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.

Recently I was lucky enough to visit my friends at Heartsease Farm, an Icelandic sheep farm outside of Rochester, NY. For a woman raised in the suburbs who is now living in the city, waking up to the sound of an actual rooster crowing and watching a one-day old lamb run around the sheep yard was an amazing experience.

At Heartsease they also raise chickens and typically have a couple of pigs in the mix as well. I left the farm with a head full of romantic thoughts of setting up my own little farm, somewhere in the rolling hills upstate. Thank goodness, on my return, I got a chance to read The Joy of Keeping Farm Animals, a new book by Laura Childs, from Sky Horse publishing.

While there is nothing like real experience, Childs provides a very thorough description of what you can expect when setting up a farm for the purpose of raising your own animals for meat, eggs and dairy. It may seem romantic at first but, like all people and pets, farm animals have daily needs that must be attended to or they could get sick or die. While reading Child’s book, I felt reality set in as I learned just how much work farm animals can be.

The book is organized in chapters by animals, and includes chickens, goats, pigs, sheep and cows. Childs takes you through space and time requirements, how to choose and find animals for purchase and what to look for in both sellers and animals, caring for animals once you’ve got them home and preparing them for slaughter once it’s time. Consideration is given to raising animals as economically as possible, as well as breeding your own. She even suggests ways to not get outsmarted by clever goats and pigs.

What I like best about Child’s book is that, while it isn’t a tome on anti-industrial meat production, through her discussion of the needs of happy animals and the impacts of stressful living conditions, she illustrates very clearly what is wrong with our industrial meat production system. Even in ideal living conditions animals can face any number of health threats. It’s easy to see why industrial producers rely so heavily on antibiotics, growth hormones and tightly-controlled conditions to produce their over-stressed, over-medicated animals for slaughter, reducing meat strictly to a commodity, with minimal recognition of the life involved in reaping the profits.

Childs concludes each chapter with instructions for butchering animals yourself. Her motto is the farmer’s creed, “If you raise it to eat it, you had better be man enough to kill it.” She says that this is hardest with the pigs, which can become pet-like very quickly. My friends who own Heartsease Farm say, “Every time we have a meat dinner some animal has died. We know ahead of time each one of these lambs and we try to give them the best, most sun-filled life they can have.” Childs book certainly reinforces this philosophy and should be required reading for anyone considering raising their own farm animals.

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 Green Music Group (GMG), a project of Reverb, has launched a series of earth friendly calls-to-action this summer. Starting tomorrow, Guster is challenging fans to use the Eat Well Guide to find and eat at least one meal using local, organic food. You have until noon on Friday June 18^th to submit your foodie photos and become eligible to win a Live Nation Ultimate Access Pass. You can check out all the details at the GMG challenge page. The “Eat Local” challenge is part of GMG’s mission to encourage concert venues to sell local and organic food.

GMG is a group of musicians, industry leaders and fans working to inspire environmental action. Directed at music fans everywhere, a different challenge will launch each week though mid-August with an exclusive video from a founding artist, including the Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, The Roots, Barenaked Ladies, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Maroon 5 and, of course, those CO2-saving superheroes, Guster.  Challenge prizes include season passes to concert venues, a specialized mountain bike and a Honda Insight Hybrid – plus that green glow we all get from just doing the right thing.

Join the GMG community and check out the various challenges throughout August, and don’t forget to use the Eat Well Guide to find fabulous locally produced food all summer long.



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.