La Vida Locavore is the blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
Agriculture
Chair: Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Ken Salazar (D-CO)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Norm Coleman (R-MN)
- Mike Crapo (R-ID)
- Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Larry Craig (R-ID)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: Tim Holden (D-PA)
- Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Barrow (D-GA)
* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Nancy Boyda (D-KS)
* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
- Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
- Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Bob Etheridge (D-NC)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Nick Lampson (D-TX)
- Tim Mahoney (D-FL)
- Jim Marshall (D-GA)
- Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- John Salazar (D-CO)
- Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- David Scott (D-GA)
- Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Charles Boustany, Jr. (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Terry Everett (R-AL)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Robin Hayes (R-NC)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
* Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Tim Walberg (R-MI) *=House Organic Caucus member
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
- Ray LaHood (R-IL)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
P Danny Davis (D-IL)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
P Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
- John Sarbanes (D-MD)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- John Yarmuth (D-KY)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Charles Boustany, Jr (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- David Davis (R-TN)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Ric Keller (R-FL)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- Timothy Wahlberg (R-MI)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
This week the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) met and decided to okay "organic" farmed fish, despite much opposition from well-respected groups like Consumers Union, Food and Water Watch, and the Center for Food Safety.
Consumers Union sums up the problem with the new standards as follows:
Fish to be fed food other than 100% organic feed-the gold standard that must be met by other USDA-certified organic livestock;
Fishmeal used to feed farmed fish from wild fish-which has the potential to carry mercury and PCBs; and
Open net cages to be used-which flush pollution, disease and parasites from open net fish farms directly into the ocean, adversely impacting wild fish supply, sustainability and the health of the oceans.
When you eat an organic apple, you can feel good that you aren't biting into a bunch of pesticides or other toxins. When you drink a glass of organic milk, you can feel good that you won't be drinking antibiotics and growth hormones. But if this recommendation by NOSB becomes a reality, you will have no such assurances if you eat a "USDA Certified Organic" fish.
While some members of NOSB admitted they were under pressure to OK this from the aquaculture industry, it's clear what American consumers want:
Just this week, a Consumers Union Poll revealed that 93 percent of Americans think that fish labeled as "organic" should be produced by 100 percent organic feed, like all other organic animals. Nine in 10 consumers also agreed that "organic" fish farms should be required to recover waste and not pollute the environment and 57 percent are concerned about ocean pollution caused by "organic" fish farms. Nearly 30,000 signatures have been collected in favor of maintaining strong standards for the organic label for fish.
Tom Daschle has been named to lead HHS - Health and Human Services. That means that the FDA will be under him. It also means he's out of the running for Secretary of Agriculture. For those of you who are keeping score at home, the other names floating around for potential SecAgs are: Tom Vilsack, Collin Peterson, Charles Stenholm (all of whom fall into my "Oh god, no!" category), Tom Buis, John Boyd, and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.
Today's dose of Tom Philpott brings word that Obama's graciously invited a well-known "fox" to serve on his transition team. How will the henhouse ever be safe now?
The transition named its "team members" looking at energy and natural resources agencies, which includes USDA. The list includes Michael R. Taylor, a man who spent his career bouncing between the employ of GMO-seed giant Monsanto and Bill Clinton's FDA and USDA. Taylor is widely credited with ushering Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply. He was particularly useful in the effort to prevent abstaining dairies from advertising their milk as rBGH-free.
I've been poking around Thomas.gov, the Library of Congress site, finding good food bills that were proposed but (in most cases) not passed. There were some surprises - certain bills had incredible bipartisan support for example, and some legislators apparently spend their time proposing resolutions commending their favorite NFL players (no joke!). But a lot of it is what you would expect... it's no surprise that Dennis Kucinich is really, really awesome, for example.
One thing I noticed is that Senator Clinton is actually WONDERFUL on food-related issues. I'll miss her votes from the Senate if she becomes Secretary of State. Out of 11 different bills I looked into on the Senate side, she was a cosponsor or sponsor for six of them and on a 7th she voted the right way. If there are any other Senators who are that good for us, then it's very few.
Also notable are Feingold, who sponsored or cosponsored six of the eleven things I looked at, Dick Durbin who sponsored or cosponsored five, and Tom Harkin, who sponsored or cosponsored four. Unfortunately a lot of these bills were never voted on so there's no way to tell who's for and who's against, but at least we know who to talk to on each of them if we want to get bills introduced by looking at their sponsors and cosponsors.
Today I learned some good news about organic dairy. Well, good and bad. The good - no, great - news is that the USDA took a step towards putting factory farm "organic" dairies out of business by issuing new rules that would disqualify them as organic. The bad news is that the proposed rule is so flawed that we can't even advocate for it.
First of all - if you are concerned about your own milk, check out Cornucopia Institute's dairy scorecard. They assure me that MOST organic milk does meet the high standards we expect them to, and their dairy scorecard is crucial to any consumer who wants to know for sure that their organic milk is organic.
That said, there are some bad apples (namely, Horizon and Aurora). The new rules strive to put them out of the organics business by requiring organic dairies to allow the cows to graze on grass for a significant part of the year. This is also great news for milk drinkers because when the cows eat grass, their milk contains a healthy nutrient called CLA. The problem with the proposed rule is that it would also put an estimated HALF of legitimate organic dairies out of business.
Forgive me for leaving out the details for now - I've read through them and my head is spinning. It's clear that organic dairy farmers are needed to weigh in on the proposed rules. The other problem with the rule is that it includes rules for organics other than dairy (beef, honey, and fish).
It seems to me that our major requests as of now are three:
First, separate the dairy rules from other livestock rules so that we can get the changes we need in dairy without slowing that process down with controversy over other foods;
Second, allow the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB) to weigh in on fully on the proposed rule (apparently the USDA issued this proposed rule without running it past NOSB);
Third, please extend the comment period on this proposed rule so that the organic community has time to decide what needs to be done and communicate that back to the USDA.
Currently there's a comment period open until mid-December. I will continue to cover this issue and I will certainly let everyone know once we foodies have a unified message to send to the USDA in our comments.
A couple of days ago I wrote this diary and copped quite a few unkind comments, mostly from misinformed posters and a handful of hardcore denialists. Yet the problems persist, and shooting the messenger rarely helps. But I'm a tough cookie, comfortable in the knowledge of what I know and write about and in this diary I'm basically tackling the same issues albeit from a different angle: "Big Pharma" and the multinational junk & processed foods companies ("Big Food") which, worldwide, make gigantic profits on the back of unsuspecting consumers, specifically marketing non-nutritious food appealing to children and adults alike via disingenuous advertising.
Obesity, though some would prefer to call it eating disorders, is a big growth area, not just for the unwitting sufferers, but also for some food companies which contributes so greatly to the problem. "Big Pharma" which works in tandem with "Big Food" would love to "terminate" its main source of competition: the natural products industry and the organic movement.
How fresh can you and your family really eat when the trip to the grocery store is a once-a-month event?
Calderon rests her hand on the wheeled wire basket that will haul home nearly a month's worth of groceries for her family of four.
It's after 5 p.m. on a Friday. Calderon and her daughter, Amelia, wait for the No. 72 bus.
From the bus shelter, Calderon has a good view of the neighborhood's most prominent business, The Sugar Shack, a vast strip club and adult business.
"Let's just suppose if they were to get rid of the strip joint across the street, if they put a store there," Calderon muses in Spanish.
Instead, the closest markets are convenience stores. They're sugar shacks of a kind, given their selection of cigarettes, beer and processed foods. At one, the produce section amounts to a few bruised tomatoes, limes and jalapenos. The other charges $4.89 for a gallon of milk, about $2 more than a regular supermarket.
I stumbled across an article about mad cow in Canada that I find very worrying: Canada mad cow case blamed on feed manufacturer. In the case of the 2007 pet food crisis in which hundreds of pets died from melamine and cyanuric acid contamination, the food came from a Canadian supplier. I'm not saying that Canadians are suspect... I'm saying that America and Canada trade. What happens in Canada can easily happen here.
One of our major mad cow preventative measures is a ban on feeding ruminents to ruminents. No feeding cows to cows. But you can feed cow to pig and pig to cow. And you can feed cow to chicken and chicken litter (including dropped chicken feed) to cows. Despite these rules being on the books:
Dr. Connie Argue of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said this week that one of the most recent cases of BSE and all 12 previous cases likely came "through incidents of accidental cross-contamination, which may occur in the complex feed and manufacturing system."
The food source was narrowed down to an unnamed food supplier of heifer ration that also manufactured food for other, non-ruminant animals that contained material prohibited from cattle, sheep and goat feed.
Two other unnamed feed manufacturers where prohibited material was handled were also mentioned in the report as potential areas for cross-contamination. The report said the feed did not contained banned protein on purpose, but may have been contaminated by equipment used to process non-ruminant feed.
In other words, when we're in the business of feeding rendered animals to animals in a highly centralized manufacturing system, mistakes happen.
Yes, you read that right. The World Bank in general and former chief economist Lawrence Summers in particular are concerned that the virgin lands of this earth located in developing nations may be "under polluted." Fortunately, they are right there to make sure we pollute those places to make sure they are just as dirty as our countries.
Enjoy that wild salmon, it could be extinct-- or at least unobtainable-- in your lifetime. This is the message I get the more I look into it. It's one reason why I write on the behalf of wild salmon, because it is so good as a food, and such an inspiring work of nature, but it is becoming so rare. What would the Pacific Northwest, my home, be like without it? The rivers would seem barren. The orcas in the ocean would starve and diminish. The Web of Life would fray badly.
And it is fraying now.
What are the alternatives?
Declining ocean fish stocks have led to a rapid growth in fish farming. Let's see how that's working out.
Absolutely brilliant article about the food industry's approach to public health. The food industry often presents itself as "part of the solution" to obesity and other nutrition-related problems, but the fact of the matter is, they are NOT. In short:
Why would a food company care about the health of society? Isn't a food company's primary goal to make profits for their shareholders? Of course it is, and that is fine. The problem is that the most healthful foods - unprocessed vegetables, fruits and grains - are not nearly as profitable as highly refined and processed foods. This fact makes the industry's claims to promote health somewhat dubious.
To make a short story long, please read the fantastic book Appetite for Profit by Michele Simon (and for dessert, I recommend Food Politics by Marion Nestle). For some brief examples on how the food industry undermines nutrition from this article, see below.
Organic Consumers Association, a group I strongly support (Ok, full disclosure... I'm on their policy advisory board) is collecting signatures on a petition they plan to give President Obama. I've included the petition below, and you can read it there if you'd like. You can sign the petition here - but why don't you also (not instead) send the text of the petition with your own ideas in your own words to Obama's transition team at the Change.gov site?
This week, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will meet (Nov 17-19). Among the topics for discussion are organic standards for farmed fish. As the Chicago Tribune put it, the organic definition for fish flounders.
With wild-caught fish the reason is quite simple: if the fish was wild, who the hell knows what it ate? I'd assume it probably ate food that was more natural than anything a fish might eat in captivity, but then there's the question of what kind of pollutants we lovely humans may have added to that wild fish's food. Hmm.
For farmed fish, here's the issue:
But under the proposed standard, farm-raised fish would be considered organic, even if what they eat includes fish meal, which is feed spiked with ground up wild fish.
So a wild fish is not organic, but farmed fish that eats wild fish is? How about not. I'll add to that my own personal concern with this that one of the major problems with some kinds of farmed fish is that it keeps the fish at the top of the food chain throughout their lives, whereas wild fish start lower down on the food chain and only achieve "top of the food chain" status in adulthood. This is significant because the higher you are on the food chain, the more pollutants you accumulate.
One more problem is:
The USDA requires that feed for cows, chickens and the like be 100 percent organic. But under the fish standard, non-organic feed initially would constitute up to 25 percent of the diet of an organically raised fish.
Perhaps NOSB should skip certifying fish and instead allow the MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) continue to provide the gold standard of seafood certification.
Groups opposing the proposed fish rules are Consumers Union, Food & Water Watch, Living Oceans Society, and the Center for Food Safety. I've included a statement from them below.
Tonight I discovered the fun of Thomas.gov, the Library of Congress website. Want to know what our friends in Washington are up to? Thomas will tell you. In my case, I was searching for something that I couldn't find, but I ended up stumbling upon a bunch of really great bills that Tom Harkin has proposed this year. They are:
S.771: A bill to amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to improve the nutrition and health of schoolchildren by updating the definition of "food of minimal nutritional value" to conform to current nutrition science and to protect the Federal investment in the national school lunch and breakfast programs.
If I've got the facts right, you can't serve "foods of minimal nutritional value" in schools, but the way they define "foods of minimal nutritional value" allows you to basically serve whatever you want. Cheetos? Mountain Dew? No problem. Under government definitions, those aren't foods of minimal nutritional value (so what is? tree bark?). Good on Harkin for proposing this! Unfortunately, after gaining 32 co-sponsors, it went to the Ag committee and died there.
I've been enjoying all kinds of speculation going around about who Obama will pick as his Secretary of Agriculture (the link will get you to a list of proposed names for Ag Secretary with some information about each). But I don't think the "who" is nearly so important as "what" - as in what they believe.
What do they believe the role of the government is? Do they think corporations have a right to pollute the air, land, and water for their own profit? Do they believe all people have a right to healthy food? How much information do they believe people are entitled to about their food? Is it important for the animals we eat to live and die well? And - in my mind, the most important of all - what do they know (and care) about soil????
