our own households, congregations and communities.

As we rebuild food security and sovereignty here in the United States, let us always remember, pray for, and do all we can to support the same around the world. Advocacy on US foreign assistance and global food security legislation, as well as the Trade Act, will be critical this year.

So . . . How to follow the HEART?

Home base for the Heaven on Earth Agrarian Road Trip will be the Food and Faith Blog where you can find HEART photos, posts, videos and interviews from the Road Trippers, June 13 – 26.

Follow HEART and find events along the way! The Eat Well Guide has donated their database of local food farms, farmers markets, restaurants and much more to create a Heaven on Earth map, event descriptions, and even a printable local foods and farms resource for each of the towns we’ll visit.

Find us on the HEART Google map.

And “fan” the HEART facebook page for more updates!

“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.

The Sweetie and I were driving through the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, reluctantly following the bossy directions of the GPS who was taking us through what would commonly be called “a lousy neighborhood.”

The elevated train was rumbling above us, and I was looking around at the ramshackle collections of shops. Suddenly, among second-hand furniture and used TV stores I saw a fence and the sign:  BUSHWICK CITY FARM.  What?  In this unlikely spot?

We parked the car, walked in, and were greeted by an amiable young woman, a teenager, six chickens, and two cats.  It turns out that the amiable young woman decided–fortunately for the U.S. in general and Bushwick in particular–to emigrate from Russia.  With a slight accent, Masha Radzinsky told us that she lived in Bushwick and every time she passed the garbage heap in this deep, skinny lot, she thought about turning it into a garden.  One day she started doing just that.  Here’s a mighty example of what one person can do…

With the help of neighborhood volunteers who signed on when they saw her beginning to remove the rubble, Masha first carted off tons of debris.  Once the land was cleared, she rescued six chickens about to be slaughtered and two cats about to be put down at the neighboring shelter.   The chickens are there to eat the weeds and produce excellent compost.  The cats are there for fun. The cats and chickens get along just fine.

Attached to the front fence, there’s a basket of bread contributed by a neighborhood bakery for those in need.  The sign reads “Comida Gratis,”  free food.

Masha has already set up a compost bin and, while we were there, a neighbor parked her bike at the entrance to the garden and dropped off some vegetable scraps.  Others have contributed soil and plants.

There’s a raised bed at the back waiting for more soil and vegetable seedlings with the idea of giving the produce away for free.  But the garden has run out of money.  The Sweetie, being his usual generous self, opened his wallet.  But more help is needed. If you know of anyone who would like to contribute organic soil or seedlings–or some seed money or sweat equity–contact Masha at bushwickcityfarm@gmail.com. (At this point, the farm has no help from the city and no grants or other financial support.)

Below this photo of the garden, you’ll find a U-Tube clip of Masha telling us about the garden and showing us around.  You also meet one of the volunteers, Coralis Henriquez, who will tell that she loves hanging around the garden and helping out “because it’s so nice and green around here.”

Nothing says summer like strawberries, but before you bite into your next, read this.

Methyl Bromide, a soil fumigant often used on strawberry crops, was phased out in the US by 2005 because it was depleting the ozone layer. The phase out was based on the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the Clean Air Act.

Good news, right? The EPA was acknowledging that yet one more federally-approved chemical was actually causing more harm than good. But I only found out about the banned Methyl Bromide because of the attention recently placed on Methyl Iodide. Approved in 2007, and currently used in many states as a “good” replacement for the banned Methyl Bromide, Methyl Iodide has its own set of problems.

Methyl Iodide is currently under scrutiny as the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) proposes approval of its use. Even though Methyl Iodide is used in many states already, California, which has its own pesticide approval process, has been questioning its safety level for the last year. While Methyl Iodide is not an ozone depleting pesticide like Methyl Bromide, it is extremely toxic to humans, a consistent carcinogenic that is used in the lab by chemists to induce cancer in experimental subjects such as mice. It has also been found to affect the nervous system, lungs, liver and kidneys, and to damage human fetuses.

While an independent review requested by the DPR concluded that “any anticipated scenario for … use of this agent would result in exposures to a large number of the public and thus would have a significant adverse impact on the public health,” the agency is still pushing for its approval, suggesting more stringent regulations than originally spelled out by the EPA. These tighter regulations include better training in proper application, controlling the amount used, limiting exposure for workers and requiring special permits. They would also include bigger “buffer zones” between fields sprayed with the toxin and local hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and schools.

Though it isn’t looking good, if the California proposal is rejected, it could have a large impact, possibly moving up the next scheduled federal review of Methyl Iodide, now slated for 2013. It could even help lead to a federal ban.

As the revolving doors between industry and the government continue to …revolve, it takes very little digging to unearth a sketchy connection in this situation. In 2007, the year Methyl Iodide was approved by the EPA, Elin Miller, a past employee of Arysta (the company that makes the pesticide), was EPA Administrator for Region 10, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington State and 267 Indian Tribes. Methyl Iodide was originally approved for one year, but the probationary time line was extended indefinitely as the Bush administration left office.

In the wake of President Obama’s Cancer Panel report, which found that the “risk of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated,” and links between chemicals and diseases (such as that between pesticides and ADHD) showing up regularly, the DPR’s proposal flies in the face of facts we’ve been privy to for a long time. You can send your comments about the proposal to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation until June 29^th at mei_comments@cdpr.ca.gov.

More Information:

Scientists Fume Over California’s Pesticide Plans, Pesticide Action Network – Methyl Iodide

Helpful tips:

Dirty Dozen – Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides

The “top kill” didn’t work?  Really?  The “junk shot?”  (And who is coming up with these names, by the way?)  They’re pouring thousands of gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf to counter the oil spewing forth?  Those chemicals are highly toxic and possibly creating plumes, increasing danger to coral reefs and other sealife?  The EPA didn’t test them until after BP had started using them?  It took the president how long to issue an apparently toothless moratorium on off-shore drilling?  People are getting haircuts all over the country, for nothing?  It took the EPA how long to finally demand BP switch to a less toxic dispersant?

August???  I mean…it’s crazy, right?

This might sound crazy too, but maybe mushrooms would be a better deal than these chemical dispersants.  That’s right, mushrooms.  I thought it was crazy, too, the first time I heard about it, about 10 or 15 years ago.  In fact, that’s the only thing I remember about that first time I heard about it, and I wish I could remember which of my radical friends had mentioned it to me because I would apologize for not having believed it back then and for not having written about it sooner.

In fact, mushrooms were proven back in the late 1990s to be a useful tool in cleaning toxic soil, even soil contaminated by diesel.  Watch Paul Stamets, leading mycologist, explain in his TED talk:

Stamets himself does not claim that mushrooms are the way forward — in a web page created to answer the questions writers like me (and hopefully, some decision-makers as well) are putting to him, he lays out what he knows and what he doesn’t.  In the former category, the fact that by inoculating diesel-contaminated soil with oyster mushroom spores, he and scientists from Battelle Laboratories managed to cut the toxicity of the soil from 10,000 parts per million to less than 200, over a period of 16 weeks.  In the latter category, major questions remain, like how salt water would affect the process.

What Stamets does call for is increased dissemination of knowledge of mycoremediation, more funding for research, Mycological Response Teams to respond to such environmental disasters as oil spills, and mushroom production centers strategically placed near population centers around the country, the waste from which could also be used as compost, or in times such as these, for remediation.  Also, for people to spread the word.  You can do this by sharing this blog post with your friends via Facebook, Twitter or old-fashioned email.

Suffice it to say that you can’t clean up a mess that just keeps spilling, and who knows – maybe the dispersants are our best bet in a worst case scenario.  But if we’re taking shots in the dark, maybe we should be funding research toward more eco-friendly solutions to eco disasters.  Mycoremediation probably won’t ever make any money for BP, or even friends of BP, but  it wouldn’t hurt to look into it.  Really.

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.

Theaters aren’t exactly known for being environmentally sustainable. For each show a new set is built and the material is typically thrown away once the set is torn down. Each show involves printing hundreds or thousands of programs and postcards, not to mention scripts and other materials. In addition, there is no energy saving compact florescent light (CFL) substitute for stage lights, which must light the stage or go dark at a moment’s notice. This is not the stuff environmental sustainability is made of.

But never fear! In New York City, an exciting new theater festival, now in its second year, is working hard to raise the sustainability and eco-consciousness of off-off-Broadway. The Planet Connections Theater Festivity, running June 3-29, 2010 in three downtown locations, is challenging theater companies to green up their act (disclosure: I’m in Good, Lonely People, by Carol Carpenter, one of the plays in the festival). The concept is growing fast: last year there were 30 plays, this year there are 50 taking part in the festivity.

Festival organizers work directly with production companies to help them inject sustainability into their efforts. Participating companies work with a charity and look for ways to be more sustainable both in pre-production and during the show. While the technology doesn’t yet exist to replace standard stage lights with CFLs or other energy-saving alternatives (hello all you would-be entrepreneurs out there looking for a bright idea!), there are many areas where productions can be more sustainable without making it a full time job. Festival organizers say their goal is to show, “artists everywhere how to ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ while still creating gorgeous designs, getting fabulous reviews, and packing their houses!”

“People don’t often know how to make changes, so part of the festival outreach to productions is to show people examples of new options,” said festival Associate Director Carly Robins. Production companies can take steps as simple as not printing scripts or only printing one copy and making all changes to that one. Similarly, postcards can be replaced by social networking and other online marketing tools or can be made from recycled materials, or made the size of business cards instead of post cards. Sets and props can be shared or made to be modular and portable so they can be easily reused by future productions.

Theater facilities can also take simple steps towards sustainability like using biodegradable, earth-friendly cleaning products, recycled paper products and CFLs in their house lights. They can also make a bit of a financial sacrifice and forgo bottled water sales. This can be a tough choice since many facilities are on tight budgets and bottled water is a good money maker for many theaters, but in terms of environmental sustainability, it is a wise choice. If really inspired, they can serve water from pitchers and post an explanation of the environmental payout asking patrons to contribute what they would have spent on a bottle of water to the theater instead. With a little planning, they could even show videos or educational handouts.

More and more of our stories will already do involve those times when our poor environmental choices have had major impacts on our lives. Recently I’ve seen (and participated in) shows that deal with hurricanes and droughts and bottled water. Theater is important; it’s one of the ways we tell our stories. Ensuring the survival of theater is critical if we hope to pass along those stories – our cultural heritage – to future generations. Making choices in theater that ensure environmental sustainability just seems necessary and prudent.

At the May 21st hearing, attorney General Eric Holder was urged to enforce federal antitrust laws on behalf of contract poultry growers who raise flocks like this one. While these growers raise most of the nation’s chicken, they have don’t own the birds and have virtually no job security.

Today, poultry growers from throughout the south told Attorney General Eric Holder that the US poultry business operates through price fixing and production controls that stifle fair competition and destroy the lives of family farmers.  According to the growers, who spoke at a hearing in Normal, Alabama, they are trapped in an unsustainable system that leaves them with skyrocketing costs, poverty wages and zero job security.  As one grower put it, “This system takes hard working farmers and makes them indentured servants on their own land.”

While many of us understand the importance of the nation’s civil rights and environmental laws, less attention has been paid to antitrust jurisprudence.  Yet, it is the source of vital legal protections for consumers and small businesses – at least when the laws are applied and enforced. In the United States, antitrust laws first arose in response to public anger over the control of essential products by groups of related businesses, known as trusts or cartels. These cartels arbitrarily set prices, regardless of a product’s quality, by conspiring to shut out competition.

Since 1960, the amount of chicken meat produced in the United States has grown by 600 percent, supplying an increasingly global market for chicken fingers, chicken nuggets and other fried and breaded abominations.  Meanwhile, four U.S. companies have formed a cartel that controls a majority of all this chicken – poultry that today is almost exclusively raised by people who don’t actually own the birds.

Through a business model of aggressive vertical integration, huge poultry companies in the US own and control the birds, the mills that produce the poultry feed, the factories where the birds are incubated and hatched, the trucks used to transport the chicks, grown chickens and meat, and the factories that butcher the birds and package the meat. Today, more than 90 percent of all poultry in the United States is raised by growers under contract to these vertically integrated poultry companies, rather than being raised and sold by independent farmers.  Not surprisingly, the open competitive market for chicken meat has disappeared.

The contract growers who actually raise the birds earn, on average, about 5 cents a pound for the poultry. To put it another way, according to testimony from West Virginia poultry grower Mike Weaver:

When you purchase a twelve piece chicken meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken or any other fast food restaurant it costs you about $26.99 in our area.  The grower who raised that chicken only received about $.30 cents.

The poultry growers who attended today’s hearing describe an industry that sounds like nothing so much as the old con man’s game of “bait and switch.”

When I retired from teaching in 1993 and was considering the construction of two, 500-foot chicken houses, I was promised a long-term relationship as long as I raised a good bird or followed the company’s instructions.  Initially, I was provided a contract for the ten-year length of my loan.  However, a few years later, the company brought out another version of the contract and said I needed to sign it to continue to get chickens.  Before the end of the initial ten-year term, the company again changed the contract to a one-year term.  I came to realize that the company could change contracts easily by threatening to stop placing birds if I refused to sign. – Kay Doby, former president of the North Carolina Contract Poultry Growers Association

The poultry companies require enormous investments in infrastructure before they will enter into a contract with a grower. But while the grower must take on huge mortgages for periods of from 10 to 30 years in order to satisfy the companies’ requirements, most are only guaranteed work on a “flock to flock” basis – that is, for about seven weeks at a time.    Meanwhile, in addition to their mortgage debt, the growers are liable for waste disposal (and any environmental damage that might result), as well as for maintenance of barns and equipment that the companies can leave vacant and unused for weeks or months at a time – periods during which the grower earns no income.

The companies also “rank” the contract growers against each other to decide whether to terminate contracts or otherwise penalize growers.  The problem is that the companies also control these rankings through decisions they make about the age and health of the chicks and the quality of the feed they provide to the growers, leaving them unable to compete on anything like a playing field.

Mississippi poultry grower Andy Stone described his life this way:

This insecurity hangs over my head each day that I grow chickens. You could argue this and say, No one’s job is secure in today’s economic environment. But the situation is not the same. Their job is a job. Mine is a job with a huge debt attached to it. . . .  The situation in contract poultry growing is out of control. 

The Sherman Act, the nation’s first antitrust law, passed in 1890, made it illegal for businesses in the same industry to make agreements that limit competition. The Packers and Stockyards Act, passed in 1921, made it illegal for a poultry dealer to engage in unfair or deceptive business practices. According to advocates, however, the Stockyards Act is especially poorly enforced due, in part, to the fact that the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture are jointly responsible for its enforcement.

Meanwhile, poultry growers point to what they perceive as collusion among members of the poultry cartels:

When I started growing chickens in 1995, I bought land and moved sixty miles from where I grew up. I moved to the broiler capital of our state. I did this thinking that if I had a reason to switch from one integrator to another, I could. After a few months into the business I realized that the integrators have an unwritten pact with their “sister” integrators – “You don’t take our growers, and we won’t take your growers.” – Andy Stone

 Equally sinister is the fear of retaliation that can deprive any grower of his or her income. As Kay Doby described it:

Another ugly reality in poultry is that growers are often intimidated by company personnel.  Growers that are here today know they are taking a big risk by being here and especially speaking about how things are done in the contract poultry business.  I had a grower tell me that he was complaining to company personnel about the quality of chicks he received and the answer he got was, “You know, you should just be glad you got a job.”  The grower got the message real quick, since the company he grows for has over 160 poultry houses sitting empty and the growers have no way to pay the loan payments.

According to Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch, who attended today’s hearing:

Many areas have only one or two chicken processors, which leaves growers few options except taking whatever contract they are given.  When companies have this much control over the food supply, they make all the decisions, and farmers and consumers pay the price.

Today’s meeting was the second in a series taking place this year in which the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Agriculture are hearing public testimony on antitrust issues in agriculture.  The first, held on March 12 in Ankeny, Iowa, focused on issues facing crop farmers.   The next hearing is scheduled for June 25 in Madison, Wisconsin, and will focus on the dairy industry.

You can read recommendations for reform of the US poultry contract system in testimony submitted to the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture.