Causing no end of difficulties in our national discourse is the steadfast belief held by both the right and the left that everything is either right or left: bad or good, strong or weak, despotic or patriotic.  You’re either with us or you’re against us.  President Obama addressed this very effectively before both House Republicans and Senate Democrats in recent days.  It is media driven to a large extent because the media need controversy to sell papers, or bytes or views or whatever it is they’re selling these days.

The most common form this takes is the old build’em-up-then-tear’em-down routine.  Perhaps the only thing many Americans enjoy more than the uplifting emotion of a success story is the schadenfreude of watching that success come tumbling down.  So when an idea comes to the fore, the critics ooze from the woodwork and their primary tactic is divide and conquer.  Label it, frame the debate, and the fight is won or lost before the story is even told.

For a long time in the circles I travel in this was not a problem because the ideas embodied in what some have come to call SOLE food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, & Ethical) were not perceived as a threat to the established paradigm.  Recent successes such as Michael Pollan’s work have, however, shined a very bright spotlight on advocates of real food.  As a result, people who have been toiling at these ideas for decades are becoming targets of powerful interests in the Big Food lobby.  Such is the case this week at WeeklyStandard.com, where Missouri Farm Bureau vice president Blake Hurst has found his most recent audience.

Mr. Hurst was among the earliest vocal detractors of Mr. Pollan’s work, as well as that of anyone who might find flaw in agroindustrial model.  His essay last summer, titled The Omnivore’s Delusion, did an excellent job of exploiting Pollan’s success to rally the big corporate agriculture interests against the perceived threat of critics both in the media and in the field.  It’s natural: he felt attacked and he responded, and has now done so again.  Unfortunately Mr. Hurst’s vitriol, then as now, only serves to fan the flames of a fire that needn’t be burning.  Individuals on neither side of the debate are inherently evil, in fact both want the same thing: healthy food for all.  Since our ideas for how to accomplish this differ, we are immediately cast into the right and left corners and told to come out fighting when the bell rings.

Of course this is not a new phenomenon.  City and country folk have mistrusted each other since the beginnings of civilization (which, it bears pointing out, came into being because of agriculture).  Nonetheless our society has changed enormously in the last 100 years.  Where once nearly everyone lived on a farm or had an immediate relative who did, today only 2% of the population lives in rural America.  It’s not a surprise that when the 2% senses criticism emanating from within the other 98% they’re going to feel a bit nervous.  Some of the critiques in fact even come from within the 2% (witness cattleman Will Harris in Georgia).  In his most recent essay though Mr. Hurst’s fears are misplaced, and he remains little more than a tool for moneyed interests.

The essay suffers from many errors of presumption as well as fact.  He contends that Kathleen Merrigan’s Know your Farmer initiative results from the idea that “America, it seems, has been operating at a knowledge deficit when it comes to farmers, and farmers lack the social skills to close the gap between eaters and producers of food.”  He is partially correct in that people in this country and throughout the Western world have become increasingly distanced from their sources of food, and we have become so to our detriment.  The second part of his statement though, a backhanded swipe at critics of industrial agriculture disguised as self-deprecation and designed to raise the ire of his fellow Farm Bureau members, is uninformed to say the least.  Not only are the farmers I know perfectly capable in the “social skills” department, both they and the rest of my friends in the movement to improve our food are working hard to close that gap.  Ms. Merrigan’s program is one of many tools.

While he correctly points out that the average age of farmers in America is 58, he misses the point that this means we are running out of farmers.  We actually now have more prisoners in America than farmers.  He goes on to put words in foodies’ mouths by claiming that we seem to think farmers are not sustainable.  Quite far from it, but many of the inputs many farmers use are not. These include the GMOs and chemical fertilizers that Farm Bureau and the Property and Environment Research Center he cites both adamantly advocate.  It’s not the farmers or even the farms that are unsustainable; it is the methods they have been railroaded into using by large corporate interests seeking markets for their chemicals since even before the early 70’s when Earl Butz and his “Get Big or Get Out” mantra took hold of American food.

The point is missed yet again when Mr. Hurst says:

In December, strawberries from California can be shipped to market in Canada with less total energy use than the locally grown crop. The food miles are greater, but the carbon footprint is smaller. True believers in the local food movement, of course, simply stop eating strawberries in winter. Their devotion is admirable, but a winter diet of freshly dug turnips and stored potatoes is hardly interesting.

I choose not to eat strawberries in the winter not because they come from far away but because they taste awful.  In my own restaurant, we stock everything feasible from local sources.  This does not mean, as Mr. Hurst would have it, that we have nothing but turnips and potatoes in winter, nor does it mean we forego oranges or olives because they don’t grow in Iowa.  Despite what he and his corporate-activist-supported friends at PERC might have you believe, the “SOLE” food movement is not a bunch of lefty Luddites, and that’s my main point (besides that I like turnips).  Not only does food I trust from people I know taste better for those reasons, it also keeps my dollars in my community.

Consider this: there are about 50,000 households in Johnson County Iowa, where I live.  If each of those households redirected just $10 of their existing weekly food budget toward buying something local, whether from the farmers market or a CSA or eggs from the farmer down the road, it would keep $26M in the local economy rather than it being siphoned off to China via Bentonville.  Now imagine the same thing in larger communities.  That’s not a left or right issue, that’s a hometown issue.

I must also point out Mr. Hurst’s use of the phrase “alleged global warming.”  It carries with it all the intellectual honesty of “alleged cancer from smoking.”

Agendas like those of Mr. Hurst, the Farm Bureau and PERC serve only the interests of the large corporations that fund them, not of the farmers whose toil fills their coffers.  Better to look to the like of the Practical Farmers of Iowa, who are truly concerned with the well-being of the food, the farms and the people on them.

This is not about rich v. poor, city v. country or smart v. dumb.  It’s not even I’m right and he’s wrong nor the reverse.  It’s that these issues are only important to those of us who eat, live and breathe on this planet.  It matters to those of us who have to pay for health care, and raise our children, and get and keep a job.  And the positions that the organization I work for, and many others take are not ones designed to attack farmers but rather to support them and all the people who are making food where it should be made: on farms and dairies, in breweries and wineries and vineyards and not in factories.

Meat industry luminaries including Don Tyson, Jimmy Dean, and the late Frank Perdue were inducted that evening, along with litigious feedlot owner Paul Engler, who you might remember for suing Oprah Winfrey over mad cow disease and getting spanked in court. By all accounts, it was a truly magical evening, what with Kurtis’ gripping keynote address offering up a 30 minute history of the American meat industry.

Despite the glitz, an undercurrent of worry pervaded the event. See, the meat industry was in the midst of its most horrific year on record, being seemingly besieged by all sides. Robert “Bo” Manly, CFO of pork titan Smithfield Foods put it best: “Anything that breathed lost money.”

Most of the meat industry’s pain was from a faltering economy that was creating countless “recession era vegetarians.” An August USDA report showed that beef, pork, and chicken production had all dropped substantially. That month, meat giant Tyson Foods warned its investors that quarterly sales had dropped 3 percent from a year before.

The end of burgers and fries as the quintessential American meal may be at hand. In America, the furthest you can possibly get from a McDonald’s is just 107 miles. But it appears the industry has overbuilt, and franchises are closing up left and right. In a sign of the times, one failed KFC was converted to a marijuana dispensary.

Nowhere was animal agribusiness’ pain more keenly felt than in the milk industry. American dairies were failing at such a rate that one observer predicted that a third would go out of business in 2009. To deal with the glut of milk, government and industry combined to organize a mass slaughter of more than 100,000 cows. Dairies spent 2009 looking for every excuse to cut herd sizes, and keep only the most productive cows. Overall, it appeared likely that more than 1.5 million cows would be slaughtered in 2009. The dairy industry’s pain was borne disproportionately by organic farmers, as cash-strapped consumers switched back to cheaper factory farmed milk.

Happily for US dairies, the USDA once again came riding to the rescue, this time with a $290 million taxpayer-funded bailout. Imagine if that money had instead been spent to subsidize the production of healthful fruits and vegetables, instead of producing more unwanted milk and nasty government cheese. Adding to the industry’s woes, agribusiness giant Cargill announced an invention that could dramatically reduce demand for milk: a plant-based substance that can be used to produce gooey, stretchy, totally realistic cheese.

The chicken industry likewise tightened its belt in 2009, eliminating its national chicken recipe contest. The grand prize—which once stood at $100,000—had been slashed to $50,000 before the contest was cancelled outright.

The pork industry had a horrifying year. Smithfield Foods’ CEO, Larry Pope, said, “I sort of feel like the world has been against us for 12 months.” In November, America’s 22nd largest pork producer abruptly quit the business. The company had an inventory of more than 30,000 breeder sows. USA Today reported in November that, starting in late 2007, pig producers were losing about $23 on each animal they raised.

Business was comparably bad at feedlots, with nearly all hemorrhaging cash. Twenty percent of feedlots were up for sale in 2009, but, given the beef industry’s bleak prospects, there were no buyers. When National Beef attempted to raise $276 million through an IPO this year, they were forced to withdraw the offering for lack of interest. The future looked even worse for ranchers in the UK, where it turned out the minister put in charge of rescuing the beef industry is a vegetarian.

Excerpted from Vegan.com, Read the rest here

During a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, President Obama gave himself a letter grade of B+ for his first year in office. But all the same, an ad hoc consortium of food safety professionals, food safety advocates, and food safety writers say he deserves some coal in his Christmas stocking. Food Safety News, the best online publication for all aspects of the safety of the global food supply, is running a list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice this year in food safety. The list was created after polling those mentioned above, including your intrepid blogger. There was an overwhelming consensus that large chunks of coal should be deposited in the Christmas stockings of both President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for the failure to name someone to lead USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs.

Sure, the President and Sec. Vilsack inherited huge problems…but after almost a year in office–and multiple Class I (you could die) recalls for contaminated beef–where’s the FSIS Under Secretary? Perhaps Santa himself will be delivering a sprightly, smarty-pants elf from Toyland, to monitor the nation’s food supply in 2010? Because elves might be the only individuals who can pass the conflict-of-interest test…which is the “official” reason no one has been appointed as Under Secretary for Food Safety. The President also gets some coal for attempting to let free trade trump food safety issues, and for his lunch visit to the aptly named Ray’s Hell Burger, which had been cited for food safety violations for under cooking its burgers. The FDA is also awarded coal on the naughty list, because it’s been engaging in the dubious activities cited below, and the entire Senate warrants mention, too.

The “Nice List” will be published tomorrow–and the President and Sec. Vilsack are on that list, too–but here’s the Naughty List:

NAUGHTY: President Obama for NOT appointing a new permanent U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Food Safety. ALSO NAUGHTY: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack for making excuses about it. (See “FSIS Remains Leaderless,” Oct. 16, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The Senate for being too slow on health care reform to pass meaningful–and decades overdue–food safety legislation before the Holidays. (Ed. note: The House passed food safety legislation in July)

NAUGHTY: Secretary Vilsack and White House for trying, in the name of free trade, to roll over Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-Conn) efforts to assure that the US does not permit poultry processors from shipping raw poultry meat from the US to China for processing and shipping back to the US for sale until USDA has determined that China’s inspection program is equivalent to ours. (See “Deal Reached on Poultry Imports,” Sep 27, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The FDA staff that keeps appealing to consumer advocates, “don’t set us up to fail,” when consumer advocates push for more inspection. They never say, “help us get the law and resources we need to protect people.”


NAUGHTY: J. Patrick Boyle of the American Meat Institute for trying to dynamite the Senate food safety bill even though it doesn’t have anything to do with the meat industry.

NAUGHTY: State public health department officials attending the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference in October who put industry profits ahead of public health.

NAUGHTY: Weston A. Price Foundation for more denial of outbreaks and giving consumers false information about raw milk safety.

NAUGHTY: FDA for its failure to control ridiculous health claims like Kellogg’s claiming that Cocoa Krispies are a “Smart Choice” because it “helps support your child’s immunity.”

NAUGHTY: Some raw milk, small and sustainable agriculture advocates who confused the entire food safety debate by making and circulating false claims about the food safety bills. It really is about food safety, and is not a gigantic conspiracy by Monsanto to wipe out organic and backyard farms!

NAUGHTY: Washington State University for removing Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” from the Common Reading Program. (The book was restored after monetary interventions by Bill Marler.)

NAUGHTY: The FDA for caving to political pressure and backing down on oyster regulations. (See “Under Pressure, FDA Puts Oyster Policy On Hold,” Nov 14, 2009)

NAUGHTY: President Obama and Vice-President Biden for ordering undercooked hamburgers for the Press Corps at a DC restaurant with less than stellar inspection reports.

NAUGHTY: Stewart Parnell, President of Peanut Corporation of America, for asking for nearly $1 million from his bankrupt business for his own criminal defense fund after shipping peanuts his own tests showed were contaminated with Salmonella that sickened over 700 and killed at least nine. (See “PCA Executives To Divide $875,000,” Dec 11, 2009)

NAUGHTY: FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and the U.S. District Attorney in Georgia for moving so slowly with the criminal investigations of the Peanut Corporation of America and its executives, including Stewart Parnell. (See “One Year Later, Still no Charges for PCA,” Nov 07, 2009)

Originally posted on Obama Foodorama.

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.

Would you defend it by pointing out the abundance of choices offered in today’s average supermarket, estimated to be over 45,000 items? Would you cite that per capita spending on food has dropped significantly over the last 50 years, freeing up incomes to improve quality of life? Would you talk about how American innovation is not only feeding our citizens, but is also feeding the world? Or would you quietly ask what a food system is?

While perhaps it’s not “broken,” America’s industrial food system, which dominates food sales, has developed side effects that are accelerating in severity, especially diet-related health (e.g., obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies) and environmental (e.g., chemical toxins, soil degradation, carbon emissions) issues that can no longer be ignored.
The food industry’s insatiable drive toward cheaper, more convenient products has also disrupted the simple pleasures of cooking, eating and/or sharing meals with family and friends, turning food into an accessory, a lofty drop from once being an intimate part of our daily lives.

The good news is there is an increasingly vocal ground swell of advocates and experts working to reverse the downsides of industrial food, with the high-profile personalities becoming lightning rods for the powerful, entrenched corporate interests being challenged, which commonly label them as “elitist” or “anti-ag.” Such claims, both untrue and unfair, are designed to minimize any impact these knowledgeable voices have on public opinion and consumer spending. Look no further than industrial food’s aggressive reactions to the Food, Inc. documentary to see it in action.

One thing is clear, we can no longer allow industry to control the dialog, but fighting fire with fire, especially the use of fear to influence consumer behavior, doesn’t sit well, and would probably be less effective than other approaches. To that end I’ve attempted to define the concept of “Pro Food” based on a set of core principles that get at the heart of why I and others are dedicated to driving these principles into mainstream culture through communications and alternative food systems.

PRO FOOD IS…
• Inclusive – Everybody is part of Pro Food, since everyone can gain from its success.

• Pro Farm – Fresh, healthy, and sustainable food starts with the farmers who grow it. Without their dedication, stewardship of the land and tireless labor it is difficult to envision Pro Food getting out of the gate.

• Pro Consumer – Today’s conventional food system has invested billions of dollars in constructing a food infrastructure designed to do one thing: sell as much food as possible, as quickly and cheaply as possible. This strategy has been good for bottom lines, bad for waistlines and even worse for personal healthcare costs. Pro Food envisions bringing farm and plate together in innovative retail experiences that go beyond convenience to embrace flavor, taste, seasonal rhythms, community and health.

• Pro Cooking – Where would we be without cooking? Unfortunately for the last few generations, cooking has been left by the wayside in exchange for cheap, convenient substitutes as people became increasingly squeezed for time and energy. In many ways, Pro Food is based in the home kitchen, the best place to ensure we eat sustainably every day.

• Pro Eating – The only thing possibly more important than cooking is eating. And while Pro Food places an emphasis on awakening America’s home kitchens, it also recognizes that many institutions (schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias) and restaurants are doing their part in bringing the same healthy, flavorful and sustainable food on to every plate they serve.

• Community-Oriented – Pro Food recognizes the simple pleasure of bringing people together around food. Information is shared, bonds are strengthened and friendships are made. It also appreciates the economic benefits it can bring to regional food economies. Sustainable food can be imported (in the absence of local options), but increasing demand being met through local channels, there will be incentive for farms and processors to participate, as well as for existing providers to transition to sustainable production. Keeping money circulating longer within regional economies is key to Pro Food efforts.

• Entrepreneurial – Building a meaningful Pro Food presence in a food system dominated by massive conventional players with deeply entrenched interests (and reach) will take a lot of hard work, innovation and old fashioned luck. Fortunately we can leverage America’s entrepreneurial spirit in systematically building the ever-broader foundation needed to move Pro Food forward.

What Pro Food ultimately becomes is up to those who recognize and embrace its ideal of healthy, sustainable food systems and make it their own. For it is up to all of us, from farmers to eaters, and everyone else who cares about the food they eat, to carry Pro Food forward and make its vision, its values a reality.

In some very interesting ways, Pro Food draws parallels with the early years of the Internet, when it was still isolated from the mainstream in government and university labs. People, especially entrepreneurs, were starting to eye the Internet as something that could revolutionize communications and collaboration, that could democratize things long centralized. At first, they had no idea what was going to stick, but began applying time, energy and money in search of winning formulas.

This is where I see Pro Food today, which makes it financially exciting for those with solutions to the problems we face. I look forward to joining them and others on this exciting journey.

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.

Just when America thought it was safe to go back into the grocery store, another food outbreak wakes us up to the fact that there is something seriously wrong with our food safety system. This time it’s Nestle Toll House cookie dough with E.coli, a treat that nearly every kid in America reaches for a few times a month during the summer. This is yet another reminder why it’s important to get the new food safety legislation, currently winding its way through Congress, right.

Last week a new food safety bill passed unanimously out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and opinions of it vary widely. Known as H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, the bill is being hailed as everything from as “the most sweeping reform of the food safety system in nearly 50 years” or the “totalitarian control of the food supply” depending on what you read.

Civil Eats reported on the intricasies of the legislation and its supporters.

As the debate rages on about how the U.S. will create a new food safety system, with all of the attention focused on FDA’s failure to assure the safety of the food it regulates, a very quiet controversy is brewing at the USDA over the fact that the agency has yet to name an Under Secretary for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

So far, the two leading candidates for the job, both with close ties to the food industry, have been knocked off track due to the efforts of a small collection of food safety advocates and a few advocacy groups who believe that food safety is not something that you should create a “Team of Rivals” around.

After watching the new administration’s efforts to select political appointees that conform to the plotline of a popular nonfiction book, it’s time to remind them why they won the election. Last year when Americans went to the polls in record numbers, they voted for change and the hope of reform.

What is becoming more evident every day is that while Republicans reward their base, Democrats kick theirs to the curb.

As one food safety expert who has been leading the charge for food safety reform in Washington for over twenty years said recently, “It’s funny. When Republicans win the election I have to fight the meat industry and when Democrats win I have to fight the meat industry. When is somebody going to stand up for the American consumer?”

We couldn’t agree more.

If the Obama Administration is Serious About Food Safety – We Need a Reformer

Every year in the U.S. an estimated 76 million people get sick with foodborne illnesses and 5,000 die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One person who knows this fact better than almost anybody else in this country, is food safety lawyer Bill Marler.

Marler recently came to the public’s attention with his generous offer to pay for author Michael Pollan’s visit to Washington State University, after his book had been removed from the freshmen reading program. What many may not know is that he’s been known as a leading advocate for food safety for nearly two decades.

Marler first leapt to national prominence as the lead attorney in the famous 1993 Jack in the Box E.coli outbreak. Since that time, Marler has led the charge in protecting the rights of consumers against unsafe practices of major corporations. While dedicated to a high standard of food safety protocols, Marler is also pragmatic about the real economic need for food safety.

Poor food safety practices also have a major negative impact on the bottom line of business, costing U.S. companies more than $6.9 billion each year, which Marler believes could be better spent to keep America’s food supply truly safe.

Despite the food industry’s long contempt for personal injury attorneys, Marler could end up being their dream pick for the FSIS spot if they were willing to allow the motivated attorney to oversee the much needed change in food safety policies at the USDA.

Known as a fair but fierce opponent, Marler draws as much criticism from the industrial meat crowd as he does from proponents of local agriculture, with strong stances on the need for inspection and a concern on the growing interest in raw milk.

Why select Marler as the head of the FSIS? Because he’s a champion of citizen’s rights to safe food and he knows the system better than anyone. He’s also willing to balance the concerns of the meat industry and local foods at the same time.

If the Obama Administration is serious about reforming America’s food safety system, there really is only one choice – Bill Marler for FSIS. Now’s the time.

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.

"Harvest Time in Harlem," an education program run by Slow Food USA.

Last week, Michelle Obama made these remarks (VIDEO) to a group of fifth-graders who had just harvested 73 pounds of lettuce and 12 pounds of snap peas from the First Lady’s Garden on the White House Lawn:

“To make sure that we give all our kids a good start to their day and to their future, we need to improve the quality and nutrition of the food served in schools. We’re approaching the first big opportunity to move this to the top of the agenda with the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. In doing so, we can go a long way towards creating a healthier generation for our kids.”

It wasn’t Michael Pollan who said those words. It was the First Lady. Coming from her, the phrase “big opportunity to move this to the top of the agenda” is a call to action we cannot ignore.

When children are given the chance to plant and pick and cook food that’s both delicious and good for them, they’re far more curious to give it a try—and more often than not, they like it. When those children are offered real food in the school cafeteria and at the family dinner table, they eat it. They begin to ask for it.

Michelle has said that when Sasha and Malia learned to enjoy real food, they started “lecturing” her about what she should be eating and “what a carrot does, what broccoli does” to our bodies. Her kids taught her to enjoy real food. Kids can lead the way.

The National School Lunch Program provides a meal to 30 million children every school day. By giving schools the resources to serve real food, we can teach 30 million children healthy eating habits that will last throughout their lives. That’s a major down payment on health care reform. By providing 30 million children with locally grown fruits and vegetables, we can dramatically reshape the way this country grows and gets its food. By raising a generation of children on real food, we can build a strong foundation for their health, for our economy’s health and for America’s future prosperity.

This year, the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that governs the National School Lunch Program, is up for reauthorization. Unless citizens everywhere speak up this summer, “business as usual” in Congress will pass a Child Nutrition Act that continues to fail our children. We can do better.

Our leaders in Congress have to hear that everyday people in their districts refuse to accept the status quo. We have to tell them that when it comes to our children and the legacy we’re leaving them, change can’t wait.

That’s why a group of us are organizing a National Eat-In for Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009. On that day, people in communities across America will gather with their neighbors for public potlucks that send a clear message to our nation’s leaders: It’s time to provide America’s children with real food at school.

To get the whole country to sit down and share a meal together we’re going to need the help of all kinds of people: parents, teachers, community leaders, kids and people who’ve never done anything like this before. We’re going to need everyone to pitch in, starting today—because with the President calling for health care reform and the First Lady planting a garden on the White House Lawn, we’ve got an opening to pass legislation that grants 30 million children the freedom to grow up healthy.

We can do it this year, but only if we act now. It’s time to get real food into schools.