Dr. Keeve Nachman, Director of the Farming for the Future Program at the Center for a Livable Future gave invited testimony to the Maryland House of Delegates on Friday, March 5 on the public health risks of arsenic in poultry feed. Delegate Tom Hucker (D-Montgomery Co) introduced the bill, which also received supportive testimony from Douglas Gansler, the state’s Attorney General, a representative from River Keepers, a representative from the Maryland Parent Teacher Association, and a concerned citizen.
Opponents to the bill gave a wide range of unsupported statements of questionable validity why Roxarsone should be included in poultry feed.Among their assertions were statements that Roxarsone promotes environmental sustainability, food safety, and poultry health, improves the rate of weight gain, and because of its widespread use (fed to 88% of chickens in the US), that Roxarsone should be treated as a national issue and not a state issue.
Perdue has publically stated that they do not use Roxarsone, and when questioned by Delegate Steve Lafferty (D-Baltimore Co), none of the four poultry industry representatives could give a concrete reason why Perdue withdrew it from feed.
It is possible that the reasons Perdue are no longer using roxarsone are the following:
Roxarsone is transformed by bacteria or ultraviolet light into inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen.
In addition to arsenic in meat, poultry waste from the Mid-Atlantic generates an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 kg of arsenic annually (Christen 2001; Silbergeld and Nachman 2008).
A market basked sample of cooked and uncooked poultry products conducted by The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found total arsenic in 55% (of 155 samples) of grocery store poultry meat.
“The use of arsenical drugs like roxarsone, combined with the various methods for poultry waste management create opportunities for people to be unnecessarily exposed to inorganic arsenic” says Dr. Nachman.The only way to eliminate these risks is by banning aresnicals in poultry feed.
We will follow MD Bill 953 as it moves through the Environmental Matters committee and report back in the coming weeks.
Kirby, who kicked off a national book tour last week, stopped in Baltimore to visit with staff at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and discuss his latest project with students and faculty. In his research for the 492-page book, the New York Times best-selling author had consulted several times with CLF Director Bob Lawrence.
“Animal Factory documents the scandal of today’s industrial food animal production system in the same compelling way Upton Sinclair alerted Americans to the abuses of the meatpacking industry in his 1906 The Jungle,” says CLF’s Lawrence.
“Animal Factory” follows three American families in different regions of the US, whose lives have been utterly changed by these CAFOs: Weaving science, politics, big business, and everyday life, Kirby accompanies these families and their struggles.
This past weekend, I witnessed hundreds of volunteers working in a very tangible way to take back the food system for a community. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” This was a stride. Two high schools in Richmond, Calif in the span of one weekend built urban school farms at their respective school sites. Supported by Urban Tilth http://www.urbantilth.org, those students, teachers, parents and community volunteers laid the infrastructure and built the capacity to grow significant amounts of local produce in Richmond.
These are farms that will not just change the physical environment of the schools and the community, but significantly change the way students think about food. This year, close to 30 students at Richmond High are enrolled in the second pilot year of an Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class, what we call Urban Ag Institutes, and those students will grow from seed thousands of pounds of produce, that will feed families from their high school. Last year, the program had a small but impressive 10 family CSA box (community supported agriculture) and this year with the expansion of the farm at the high school, they hope to do even more. Article on RHS programContinue reading »
Media outlets were buzzing this morning with the news that a Jackson County, MO, jury had awarded an $11 million verdict to farmers affected by a CAFO owned by Premium Standard Farms. This is the second time in the last 11 years that Premium Standard Farms has been sued for the noxious odors coming from the Gentry County, MO operation. Center for a Livable Future Director, Robert Lawrence, MD, provided testimony at the trial, calling the cesspit holding tanks for pig manure from the CAFO a “fly heaven,” wrote Karen Diller in a piece in The Kansas City Star.
The verdict in the month-long trial, gives $850,000 each to 13 plaintiffs, with the 14th plaintiff receiving $250,000. The plaintiffs represent families who testified about the odors and swarms of flies that have largely kept them confined to their homes. Lawrence, as the Star noted, “said he has been to Calcutta, South Africa and Southeast Asia, but ‘I have never, ever observed anything as extreme as the cesspits.’”
As I was jogging past the group of giggling teenagers on a stoop, something struck my shoulder. Curious, I picked up the offending projectile: a plastic bag, tied and filled with a dark, crumbly material. The kids on the stoop burst out laughing.
“So what’s in the bag?” I asked, playing along.
After a pause, one of them blurted out,”it’s sh*t.”
“I see,” I replied. “Is it yours?”
“Uh-huh.” More laughter.
“Oh? Well here - take it back!” I flung the bag back in their direction. It tore as I threw it, flinging the contents (which, for all I knew, could have been only dirt) in all directions. Thanks in part to the mood-enhancing endorphins generated by my run, we all had a good laugh.
“That was a good one!” One of the kids shouted as I waved and continued on my way.
This harmless practical joke was unusual for the Baltimore neighborhood where it took place, but plastic bags filled with human feces - flung out windows or onto the street - are not uncommon in urban slums of the developing world. According to the World Health Organization (2006), an estimated 18% of the global population resorts to defecating in open spaces. In areas that lack basic sanitation, these “helicopter toilets” are often the most pragmatic waste disposal method available.
On Tuesday, while working on my capstone research, I delivered some Healthy Monday pedometers to the participants of a food survey at the school. The incentive for taking the survey as part of the “control” group in my study was this item from the Healthy Monday program. The students were extremely excited and commented frequently on how “cool” the pedometer looked. They immediately started tapping the pedometer up and down to try and get the steps to increase even though they weren’t moving. We talked a lot about caloric balance and that people had to balance the calories coming in and going out and some strategies for doing that.
Some students challenged their teacher to see who actually walks more during the day. At present moment the students are somehow winning even though they sit in class all period while the teacher walks around. We know that delivering pedometers is not enough. When urban students are placed in an obesogenic physical environment that produces far more density of calories than density of nutrition, these are they types of discussions that need to be happening everyday.
We talked about the Health Monday website www.healthymonday.org and the ability to find healthy recipes and strategies for healthy living. Much thanks to the participating teachers, Jessica Price, Lorna McClellan and Rishi Patel.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of escaping the snow-ridden Mid Atlantic to travel to Athens, Georgia for the Georgia Organics conference. I was contacted months ago to come speak to them about what it means to “eat for the future” - the title of the program I run and an apt title for my presentation. After a 3-hour drive during Atlanta’s Friday rush hour, I arrived in Athens in time to enjoy the evening expo and reception. I had attended the Future Harvest conference (the Mid Atlantic’s sustainable agriculture association) a few weeks ago, where they reached registration capacity at 200. I was unprepared for the crowd at Georgia Organics. 1,300 people had registered to participate - apparently they experience exponential growth every year!
I had well over 100 people come hear me speak - a humbling experience since I am still very much a novice in this field. I was reminded by kind woman early on that I was in the South and I needed to sloooooow down my speech. Not an easy task for a Midwestern like me. I was able to stay for most of Nicolette Hahn Niman’s talk on her book entitled Righteous Pork Chop before I returned to the airport and alas, back to snowy Baltimore.
Thank you, Georgia Organics, for inviting me, and inspiring me that this renewed interest in how we grow the food we eat is not just a fad. The diversity of the participants, the excellent questions, and the sheer number of people attending bodes well for the future of agriculture. Eating for our future means supporting sustainable methods of farming to create a thriving market place for farmers and provide a greater share of the nutritious food for us all.
The Meat Industry* hosted a Congressional briefing on Tuesday (2/23/2010) in Washington D.C. on antibiotics in livestock and poultry production.The purpose of the briefing was to uncover, in the moderator’s words, the ‘true science’ on antibiotics.Contrary to his assertion, there was very little science presented.
Instead, the briefing featured anecdotes from two veterinarians (Dr. Craig Rowles and Dr. Leon Weaver) who each spoke on how they responsibly manage their own farms.I’m curious as to how representative this is of most farms. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a live-in veterinarian on every farm to diagnose diseases and prescribe medication on a day-to-day basis? Rowles admitted that typically veterinarians visit swine farms only once a month.
A third speaker (Dr. Timothy Cummings) who focused on poultry provided no scientific findings that supported his anecdotal recollections of flock health management with antibiotics in feed - I found this surprising, given his affiliation with the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University.It would be reasonable to assume that he would have some interesting published data on antibiotics use in poultry to share.
The final speaker was a DVM/PhD researcher from West Texas A&M University (Dr. Guy Loneragan) who discussed antibiotic use in beef cattle. This was the first speaker to engage the audience with any sort of science, though his slides with data were not cited. I appreciate Loneragan responding to my email with three citations for his slides. His characterization of the science behind antimicrobial resistance as a black-and-white issue was misleading and polarizing, though I did appreciate his discussion of a risk benefit approach that implicitly acknowledged that there were risks to using antibiotics. Continue reading »
When I first arrived in Amsterdam, I was thrilled to see that there was a good-sized and well-stocked organic market on the corner of the street I was staying on. I immediately saw that the awareness of and demand for biological (organic) foods was widespread. I saw organic markets littering many neighborhoods in Amsterdam, along with biological options for almost any kind of food offered in regular supermarkets. In many of the restaurants and cafes I visited, there was often an asterix next to the meat on the menu, with “biologische” in the footnote. The only chain fast-food restaurants I saw were in the busiest most tourist-ridden part of the city. However, my initial enthusiasm was a bit blunted by my eventual discovery that the Netherlands seems plagued by some of the same food systems issues as the United States.
German biological lemonade popular in the Netherlands
After Amsterdam, I moved on to visit a friend for a week in University town about 30 minutes away by train, Ütrecht. Ütrecht was also littered with biological markets and even clothing stores. I saw the same presence of biological foods in menus, supermarkets, cheese shops and butcher shops. I began to believe I needed to move there.
I went into a couple of cafes that did not advertise themselves as organic, but in fact, had all biological items on the menus. At one such café, the waiter told me that you have to be careful when considering businesses’ and products’ claims of being organic. It is his impression that there is very little enforcement of biological guidelines in the Netherlands for meat production and produce farming, so it is wise to be wary about what you are being sold. The owners of this café had decided to provide food produced in ways they believed in (organically). They know their meat sources and butchers and have visited them multiple times. But because of the lack of credibility in organic advertising, they operate their business without it. Continue reading »
Yesterday, CBS News’ Katie Couric had former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler and “Fast Food Nation” author Eric Schlosser on @katiecouric to discuss further last week’s two-part series on the overuse of antibiotics in industrial farm animal production. “There are real risks here, using drugs in a non-therapuetic context,” Dr. David Kessler said. “This industry has a record of viciously going after anyone who criticizes their practices,” Schlosser told Couric, recalling the industry suit against talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
On Tuesday, while working on my capstone research, I delivered some Healthy Monday pedometers to the participants of a food survey at the school. The incentive for taking the survey as part of the “control” group in my study was this item from the Healthy Monday program. The students were extremely excited and commented frequently on how “cool” the pedometer looked. They immediately started tapping the pedometer up and down to try and get the steps to increase even though they weren’t moving. We talked a lot about caloric balance and that people had to balance the calories coming in and going out and some strategies for doing that.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of escaping the snow-ridden Mid Atlantic to travel to Athens, Georgia for the 
