Go figure

From a March 10, 2009 New York Times article:

"The former first lady, Laura Bush, insisted that fresh, organic foods be served in the White House, but did not broadcast that fact to the public, according to Walter Scheib, who served as executive chef under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 'She just didn’t talk much about it outside the house,' Mr. Scheib said of Mrs. Bush."

Hmmm... so while Laura is insisting that only organic food be served in the White House, hubby's policies are almost what one could call anti-organic? Perhaps she didn't mention it outside the White House so as not to upset her friends such as Rush Limbaugh or Matt Drudge?

And why did the American tax payer have to pay for organic food for a White House that enabled or even forced the "common folk" (i.e. us) to eat contaminated unhealthy industrially-produced garbage at times?

FDA and USDA drop the bomb AGAIN

Scientists (this time at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy) have once again found the FDA and USDA to be hiding health-relevant information from consumers. The latest? Many products containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contain mercury, due to the processing, uh... process. And what's the acceptable level of mercury in American consumers' food and drink, you ask? The answer?: Zero!

Again, hopefully with the new presidential administration in power, things like this will no longer happen, and the FDA and/or USDA will not sacrifice the American consumer so that a few crooked companies can force or keep their products on the shelves.

Read the report, Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup, here.

A great weight (both standard and metric) has been lifted

Hopefully a house cleaning will be undertaken in the U.S. government, getting rid of all (or at least most? Please?) of the ignorantly-idealistic, ill-suited, armchair commando, activist neo-cons who can't differentiate fact from fantasy. Well, hopefully the last eight years will show that their unsuited experiments of fantasy won't -- and didn't -- work. Their small ideas were once untested, but have now been tested - and their follies have been found to be greatly lacking and foolhardy. People so grossly unqualified should not be in charge of anything, much less a post that requires (demands!) intelligence and a comprehension of science.

I call on President Obama to change the course of America's future, and to do what's right for the people of this great country, and the world. Not for what's good for CEOs' annual bonuses, or for the middle-management of self-serving companies that would do harm to American (or world) citizens so that they can be lazy and save a few dollars and assure their stockholders of a profit the next quarter. But for all the others of us out there who will reap the harm caused by them currently and in the future. Because I really don't want three-eyed, one armed, flipper-footed, grossly overweight grandkids.

Oh! bama

On Wednesday, President-elect Barrack Obama appointed former Iowa governor Thomas Vilsack as his USDA chief. And previously, Obama appointed former Monsanto vice-president Michael R. Taylor to his transition team.

There's just not many positives to having either of those two creeps in this administration... I guess Change™ doesn't apply to our food chain. Perhaps next, Richard L. Bond will be made head of the FDA.

(Update: and then there's this article, written by Obama's chief adviser on agricultural issues, Marshall Matz. It's all "blah, blah, industrial agricultural is so great, blah blah..." yikes.)

Disappointing to say the least. I expected better this time around, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it (and hopefully it won't kill us or give us cancer).

Meat madness

Wow... South Korea's government has been almost wiped out by a mass "resignation" of ministry officials from the public outcry and protests over a deal to allow U.S. industrial beef imports to resume. I was feeling rather chagrined when I found out that the U.S. had pushed industrial beef on to the unsuspecting Korean people as part of a trade agreement. But... apparently, they weren't as unsuspecting as I thought, as the Korean government has found out, much to its chagrin. Too bad the average U.S., consumer won't stand up to its own government and protest the lousy meats that are forced upon him or her; you'd think with all the current health problems and the massive meat recalls that people would finally realize what's going on and say no to industrial meat. But oh well...

In other news, perhaps caused by industrial meat contamination: tomatoes recall. But, at least it's apparently prompting the FDA to finally want to do its job, and the government to financially support the FDA so that it can do so.

Perhaps the FDA will be able to head off what appears to be the next major food disaster before it wipes out too many people. Stay tuned for MRSA.

The agro-industrial complex

An important independent report, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been released, concluding that "Industrial animal farming in the United States needs to make many major reforms in order to protect public health and the environment."

+ The report criticized "the agro-industrial complex" in regards to:

+ their over-and mis-use of antibiotics

+ the pollution created by overcrowded factory farms

+ the spread of disease in overcrowded feedlots

+ the inhumane treatment of confined animals

+ the industry's influence on agricultural research and governmental regulation

... amongst other things

Read the report in its entirety here: http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAP%20FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

Better than organic?

I am still a big fan of "beyond organic," where you do better than the organic standards, but disregard getting organic certified (since the organic standards are getting watered down yearly so that more big business can profit from what are becoming pretty much misleading and confusing -- to the consumer -- labels).

I've somewhat recently become a fan of France's "Label Rouge" (Red Label) program. France's standards for everything from Label Rouge to organic are much more stringent than our rather watered-down FDA/USDA standards. France labels food for the customer's benefit, not for business's benefit (i.e. profit). And often times, American farmers get stuck in the middle when trying to convert to organic, where in France farmers are the ones who benefit from the stricter labelling; BUT, they can't be lazy and have to stick to the prescribed standards, not just let their chickens see the light through a window ten feet up and magically be switched from conventional to free range.

Apparently, in France, Label Rouge chickens cost about twice as much as conventional chickens, whereas organic chickens cost about five times as much. So Label Rouge seems to be a "happy medium" for both the consumer and the farmer.

It would be nice to see more similar (if not the same) standards applied to food in the U.S. And if the government won't do it, farmers and consumers will need to take matters into their own hands perhaps.

Here's an excellent informational bulletin (PDF version) by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) and the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) on Label Rouge:

ATTRA Techs Study "Label Rouge"

Here's a few local (to me) farms that adhere to the Label Rouge standards:

Coon Rock Farm

Ashley Farms

WTFFDA?

Yesterday, the United States was totally hosed by one of its own taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cloned animals (and their products, such as milk) to be allowed into America's food chain... and of course, without adequate testing (unless you consider testing partially funded by the same biotech firms that produce cloned animals as adequate or impartial). Plus, the FDA went against the wishes of the U.S. Senate (i.e. Congress), who passed a bill requiring a rigorous and careful review of the human health and economic impacts of allowing cloned food into America's food supply by a vote of 79 to 14. And, they of course went against the will of the American people; according to the Center for Food Safety:

Recent opinion polls show the majority of Americans do not want milk or meat from cloned animals in their food. A December 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers were uncomfortable with animal cloning. A national survey conducted this year by Consumers Union found that 89 percent of Americans want to see cloned foods labeled, while 69 percent said that they have concerns about cloned meat and dairy products in the food supply. A recent Gallup Poll reported that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that it is immoral to clone animals, while the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that a similar percentage say that, despite FDA approval, they won't buy milk from cloned animals.

For further information, read Not Ready for Prime Time: FDA's Flawed Approach to Assessing the Safety of Food from Cloned Animals.

Nuts

(This article '"Raw" almonds aren't, really' is excerpted from "What's really in your food?" from the Independent Weekly.)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently required that all almonds produced in the United States be pasteurized, including nuts labeled "raw." The rule went into effect September 1, despite protests from health-conscious consumers who prefer unprocessed nuts and small-scale growers who can't afford the equipment, which costs between $500,000 and $2.5 million.

The move follows two Salmonella outbreaks attributed to raw almonds in 2001 and 2004. Critics of the rule point out that both incidents were the result of faulty practices at large-scale commercial farms. Small-scale and sustainable practices—including mowing and mulching to control weeds, instead of using chemical herbicides—naturally prevent the spread of harmful bacteria more effectively than post-harvest treatment, they say.

The Almond Board of California, a governing body representing all almond growers in the state, pushed for the change. Small growers complain that the board disproportionally represents the needs of the large producers.

A spokesman for the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service says that the agency simply responded to the almond board's request. "We basically move at the behest of industry," spokesman Jimmie Turner says. "If the industry calls and says they want a standard or a marketing order, we take that request, and normally we do what's called a notice in the Federal Register. We seek public comment, and based on that comment, there can be a marketing order established."

The same process is followed for all food stuffs, Turner says.

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group leading a campaign to convince the USDA to overturn the pasteurization rule, contends that labeling treated almonds as "raw" is deceptive. More than that, the group argues that it epitomizes the industrialization of our food supply.

"This is just the opening salvo of corporate agribusiness wanting to sanitize all of our food," says Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute. The impetus, Kastel says, is the economics of large-scale production. In many cases, such operations utilize growing and cultivation methods that provide much greater opportunity for contamination.

"After the fact, they want to use these technologies ... so they can sanitize our food supply, but it will do great damage to our food and, because of the infrastructure costs, will put out of business small and high-quality growers and independent processors," Kastel added.

To comply with the regulation, almond producers can either steam the nuts or fumigate them with propylene oxide (PPO), the almond board's preferred process. PPO is recognized as a possible human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is banned in the European Union, Canada, Mexico—and much of the rest of the world.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require labeling of foods treated with the fumigant, and while packages of almonds may contain the disclaimer "pasteurized," there isn't likely to be any indication by which process the nuts were treated.

The only way consumers will be able to distinguish how their "raw" almonds were pasteurized is by the organic label. Regulations mandate that foods bearing the "organic" seal cannot be treated with PPO.

[Chinese] Food fight!

China apparently retaliates for our rejection of "some" of their imports:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSPEK1175920070710

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070822064416.l7or1zaz&show_article=1

and ...

"I'm sorry Mr. Chinese Export Company President, but we detected large amounts of arsenic, diesel fuel, battery acid, and Agent Orange in your lastest seafood shipment to the United States. Hmmm ... I know! Let's label it organic!"

and ...

Good thing for our FDA that such things don't happen in the U.S. of A.:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSPEK2206820070710

(Al Gore's cousin-in-law, Michael Taylor, would have been six feet under by now!)

Does Whole Foods have an organic produce section?

Whole Foods does have many items that are “organic” (according to the official USDA/FDA standards), and their 365 brand is pretty amazing (quality and price-wise) but their produce section leaves much to be desired. Nowadays when you walk into Whole Foods (some call it Wal Foods) produce section, you’ll notice that much of their produce is conventionally grown, mostly either in California or in another country.

Living in North Carolina, I’m offended when I see such items as collards (grown widely in N.C.) or sweet potatoes (N.C.’s state vegetable!) from California being sold at Whole Foods, especially when they’re conventionally grown and in season right here. Basically, this means that a truck had to drive all the way from California, perhaps stopping at Whole Foods’s HQ in Texas, with its load of produce for my local Whole Foods stores. And not only are they conventionally grown, but they’re much more expensive than if you were to buy them at a local supermarket (which sells the exact same conventional product) or farmers’ market (which sells the organic version). I guess somebody’s gotta pay for all that diesel for the trucks!

Awhile ago, Wal-Mart entered into the organic fray and began an organic items section, which includes produce. Years ago (perhaps now, but I haven’t checked), Wal-Mart carried more locally-grown produce than Whole Foods did. I’ve heard that my local Food Lion grocery stores rely on a farm or farms that are located in eastern N.C. (it still has to be trucked in to the stores, but not nearly as far as Whole Foods’ trucks have to drive). I have to laugh when I see pictures of local farmers and such adorning the walls of my local Whole Foods, with a write up about their product; well, many times their products have been discontinued because a cheaper source has been located overseas or in California … but their picture and bio remain well-visible! Whole Foods tries to explain away the various reasons for selling local produce on their website, but it sounds more like something a political operative wrote.

The solution for me? Well, besides growing my own naturally-grown/organic (non-certified, of course) vegetables, I shop for my veggies at a co-op grocery that is a much less-corporate version of Whole Foods: Weaver Street Market (located in Carrboro). Also, I shop at the local farmers’ markets: Hillsborough’s, Carrboro’s, Durham’s, and even the state farmers’ market in Raleigh or a local flea market (Buckhorn) on occasion. Raleigh’s doesn’t have an actual organic section per se, but some of the farmers who sell there actually grow their vegetables old school-style, and don’t use pesticides and herbicides (or only sparsely when necessary). I do shop at the conventional grocery stores on occasion, as they have produce that is similar to Whole Foods (i.e. conventional, but at least it’s often times local). Plus, it’s cheaper there (average probably about 1/3 the price). One must be careful, however, as since the FDA’s been micromanaged by the current presidential administration bureaucrats, and therefore less food safety testing has been conducted in the past several years; your fruit and veggies could be irrigated in diesel fuel in beds of asbestos for all you (and the FDA inspectors) know. They’re leaving it up to the companies to police and report themselves … yeah, I’m sure THAT will work out in the consumer’s best interests…

Again, though, I have to hand it to Whole Foods for products like their 365 brand; while not even close to being local, at least its a safer alternative than buying GMO-laced garbage at the conventional supermarket.