When we think about the people behind our food, the familiar faces at the farmers market may readily come to mind. But the many other individuals who do the hard work of planting, growing, and harvesting that food may remain only a distant picture for us. These agricultural workers, who often have specialized skills and many years of experience, are generally among the least recognized and respected members of our food system.

As socially conscious eaters know, farmworkers are excluded from federal labor laws that guarantee the right to organize and, in some cases, they are not afforded basic protections such as minimum wage, overtime pay, and workers’ compensation. According to the US Department of Labor, three-fourths of agricultural workers earn less than $10,000 annually. At many farms, the employment terms are not spelled out on paper, leaving even greater room for abuses. People of color and undocumented workers fare the worst in this system. Even on organic farms, although workers are exposed to fewer toxic chemicals, the labor conditions aren’t necessarily much better.

As recently reported in Grist, however, a growing “domestic fair trade” movement aims to formally recognize and reward farms that are working to address social justice. The Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) has developed a set of fair labor guidelines under the Food Justice Certified label, which was born out of dissatisfaction with the US National Organic Program’s failure to address workers’ dignity and rights.

While more than 70 Canadian farms are Food Justice Certified, only eight in the United States have received certification. There is now a burgeoning effort to bring the label to California, with Santa Cruz County-based strawberry grower Swanton Berry Farm among those leading the way.

Farming with Dignity

Last week, the AJP conducted a certification training at Swanton Berry Farm for representatives from such organizations as California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and Líderes Campesinas. Over the last few years, Swanton has been a testing ground for the Food Justice Certified program, providing input as AJP has developed their standards.

“They (Swanton) have put a lot of attention into making the relationship between the farmers and managers and the people who work on the farm different from what you so often see in agriculture,” says AJP co-founder Elizabeth Henderson, who helped lead the training.

As the first organic farm to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers of America, the nation’s largest farm labor union, Swanton has is considered a model of fair agricultural labor practices. Workers are guaranteed a decent pay scale as well as benefits such as health insurance, a retirement plan, and paid time off, plus access to affordable housing. The farm helps workers avoid repetitive strain injuries (the most common type of injuries in agriculture) by offering a variety of work. In addition, Swanton makes an effort to involve workers in business decisions. Swanton was also the first farm to offer its employees the opportunity to own own stock in the company.

While the farm still has some work to do before they can brandish the Food Justice Certified label, co-owner Sandy Brown says that they are firmly committed to the process. “We think it’s a worthwhile investment because it helps us think through our management systems,” she notes. “It’s another set of eyes looking at the operation and helping us figure out how to do a better job.”

Certification requires both a third-party certifier and a worker organization to conduct interviews and verify that employers’ claims are true. From the initial assessment to the final audit, the whole process can take about a year. If CCOF signs on as a certifier, they plan to offer Food Justice Certification as an adjunct to their organic inspection, making the process less onerous and costly for cash-strapped organic farmers.

“It’s a time commitment, and it’s a financial commitment,” admits Brown. “Farms are busy, just trying to get through the day, and it’s hard to think about adding more on.”

Despite the red tape, Brown feels that the Food Justice Certified label offers the best package for socially conscious farms and eaters. “There are plenty of certification programs that don’t really do much,” she continues. “One of the reasons we’ve stuck with AJP is they have incorporated into their program the idea that workers’ ability to exercise a collective voice is critical to the enforcement of fair labor standards.”

Building Momentum

To share the costs of getting the certification program up and running in California, it will take a team of dedicated stakeholders. AJP and Swanton have participated in outreach to regional farms and organizations to build awareness about the program, but Brown admits that they have much more work to do in order to achieve a critical mass. “A lot of farms don’t see the need because there isn’t a whole lot of consumer demand,” Brown observes.

For eaters who want to see the Food Justice Certified label, she recommends opening a conversation with farmers, food vendors, grocery stores, and restaurants, as well as reaching out to organizations invested in sustainable agriculture. Getting buy-in from all levels of the food chain, particularly institutional and retail purchasers, is crucial. “The good news is there’s growing interest in the social relations of organic production and agriculture in general,” she adds.

But the onus does not rest solely on farmers, many of whom struggle to make a living themselves. “The biggest hurdle is the United States’ cheap food policy,” says Henderson. “People are used to paying low prices for food. There’s constant downward pressure on farms and food businesses, and as a result, the people who do the basic work aren’t paid well.”

For AJP, the ultimate goal is to transform not just labor on farms but all aspects of the food system, which represents 20 million workers, most of whom are among the lowest paid in our workforce. They hope to expand the program by working with organizations such as Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and Food Chain Workers Alliance.

While creating a socially just food system is a long row to hoe, Henderson sees the Food Justice Certified label as an important first step. By offering tools and support for farmers to evaluate and improve their labor policies, the AJP intends to raise awareness about the vital role workers play in a sustainable food system.

“Our emphasis is on changing the relationship, so that people who do this work are treated with respect and have decent standards of living,” she says. “Farm work is wonderful work, and it is absolutely necessary to the human race.”

Originally published by CUESA

Photo courtesy of Swanton Berry Farm

“There’s a lot of green lipstick on this pig,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. “The whole idea of genetically engineering a pig to fit into an unsustainable production model and then dubbing it “enviro” is ridiculous. Given recent industry and consumer backlash, it’s no surprise that funding for this misguided research has dried up.”

The “Enviropig” was engineered using genetic material from a mouse and an E. coli bacterium to reduce phosphorus in the pig’s feces. The University of Guelph began its GE pig research in 1995 and requested food safety approval from regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S. in 2009. While Canada approved reproduction of the GE pigs in February 2010, no government has approved the “Enviropig” for human consumption and no GE pigs have been sold commercially.

According to recent news reports, the Canadian hog industry group Ontario Pork has redirected its funding away from GE pig research. Lacking this funding, the university is ending its program to breed the genetically engineered pigs.

The announcement comes after years of mounting rejection by farmers, pork producers and consumers.  In a statement appearing in Reuters Canada yesterday, Paul Slomp of the National Farmers Union said, “[t]he GM pig was going to drive consumers away from eating pork if it was ever approved for market. This GM pig fiasco could have permanently damaged (Canada’s) domestic and international pork markets.”

Last year, Olymel, a pork processor in Quebec, announced it would not sell meat from Enviropigs even if the animals were approved for marketing. Other pork industry players are also leery of such biotech efforts. For example, the leading U.S. pork producer Smithfield Farms stated it would not sell meat from animal clones even with FDA approval, and that the company relies on traditional breeding.

“The U.S. government should quit wasting taxpayer dollars on what amounts to an engineered sham for the hog industry,” continued Kimbrell. “Consumers have made clear that they don’t want to eat genetically engineered animals. The FDA should stop its review of this GE pig immediately.”

Recent polls show that consumers do not want to eat these genetically engineered animals. An October 2010 poll by Thompson Reuters found that nearly 65 percent of consumers would not eat genetically engineered fish or meat and 93 percent consumers would want GE animals to be labeled if approved for consumption.

Support for GE labeling recently garnered media attention when a record-breaking one million public comments were sent to the FDA late last month in support of a legal petition filed by CFS calling on the agency to require the labeling of GE foods.  Fifty-five Members of Congress joined Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a letter to FDA in support of the legal petition.

Originally published by the Center for Food Safety

We know we’ve struck a chord with the Just Label It campaign, as Americans are responding in record-breaking numbers. As of today, more than 900,000 people have submitted comments to the FDA in favor of labeling genetically engineered (GE) foods. (I’ve written about the campaign before here and here.) But this campaign has always been about more than just the numbers. It’s about spreading the word about our right to have GE foods labeled.

We’re excited to now introduce this new infographic, which visually explains why the FDA should Just Label It. Designed to clearly show the need for labeling of GE foods, this educational tool includes a link to the Just Label It website where consumers can submit a comment to the FDA. Convenient for sharing on-line and via social media, the infographic is being distributed nationally by Just Label It’s 500 diverse partner organizations.

Whether it’s salmon genetically engineered to grow at twice its natural rate or herbicide-resistant corn that encourages the use of more chemicals in our food supply, we have a right to know what’s in our food.

Already, more than 40 countries–including China and Russia–require labels on genetically engineered food. As Americans, we deserve the same opportunity to make informed decisions about what we eat.

As more Americans know about GE foods, more pressure will build on the FDA to label them. This new infographic will help do just that and it’s easy to share with friends and family, so everyone can be afforded the right to make informed decisions about the food they eat as well. So please help share this cool new tool online, on Twitter, and Facebook. Together, we’ll continue to raise awareness and make our collected voices heard!

Originally published by Just Label It

Honestly, I don’t get it. What’s wrong with labeling? Most other developed countries–the 15 nations in the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and China–all have some sort of GE labeling requirements. And public opinion polls here in the U.S. have clearly and consistently shown that nearly all of us–over 90 percent in recent polls–want labeling of GE products.

“If you want to avoid sugar, aspartame, trans-fats, MSG, or just about anything else, you read the label,” Mark Bittman notes. So why not GMO’s–genetically modified organisms–why aren’t they listed?

Because they don’t have to be. In the Spring of 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that labeling of GE foods would remain voluntary. Perversely, it is companies with GMO-free products that want to add “NON-GE” labels which have faced the tight regulations (and litigation challenges from industry). The agency argues that guaranteeing a product to be free of GMO material is virtually impossible.

It was 1992 when FDA cooked up this idea that GE foods need not be labeled because they were not “materially” different from other foods.  While the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requires the FDA to prevent consumer deception by clarifying that a food label is misleading if it omits significant, “material” information, the Agency chose to limit what it considered “material” to only changes in food that could be noted by taste, smell, or other senses.  Since GE foods can’t be “sensed” in this way, FDA declared them to be “substantially equivalent” to conventionally produced foods, and no labeling was required.

Wow. Has anyone told the FDA about nanotechnology? We have entered a brave new world of 21st century food science, yet we’re using seriously outdated definitions of “material differences” and “substantially equivalent.”

Here’s my thinking on this: If I just made a better salmon, I’d want people to know about it. I’d want them to know that by adding just one gene from a Pacific Salmon to an Atlantic Salmon, I can bring you this GE salmon faster and cheaper and without overfishing its wild cousins.

I might spare everyone the part about how all the fish are infertile females, even if that’s how wild populations are safeguarded. It just might be more than what a customer will want to read on a label, but it makes for an interesting backstory, no?

I’m not an advocate for the GE-salmon, nor am I a frankenfood-phobe. We’ve got to feed the world somehow, and well-regulated aquaculture systems are likely to be a big part of the solution.

What I am for is labeling, and not just labeling “bads,” but labeling “goods” as well. Case in point–the term “organic” on the label means this is a good product which was responsibly produced (without GMOs by the way).

Let’s take the stigma out of labels and have them do what they do best–inform consumer choice. And while we’re setting in place a 21st century approach to genetically engineered food products, let’s settle on some suitably modern-day definitions.

They may taste, smell and look the same, but there is most definitely a “material difference” between a salmon genetically altered to grow at a rate 6-10 times faster than its wild counterpart. Oh, and the former can’t reproduce. If that’s not material, then what is?

Originally published on Huffington Post

The Just Label It campaign today launched a new video by Food, Inc. filmmaker Robert Kenner that empowers consumers to fight for their right to know what is in their food. The video, “Labels Matter,” is the result of collaboration between the Just Label It campaign and Kenner’s new project, FixFood, a social media platform that aims to empower Americans to take immediate action to create a more sustainable and democratic food system.

To date, more than 450 consumer, healthcare, environmental and farming organizations, manufacturers, retailers have joined the Just Label It campaign, which has generated more than 500,000 consumer comments calling on the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to label GE foods.  (We wrote about the launch of Just Label It here.) The video seeks to garner more consumer awareness and participation by galvanizing one million consumers to comment to the FDA by mid-April, the date that the FDA’s public comment period ends.

“Labels Matter” tells the story of three women who share a belief in the right to know, but for entirely different reasons. Heather Donatini is a pregnant woman who knows she is feeding her developing baby, as well as herself, with every bite. Luann Clark recently had heart surgery and has to closely monitor what she eats. Robyn O’Brien is a mother whose child developed an allergic reaction to breakfast. “As a mother of children with food allergies, the labeling of GE foods is especially important, as it would provide essential and possibly life-saving information for the food allergic population,” said O’Brien, founder, Allergy Kids Foundation. (We’ve written about Robyn’s important work here and here.)

As the video connects with each woman, Kenner shows how the U.S. compares to other developed nations, including the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia, and even China, where genetically engineered (GE) foods are labeled. The video notes that the vast majority of Americans (90 percent in most studies) believe GE foods should be labeled.

Gary Hirshberg, Chairman of Stonyfield and a founder of Just Label It, collaborated with Kenner to produce the video. “While the pros and cons of GE foods is debated, an entire generation is growing up consuming them,” he said. “Until we have no doubt that GE crops are safe to eat, consumers should have a choice about whether we want to eat them. GE foods must be labeled. Consumers need to know.” Hirshberg recently published “Label It Now,” the first consumer guide to GE foods available at online booksellers. All proceeds of the e-book go to the Just Label It campaign.

The drumbeat for mandatory GE labeling is getting louder, as the FDA decides whether to approve GE salmon and a proposal advances at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate corn engineered to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, a major component in Agent Orange. You can join in asking the FDA to allow consumers the right to know what’s in their food.

In both the popular imagination and ad campaigns, honey is the epitome of a wild food. After all, bees can’t be herded and overfed like cattle, or immobilized like broiler chickens if they are to continue making the sweet substance. As reported here last year, bees are “a key to global food security” due to their critical importance in food chains worldwide. In fact, honey seems to be a bellwether of global food insecurities.

The “wild” nature of even cultivated honey is both one of its major selling points and the source of many of its problems. A Guardian article recently reported that a European Union court on September 6 ruled that honey containing traces of pollen from genetically modified (GM) corn must also be labeled as GM produce. The ruling comes as a result of beekeepers in Germany discovering traces of corn pollen from a nearby field of Monsanto corn crops. The nature of bee biology and honey production throw the current discourse surrounding globalization and its effect on the permeability of local and global boundaries in a more literal light. After all, bees can’t be herded according to national borders.

Honey and national security are an odd combination, but one of undeniable importance. Colony Collapse Disorder continues to plague hives, causing mass bee die-offs. Last year, although there were rumors that the root cause of the disorder had been found, it is still unclear how much pesticides play a role. As a result, over the last decade these bee die-offs and other environmental factors have increased the price of domestic honey and, as with so many other products, have opened the door to cheaper Chinese imports. This imported honey, however, is often tainted by antibiotics fed to the bees, heavy metals from storage containers, or adulterated with “filler” products such as barley malt and jaggery. The sale of Chinese honey in the United States has been made nearly impossible by staggeringly high tariffs.

A recent Food Safety News (FSN) investigation, however, discovered that “a third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China.” Such a thing can occur because of a number of factors–the cheaper price of Chinese honey and the lack of a legal definition of “honey” among them. Chinese manufacturers pass honey through countries such as Russia, India and Australia in order to disguise the honey’s true country of origin.

One company, True Source Honey, LLC, has taken steps to halting this process. Formed by representatives from four North American honey marketing companies and importers, Golden Heritage Foods, LLC, Burleson’s Inc., Odem International, and Dutch Gold Honey, the company works to accredit honey sources and thereby build a base of trustworthy companies. The pledge signed by accredited companies includes these three tenets, honey must be:

• Ethically sourced in a transparent and traceable manner from known beekeepers and brokers;
• Moved through the supply chain in full accordance with U.S. law and without circumvention of trade duties; and
• Carry truthful labeling as to its source, has been tested to ensure quality, and has been handled in a safe and secure manner from hive to table

However, zero North American packers, five importers, and four beekeeping companies have passed the accreditation process and are now “True Source Certified.” Of course, the American founders of True Source Honey have a vested interest in keeping cheap international competition controlled. Yet I think, in looking at True Source Honey’s web site, what is most surprising is not the comparatively few companies that have gone through its accreditation process, but rather the hundreds of news stories on the site about the company’s milestones, busts of honey launderers, meetings of big players in the honey industry about the issue.

Just this week, FSN reported that more than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for FSN. FSN reports: “The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled ‘honey.’ The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.”

In a culture plagued by food industry horror stories and bad news, why hasn’t the problem of honey laundering made more of an impact on national media outlets over the course of the past ten years?  Why have they been, with a few exceptions, relegated to local news pieces replete with honey jokes, such as one CityPages blog post that states, “Minnesota beekeepers are so buzzing mad about ‘honey laundering’ that they’re holding a press conference about it today at the State Fair.”

Perhaps one of the reasons honey laundering hasn’t received more national attention is because the problem sheds unwelcome light on so many of the problems faced by current national food security. Honey reveals how something so simple as a name (what one can legally call “honey”) unites issues of international relations, economics at both the global and domestic levels, and biology (how honey is naturally made, and what can be done to bees in order to produce more of it).

Worth considering is the fact that the U.S. often views China as an economic and social threat–while the U.S. is in the process of forging a new, deeper alliance with India. Chinese honey cannot be imported into the U.S., for example, while Indian honey still is (in fact, according to the earlier FSN report, nearly all of honey imported to the U.S. comes from India). Yet Indian honey has already been outlawed in the E.U. because of its equally high level of antibiotics.

Perhaps, as with so many other foods, people must get sick before good health takes precedence over business as usual. The honey laundering issue is not, as some have claimed, just an overreaction to competitive global market practices. It is a case study that, were the world to truly focus on it, would cause us to reconsider many aspects of how global food industries work.

Photo: LauraZimmerman

The European Union (EU) made a substantial step toward establishing a binding food labeling policy for its member states. According to an agreement reached by negotiators yesterday, all food products in the EU will be required within five years to display their energy, salt, sugar, protein, carbohydrate, fat, and saturated fat content. Once finalized, the food label policy would conclude a debate over the redesign of the European food label that started in 2008.

In the U.S., a comparable debate is about to take place. The Department of Agriculture recently released the “MyPlate” image as a replacement of the decades old food pyramid and the Food and Drug Administration is currently considering a redesign of the Nutritional Facts label, which lists values for calories, fats, sugars and other nutrients. While Americans negotiate which label might most effectively communicate nutritional values to consumers, it is worth looking to the experience of the EU.

Initially, lawmakers in Europe wanted to require a mandatory front-of-package labels and discussed requiring food companies to list Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) of calories, sugars, fat, saturates, and salt in a serving of food. The deal reached Wednesday does not require that labels be on the front of packages or that they include the GDA figures.

One nutrition label design that proved particularly popular among European consumers (and controversial among industry groups and law makers) was the “traffic light label” that uses the colors red, yellow, and green to indicate whether a food product contains high, medium or a low amounts of fats, saturated fats, sugar, and salt.

“It is absolutely essential that it is simple, that you don’t need to sit down and start trying to work out what that percentage means,“ Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, told the BBC in 2010. “And the traffic lights system is something you can even see from a distance, so you can start to hone in on the foods that are predominantly green or green and amber and just cut down on the foods that are marked red.“

The traffic light label is already used on a voluntarily basis by a number of British food chains and manufacturers. It is supposed to help consumers compare products and make choices quickly when buying food.

In the European relabeling debate last year, the traffic light label received widespread support from the public and consumer protection groups. In one poll, 69 percent of the Germans favored the traffic light label. Also, separate studies of an Australian group of researchers and the UK consumer’s association found that the traffic light system was the most effective in assisting consumers to identify healthier foods.

Despite its popular support, EU lawmakers chose not to go with the traffic light label, deciding instead on the optional inclusion of a label that looks similar to the one recently proposed by the U.S. by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute.

In Europe, the food industry groups criticized the traffic light label, saying it patronized consumers and that consumers who strictly adhered to the green lights would not be able to eat a healthy diet.  The non-profit research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory estimated that the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries and its companies spent $1.45 trillion in order to assure the traffic light label was not chosen by lawmakers.

In June 2010, the politicians of the European parliament decided against mandating the traffic light label. The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on food labeling, Renate Sommer , said that the traffic light labeling was rejected because it over simplifies food choices.

“Coke Light is made with sweeteners instead of sugar, it would get a green light for sugar because it contains none, while natural fruit juice with no added sugar would get a red light because of its natural sugar content,” said Sommer. Also, one would create an incentive for the producers to substitute sugar with starch or sweeteners and salt with sodium glutamines in order to get more green lights.

In the U.S., there is a nation-wide design initiative to redesign the nutrition label that’s independent of the government and the food industry. Rethink the Food Label, a design challenge hosted by UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s News21 and Good magazine online is asking the public, graphic designers, and nutritionists to picture a revamped nutrition facts label.

Contributors are asked to incorporate the nutrition label’s existing break down of fats, sugar, vitamins, calorie count, and percent daily values; or completely re-imagine the label to include geography, food quality, food justice, added sugars or carbon footprint. The top designs will be judged by a panel of food thinkers and graphic designers that includes Michael Pollan, Robert Lustig, Andrew Vande Moere, and Laura Brunow Miner.

Top image via FSA; bottom image via GMA.

China has a reputation for producing knock-offs of luxury brands like Louis Vuitton purses and BMW cars. Add organic food and wine to the list of faux products.

In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report citing a company in southern China’s ZhongShan district for falsifying an organic food certificate and seeking to export their non-organic soybeans, buckwheat and millet as organic products. The fake certification was brought to the USDA’s attention when French organic certifying company Ecocert contacted USDA officials.

On March 24, the USDA caught another company using a fraudulent organic certificate for brown sugar in Johannesburg, South Africa. In both incidents, the USDA found no evidence that the sugar or soybeans ever made it to market. Still, they could prompt consumers to question the validity and trustworthiness of food labels, particularly for imported organic food.

“If you’re not there watching how the food is produced and processed, there is always the unknown,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization. “We push for high standards for organics, but to make it meaningful, we need systems of enforcement.”

To police organic standards internationally, the USDA depends on accredited agents to enforce organic certificates. The USDA relies on 94 agents worldwide to certify organic food for import to the United States. Those 94 organic certifying agents are responsible for monitoring some 20,000 companies that want to sell organic products.  “The USDA is working hard with the certifiers to collaborate so they can be the eyes and ears on cases like this,” said Soo Kim, a spokesperson for the USDA.

The U.S. increasingly relies on China as a source for food products. In 2008, the U.S. imported some $5.2 billion worth of seafood and agricultural products from China compared to $800 million in 1995 according to the USDA. The USDA estimates that 60 percent of apple juice consumed in the U.S. is imported from China. Other major Chinese imports include garlic, instant coffee, dried and canned vegetables and fruit.

In 2008, Chinese manufacturers added melamine chemicals to milk products, including infant formula, so that their products could appear to have high levels of protein in laboratory tests. Six babies died and hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the contaminated milk.

These latest bogus organic labeling scams have prompted some local food advocates in the U.S. to take a hard line against imported foods. Mark Kastel, co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit supporting small-scale ecological farming, believes that importing food from China and elsewhere violates the spirit of sustainability, which he defines as minimizing the distance between consumers and producers, and assuring transparency in how food is grown. Organic consumers “want to pay more and so they know more,” said Kastel. For consumers, paying a premium for organic food makes less sense when food importers are found to be falsifying organic certification.

This post is part of an ongoing partnership between Civil Eats and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting. Over the next several months we will regularly feature stories from students in the class.

If you eat beef, or take milk and sugar in your coffee (and even if you don’t), here is why you should care: The move could put organic foods at risk for contamination and make it more expensive.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has attempted to stave off further litigation and quell the mounting antagonism between farmers growing GM seed and organic farmers by proposing “co-existence” between the two.

Part of Vilsack’s plan for co-existence includes using buffers between organic and GM fields and even placing geographic restrictions on the growth of GM seeds. This is the first time such a discussion had been broached by the USDA. New York University professor and food movement leader Marion Nestle called the move a “breakthrough,” and we also ran an op-ed pushing for co-existence as the lesser of two evils here on Civil Eats.

But Vilsack’s co-existence plan seemed to put President Obama’s pro-business agenda at risk. In fact, David Axelrod put the kibosh on the idea with a bad pun, encouraging “everyone to ‘plow forward’ on a plan for genetically produced alfalfa,” according to Maureen Dowd.

Monsanto, the company behind 95 percent of GM sugarbeet seed and all of the GM alfalfa seed, had fought against the deal behind closed doors.

Worries were expressed about our biotech credibility abroad should we discuss any fallibility at home. But in a nod toward co-existence, Monsanto spokesman Tom Helscher told the AP on Monday, “Since the advent of biotech crops, both biotech and organic production have flourished. We have no reason to think that will not continue to be the case.” What Monsanto execs don’t mention publicly is that co-existence is not possible, and as patent holders to the gene traits in their GM seeds, they have the right to sue farmers whose fields become contaminated by these traits.

“Certainly, on a commercial-scale crop, over time, you are going to get contamination,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The provisions [in the EIS] will certainly reduce contamination, and they may delay it to some extent, but they’re not going to prevent it.”

Aside from the transfer of genetic material through pollen, there are many other ways in which it has proven impossible to contain the risk of contamination. And unfortunately, there are plenty of real examples in which contamination has already happened.

There are well-documented cases with papaya in Hawaii, corn in Mexico, canola most recently in North Dakota, and creeping bentgrass, which pollinated grasses 13 miles away in Oregon. A test plot of a GM rice was even responsible for contaminating long grain varieties in five states in 2006, five years after Bayer CropScience had abandoned trials of its LL601 rice, costing the industry $2 billion.

In 1999, a corn variety called StarLink–which was not approved for human consumption–contaminated half of the Iowa corn harvest. Whether batches of corn meant for animal consumption were mixed with corn for human consumption on accident or through cross-pollination–we will never know exactly what happened. What we do know is that our current regulatory process has significant–in many cases, insurmountable–problems, and the concept of co-existence is merely a smoke screen that will create more of the same.

This is why deregulation has huge implications for organic farmers as well as consumers. The USDA does not test for contamination after deregulating a biotech crop. In the StarLink case, it was a non-profit group that found traces of the corn in taco shells. This means that the impetus will be on organic farmers to test their own crops, further increasing food prices. Worse, organic food could become more limited in availability if contamination becomes a widespread issue.

“Today, there are many committed consumers who want to know their farmer, feed their families wholesome dairy products, and be assured that their food isn’t contaminated by GMOs,” said Albert Straus, an organic dairy farmer from California who has spoken out against GM alfalfa. “If the organic feed supply for dairy cattle is contaminated with GMOs, farmers will no longer be able to offer truly organic milk to consumers, and everything we have worked to build will be compromised.” Straus Family Creamery has been voluntarily testing its feed for GMOs since 2006, and carries the Non-GMO Project Seal on its label.

In addition, organic farmers fear economic loses in export markets–places like the European Union and Japan, where products containing traces of GM foods are consistently rejected. In addition to risks in the field, it is not uncommon for organic crops to be transported in rail cars, on boats and in truck beds where GM or conventional crops have also been transported. This means that a crop that has been tested by the farmer can still be contaminated later. With no protections in place, the organic farmer bears the majority of the risk.

The reason Japanese and EU consumers are driving the purity tests on crops coming from America is simple: When GM foods are sold in places like the EU or Japan, they are labeled as such. And this really is the critical issue. American consumers want to know what they are eating, but the industry doesn’t want to be forthcoming because letting the market decide would mean resistance to GM foods.

“We don’t challenge consumers on whether they want a red car or a blue car,” said Gurian-Sherman. “But when it comes to choosing what they want to eat, the people that are supporting this technology seem to be greatly offended that the market in Europe and other places is doing what markets are suppose to do.”

Letting the market decide would also mean more support for organics, which would force the USDA to protect that market–and thus our food supply–more conscientiously. Therefore, pushing for transparent labeling on food containing GMOs could be the first step in protecting our food supply from genetic contamination.

This will not be the last battle fought to preserve an agricultural product from contamination. In fact, any day now the FDA will be issuing a ruling about the first genetically altered animal–the GM salmon.

Meanwhile, here are a few things you can do to defend organic against the threat of GM food.

Only 20 percent of people who seek out kosher foods are Jewish; the rest look for the label because they believe it signals food that is healthy, safe, and generally high in quality. The reality is that many kosher meats and processed foods — like their conventional non-kosher counterparts — are made in large, industrial facilities. Today’s kosher standards are focused mainly on religious ritual and do not account for aspects of the production process that might impact the environment* or food system workers.

If Rabbi Morris Allen and the team behind a soon-to-be-introduced seal and certification process called Magen Tzedek (or “seal of justice”) have their way, however, this won’t always be the case. Through Magen Tzedek, Allen hopes to give food producers a chance to incorporate social justice, corporate transparency, and environmental stewardship into the world of kosher food. And, while Jewish people make up only two percent of the U.S. population, the movement to create a complementary label for sustainable kosher food has significant implications for the wider food world. Forty percent of all products sold in the US are certified kosher and the market is growing. When they were last measured in 2008, sales of kosher foods totaled $12.5 billion. I spoke with Rabbi Allen recently about his motivation and the challenges he’s facing in advancing this new frontier for kosher food.  

CUESA: How did you (and your congregation, Beth Jacob Congregation in Minnesota) arrive at the idea for Magen Tzedek?

Rabbi Morris Allen: In 2006 I was helping to source fresh kosher meat for a supermarket in St. Paul through an Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa. We were very successful for a few months, until a national news story was released detailing horrible labor practices at the plant. Having sort of staked my reputation on being able to work with them, I was distressed. When a national commission of people went to Postville, we discovered many things that were troubling and we made suggestions for changes they could make. [Editor's note: when the plant was raided by immigration officials in 2008, they found 57 under-age workers. Many worked 12-hour days with harsh chemicals and very sharp tools.]

It was around that time that I decided we could wait to see if they figure out all these issues, or we could use the model of how food was certified as ritually kosher to create a way to certify food that had been produced in a manner that was consistent with Jewish ethical values.

Q: A number of people buy kosher because they perceive it to be safer; are there aspects of the current kosher certification process that do make it any safer?

Not necessarily at all, unfortunately. People believe that it is more healthy, safer, etc. and I think that is part of the appeal to food producers. The fact is, you can have kosher food that is really unhealthy for you but is kosher.

Q: Where is the process today?

Beginning this month, we hope to begin beta testing our standards with three companies. If they all participate fully, we will be certifying over a billion dollars’ worth of food production. Let’s just say they’re all significant players in food production in America. Once we know it’s working we can begin taking applications from companies interested in being certified.

Q: Do you think there are there many companies already able to meet your current standards?

Yes. There are a number that are already doing the right thing, and they need to know that people take note of that fact. It’s the first time that a religious community has essentially decided to demonstrate that good corporate citizenship is a religious issue.

The standards are in five areas: Labor Concerns, Animal Welfare, Environmental Impact, Consumer Trust and Corporate Integrity [Read a draft of the standards].

Q: There’s an increased cost when you treat workers well and respect the environment. Have you gotten pushback from the kosher industry about those costs?

The major complaint is that this is an unnecessary [certification] that will punish people who keep kosher because their costs will go up. In the first place, many people are already doing the right thing and won’t see their costs go up. On the other hand, the food industry is the only one in the world where we walk into a store and say “I always want to buy the least expensive product.” You wouldn’t walk into a car dealership and say that.

We can buy the head of broccoli that is $1.99, or the locally grown, organic one for $2.50 — and we might actually be spending $1.99 for the product and 50 cents for the community or to benefit us in other ways. Those kinds of equations aren’t necessarily thought through in the grocery store. But if eating, and in particular eating kosher food, is an act of the sacred, then you have to think about those things.

People don’t want to pay more for food, but we have to make the argument that it’s not about paying more, it’s about doing right.

Q: So, just for clarity, you see Magen Tzedek going alongside the standard kosher label?

Yes. We’re also speaking with some people in the Halal community about ways they might be able to adopt our standards down the road. Of course, you can have too many labels, and the key is to make sure our food products don’t start looking like Nascar vehicles.

Keep up with the Magen Tzedek process on Morris Allen’s blog.

Read a related article, Kosher Wars, about the contemporary take on kosher slaughter and other ritual-based dietary rules.

* A number of companies now adopt the kosher label alongside organic certification, but the national organic standards do not include labor practices

Originally published on CUESA