This is another of those good news, bad news stories.
The good news is that the journal Public Health Reports has published a review article acknowledging (not in so few words) that agriculture is one of the major drivers of the antibiotic resistance crisis that is unfolding.
That’s good news because Public Health Reports is both the official journal of the U.S. Public Health Service and is published by the Association of Schools of Public Health. So, it wields some credibility from two angles, government and academia. It’s also a welcome development because in the public health community there is often much more attention paid to overuse of antibiotics in the health care field as a driver of increased antibiotic resistance. Read More >
Last week, Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, addressed the issue of economics as it relates to food systems and the future, at the sixth session of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project’s Enoughness series. Complex and massive, the topic garnered a number of diverse responses. Here are two contrasting written responses, excerpted from attendees of the session.
Avram I. Reisner, PhD, rabbi of Congregation Chevrei Tzedek, Baltimore:
Sylvia Nasar gave an important presentation for us to hear, this morning, precisely because it so represented economic orthodoxy and failed to grapple with the very issues we are convened to consider. … We must be thankful for and preserve those gains [from the Industrial Revolution], no doubt. But her prescription for the future was continued productivity gain through the free market. And I, and I think all of us, question whether that is a reasonable prescription for the future. She presumes a continued escalator; that productivity can and will rise in the future as it has in the past. Is that likely? … Granting that humankind was not producing enough before the Industrial Revolution, are we now, and should we now remain in thrall to the old orthodoxy that rapid productivity growth is necessary? Read More >
For the eleventh entry in our series “Corn-Fed Cars: On the Road with Ethanol,” we asked biofuels expert Donna Perla, MPH, senior advisor with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, for her thoughts on the future of the biofuels industry.
Patti Truant: What’s new in the world of biofuels right now? What do you think are the greatest opportunities and challenges right now in moving toward a more bio-based economy?
Donna Perla: I think there are several. One is that the industry has really evolved. Certainly it started with corn ethanol, but there still is this push for cellulosic ethanol. 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.
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 >
