archive for May 14th, 2007

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the goodest, cleanest, and fairest of them all?

by Bonnie P. @ Monday, May 14th, 2007.

The sun was not yet warm enough when, in the company of my chef friend Alice Waters, I entered an elegantly refurbished area of the docks; pretty little coffee shops were serving warm mugs of excellent organic fairtrade coffee; sumptuous bakeries were putting out all sorts of good things, spreading the fragrant aroma of some wonderful kinds of bread…. The former, with long hair and a plaid flannel shirt, held his lovely little blond-haired daughter in his arms and told me, in a conspiratorial tone, that he had to drive two hundred miles to come and sell in that market: he charged incredibly high prices for his squashes, it was “a cinch,” and in just two monthly visits he could earn more than enough to maintain his family and spend hours surfing on the beach…. He replied: There are many cases of organic farming that are not sustainable, because they create a vast monoculture, one that relies on the use of integrated pesticides which greatly reduce the surrounding biodiversity: vast stretches of vineyards in Chile and in Italy, huge plantations of vegetables in California, hectares and hectares of olive groves in Spain…. Social sustainability can be achieved through public intervention, through politics: in Brazil, in those regions where the Workers’ Party con-trols the local government, all food served in public cafeterias must by law be organic and must be produced by small local producers at fair but accessible prices. Agroecology has a scientific basis, but it also has profound political implications, because it is badly in need of public intervention: before an agroecological approach can be established in Latin America, there must be agrarian reform and public intervention in the market to protect small farmers or to guarantee fair prices for producers and consumers.

Digest: Citigroup plan to buy subsidies, Cargill’s “organic” sweetener, meet the czar, fish MPAs

by Ethicurean @ Monday, May 14th, 2007.

NEWSFEATURES & COMMENTARYON THE BLOGS, ETC.Transparency special on aisle 7: Steve Balogh writes to his local grocery store - Wegmans - to see how they intended to keep melamine and cyanuric acid tainted food off of store shelves…. Contrast their compete and detailed response to Balogh’s inquiry with Whole Foods’ response to reporter/blogger David Gumpert’s similar one…. Some, including Michael Pollan, think not: “If you’re concerned about your health, then you should probably avoid food products that make health claims…The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient science is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet, and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.” (The Observer)The obesity epidemic hits avatars: Kraft Foods, Inc. has set up a supermarket in the online world of “Second Life.” The story mentions Kraft’s “Sensible Solution” label for “healthier food choices,” but does not mention that Kraft ch which items are “Sensible.”

A recipe for change: Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini speaks in San Francisco

by Marc R. aka Mental Masala @ Monday, May 14th, 2007.

On May 10 Dairy Queen and I went to a lecture by Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini, who’s on the road to promote the English-language release of his book “Slow Food Nation.” The book, which we have not yet read, is about the future of food, and what we must do to prevent […]

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