Good Food is Everybody's Business
It may be our last chance to say “beet it” to genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets. The National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) encourages consumers to voice their opinion on GE sugar beets to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) by Dec. 6 though the USDA’s public commenting period on the issue.
The need for speed with perishable foods makes air cargo the only practical way to get fresh fish to customers an ocean away. But once the seafood is frozen, there’s no rush, and it can take a slow boat trip to market. Mile for mile, ton for ton, air cargo puts out at least 20 times more carbon dioxide than shipping at sea does. “Frozen-at-Sea” processing delivers perfect fish to retailers, restaurateurs, and consumers.
Somehow the words “Humane Society” always seem to bring images of puppies and kittens to my mind. But the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) will NOT stop at dogs and cats; ALL animals are to be protected, including the turkeys and chickens that are part of our everyday diets. Like the comic book hero Hellboy – who was tough on evil doers but had a soft heart for cats – HSUS is out to stamp out the bad guys.
In a landslide vote (73 to 25), the Senate has passed the food safety bill. Now the bill just needs to make it past the …
Just months after the largest recall of shell eggs in history (more than 500 million) and regular recalls of other food products – 13 recalls in November alone for “possible health risk” – food safety has become a front page issue. The timing couldn’t have been better for S.510 to be on the table. Michal Pollan and Eric Schlosser have come out in a New York Times Op-Ed piece in favor of the Food Safety Bill – S.510 – due to be voted on tonight.
For decades, Wes Jackson has taken it upon himself to speak for the grasses and the land of the prairie, to speak for the soil itself. Here, he offers a manifesto toward a conceptual revolution: Jackson asks us to look to natural ecosystems — or, if one prefers, nature in general — as the measure against which we judge all of our agricultural practices. He believes the time is right to do away with monocultures, which are vulnerable to national security threats and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs. Soil erosion, overgrazing, and the poisons polluting our water and air — all associated with our contemporary form of American agriculture — foretell a population with its physical health and land destroyed.
Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute, Salinas KS, will be speaking in Seattle, Tuesday, November 30, at the University of Washington in Kane Hall. In his presentation, Wes Jackson will discuss a future much different from the one we’re heading to now, one “where conservation becomes the consequence of food production.”
The consequences of agricultural industrialization include “topsoil erosion, dependence on fossil fuels, toxic soil and water, an explosion in nitrogen fertilizers and downstream dead zones.” We hope good food will also be another consequence.
The food universe has been all atwitter (as well as blogging and Facebooking) about the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) that is expected to go to a Senate vote on 11/29. Just months after the largest recall of shell eggs in history (more than 500 million) and regular recalls of other food products – 13 recalls in November alone for “possible health risk” – food safety has become a front page issue. There is a definite possibility S.510 will pass.
