Would you change the way you eat if it kept you from getting cancer or stopped the disease in its tracks? Could you see yourself adding more sustainable, fresh local foods to your diet every day if it might prolong your life?  Cancer researcher Dr. William Li, of the Angiogenesis Foundation, thinks you can.

Li’s work revolves around looking at the way that our blood vessels–every person has around 60,000–deliver oxygen and nutrients to the all our body’s organs, but can also feed cancers and grow tumors in the body. To prove his theory about the preventative powers of healthy food, his Angiogenesis Foundation has kicked off an Eat to Defeat campaign, that has a goal of signing up one million volunteers who are willing to increase their intake of healthy foods, and to become a part of his research.

How It Works

Dr. Li says that each person’s body has the power to regulate how many blood vessels there are operating in it at any one time, and that balance of this number is critical to health.

When we suffer an injury, the body creates a set amount of new blood vessels, and when we don’t need that much blood supply, the body knows how to “prune the vessels back to baseline,” said Dr. Li. This process is called angiogenesis. When the body doesn’t have enough blood vessels, it can lead to poor circulation, strokes, heart attacks and even hair loss. On the flip side, a body that has too much angiogenesis can create cancers, blindness, Alzheimer’s disease and other ailments. “Obesity can also be linked to the imbalance of angiogenesis,” said Dr. Li.

Cancerous tumors cause the body to have a difficult time regulating the number of blood vessels present. Dr. Li said that most of us live with small microscopic tumors in our bodies that don’t cause us any risk at all. The trouble comes when there is an increase in blood vessels that feed those small tumors and make them grow.” And as the cancer grows, it allows the malignant cells to metastasize to other organs.

His main theory is that certain foods can literally bring naturally occurring inhibitors of angiogenesis into the body and stop or slow down cancer.

“Prevention is a better way of doing this than through treatment after the cancer has occurred,” Dr. Li says. “We know that diet accounts for 30 to 35 percent of environmental cancers.”

On his list of superfoods that help keep cancer and disease at bay are red grapes and red wine that have concentrated levels of resveratrol, which Li says  “can cut off the growth of blood vessels.” In the case of prostate cancer in men, Li says that consuming cooked tomatoes at least two to three times per week can reduce a man’s risk of prostate cancer. Why? “Those who ate more cooked tomatoes had fewer blood vessels growing and feeding their cancerous tumors.” Other foods with the power to block the growth of blood vessels are oranges, lemons, cherries, spinach, kale and bok choy, tumeric, nutmeg and garlic, to name a few. He even suggests that drinking a combination of teas can aid in anti-angiogenesis.

While studies show that eating a healthy diet full of fresh fruits and vegetables can make significant improvements in health, more work needs to be done to prove that the cure for cancer lies in what we eat. Dr. Li has teamed up with Dean Ornish, the diet guru at University of California to learn more about the impact of diet on controlling angiogenisis.  The two doctors will also be looking at the impact of angiogenesis on obesity. Dr. Li has suggested that cutting off blood supply through diet may be a way to shrink fat and reduce obesity. Chefs Mario Batali, Ming Tsai, and Michael Schlow have signed on to the Eat to Defeat campaign by offering up healthy recipes using the dietary sources that Dr. Li outlines.

At this point, does anybody know that this approach to eating is a sure fire guarantee that you’ll spend your whole life cancer-free? No, but it is a part of a common sense approach to being fitter and living healthy.

Watch Dr. Li talk about angiogenesis at TED here:

On a slow Friday afternoon, a surprising bit of news came down the pike: Roger Beachy, head of  National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the main research arm of the USDA, has officially resigned his post, effective May 20.

Who is Beachy? When Obama hired Beachy in 2009, I got a case of policy whiplash, because it seemed to me that the administration kept whipping back and forth between progressive food-system change and agribusiness as usual. Beachy, you see, came to the post from the Danforth Plant Science Center, where had he served as the organization’s president since its founding in 1998. Nestled in Monsanto’s St. Louis home town, Danforth has long and deep ties to Monsanto.

According to its website, the center “was founded in 1998 through gifts from the St. Louis-based Danforth Foundation, the Monsanto Fund (a philanthropic foundation), and a tax credit from the State of Missouri.” Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant sits on the center’s board of trustees, along with execs from defense giant McDonnell Douglas and pharma titan Merck. Another notable board member is Alfonso Romo, a Mexican magnate who cashed in big during his country’s notoriously corrupt privatization /liberalization bonanza in the early ’90s, and who sold Seminis, the globe’s largest vegetable-seed company, to Monsanto in 2005. (Here’s my account of that deal from the time.)

In his short stint at USDA, Beachy never hid his enthusiasm for ag biotechnology–or his disdain for organic ag. When I met him at an agriculture conference in Mexico and asked him about funding for organic research, he came up with a novel slander against synthetics-free ag: “I’m concerned about the safety of organic food… I’m concerned about the issue of microbial contamination with organic.” It was a strange encounter; I wrote about it here. Beachy also hotly promoted GMOs, and thundered against organic, in a recent profile in Scientific American.

Now he has quit abruptly–according to the USDA’s internal announcement, posted on ScienceInsider, to “spend more time with his wife, his children, and his grandchildren” back in St. Louis. Be that as it may–sometimes, no doubt, people actually do abruptly quit jobs to “spend more time with family”–Beachy’s exit coincides with news that NIFA’s budget outlook has darkened considerably. Reports ScienceInsider:

This year’s pot for competitive grants is down about 1 percent, a far cry from the 64 percent increase that the Obama Administration had requested for FY 2011. And reflecting larger fiscal realities, the department’s request for FY 2012, submitted in February and still pending before Congress, was scaled back substantially, although still a robust 25 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the Danforth Center, where Beachy is still listed as a researcher, is going great guns. According to the April 14 St. Louis Today, “Researchers working to develop genetically modified, nutrient-dense cassava got another major boost Wednesday with an $8.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” Total funding awarded to Daforth by the the Gates Foundation “now tops $20 million,” St. Louis Today reports.

Originally published on Grist

The New York Times made a long-awaited (and much emailed) announcement on its front page last week: The mystery of the ongoing and agriculturally devastating bee die-off (aka Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD) has been cracked!

I’m not trying to hype the news. Here’s the headline and lede:

Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership–of military scientists and entomologists–appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

It’s easy to miss, but in that last sentence, reporter Kirk Johnson takes a wrong turn. In essence, he confuses proximate and efficient causes (i.e. what bees ultimately succumb to vs. what makes hives susceptible to collapse) and from that logical error, a whole series of cascading failures ensue. But don’t take my word for it. Go read Katherine Eban’s crack piece of reporting for Fortune that dissects the problematic nature of the Times article; the underlying study; its lead author, Jerry Bromenshenk; and the role in the whole debate of the pesticide company Bayer CropScience.

The enigma wrapped in a mystery coated with pesticide

Let’s be clear: The study itself makes no conclusive claims about the causes of colony collapse disorder. Eban quotes from the paper that the research does not “clearly define” that the virus/fungus combination is “a marker, a cause, or a consequence of CCD.” A scientist interviewed by Eban very helpfully offers the metaphor of HIV to describe what’s going on with bees. HIV doesn’t kill you–it’s the opportunistic infections and diseases that follow HIV’s dismantling of a sufferer’s immune system that do. In the case of bees, the virus/fungus combo are most likely the follow-on infections that kill off an already weakened hive.

The Times blunder goes beyond whether Johnson or his editor misinterpreted the results of new research. Unfortunately, as Eban details–in part drawing on an unpublished piece she wrote for the now-defunct Portfolio magazine–the Times left out key pieces of the real story of the fight over research into what’s killing the bees.

As I wrote last January, many scientists believe that a novel class of pesticides called neonicotinoids–which are insect neurotoxins-has played a major role in CCD worldwide. An Italian entomologist at the University of Padua, Vincenzo Girolami, has research currently undergoing peer review showing that bees can be exposed to lethal levels of these pesticides through the use of seeding machines that sow neonicotinoid-coated seeds. These devices throw up a toxic cloud of pesticide as they work: bees fly through the cloud and either die or take the pesticide back to the hive. Once inside, even at low doses, it can cause disorientation or, as Girolami calls it, “intoxication” of whole hives.

The maker of this pesticide is Bayer CropScience. What does a corporation do when it discovers it may have developed and marketed a dangerous and potentially devastating product? Here in America, you confuse, you obfuscate, and you buy off scientists.

And as Eban skillfully details, that’s exactly what Bayer has been doing for the last decade or so.

Beeing clear

Which brings us back to Bromenshenk. He was an expert witness for a group of beekeepers that in 2003 sued Bayer over the pesticide Imidacloprid. Bromenshenk later backed out of the lawsuit and, soon after, Bayer gave Bromenshenk a “research grant.” But it gets worse. Eban reports something the Times piece doesn’t: that Bromenshenk’s consulting company, Bee Alert Technology, is developing diagnostic tools for “various bee ailments.” The company stands to profit from curing bee diseases–and thus it’s rather convenient that Bromenshenk has published research that points the finger towards “treatable” conditions, rather than pesticides, as the primary culprit in bee deaths. Indeed, he had admitted as much to Eban while she was researching her Portfolio piece.

While this tremendous potential conflict doesn’t necessarily invalidate Bromenshenk’s findings, it certainly warrants a mention.

So where does this leave us? In an email exchange with me, the Italian scientist Girolami said he agrees with many of the experts Eban interviewed: The virus/fungus combination is secondary. In Girolami’s opinion, the underlying causes of CCD–the factors that are weakening the hives and making them susceptible to infection and die-offs–are most likely neonicotinoids along with the Varroa mite, a parasite that can infect and destroy hives all on its own.

In fact, last year Italy banned neonicotinoid-coated corn seeds and, according to this report, after the first non-neonicotinoid sowing, nary a hive was lost, although neonicotinoid spraying is still allowed in some areas–and still linked with bee deaths. France has also banned coated seeds–though there, as in Germany, the pesticide lobby has fended off total bans for now. As for the U.S., Bayer successfully convinced a judge to throw out crucial evidence in the beekeeper lawsuit and has, to date, prevented the EPA from releasing the data the agency used to approve neonicotinoids in the first place.

Eban concludes with the observation that little neonicotinoid research is going on in the U.S .at the moment, thanks in large part to Bayer’s efforts to “support” scientists who work in other, shall we say, less-sensitive areas. It seems it is up to scientists outside the U.S., in countries less beholden to corporate interests, to do the scientific heavy lifting.

Ah, America. Fighting hard for the freedom to spray toxic chemicals everywhere.

Photo: nikonvscanon on Flickr

Republished with permission from Grist

These days, we hear more and more about our food system in crisis: contamination, obesity, poor distribution, and environmental devastation.  To combat some of these issues, the school garden is a growing trend that aims to teach our kids a more direct connection to their food and eating habits.  It’s actually not a new concept.  During World War I and II, motivated by scarcity and national security issues, schools  became major suppliers of fresh produce.  Our government began the U.S. School Garden Army, promoting fruit and vegetable production, consumption, and health.  But now the format has entered modern times, up against modern ailments and a larger population.

It is one thing to plant a few sunflowers with Kindergarteners and another to install, maintain, and implement nutrition, cooking, and ecological curriculum that ensure a lasting impact on the students.  It’s not as easy as just planting some tomatoes and hoping our kids will get the message. We’ve all encountered a neglected schoolyard, tangled weeds and scorched earth, with evidence of good intention but stunted momentum.  To really hit home on the important seed to fork lessons a school garden can deliver, it takes tons of work, planning, thought, and consistency…a home garden times one hundred or more.  The hurdles involved are also great, from our national policies, to funding, to actual space available within our country’s concrete landscapes.

But today we also have more resources promoting the school garden concept.  Lesson plans, non-profit organizations, grants, teacher workshops, and consulting opportunities get us closer to creating these Growing Classrooms more efficiently and with a broader reach.  We also finally have some definitive research to back up our claims that these school gardens will work towards creating a healthier food system for generations to come.

In 2004, The School Lunch Initiative was launched in Berkeley, California.  The Initiative, which aims to integrate cooking and gardening into regular school programming and food, is a collaboration between the public school district’s 11 elementary and 3 middle schools, Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Foundation and the Center for Ecoliteracy.  However, after being met with criticism and arguments about the project’s validity, the Chez Panisse Foundation decided to fund The School Lunch Initiative Evaluation Project that was released in June of this year.

This academic study conducted by UC Berkeley researchers is one of the first to thoroughly examine a fully functioning school garden program within a public school system. This lack of scientific evidence is due, in part, to the difficulty involved in quantifying the multi-layered variables, time, and sophistication within the diverse samples of school food and garden projects. Some focus only on the environment, some on nutrition, some on public school menu changes, but until now there has been little evidence that looks at models of successful integration within all the tenants of this issue.

Over the course of three years (fall of 2005 to spring of 2009) 238 students were followed as they moved from the fourth and fifth grades into middle school to determine the effects of The Initiative as it was being implemented. The method was to track students’ development over time within a critical age group, broken up between highly developed food programs and less developed ones within the Berkeley school system (all under the School Food Initiative, which has required healthier food choices, a school garden, on-site cooking education, and professional development for teachers). It is important to note that the schools receiving more exposure to the Initiative programming generally have lower income students, while the schools with less assistance have higher income families enrolled.

The reason this age group was chosen is because studies have indicated that as we move into middle school and our teens, food choices become less healthy, which may lead to poor eating habits as we enter adulthood. U.S. adolescents eat about 3.5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, according to the USDA, as opposed to the recommended seven to eight. This statistic points to the importance of sustained garden and cooking education in middle schools to create a lasting impact. The researcher’s evidence documented an increase in fruit and vegetable servings by 1.5 for fifth graders at the highly developed schools. The less developed schools showed a decrease by 0.4 servings.

There was also a concerted effort to mirror the ethnic and economic diversity of Berkeley public schools within the study, as stated by the authors, “The heterogeneity of the student population is due to Berkeley’s long-standing efforts at integrating its schools. In 1968, the Berkeley Unified School District became the first major school district in the nation to voluntarily integrate its schools. Today, a school assignment plan based upon race, ethnicity, parent education and parent income level aims to bring a diverse mix of students into each Berkeley school.”

One main finding was that parents reported much healthier eating habits in their kids. More than half of the families involved in the study reported eating dinner together every day, and 35 percent of parents with kids in the highly developed School Lunch Initiative schools saw a noticeable improvement in their children’s food choices as opposed to 16 percent in the less developed Initiative schools.

There was also strong evidence that students had increased knowledge of nutrition when exposed to higher levels of Initiative programming (cooking and gardening), specifically in seventh graders in year three with a five percent increase in nutrition scores over the previous year. Not only did the kids know more about fresh produce, they actually started to prefer it, notably in the first year of exposure. The preference was sustained, specifically for leafy greens, following them all the way into middle school.

By year three, the older kids at the highly developed Initiative middle schools displayed a positive attitude about their lunch program, food choices, in-season produce, and ideas that our eating habits can help or hurt the environment. In short, they got it…

The study was also to determine how to enhance, change, and replicate this kind of programming on a wider scale. Obvious recommendations included continuing these kinds of integrated school garden programs, ensuring regular attendance by hiring paid staff, and maintaining the programs into middle schools to reach kids as they move into their teens. The report also suggested adding components that include parents and community members, finding ways to improve the quality of foods brought from home (not just for lunch but for larger events, fundraisers, etc.), and increasing physical activity during the garden and cooking lessons to promote exercise.

On a policy and research level, there needs to be more understanding of how the parents and children view the school meals and what they are actually consuming in order to create strategies that ensure more participation. Also, future assessment of cost and replicability of the School Garden Initiative needs to occur to determine feasibly spreading the model on a wider scale. And finally, the study suggested broadening the age group to look at much younger kids all the way into high school to really analyze the impact of these garden programs for the future.

Photo: Life Lab Science Program in Santa Cruz, CA

One of the primary concerns with transgenic (aka genetically modified) crops is the risk of genetic contamination, i.e. the transfer of engineered genes to wild versions of the same plant. The corporations involved in genetic engineering, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, have time and again assured regulators and the public that this risk is minimal. Still, the government mandates “buffer zones” around such crops’ plantings and the corporations who sell the seeds have created their own protocols to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

Well, surprise! It’s happened. Big time.

Scientists from the University of Arkansas announced at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting the results of a study that showed genetically engineered pesticide-resistant canola growing like a weed in North Dakota. They found that up to 80 percent of wild canola in their sample from various North Dakota roadsides contained genes that conferred resistance to either glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide) or gluphosinate (from Bayer’s LibertyLink seeds).

But it gets better, er, worse. The scientists also found wild canola with both properties. And as lead scientist Cynthia Sagers observed in an accompanying news report, “these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations” — plant generations, mind you, not human generations. Still, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s true that biotech companies do sell seeds with multiple forms of pesticide resistance, so-called “stacked trait” seeds. But these wild canola plants managed this interbreeding feat all by their lonesome.

So, these genetically engineered plants — which, when out in the wild, are considered weeds — are cross-pollinating and transferring “alien” genes that confer pesticide resistance. The next step in the chain is for the canola to interbreed with other related weeds. Suddenly, the prospect of our nation’s bread basket infested with superweeds becomes very, very real.

Monsanto issued a statement that didn’t exactly address the issue at hand:

Tom Nickson, head of environmental policy at Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri, told Nature, “Those familiar with canola know that these plants are readily found on roadsides and in areas near farmers’ fields. This was true prior to the introduction of GM canola, and a common source is seed that has scattered during harvest and fallen off a truck during transport.”

Okay. No one is accusing Monsanto of culpability in the scourge of roadside canola. It’s the utter failure of the company’s safety protocols that’s the issue. Time and time again, Monsanto and its ilk have promised that this sort of thing would never happen; that the systems in place to prevent it are foolproof. Well, I think we know now who the fools are …

A report last year suggested that farmers routinely ignore planting requirements and buffer zones when it comes to genetically engineered crops. And now we see the result. Perhaps this news will give the USDA pause as it considers whether to allow Monsanto’s GM alfalfa to be planted this spring, which was recently halted by a federal judge for insufficient protections against exactly this kind of phenomenon.

Either way, what we’re seeing is what some would have considered a worst-case scenario a few years ago — transgenic plants growing in the wild and creating versions that don’t currently exist, even in a lab. Scared yet?

cross-posted from Grist with permission

Photo: Aerial Photography

“What is wrong with us? Why do we seem to care so little about our own safety, our own health, and the future of our children?” asks Maria Rodale, farmer, author and CEO of Rodale Inc. “Why are we willing to pay thousands of dollars for vitro fertility treatments when we can’t conceive, but not a few extra dollars for the organic food that might help to preserve the reproductive health of our own and future generations?”

In her powerful and informative new book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, Maria Rodale has done all of the thinking and the research about organic farming for us. Yay, we don’t have to think! Following in the path of her grandfather, JI Rodale, who launched Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in 1942 and her father Robert Rodale, who devoted his life to educating others on health and environmental issues, Maria Rodale explains why and how we must immediately begin to undo the damage we have done to the environment and to ourselves.

The ‘Farming System Trial’ that her father, Robert Rodale began in 1990, is now the longest running scientific study comparing ‘synthetic-chemical’ versus ‘organic’ agriculture. After 20 years of experiments, the trial clearly shows that organic farming is not only more productive than chemical farming, especially during times of flood or drought, but that soil farmed organically is a necessary step toward solving our climate crisis. ‘Mycorrhizal fungi’ which grow at the roots of plants, stores carbon. These miraculous fungi build our soil and its health while also sequestering excess carbon and pulling it underground.

Tada! Billions of beneficial microbes found plentifully in healthy organic soil do not exist in conventionally farmed soil because synthetic chemicals (pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, etc…) eradicate them as well as their useful creepy-crawly cohorts. As a result a conventional farmer is left with soil that has weakened microbial life, a compromised structure and a significantly impaired ability to withstand the stresses of drought and flood. In organic farming, soil is constantly being replenished and revitalized by adding compost or growing cover crops. It’s a ‘give and take’ approach; a happy, healthy long-term relationship, while chemical (conventional) farming is more ‘crash and burn’ or ‘hit and run.’ That’s so 1980′s!

“The fact that we haven’t noticed these little helpful creatures before shouldn’t surprise us. We prefer our nature in the macro-the postcard vistas and views. When it comes to the micro, we’d rather not look or know,” says Rodale. ” We know more about space than we do about the ground we live on, about the soil that sustains us. What we call soil is a living thing: Just one tablespoon of soil can contain up to 10 billion microbes-that’s one and a-half times the total human population.” Try wrapping your head around that fact.

Rodale makes a convincing argument for moving from conventional farming to organic farming, which at the present time constitutes less than 1% of farming in the United States. Rodale writes, “Cheap food equals high healthcare costs.” She cites various studies showing that some organic foods are higher in antioxidants and that organic foods are safer simply because they’re grown without dangerous chemicals, antibiotics or contaminated sewage sludge. She also refers to recent medical studies that show that even small doses and cumulative small doses of agricultural chemicals can be just as toxic as large doses. Government regulations are based on ‘estimated safe amounts’ of exposure. Harvard-trained, Dr. Philip Landrigan, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Chairman of the school’s Department of Preventive Medicine agrees. “There are no safe limits,’ says Landrigan. “No matter how small. The biggest bang for the buck still occurs at the lowest doses. If babies are exposed in the womb or shortly after birth to chemicals that interfere with brain development, the consequences last a lifetime.”

Rodale’s tone, part scientific-part reassuring MOM, is encouraging even when she’s swinging depressing statistics on the effects of water pollution from chemical farming; alligators’ penises shrinking, male toads turning partially into female toads and reproducing, or the disappearance of honeybees and fireflies. All of this sadly reminding us that they are our canaries in the coal mine.

She also dismisses the theory that there ‘isn’t enough food.’ We have too much food, Rodale claims. The quantity of food isn’t the problem. She refers to a study commissioned by the United Nations concluding that the quantity of food isn’t the cause. The price and the political instability is the problem globally.

“It takes fuel to ship food around the world. And nearly every chemical fertilizer is petroleum based,” says Rodale. ” Chemical and Biotech companies still claim there is not enough food to feed the world. They spend billions of dollars each year on advertising and lobbying in order to drive that point home. Yet the problem isn’t food scarcity-it’s too much food- but fear of famine sure sells chemicals.”

Current agricultural use of pesticides in the United States is estimated to be about 1.2 billion pounds annually-about 4 pounds for every man, woman and child.

Organic Manifesto has come along at a pivotal time. In California, residents are speaking up against aerial spraying of pesticides in their cities to combat a minor moth (LBAM) which many leading entomologists consider an insignificant pest. In New England, director Brett Plymale recently released A Chemical Reaction, a documentary about the first Canadian town to ban pesticides. And New Jersey’s Senator Frank Lautenberg is currently drafting legislation to strengthen the Toxic Substances Control Act, which at the present time is considered arbitrary by many environmental experts. This revision would require stronger safety testing and oversight of the 80,000 chemicals registered in the United States. Maria Rodale asks that we stop supporting a food industry that is poisoning us, and demand organic; for everyone. “Let this book be your cocktail party guide to global organic conversion, no spin included-just the facts,” says Maria Rodale. “And maybe a few opinions thrown in for good measure.”

This regulatory end-around has been aided in part by the industry’s successful campaign to convince the media and our representatives that genetic engineering is just a super-duper cool version of conventional breeding. That is a lie. Genetic engineering involves inserting a new piece of DNA code into a plant’s own DNA — which sounds straightforward except you have no idea where your piece will end up and what disturbances it might cause in the plant. You just have to grow the thing and find out.

What you might get is what’s known as “insertional mutagenesis” and it can result in all sorts of bad things happening. One example might be that you engineer a plant to produce some new substance — like a herbicide, a vitamin or a even a drug — but it also produces a potent toxin to go along with it. Oops!

Insertional mutagenesis is why pretty much all of Monsanto’s promised innovations are five or ten years away and it’s also why GMOs can come with all sorts of nasty surprises. And because these are subtle changes to the genome, it shouldn’t be surprising that any health effects it would cause in creatures that eat them might be subtle, too.

All of which brings me to the news (via Tom Philpott) that there is increasing evidence that GMOs can and do cause health problems:

And now comes this study by three French university researchers. It’s a fascinating piece of work. The researchers analyzed data from tests done on rats by Monsanto and another biotech firm, Covance Laboratories, submitted to European government in 2000 and 2001. The firms conducted the tests to prove that their products were safe to eat; scrutinizing the same data, the researchers arrived at a different conclusion.

The three products in question are still quite relevant: one strain of Roundup Ready corn, engineered to withstand Monsanto’s flagship herbicide; and two strands of Bt corn, engineered to contain the insect-killing gene from the BT bacteria. Roundup Ready and Bt products are ubiquitous in the U.S. seed supply, often “stacked” into the same seed.

The researchers also found “clear negative impact” on their livers of rats fed all three kinds of GMO corn.

They added that it’s impossible to tell, based on the data, whether the damage was caused by the specific genes introduced to the corn, or — more troubling still — if the very process of genetic modification creates a toxic effect.

Firstly, let’s be clear — industry scientists got bad results, fudged the analysis and then figured no one would notice. Well, it took almost a decade, but these enterprising French scientists did notice. And that last bit about a toxic effect of genetic modification: That’s got “insertional mutagenesis” written all over it, no? Philpott then explains why, though no one’s arguing that GMOs cause “illness” per se, this isn’t some kind of crank theory:

Nearly our entire corn and soy crops crops are genetically modified — and have been for nearly a decade. Corn and soy course through the food system like blood in a body. If GMOs caused harm, wouldn’t it be obvious by now?Moreover, most corn and soy goes into animal feed. Last I checked, pigs, chickens, and cows on factory animal farms haven’t been dropping dead en masse before their date with the executioner. Again, if GMOs were dangerous, why aren’t factory animal farmers rejecting them?

This thinking, I think, represents educated opinion on GMOs. The logic would be persuasive, if scientists were claiming that GMOs caused spectacular, virulent illnesses, the kind associated with, say, E. coli O157 or salmonella. But instead, the evidence I’m referring to suggests that GMOs cause low-level, chronic damage.

And think of the U.S. diet. People here tend to survive on refined sugars and processed food, and are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals like BPA. Moreover, we have high and growing levels of chronic ailments. To me, it’s highly plausible that yet more low-level toxins could enter the food stream without causing immediately identifiable trouble.

Yes, after the fiasco of bisphenol A — whose safety had been “proven” by industry-conducted research accepted by a gullible FDA — I think we can conceive of the possibility that GMOs, which have never even gone through a thorough environmental impact review, much less a full safety review, might, just might come with serious long-term risks attached. Maybe someone should ask the FDA what they think about GMOs now?

Originally published on Beyond Green

Nearly two years ago, candidate Obama said the following in a speech at the Iowa Farmer’s Union:

We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. It’s the Department of Agriculture. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.

Then, less than two weeks before the election, Obama told Joe Klein at TIME:

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.

Sure these comments didn’t go silently into the good night; Big Ag pitched a fit. But wow! Our president once used the word monoculture in a sentence. And he made the connection between health care and food. And threatened to take back the USDA. I belabor this point only because I would argue that Mr. Pollan’s piece has become required reading, even a blueprint, for the movement – and has set the bar ever higher for what food system thinkers have come to expect from President Obama. But whether or not these ideas are still in the president’s mind, with an economic crisis, the health care debate and two wars to distract him, we can’t be sure. At one point, though, we know he got it.

Perhaps as a result of the public conversation about food taking hold, Michelle Obama planted a garden on the White House lawn and used it as a jumping off point for a conversation about food choices with children. And because the movement showed up and made itself heard through the Secretary of Agriculture selection process, in which Tom Vilsack was nominated, when it came time to choose a Deputy Secretary of Agriculture this administration listened and selected Kathleen Merrigan, a Tufts University professor who’d previously helped develop the organic standards. Vilsack and Merrigan have together launched Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, an initiative designed to connect consumers to producers, a “start of a national conversation about the importance of understanding where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate.” In addition, the Justice Department is currently reviewing the consolidation of agribusiness for potential monopolies, which could result in a re-structuring of control over meat, seeds, processing, and grocery sales. This could mean the opening up of suffocated markets to competition, and more choices for consumers and farmers.

However, with an ever-increasing amount of meat recalls and hundreds of thousands of Americans sickened by food-borne illnesses every year, we still don’t have anyone running the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspections Service (FSIS) – the body that is responsible for the safety of our eggs, meat and dairy products. Back in March, the President launched the Food Safety Working Group, but the group has not had an affect on how food — and especially meat — is processed and regulated. Meanwhile, last month President Obama declared the swine flu a national emergency, and while bailouts totaling $150 million have been doled out to hog operations for their losses this year, those operations are still not required to test their pigs for the H1N1 virus. No one seems to be willing to discuss the obvious: that these pigs, living mostly in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are standing in their own potentially bacteria and virus-laden shit, and are being given eight times the antibiotics of the average human, scientifically proven to lead to resistance. This means more virulent sicknesses could be getting passed on to farm-workers, their families, and the public.

Some have argued that there is an empty seat at FSIS because the Obama administration had trouble finding a non-lobbyist for the position who simultaneously wouldn’t upset the meat lobby. Surprisingly, though, Obama recently nominated a pesticide lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, from CropLife America (the organization that wrote a letter chastising Michelle Obama for not using pesticides on the White House garden) to handle our agricultural trade interests abroad. He also nominated Roger Beachy, former director of Monsanto-funded research facility, the Danforth Plant Science Center, to head the newly branded research arm of the USDA, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy promised to give ever more money to public-private sector research collaborations (read: technology-focused), despite a broken funding system that already favors agribusiness while we actually need more research on how the current food system affects our health and the environment.

Indeed, our Blackberry-toting president is fond of technology, and he seems to believe that all of it is moving us in the right direction when it comes to food. In July, President Obama secured $25 billion in agricultural aid at the G8 in Italy, and has stated his interest in a second green revolution for Africa in an interview (the first one brought genetically modified seeds to India, and created chemical dependence and debt in its wake). If his team, led by Secretary of State Clinton, and including pro-biotechnology Nina Federoff and Rajiv Shah, is any indication, instead of focusing on localized education, markets and infrastructure in countries in need of food security, this money could be invested in shiny new technologies that are years from implementation, have yet to fulfill the promise of high yields, and that are overly dependent on irrigation (water) and chemical fertilizers (oil). He will most likely be speaking in Rome this month at the FAO Summit on Food Security, so there is still time to retool the focus.

Maybe candidate Obama spoke out on food issues with the greatest of intentions, but didn’t realize the scale of the task at hand. But there are issues ripe for the taking, that Big Ag just can’t credibly pitch a fit about. Like research – Without facilitating necessary research that looks at the results of years of chemical agriculture on the land, how can we expect our president to see just how our current food system is making us sick, and then acknowledge sustainable agriculture for what it is – human-scale operations, which build soil and focus on diversification? And school food – who could argue with increasing the rate spent per child by $1 in the upcoming Child Nutrition Act and building relationships between farms and schools without looking like a bully?

And though there may be backlash, we need a strong regulator at FSIS. The Fairbank Farm recall has already killed two people, so no matter what the industry wants, we need to protect eaters first.

Despite my harsh critique of Obama’s first year in food system reform, one takeaway is that no matter the business on the President’s preverbial plate, he can be engaged about the actual food on our collective plates. It might take a team of skilled community organizers to keep showing him the movement. But once convinced, President Obama and his team have proven they will act.

Vilsack had this to say in his kick-off speech:

The opportunity to truly transform a field of science happens at best once a generation. Right now, I am convinced, is USDA’s opportunity to work with the Congress, the other science agencies, and with our partners in industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector, to bring about transformative change.

It is hard to reject the idea that our country needs more research on agriculture — specifically, more science-based knowledge from which to make political and regulatory decisions around food. But as his speech continued, Vilsack placed the focus on technology as our aegis. And while technology is not a bad thing, there are still many questions left unanswered that USDA could and should be focusing on — questions that the agribusiness lobby quite possibly doesn’t want answered, as the outcomes could force the public and our politicians to take a harder look at just what it means to build a truly sustainable food system.

NIFA will be headed by a controversial choice, Roger Beachy — formerly of the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, which receives funding from Monsanto, and was part of the lobbying effort to create NIFA in the mold of the National Science Foundation. Beachy joins a team that already includes Rajiv Shah, formerly of the Gates Foundation. The re-branding of CSREES worries sustainable food advocates who fear US research priorities could shift with the private sector’s coaxing further towards a more biotechnology-oriented focus in an attempt to end world hunger, even though more viable solutions to hunger — a problem of distribution and not yield — exist on the ground that are both cost-effective and ready to implement now in the developing world.

The government’s job is to to give unbiased science center stage, so that we can assess and make informed decisions about agriculture moving forward — decisions that are in our collective interest as a nation, not just in the interest of one sector of our economy. To begin, the USDA must extend 100% funding to formula grants at land grant universities again, thereby replacing the current practice of “matching funds” [pdf] — requiring these institutions to find a matching donor for between 50%-100% of the grant from outside of the government — which usually ends up being a private industry source. And what might the industry be interested in funding? Shareholders hope they will support things that have the potential to increase the bottom line, instead of research that investigates the way our food system is affecting us, which could detract from it. This is how the industry has controlled the types of research being conducted since matching funds were instituted in 1999 (as an amendment to the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977).

Vilsack also stated in his speech that in creating NIFA, “we will be rebuilding our competitive grants program from the ground up to generate real results for the American people.” In thinking about how to better focus the government’s efforts on agricultural research in order to truly benefit the American people, I thought I’d reach out to some key thinkers on agriculture, and find out what they would like the USDA’s new research body, NIFA, to be focusing on. Here were their answers:

Biologically focused organic agriculture—which uses neither chemical fertilizer, pesticides nor GMO crops—provides broad ecological services while it sequesters carbon to fight global warming. We need research that documents the greenhouse-gas mitigation aspects of organics, conducted at the whole-farm level to capture the cascading biodiversity benefits of organic systems. This work should be focused on the three most appropriate, farmer-identified organic techniques per bioregion in the 10 most agriculturally significant areas of the U.S. Tied to this multi-disciplinary, 10-year study should be data collection on soil water-holding ability, biological diversity and productive capacity, in order to qualify and quantify the corollary benefits that come with increases in soil organic matter.
Tim LaSalle, CEO, Rodale Institute

Since I just spent more time than I care to think about sitting through hearings on the proposed Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, I think I would say that USDA should be focusing its research more on scale appropriate food safety programs — and exploring what we really know about risks posed by wildlife, the use of vegetated buffers and other practices that some private food safety programs have targeted.  It seems like USDA could serve a useful role in finding ways for diversified, organic, and small farms to prove that their methods can coexist with food safety requirements.
Patty Lovera, Assistant Director, Food & Water Watch

We need to be studying how best to protect agriculture from the effects of climate changes, which is to say, how can we make farming more resilient?– which is further to say, how can we successfully diversify our monocultures?
Michael Pollan, Author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma

There are both areas of research that USDA is neglecting as well as a lack of investment in research examining agricultural systems and practices that are critical to addressing the research challenges that Secretary Vilsack outlined in his speech at the NIFA event on Thursday.  On the former, areas of research that USDA is neglecting include long-term agroecosystem trials; the characteristics, barriers, and opportunities for the growth and development of local and regional food systems; public plant and animal breeding (all the non-biotech plant and animal research); organic agriculture; the sustainability of biofuel and bioenergy production; and rural development, just to name a few. While several of these have dedicated funding streams, they pale in comparison to other research programs and the overall research budget at USDA.

On the latter, the Administration on Thursday defined a surprisingly narrow approach to addressing the challenges to overcome with the help of agricultural research. Vilsack laid out significant challenges — including ensuring global food security through productive and sustainable agricultural systems, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and improving public health and reducing childhood obesity — and NIFA is structured into separate institutes around these challenges and others. But the tools that Vilsack, Research Undersecretary Shah, and NIFA Director Beachy identified as key to solving these problems were extremely limited to biotechnology, nanotechnology, and computer simulations. Without investing in the development of technologies and practices of sustainable and organic agricultural systems, USDA’s research agenda will fall far short of meeting its objectives and will continue to support an agricultural system that contributes to — rather than mitigating — these challenges.
Ariane Lotti, who focuses on Agriculture Research Policy at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Organic and sustainable-systems agriculture is still woefully underfunded and misunderstood. Likewise, research and education directed towards regional food-system integration is still only getting a trickle of support. Good programs and projects do exist within the agency, but they are still marginal in the scheme of things. These commitments and investments by the research agencies have to be much more significant if alternative systems themselves are going to be scaled upward and outward.