NY Times Article - As U.S. Approves GM Soybean, DuPont and Monsanto Gird for Cooking-Oil War

By Paul Voosen of Greenwire
Published June 7, 2010

The Agriculture Department will approve for broad use tomorrow a genetically modified soybean engineered to contain healthier oils, the opening salvo in a biotech oil fight between DuPont Co. and its rival, Monsanto Co. The high-oleic soybean, developed by DuPont and pending deregulation since 2006, is one of the first in a wave of bioengineered cash crops that are being altered for nutritional purposes. Currently, nearly all biotech crops grown in the United States have been altered for resistance to weedkiller or insects, traits that are rarely felt by consumers or commercial businesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/06/07/07greenwire-as-us-approves-gm-soybean-dupont-and-monsanto-80269.html

Food Safety News Article - US, Canada Tie for Fourth in Food Safety Ranking

By Helena Bottemiller
June 4, 2010

"The U.S. and Canada tied for fourth in a recent food safety performance ranking report that looked at 17 of the 31 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Australia, Denmark, and the United Kingdom tied for first in the study. Italy, France, and Ireland fared poorly, ranking close to last...."

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/us-canada-tie-for-fourth-in-food-safety-ranking/

New Book - "Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer--and What You Can Do About It"

I recently finished reading the companion book to the wonderful documentary film, Food, Inc. As the subtitle states, this book is for people who upon watching the film felt compelled to do something about the various food issues discussed.

If you watched Food, Inc. and found yourself wanting more - not only more information, more statistics, but also more resources about how to get involved with, participate in, and contribute to the food movement, then I highly recommend at least browsing through this book. The topics are wide-ranging and will suit a great variety of interests - whether you care about animal welfare, genetically modified foods, farmworker rights, or global warming, you will find this book useful because it touches on each of those subjects and more.

Here's a brief sampling of the types of resources that I found particularly helpful and worth mentioning:

• Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. The chapter in the book that this organization contributes is titled "Food Safety Consequences of Factory Farms," and gives an overview of some of the devastating effects (on consumers, on the environment, and on the animals themselves) of industrialized farming, which has become the norm in America. Visit their website to check out their labeling fact sheets, which explain what labels to look for when buying meat and dairy products.

• The Dirty Six, as listed and explained in a chapter by the Humane Society of the United States, are the six most abusive practices employed by agribusiness in the raising of animals for human consumption. Without going into too much (horrific) detail, here are "The Dirty Six": (1) battery cages, (2) fast growth of birds, (3) forced feeding for foie gras, (4) gestation crates and veal crates, (5) long-distance transport, and (6) electric stunning of birds. Visit www.HumaneEating.org for more information on how you can help farm animals when you eat, including recipes, tips on incorporating more animal-free meals into your diet, shopping list suggestions, and more. And for more information on the lives of farm animals, visit www.FarmAnimalWelfare.org.

• FoodPrint - In their contributed chapter, the Cool Foods Campaign (a project of the Center for Food Safety and the Corner-Stone Campaign) describes how to reduce your "FoodPrint," which reflects the amount of greenhouse gases that were created in the production and shipping of the food you buy (the "coolest" foods have the lowest FoodPrint), by answering the following questions: (1) Is this food organic? (2) Is this product made from an animal? (3) Has this food been processed? (4) How far did this food travel to reach my plate? (5) Is this food excessively packaged? Download this PDF for the best answers to these questions.

• Questions for a Farmer - Sustainable Table provides a list of questions they recommend asking  farmers (at farmers markets, for example) about their sustainable food production practices, along with the answers you should be listening for. Here are the questions, along with the answers you should be listening for.

• ONE Voice - Heifer International, whose mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth, provides guidance for people who want to know what they can do to help alleviate world hunger. ONE Voice is a resource they list that particularly stood out to me. A nonpartisan campaign made up of more than 2.4 million people from all fifty states and more than one hundred of the US's most effective and respected nonprofit, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations, ONE aims to raise public awareness about the issues of global poverty, hunger, and disease and encourages efforts to fight such problems in the world's poorest countries. Check out their extremely easy to use website to join the effort by entering your email address and zip code.

The above list is just a small selection from the abundance of resources and information featured in Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer--and What You Can Do About It. Although much of the book's content can be found online on the various contributors' websites, to have all of it accessible and organized in a single source will no doubt continue to prove very valuable.

Atlantic Article - Big Meat: Fueling Change or Greenwashing Fuel?

By Anna Lappé (author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It)
June 3, 2010

"On January 13, 2009, Tyson—one of the world's largest processors of chicken, beef, and pork—and the fuel company Syntroleum broke ground in Geismar, Louisiana, on a "renewable" diesel plant. The fuel will be produced in part with Tyson factory farm byproducts, including animal fat and poultry litter. ("Litter" is the euphemistic term for poultry poop mixed with feathers, leftover feed, bedding, and whatever else ends up on the factory floor.) Tyson says this plant, along with another one it's building with oil giant ConocoPhillips in Borger, Texas, will produce diesel destined for military and commercial aircraft. Once it is working at full capacity, the Geismar plant alone, Tyson estimates, will produce roughly one quarter of the country's current total output of biofuels...."

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/06/big-meat-fueling-change-or-greenwashing-fuel/57304/

NY Times Recipe - Swiss Chard, Spinach and Rice Gratin

By Martha Rose Shulman
Published: May 27, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/health/nutrition/03recipehealth.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Guardian Article - UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet

By Felicity Carus
June 2, 2010

"A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today. As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management...."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet

How to Store Fruits and Vegetables: Tips and tricks to extend the life of your produce without plastic

Check out this very helpful guide (available as a PDF here) from the Ecology Center's Berkeley Farmers' Market, which explains how to store all different types of fruits and vegetables without plastic so that your produce will last longer.

As the Farmers' Market season is officially under way, this guide should come in handy!

Atlantic Article - Can Meat Eaters Also Be Environmentalists?

By Nicolette Hahn Niman (livestock rancher, environmental attorney, and author of Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms)
June 2, 2010

"I recently sat center stage at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California, arguing that being a meat eater and also a dedicated environmentalist is not a contradiction. Arguing the reverse was Howard Lyman, a former cattle-feedlot operator turned vegan, who is an entertaining speaker and the author of Mad Cowboy. I'm a vegetarian who's become a cattle rancher. As Ari Derfel, the moderator, noted: this event could only happen in Berkeley. I rarely argue about meat eating—pro or con. I prefer to encourage people who are eating meat to, as I said in my book, Righteous Porkchop, "eat less meat, eat better meat." Although I've been a vegetarian for more than 20 years, I have never accepted the view that eating meat is morally wrong. It's just never made sense to me that something humans and our ancestors have been doing for some 4 million years—something that's a major component of the natural world's system of nutrient recycling—could be immoral. And the more I've learned about ecologically sound food production, the more I've come to appreciate the important role animals play in it, both here and around the world. So when Earth Island Institute invited me to participate in this debate, I agreed...."

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/10/06/can-meat-eaters-also-be-environmentalists/57532/

London Review of Books Article - What We're about to Receive

In the most recent issue of the LRB, Jeremy Harding writes about the future of food and its supply. See full article here, or see below for a brief recap of the article's main points.

While mostly focusing on Britain's current food system and how that nation specifically will be affected by the future pressures of the world food system, Harding also more broadly identifies seven factors "bearing down on the global food supply," which came out of a recent study by "a team of experts and strategic analysts recruited by Chatham House[, who] published their findings on 'food futures' and the looming threats that we should keep in mind." Briefly, here are the seven most pressing factors affecting the global food system today:

1. Overpopulation and increasing rate of population growth - "We are six billion now and by 2030 we’ll be eight billion."

2. Nutrition transition (i.e. from grain- and vegetable-based diets, to meat- and dairy-based) - "Global production of food – all food – will have to increase by 50 per cent over the next 20 years to cater for two billion extra people and cope with the rising demand for meat."

3. Energy, of which industrial food production requires more every year - "It takes 160 litres [roughly 40 gallons] of oil to produce a tonne of maize in the US."

4. Land - "The amount of the world's land given over to agriculture continues to grow (in the UK, roughly 70 per cent of land is agricultural), but in per capita terms it's shrinking."

5. Water - "[O]ne in three people face water shortages [...] and by 2030 the ratio will have narrowed."

6. Climate change - "[E]xtreme weather events will [...] jeopardise agriculture and the movement of food from one place to another."

7. Agricultural workers - "[Totaling] 1.1 billion, [...] more than half of them own neither land nor machinery and live in a state of semi-slavery. The conditions of this new global underclass are at last a matter of concern: worldwide food production is set on a downturn as their wretchedness weakens their capacity to produce and earn, driving more people inexorably towards the cities."

The proposed solutions to the above seven issues of course come from a multitude of sources ("scientists, policy analysts, nutritionists, campaigners"), all of whom "put together a mix of different approaches" and propose a "a range of interventions on several, overlapping fronts" by: (1) consumers, who "must be urged to change their habits," (2) retailers, who "must encourage consumers to make that change," and (3) government, who "must repair the heavy machinery of policy, which has been left to rust when it might have helped consumers, chivvied retailers into line and revived British farming."

The remainder of the article includes arguments and trends often cited in U.S. journalism about the future of food:

- Movement towards choosing local, sustainably-produced food: "Local is now the prevailing doctrine of the alternative food movement. Many 'locavores' are attentive to the global food supply, yet their philosophy is based on a growing exasperation with the bigger picture beyond the parish. Overwhelmingly, in Bidwells' research, caterers, retailers and customers say 'knowing where it's from' is the main reason they prefer local."

- Hidden costs of cheap food: "A common thread in the alternative food movement – stronger in Britain than in any other EU member state – is a rugged opposition to the 'externalised' costs of food. [...] What we eat in Britain is cheap because so many of the real costs of producing it are absent at the checkout. [...] There are too many hidden costs in food that get shrugged off to the environment, or dumped on the world’s poor."

- Comparing campaign against junk food to campaign against smoking: "Politicians can legislate away civil liberties on a good enough excuse, as we've seen, but they’ve been loath to come out in the open and curtail consumer choice. It wasn't so long ago that the tobacco lobby claimed civil liberties and consumer choice were one and the same – and perhaps the assault on smoking is a precedent for regulating our intake of 'bad' food."

Food Safety News Article - Vogue Takes Up Antibiotics in Ag Debate

By Helena Bottemiller
June 1, 2010

The growing discussion over the widespread, nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture showed up in an unexpected publication last month: Vogue, the world's most influential fashion magazine. In the May 2010 edition, which features Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover, Jancee Dunn, a regular contributor to Rolling Stone and Oprah's magazine, O, dives into the increasingly controversial debate in a piece titled, "Prime Suspect: With the vast majority of livestock being fed antibiotics, Jancee Dunn wonders: How safe is our meat?"

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/antibiotics-in-ag-debate-hits-vogue/

I wasn't able to find the Vogue piece on the magazine's website, but once I do I'll certainly post it.