fauren

Vote for a Victory Garden at the White House!

Change.org (not to be confused with president-elect Obama's official website, Change.gov) is hosting a competition called Ideas for Change in America, which was "created in response to Barack Obama's call for increased citizen involvement in government." Anyone who registers with the website gets 10 votes to cast on projects spanning categories from Social Entrepreneurship to Peace in the Middle East. The 10 project ideas receiving the most votes will be presented to president-elect Obama on January 16 at a National Press Club event in DC.

Earlier this week, Michael Pollan sent Chris Stevens' post at Liveable Future to his mailing list, encouraging readers to vote for Victory Gardens 2.0. I would like to do the same. Understandably, an organic Victory Garden at the White House may not be the most pressing issue even for the strongest agricultural policy advocates right now, given what else is happening in the world at the moment, but luckily you get 9 more votes to address your other concerns, too.

Register with Change.org
See the other Ideas for Change in America
TheWhoFarm
Eat the View

A 50-Year Farm Bill

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry have contributed a short but eloquent op-ed to Sunday's New York Times about the dangers of industrial agriculture and our need for what they call "a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles":

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities... We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

After the passing of a mediocre 2008 Farm Bill and President-elect Obama's appointment of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture – which upset (or at least disappointed) many folks advocating for large-scale sustainable agricultural practices in the States – it's as important as ever that these voices are being heard. Here's hoping some more change is on the horizon.

New York Times: A 50-Year Farm Bill

Déjà Moo

Good morning, world.

And what a wonderful day it is, because today! Today it's officially safe to eat meat from cloned animals in the United States.

The European Union's Food Safety Agency made its announcement to this effect this past Friday, with the Food and Drug Administration expected to follow suit shortly thereafter. Well, the Washington Post has obtained a copy of the FDA's report, which has not yet been officially released, and it indeed draws the conclusion that meat from cloned pigs, cows, and goats is no less safe to eat than meat from their non-cloned counterparts. That is all they are at liberty to conclude, however:

"Moral, religious and ethical concerns . . . have been raised," the agency notes in a document accompanying the report. But the risk assessment is "strictly a science-based evaluation," it reports, because the agency is not authorized by law to consider those issues.

Like Bonnie over at the Ethicurean, I'm kind of horrified that these conclusions were drawn after mere months of study. The FDA research is based on an inconsistent pool of animals, and because it is so difficult to determine what will actually predict the safety of food from cloned animals, the FDA is just going with what's (only kind of) worked so far:

...agency scientists decided to use the same simple but effective standard used by farmers since the dawn of agriculture: If a farm animal appears in all respects to be healthy, then presume that food from that animal is safe to eat.

Somehow, I'm not reassured... E. coli, anyone? Added bonus: as of now, when that cloned meat starts hitting the grocery shelves, it will not be required to be labeled as such, à la the current guidelines for genetically modified foods.

Though the few articles I've looked at this morning haven't really touched on this, the only point I can see in cloning animals for food is to give cloning companies business and boost meat production in the States, like we need it. Is that so crazy, or am I missing something? Well, count me among the folks who would rather eat meat from a known farm upstate once every couple of days than have cloned meat from who knows where for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

New York Times: Cloned Animals Safe to Eat, FDA Concludes
Washington Post: FDA Says Clones Are Safe For Food
Washington Post: Animal Cloning: A Risk Assessment (excerpts from the FDA report)
The Ethicurean: FDA approves food from cloned animals

Farm Bill 2007 Resources

As many of you surely know by now, the USDA Farm Bill is up for revision this year.  Among the issues of concern are the allocations of farmers' subsidies, which at the moment are grossly skewed toward large-scale, industrial farmers growing surplus and commodity crops and away from those dedicating their work to organic and sustainable agriculture. 

If you're anything like me and can only spend so much time in front of a computer before your mind melts, it might be hard to read up on all the specifics of this year's revision, but there are a couple of ways around that.  For one, Michael Pollan put together a helpful list of links for his mailing list last month, which can be downloaded in .pdf format here.  I found Om Organics' guide particularly helpful, and if you've only got a moment in front of the computer, they've even made it easy for you to take action in one minute.  The Ethicurean also has some links to blogs discussing the matter, including The Ruminant, which is wholly dedicated to discussing the bill.

It's getting into crunch time, but it's not too late to contact your local Congressman and spread the word for others to do the same. 

A Matter of Taste

Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns and the creative director of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, wrote an incredible opinion piece in the New York Times Sunday magazine addressing the upcoming congressional revision of the Farm Bill.

This is a sweeping bill, omnibus in every sense... If you’re a chef or a home cook or someone who just likes to eat, it affects you, because it determines what you eat and how what you eat is grown.

And the food that we grow on 200 million acres of harvested cropland is inedible. Stand in the middle of our farm belt and you’ll see cornfields extending to the horizon, but the harvest won’t be dinner, not until it’s milled and processed into flours or starches, or used to fatten our animals on feedlots. Just four crops — corn, rice, soybeans and wheat — account for the vast majority of our harvested acreage. Not surprising, given that these same crops account for 70 percent of the total subsidies allotted to farmers.

No one wants farmers to suffer, especially chefs. But if we’re spending $20 billion or so a year on farm subsidies, we ought to invest in the foods we eat. And I mean eat, not process into something that resembles food.

If you have not read the entire piece, please do yourself the favor.  And then write your local representative.

Amber Fields of Bland (registration required)

Food, Ethics & the Environment on the Web

I'm happy to report that the webcasts of the Food, Ethics & the Environment conference sessions are finally up on the Princeton WebMedia site for your listening pleasure.  I would particularly recommend the presentation given by Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society in Session III and the entirety of Session IV, which was a pair of talks given by Michael Pollan and Bob Langert, the Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at MacDonald's (quite a pairing, to say the least). 

If you listen to no other part of the latter, I would suggest at least skipping to the Q&A at the end, beginning right at minute 58.  Mr. Langert, to whom I give much credit just for being willing to speak to a roomful of people who probably haven't patronized MacDonald's in years precisely for ethical reasons, was put to the test, and the back and forth between him, Pollan, and the conference attendees was unlike much I've ever experienced: entertaining, frustrating, tense, and engaging.  (Mr. Langert makes reference to the MacDonald's corporate responsibility report in his talk, and it can be found here.)

Enjoy.

Food, Ethics & the Environment webcast
(no permalink available; search for November 16 and 17, 2006)
 

Small World

While I finally took some time last night to catch up on my foodie reading, I was moved by Tana Butler's entry over at I Heart Farms to revisit Wendell Berry's essay, Think Little.  Berry is prolific, to say the least, but I think this essay has to be the single most powerful piece of his writing I've read.  And lucky for you, the full text is here on the internet for your reading pleasure (a little unwiedly, yes, but you can use that as an excuse to buy yourself the book).

It recently occurred to me that, over the last year or so, my interest in food has sort of morphed from a fairly superficial love of a good eating experience to something decidedly more political.  As happens with a lot of things, once I examined my food choices closely, I found that feeling good about what I eat involves much more than I originally thought.

At first, the idea was to treat my own body better -- more healthy, whole foods and fewer artificial ingredients and chemicals.  Okay, but it raised an important question: what is the good of taking care of my body if I don't recognize its place in space?  That is, is it necessarily better to eat things that might be good for my body if they're bad for the world my body inhabits?

I think it was right around the time I started asking these questions that I picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma and first saw reference to Berry's essays, Think Little in particular.  Needless to say, the piece struck a chord.

...the change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economics, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough.

Reading about the effects of our industrial food chain on the population and the environment had upset me almost to a point of paralysis, where I thought there was no possible way my weekly grocery trip could really affect change.  But reading this essay made me feel a bit better about my smallness.  How could I not find comfort in Berry's simple but profound belief that "a person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us"? 

So I have started owning up to my choices, and food has acquired an important secondary significance.  it's not just a means of nourishing myself, but it can (and should) also be a tool to nourish the planet.  It's overwhelming sometimes to try to circumvent our conventional means of cultivating and purchasing food, but I think the idea behind the Think Little philosophy is to embrace our agency as individuals and teach our peers by example, because when a lot of people think little, it can create big change.