In the 1990s, we were concerned with fair food production and trade conditions, especially with the lot of migrant farmworkers. That concern seems to have fallen to the margins of public discussion—but not so with Baltimore Food and Faith’s Enoughness series, which met for the third time on Tuesday at The Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies (ICJS), where we focused on the dignity of work.
A month or so ago I visited Angela Smith, Project Director of Baltimore Food and Faith, an initiative of The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Our discussion touched a whole range of questions related to food, environment, and faith-based organizations in Baltimore and around the globe. Read More >
For the third time in as many years, legislation to ban arsenical drugs from poultry feed has been introduced in Maryland, with House Bill 167 introduced on Tuesday. The ban, if enacted, would help to curb the ongoing problem of arsenical drug use by the poultry industry, and associated public health risks to poultry consumers. For a glimpse of what’s in store for Maryland on this important issue, here’s an update on all things arsenic and the prospects for similar legislation in this upcoming session: Read More >
According to USDA estimates, per capita meat consumption in the United States nearly doubled between 1930 and 2007. On average, each American today eats about 200 pounds of meat per year, or almost nine ounces per day—roughly twice the global average. With a few exceptions, intake has been on a fairly steady incline, until recently: From 2007 through 2011, estimates of consumption dropped by over 12 percent and are projected to continue to decline through 2012.
After 70 years, Americans are finally eating less meat. In his recent New York Times opinion piece, author Mark Bittman asks, “Why?” Industry reports suggest the “shocking” decline stems from factors such as a rise in ethanol production, which raised the demand for corn—the main ingredient in most livestock feed—along with the price of meat. Combined with the recent economic downturn, it’s understandable that consumers would turn toward cheaper alternatives.
The report also blames a federal “war on meat protein consumption,” a suggestion that ignores the considerable federal support offered to them in the form of feed subsidies, tax write-offs, research dollars and weak enforcement of antitrust laws and environmental regulations.
Both Bittman and industry literature acknowledge another possible reason: Perhaps Americans have come to recognize the public health, environmental and social justice impacts—to which I would add animal welfare harms—of a model that has come to be known as industrial food animal production, or IFAP. Read More >
Agree/Disagree: The Farm Bill is a Public Health bill.
For those of you who agree, give yourself a pat on the back! For those of you who do not believe that the Farm Bill is a Public Health bill, read on, and we just might convince you.
As Roni Neff, PhD, Research and Policy Director for the Center for a Livable Future, explains, the Farm Bill affects the health of the American public in at least five important ways: Read More >
Kremer with piglet (The Missourian)
Drug-resistant infections are nothing to sneeze at. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, this year said that “in the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading toward a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated.” Last year, a New York Times article addressed the increase in drug resistance and how it is outpacing the development of new antibiotics; in the article, Brad Spellberg, a doctor specializing in infectious disease at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said “For these infections, we’re back to dancing around a bubbling cauldron while rubbing two chicken bones together.”
Last week, I attended a Congressional briefing on the use of antimicrobials in food animal production sponsored by Representative Louise Slaughter (D–NY) and organized by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). Read More >
Happy holidays from the Center for a Livable Future. Click on the envelope to watch a video card featuring our farmer friends!
What began as a “guerilla gardening” project in a Baltimore food desert now operates as a legitimate urban farm that fulfills several important community functions.
In March 2010, members of Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill neighborhood began gardening in an abandoned public lot on Whitelock Street. They hoped to cultivate the lot as a community gathering space and as a source of fresh produce in the neighborhood. With only one supermarket, Reservoir Hill is a recognized food desert, meaning residents do not have easy and affordable access to healthy foods. Read more about the history of Whitelock and Reservoir Hill in this previous blogpost. Read More >
An article just out in Clinical Microbiology Reviews should put to rest the hotly contested debate about antimicrobial misuse in industrial food animal production (IFAP). The review article, “Food Animals and Antimicrobials: Impacts on Human Health,” written by Bonnie Marshall and Stuart Levy of the Tufts University School of Medicine, provides one of the most comprehensive summaries to-date of the evidence linking antimicrobial misuse in IFAP to increased incidence of antimicrobial-resistant infections in humans, and it should silence accusations made by elected officials who contend that there is insufficient evidence to support restrictions on antimicrobial use in agriculture.
These accusations have grown louder in recent months. In June of this year, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prohibited the Food and Drug Administration from spending money to restrict the use of antimicrobials in the absence of “hard science.” The “hard science amendment,” poorly written and clumsily introduced, was stripped from the legislation before it passed the House. But the arguments presented by Rehberg and other members nevertheless reveal a strident—and unwarranted—skepticism of existing scientific knowledge about antimicrobial resistance. Read More >
In 2009, China produced 450 million pigs
China has announced that it will join the European Union in banning the use of antimicrobial growth promoters (AGPs) in food animal production, WattAgNet.com reports. When implemented, the ban could affect food animal production throughout the country. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Chinese production at more than 4.7 billion chickens, 450 million pigs, and 84 million cattle in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available. This is clearly big news.
The use of AGPs in food animal production has long been a concern in the public health and medical communities. The administration of non-therapeutic doses of antimicrobials to increase animals’ growth rates has been found repeatedly to select for resistant bacteria. The practice could even induce mutations that make bacteria previously susceptible to antibiotics become resistant to them. Read More >
The prospect of a ban on the Maryland poultry industry’s use of arsenic-based drugs has become more complicated with a request by Delegate Maggie McIntosh (D–Maryland House of Delegates, District 43) and Senator Joan Carter Conway (D–Maryland State Senate, District 43) for a review of the scientific literature on the environmental effects of arsenic-based drugs in poultry. As a medical doctor and epidemiologist, I am disappointed that Delegate McIntosh and Senator Conway have not contracted with a research body with the capacity to assess potential human health hazards of Roxarsone and other arsenical drugs used by the Maryland poultry industry.
In their request, McIntosh and Conway have asked the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology to conduct the literature review and submit a report to the Maryland General Assembly (the scope of the study can be found here). As the Hughes Center states in their Scope of Work (read Scope of Work Hughes Center 2011 here),“We are not public health/human health experts and therefore cannot comment on concerns in these areas.” Read More >
In the 1990s, we were concerned with fair food production and trade conditions, especially with the lot of migrant farmworkers. That concern seems to have fallen to the margins of public discussion—but not so with Baltimore Food and Faith’s Enoughness series, which met for the third time on Tuesday at The Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies (ICJS), where we focused on the dignity of work.
