A significant ruling in San Francisco mowed down the prospects for geneticially engineered alfalfa. U.S. Agency Violated Law in Seed Case, Judge Rules, the New York Times reports.
ChewsWise Blog
ChewsWise Blog
Cracking Down on GMO Opponents
Here's a map revealing states that ban local counties from enacting seed legislation. This lobbying move occurred after Mendocino and Marin counties in California successfully legislated bans on GMO seeds in 2004. Agbribusiness got to work to prevent further such actions around the country. Here's a map laying out the activity (in red), from Enviromental Commons.
Environmental commons also details the status of these laws.
Not surprisingly, the laws have been passed in key agriculture states where the planting of GMO corn and soybeans are prevalent. An attempt to pass such a bill failed in California in 2006.
Organic Sexuality
"PASA includes farmers who see the growing of nutritious food as an end in itself, not just a way to eke a living from a patch of dirt." - Kim Miller, PASA president 2000-2007
This past weekend, I was in State College, Pennsylvania, for the annual Farming for the Future Conference, the largest sustainable agriculture gathering on the East Coast and among the biggest in the country, with about 1,700 attending.
The conference was organized by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and drew all sorts of farmers and artisans out of the hills and gulleys: from Amish draft-horsesmen to biodiesel proponents, from grass-fed beef ranchers to organic herb farmers, from bee keepers and mushroom culitvators to back-woods denizens of hand hoes and makers of tomato sauce, organic flour and artisanal cheese.
There wasn't an agribusinesses in sight.
I participated in a couple of panels, on the growth of organics and where this movement is headed. As might be expected, there were misgivings about the onward corporatization of organics and concern that the label would be devalued. At the same time, farmers expressed a strong desire to protect the "meaning" of organic, fight to maintain the integrity of the organic label, and welcome corporate players, if they played by the rules. Well, that last point might be overstating it - there was a clear distrust of the mainstream food companies.
One of the more enlighting talks of the conference came from Michael Ableman,
His solution - don't hit people over the head with a sense of all that's gone wrong, rather entice them with what can go right. For consumers, that might come through the food and an understanding of how it was grown and who grew it.
He also talked about the need to attract younger farmers to the land, perhaps with a sexual enticement. Ummm, not actual, but building on the idea - as one bumper sticker from the 60's put it - that "organic farmers are more fertile." Sexuality is humming through the farm, not just among the animals, but among the bugs, the seeds, in the soil itself at a microbrial level. He drew out this metaphore to many laughs, but made the point that there was a richness, even, at the extreme, an eroticism in this relationship with the land. Isn't this what marketers have known all along? Sell the sizzle? Actually, I've met quite a lot of young farm interns who matched up during their apprentice years and went on to start farms of their own.
The other interesting thing - aside from the workshops on how to butcher an animal, make your own sauerkraut, start a farmers' market - was the absolute buzz around biodiesel.
Recall, this meeting is the epitome of the do-it-yourself set and finally, in energy, biodiesel gives these farmers one more opportunity to cut their ties with The Man - Big Oil. Long live the french fry!
One farmer, though, who picks up gallons of the stuff every week, said he's around the fry oil so much, belching out of his tractors and trucks, that he has sworn off fries. "I won't eat 'em," he said. But that's probably not a bad thing.
I suggested, for variety, he try fry oil from a Chinese restaurant.
"That's a good idea, except when you get frying oil from a Chinese restaurant the trucks never seem to get full," he replied.
Ba-Da-Boom.
This kind of summed up the ethos of the conference: a "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" Toyota Prius.-
Clones Can't be Organic
The FDA's rush toward cloned livestock will bypass the organic food industry - at least according to the USDA's National Organic Program.
The folks over at the NOP issued a statement in the form of a Q&A today saying cloned animals were incompatible with organic food production. (This addressed some of the issues raised in a front page article in the Washington Post this week).
Q. Is cloning as a livestock production practice allowed under the NOP regulations?
A. No. Cloning as a production method is incompatible with the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) and is prohibited under the NOP regulations.
Q. May animals produced using cloning technology, or clones, be considered organic under the NOP regulations?
A. No. Animals produced using cloning technology are incompatible with OFPA and cannot be considered organic under the NOP regulations.
The last question though left open the possibility that offspring of organic animals might become organic.
Q. What about the progeny of animals produced using cloning technology, or clones – can they be organic under the NOP regulations in organic livestock production?
A. AMS intends to work with the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to develop a rulemaking proposal to determine the organic status of the progeny of animals derived using cloning technology, or clones.
Why? Because right now some organic farms can bring in conventional animals and there is no tracking of the cloned livestock. It's a huge problem but won't be solved unless we call a clone what it is - A CLONE! - and label and track it so everyone knows.
Republican Environmental Buzz
What can a Republican political strategist tell us about the environment? Quite a bit, if you read this engaging column over at Grist.
Amanda Griscom Little gets GOP strategist Frank Luntz to give his quick comments on creating an environmental communications strategy. Three points stand to me.
One, that for a message to work, it's gotta have a symbol: he points to the Polar Bears as this decade's Bald Eagles.
Secondly, that a story needs to be told visually to have impact, so kudos to Al Gore's video.
Third, it's got to connect with other issues, whether energy security, energy independence - these are all bigger than environmentalism persee because they reach other interest groups.
But what I found most curious was that this GOP heavy considers himself sympathetic to the cause, which goes to show you how much this issue has crossed over. The big failure, he maintains, has been the inability of environmentalists to capitalize on sentiment out there.
Why?
Because they're too mean ... or so he says.
The column seems to follow in the spirit of keep your friends close, but your enemies closer...
Echoes at Eco-Farm
At the Eco-Farm conference last week in Asilomar, on the coast of California in Monterey, the sun was shining. For one day at least, then it began drizzling and I didn’t mind being indoors listening to a host of engaging speakers and panelists.
A theme kept arising - where are we headed? It’s a pertinent question for organic and sustainable agriculture, looking back over 30 years of progress with both pride and misgivings. Common themes were voiced and common quesions about whether the movement was being corrupted by the mainstreaming of organic food.
Michael Sligh of Rural Advancement Foundation International, a longtime participant in this movement, talked up the concept of “multistreaming” as opposed to “mainstreaming.” It’s a good concept, since that’s where we’re headed - food with various values and characteristics sold in a variety of ways and channels. There’s no mainstream these days, just ever more segmented markets which is why the be-all-things-to-all-people retailers are struggling. Small and focused is beautiful, and profitable.
My message - or the one I tried to convey in a plenary - was that a lot of energy gets expended on anxieties about bigness. I think more work needs to be put into “What’s Next?” Whether it’s a more vibrant local scene, social justice, fair trade - whatever it is. But judging by the number of people on hand, I’d have to say those issues are being discussed in a way that will create the next wave in this movement.
Wal-Mart Unmoved
Wal-Mart has issued a response to the Cornucopia complaint about its labeling practices. "Wal-Mart officials say that the company has done nothing wrong," according to Business Week.
The company notes it has has more than 2,000 locations that offer up to 200 organic selections, in addition to thousands of nonorganic offerings. It called the mislabeling an "isolated incident."
But many retailers sell far more than 200 organic offerings but seem to get the labeling right. Why doesn't Wal-Mart simply admit it made a mistake and plege to correct it? Instead, they are facing two potential investigations on mislabeling by the state of Wisconsin and the USDA.
Organic but not Natural?
Center for Science in the Public Interest, the nutritional watchdog, has said it withdrew its threatened lawsuit against Pepsi after the company announced it was dropping an "All Natural" claim for 7up.
At issue, the use of high fructose corn syrup, which CSPI notes "is made through a complex chemical industrial process in which corn starch molecules are enzymatically reassembled into glucose and fructose molecules."
A couple of years ago, a company tried to make "organic high fructose corn syrup" by using the same process with organic corn. I heard the company halted work due to a lack of demand, but have also heard annecdotally that organic HFCS is available from a European company. (I have not confirmed this).
This became an issue a couple of years back, when the USDA gave a blanket approval for "food contact substances" - some 500+ FDA-allowed chemicals - for use in organic production. One was styrene-divinylbenzene, necessary to manufacture HFCS. The issue though never got on the front burner because no one came out with a product with Organic HFCS.
Presumably, if a company uses this sweetener with a natural label they will come on CSPI's radar screen, being forced to argue either that Organic HFCS is "natural" or to justify that an organic product could be "un-natural." This will prove a very interesting debate ... perhaps too interesting, which is why no one yet has tried to sweeten an organic product with organic high frustose corn syrup.
Seedy
I was speaking to one organic seed company rep recently, who told me they source no corn seed from the Midwest because it's likely contaminated with GMO - that is with genetically modified seed.
I also recently came across this Nation article by Lisa Hamilton, who says that virtually no corn seed in the US is GMO free. But what the article points out is that there are in fact traditional breeding techniques - through mating one plant with another - that could insert a shield to prevent GMO contamination. The only problem is, that method is now patented too.
The issue here is the privatization of seed, which is one major problem I see with sending GMO seeds to the Third World. The farmers there will be tied into the seed and chemical companies, like any addict. They will also need to invest in chemicals and irrigation networks, which only concentrates farming and takes more people off the land and into cities.
Hello USDA? Check Up on Wal-Mart
The Cornucopia Instiute, a small farm advocacy group, has filed a complaint charging that Wal-Mart is passing off non organic food as organic. At the very least, the retailing giant may be causing consumer confusion if you take a look at the pictures Cornucopia has posted on its web site.
So what's the big deal?
Well, one of the reasons organic regulations were written was to make sure that consumers got what they were paying for. There's a whole system of inspections, certifications and labeling requirements that each producer and retailer must meet in order to sell organic food. Now, a retailer doesn't have to be certified to sell organic food, but they are required by law to label the stuff correctly (among other things). You want the fine print, check it out on the USDA web site here. The bottom line: mislabeling can lead to a $10,000 fine per incident.
Although Cornucopia complained to the USDA several weeks ago, the USDA apparently took no action. Nor did Wal-Mart, although Cornucopia also fired off a letter to Bentonville about the labeling issue. With everyone apparently asleep, Cornucopia - pitbulls that they are - racheted up the action by filing legal action.
Now, it would be easy to cry fraud. More accurately, it's probably a case of ignorant stocking clerks and managers slapping the organic signage on any and all products. Not too keen - but hey, that's what you get in the absence of adequate training about the organic marketplace.
So two things needs to happen. The USDA needs to check this out. And Wal-Mart needs to take some corrective action. They might be able to change the world by embracing sustainability, but first, they've got to get it right.
No wonder some organic types are likening the company's entry in the market as the arrival of Wal-Martians.
Organic Fraud?
The Dallas Morning News has run a groundbreaking series of stories about apparent fraud in the organic food industry.
The main story, "Is Organic Food The Real Deal?", was based on a Freedom of Information Act requests of documents from the USDA about complaints against certain producers and certifiers.
...a Dallas Morning News analysis has found that the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out.
The most pertinent details had to do with crops coming from China.
Mutsumi Sakuyoshi, a Japanese inspector who has checked Chinese soybean fields for many of the world's largest certifiers, said she confronted one farm's workers after finding an empty plastic bag of herbicide.
Workers told her wind must have blown it from a neighbor's field.
Another farmer gave her an affidavit stating the land under inspection hadn't been used for at least three years. Ms. Sakuyoshi found the government official who stamped it and questioned its accuracy.
"He said, 'No. I don't know. I don't care. They just asked me to stamp it, so I stamped it,' " she said.
The only questionable part of the story I had was a blanket assertion by a USDA researcher that organics would be impossible in China because of water and air pollution. I would be very careful about writing off a country as large as China and its 2 billion population, especially considering that small peasant farmers historically used and still use organic methods such as composting.
But there is a major questionmark about whether the organic exports from China meet the USDA organic regs. That's a very worthwhile question to ask and to my mind has not been sufficiently answered yet.
I have heard annedotal reports of cancelled orders of organic products from China because of these concerns.
It also ran a story on a certifier who was certifying fields with prohibited materials. The USDA really needs to clamp down to maintain, and restore, credibility to the industry. Here's the piece Organic Certifier Targeted