The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a United Nations agency that develops food safety and labeling standards. Its standards carry weight because they are used to settle disputes at the World Trade Organization. The Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL) meets in Quebec City, Canada May 3-7, 2010 to discuss the labeling issue.

The letter refers specifically to a position, drafted by USDA and FDA, that opposes a Codex document stating that countries can adopt different approaches to labeling of GE food, in line with existing Codex guidance. The current U.S. draft position goes even further to say that mandatory labeling of food as GE/GM “is likely to create the impression that the labeled food is in some way different” and would therefore be “false, misleading or deceptive.”

“We are concerned that the current U.S. position could potentially create significant problems for food producers in the U.S. who wish to indicate that their products contain no GE ingredients. Organic food in particular, which prohibits GE ingredients, are frequently labeled ‘GE-free’ or ‘No GMOs’. A recent CU poll [PDF] found that two-thirds of consumers would be concerned if they thought that GE/GM ingredients were in organic food,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union.

The U.S. position paper states that Codex should not “suggest or imply that GM/GE foods are in any way different from other foods.” However, Dr. Hansen stated, “Such foods clearly are different. USDA organic rules specifically state that GE seed cannot be used in organic production. The FDA has also taken the position that within the U.S., voluntary labeling as to whether or not a product contains GE ingredients is permissible.”

The letter to USDA and FDA is signed by the Organic Trade Association, the Organic Consumers Association, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Organic Coalition, and R-CALF USA, among many others.

“We find it hard to understand how FDA and USDA can argue to Codex that mandatory labeling is inherently false and misleading, but voluntary labeling, which is permitted in the United States, is not,” the groups state. “We are, in fact, concerned that the current U.S. position appears to seek to establish precedents at Codex that would make it difficult to label food as non-GM within the U.S.”

The groups also urge the U.S. to not allow trade goals to interfere with or overrule judgments made on sound science and existing policy.

Join CREDO Action in calling on the U.S. delegation to the Codex Committee meeting, led by representatives of FDA and USDA, to drop these positions and support proposals to allow countries to make their own decisions on the labeling of GE foods.

The Bay Area is fortunate to have abundant local produce available at multiple farmers’ markets and stores. But not everyone has access to, or can afford, farm fresh produce. Many restaurants and businesses also want to buy local, but don’t have the time or staff to shop locally. The conversation will tap into best practices and lessons learned from three of the Bay Area’s most interesting initiatives and address the creative ways these organizations are getting local produce to more people, including those in underserved and neglected communities.

Panelists include:
Grayson James, Executive Director of Petaluma Bounty, a non-profit organization that helps people grow their own healthy food, redistributes surplus food, and provides affordable fresh food to low-income families and seniors;
Melanie Cheng, Founder of FarmsReach, a new online farm food marketplace that connects farmers to business buyers; and
Christine Cherdboonmuang, Coordinator of Healthy Farms/Healthy Communities for Oakland’s East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC) and the Oakland School District which works to bring farm stands directly to parents at 12 Oakland schools.

The panel will be moderated by Michael Dimock, President of Roots of Change (ROC), a nonprofit, organization whose purpose is to spawn a sustainable food system in California by the year 2030.

Please join us at 6:30 p.m. for our conversation; refreshments will be donated thanks to a collaboration with BiRite Market. As always, Kitchen Table Talks is a joint production of CivilEats and 18 Reasons.

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009. A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, or organic dairy farmers seriously, for example, having dismissed the fact that contamination will threaten export markets and domestic organic markets. You can review the EIS here and supplemental documents here.

This is the first time the USDA has prepared an EIS for any GE crop and therefore will have broad implications for all transgenic crops, and its failure to address the environmental and related economic impacts of GE alfalfa will have far-reaching consequences. CFS is spearheading a campaign to make sure all affected parties know and are involved in the public process and have the opportunity to comment.

This is a call to action to all who have concerns about the environmental and economic consequences of uncontrolled nation-wide growth of GE alfalfa, to all who believe in the public’s right to choose to eat non-GE food and the farmer’s right to sow the crop of his or her choice, and to those who care about the impacts of pesticides and invasive weeds on biodiversity and endangered species.

Farmers, dairy producers, scientists, public interest organizations, and all concerned citizenry must make sure their voices are heard in this important process. At this stage, the most critical thing anyone can do is provide public comments indicating their concerns with GE Roundup Ready Alfalfa.

In particular, the EIS dismisses the significance that GE alfalfa will broadly contaminate non-GE alfalfa. Opinions, studies (published or unpublished), anecdotal stories, and testing data about how contamination will occur and /or demonstrating that contamination has in fact occurred are critical.

The EIS also dismisses the significant adverse economic effects that GE contamination will have on non-GE conventional alfalfa seed or hay growers (e.g., export markets), or dairy production that rely on non-GE and organic alfalfa hay for forage. Studies (published or unpublished), anecdotal stories, and economic analysis showing harm through contamination is essential, especially markets that are GE sensitive or reject GE outright.

Submit your comments to USDA APHIS No Later Than February 16, 2009. You can also sign up for the CFS True Food Network and receive alerts on the process. Please also consider donating to CFS to help with this important effort.

Fortunately, many of the measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in the soil will also make agriculture more resilient to extreme weather patterns, such as the current drought. Cover cropping, composting, conservation tillage, organic fertilization and other best management practices will increase the amount of soil organic matter, reduce erosion, conserve water and enhance fertility. This, in turn, will help increase crop productivity and drought and pest resistance in the face of an increasingly dry and hot climate. According to a January 2009, ground-breaking study by University of California at Davis researchers, these practices, when combined, will generate significant greenhouse gas reduction benefits, primarily through carbon sequestration.

Unfortunately, none of these measures were adopted or promoted in California’s climate change strategy. In fact, agriculture was almost entirely left out in the California Air Resources Board’s (ARB) implementation strategy for AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. Of the 174 million metric tons of CO2 emissions reductions targeted in California’s legally binding “Scoping Plan,” not one ton is expected to come from agriculture. Of the additional possible 37.4 million tons in voluntary reductions identified in the strategy, just one million tons are expected from agriculture.

Making matters worse, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) recently closed its environment division and currently has no full time staff, resources or web-based information specifically dedicated to the issue of agriculture and climate change. The Agriculture Climate Action Team (AGCAT), an inter-agency group established to give input to the Air Resources Board and ensure follow up on agriculture and climate change measures, has been disbanded; and most of its recommended follow-on actions were ignored.

For a state with a $33 billion-a-year agriculture industry and a history of leadership on climate change, this is completely unacceptable.

The Economic and Technical Advancement Advisory Council (ETAAC), which advises the Air Resources Board on climate change matters, estimates that by 2020, agriculture could achieve an estimated reduction of 17 million metric tons per year, or about 10 percent of California’s goal.

As things currently stand, however, virtually none of this will be achieved, leaving California farmers even more vulnerable to the higher temperatures, increasing drought, frost, floods and shrinking water resources that are already putting significant stresses on the agricultural sector. By 2050, estimates show average temperatures rising by as much as 3.6° F in certain regions and the Sierra Nevada snowpack declining by as much as 40 percent. These changes will result in declining crop yields, increased pests and invasive weeds, soil erosion and diminished productivity. If for no other reason than to protect agriculture from the devastating impacts of warming temperatures, California needs its best minds and most powerful institutions working actively to devise programs, incentives, and in a worst case scenario, regulations, that will dramatically expand the implementation of management practices that both reduce the impact of global warming on agriculture and reduce its contribution to global warming.

In our latest report, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) outlines a set of recommendations that include research, communication, technical assistance and incentive programs to promote cost-effective best management practices that will reduce emissions as well as help farmers cut energy use, improve water conservation and water quality and build healthier, more productive soils. These are all critical elements in a comprehensive strategy for minimizing and adapting to the serious threats that climate change poses to California agriculture.

As a first step, the Air Resources Board, together with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the California Energy Commission and the Natural Resources Agency, should establish an inter-agency working group on agriculture and climate change. Federal agencies, NGOs and farm groups all have critical roles to play and should be actively involved. The group would provide a much needed forum for the intensive stakeholder engagement and outreach needed to motivate real change in California’s skeptical agriculture sector.

In the conclusion of the report, EWG recommends 10 specific actions that should be carried out under the auspices of a new inter-agency working group and/or under the leadership of California’s chief state agencies concerned with agriculture and climate change.

On a recent Sunday evening, nearly a hundred and fifty people decided to drive out to Brentwood, Ca to have dinner and enjoy the harvest hospitality at the Brookside Farm.  Farmer Welling Tom was busy running about – harvesting fruit for the small vegetable stand set up on the edge of the orchard where his mom Anne would sell some pears before being called over to help serve the grilled fish and meats that accompanied their local bounty.

Far from being a polished corporate event, we sat on hay bales in the orchard as we talked and feasted.  Chefs from around the Bay Area provided dishes to share, mingling with customers Welling and Anne had met at the various farmers markets they attend.  The true feeling of local community was evident in every bite, every conversation.

When people try to talk about the value of local food – the value that doesn’t necessarily relate to dollars or sense – this is it.  There can be no monetary value placed on evenings like these; they can’t be created by marketing budgets or new research and development programs or new strains of genetically modified wheat.  Evenings like this 0ccur when a community comes together to celebrate a family choosing to work the soil they’ve lived on for 35 years by hand.

And yet, this is also part of the problem.  Surrounding Brookside Farm’s 10 acres is an ever-encroaching suburban sprawl, as century-old fruit and nut orchards are ripped out in favor of mini-mansions and big box stores.  As the Bay Area housing market heated up in years past, development roared ahead at a feverish level as farmers were offered larger and larger sums to sell their land for new houses and malls.  Sadly, the market fell even faster when the bubble burst last winter, and now many of those new houses stand empty.  But the deeper tragedy is not the lost property value.  It is that the orchards and open farmland that preceded these empty houses can not easily be replaced.

This very issue – farmland preservation – was the topic of a recent letter sent by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  “Protecting farmland for future agricultural use is of utmost importance to every citizen of the United States” the letter reads.  The letter brought attention to the federal Interim Final Rule regarding the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP).

A statement released by the AFT reads:

“The states who signed the letter represent over 70 percent of all the acreage protected under state farmland protection programs,” says Bob Wagner, Senior Director of Farmland Protection Programs for AFT. “The states recognize that the federal government has been a key partner in helping protect farmland since 1995, and they are offering improvements to the FRPP program so that it can be most effective and efficient.”

This issue could not be more important, and the time for increased preservation needs to be now.  As the economy has slowed, the cost of keeping land protected for agricultural use is a fraction of what it was last year – and this price will only increase as the economy recovers.

The demand for development never ends, and at each turn the message is, “We just need a little more housing, but you can save the rest.”  But then the next year, it’s “Just a little more for a small mall we need to build,”  and then “Well, we need to build….”  and so on.  Meanwhile, all forms of open space disapears and we are left with the proverbial “asphalt jungle.”

Reflecting on these issues, Chef / Owner Peter Chastain of Prima Restaurant in Walnut Creek recently recalled a day, perhaps 30 years ago, when you could look east from the Berkeley hills and see only orchards and ranches and rolling green fields.  Today, all that has been replaced by suburban development.

Thoughtfully, Chef Peter said “Now, our job as cooks is to rediscover the connections to the land through our work, and in the process try to awaken people’s awareness of those connections through the food we serve.”

Connecting to the land through our food – it’s the most natural thing in the world.  But the land needs to be there to connect with, and that’s something worth protecting.

It is often said: You are what you eat, and increasingly in this day and age we come to define ourselves by our food habits.  Are you a vegetarian or a vegan?  Are you a compassionate carnivore or a junk-food junkie?  Are you a locavore?  A raw foodist?  An omnivore?

We choose these labels for ourselves because they in many ways reflect our core values. Do you believe that ultimately it is the local connections that you make in life that matter?  Locavore it is.  Do you believe that all life, from the cows in the field to the ants running through your kitchen cabinets, need to be honored and not eaten?  Vegan is the choice.

But in addition to these personal reasons, many of us eat the way we do because we believe that it makes a difference in the greater world.  We believe that if enough of us “vote with our fork,” we can change the very food system that feeds us.

In a blistering new essay by Derrick Jensen in the July / Aug issue of Orion magazine, he starts by asking us: “Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery?”

His point is that individual consumer choices are not a substitute for working toward real political or social change.

Jensen continues:

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

I believe Jensen’s is a powerful argument, but only slightly less so when it comes to food.  For example, he writes:

We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans.

To make a difference we need to change that 90%.  So that short shower might not be the solution, but changing our agriculture system just might, which in turn will surely change our eating habits.

This leads to the next point:  instead of putting so much political emphasis on what we eat, maybe we should spend more time writing letters to our representatives and organizing to change the system directly.  Let’s spend our eating energy on growing, buying, and cooking what’s healthy and tasty for our families, and hopefully have some time leftover for direct engagement.

When it comes to our food, it’s clear that we need to be doing both simultaneously.  Just be sure to finish that grilled summer vegetable sandwich before your homemade pesto gets all over those letters.

Robyn O’Brien is the best-selling author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It and a “reluctant crusader” for cleaning up our food system. A Houston native from a conservative family—not the most likely candidate to be found on the frontline of the battleground for the American food supply—Robyn’s advocacy began when the youngest of her four children had a violent reaction to eggs. In a quest to find answers and solutions to what seemed to be a personal problem, she used her MBA and background in finance to uncover and report on the relationship between Big Food and Big Money and unearth how a flawed federal policy has allowed hidden toxins in our food that she argues could be contributing to the alarming recent increase in allergies, ADHD, cancer, and asthma in our children. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robyn about her book and her work, specifically focusing on the recent engineering of patented chemical and proteins in our food.

Why did the U.S. recently begin to alter food proteins using biotechnology?

To enhance corporate profitability. The introduction of genetically altered foods into the American food supply began in 1994 after scientists realized that by manipulating the genetic structure of a growth hormone, they could enhance profitability in the dairy industry by injecting manipulated proteins into dairy cows, inducing these cows to make more milk. Realizing the profitability to be achieved in this invention, Monsanto quickly patented this new technological and synthetic trait (recombinant bovine growth hormone or rbGH) under the commercial name Posilac and began to sell it to the dairy industry.

Can you explain why the U.S. is one of the only developed country to have recently allowed foreign proteins like genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our food supply?

American corporations, like Monsanto, are largely responsible for the recent introduction of these patented, novel proteins into our food supply. They have a strong profit motive and tremendous influence (in the form of lobbying and longstanding relationships with those responsible for regulatory oversight). Our regulatory system has looser standards than other developed countries. One of the first patents in the biotech industry was invented by the State Department’s Chief Technology adviser, Nina Fedoroff, a genetic scientist appointed after Bush awarded her the 2006 National Medal of Science. (Fedoroff cloned the first complete maize/corn transposon.) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has chosen to keep Fedoroff on.

In the United States, we allow ingredients into our food supply until they are proven dangerous. In other developed countries, substances are not allowed into the food supply until they are proven safe—a higher food safety standard and a precautionary measure that puts additional burdens on corporations. In some countries like France and New Zealand, not only have they not allowed these food proteins into their food supplies, but they also have not allowed these food proteins to be fed to their livestock or planted in their soil, given the toxicity that they might present. However, here in the U.S., we began engineering these foreign proteins into our food supply in 1994 to drive corporate profitability. The deregulation of the food system is not unlike the deregulation of the banking system that we have recently witnessed, as in both cases, this deregulation has enhanced profitability for industry as new derivates (in the food markets and in the financial markets) have been introduced.

Might these foreign proteins in our food have unintended consequences?

This is the health question that countries around the world have asked, to which they feel that there has not yet been an adequate answer. As these genetically altered foods are created in the laboratory in order to alter the DNA of these food proteins in an effort to enhance profitability for the food industry, new proteins and new allergens are created in the process. The costs of testing all of these new proteins and allergens is prohibitive, so here in the United States , we simply assume that these newly engineered food proteins are not dangerous.

A good example is of the inadequacies in our testing system and the potential impact of these foreign proteins and allergens in our food supply is milk. According to CNN, milk is the number one food allergy in the United States. However, we do not have testing to determine whether or not a person with a milk allergy is allergic to an organic milk protein or rbGH. We do not know if a child with a soy allergy is allergic to an organic soy protein or Monsanto’s patented and genetically engineered soy protein introduced in the late 1990s that has been designed to resist herbicide. We simply do not know because tests have not been developed, so we assumed that these new food proteins were not dangerous. Since human studies have not been conducted and the U.S. is one of the only developed countries to have adopted the early use of these foreign proteins into our food system, it has been said by government officials in other countries, that the health of the American children will serve as an indicator.

Additional concerns about the unintended consequences of these foreign proteins focus on the environmental impact that the chemicals in these crops might present, given that some, like corn, now have insecticidal proteins engineered into the DNA of these crops.

Fortunately, these concerns are now gaining attention here and just this week, a U.S. appeals court left in place an injunction barring Monsanto from selling its Roundup Ready alfalfa seed until the government completes an environmental impact study on how the genetically modified product could affect neighboring crops. As this investigation into Monsanto’s patented product moves forward, it will be extremely important to have full disclosure and transparency in the funding ties behind the science and researchers that conduct this environmental impact study.

The FDA has claimed that these ingredients are some of the most tested in our food supply. Scientists will claim that these ingredients have never been proven harmful, what is your response?

As evidenced by the recent headlines about food recalls, the FDA is in dire shape and these ingredients have never been proven safe which is why governments around the world have not allowed them into their food supply. Health data presents a compelling reason to adopt the precautious approach: according to the American Cancer Society, the United States has the highest rates of cancer of any country in the world. Because the FDA is inadequately funded and not funded to conduct independent studies, it is forced it to rely on industry-funded studies.

What did you discover in your research that connected “Big Money to Big Food”?

That some of our most trusted names in pediatric research not only serve on the speakers bureaus of some of the largest corporations in the world, but that these trusted doctors have also invented patented proteins for agrichemical and pharmaceutical corporations. As I write in Chapter 7 of The Unhealthy Truth, these corporate ties seemed to highlight the flaws in our system: dedicated scientists are often employed by corporations who have a financial stake in the outcome of their research. As a result, it’s hard for the public to know how to view the scientific information we’re given, since so much of the funding comes from companies with a built-in incentive to support research that will help their bottom line and profitability.

For example, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most trusted names in the world of pediatric allergy, has reported receiving consulting fees from Unilever, Wyeth and Monsanto; receiving a grant and holding stock options and related patents with SEER (formerly Panacea); and receiving grants from the Peanut Board, the National Peanut Foundation and Monsanto and is also on the speakers bureau for EpiPen/Dey.

It would be extremely beneficial for all American families to have full disclosure and transparency into these funding ties, royalty structures and revenue streams so that we can make an informed choice, based on transparency and full disclosure, when weighing the opinions of these experts and this industry funded science.

What’s your take on the documentary Food, Inc., and Monsanto’s response to it?

I am profoundly grateful for all who are working to inform our nation of 300 million eaters of the recent changes in our food supply and the role that Food, Inc. has played in broadening awareness and expanding the discussion around our food system. As a former financial analyst, I am not at all surprised by Monsanto’s response and the marketing investment that they have made in defending their patented technology, their products and in turn their share price, as it is their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to do exactly that.

What do you think is the most effective way to get some of these foreign proteins and GMOs out of our food supply?

Fortunately, on a personal level, there is a lot that we can do to reduce our families’ exposure to these ingredients and to feed our children the same food that children in developed countries like France, Australia and the UK are eating. Recognizing that corn and soy are two of the largest genetically engineered crops in our country, simply reducing your families’ exposure to corn and soy-based ingredients can go a long way, since recommending organic soy and organic corn (which by law is not allowed to contain these genetically engineered proteins) is not a viable option to many. In voting with your fork, you are sending a message to both the food industry and the agrichemical industry that you would rather not choose their products for your family. And since Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart have been amazing in responding to the concerns of citizens overseas and voluntarily removed certain synthetic ingredients from the products that they sell overseas, together we can urge them to respond to our concerns here in the U.S. and offer their newly reformulated products in our grocery stores, too.

On a broader level, I also think that it is important to recognize that there are already remarkable platforms in place that are working to advance the health of the American children, given that today 1 in 3 American kids has autism, allergies, ADHD or asthma and that according to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 3 Caucasian children and 1 in 2 African American children born in the year 2000 are expected to be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood. These conditions do not know party lines or rungs on the socio economic ladder and are affecting all of our children, regardless of income level or party affiliation. With legislation like the Food Allergen Labeling Act already in place, it makes sense to amend it to include these foreign proteins given the novel allergens that they contain.

What about people or corporations that say we need this patented technology to feed the world?

As I address in Chapter 7 of the book, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (hardly an anti-industry or anti-technology organization) currently available genetically engineered crops do not increase the yield potential of hybrid varieties. Furthermore, a 2004 report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization on agricultural biotechnology acknowledges that genetically engineered crops can have reduced yields. As this issue continues to be debated, I would simply ask the corporations advocating for the adoption of their products in the global agricultural marketplace to disclose who is funding their research and their claims for increased yields. The promise of increased yield is a forward looking statement that drives share price gain for these corporations. Science has yet to prove these claims to be true. Independently funded research used by governments around the world suggest that food security for the world would be better served through an adequate distribution system.

What’s the single most important thing that an average person can do to learn more about our food system?

Believe in our collective ability to effect remarkable change, just as eaters around the world, in other developed countries, have already done. Together, they have voted with their forks and their shopping carts. They have made their voices heard by their governments and their legislators and have implemented new legislation and higher industry standards in efforts to safeguard their health and remove certain synthetic ingredients and genetically engineered proteins from their food supply. They have inspired food corporations (including the international arms of American corporations) to move voluntarily ahead of this new legislation. And it has been largely out of a drive to control health care costs. Just as eaters around the world have already done, we can do it here, too, if we simply work to inform and inspire that change together.

School’s out for the summer, but there’s a food fight going on in the cafeteria. In Washington, Congress is turning up the heat on the policies that determine what 30 million children will eat once the lunch bell rings.

Want hormones out of kid’s milk? Pesticides off the tomatoes? Local lettuce in the salad bar? Candy bars and snack cakes to be considered junk food? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then I urge you to step into the lunch room and learn what this food fight is all about.

What our kids see on their lunch trays is a snapshot of our national food system: fresh, baked, breaded, or fried. What we feed them affects how they learn, how they grow, and what kind of future citizens we’re nurturing. A formidable new combatant has just joined the kid-food fray: our country’s Mom-in-Chief. Last Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama stepped up her support of local, fresh foods, invoking community gardens and the Child Nutrition Act, while enjoying a harvest picnic with the Bancroft fifth-graders. (Read or watch (VIDEO) Michelle Obama’s speech.)

The current Child Nutrition Act expires September 30, 2009, meaning it’s up for reauthorization, and in that process we have a chance to really improve on how food for our smallest citizens is funded, sourced, defined, and prioritized. Remember in 1981, how under Reaganomics ketchup was classified as a vegetable and 2 million children were dropped from the National School Lunch Program? The Act has far-reaching impact, beyond school lunch, to the WIC, Child and Adult Care Food, and Summer Food Service programs, and others.

During the last reauthorization cycle five years ago, there was a scarcity of grassroots pressure and media around this policy. Thankfully, times have changed. There is a bountiful buffet of campaigns you can participate in: you can take five seconds and sign your name to a petition to demonstrate support, or you can dedicate your life to the cause like the indefatigable Ann Cooper (aka the Renegade Lunch Lady). Or you can grab a tray and get in line on one of the following efforts.

Today, the Healthy School Food Brigade, comprised mostly of moms, marched the halls of Congress to, you guessed it, voice their support of healthy food choices in schools, from hot lunches to less junk-filled vending machines. Basically they want to get junk food out of schools. Sounds simple, but au contraire. Think water is better than high-fructose-corn-syrup-laced fruit juice? Take this quiz to see what the standards for “healthy” currently are.

This group is specifically advocating for HR 1324 and S.934: “Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2009,” which amends the Child Nutrition Act to require the Secretary of Agriculture to establish science-based nutrition standards for foods served in schools other than foods served under the school lunch or breakfast programs. Today’s day of lobbying is the culmination of the new film Food Inc.’s social-action campaign, organized by Participant Media for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization. They joined forces with the Center for Science in the Public Interest in advocating for the proposed bill.

Food, Inc.’s campaign doesn’t stop at the end of the brigade today. Turn on your computer’s sound and take a noisy wander through the Hungry for Change cafeteria, which links to various organizations’ child-nutrition-focused campaigns. Among them:

Food & Water Watch is working to get rBGH out of school milk and stopping the practice of irradiation to kill bacteria

Pesticide Action Network pushing for decreasing pesticide use on the food, particularly endosulfan

Center for Science in the Public Interest standing up for nutrition standards
National Farm to School Network restoring the connection between children, food, land, and place One Tray at a time

Representing the Farm to School programs, One Tray’s premise is that school food can not only improve the health of kids, but it can also offer new marketing opportunities for farmers and support the local economy. A joint project of the Community Food Security Coalition, National Farm to School Network, and School Food FOCUS, One Tray will officially launch when it’s time to take Congress “Back to School” in the fall.

The 2004 Child Nutrition Act included one provision on Farm to School (section 122): a seed grant program with $10 million in discretionary funding. It has failed to receive an appropriation. One Tray requests that Congress enact $50 million in mandatory funding for section 122. This would fund 100 to 500 projects per year, up to $100,000 each, to cover start-up costs for Farm to School programs.

Also in support of Farm to School, Slow Food USA launched a Time for Lunch campaign yesterday, to organize a national day of action on September 7 with grassroots Eat-Ins around the country, reminiscent of their monumentally successful event in San Francisco last year. Their message is simple: Real food in schools. Check out their top-notch organizing tools to plan or join an Eat-In.

These are all relatively new campaigns. The Child Nutrition Forum is the lunch monitor of this policy push. Formed in the late 1970s by former Senator George McGovern (D-S.D.), the CNF is co-led by the School Nutrition Association (which has a set of amazing, frequently updated resources) and the Food Research and Action Center, and includes more than several hundred diverse organizations, such as the American Dietetic Association, Congressional Hunger Center, National PTA, and the National Education Association. They have a petition to sign, too.

Petitions, eat-in’s, brigades…so many choices of ways to work on improving our future. What are you going to do?

Cross-posted from Ethicurean.com.

Author’s note: Lately a number of people have asked me what I think of how the Obama administration is approaching agriculture. Do all the gardens and talk of healthy food represent significant change, or are they a leafy green veneer on what amounts to nothing more than business as usual? Here’s my response, which was mailed by post today.

*
June 23, 2009

Dear President Obama and Secretary Vilsack,

I’d like to applaud your bold work this spring in beginning the shift toward a more sustainable agriculture. Change is evident in your symbolic work regarding gardens and food, and, more importantly, in the USDA’s practical actions of appointing Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy Secretary and granting $50 million to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Family farmers and other proponents of a healthy food system have long worked to advocate ideas like these, and it’s invigorating to see them finally taking root in the highest levels of government.

However, when I pan out from these changes, I see a deep contradiction. In your approach to agricultural policy as a whole, you continue to promote practices on the other end of the spectrum—practices that in fact negate those changes toward sustainability. Specifically, what troubles me is your hybrid vision for the future, in which those organic gardens grow alongside inherently opposing constructs, most notably patented biotechnology and the National Animal Identification System. Mr. Secretary, this spring you told the Des Moines Register, “To me it isn’t about either-or… It’s about how do you figure out ways for folks to co-exist and how do you figure how to take the best of all of it…” The problem is, that co-existence is impossible. Here’s why:

Sustainable agriculture is founded on the principle of farmer leadership. The first step to creating a sustainable food system is restoring stewardship, that elemental relationship in which a farmer balances food production with ecological health and social well-being. That is possible only when farmers are empowered: trusted to lead, respected financially, and encouraged—indeed, allowed—to be independent and free.

But these practices you propose as integral to our future in fact disempower farmers: biotech by denying them the right to save seed, and NAIS by indirectly punishing livestock producers who work on a smaller scale. Worse, they set in place systems by which the rights that farmers do have are overruled. What might seem like coexistence early on proves to be, instead, the slow death of the weaker half.

There’s an illustration of how this has already happened in the story of genetically engineered corn: After less than two decades since biotech seed came on the market, American agriculture has accepted that more or less every corn stock in this country has been contaminated with their patented genes. Because of that, the companies that own those genes have the power to shut down the farmers and plant breeders who are trying to come up with non-biotech solutions for our future—the very alternative agriculture that you claim to endorse. This approach is not “bi-partisan,” it is undemocratic.

Mr. President, on the campaign trail you insisted that “if Washington continues policies that work against America’s family farmers, our rural communities will fall further behind—and so will America.” Both of you have recognized the anti-farmer nature of corporate livestock production contracts, and worked to restore fairness to that sector of the industry. Why have you not applied the same judgment and vision to the rest of your agricultural policy?

I urge you to reconsider the future of our food system. I firmly believe that to feed ourselves in years to come, we’ll need to have our farmers right there with us—and not just as service people, but as leaders, stronger and more numerous than they are today. As a realist, I recognize that many existing practices within agriculture, even the most faulty, must stay in place at least long enough to keep Americans fed today. But if we base our survival on systems that ultimately disenfranchise farmers, we will certainly go hungry in the long run.

Sincerely,

Lisa M. Hamilton

Editor’s Note: Lisa M. Hamilton does write for the Prairie Writers Circle, but this letter was composed independently.

Thomas Keller is one the world’s most celebrated chefs with his fleet of restaurants in Yountville, Los Vegas, and New York. At the same time, he is a vocal “thorn in the side” of local food advocates, with his direct dismissals of the locavore movement.

His message was much the same this year when he spoke at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sustainable Foods Institute a few weeks ago.  Speaking on a panel called “The Future of Food: Scaling Down,” Chef Keller made the distinction between geographically local and temporally local food.

That is, he personally considers local food to be anything that he can get at his doorstep within one day of harvest – even if that means flying that product overnight from across the country.

Here are some excerpts from Keller’s comments on the panel:

When I started cooking, 32 years ago sustainability wasn’t something that was talked about. And, being a chef, the kind of chef that I wanted to be, was about quality number one: quality of product, quality of execution, quality of experience for the guest.

It all rested on the highest quality that I could produce. For me as I went through my career, I came to understand where our product came from and where the best products came from, the term local changed for me. So it wasn’t about a geographical location, it was about quality of the product.

If we could get great lobsters from Main everyday at my back door, then for me that was a local product. If I could get the best lamb available from Pennsylvania, then that to me was a local product.

Now certainly, in saying that, all of you are probably thinking “Well, this guy’s crazy “– because he’s talking about sustainability, local geographical products, not leaving a carbon footprint by shipping things across the US, and there are certainly many things to be said for that.  But there’s also something to be said for supporting some of our purveyors who have products that are coming across the continent for us, people like Keith Martin, who is my lamber in Pennsylvania.

His protocols, his holistic way of raising his animals is something that I want to continue to support, because I really believe in the way that he’s doing. And eventually he will have an impact on the entire industry, and raise the standard of the entire industry. So, I’m willing to leave a small carbon footprint by shipping his lamb from Pennsylvania to Yountville or to New York or to Las Vegas because we use his lamb in all of our restaurants to continue to support what he’s doing. So, I buy from people I have great respect for.

So, ultimately, Keller is justifying the greater environmental load that his purchasing produces by the possible long-term benefits that supporting quality farmers might create. Keller has also said, “Price isn’t important to me, I just want the very best available.” As such, he admits to having an elitist philosophy – which is partly why he has been so successful in the culinary world.

And I am the first to admit — in the sphere he inhabits, his views work.  Extremely well.  At the same time, I would strongly caution against implementing this “24-hour local” food rule for the rest of society.

There are several reasons for this:

1) Building a Diverse Community: If everyone bought their food like Thomas Keller, we might have good quality farms but at the same time we wouldn’t have the infrastructure to support them.  Our agricultural infrastructure is currently targeted toward the large players in the market. It is difficult, for example, for small meat producers to find a certified processing facility in their local area, or for small farmers to find distribution networks for their products.  The more we buy from our local foodshed, the more incentive there will be for these localized networks of infrastructure to be (re)created.  In the process, we will make it  easier for sustainable food producers to go about the business of growing good, healthy food.

2) Diversity on our Local Farms: If we choose to buy our specialty foods from across the country, we are simultaneously decreasing the food-dollars that go to our local farmers — dollars they might invest in growing those very same products closer to home.  Farmers need an economic incentive to grow a variety of plants and animals.  This agricultural variety will directly increase the ecological / environmental health of our farm ecosystems, and at the same time encourage better health as we increase the number of foods in our diets.

3) Energy Use: Economist Jeff Rubin has a new book called Why Your World Is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller which addresses these issues directly.  Rubin’s premise is that the current decline in oil prices is going to be short lived, and was caused in large part by our current recession.  Once the economic recession is over, oil will again be well over $100 / barrel – which will have a dramatic impact on how we grow and ship food.

Here’s an excerpt:

I like salmon — who doesn’t? Salmon consumption has risen about 23 percent each year for the last decade or so. There are a number of good reasons to eat more fish: we all want food high in omega-3s, we want to eat less saturated fat, we want healthy protein for our low-carb diets. But here’s the key reason for the amount of salmon on your dinner table: cheap oil has been subsidizing the cost of fish. Just like Wal-Mart and Tesco and big- box retailers around the world have been able to cut prices on almost everything by taking advantage of cheap shipping and cheap Asian labor, salmon went from being delicious local seafood to being another global commodity. Cheap oil gives us access to a pretty big world.

So, what happens when our globalized food system breaks down as oil prices rise?  We need to be ready with local options, which brings us back to points 1 and 2.  (Again, in Keller’s case, he is buying the best without regard to price.  But this doesn’t work for the rest of us.)

Finally, as a chef I have personally found great value in buying and serving local food.  First of all, it keeps me directly connected with the seasons – and more importantly, how those seasons change from year-to-year.

For example, the menus I create tell me to the week when the local strawberries are available, when the blood oranges are ripe, and when the heirloom tomatoes are fresh off the vine.  I could, if I wanted, get these products nearly year-round if I chose – but then I wouldn’t know that a heavy spring rain delayed the strawberry harvest by two weeks compared with last year.  And perhaps I wouldn’t realize it when unusually cool temperatures kept the heirlooms from fully ripening.  And it is these seasonal and yearly variations that keep me grounded in where I am.

Working with local farmers also teaches me to be nimble in the kitchen, especially if you commit to buying whatever they bring you.  They might say they have 20 lbs of baby bok choy, but then the harvest might not pan out and instead I receive 10 lbs of sugar peas and a case of garlic scapes instead.  Too bad that your menu is already printed – improvise improvise improvise.  This is how nature is in the real world, and it benefits me as a chef to accept and integrate that unpredictability.

Interestingly, Keller does have a small farm as part of The French Laundry.  But when he talks about his farm, he does so from a social view point, not an environmental one. Again, here are Keller’s comments from the Sustainable Food Institute panel:

We have our own garden and orchards in Yontville.  “Why do we have our own garden, our own orchards?”  We’re in California which has the most amazing product in our country. It’s not just that we like to grow our own so we can say so. It’s about the teaching process for our young cooks.

When I was a young cook, I would get on the phone every night and place my order and it would come in the back door, and I didn’t have a connection to where that food came from, and so my idea of waste wasn’t’ something that was really important to me.  So now, growing our own, and harvesting it, and washing it and serving it, you understand the level of respect you have for that food grows enormously. So the amount of waste has been reduced by a great deal.  So it’s really about responsibility and respect for the product.

“Responsibility and respect for the product” is a great goal — and I applaud Keller for investing time, energy, and money into his gardens.  But at the same time, his culinary skills have given him power as an international spokesman for what good food is.  His terminology and ideas around local food are confusing to the casual observer.  So while his food is delicious, I believe our country would be better off by not following the example he is creating.

Photo: inuyaki.com