Responding to Congressman Steve Israel’s (D-NY) proposed ban on roxarsone – an arsenical growth-promoting additive to swine and poultry feed – John Starkey, President of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, claimed use of the antimicrobial drug in poultry feed “…increases sustainability of production.” Mr. Starkey’s use of the term “sustainability” requires clarification – is he associating roxarsone use in feed with a form of sustainable agriculture, or is he suggesting the practice is necessary to sustain the cost-effectiveness of a poultry operation? Both claims are unsupported, if not wholly contradictory to the evidence. Read More >
This is the second of a two post series highlighting the critical issue of Food Deserts and how communities can work together to address their needs, as part of the Center for a Livable Future’s focus on National Food Desert Awareness Month.
I was a guest on the “Midday with Dan Rodricks show” three weeks ago, where discussion focused on Food Deserts and a recent study on how residents themselves felt about their effects.
We had conducted a community food assessment with neighborhood coalition Operation Reachout-Southwest (OROSW) amongst areas where studies revealed residents had higher rates of diet-related disease than other parts of the city.
We recognized it as an all too common correlation for people living in food deserts.
Read More >
This is the first of a two post series highlighting the critical issue of Food Deserts and how communities can work together to address their needs, as part of the Center for a Livable Future’s focus on National Food Desert Awareness Month.
In just this last week, newspapers around the country have lamented the lack of good food availability in rural areas such as Oklahoma and in the large urban cores of Chicago, and Los Angeles. Health reform dominates the headlines as advocates, policymakers, and community members focus attention on how to make Americans healthier. Diet plays a key role, but it is difficult to maintain a healthy diet without access to healthy foods.
But what does access really mean? In public health, access can be defined by a variety of mechanisms: information, location, and cost.
Read More >
Today’s announcement by U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) introducing legislation to ban the use of the arsenical compound roxarsone once again shines the spotlight on the all-too common practice of the unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs in industrial animal production.
“American consumers simply shouldn’t have to ingest this arsenic compound when they sit at the kitchen table,” said Rep. Israel. “There’s a reason some major poultry producers have stopped using it – it can only cause environmental and health problems. With cancer levels on the rise we need to be vigilant about the sources of health problems, and that means banning roxarsone.”
The bill (H.R. 3624), known as the “Poison-Free Poultry Act of 2009,” would prohibit all uses of roxarsone as a food additive in animals.
What is roxarsone and why should we be concerned about its use? Roxarsone is an arsenical antimicrobial drug used extensively in poultry and swine production to combat intestinal parasites, speed growth and improve pigmentation. Some large poultry integrators have reported voluntarily withdrawing roxarsone from feed regimens, although I am unaware of efforts to validate these claims. Further, I am unaware of similar voluntary withdrawals from swine producers. Federal agencies do not mandate the reporting of food animal drug usage, making it difficult to characterize the use of the drug in food animal production. Read More >
Earlier this week we received word from Amsterdam that the Dutch may be followers of Center for a Livable Future’s Meatless Monday campaign. While the Dutch may be learning from the United States, maybe it’s time for the United States to also start taking pointers from somewhere else?
David Wallinga published a well-written op-ed two days ago in the Twin Cities Daily Planet entitled, “Why Danish Farmers Stopped Feeding Antibiotics to Animals.” The answer to this question, according to Mr. Wallinga, is that in 1998 they made a rational decision in realizing that the antibiotics that they had been using could be a public health issue, create a risk for their strong exporting meat market, and even lead to deteriorating human health by diminishing the effectiveness of antibiotics for serious infections by creating resistance.
The article reiterates the point that Center for a Livable Future makes: antibiotics do not have to be part of modern day agriculture. Why then, however, haven’t we here in the United States been able to follow in Denmark’s footsteps and lower the estimated 70 percent of antibiotics that we feed to healthy animals?
According to Mr. Wallinga we have a limited number of excused to make. We can’t say that Denmark doesn’t make agriculture a top priority—Denmark remains the largest exporter of pork in the world.
We can’t say that we care more about the health of our animals—the sick animals still get treated with antibiotics in Denmark. We can’t say that we care more about productivity—productivity of Danish agriculture has continued to improve. We can’t say that we care too much about profit—there has been no change in the price of meat for consumers.
Then what is it? Mr. Wallinga answers this with a question: “Could it be that the largest producers of of animal antibiotics, like Bayer and Pfizer, are major supporters of the status quo?”
I’ll let you answer that question.
Cows at a Wisconsin dairy produce about 1.5 million gallons of manure each month. Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times
Take a look at a new New York Times video, “The Danger of Livestock Waste,” produced by Brent McDonald. The many manure lagoons and field spraying in the state have led to the contamination of Idaho aquifers and private wells, causing high levels of nitrates, which have forced some families to buy bottled water. Another article, by reporter Charles Duhigg, in yesterday’s NYT “Toxic Waters” series, “Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells,” looks at the problems caused by a 41,000 dairy cow operation in Brown County, Wisconsin. Duhigg points out that more than 100 wells there have been polluted by agricultural runoff in recent months, causing residents to suffer from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses and sever ear infections. The story is the latest to focus national attention to the human health issues caused by unregulated agricultural runoff. There’s also an excellent slide show accompanying the piece.
Check out today’s column, “Just Say No to Antibacterial Burgers,” by Washington Post Opinion Writer Ezra Klein. “This column, ” he says, “is based on a single and quite extraordinary statistic: Food animal production accounts for 70 percent — 70 percent! — of the antibiotics used in the United States.” Klein zeros in on the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009, now in before Congress, and the industry’s contention that the legislation will raise the price of meat. Pointing to a National Academy of Sciences study, which found eliminating the non-therapeutic antibiotics would cost between $5 to $10 per person each year, Klein says, “I’d pay that for a lower risk of super-staphylococcus.”
Whenever anyone asks why I became a vegetarian, I simply tell them that, “I read a book in 5th grade that I shouldn’t have.” In 5th grade we were told to pick an independent reading book. I always jumped to the non-fiction bookshelf and it was there that I found not only a children’s biography of Rachel Carson, but also a book that persuaded me (and my best friend at the time) to become a vegetarian. I do not remember the title of the book, but I do remember creating images in my mind of pent up chickens unable to open their wings.
A recent article by Alice Waters in the Huffington Post made me question if the book I read really was a book I should have read, rather than one that I shouldn’t have. The article is part of a series of articles on food politics. In the article, Ms. Waters argues that school lunch reforms are missing an important component: “the opportunity to use food to teach values that are central to democracy,” referred to as “edible education.” She argues that edible education-which includes teaching children about where food comes from and how it is produced, giving children responsibilities in the school garden and kitchen, and preparing school lunches-into the school curriculum. The ultimate goal of this edible education is to teach values are that are “central to democracy.” Read More >
While working on a Baltimore-focused community gardening show for his GardenSMART PBS show, host Joe Lampl’l (aka Joe Gardener) stumbled upon the farmer’s market partnership between the Center for a Livable Future and Knox Presbyterian Church in East Baltimore. Joe spent some time talking about the project with Angela Smith, CLF’s coordinator for the Baltimore Food and Faith Project. Lamp’l wrote about the discovery in his blog, ComPost Confidential.
“It’s about another grass-roots effort taking place on that same block [as the show being filmed], as well as in other neighborhoods across the city. I wouldn’t have known anything about it, except for the four or five fresh vegetable-laden tables and handmade signs lined up on a nearby street corner that quickly caught my eye and drew me in,” writes Lamp’l.
“It was a bit of a strange site. So many fresh vegetables, obviously picked only hours earlier, stacked tall and wide, just waiting for people to buy them at bargain basement prices. But where were all the people? Recreate this scene in a heavily trafficked part of any city, or place them for sale at a farmers market on Saturday morning, and they wouldn’t last the hour. But that was the beauty of this program as I soon learned.
As it turns out, he project is a joint partnership between Knox Presbyterian Church and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), specifically, the Baltimore Food and Faith Project.
“CLF recently undertook a food assessment of Baltimore and found there were certain areas where people didn’t have much access to healthy, fresh foods,” explained Smith. Often, these neighborhoods were located where poverty rates were high and which had suffered from urban blight for decades. Because the poor are at greater risk for developing diet-related diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, etc., and are the very people who have the most trouble finding and affording good food, we were particularly interested in finding a way to bring healthy food to them.”
Lamp’l concluded the blog post commending the effort. “I applaud you and every person and organization mentioned here for your genuine desire to make fresh, healthy produce available to all in such a creative and sustainable way. Good things really to come out of a garden, especially when you add the efforts of so many good people!”
In a letter to president Obama the former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP), Robert Martin, suggested that any federal money used to bailout the ailing pork industry be tied to “retooling and improving the swine industry.”
The pork market’s slide is reportedly attributed to overproduction, high feed costs, misplaced public fear over the swine flu, and, of course, the global recession. Martin believes if taxpayers are going to bailout the pork industry, which is dominated by a handful of large corporations, the federal dollars “should be paired with changes to the swine production system that would not only improve long-term sustainability of the industry, but also the environment, public health and rural communities.
Based on the PCIFAP’s recommendations, Martin suggested that those changes should include:
- phasing out the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics and requiring veterinary involvement in all antibiotic use in livestock
- replacing the gestation crate system with hoop barn or pen systems
- replacing liquid waste management systems with solid waste composting
It seems to me that the biggest victims in the pork market plummet are family farmers who are tied to contracts to large corporations like Smithfield Foods and small independent farmers who can’t sell their food across state lines without breaking the law. Independent farmers have a difficult time selling their meat in regional and some local markets, because accessing USDA-approved slaughterhouses is becoming almost impossible due to the fact that the numbers have shrunk greatly across the country and most slaughterhouses only deal with large high yielding corporations. I would hope some of that federal money would go to construct regional slaughterhouses that can be accessed by small producers.
