Eeny, mela-miney mo — who is minding our food sto’?: The New York Times reports that China isn’t the only country using melamine in animal feed. A Ohio manufacturing plant was using melamine as a binding agent for feed for farmed fish, shrimp, and livestock. Discovered in independent testing, the melamine came from Tembec BTLSR, a Canadian forest products company that makes resins and certain chemicals for industrial uses; Tembec surely should have known to stop using it after the contaminated Chinese gluten scandal hit the front pages. The Brownfield Network quotes new FDA food-safety czar David Acheson as saying, “You know, if I was a CEO of a company, I would be asking the question, ‘Do I know who I’m getting my supplies from and do I know exactly what’s in it?’” We think eaters should be asking themselves exactly the same thing. Full transcript of yesterday’s FDA-reporter conference call here.

The protein wars: The specter of mad-cow disease haunts EU plans to feed chickens to pigs and vice versa. An EU body says use of meat meal from non-ruminants poses no danger to human health, and it’s true that chickens and pigs are both omnivores (unlike cattle, which are ruminants). The problem is whether, given the labyrinthine food supply, the proteins can be kept separate enough so as to avoid species cannibalism that could give rise to more prion diseases. (Times UK)

PETA 2, BevCo 0: Under pressure from PETA, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have agreed to stop financing research that uses animals to test or develop their products. PETA already got Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice to cease tests on rabbits for … possible erectile dysfunction relief? (New York Times)

Honorary streets are popular in many cities–New York has Joey Ramone Place (E. 2nd Street at The Bowery) and Peter Jennings Way (66th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park), San Francisco has Lawrence Ferlinghetti Way (near City Lights Books), and Chicago has Bob Fosse Way (Montrose and Paulina), to name a few.
Now it appears […]

NEWSU.S. FDA head very glad he is not Chinese: China has sentenced the former head of its food and drugs agency to death for corruption. The sentence, which could still be reduced on appeal, reflects the weight China’s top leaders are giving to the issues of corruption and food safety as they grapple with the fallout overseas after a series of safety breaches involving toxins in food and other products. Given how well capital punishment works to deter crime in this country, we’re sure the Chinese food system will reform itself immediately.

Despite feeling like I’ve read as many reviews of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” — Barbara Kingsolver’s best-selling new memoir of her family’s year spent growing most of their own food — as there are pages in the actual book, I am still enjoying it immensely.

Her account of stopping in at central Vermont’s Farmers Diner, whose slogan is “Think Locally, Act Neighborly,” reminded me of several events I’m looking forward to around here. Farmer’s Diner owner Tod Murphy believes that “if every restaurant got just ten percent of its food from local farmers, the infrastructure of corporate food would collapse.’

I recently spent a few days in Portland, Oregon. Before the trip I didn’t do any serious restaurant research, but my negligence was not a major problem, thanks to a set of pamphlets published by Urban Living Maps that show the locations of shops and restaurants in various city neighborhoods, along with short descriptions. The […]

Big gulp, indeed: Research from a British university suggests sodium benzoate, a common preservative found in soft drinks, has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA. The problem can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s. (The Independent) Although Coke and others recently reformulated their drinks to avoid the combination of sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or citric acid can turn into the carcinogen benzene, this indicates it might be scary all by itself.

Protection vs. protectionism: China went on the offensive in response to rising concern about the safety of its food and drug exports, asking the U.S. to clarify its regulations on the use of antibiotics that turned up in Chinese catfish in three southern states. The Chinese regulator said the drugs are allowed in China, the EU and Japan - and said the FDA allows their use if below concentration levels of five parts per billion. (The Wichita Eagle/AP))

“Supersize” diet is deadly: A high-fat and sugar-sweetened water diet compounded by a sedentary lifestyle will have severe repercussions for your liver and other vital organs, if results from a Saint Louis University research on mice can be extrapolated. )SLU press release)

This post is about the California state budget, and so may seem relevant primarily to Californians. However, what happens to California agriculture affects most Americans, as California is the only U.S. producer of almonds, clingstone peaches, figs, persimmons, artichokes, dried plums, olives, pomegranates, raisins, and walnuts (PDF).
As suburbia roars into farming and ranching areas, the […]

Digest: Fetal exposure worries, monkfish might be pufferfish, Farm Bill play-by-plays

Sometimes I get so pissed off by the world we live in, all I want to do is scream.
Instead, I garden.
I can’t believe what people are putting into my food, into your food, just to get rich. Is money that important?
I don’t make a lot of money, but I have an apartment, a television, a […]

The House of Representatives Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry has successfully added language to its markup of the Farm Bill that would pre-empt state laws prohibiting or regulating the use of genetically modified food, food from clones, or other types of food if approved by USDA. So, bye-bye the is trying to add what is essentially another National Uniformity of Food Act to the Farm Bill.The Center for Food Safety has up-to-date comprehensive information, so please visit their site and send their message to the members of the Committee. The CFS has listed these Representatives’ phone and fax numbers on their site to aid with this process. Don’t forget to call the offices of Committee Members to voice your concerns as well!

On the House Committee on Agriculture Farm Bill Page that was launched at the beginning of the week, Rep. Collin Peterson, chairman of the Committee, wrote that “this will be an open and public process, allowing for debate and discussion about all of the issues included in the Farm Bill.” (Emphasis added.)
Later in the week, […]

NEWSFEATURES & COMMENTARYGet fatty: The Economist takes aim at high fructose corn syrup and dares to suggest it is guiltier than sugar of making us fat. Supporting evidence: The number of Americans with metabolic syndrome — a condition characterized by obesity, insulin resistance and lots of ugly triglyceride fats in the blood — has more than doubled, to 33%, but in Europe, where HFCS can’t compete with cheap cane or beet sugar, only 15% of the adult population has it.

That includes — you guessed it — U.S. farm fields, packing plants, and slaughter facilities, where Congress admits even migrant laborers probably won’t want to work once they gain legal status (and where Colorado has recently proposed to use prison labor to deal with a shortage of migrant workers)…. In 1951, Congress passes a law creating the Bracero guestworker program, which allows producers to “import” Mexican workers legally for seasonal jobs and send them home afterward…. They’re stymied by two factors: first, employers use the threat of job termination to keep workers from even talking to the union, and second, when workers do manage to gain legal status, they typically leave the farm sector for better-paying positions in other industries.

…We can also take important steps in our communities by supporting producers and organizations who are making workers’ rights a top priority for farm businesses (see some inspiring work by the Domestic Fair Trade dialogue, the upper Midwest’s Local Fair Trade Network , and California’s Swanton Berry Farm)…. See Oxfam America’s labor rights campaign and the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative for information on making processing and retail markets more fair, and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture for some great 2007 Farm Bill proposals that would help address these issues in contract markets (where producers raise crops and livestock under contract for packers and processors).

Digest: Pig slop, China trends, Planck’s constant crusade

NEWS”We are what they eat” — and man, is it unappetizing!: Forget melamine and cyanuric acid in animal feeds — we should be at least as concerned about the “business as usual” ingredients routinely fed to U.S. farm animals. This op-ed discusses an Environmental Health Perspectives paper by the authors that examined the health effects of ingredients such as rendered remains from slaughtered animals (including those excluded from human consumption); animal excrement; animal fats that may contain dioxins and PCBs; food contaminated with rodent and roach excreta; byproducts from drug manufacture; and plastics.