Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley Tuesday signed a bill banning arsenic in poultry feed, making his state the first to have a law against the practice on the books.  

The new law, which takes effect Jan 1, prohibits the use, sale, or distribution of commercial feed containing arsenic and specifically mentions two Pfizer drugs that contain arsenic: Roxarsone, which the company voluntarily withdrew from the market last year, and Histostat, which is still on the market.

The move follows a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study released last summer that found increased levels of inorganic arsenic in the livers of chickens treated with the Roxarsone. The new data raised concerns of a “very low but completely avoidable exposure to a carcinogen,” said Michael Taylor, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods, when FDA announced the company was withdrawing the drug in response to the study’s findings.

Arsenic is a known human carcinogen and has been linked to a variety of health concerns, including interfering in fetal development, but FDA said the levels found in their poultry study are low enough that consumers are not at risk eating poultry while Roxarsone is phased out of use in the United States.

It is not known how widely the drug might be stockpiled and still used today. When Pfizer announced the withdrawal, FDA said it did not have data on usage in poultry production.

Aside from food safety concerns, which have been raised for many years, there is also overwhelming evidence that feeding arsenicals to poultry has had a harmful impact on the environment.

Maryland knows the impacts first hand. According to Food and Water Watch, the state’s poultry producers spread 22,000 pounds of arsenic–which is found in the fecal waste–to farmland “which ultimately gets washed into waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of Maryland found that poultry fed Roxarsone produced poultry litter–the waste from production, which includes feces, feathers and bedding–that contains 2.9 to 77 times the arsenic than poultry not fed Roxarsone. Further, the team found that the arsenic in the litter broke down into inorganic, the kind known to be harmful to human health, and it accumulates in soil.

Originally published on Food Safety News

To buy local fruits, vegetables, and meat, we do not have to look much further than a nearby farmers market or community supported agriculture share. But to buy wheat flour, we have traditionally spent our dollars outside of the farmers market to find the product we use during all seasons. For a large part, the underlying reason lies in the industrialization of wheat production, which started in the 1880s with the advent of the steam roller mill. This large-scale mill turned out a cheap shelf-stable flour which essentially crippled regional grain markets. But as we begin to realize the detrimental economic and nutritional effects of the transformation of wheat to a commodity crop, regional grain economies are beginning to regrow across the country. Over the past five years, the necessary infrastructure has been put into place to process and sell grains at a smaller scale and keep profits within local communities.

When we talk about grains, we are referring to starch-rich hard seeds which grow on cereal grasses. Common grains include wheat, maize, rice, barley, oats, rye, and more. The anatomy of a grain consists of three parts: endosperm (starch), bran (fiber and fatty acids), and germ (fatty acids, nutrients, and proteins).

When processed, industrially grains are stripped of their bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm. The resulting processed grain lacks fatty acids, which prevents rancidity and allows for long-term storage–but it also lacks the core nutritional value of fiber, proteins, and other vitamins/nutrients. Whole grains contain the same proportions of the bran, germ, and endosperm as the grain pre-processing; whether cracked, split, or ground, the grains maintain their nutritional value. The health benefits of a diet rich in whole grains has been documented to decrease blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Sparked by these alarming public health implications combined with a hike in the price of grains on the global commodity market in 2008, regional grain economies have been developing. Some involved parties include farmers, millers, distributors, and bakers. Groundbreaking efforts to build these networks across the country include: Community Grains in the San Francisco Bay Area, Somerset Economic Development Corp. in central Maine, North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project in Asheville, NC, and Northeast Organic Wheat in upstate New York. Many of these efforts focus on regional grain varietals, community education, regional economic growth, and job creation.

Join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks at Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland as we discuss the local grain economy in California from the economic, infrastructural, and public health perspectives.

Date: Sunday, June 17th
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 PM
Location: Oliveto Restaurant (5665 College Avenue, Oakland, CA)
Price: $10 at Brown Paper Tickets
Note: A limited amount of sliding scale tickets may be available at the door, dependent upon capacity.

Bob Klein has been a broadcast television producer, executive producer, national program consultant, and developer/syndicator. He’s currently co-owner of Oliveto Restaurant and founder of Community Grains.

Craig Pondsford is founder of Artisan Bakery, winner of the Specialty Breads category of France’s 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (an international, invitational, artisan baking competition held in Parish every three to four years). He recently opened Pondsford’s Place Bakery & Innovation Center in San Rafael, CA.

Doug Mosel, founder of the Mendocino Grain Project, grows a variety of grains and lentils in the Ukiah Valley. Whole grains and stone-milled flour are distributed locally through a CSA-style grain-share. Doug is a member of the Mendocino Organic Network and host of a monthly radio show, the “Agriculture and Ecology Hour.”

Food scandals are so costly to Big Food, it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act. In the 1990s it pushed through “food disparagement” laws under which Oprah Winfrey herself was sued by cattlemen in 1997 (Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again upon learning that cows were being fed to cows). Winfrey was acquitted and cow cannibalism was made illegal but the US still lost $3 billion in beef exports when a first mad cow was discovered in 2003. April’s new mad cow will not help foreign trade.

Last year, Big Food introduced Animal Facility Interference laws in several states which make it a crime to “produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility.” The bills also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility “with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the Owner”–in an effort to stop the flow of grisly undercover videos. The first facility interference offense would be an aggravated misdemeanor but subsequent offenses could be felonies.

Of course, the Ag-Gag bills, as they were quickly dubbed, are anti-free-speech and would chill both whistle-blowers and news media (who couldn’t legally even receive non-approved farm images). The bills were scorified by CNN, the New York Times, Time magazine and First Amendment and food safety activists and, luckily, were defeated in 2011. But they are creeping back.

Many farmers and agricultural professionals are miffed that the days of “it’s-none-of-your-business” farming are over. Once upon a time, consumers cared only about the price and wholesomeness of food and didn’t worry about–or videotape–its origins and “disassembly.” Now consumers increasingly want to know how an animal lived, died, and even what it ate in between. Some of the newly engaged consumers are motivated by health, wanting to avoid hormones in milk, antibiotics in beef, arsenic in chicken, and who knows what in seafood. But many are also motivated by humane concerns.

Here are some shocking facts that Big Food would like to mute with Ag-Gag and food defamation laws:

rBGH in milk

Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), injected into dairy cows to increase milk production, was created by crossing cow DNA and E. coli bacteria. Yes, that E. coli. From the start, farmers and veterinarians worried about the udder infections it causes, the resulting need for more antibiotic usage and more. “I surely wouldn’t want to eat from the hypodermic pockmarked section of the cow,” said one farming critic as early as 1994. Banned in many countries and unlabeled here, rBGH-produced milk also contains pus and a protein associated with increased prostate and breast cancer risk called IGF-1. Still, Eli Lilly, who bought rBGH in 2008 from Monsanto insists, it “safely increases productivity of dairy cows” and helps “family farm owners.”

Eggs with a side of salmonella

Two years ago, a salmonella outbreak caused the recall of half a billion eggs and 1,600 illnesses. Thanks to factory farming, with thousands of hens stacked over their own manure, egg operations are festooned with germs. In fact, the government found both Tyson Foods and a hatchery injecting eggs of future laying hens preventively with antibiotics to avert infections. Yum. Austin “Jack” DeCoster, to whose farms the salmonella was linked, had a 30-year history of health and safety violations. In fact, when authorities raided his Turner, Maine operation in 2009, charging him with animal cruelty, four officers required treatment for ammonia-burned lungs just from entering his barns. Yet DeCoster received no penalties for the salmonella outbreak and enjoyed a gracious retirement.

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

The drug store in your meat

You may not have heard of Fort Dodge, Elanco, or Intervet, animal divisions of Big Pharma, but you may well be “taking” their drugs. Government safety inspectors miss residues of penicillin and other antibiotics, parasite and anti-inflammatory drugs and heavy metals in beef, says a 2010 Office of Inspector General report, allowing contaminated beef into food supply. For other toxins like dioxin, lindane and fire retardants, inspectors do not even have “established action levels” to test for. Four plants, with an astounding 211 drug residue violations, were given a pass says the OIG report. Worse, unlike germs like salmonella or E. coli, drug and metal residues aren’t neutralized by cooking and can even turn into more dangerous compounds when heated.

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

“Free antibiotics” in your food and water

One of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s last legislative fights was about the overuse of livestock antibiotics. “It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs,” he wrote in the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. Over 70 percent of antibiotics go to livestock, not to people, says the bill and 48 percent of national streams are tainted with antibiotics. Other reports say that almost half of Midwest hog farms harbor the antibiotic resistant germ, MRSA, and 64 percent of workers carry it. Are people who don’t eat meat or drink tap water safe? Guess again. Crops themselves can harbor antibiotics, say food researcher, siphoning them right up from the soil.

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

Meat inspection by the “Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray” method

Once upon a time, federal meat inspectors visually examined carcasses for wholesomeness. But under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), implemented in 2000, inspectors now simply ratify that companies are following their own self-created systems–as in “Trust us.” Soon after HACCP, 80 percent of inspectors surveyed said that HACCP limited their ability to enforce the law and the public’s right to know about food safety. Almost 20 percent said they’d been told to not document violations. And 62 percent of inspectors said they allowed contamination like feces, vomit, and metal shards in food on a daily or weekly basis since HACCP. No wonder HACCP has been been dubbed “Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray.”

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

A delicacy from hell

Foie gras is a “delicacy” that requires the indelicate force-feeding of geese and ducks to bloat their livers. Video shows birds with bloody throats, barely able to walk and struggling to breathe. Yet Big Food, restaurateurs and even the American Veterinary Medical Association defend the gratuitous cruelty lest veal crates and other extreme “production agriculture” be questioned next. Foie gras is banned in Europe and other countries but a 2007 foie gras ban in Chicago drew ridicule from the Chicago Tribune‘s food critic (“Has City Council finally quacked?” Will “quack-easies” surface?) and a Foie Gras Fest backlash from area chefs who served five-course foie gras meals. P.S. The ban was repealed.

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

Extreme growth promoters

Many of the growth promoters used in US meat production are banned in other countries. Europe boycotts US beef because of hormones like oestradiol-17 and trenbolone acetate which it says are linked to prostate and breast cancer. The EU also disallows farmers to use antibiotics and arsenic as growth promoters, which the US does. (Yes, arsenic.) Still, it is some consolation that most US growth promoters are withdrawn in the weeks before slaughter. Not so with ractopamine, an asthma-like drug given to 60 to 80 percent of US pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle and an undisclosed number of turkeys. Ractopamine, which few are aware of, is given during the last weeks of life and not withdrawn before slaughter.

Illustration courtesy Martha Rosenberg

Mad Cow–it’s baaaack

Does anyone remember the government’s misinformation and ineptitude with the first three mad cows, now that the disease is baaaaacck? With the first cow, a government report said all “potentially-infectious product” had been “disposed of ” in a landfill but the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times said it went to California restaurants where it was eaten. That’s very different. With the second cow, authorities did not even realize it had mad cow disease for seven months! The government’s final report says the farmer who sold the cow was “relatively sure” he had not kept any offspring but “there were essentially no records maintained.” Want more reassurances? The ranch was cleared to resume selling meat within one month.

Illustration courtesy Marta Rosenberg

Brave new clones

The FDA says clones and their offspring are no different from other food animals and won’t be labeled. (See: rBGH.) But in its own 2008 report it cites cloned calves with elevated glucose, elevated growth indicators, early mammary development, umbilical abscesses and high white blood cell counts. Even the meat and milk is different in one study, the FDA admits. Are Americans eating unlabeled clones right now? “I can’t say today that I can answer your question in an affirmative or negative way,” replied Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to the question in 2010. (Why should the ag secretary know?) “I don’t know. What I do know is that we know all the research, all of the review of this is suggested that this is safe.”

Illustration courtesy of Prometheus Books

Originally published on Huffington Post

The California cow died of a particularly virulent form of mad cow disease known as BASE, bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy, also known as L-type atypical BSE. Typical BSE was first documented in the ’80s in Britain. Afflicted cows often became twitchy and aggressive, giving rise to the “mad cow disease” moniker, as their brains degenerated into a characteristic Swiss cheese-like appearance. Hence the scientific name, BSE: bovine (cow) spongiform (sponge-like) encephalopathy (brain disease).

Then cats started dying. Max, someone’s pet Siamese, was the first non-bovine victim of the disease. Infectious pet food was implicated as the cause of Max’s death from a never-before-described feline spongiform encephalopathy.

Then young people started succumbing to a human spongiform encephalopathy called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a relentlessly progressive and invariably fatal dementia, often involving weekly deterioration into blindness and seizures as their brains became riddled with holes. CJD appears sporadically in one in a million people, but typically strikes only the elderly. The new cases among teenagers were dubbed “variant” CJD, a disease now understood to be caused by consuming contaminated meat (or by getting a blood transfusion from someone who did).

Despite massive contamination of the food supply, no more than a few thousand people are expected to die, suggesting a robust transmission barrier between cows and humans when it comes to BSE. The same may not be true of the atypical forms of BSE found in California and in the last two mad cows in Texas and Alabama. Experimental models of human infection suggest that the type of mad cow disease discovered in the California case “is a more virulent BSE strain… in humans,” with “higher transmissibility” and causing a swifter death.

Just as one in a million people sporadically get CJD, evidence suggests one in a million cattle get atypical BSE. The U.S. cattle population hovers around 100 million. Though there is evidence some of these sporadic human cases of CJD may be associated with infected cows or sheep, case control studies tie CJD more closely to the consumption of pork. A study co-authored by D. Carleton Gajdusek, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on these diseases, found that “consumption of pork as well as its processed products (e.g., ham, scrapple) may be considered as risk factors in the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.”

Though pigs have been proven susceptible to a porcine spongiform encephalopathy, the National Pork Producers Council claims that no naturally occurring cases of “mad pig” disease have ever been discovered. The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, however, has petitioned the federal government to reopen an investigation into a case in which a USDA veterinarian may have found a cluster of suspect pigs in upstate New York.

New research just found that unlike the British strain, the atypical forms of BSE found in the U.S. cause animals to have difficulties in standing up, so instead of mad cow disease, it’s more of a downer cow disease. Since we continue to feed slaughterhouse waste and blood to pigs, this raises the question whether any of the hundreds of thousands of downed pigs that arrive at slaughter plants every year in the U.S. may be infected.

It’s ironic that this new case of mad cow disease was discovered in California where a law excluding downed animals from the food supply was recently overturned by the Supreme Court.

In 2008, an undercover investigation by The Humane Society of the United States of a dairy cow slaughterplant in California showing that downers were being dragged to slaughter for school lunch hamburgers prompted California to strengthen its laws to keep downer livestock out of the food supply. The meat industry, represented by the National Meat Association and the American Meat Institute, responded by successfully suing the state of California to keep meat from downed animals on people’s plates on the grounds that only USDA had the authority to determine which animals should not be forced to the kill floor for humane or public health reasons.

Sick animals can lead to sick people. An unequivocal ban on the slaughter of any farm animal unable even to stand may reduce the public health risk of myriad threats from anthrax and E. coli to swine flu and Salmonella. Spongiform encephalopathies are a special case, though, as they are caused by infectious agents that cannot be eliminated by cooking, pasteurization, or the rendering process used to make pet food. In fact, infection can survive even incineration at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. It is therefore the meat industry’s responsibility to prevent sick animals from entering the food chain in the first place, by instituting a “bright line” ban on the slaughter of all downed livestock. In the California case, the animal was killed before she could be slaughtered. Next time we might not be so lucky.

Originally published on Huffington Post

Mary Davis started feeling the squeeze of city life about a year ago. She had grown up gardening and spent a stint working on an organic farm while attending grad school in Missouri. Now an architect living in San Francisco’s Mission District, she longed to reconnect with her gardening roots, but her small apartment was lacking in the dirt department. “There was no garden, no outdoors,” she says. “I really wanted a place with some soil.”

She started looking around her neighborhood and fell in love with the historic Dearborn Community Garden. But when she inquired about getting a plot, she was told there was a 22-year waiting list.

She signed up nonetheless and continued her search, adding her name to the Potrero Hill Community Garden’s list as well, which had a comparatively modest seven-year wait. Since then, Davis has moved into a house with a shared backyard garden, but she still longs for a plot of her own.

Davis’s experience is not uncommon among would-be gardeners in San Francisco. Most of the city’s community gardens have waiting lists of two years or more, according to Public Harvest, a new report by San Francisco Urban Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR). The most comprehensive report of its kind in recent years, it paints a sweeping portrait of the current urban agriculture landscape and presents a bold agenda to help San Francisco meet the demands of a burgeoning movement.

Since the dissolution of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) in 2004, there have been no centralized city-funded efforts to maintain or expand urban agriculture. Residents hoping to start new projects face many bureaucratic hurdles, since public land and urban agricultural activities are managed by multiple agencies, with little coordination. From commercial urban farms to rooftop plots and shared gardens, more than two dozen private and public urban agriculture projects have sprouted up in the City over the last four years as a result of the resurgence of interest in gardening. “We need to start looking to our public land to meet this demand,” said SPUR program manager Eli Zigas at a recent press event at Michelangelo Playground Community Garden in Nob Hill (pictured below).

While San Francisco Recreation & Parks oversees 35 community gardens on public land, those gardens are generally operated by volunteers, not staff. “The gardens are run by gardeners,” says Andrea Jadwin, a founding and active member of San Francisco Gardening Resource Organization (SFGRO), which offers support and training for community gardeners throughout the city. “That’s good and that’s bad because some gardens aren’t very well run.” Garden managers are often inadequately prepared to deal with issues like vandalism or garden members who neglect their plots while waiting lists grow. “If there were an agency helping people run the gardens better, it’d be easy to keep them going with minimal budget,” she adds.

According to SPUR’s findings, San Francisco’s urban agriculture program is middling compared to other large cities. With an annual operating budget of $800,000, or about $6,615 per site, San Francisco spends more than New York but far less than Seattle, which invests $11,940 per site.

Taking SPUR’s findings and recommendations to heart, District 3 Supervisor David Chiu has proposed new legislation that would create a strategic plan and a centralized program to streamline the management of urban agricultural projects, either through the city or a city-funded nonprofit.

The proposed ordinance includes a six-month audit of city-owned building rooftops that could be used for urban agriculture, the creation of a “one-stop shop” for individuals and organizations looking to engage in agricultural activities, and the establishment of garden resource centers that would provide residents with compost, seeds, and tools. By 2014, Chiu aims to develop at least 10 new urban agricultural projects on public land and reduce waiting lists for plot-based gardens to one year.

Zigas emphasizes the minimal cost of such a program for the returns it offers to the city of San Francisco, such as greening the urban landscape and reducing stormwater runoff, which in turn reduce public spending on landscaping and sewage treatment.

He also notes the benefits of urban agriculture for San Francisco residents and the food system at large, connecting city dwellers with the miracles and challenges of growing food. “I think a many gardeners in San Francisco have a great appreciation for a fresh tomato because they know how hard it is to grow a tomato,” says Zigas. “There are a lot of people in the city who learn about food and how it’s produced through that process.”

Having been a member of White Crane Springs Community Garden in the Sunset for nine years, Jadwin has witnessed the benefits that such spaces offer by bringing neighbors together.

“People garden for the same reasons they go to the farmers market,” she observes. “You see your friends and neighbors. You talk about the weather and what’s in season. It not only allows people to have a broader connection to food, but it also builds community.”

Originally published in CUESA‘s newsletter

The farm bill draft released by the Senate Agriculture Committee last week (April 20) falls far short of the providing farm and food policies Americans want. In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. They’re going to be sorely disappointed. If it passes, this agribusiness-as-usual proposal will largely perpetuate our broken food and agriculture system, leaving in its wake a long legacy of poor health and degraded soil, water and habitat, especially in the industrial agriculture heartland.

Without the efforts of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the chair of the committee, the bill would have been even worse, but as it is, the proposal will continue to give away tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to the nation’s largest, most profitable and environmentally damaging farm businesses. To pay for this giveaway, the Agriculture committee’s proposal would slash programs for conservation, nutrition, rural development and beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.

That’s exactly what the majority of Americans polled said they don’t want. 

An All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet for the Subsidy Lobby 

The committee could simply have ended the widely discredited direct payment program and redirected the money to healthy food or conservation programs that benefit the public and save money in the long run. Instead, legislators created an expensive new entitlement program (called “shallow loss”) that guarantees nearly 90 percent of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits. It also leaves untouched a bloated $9-billion-a-year crop insurance program that pays about 60 percent of farmers’ crop insurance premiums, no matter how large the farm, and sends billions to crop insurance companies and their agents.

Most of the benefits of these proposed programs would flow to the big five commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice, and wheat) that provide feed for livestock, raw material for processed food and corn ethanol fuel for our cars. Not only would these proposals be highly inequitable and wasteful, but the new revenue guarantees, combined with unlimited insurance subsidies and high crop prices, will create powerful new incentives for growers to plow up fragile wetlands and grasslands and erase many of farming’s recent environmental gains.  

Table Scraps for Good Food

With most of the savings from ending direct payments being poured into even more wasteful programs, there is little left for anything else. When it comes to promoting better food, the bill would provide a few new important scraps. There’s $20 million a year for promoting local food; $10 million for Community Food Projects; and $20 million for the Hunger-free Communities Program to create incentives for SNAP (food stamp) recipients to buy healthy food at farmers’ markets. But the committee also cut $4 million from organic research funding (to $16 million a year and cut funding to support Beginning Farmers in half, to $10 million. Never mind that we have a serious shortage of young farmers and the average age of all farmers is hovering around 57.

The fruit, nuts, and vegetable sector is generally happy with their scraps, which add up to an extra $75 million a year, mostly for marketing and research. Yet few of the no-cost policy changes outlined in the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act–introduced recently by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)–which would help build local food systems and expand access to healthy and sustainable foods, made it into the bill.

Modest Trims to Lavish Subsidies Could Easily Pay For Good Food

With the full Senate expected to consider the bill later this year, the only real hope for redirecting the ill-considered spending cuts to conservation and healthy food programs will be to persuade other senators that there are smarter policy options if they are willing to pry the needed resources out of the hands of wealthy farm operators.

According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, simply capping crop insurance premium subsidies at $40,000 per farm could yield as much as $10 billion in savings over 10 years. This would be nearly enough to spare conservation and anti-hunger programs from the proposed cuts while affecting just four percent of the subsidy recipients, who currently collect more than 30 percent of the total!

According to the same report, reducing the average crop insurance premium subsidy by 10 percent might save another $10 billion over 10 years. This would be more than enough to significantly pay down the deficit and cover the modest $200 million annual cost of the Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher bill.

A portion of that subsidy savings could also be used to not just restore but actually double funding for organic agriculture, reinstate funding for the socially disadvantaged farmer program cut by the committee and double the number of low-income schools participating in the Fruit and Vegetable Snack program.

None of these modest cuts to the crop insurance subsidies would harm the integrity of that program or leave farmers with inadequate coverage.

Watch for the Budget Deficit Smokescreen

In spite of the committee bill’s major flaws, outrage from good food advocates has been muted thus far, in part because expectations were exceptionally low.

The overriding message from Congress, meekly accepted by too many, is that the current budget-cutting climate makes it impossible to expect new money for nutrition, conservation, local, organic and healthy food, no matter how valuable (and oversubscribed) these programs are. All we can hope for, they say, is to hold onto current funding or minimize cuts.

But the nation’s difficult fiscal situation shouldn’t get all the blame. The main culprit is the farm lobby’s stranglehold on the majority of Senate and House Agriculture Committee members and the unwillingness of those who would prefer a reform-oriented farm bill to seriously challenge Congress to do better.

Disregard the Coming Spin

As the farm bill moves to the Senate floor, there will be a lot of spin-doctors proclaiming that this is the best that can be expected in the current fiscal climate. But if the goal is really to save money and invest wisely, it makes no sense to give away unlimited crop insurance premium subsidies to wealthy farm operators at the expense of feeding hungry people, protecting our water, and investing in healthy food.

It will not be easy to break the farm lobby’s long-standing grip on Congress. But it is certainly not going to happen if we stay silent. It’s time to pick up the phone and let your representative and senators know that you want a fair farm bill that invests in a healthier food system for you and your family.

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your senators’ and/or representative’s office.  Tell them you think the Farm Bill should invest in healthy food. Tell them to cut crop insurance subsidies instead of nutrition, conservation and healthy food programs.

Originally published on AgMag

Last week the White House released its National Bioeconomy Blueprint  (PDF) which “outlines steps that agencies will take to drive the bioeconomy—economic activity powered by research and innovation in the biosciences—and details ongoing efforts across the Federal government to realize this goal.”

Unfortunately, this new bioeconomy is not as green as the Obama administration is making it out to be. The so-called bioeconomy is dependent primarily on the risky, unregulated field of synthetic biology and the use of unsustainably produced biomass to feed synthetic organisms created by these technologies. The National Bioeconomy Blueprint, while offering little in new substantive policy, causes more harm than good by giving the green light to the growth and profit of the synthetic biology industry without making any real effort to protect people and the environment from the novel risks posed by this emerging technology.

Synthetic biology is an extreme form of genetic engineering involving the writing and rewriting of genetic code and biological systems in order to create novel organisms that have never existed before in nature. Novel organisms created through synthetic biology could escape from the lab and become a new class of invasive species or pump out oil into local waterways. Biotech workers at put at risk if organisms are improperly contained and these synthetic bugs get inside their bodies or are carried home with them on their clothes. Check out this issue brief from Friends of the Earth, Synthetic Biology 101, (PDF) for more information on what exactly these technologies are and the risks synthetic biology pose.

According to Andrew Pollack at the New York Times, “much of what is in the 43-page-report…is a list of government programs that are already under way. So it is not clear what concrete changes, if any, will result.” But while no new major policy initiatives were announced, the Blueprint appears to be a nod of approval for moving full speed ahead for an unregulated and rapidly developing synthetic biology industry.

You may recall that last month, 113 organizations from around the world called for the proper oversight and regulation of synthetic biology in the Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology. This global coalition demanded that the Precautionary Principle be applied to the governance of synthetic biology and that a moratorium be placed on the environmental release and commercial use of synthetic organisms until proper national and international laws have been established to ensure synthetic biology does not harm people or the environment.

Unfortunately, the Obama White House is moving in the exact opposite direction with this new initiative. The National Bioeconomy Blueprint calls for expanded development of “essential bioeconomy technologies” such as synthetic biology and identify points to reduce regulatory barriers for the biotechnology industry. One of the White House’s main strategic objectives is to “unlock the promise of synthetic biology” by making strategic investments in synthetic biology that “have the potential to move the bioeconomy forward in all sectors.”

The Blueprint quotes President Obama’s Bioethics Commission, which recommended back in 2010, (PDF) that federal actions be taken “to ensure that America reaps the benefits of synthetic biology while identifying appropriate ethical boundaries and minimizing identified risks” of synthetic biology. Unfortunately those recommendations, which were publically criticized by Friends of the Earth and 57 other organizations from around the world, looked to self-regulation to guide developments in synthetic biology instead of developing actual laws and regulations that are specifically tailored to the novel risks posed by synthetic biology.

The claim that the government will “minimize identified risks” from synthetic biology sounds great but so far they have failed to even look at these risks. According to a report from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, (PDF) of the $430 million spent by the federal government on synthetic biology between 2005 and 2010, zero projects were identified that focused on risk assessments related to the accidental or intentional release of synthetic organisms from the lab. Instead of truly balancing the potential benefits and risks of synthetic biology, the Bioeconomy Blueprint gives the industry the green light to rush ahead while turning a blind eye to the risks.

The bioeconomy also carries serious socio-economic risks. As the ETC Group highlighted in its brilliant report, the New Biomassters: Synthetic B iology and the Next Assault on Biodiversity and Livelihoods, (PDF) the new bioeconomy is not as green as it seems. The bioeconomy is, in fact, “a red-hot resource grab of the lands, livelihoods, knowledge and resources of peoples in the global South, where most of that biomass is located.” As the report points out, 86 percent of global biomass is located in the tropics and subtropics, and a push for a new bioeconomy, enabled by synthetic biology, will only “accelerate the pace of forest destruction and land acquisition in the South in order to feed the economies of the North.” Biomass, or land on which it is grown, is not an unlimited resource, as the Blueprint seems to assume.

And just last week, a new report was released by the Global Forest Coalition titled Bio-economy Versus Biodiversity, (PDF) which argues how the so-called bioeconomy will have “serious negative impacts…on forests, forest-dependent peoples, and biodiversity.” According to Simone Lovera, Executive Director of the Global Forest Coalition, “the bioeconomy is a massive effort to privatize nature for corporate profit…high-risk technologies like synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and genetically engineered trees will only drive the planetary ecosystem further into crisis.” This report concludes by challenging the Obama administration and other global leaders to “abandon the green sheen of biotechnology and market-based conservation schemes, and to affirm the kinds of biocultural approaches demonstrated by Indigenous Peoples and social movements in the Global South that eschew infinite economic growth for sustainable livelihoods, local living economies, and integration with the natural world.”

The Obama administration had a chance to take the driver’s seat and ensure that synthetic biology does not cause more harm than good. Instead, the White House is sitting in the passenger’s seat while the biotechnology industry speeds ahead without proper regulation, safety assessment, or oversight.

In the end the National Bioeconomy Blueprint feels more like an attempt for President Obama to claim he is creating jobs. What we really need is a serious discussion over how we should regulate new technologies and just what kind of future economy we want. If we are to have a truly sustainable economy moving forward, it cannot be based on risky, unregulated (and patented) technologies such as synthetic biology that pose serious harms to the environment and our health. The risks posed by synthetic biology and other biotechnologies must be studied before we rush forward with this new bioeconomy in which industry stands to make large profits while the risks are spread to the public.

Originally published on Friends of the Earth

Following on the heels of pink slime, mad cow disease (AKA bovine spongiform encephalopathy—or BSE) is back this week after a California dairy cow destined for a rendering plant that makes pet food was found to have the disease. So far, it looks like the beef industry is playing down the finding, hoping to dodge a loss in sales at home and abroad. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to tell Americans that our food supply is entirely safe.

But the re-emergence of mad cow and the conversation around pink slime has re-opened questions about our food system. It has exposed how food safety falls inevitably through the cracks in a country where over 9 billion animals are being slaughtered per year and budgets for the departments that oversee these processes are being slashed. The incredible media coverage of both issues reflects a growing consumer interest in more transparency in what we’re eating and how it’s being produced.

While this is only the fourth case of mad cow in the U.S. to date, experts argue that finding it this time was a stroke of luck. Of the 34 million cows we slaughter annually in the U.S., 40,000 are being tested by USDA for the disease, down from nearly 500,000 in 2005—about one tenth of one percent.

Some would like the media focus on mad cow to be re-directed to other ongoing and serious food safety issues. Dr. Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and author of Safe Food, is among those connecting this finding of mad cow to other unfortunately routine (and in some cases, deadly) food safety issues. “The risk of you getting this disease from eating beef is extremely small,” she said.

Sarah Klein, of the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest told the AP, “What we know is that 3,000 Americans die every year from preventable food-borne illnesses that are not linked” to mad cow disease. She continued, “Things like E. coli, salmonella–that’s where we should be focusing our attention, outrage and policy.”

Mad cow originally captured the public’s attention because of the grotesqueness and serious consequences of the story. Back then we learned that cows were being fed parts of other cows–some of which had been infected with the disease, and thus BSE was able to spread easily among herds. Worse were the photos of human suffers of the lethal prion, an infectious agent that degenerates the brain. The disease takes years to show up, and looks somewhat like an accelerated version of dementia, making it more difficult to trace–and adding to the public fear factor.

Similar to mad cow, pink slime struck a chord with consumers who were disgusted by the idea that less desirable parts of the cow were being made “safe to eat” with the addition of ammonia. Through the weeks of media coverage we learned that pink slime, or “lean finely-textured beef,” is a regular ingredient in the hamburgers used in school lunches and in 70 percent of the ground beef sold in supermarkets.

The USDA insists that the strain of mad cow found this week is a random mutation that occurs from time to time in older cows (the cow in question was 10 years old and found lame and lying down) and that no harm could have come to humans should it have gone undiscovered. Specifically, the USDA has stated that this dairy cow couldn’t have transmitted the disease through its milk. Yet Tom Philpott at Mother Jones draws attention here to a study in which a similar prion was transmitted from sheep to sheep through milk.

In addition, Dr. Michael Hansen, PhD, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, told me that some of the practices that led to the mad cow epidemics of the past are still being employed, like “feeding cows’ blood back to cows, feeding chicken litter to cows and allowing ground up cows to be fed to pigs and chickens, then allowing ground up pig and chickens to be fed back to cattle.” These practices are banned in Europe, Japan and Canada. According to Hansen, a team of scientists including the former head of surveillance at USDA, Linda Detwiler, recommended in 2005 that the FDA stop “the legal exemptions which allow ruminant protein to be fed back to ruminants (with the exception of milk).” [PDF of the letter here]

Mad cow deserves our attention and we deserve to know the truth about our food system. It is but one small piece of the puzzle of overcoming our food safety challenges and a potent reminder why our food system needs an overhaul. Now let’s just hope that enough public pressure forces our regulatory bodies to step up to the plate and act, and that the government has the impetus to fund and enforce new regulations.

Photo: Dairy cows by Shutterstock

A new coalition is trying to throw sand in the gears of industrial agriculture’s chemical treadmill. And this one just may have what it takes to slow it down. I’m referring to the fight over USDA approval for Dow AgroScience’s new genetically modified corn seeds (brand name “Enlist”), which are resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D.

This is part of biotech’s “superweed” strategy, by which they hope to address the fact that farmers across the country are facing an onslaught of weeds impervious to the most popular herbicide in use, Monsanto’s glyphosate or RoundUp (and in some cases impervious to machetes as well!). Of course, this is a problem of the industry’s own making. It was overuse of glyphosate caused by the market dominance of Monsanto’s set of glyphosate-resistant genetically engineered seeds that put farmers in this fix in the first place.

One of the older herbicides, 2,4-D is a pretty nasty chemical—it’s been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver problems, reproductive effects, and shows endocrine disrupting potential—which is one of the many reasons farmers prefer the more “benign” glyphosate. In fact, on the basis of the scientific evidence, especially related to human cancers, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) several years ago to withdraw its approval for 2,4-D. Earlier this month, the petition was summarily denied.

So it’s interesting to see this new coalition’s opposition to 2,4-D getting so much traction so quickly. Perhaps it’s because the group—dubbed Save Our Crops—isn’t made up of environmentalists and sustainable agriculture types, but rather Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic conventional farmers and large food processors (and Organic Valley, the organic co-operative organization which is both a producer and a processor).

The basis of their concern isn’t so much the health effects, but the fact that their farms may end up as collateral damage from the increase in the use of 2,4-D that will occur if Dow’s seed is approved. After all, the use of glyphosate went through the roof once Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready seeds took over the marketplace. These farmers expect 2,4-D to follow the same path. (Rodale News estimates a 60 to 80 percent increase.)

The problem has to do with pesticide drift—an issue with many pesticides, but a particular problem with 2,4-D, which unlike glyphosate is highly volatile. While its volatility was in one context considered a strength, at this point even Dow itself acknowledges that it’s a concern. In an article on the battle over the new seed’s approval, The New York Times offers an illustration of what these farmers have to fear:

To Jody Herr, it was a telltale sign that one of his tomato fields had been poisoned by 2,4-D, the powerful herbicide that was an ingredient in Agent Orange, the Vietnam War defoliant.

“The leaves had curled and the plants were kind of twisting rather than growing straight,” Mr. Herr said of the 2009 incident on his vegetable farm in Lowell, Ind. He is convinced the chemical, as well as another herbicide called dicamba, had wafted through the air from farms nearly two miles away.

As explained by Rodale News, 2,4-D-resistant plants will alter the way farmers use the chemical, encouraging them to apply it later in the season to more kill weeds (you normally wouldn’t apply a herbicide on a field full of mature plants). This fact makes it particularly problematic since, as Rodale News put it:

… not only are humidity and temperatures higher, but also neighboring tomato plants are leafing out, making them most susceptible to the drift. If the chemicals don’t outright kill plants like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and other favorites, they could cause severe twisting and other deformities to occur as the plants in the drift’s path grow, rendering the harvest useless.

Which is just what farmer Herr saw in his field. Indeed, it is tomato farmers who may be the most at risk. Rodale also reports on a study produced by scientists at Ohio State University, which simulated the effects of 2,4-D drift on tomatoes [PDF]:

Experts found that the migrating pesticide vapors sparked late bloom, which diminishes the marketable red part of the tomato and stimulated growth of unmarketable green growth, which can’t be sold. In fact, just tiny amounts—1/300th of what was applied to field crops—caused significant field loss on neighboring tomato farms.

Ohio researchers concluded that realistic drift from corn or soy fields treated with either dicamba or 2,4-D will result in a 17 to 77 percent reduction in marketable fruit for neighboring farms and gardens.

These are, of course, estimates from a simulation. But the farmers and processors behind Save Our Crops would rather not be the guinea pigs in the real-world version of this experiment.

For its part, Dow assures the USDA that its new version of 2,4-D doesn’t have the same volatility—and the company will “urge” farmers to use the new, branded version rather than the far less expensive generic version of 2,4-D that’s been on the market for decades. How reassuring.

Indeed that’s where I get worried. If I had to guess, I suspect that the USDA will approve Dow’s new seed but with restrictions on things like planting acreage and use of recommended formulations and so on (though there’s always the chance the agency will punt the final decision until after the election). In any event, restrictions are only as good as their enforcement, and the USDA doesn’t have an inspiring track record. Farmers have routinely violated planting restrictions on GM seeds in the past—while regulators have a history of acceding to industry’s demands to reduce the restrictions rather than enforce them.

The public comment period on the 2,4-D-resistant seeds ends today. According to the Center for Food Safety 365,000 people have already submitted comments to the USDA. An additional 143 farm, environmental, health, fisheries groups and companies will submit a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack expressing their opposition to the GMO seeds. Save Our Crops has also already submitted two petitions [PDF] while the consumer group Just Label It is sponsoring its own petition to protest USDA approval, so there’s still time for the public’s voice to be heard.

But the real fight appears to be between commodity farms who want a simple answer to the growing problem of superweeds and fruit and vegetable growers who don’t want to see their crops damaged as a consequence. The latter are often treated by the USDA as step-children while growers of the Big Five commodities—corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton—receive the overwhelming majority of federal farm subsidies.

I doubt that USDA approval of Dow’s new seed, if it comes, will be the end of the story. But it should tell us something that even some large conventional farmers are starting to get angry and scared by the direction industrial agriculture has taken.

Below is a video produced by Dow AgroScience advertising Enlist, or 2,4-D. Skip ahead to 2:35 to hear the company’s take on superweeds and to see some compelling images.

Photo: A still from a promotional video for the herbicide 2,4-D, which is being marketed as a solution for “superweeds” (picured), which have grown tolerant to other herbicides.

Originally Published on Grist

Part history text, part socio-political commentary and part call to action, Food Fight: The Citizen’s Guide to the Next Food and Farm Bill offers something for everyone from the seasoned agriculture advocate to the newcomer on the food systems scene. The newly re-issued book by Dan Imhoff comes just as the federal debate over the 2012 Farm Bill is heating up.

The book is divided into three sections: Why the Farm Bill Matters; Wedge Issues; and Turning the Tables. To set the context, Imhoff summarizes the early history of the farm bill, describing the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and the overproduction of crops that led to its creation as a cornerstone of the New Deal. The history lesson continues with a short summary of the impact of the Green Revolution on farm bill policy, as well as the story of how the bill came to include hunger and nutrition programs, and the ebb and flow of conservation programs to incentivize environmental stewardship on the nation’s farms and ranches. And because no discussion on the farm bill would be complete without discussing commodity subsidies, that’s covered too.

After laying down the foundation, he devotes the rest of the book to strategic topics. He lays out a number of “wedge issues” that could change the terms of the farm bill debate—government deficits, the increasingly apparent impacts of climate change on agriculture, and other emerging ecological crises, the rise of the local food movement, food security concerns, and more.

The last few pages of the book are devoted to “Turning the Tables” and Imhoff offers a checklist of 25 ideas whose time has come—an aspirational menu for American agriculture. Finally, he provides a succinct activist tool kit with tips on organizing and a resource list of organizations across the country engaged in progressive advocacy on the farm bill and related issues.

Perhaps my favorite quote from the book—maybe because I can relate to it–is this: “I confess, I am a reluctant policy wonk. But these are the issues of our times. If Americans don’t weigh in on the Farm Bill, the agribusiness lobbyists will be more than happy to draft the next one for us as they have done for at least 30 years.”

The book is available online at Watershed Media where you can also see a number of other of Imhoff’s books. You can also order it on the action-oriented Food Fight site that features farm bill-related events, news and a “what you can do” section.