2010 January | Center for a Livable Future

New analysis claims Monsanto skewed GM corn findings, but is hype clouding the real story?

Monsanto conducted studies to evaluate the toxicity of genetically modified (GM) corn on rats as part of European regulatory registry of GM food and feed, prior to commercialization. To our knowledge, only a summary of the findings were made available to the public (for examples see European Food Safety Authority reports NK603, MON863). Greenpeace sued Monsanto to access the original study data, which it then passed along to French investigator Dr. Joël Spiroux de Vendômois, who published a reanalysis of the Monsanto study.

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Unlike what was concluded in the Monsanto study, Vendomois’ group’s reanalysis found consumption of GM corn to be associated with rat kidney and liver toxicity. The strains of GM corn evaluated in the study (NK 603, MON 810 and MON 863) contained residues of chemicals that allow the plants to tolerate herbicides or insecticides, such as Round-up.

Online sources were quick to cite the GM corn article as evidence of the ills of GM crops. At the time of this writing, social bookmarking sites Reddit and Digg had a combined total of 4,341 tags/votes for a single Huffington Post article about GM corn study.

It is useful that the Huffington Post is raising awareness of GM foods debate; what is concerning is that the media coverage of the study appears to muddle the study conclusions.

Dr. Vendômois and colleagues are quick to say their findings are merely “signs of toxicity rather than proofs of toxicity”; no mention of organ failure in rats is made in the article. This is in contrast with the Huffington Post story that uses organ failure in the title, Monsanto’s GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals, and the follow-up story, Monsanto GM Corn Causing Organ Failure In Rats Study: Everything You Need To Know, which further exaggerated study findings to imply a causal link between GM corn consumption and organ failure. Link and causation are distinct concepts and are not interchangeable. Overextending the study’s findings is unwarranted, especially given the study authors’ reservation regarding the quality (and quantity) of the Monsanto data. A similar opinion was expressed from another online source. Read More >

Antibiotics in Farming: Has Tyson Foods Shot Itself in the Foot?

-From the Animal Welfare Approved web site

Tyson Foods’ recent agreement to settle a lawsuit for falsely advertising its “raised without antibiotics” chicken brand has received limited media coverage – no doubt to the relief of the company’s boardroom. And with an annual turnover of nearly $27 billion, they probably won’t sweat too much over the $5 million that the company must now shell out as compensation to unhappy customers.

In falsely marketing its chicken meat as produced from birds “raised without antibiotics” while still feeding them antibiotics, Tyson Foods was shamelessly exploiting the growing public concern over the excessive use of antibiotics in industrial farming, particularly in the form of non-therapeutic growth promoters.

But while the intensive meat industry continues to vigorously oppose any attempts to reduce antibiotic use in farming, the irony is that Tyson Foods may well have inadvertently shot itself in the foot by publicly admitting that the overuse of certain antibiotics in industrial farming really is a threat to human health.

Originally published on the Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) web site. AWA was founded in 2006 as a market-based solution to growing consumer interest in how farm animals are raised and desire to know where their food is coming from and how it is produced.

Baltimore Food Makers potluck

On the recommendation of a friend, I had to good fortune to attended the Baltimore Food Makers monthly potluck this Saturday to share home-grown, home-preserved and home-made food with a group of ~30 “food makers.” Before eating we all gathered around the spread of food and each maker discussed with zeal his or her dish– covering the smallest details about prep, food sourcing, and questions from the crowd. As the discussion of each dish drew to a close I felt a collective sigh as we acknowledged the embodied time and love poured into the food. I eagerly watched as pickled watermelon rind, cured duck and beef, bison jerky, bbq tempeh, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and other delicious dishes were uncovered the large dining room table. My plate, below, was full of tasty bites in no time.

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The Baltimore Food Makers is ~1 yr old group that provides a forum for sharing skills and resources about cooking, eating and farming for those in Baltimore. They have a great list of local food sources, and an active google group with >100 members. The theme of this potluck was “Meat / Faux-Meat — AKA Making do with Meat, Making do without.” To give more background, here is an excerpt from the potluck flyer:

When it comes to meat, there is even more of an incentive to make do with small amounts of it or none at all. Meat is expensive, there are environmental implications to it on a large scale and there are easily debatable ethical implications to it as well. Some of us choose to cut back on how much meat we eat, some of us find different places to purchase it from, and some of us choose to do away with it entirely.

This month’s potluck is about how you find creative ways of using meat, and/or how you use meat substitutes to take the place of meat. On the carnivorous side, this might including stretching some very small amount of meat into a big dish, curing/smoking meat to preserve it and therefore make it last longer, using odd normally unused bits (i.e. Aliza’s chicken feet) or any other creative use of meat. On the herbivorous side, for the vegetarians and vegans in the group, this might include uses of tofu, tempeh, seitan, TVP (I’ll never understand the branding department that came up with this name) or anything else that might be faux-meat.

…If you do bring a dish with meat, please make sure the meat was raised someplace where the animals are treated well (i.e. free-range, pasture/grass-fed or simply knowing the farmer who was involved and what the life of the animal was like).

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Everybody that I talked to was friendly and inviting. Conversions about our favorite recipes for fermented drinks were washed down with home-made sweet and dry cider, ginger beer, and kombucha. After munching on vegan dark chocolate cake and a sliver of flan, I learned about curing meat in a make-shift basement drying rack.

We didn’t shy away from discussing the risks of curing and canning either, as I learned more about methods for preserving food through fermentation and canning in a high salt and low pH environment. One disease that home canners/fermenters are at more risk for is botulism, a paralytic illness, caused by the toxin produced from a rod-shaped, anaerobic bacteria, Clostridium botulinum that is present in soil and can proliferate in non-refrigerated, perishable foods. Foodborne botulism can be dangerous for infants eating home-canned baby food (Armada et al., 2003). Ways to inhibit C. botulinum while home-canning food are by controlling pH (pH <4.5) and heat pasteurizing food to >250 deg F in a pressure cooker for 20 min (CDC).

I’m looking forward to the next Food Maker potluck, and sharing some of my own safely-canned spicy green beans, kimche (fermented cabbage), and idli (steamed, fermented dal cakes). I’m excited to continue learning from others who have many more years experience farming and cooking. With the Baltimore Food Makers, eating delicious food is easy– but with the right mix of regional ingredients and community, sharing a meal is an incredible way to re-build our local food systems from the ground up.

- Dave Love

Vegetarian and low-carbon diets emerging in China?

Yesterday I spotted a segment on the China Central Television (CCTV) web site describing the vegetarian restaurant scene in China and the emergence of a low-carbon diet trend. Meat consumption has risen dramatically in China in the last few decades; research by Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and others has shown that as income has increased in China, adults proportionally increase their intake of animal protein. But there are apparently some Chinese who are choosing a vegetarian diet in part because of the environmental impact of meat production.

A manager of a vegetarian restaurant tells CCTV that the average age of his customers is under thirty-three years old. “They’re particularly interested in the concept of eating for a low carbon life,” the manager says. “Young people are more environmentally aware and more open to new ideas. They love to be in the trend or lead the trend.”

It seems that China may also have its own future Meatless Mondays advocate: Liao Sha, owner of four restaurants in Beijing, says she thinks people should give up meat once a week. But even if vegetarian restaurant owners and managers are eager for people to go vegetarian at least once a week, the reasons for going meatless seem to be shifting. There were once 80 vegetarian restaurants in Beijing, many likely tied to Buddhist traditions, but the number has dropped to 50. Sha believes vegetarian dining can make a comeback, in part because “the vegetarian diet is aligned with the Chinese philosophy of harmony between the body and nature.” And if Chinese increasingly understand the climate as a key part of nature under threat, then the low-carbon diet may show up as a real trend, albeit difficult to measure.

The segment is part of a series called My Low-Carbon Life, which includes episodes on transportation, water conservation, and clean energy in China. Watch the low-carbon eating video here.

Study Finds Menu Labels Including Daily Caloric Requirement are Much More Effective Than Labels Alone

Last week I discussed why obesity experts, such as Drs. Kelly Brownell and David Kessler, believe highly processed foods are leading to excessive overeating. Until healthier unprocessed foods are more readily available and affordable, today I want to focus on one way we can thwart the cravings believed to be triggered by eating foods engineered or prepared with extra fat, sugar and salt and that’s by reducing your daily caloric intake.

With our fast paced lives and limited time to prepare meals, Americans are eating out much more often than just a decade ago. The latest numbers show that we spend almost half of our food expenditures outside the home.

Since foods purchased outside the home are often higher in calories and served in larger portions there’s been a push at all government levels to encourage restaurants to post calorie labels on their menus to give consumers a better idea of just how many calories they’re consuming. New York City was first to pass a menu-labeling law in 2006. Since then several cities and states, including Philadelphia, Nashville, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Oregon have all passed their own menu-labeling legislation. The latest state to approve a menu-labeling bill is New Jersey. And soon we could see a federal law passed. Both House and Senate versions of the Health Care Reform Bill have menu-labeling provisions attached. Read More >

Fish and Health: More to the Story

I’d like to expand a little on my recent interview for a CNN piece by Elizabeth Landau entitled “Farmed or wild fish: Which is healthier?”

At face value, this question can partialy be answered by comparing the nutritional content in farmed and wild fish and weighing the health benefits of fish consumption against the risks of pollutants present in fish. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has expertly covered this topic in Seafood Choices: Balancing Benefits and Risks, and authorities like Dr. Charles Santerre, have produced an excellent seafood consumer guide (Fish for Your Health wallet card) based on Omega-3 fatty acids, mercury and PCBs in fish. These comprehensive benefit-risk analyses and consumer-friendly information are useful and important contributions, though focus solely on human health.

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In any discussion of seafood, it is also important to consider the negative impacts of fish farming or wild-caught fishing can have on the environment. These environmental impacts are considered as the basis for progressive fish certification schemes (examples: Friends of the Sea or Marine Stewardship Council) and consumer recommendation lists (example: Monterey Bay Aquarium wallet card) (read more). Sustainability should be an important consumer consideration, though in these certification schemes and consumer guidance materials, human health considerations are often absent.

Atlantic gets it wrong! School Gardens cultivate minds not failure

As a disclaimer, I used to be a high school teacher in Richmond, Calif in the exact urban schools of which Caitlin Flanagan writes about.

This post is in response to the recently published article in the Atlantic magazine by Caitlin Flanagan titled, “Cultivating Failure.”

Ms. Flanagan makes the argument that the school garden movement building in California and nationwide is somehow stripping students of valuable time to become “educated,” dooming urban students to a life of poverty and “cultivating failure” as her title expresses. She begins with the idea that immigrant students from Mexico, who come to the United States in search of an education are being pushed back into the fields of manual labor through their middle school garden. I wish I could just claim how ridiculous this viewpoint is and be done with it, but I take her feelings seriously and feel the need to correct the record.

In her article, she makes the claim that she traveled to deeply urban areas near Compton, Calif., and found a bountiful harvest of cheap, healthy produce in the local Ralphs and other supermarkets backing up her claim that there is no need for school gardens that provide “access” to healthy food because it is everywhere. There are some serious flaws with this argument. First off, a recent study released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture tells us that 14.6 percent of American households, approximately 17 million households are “food insecure” meaning that they can’t afford a healthful diet or lack dependable access. Many communities like West Oakland, Calif., Baltimore and Richmond, Calif., lack supermarket chains within a reasonable distance. Her contention thus smacks of a very dangerous fallacy of composition. A second problem I have with Ms. Flanagan’s assessment is that even if there was incredible access of all of our urban and rural residents to great healthy produce, which there is not, it not would diminish the importance and need for school gardens and even more intensive food production-focused endeavors like The Food Project in Boston, Urban Roots in Austin, Urban Tilth in Richmond, Calif., and Alice Waters’ edible schoolyard. With staggering obesity rates in the United States, our children have not just lost access, they have lost their connection to food. Gardening is less about manual labor than it is about re-connecting to your body, to food and to health. Read More >

The Ethanol Policy Trap

Mention the biofuel ethanol from corn in anything but glowing terms in Iowa five years ago and one had probably best apply for witness protection. Created by political pressure from the corn and the high fructose corn syrup industry with the lobbying from ADM and later other corn-related lobby groups, corn ethanol went from a few million gallons, as an afterthought from the wet milling industry, to about 12 billion gallons per year today (the numbers are approximate, plants are opening and closing depending on market conditions). This will require close to 4 billion bushels of corn (each bushel of corn on average supplies about 2.8 gallons of ethanol). In the process ethanol production uses about 36 billion gallons of water just for processing, and requires about 20 million acres of corn land. All this to displace about 8.5 billion gallons of gasoline (ethanol has about 67% of the energy per volume as does gasoline). Further it requires about 7 gallons of diesel fuel equivalent to produce 10 gallons of ethanol when one accounts energy to grow the corn, deliver it to the processing plant, and to process the corn to ethanol. Therefore the net energy gain is about 3-4 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent. We have about 245 million cars in this country. If each car used 20 gallons of gas per year less–by improved efficiency and driving less–we could save nearly 5 billion gallons of gas, more than the ethanol that is being produced by the industry when put in energy equivalents.

Corn is King in the Midwest. Iowa produces over 2.2 billion bushels and sends about one-third of its crop to ethanol plants. That is the base of the ethanol madness–create a market for more corn where no existed before. And it has worked so far, thanks to government support.

Much of the rest of the corn goes to feed livestock and for export. Only about 10% can truly be said to be made into food products, and that includes the unhealthy HFCS. Trailing corn, but still very important is the legume, soybeans. Biodiesel from soybean oil has been on the burner for several years but the economics have never worked out.

The corn ethanol lobby has been hoisted on its own petards. They calculated that if they mandated ethanol use, the market would follow. This worked for the first 7 billion gallons. Since we burn about 130 billion gallons of gasoline a year, the blend of up to 10% ethanol would not be an issue. But in 2007 the mandate was progressively increased and soon will be 15 billion gallons. Simple math says that there will have to be more than 10% ethanol in all of our gasoline to meet the mandate. So the industry asked EPA to raise the “blend wall” to 15% by the end of 2009. EPA is still studying the request. They are concerned with engine component damage and air pollution issues. Time will tell. Another industry answer was a blend of up to 85% ethanol. That has not worked out, because the extra pumps cost more than they return in profits, and few buy E85 both because it performs less satisfactorily and because not many cars and trucks are capable of using E85 without engine component damage. Read More >

Meatless Monday Begins Week of Volunteer Events in Baltimore

Charm City government leaders are following the lead of the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) and fully embracing the Meatless Monday campaign. Members of the the Mayor’s office, city employees and BCPS officials visited Hampstead Hill Academy this Monday to serve students meat-free meals. According to city officials the event was organized to highlight the importance of “eating greener and healthier.” As part of an ambitious school lunch reform plan which includes the use of a 33-acre organic farm and the procurement of locally grown fruits and vegetables, BCPS incorporated its own Meatless Monday campaign at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school-year.

2009 CLF Award presentation at Great Kids Farm

Last September, for its efforts the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future honored Baltimore City Schools with the 2009 CLF Award for Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education.

Baltimore City officials say the Meatless Monday recognition kicked off a, “week of service projects in Baltimore leading up to a national Day of Service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Since its inception in 2003, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livabale Future has acted as a scientific advisor to the national Meatless Monday campaign.

Is the UK Abandoning the Precautionary Principle on Genetically Modified (GM) Crops?

The latest posting by FoodforeThought summarizes recent debate in the United Kingdom about the role of genetically modified (GM) crops in planning for future food security. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) report, Food 2030 was released at the Oxford Farming Conference. The comments below by William Surman captured the mood of sustainable agriculture supporters, a group critical of industrial agriculture in the U.K. who held a concurrent meeting called the Oxford Real Farming Conference:

“The government is ‘dangerously deluded’ if it believes genetically modified crops will solve the world’s food security issues,” members of the breakaway Oxford Real Farming Conference warned. Professor John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientist, told the Prime Minister on Wednesday, January 8, that genetic technology would help deliver ‘a new and greener food revolution’ for Britain.

But Colin Tudge, a science writer and organiser of the rival farm conference, which took place alongside the Oxford Farming Conference, said farmers did not need ‘novel and untried’ technology. Instead he said the Government must ‘free farmers from the shackles of economic dogma’. Read More >

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