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Selected news about CSAs, organic farming, food, health, etc.
Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem
Mon 17 Nov 2008 9:29am
NY Times, November 17, 2008 By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what the United States has failed to scrutinize is how much of the chemical has pervaded our own food system. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/opinion/17mcwilliams.html
more here . . .
Michael Pollan's Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief
Wed 29 Oct 2008 10:52am
NY Times, October 10, 2008.
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
more here . . .
'Dead Zones' Appear In Waters Worldwide — New Study Estimates More Than 400
Fri 15 Aug 2008 7:55am
By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, August 15, 2008. "In the latest sign of trouble in the planet's chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday ... Low oxygen, known as hypoxia, is in significant measure a downstream effect of chemical fertilizers used in agriculture. Air pollution, including smog from automobiles, is another factor. The nitrogen from the fertilizer and the pollution feeds the growth of algae in coastal waters, particularly during summer."
link to article
more here . . .
Is Your Organic Food Really Organic?
Thu 7 Aug 2008 9:59am
By Jill Richardson, AlterNet. Aug 7, 2008. - Half of federally accredited organic certifiers recently audited were put on probation after foods were found with unacceptable pesticide levels.
"... the USDA just announced Monday it was putting 15 out of 30 federally accredited organic certifiers they audited on probation, allowing them 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation. At the heart of the audit for several certifiers were imported foods and ingredients from other countries, including China."
"Chinese imports have had a bad year in the news, making headlines for contaminated pet food, toxic toys, and recently, certified organic ginger contaminated with levels of a pesticide called aldicarb that can cause nausea, headaches and blurred vision even at low levels. The ginger, sold under the 365 label at Whole Foods Market, contained a level of aldicarb not even permissible for conventional ginger, let alone organics. Whole Foods immediately pulled the product from its shelves."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/94146/
more here . . .
More dairies go raw
Mon 21 Jul 2008 10:14pm
By Darry Madden, Boston Globe, February 23, 2008 - "Jill Ebbott, a holistic health counselor in Brookline, buys 8 gallons of unpasteurized milk a week for her household of three people, and she pours a splash in the bowls that her three dogs eat from. She says a year of drinking raw milk has cleared up her husband's allergies."
"Massachusetts is among 28 states in which raw milk can be sold for human consumption, and in the past two years the number of dairies licensed to sell it here has gone from 12 to 23. Dairies are selling more raw milk than they were five years ago, according to the Northeast Organic Farming Association, which says it receives calls weekly from consumers trying to find it."
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/02/23/more_dairies_go_raw/
more here . . .
Why Our Food Waste May Be Our Greatest Asset
Fri 18 Jul 2008 10:47am
By Ruben Anderson, The Tyee. Posted July 17, 2008. "Composting is key to reducing waste costs, cutting global warming emissions, and increasing urban food security." http://www.alternet.org/environment/91732
more here . . .
Cutting Out the Middlemen, Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms
Fri 11 Jul 2008 8:20pm
By SUSAN SAULNY, NY Times. "A growing numbers of people are skipping out on grocery stores and instead going right to the source by buying shares of farms — in essence hiring personal farmers, CSA farms."
"[In the USA] there were fewer than 100 C. S. A. farms in the early 1990s, but in the last several years the numbers have grown to close to 1,500, according to academic experts who have followed the trend." — One of those 100 in 1990 was Stearns Organic Farm CSA.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/us/10farms.html?th&emc=th
more here . . .
Zapped! Irradiation and the Death of Food
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:24pm
By Wenonah Hauter, Alternet, June 13, 2008. "In violation of their own safety protocols, including the 100-fold safety factor, the FDA has approved many foods for irradiation. Scientists have observed serious health problems in lab animals fed irradiated foods. Those include premature death, cancer, tumors, stillbirths, mutations, organ damage, immune system failure and stunted growth." http://alternet.org/environment/87713
more here . . .
Why Bother?
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:23pm
By Michael Pollan, NY Times, April 20, 2008.
"There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists' projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.
So do you still want to talk about planting gardens?
I do."
link to the nytimes.com article
more here . . .
The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:21pm
by Richard Manning (Harper's Magazine) - " ... we humans, a single species among millions, consume about 40 percent of Earth's primary productivity, 40 percent of all there is. This simple number may explain why the current extinction rate is 1,000 times that which existed before human domination of the planet. We 6 billion have simply stolen the food, the rich among us a lot more than others. ...
Iowa is almost all fields now. Little prairie remains, and if you can find what Iowans call a 'postage stamp' remnant of some, it most likely will abut a cornfield. This allows an observation. Walk from the prairie to the field, and you probably will step down about six feet, as if the land had been stolen from beneath you. ...
David Pimentel, an expert on food and energy at Cornell University, has estimated that if all of the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years."
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915
more here . . .
Oxford's Word of the Year
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:18pm
11/12/07 - Not everyone has joined the local food movement, but it has won over Google's cafeteria, Barbara Kingsolver's kitchen, writers at The New York Times, and now, leading wordsmiths at the Oxford American Dictionary, who are adding their lexicographic seal of approval: The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.
more here . . .
It's Official: Organic Really is Better
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:20pm
The London Times October 28, 2007 - "The biggest study into organic food has found that it is more nutritious than ordinary produce and may help to lengthen people's lives.
The evidence from the four-year project will end years of debate and is likely to overturn government advice that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice.
The study found that organic fruit and vegetables contained as much as 40% more antioxidants, which scientists believe can cut the risk of cancer and heart disease, Britain's biggest killers. They also had higher levels of beneficial minerals such as iron and zinc."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2753446.ece
more here . . .
Is Eating Local the Best Choice?
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:16pm
By David Morris, Alternet, 9/11/2007. Those who say eating local is not always the best choice for the planet are forgetting one very important part of the equation: community.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/60670
more here . . .
USDA to Allow More Conventional Ingredients in Organics?
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:15pm
By Lorraine Heller Food Navigator, 5/16/2007 - The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing to add a number of ingredients to the list of substances permitted for use in organic food products, in a move designed to prevent disruption to business when new regulations come into place next month. The additional 38 proposed substances include non-organic colors, starches and oils, which may [currently] be used only when an organic counterpart is not available commercially.
http://organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5217.cfm
more here . . .
Consume Like There's No Tomorrow by Don Fitz
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:12pm
4/22/07. "Would someone please tell the Sierra Club Exec Board that the idea of an 'environmentally friendly car' makes as much sense as a 'non-violent death penalty?' While the vast majority of those concerned with global warming consider reduction of unneeded production to be at the core of a sane policy, the Sierra Club has endorsed a plan that includes virtually no role for conservation."
www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=12636
more here . . .
Organic Food: The Farmer's Conundrum
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:14pm
By Tom Philpott, Grist Magazine. 3/27/2007. If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land? http://www.alternet.org/environment/49783
more here . . .
Eating Better Than Organic
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:10pm
3/8/07 - By John Cloud. Eat local or eat organic. You decide.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595245,00.html
more here . . .
Ethanol: Feed a Person for a Year or Fill Up an SUV?
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:09pm
3/5/07 - By Robert Bryce. 'Last September, Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute (a group that promotes "an environmentally sustainable economy") wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that the amount of grain needed to make enough ethanol to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank "would feed one person for a full year. If the United States converted its entire grain harvest into ethanol, it would satisfy less than 16 percent of its automotive needs." Brown said the ongoing ethanol boom in the U.S. was "setting the stage for an epic competition. In a narrow sense, it is one between the world's supermarkets and its service stations." More broadly, "it is a battle between the world's 800 million automobile owners, who want to maintain their mobility, and the world's two billion poorest people, who simply want to survive."'
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/48790
more here . . .
Unhealthy Flowers: Why Buying Organic Should Not End With Your Food
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:08pm
2/13/07 - By Jason Mark. "Conventionally grown cut flowers are most often raised in chemical-intensive systems that expose workers to toxins that can make them sick — sweatshops in the greenhouses, you could say. Responsible alternatives have been difficult, if not impossible, to find."
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47847
more here . . .
Unhappy Meals
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:16pm
By Michael Pollan, NY Times, 1/28/2007. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy." "Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."
http://michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87
more here . . .
Buying Local Doesn't Hurt the Developing World
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:06pm
11/23/06 - By Frances Moore Lappe. "Shedding corporate-media filters, we see that the poor are not languishing in their sad villages and grimy shantytowns just waiting to be saved by corporate giants from abroad. Many poor people are themselves creating the real job growth in much of the Global South. They are the small shopkeepers, street vendors, and home-based workers whose jobs make up what's called the 'informal economy' not counted by authorities.
In Latin America, 85 percent of new jobs created during the 1990s were in this sector, not the corporate one. Informal jobs account for more than half of all jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and as much as 80 percent in parts of Asia and in Africa." http://www.alternet.org/story/44518
more here . . .
The Truth Behind Tainted Spinach
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:05pm
10/5/06 - "If we are truly concerned about food safety, we need to know the folks who grow our food, know that they are paid a decent wage, know that the land they farm is well cared for and protected, and know that the food they grow has not been irradiated or genetically engineered or exposed to pesticides. It is this knowing that will truly nourish us and keep us well." http://www.alternet.org/story/42526
more here . . .
The Organic-Industrial Complex
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:04pm
5/17/06 - The organic and natural foods brands are not what they were 10 years ago - they have largely been acquired by much larger companies. How sustainable are these big business practices? Does it still make sense to call them organic? http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0603-03.htm
Check out which mega-corporations own your favorite brands in this chart: certifiedorganic.bc.ca/rcbtoa/services/corporate-ownership.html
more here . . .
U of Chicago Study: vegan diets healthier for planet, people than meat diets
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:03pm
4/13/06 - The food that people eat is just as important as what kind of cars they drive when it comes to creating the greenhouse-gas emissions that many scientists have linked to global warming, according to a report accepted for publication in the April issue of the journal Earth Interactions.
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060413.diet.shtml
more here . . .
Fossil Fuel for Breakfast
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:02pm
3/29/06 - According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food ... Buying locally-grown foods should be the first priority when it comes to saving fossil fuel. http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/34073
more here . . .
U.S. Meat Supply at Risk of Mad Cow Disease
Wed 25 Jun 2008 5:59pm
2/6/06 - The U.S. Agriculture Department's Inspector General warns beef inspectors aren't strictly following cattle screening rules, increasing the risk of mad cow disease in the nation's meat supply. The report said it found cases where rules covering the slaughter of cattle were being ignored. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/02/usda_mad_cow.html
more here . . .
Mineral Levels in Meat and Milk Plummet Over 60 Years
Wed 25 Jun 2008 6:01pm
2/2/06 - The mineral content of milk and popular meats has fallen significantly in the past 60 years, according to a new analysis of government records of the chemical composition of everyday food. UK Study blames the decline on intensive farming. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0202-06.htm
more here . . .
Revision 3. Last edited Fri 11 Jul 2008 8:21pm by TomYelton