Skip to Main Content
Funny how much difference a week can make. Just a few days into his term, President Obama gave America a new reason to look at the world through green-tinted shades by announcing his plan for tackling climate change, the New Energy for America plan. The plan focuses on increasing the country’s energy independence by investing in renewable energies and plug-in hybrid cars and creating new jobs for a greener future. Read More >
In mid-January, Future Harvest – A Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, held its 10th annual conference. More than 200 people gathered to learn about sustainable agriculture practices, and how to get more local, sustainable foods into groceries, schools, hospitals and even farmers markets (thanks to keynote speaker Nina Planck). This year’s attendance was evidence of the expanding diversity of the group’s supporters as food service chefs from schools and hospitals, small grocery buyers, local food distributors, and farmers’ market managers came for the first time. Farmers from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania mingled with these folks, sharing their stories and talking about ways to improve the local food system. Members and supporters of Future Harvest CASA are a real, viable solution to the recent unsettling news about the safety of our food supply – like antibiotic resistant staff strains in industrially produced hogs and mercury in industrially produced High Fructose Corn Syrup or see IATP press release. Read More >
To continue that scary conversation about MRSA in pigs and farm workers, check out Andrew Schneider’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog entry. After Schneider’s original report on the research of Dr. Tara Smith at the University of Iowa, he and Smith received plenty of feedback-most notably from FDA, CDC and USDA employees and members of Congress concerned that the government isn’t doing enough to ensure that pork products are not contaminated with the bacteria, which can be deadly.
It’s good that some federal agency employees and legislators have this on their radar-but since they are the ones with the power to institute better protection from threats in our food supply, they should be fighting harder to make this a priority. And public health advocates like us should be constantly reminding them of what needs to be done-and providing the research to back it up.
A new study published by the University of Iowa connects Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Midwestern US swine farms and swine workers and suggests transmission between the two. Prior to the study, there was only knowledge of the prevalence of this bacterium in locations including the Netherlands and Canada. MRSA is resistant to a wide array of antibiotics, and this University of Iowa study linked MRSA with an estimated 94,000 infections and over 18,000 deaths in the United States in 2005, based on data taken from several metropolitan areas. Read More >
New Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, discussed the difficult economic issues facing the country, discrimination at the USDA, and health care and nutrition issues yesterday in a wide-ranging address to USDA employees. “The health care issue is a big issue…that’s why it’s important to promote a nutritious diet…and make sure children have access to healthy foods,” he told a packed audience. In a question and answer session following his remarks, he alluded to an article, “Farmer in Chief,” published last October in the New York Times by Author Michael Pollan. “If it had been president Pollan, I probably wouldn’t be here right now,” he joked. Many comments in the press and blogs following his nomination were critical of Vilsak’s ties to big agriculture interests, particularly the biofuel industry. He appeared to be sensitive to that in answering the question saying, “We have to listen to critics and criticism of the food system in this country,” adding, “We have without question an epidemic of juvenile diabetes. If we’re interested in making sure our resources are spent wisely….we have to address this issue.” There’s a short piece in today’s Des Moines Register about his address and a full video clip available on USDA’s web site.
-Chris Stevens
Screen Shot of Course Web Page
Work from students enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s “Food Production, Public Health and the Environment” course is reaching thousands of newspaper readers. In the recently-concluded course, three students took an assignment -writing a letter or op-ed-and had their work published in online and print versions of major newspapers.
John Berggren, student and research assistant at the Center for a Livable Future, had his op-ed, “Horrified by Animals on Antibiotics,” published last Sunday by the Denver Post. ”Take some initiative on where your meat comes from, how it is raised and what the animals are fed,” writes John. “Write to your congressional leaders asking them to support legislation banning the use of antibiotics in animal feed. Support local restaurants that only source meat from sustainable farms. Food is an area where individuals can make a difference with their actions and prevent a public health disaster.” Read More >
Aerial view of North Carolina CAFO
Several staff members and doctoral fellows from the Center for a Livable Future attended a national CAFO summit in New Bern, NC organized by the Waterkeeper Alliance. The title of the summit was “Pure Farms, Pure Water,” which is the name of the Waterkeeper farm campaign. A diverse group of people from the U.S. and Canada attended the conference, and it was a very informative event.
The Waterkeeper Alliance focuses on an array of water quality issues, and uses an approach that includes monitoring and litigation (or threat of litigation) to enforce existing environmental laws. There was a focus on the detrimental effects CAFOs have on ground water at the summit, but many other problems were also discussed. Read More >
In an op-ed published in yesterday’s online edition of the Baltimore Sun, a Center for a Livable Future researcher urges federal and state officials to stay away from the introduction of non-native species in the Chesapeake Bay
Dr. Sharron Nappier, a former CLF Fellow whose research on the Bay’s oyster population was supported by CLF, says the introduction of non-native oysters into the bay may present greater public health consequences for consumers than native oysters. “The ecological benefits provided by the (non native) oyster’s filtration efficiency may have harmful repercussions for the health of consumers,” she warns.
The study conducted by Dr. Nappier while at the Bloomberg School of Public Health showed that non-native oysters were statistically more likely to harbor human viruses than native oysters. The oyster research was published in the November issue of the American Society of Microbiology’s peer-reviewed research journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Dr. Nappier is a research assistant professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her e-mail is snappier@drexel.edu.
As far as Senate confirmation hearings go, yesterday’s testimony by President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to become the next Secretary of Agriculture proved to be a big yawn. Questions asked of former two-term Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack seemed soft, often patronizing, during the 2-1/2 hour question and answer session.
Watch a video of the entire testimony:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, pointed to health care reform as an opportunity for the USDA. “I think we have a big role to play in that in…(with) the reauthorization of Child Nutrition Program. That’s the only thing we have to do this year,” he said. Gov. Vilsack pledged to implement the 2008 Farm Bill–and the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Program. “We can work with our schools to insure that fresh fruits and vegetables are available,” and work with local producers and ensure distributions systems are in place, he told the senators. Read More >
The California State Senate is poised today to announce a change in name of the Senate Agriculture Committee to a newly-organized Committee on Food and Agriculture. The new committee, formed by State Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, is charged with creating policy and conducting oversight with a focus on food safety, sustainable farming, animal welfare, and food security.
A Senate document announcing the name change and reorganization, notes the “California State Senate is shifting the public policy paradigm as it relates to food and agriculture. As the nation’s leading agricultural state and the fifth largest supplier of food to the world, California as an obligation to ensure that food produced in the Golden State is nutritious, safe, and accessible. For too long consumers have not had a voice at the table in Sacramento.” Read More >