Why Are People Dying to Bring You Dinner? The Shocking Facts About Our Food System.

 

 

AlterNet / By Christopher D. Cook

We hear of the sweatshops behind our computers, sneakers and other attire--yet the exploitation of farmworkers has become normalized.

 

Cesar Chavez, the champion of farmworkers' rights who gets his annual day of state recognition this Saturday, must be rolling in his grave. It's been 37 years since Governor Jerry Brown, in an earlier life, signed the landmark agricultural labor relations act--and soon California legislators will debate whether to enforce rules to provide water and shade to the 400,000 farmworkers who harvest our food.

According to Assemblymember Betsy Butler, D-Los Angeles, author of the Farmworker Safety Act of 2012, "At least 16 farm workers have died since the state issued emergency regulations related to heat illness in 2005. Since all of the deaths were preventable, it's clear that the regulations and their enforcement are ineffective."

Let's replay that: every year farmworkers are dying from thirst and heat exposure due to inadequate water and shade.

In announcing AB 2346, Butler added: "It is absolutely abhorrent to think that in this day and age, farm workers are not regularly provided with shade and water. These two commodities are essentially free and we all know that no grower would let their crops go without water."

To rally support, the United Farm Workers union and other advocates will gather in Sacramento this weekend and laborers will speak of toiling thirsty and overheated in the fields.

You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but history shows a long, sorry resistance to treating farmworkers with even the most basic dignities. In July 2010, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill to give farmworkers overtime pay after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week (New York passed such a bill in 2009). This February, after lobbying from Kraft Foods, the American Meat Institute and others, the USDA withdrew a proposed rule requiring companies doing business with the agency to prove that their subcontractors--including growers--are complying with labor laws.

Can you imagine any other profession where such injustices would be allowed? We hear of the sweatshops behind our computers, sneakers and other attire--yet the exploitation of farmworkers has become normalized. Somehow food, so intrinsic to our daily lives, escapes the kind of justice we should take for granted in 2012.

Our ongoing "harvest of shame" is about more than water and shade. It is about toxic pesticide exposures that send farmworkers to the hospital--up to 20,000 are poisoned annually according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is about rock-bottom wages for back-breaking work: more than 60 percent of farmworkers live south of the poverty line. "Hired farmworkers continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the United States," the USDA says, noting, "they are sometimes forced to sleep in their vehicles, in tents, or completely outdoors."

Farmworkers receive just half the average hourly wage of other private-sector workers, yet their pay represents up to 40 percent of food production costs for "crops such as fruits, vegetables, and nursery products," according to the USDA.

The dirty big secret of our food is that highly exploited labor is a major cost (particularly in organic farming), and even well-meaning growers fight to keep their costs down. If food prices get too high, consumers howl for price relief. Something has to give.

This Cesar Chavez Day, let's renew a national conversation about justice and fairness for America's roughly one million farmworkers. Here's a start: in the 2012 Farm Bill coming before Congress this summer, let's create an income and health support fund for farmworkers--and a Farmworkers' Bill of Rights. Currently, taxpayers subsidize agribusiness to the tune of roughly $15 billion a year--most of it benefiting large-scale production of additives for fast food and fuels that deplete our health and the environment. Let's redirect some of that money to prevent severe farmworker poverty, chronic disease and premature deaths.

Why spend taxpayer dollars to make sure farmworkers get basic justice? We're already paying the bill every day for uninsured farm laborers who end up in emergency rooms due to acute and chronic pesticide exposures or heat exhaustion; and we're already paying the bill for impoverished underpaid farmworkers who need welfare and other supports just to survive. We can pay now to prevent farmworker suffering, or pay later for the inevitable health and economic emergencies.

Farmworkers are often undocumented and vulnerable--but not powerless. They've won some impressive battles recently, with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers extracting better pay from Taco Bell and Trader Joe's. Like Cesar Chavez' great boycotts of the early 1970s, these campaigns organized farmworkers and consumers in common cause.

It's time for consumers and policymakers to demand an end to the sweatshops hiding behind our dinner plates. It's not just one company or a few bad apple growers--it's our whole economy and policy of "cheap food," which has cost many farmworkers an arm and a leg.
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Christopher D. Cook is the author of "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (New Press). He has also written for Harper's, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor.

Deepak Chopra - The Use and Misuse of Gratitude.

 

By Deepak Chopra

Once a self-help term becomes shopworn, it needs to be refreshed. I think this is true of terms like faith, compassion, unconditional love and gratitude. Let me address the last one. How is gratitude a useful expression of spirituality? No one argues that it makes others feel good if you are grateful, but is that useful to their personal growth and yours? Many people find it much easier to give than to receive, for example, which makes it hard for them to feel grateful when they are on the receiving end of a gift, favor, appreciation or love. They look embarrassed and uncomfortable instead.

Until we get to the bottom of why gratitude is so hard, we cannot really understand what gratitude actually is. A few points need to be made.

1. You are genuinely grateful when your ego gets out of the way.
2. Real gratitude isn't passing and temporary.
3. Gratitude takes openness and the willingness to set your ego aside.
4. No one is grateful for things they think they deserve. Therefore, gratitude is unearned, like grace.
5. When it is deeply felt, gratitude applies to everything, not simply to goodies that come your way.

These points focus on gratitude as a state where "I, me and mine" has been set aside. In a grateful state you are vulnerable, as the ego sees it. In reality, this feeling of openness must exist in order to receive grace, love, beauty and inspiration. More than one painter and composer has thanked God formally, knowing that there is a higher source -- something beyond the isolated individual -- that brings inspiration. There is a spiritual reason for such a sense of receiving from "on high," and it doesn't need to involve God or religion.

I'm talking about connection, feeling joined to and upheld by a higher intelligence. "Intelligence" is a more neutral word than God, and to me a more appropriate one, because we all possess intelligence, and if it suddenly expands or brings us an unexpected gift (such as insight, inspiration, a creative leap), it's only natural to feel grateful. You know at those special moments that something beyond your control has made itself known. The ego dislikes this loss of control, which is why you see people frown when surprised by a sudden gift or even the unexpected words, "I love you."

So the state of open receptivity needs to exist before gratitude has any spiritual usefulness; that connection is precious. Of course, there is polite gratitude, a social gesture that is nice in its own way. There is the gratitude of survivors who have narrowly missed death and disaster. There is passing gratitude for getting satisfaction from extra money, status, possessions and praise. All of these things count, but not nearly as much as gratitude for your very existence.

That kind of gratitude is truly spiritual, since it sets up a feedback loop -- the more grateful you are, the more your soul can give. Herein lies a trap, however. I recently caught a TV thriller set in a prison where a convict tells the warden that he is spiritual but not religious. The warden asks him to explain. "You can speak your mind," he says, and the convict replies, "Spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward." If you use gratitude as a ploy to get more gifts and gains (We are all guilty of this at one time or another), you are not experiencing a soul connection but an imitation set up by the ego. The ego is always out to get more, and if gratitude oils the machinery, all the better.

Will gratitude help you form a soul connection? This isn't a "fake it until you make it" issue. Gratitude, being a virtue, does help to put the ego in its place. A few moments of humility is all to the good, for anyone. But in a way your discomfort when being at the receiving end will prove more useful, because it indicates that you have obstacles and resistances to move inside yourself -- if you can resist sweeping your embarrassment under the rug but use it instead for self-examination, then the true bonding with your higher self begins.
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deepakchopra com

3 Surprising Shopping Habits That Are Bad for the World.

Photo Credit: Juan Camilo Bernal / Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByLauren Kelley

While most progressives are aware of Wal-Mart's labor problems, they may not know about the way workers at an Amazon shipping facility are treated.

 

 

Every good progressive knows that making ethical shopping decisions is a tricky business. Many dubious shopping practices are well-known: Wal-Mart and other big box stores that famously mistreat their workers, and chain bookstores, which are putting the nation's independent booksellers out of business, for instance.

But other practices are murkier. While most progressives are aware of Wal-Mart's labor problems, they may not know about the way workers at, say, an Amazon shipping facility are treated. And they may have no idea that buying a Groupon can be a terrible deal for some small businesses -- the very businesses they want to support.

Below you'll find several examples of shopping habits you may not know were tied to shady labor practices and other problems.

1. Buying from online retailers that treat their warehouse workers like dirt.
Most of us don't think twice about comparison shopping online to find the best deal on, well, just about everything. Shoes, books, electronics, toiletries, even food -- if there's free shipping, or a 30-percent-off code, who would hesitate to hit that "add to cart" button? Indeed, the data shows that online retail sales are going up and up, with a 15 percent increase in sales this past holiday season. Cyber Monday, the online equivalent of the old Black Friday door-busters, has become especially popular, with year-over-year sales increasing by 23 percent last year.

However, as Mother Jones' Mac McClelland wrote after going undercover at an online shipping facility recently, "every time a 'Place Order' button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job." McClelland's undercover stint as a "picker" (someone who runs -- often literally -- around a massive warehouse looking for items to ship) taught her that such facilities are a minefield of terrible labor practices. Workers are routinely demoralized, saddled with unrealistic goals, forced to work under conditions that are extremely taxing on the body, and often given no job security whatsoever.

One of the biggest problems McClelland found is online retailers' over-reliance on temporary workers, who receive low pay, few-to-no benefits, unstable work schedules, and unsure future work prospects. She reports:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that more than 15 percent of pickers, packers, movers, and unloaders are temps. They make $3 less an hour on average than permanent workers. And they can be "temporary" for years. There are so many temps in this warehouse that the staffing agency has its own office here. Industry consultants describe the temp-staffing business as "very, very busy." "On fire." Maximizing profits means making sure no employee has a slow day, means having only as many employees as are necessary to get the job done, the number of which can be determined and ordered from a huge pool of on-demand labor literally by the day. Often, temp workers have to call in before shifts to see if they'll get work. Sometimes, they're paid piece rate, according to the number of units they fill or unload or move. Always, they can be let go in an instant, and replaced just as quickly.

As she notes, "that is how you slash prices and deliver products superfast and offer free shipping and still post profits in the millions or billions."

McClelland's experience doesn't appear to be an anomaly. Similar conditions have been reported at warehouses for Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, as well as for much smaller businesses, like New York City's grocery delivery service FreshDirect. In each of these instances, companies exploit workers to meet consumer demand for free or low-cost shipping -- a demand that might not exist if shoppers knew the human price of those low shipping costs.

2. Buying from Groupon and other group deal Web sites can be a bad deal for small businesses.
The group deal fad may be on the wane, but at its peak many of us bought coupons for everything from $5 off a dozen cupcakes, 20 percent off at a local restaurant, or a discounted massage. Group deal sites like Groupon, Living Social and Scoutmob, to name a few, still exist, and at least in theory, they're still a brilliant idea: a business (often a small, local one) signs up to offer a specific discount, and on a certain day hoards of people will buy said discount, giving customers a good deal and businesses an influx of business.

Unfortunately, the reality of these deal sites is often not so win-win. Some business owners have spoken out about their bad experiences. Jessie Burke, the owner of Portland's Posies Cafe, wrote last summer in a much circulated blog post that signing up with Groupon was "the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner thus far." TechCrunch broke down why Burke's experience was not unusual:

• The customers she attracted weren't likely to be regulars. One customer tried to use three Groupons at once. "What are you going to get for $39? Do you want the whole shop? And they were really offended." "Most people took a trek here. This is definitely a neighborhood shop. People don't come here from other parts of town just to get coffee." Some were abusive to staff and didn't tip.
• Most customers didn't spend much more than the deal value. Groupon told her that something like 98% spent more than the value of the Groupon. "You think maybe like $5 above the value, not like 10 cents." It's in Groupon's interests to make the deal value as high as possible because they get a cut of that. They don't get a cut of anything extra that someone spends at the business.
• There was minimal training on what to expect. Groupon sent her a link to a video. There was no explanation of how to handle things like expired coupons. "The onus of responsibility shouldn't be entirely on this little business that doesn't know the laws in the first place."
• Burke didn't do anything to convert Groupon customers into regulars, like asking them to follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
• She would like to see more transparency. "I think it's helpful for people to know that you're not actually giving someone $6, you're giving someone $3 in our case."
• Her Yelp ratings sank after the Groupon customers complained about the business.

Points like these are surely part of the reason the deals on group deal sites have become less appealing in recent months; business owners have heard too many horror stories like Jessie Burke's. And that might be for the best, because for every Groupon success story, there seems to be a few businesses that got (unintentionally) screwed over by the people who bought their "deal."

3. "Fast fashion" stores rip off artists and exploit factory workers.
Awareness is growing about the unethical tendencies of companies that shill "fast fashion" -- H&M, Zara, Forever 21 and the like -- but it hasn't grown enough. There is not the same stigma among progressives for going into an H&M as there is for going into a Wal-Mart, and yet shopping at the former isn't a whole lot more ethical than shopping at the latter. In fact, many people still think of fast fashion stores as liberating, because they democratize fashion, bringing unattainable runway designs to the masses. Fashion for the people!

The reality is that these stores achieve "fashion democracy" by exploiting workers (the vast majority of their clothes are still made in overseas sweatshops) and ripping off the work of other designers. (Good design is expensive, because it takes a lot of work!)

These businesses are also famously wasteful, having been known to destroy perfectly good clothes that could have been worn by someone in need. And they've created the false impression among shoppers that everyone should be able to buy as much clothing as they want -- at $15 a dress, why not? So shoppers buy far more clothing than they actually need, and then toss it after it falls apart or becomes unfashionable, often after a few wears. Then, it either ends up in a landfill, or if the clothes are still wearable and can be donated, it goes to a thrift store, which is probably overrun with clothing donations. As Tabea Kay reported for GOOD recently:

[W]hen we drop off our blue Ikea bags filled with used clothing, we believe that the evidence of our disposable income is being put to good use. From there, only 15 to 20 percent of worthy waste is resold in thrift shops domestically, as the U.S. market simply doesn't house the demand to absorb more secondhand clothing. The remaining T-shirts, skirts and jeans follow one of three paths: 30 percent of it is cut and repurposed for industrial wiping rags; roughly 25 percent is recycled into fiber for reuse as stuffing and insulation; and the remaining 45 percent continues life as clothing on a different continent.

It would be easy to meet this information with resignation: Well, where the hell am I supposed to shop? And indeed, it is unrealistic to assume that we can or will all start shopping exclusively at food co-ops and ethical fashion boutiques. Still, we shouldn't despair. Instead, we should use this information to fire us up about supporting workers' rights in every industry and pushing for things like ethical shopping certifications, to borrow an excellent idea from McClelland's warehouse reporting.
As for the daily deal sites, some communities are starting to launch alternatives called cash mobs, which ask participants to flock to a chosen business on a chosen day and pay full price for their goods and services. The bottom line is that we're all going to have to get creative, and stay informed, to make headway toward widely available, ethical shopping choices.
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Lauren Kelley is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Change.org, The L Magazine and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

Why Hot Dogs, Chicken Nuggets and Some Other "Meats" Are Way Grosser Than 'Pink Slime'.

Photo Credit: courtesy of Beef Products Inc.

AlterNet / ByAri LeVaux

Processed meats like hot dogs, baloney and chicken nuggets seem, on the surface, no less icky than pink slime. And here's why they could be even worse.

If there's one thing America can agree on, it's that "pink slime" is scary. The hamburger filler made from processed beef trimmings has been in use for decades, but now, thanks to social media-fueled campaigns and traditional media coverage from Fox News to MSNBC, we're suddenly terrified of the stuff. But is pink slime really any worse than pink cylinders like hot dogs, or yellow nuggets of mechanically separated poultry? Probably not. But it seems to represent a discussion that's time has come.

After having quietly graced pre-made beef patties in the U.S. since the early 1990s, pink slime hit the mainstream in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. An exec from Beef Products Inc. (BPI), which makes the pink product officially known as Lean Finely Trimmed Beef (LFTB) proudly welcomed the cameras into his futuristic facility, and said the product is in 70 percent of America's pre-made burger patties.

Then, a 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times expose that reported BPI had been lowering the levels of ammonium hydroxide used to treat LFTB, in response to complaints about the product's strong ammonia smell. These reductions in treatment caused several batches of burger destined for school lunches to test positive for E. coli and Salmonella.

Since the Times story, public outcry has forced several fast food joints to quit using the stuff in burgers, and supermarkets are dropping products that contain LFTB. When it broke on March 5 that USDA's National School Lunch Program had just purchased seven million pounds of LFTB to mix with ground beef, the anti-slime forces rallied again. This isn't the first time USDA's school lunch program has purchased LFTB, but judging by the pushback it might be the last. Campaigns and industry counter-campaigns have been waged, petitions circulated, and innumerable Twitter hashtags generated, all in the name of pink slime.

Nobody without a financial interest in Beef Products Inc., could argue with a straight face that LFTB isn't kind of gross. But does that make it evil? Processed meats like hot dogs, baloney and chicken nuggets seem, on the surface, no less icky than pink slime.

Unlike LFTB, many nuggets and cylinders are made with mechanically separated meat. Chicken, turkey and pork carcasses, already picked clean of presentable cuts, are pushed through filtering machinery under high pressure, removing every last scrap of tissue. The resulting fragments are used in chicken nuggets, turkey and pork sausage, and many other processed meats.

Mechanically separated beef, on the other hand, is no longer approved for human consumption due to concerns that bovine spinal cord fluid could spread mad cow disease. The final bits of beef are recovered via other methods that, while highly mechanized, are less traumatic to the carcass, minimizing spinal fluid leakage.

So if you're averse to ingesting spinal fluid, beef-based pink slime is actually a better bet than chicken nuggets or hot dogs containing pork or poultry.

The biggest difference between LFTB and most other processed meats lies in how they are preserved. LFTB is dosed with ammonium hydroxide to raise the slime's pH high enough to kill bacteria. These ammonium levels are not close to being toxic, but they still smell and taste foul, tempting processors to go light on the treatment to make the product more palatable.

While LFTB is an ingredient for extending ground beef, the other forms of processed meat I've been comparing to are finished products, stable at refrigerator temperatures because they've been preserved by agents stronger than ammonium hydroxide. Some legal preservatives have been linked to cancer, and the World Cancer Research Fund has recommended that people avoid processed meats altogether.

While preservatives in processed meats are considered ingredients and thus require labeling, BPI has successfully argued that its ammonium hydroxide is a processing agent, not an ingredient, meaning it needn't be listed on the product label.

For something that isn't an ingredient, ammonium hydroxide has certainly made its presence felt. As the Times reported, blocks of LFTB had a heavy stench even when frozen, causing BPI to cut the treatment down to precariously low levels. To its credit, BPI has since improved its safety protocols and now leads the industry in testing for not just one, but all of the so-called Big Six strains of E. coli. Assuming BPI can control the bacteria in its product, what's left to hate?

Gerald Zirnstein, a former USDA inspector, coined the term "pink slime" in a 2002 email. But his chief complaint about the stuff, according to the Times story, isn't that it's dangerous, pink or slimy, but that it's misidentified. "I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef," he told the Times, "and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling." This is hardly damning criticism-it's like complaining that 2 percent milk is being labeled as whole milk. And LFTB is, in fact, pure beef, except for the ammonium hydroxide processing agent. So it kind of is ground beef, arguably.

Implicit in Zirnstein's comment is the assumption that the non-muscle beef tissue in LFTB is less nutritious than the muscle tissue in burger meat. But the tissues from which LFTB is made, including collagen, do in fact have nutritional value, as BPI rightly claims in its new website pinkslimeisamyth.com. Indeed, people pay a lot of money for collagen supplements in pill form. So, is pink slime any worse than pink cylinders, yellow nuggets, brown breakfast sausage patties, or any number of mystery meat products? Probably not. And for what it's worth, it isn't even slimy.

Given that nuggets and dogs contain preservatives that are more dangerous than the ammonium hydroxide in pink slime, pink slime could pose less of a threat than other processed meats. And for what it's worth, the non-beef, mechanically separated meat products present the added bonus of spinal fluid, which, if there were such thing as mad chicken or mad pig disease, would be a problem.

Even if pink slime is no more dangerous than a bunch of other products out there, it's nonetheless a timely opportunity to discuss the problems and realities of our industrial meat system. Given the recent bevy of state "ag-gag" bills-already signed in Iowa, and proposed in Utah and Illinois -- it appears battle lines are being drawn over the control of information meat processing. These ag-gag bills would make it illegal to secretly record what goes on in meat processors. The forces of anti-slime could provide a boost of energy in opposing these measures.

Personally, if I can't get good, intact meat tissue to eat, I'm happier and healthier eating none at all.
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Ari LeVaux writes a syndicated weekly food column, Flash in the Pan.

What You Should Know About the Company Pushing Genetically Engineered Salmon on Consumers.

 

Photo Credit: Ari LeVaux

 

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByAri LeVaux

 

AquaBounty Technologies, maker of genetically engineered salmon, is almost out of money. It's been more than two decades since the prototype of its AquAdvantage salmon was spliced into existence, and a decade since AquaBounty applied for FDA approval, but the fish remains on the sidelines of a salmon-hungry market.

The approval process is the first use of FDA's guidelines for GE animals, and if approved AquAdvantage would be the first GE animal greenlighted for human consumption. Further complicating matters, FDA chose to treat the salmon as a "New Animal Drug," rather than a food. The drug per se is the genetically engineered part of each piece of AquAdvantage DNA, and is found in every cell of the fish.

The AquAdvantage salmon is an Atlantic salmon with genes inserted from a Chinook salmon and an ocean pout. The Chinook gene codes for growth hormone, and the pout gene keeps the Chinook gene locked in the "on" position. The extra growth hormone helps the AquAdvantage salmon reach market size twice as fast as non-GE salmon.

The approval process hasn't moved significantly since September 2010, when FDA announced it would redo a previous environmental assessment on the fish. The assessment is problematic because the fish aren't produced in the U.S. Eggs fertilized on Prince Edward Island, Canada, are shipped to a containment facility in interior Panama.

Meanwhile, the regulation of AquAdvantage salmon as a new animal drug, rather than as food, is causing side effects of its own. On February 8, an alliance of consumer advocacy groups submitted a petition to FDA requesting that AquAdvantage salmon be regulated as a food.

FDA regulation as a food additive is called for, says the petition, in cases where "breeding or selection through genetic engineering reasonably expects to alter the substance's nutritive value or the concentration of constituents."

One such constituent is IGF-1, a hormone found in some animal products that's linked to cancer in high doses. The petitioners suspect AquAdvantage salmon of harboring elevated levels of IGF-1, and challenge AquaBounty's claim that IGF-1 levels in AquAdvantage salmon are no greater than in normal salmon. The petition says AquaBounty's own data suggest IGF-1 levels could be higher in the GE salmon.

Since the fish is being considered as a new animal drug, the scientific issues around AquAdvantage salmon are being reviewed by FDA's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC). The VMAC has been criticized for not containing experts in relevant fields, like allergenicity, or endocrinology. "Most of the people on VMAC are veterinarians that deal with large animals," said Michael Hansen, chief scientist of the Consumers Union, by phone.

Two weeks before the most recent VMAC meeting, in September 2010, FDA announced it considered AquAdvantage salmon to be safe. Huge public protests filled the unusually short 14-day comment period that followed. At the September VMAC meeting it was announced that a new environmental assessment would be done.

According to the transcript of the VMAC meeting, Dr. Gary Thorgaard of Washington State University said: "I would not feel alarmed about eating this kind of fish certainly. I am not worried about it." Nonetheless, Thorgaard, a fish geneticist, voiced concern about the environmental risk of an AquAdvantage salmon escaping into the wild, and endorsed the idea of a new EA.
Earlier in the meeting Dr. Erik Silberhorn, who produced an environmental safety assessment on behalf of AquaBounty, was asked for information on native fish and amphibians in the area surrounding the grow-out facility in Panama.

"No I do not have information on native fish ..." Silberhorn replied. "The assessment of the local environment is still under the jurisdiction of the Panamanian government, and the same thing would occur in Canada."

It's appropriate that Panama and Canada should be in charge of protecting their own environments. But will they? And when the "drugs" in question can swim thousands of miles across international borders and potentially mate with fish from elsewhere, a fish pharm becomes a matter of global reach and responsibility. If it gets approved in Panama, where will the next facility be?

AquaBounty's method for sterilizing its salmon is 98.9 percent effective, according to its own data. The environmental significance of that fertile 1.1 percent was compelling enough to help AquaBounty get a $500,000 FDA grant, in September 2011, to improve its sterilization practices.

Oddly, the sterility numbers the company reports far exceed the FDA requirement of 95% sterility. If the company is already exceeding the threshold by nearly four percentage points, why would it need grant money to further improve sterility techniques?

Things aren't adding up on AquaBounty's balance sheet either. On March 22, shareholders will vote on a proposed restructure to trim costs, raise operating capital, and continue waiting out the FDA approval process. A private sale of stock to company insiders will raise enough funds to float the company for 10 months more of its upstream voyage.

AquaBounty acknowledged in a February 22 letter to shareholders it "does not expect significant sales until 2014 and thus anticipates a need to raise further funds before that time." This raises the question: why fundraise for 10 months when you need, in a best-case scenario, about two years?

AquaBounty stock currently sits at $4 a share, down from $150 in 2006, when the company went public. The last time ABTX showed any life was in August, 2010, when the FDA announced it considered AquAdvantage safe. The stock had shot from $4 to $25 in days, before settling back down after the VMAC meeting, two weeks later, when the significance of a new EA set in.

More positive remarks from FDA could send the stock back up again, giving AquaBounty the opportunity to raise more capital. Maybe that's what AquaBounty is hoping will happen in the next ten months. Or perhaps the company is biding its time to see who wins the election, or is waiting for another FDA grant to come in. Or maybe 10 month's worth is all the money AquaBounty could raise at this juncture, which wouldn't bode well for its future stability.

AquaBounty did not respond to requests for comment, so we're stuck guessing why, after a 23-year haul, it's kicking the can ten months down the road.
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Ari LeVaux writes a syndicated weekly food column, Flash in the Pan.

How America Is Making the Whole World Fat and Unhealthy.

Photo Credit: Jill Richardson

 

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByJill Richardson

 

 

 

We've exported the worst of our food to developing countries and we've imported the best of their food -- making poorer countries even more worse off.

 

 

 

It is hardly news that the United States faces epidemic health problems linked to poor diets. Nearly two out of every five Americans are obese. But according to a press release from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, "The West is now exporting diabetes and heart disease to developing countries, along with the processed foods that line the shelves of global supermarkets. By 2030, more than 5 million people will die each year before the age of 60 from non-communicable diseases linked to diets."

De Schutter, whose work usually focuses on ending hunger, just published a new report saying, "The right to food cannot be reduced to a right not to starve. It is an inclusive right to an adequate diet providing all the nutritional elements an individual requires to live a healthy and active life, and the means to access them." In other words, the right to a healthful diet must be included in the human right to food. And, as the unhealthy diets already common in the United States spread to poorer nations, so do the health problems associated with those diets. However, unlike wealthy nations, poorer nations are not equipped to deal with the health consequences via medicine, making preventable diet-related health problems more deadly.

While the poor around the world face hunger, for those who have enough to eat in non-industrialized nations, traditional diets are quite healthy. In Kenya, for example, peasant farmers subsist on a stiff corn porridge called ugali eaten with a variety of green vegetables, beans, and perhaps some pumpkin. Peasants in Bolivia may dine on potatoes, quinoa and other grains, corn, sweet potato, and other Andean roots and tubers. Mexicans combine corn tortillas and beans to provide complete protein. A Filipino family may eat pinakbet, a stew of local vegetables flavored with bagoong, a Filipino fish sauce.

In each and every case, traditional diets are made up of whole foods, including grains, beans, vegetables, fresh fruit, and perhaps some animal products. Wild plants that an American might dispose of as "weeds" are used to provide essential micronutrients, feed families during hard times, or serve as medicines. Often fermentation is used to preserve foods and increase their nutrition, as in the case of Kenya's fermented porridge uji. Livestock enjoy diverse and natural diets, and meat is reserved for special occasions -- perhaps a chicken to celebrate the arrival of a guest, a goat for Christmas, or a cow for a wedding.

But times are changing. Visit even the most far-flung rural part of each of these nations today, and you'll find Coca-Cola advertising -- and Coca-Cola -- everywhere. Restaurants and stores in Africa display Coca-Cola-themed store signs while their menus are posted on Coca-Cola chalkboards and waiters wear red Cola-Cola aprons. In South America, you can buy a bottle of Coke out of your car window from a vendor dressed in red Coca-Cola-themed gear while you wait in traffic. If there's anywhere on earth you cannot easily buy an ice-cold Coke, it's Antarctica -- although it's very possible there are already shops selling ice-cold Coke there, too. And while other junk foods sold in each of these places may not be such recognizable global brands, they are equally detrimental to human health no matter which company makes them or how they are branded.

In his report, De Schutter gives Mexico as a particular example. Mexico, only second to the United States in the percent of its population that is now obese, once had a national diet that dietitians considered nearly perfect. In the 1967 book Campaigns Against Hunger, scientists E.C. Stakman, Richard Bradfield, and Paul C. Mangelsdorf write, "It appears that the Mexican Indians, living on the land and eating their corn, beans, and chili peppers supplemented at times by tomatoes, by the seeds and flesh of squashes, and by wild plants and weeds, may have had not just an adequate diet but a near-perfect one."

What happened? Peter Brown, an activist with the non-profit Schools for Chiapas, began working with indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, shortly after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. By 2010, he began observing diabetes in the population he worked with, a problem the communities had never had before. De Schutter connects the dots, noting the massive investment in the Mexican food processing industry by U.S. companies following NAFTA, and the subsequent rise in the sales of processed foods at a rate of five to 10 percent annually between 1995 and 2003. It's not unheard of for parents to feed young children soda from a baby bottle in Mexico these days.

De Schutter provides a concise history lesson, describing how developing countries increased the amount of calories consumed from meat (119 percent), sugar (127 percent) and vegetable oils (199 percent) between 1963 and 2003 while industrialized nations also increased vegetable oil consumption by 105 percent at the same time. "Because the prices of basic crops went through such a significant decline, the agrifood industry responded by 'adding value' by heavily processing foods, leading to diets richer in saturated and trans-fatty acids, salt, and sugars. This, combined with urbanization and higher employment rates for women, precipitated the rapid expansion for processed foods, both domestically and through exports dumped on foreign markets," writes De Schutter.

Today, in industrialized nations, healthy foods often cost more than junk foods. "This should not be allowed to stand," writes De Schutter. "Any society where a healthy diet is more expensive than an unhealthy diet is a society that must mend its price system. This is even more imperative where the poorest are too poor to feed themselves in a manner not detrimental to their health."

Developing nations face an additional challenge, as they often "export high-quality foods, tropical fruits and vegetables in particular, to rich countries, while importing refined grains." The recent boom in quinoa is one such example. Most quinoa comes from the Bolivian Andes where indigenous peasants traditionally grew quinoa and raised llamas and alpaca for meat and fiber, respectively. With the demand in Europe and the United States for healthy, gluten-free grains, quinoa -- which is very high in protein -- became popular. Today, Bolivians cannot afford to buy quinoa, and the quinoa-growing region of the country is also the most malnourished as those who grow quinoa for export now purchase refined grains to eat. The region also faces decreased soil fertility, as farmers mine their soil to grow quinoa year after year instead of rotating crops with llama pasture to restore fertility.

Ironically, as wealthy, educated Americans strive to achieve diets rich in locally-grown, fresh, organic whole foods, many in the Global South strive to afford the very processed foods that Slow Food enthusiasts turn their noses up at. When a group of Americans complained to their Bolivian tour guide about the breakfast of white bread, Nescafe, and cake at a four star hotel in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, their guide exclaimed, "That's posh bread!" The hotel was serving foods locally perceived as upper class. Healthful Bolivian foods such as quinoa are seen by many as lower class "Indian food."

Examples like this can be found around the world. Nairobi's upscale suburb of Karen now boasts a brand new KFC, located in a ritzy mall that also has an Apple store. One piece of chicken costs a little more than US$2, more than the cost of an entire meal of kale, mung beans, and corn porridge elsewhere in the city. And while a meal at KFC might be out of reach for many, other junk foods are all too accessible and affordable.

American Amy Lint, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya who now lives there, notices even her rural neighbors moving away from healthful, traditional foods toward white bread and margarine, heavily sweetened tea, and cooking oil. In the past, greens might be cooked with milk, but now they are made with store-bought vegetable oil. She and her husband Malaki Obado, co-founders of the non-profit Grow Strong, are working to help connect local farmers who grow sesame with a market for sesame oil so that the cooking oil at least comes from a local, sustainable source and the profit will stay in the community.

Promoting healthful, homegrown traditional foods is fighting an uphill battle, when so much of the world sees processed and packaged junk foods as "modern" and desirable. People in poor nations often view themselves as "backward," and growing one's own food is part of their perceived backwardness. Such an attitude makes marketing an easy task for processed food corporations, especially when their target is an uneducated population that has been told throughout centuries of colonization that foreign ways are superior to their indigenous customs.

So what should be done about the "obesogenic" global food system, according to De Schutter? He begins by endorsing taxing junk food, particularly soda, an idea that has been controversial in the United States but is already practiced in France, Denmark, Finland, and Hungary. To prevent a junk food tax from disproportionately harming the poor, De Schutter recommends using the tax revenues to make healthy foods less expensive.

De Schutter also calls for "revising" agricultural subsidies that are biased in favor of large grain and soybean producers and the livestock industry; "cracking down on junk food advertising;" growing local food systems by linking farmers with nearby urban consumers; and "regulating foods high in saturated fats, salt and sugar." He specifically calls out marketing of infant formula, a major problem in poor nations where dishonest advertising and predatory marketing such as handing out of free infant formula samples in hospitals influences mothers, often women who can ill afford the cost of infant formula let alone the health consequences they cause for their children later in life, to stop breast feeding prematurely.

An issue more relevant to the United States is the marketing of junk food to children. In the last few years, the Obama administration attempted to impose voluntary measures on industry to halt marketing of the most unhealthy foods to children, but the power of industry defeated even Obama's voluntary guidelines -- let alone binding regulations. Meanwhile, as De Schutter points out, the U.S. budget to promote healthy foods is dwarfed by the amount spent on junk food marketing.

For the highly individualistic United States in which right-wing political figures -- egged on by industry -- complain about "nanny states" and "food police," a first step might be recognizing that unhealthy diets are caused by more than just individual choice. De Schutter states, "These avoidable deaths are often attributed to lifestyle choices -- choices to exercise less, choices to consume more salt, sugars and fats. But the problem is a systemic one. We have created obesogenic environments and developed food systems that often work against, rather than facilitate, making healthier choices."
The cost of waiting for individuals to repair a problem that is systemic is paid financially as well as in human misery. For example, in the United States, "direct medical and indirect expenditures attributable to diabetes in 2002 were estimated at US$ 132 billion, more than doubling the total healthcare costs for that year."

But as big as the problem is in the United States, Americans and the populations of other wealthy nations are relatively fortunate. The U.S. has a strong state, capable of enforcing its laws, as well as a sophisticated -- if expensive and insufficiently accessible -- healthcare system. Comparatively, developing nations often feature weak states, where citizens do not even expect the laws to be enforced, and healthcare infrastructure -- particularly in rural areas -- is minimal. If the U.S. cannot succeed in reversing its unhealthy food system, how can far weaker and poorer governments do so?
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Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..

I Love Food, But Food Doesn't Love Me -- What's Behind Food Intolerance?

 

Photo Credit: Dano via Flickr

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByCasey Lazonick

 

What happens when you find out that most of the food you enjoy is making you sick?

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Over the last few decades the way we eat and prepare our food has changed drastically. The majority of the food we consume is either restaurant-made or store-bought, and we have become completely dependent on easily accessible food to accommodate our fast-paced lifestyles.

 

But what happens when you find out you can no longer eat most of these easily accessible foods because they are making you sick? That is what happened to me. Like growing numbers of people, I have come to recognize that I have food intolerances.

The number of people being diagnosed with lactose intolerance, gluten allergies, soy intolerance, and diabetes is growing at a rapid pace. A food intolerance exists when the body can't ingest or metabolize food properly, causing pain and discomfort that often prevents the body from absorbing important nutrients. A food intolerance is not the same thing as a food allergy, which is an overreaction of the immune system and can be deadly.

Part of the rise in food intolerance diagnoses stems from advances in medicine and a greater knowledge and awareness of the problem. But the drastic changes that have taken place in the Western diet are a major factor. Cyndi O'Meara, an expert nutritionist and author of Changing Habits, Changing Lives Cookbook, notes a 10-fold increase in the number of people with food intolerances in the UK in the last 25 years. O’Meara, along with scientific researchers, points to the large quantities of chemicals and processed foods and major changes in food preparation.

Ingredients like artificial sweeters and modified milk can lead to a hyper-vigilant immune system that reacts painfully to more and more foods. As otherwise healthy people have delved into why they often feel unwell, “food intolerance” has emerged as a 21st-century health concern. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and the National Institutes for Health find that as many as 30 million people in the United States suffer from food intolerance -- four to five times the number with food allergies. Skin rashes, abdominal pains and even headaches can be symptoms of the body's struggle with certain ingredients.

Food intolerances can be extremely complicated. I went through years of embarrassing situations and extreme pain before I was finally able to realize that the source of my discomfort was the food I was eating. It has taken me another three years to figure out which foods are my friends and which are my enemies.

I found that even the best medical doctors do not know how to isolate food intolerances, and different nutrition experts have varying ideas about what types of foods make you sick and why. Fortunately, I finally found a nutritional therapist who discovered that I had an H. Pylori infection in my stomach and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). She explained to me that the symptoms I was experiencing (daily, extremely painful muscle spasms in my stomach being one of them) could be nearly completely eliminated with the right diet and natural supplements.

The six-week diet to cure my stomach infection consisted of a maximum of two fruits per day, no refined sugar, no deep-fried foods, no coffee, no alcohol, no cow’s milk or soy products, only gluten-free foods, and an extremely limited salt intake. But that six-week diet was just to cure my infection. To stay better in the long-term, I was told that I would need to have a similar diet for the rest of my life. I’m in my early 20s, so this felt like someone had whacked me in the face with a large frying pan. If there is anything that I really love, it's food, and if there is anything I hate, it's not being able to make my own decisions about how I lead my life.

But if I wanted to feel healthy, I had to forget the foods that I loved, and hand over my decision-making to my nutritionist. Imagine finding out that you would never again be able to enjoy a glass of wine, some candy, or some freshly baked bread? Ouch! I honestly didn’t think I would be able to pull it off without a few very painful cheats here and there.

Later, as the shock wore off, I realized that my predicament was challenging me to be creative. I began to collect recipes that contain only Casey-friendly foods, coming up with viable substitutes to keep my food enemies at bay. I started to scout out restaurants, bakeries and other food outlets that could accommodate my dietary needs. Then, as I concocted my new diet, I began to record my recipes and other discoveries on a blog I call The Adventures of Limited Eating.

Big benefits come with being compelled to think about everything that you eat. Now that I am more aware of the ingredients in fast food, I’m far less eager to grab a burger. I have discovered a whole new world of yummy foods that do not contain preservatives, refined sugar, gluten, or cow’s milk products.

As a limited eater (a badge that I now wear proudly), I have started to think about how the seemingly endless food options for the average American eater is really an illusion. Most of the prepared foods for sale on an urban street are highly processed, full of fat and refined sugar, and overpriced. Food enemies that daily attack our bodies are found on every shelf.

Being a limited eater brings the food options down so substantially that you no longer have the option of eating unhealthy foods. I’m better able to maintain a healthy weight, and I receive all my required nutrients while boosting my immune system and giving myself more energy. The stability in my blood-sugar levels has made me calmer and more even-tempered.

There are a myriad of possible substitutes out there, but you have to be adventurous, and there is no getting around the fact that it consumes some of your time. Not being able to just pick up my favorite dark chocolate bar at the shop still seems like a sacrifice when I look through the storefront window. But then I remind myself that I can go home and make some delicious gluten-free, refined-sugar-free pancakes with fruit, or an amazing berry smoothie, or even some nice gluten-free scones with homemade raspberry jam. Looking back, I find that being a limited eater has greatly increased the quality of my everyday life.

If you have been diagnosed as a limited eater (or you choose to cut out gluten, cow’s milk products, wheat, or refined sugar from your diet for other reasons), and are feeling overwhelmed, know that there are plenty of ways to still enjoy food. Most recipes can be changed to accommodate your dietary needs. For more information on the subject check out Web sites such as Food Intolerance Awareness and BestAllergySites.
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Casey Lazonick is a food blogger.