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Regional Farm & Food Project Spring 2007 News If you think you feel our paradigm shifting, these news stories should interest you! 10 news stories...
1. Farm & Food Network Presents "Welcome to the Cow Industrial Complex" Farm & Food Network Meeting & Potluck Dinner Billie Best will present "Welcome to the Cow Industrial Complex: the link between your health, the stock market and corporate personhood." Quaker Meeting House The Farm & Food Network hosts a listserv and quarterly meetings to connect farm and food entrepreneurs with new business opportunities and strengthen business relationships. Our pods are activist groups organized around pubic issues education. Together we are restoring the balance between farms and factories, local and global, people and profits. Join us for an evening of networking and good food. Everyone who attends the Farm & Food Network meeting is invited to share updates on their work. If you are promoting a country fair, an educational workshop, or summer farm and food event, we invite you to tell us about it. Now is the time to get it on our calendars. Also, Regional Farm & Food Project has a new mailing address. Please make a note of it: 2. Northeast Pastured Poultry Association Hatchery Update LOCALLY HATCHED BROILER CHICKS Within the past few years two issues around air shipping of day old chicks have emerged as problems for pastured poultry producers: airline's hesitation to ship live animals, including chicks, resulting in uncertain and more expensive shipping and the effects of early stress on chicks that spend 48 hours or longer in transit, subjected to extremes of temperature and handling. NEPPA, after a SARE supported feasibility study, has opened a hatchery to offer New York State producers a local resource for chicks. Jill and Ken Gies of The Pasture have operated the hatchery for four full seasons, bringing the incubation equipment up to peak operating condition and perfecting their egg handling techniques. Successful incubation requires extremely precise temperatures, humidity and oversight. Ken and Jill have achieved hatch rates that equal the industry standard and are consistently over 80%. They also purchase eggs from a high quality source, ensuring that chicks start with good genetics and vigor, and they carefully inspect each chick at hatch and cull those that lack vigor or appear defective in any way. This results in lower brooder mortality at your farm. During the 2006 season the Hatchery sold 15,000 chicks to satisfied customers across New York. Hatches are scheduled every Tuesday from April through August. Chicks should be ordered 5 weeks in advance, with payment submitted at time of order. There may be a small number of chicks available on shorter notice. NEPPA is an all-volunteer organization devoted to helping interested individuals and families get started raising pastured poultry. Members are located throughout the greater NY Capital District and Northeastern NY. We sponsor formal and informal training and technical assistance on all aspects of pastured poultry production, coordinate utilization of a mobile processing unit, and can offer equipment or other loans to qualified families requiring assistance to get started. Our members are eager to pass on the gift of knowledge and experience to others looking for better know-how regarding pasture raised poultry and other animals. Hatchery Operated by: Jill & Ken Gies, The Pasture, 660 Fordsbush Rd, Fort Plain, NY 13339, 518-568-5322, giespasture@usadatanet.net To learn more contact the NEPPA Leadership Committee: 3. Honey Bees AWOL! 90 Threatened Crops, $14 Billion in Potential Losses "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein Losing Their Buzz Excerpt: Urbana, Illinois -- When Hollywood filmmakers want to heighten the tension of an insect fear film, they just arrange for millions of killer bees to appear out of nowhere to threaten a vulnerable group of people — over the years, these have included children in a school bus, celebrants at a Mardi Gras parade and people living near a nuclear power plant. But people from all demographic groups across the country are facing a much more frightening real-life situation: the disappearance of millions of bees. This winter, in more than 20 states, beekeepers have noticed that their honeybees have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind no clues as to their whereabouts. There are no tell-tale dead bodies either inside colonies or out in front of hives, where bees typically deposit corpses of dead nestmates. What’s more, the afflicted colonies tend to be full of honey, pollen and larvae, as if all of the workers in the nest precipitously decamped on some prearranged signal. Beekeepers are up in arms — last month, leaders in the business met with research scientists and government officials in Florida to figure out why the bees are disappearing and how to stop the losses. Nobody had any answers. That beekeepers are alarmed over this situation is understandable, but, just as in the movies, the public may not recognize the magnitude of the threat that these mysterious events present. A decline in the numbers of Apis melllifera, the world’s most widely distributed semi-domesticated insect, doesn’t just mean a shortage of honey for toast and tea. In fact, the economic value of honey, wax and other bee products is trivial in comparison with the honeybee’s services as a pollinator. More than 90 crops in North America rely on honeybees to transport pollen from flower to flower, effecting fertilization and allowing production of fruit and seed. The amazing versatility of the species is worth an estimated $14 billion a year to the United States economy. Approximately one-third of the typical American’s diet (primarily the healthiest part) is directly or indirectly the result of honey bee pollination. Production of almonds in California, a $2 billion enterprise, is almost entirely dependent on honey bees. Every year beekeepers transport millions of bees around the country to meet the ever-growing need for pollination services for almonds, apples, blueberries, peaches and other crops. This year it is possible that there won’t be enough bees to meet the demand for pollinators. Theories abound as to potential causes of what is being called colony collapse disorder. As a social species living in close quarters at high densities — the average hive contains upwards of 30,000 insects — honeybees are prone to a staggering diversity of fungal, bacterial and viral diseases. In the 1980s, honeybee numbers plummeted when two species of parasitic mites appeared, wiping out most populations of wild bees and placing more pressure on managed colonies. This latest drop in numbers may be the consequence of a new infection, or of several diseases simultaneously, leading to a fatally compromised immune system. It is also possible that severe stress brought on by crowding, inadequate nutrition or even the combined effects of prophylactic antibiotics and miticides sprayed by beekeepers to ward off infections may be a factor. Another, particularly sad, possibility is that accidental exposure to a new pesticide may cause non-lethal behavioral changes that interfere with the ability of honeybees to orient and navigate; brain-damaged foraging bees may simply get lost on their way home and starve to death away from the hive. Irrespective of its causes, however, this drop comes at a critical time, with demand for pollination services rocketing upward. Even in a high-tech age when the human capacity to improve upon nature seems limitless, there is no satisfactory substitute for the honeybee. Thus it’s astonishing that beekeeping remains largely unimproved by technological advances relative to just about every other form of animal husbandry. The basic design of honey bee housing is essentially unchanged since L. L. Langstroth patented his movable frame hive in 1852... May R. Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois, is the author of “Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs and Rock ’n’ Roll.” FULL STORY: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02berenbaum.html?ex=1176004800&en=d766f010ec405f03&ei=5070 FOR MORE INFORMATION: (NPR) - The disappearance of bee colonies across North America, which endangers the pollination of fruits and vegetables, prompts a hearing by the House agriculture panel. Alarmed beekeepers, farmers and scientists voiced their concerns at the hearing. Full article here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9213661&ft=1&f=1001 In the US, the Sierra Club has been among those asking whether GM crops are responsible for the massive instantaneous die-offs of millions of honey-bees, which some say are slowly assuming catastrophic proportions. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7670 An article in Der Spiegel, Germany's most influential news magazine, also asks if the decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany is a result of GM crops. Walter Haefeker, vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association, points to research conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004, which examined the effects of pollen from Bt maize (corn) on bees. When during the research, by sheer chance, the bees in the experiments were infested with a parasite, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed on a concentrated Bt feed. According to the director of the study, Professor Hans-Heinrich Kaatz, the Bt toxin may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know." http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7676 4. Maine Does the Math on Agriculture Agricultural value study approved, Project will assess industry's worth to Maine, cost of improvements AUGUSTA - Calling Maine agriculture "the invisible economic sector" of the state, legislators Monday backed a study to determine what would happen if the state invested in agriculture improvements. There are plenty of signs that farmers want to expand their farms and businesses, proponents said, but there is too deep a shortage of support mechanisms within the state government. The study, sponsored by Rep. Wendy Pieh, D-Bremen, would assess the state's agricultural value and then project what the financial impact would be if a variety of bureaucratic infrastructure improvements were made. These would include more state dairy and meat inspectors, more state veterinarians, a $1 million marketing fund, a revolving loan fund and funding for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Research Center. David Milan, economic director of Bucksport, said that when his community proposed a shared-kitchen facility and looked into how many licensed food manufacturers were within a 40-mile radius of Bucksport, town officials were shocked. "There were more than 400," Milan said. They were bakers, farmers, growers and producers who were making everything from jam to salsa in their home kitchens. Without a facility, which Bucksport is creating, the opportunity to expand was beyond their reach. Milan testified that any investment in Maine's rural economy would pay off for the state. Marge Kilkelly, former state senator, goat farmer and director of the Northeast States Association for Agricultural Stewardship, proposed the five-year plan, which would conduct the study in the first year, fund it in the second year and then gather results of success in the third through fifth years. The Agriculture's Creative Economy Study, or ACES, would "be a small investment of state money that would greatly be returned to the state through economic growth," she said. The ACES would be carried out by a Cabinet-level team consisting of representatives from the Maine departments of Labor, Agriculture, and Economic and Community Development. Kilkelly said she based her proposal on three premises: the last thing farmland grows is houses, any economy is only as strong as its weakest link, and the rural economy is invisible. "You don't get the same impact looking at a sign at Bath Iron Works as you do one on a farm saying Androscoggin Holsteins," she said. "When BIW sneezes, the stock in tissue goes up. When the dairy industry is hemorrhaging, we have trouble getting noticed." Kilkelly said that when the state has had lean financial years, the Maine Department of Agriculture's budget is the first to be cut, but those cuts were never restored in good years. In addition, she said, the loss of value-added products means "lost jobs, lost money and lost opportunities." She said Maine's animals are sent to Pennsylvania for slaughter, fleeces are sent to Michigan for processing, and grain is sent to Canada to be milled. "We have wonderful, wonderful people in the Department of Agriculture," she said. "There are just not enough." "We need to strike now," she said. "There is an amazing renaissance in New England of people - consumers - who want to know more about their food and where it comes from. We have a tremendous advantage in Maine over other parts of the country. If you invest in ACES, all of Maine will prosper." Representatives from the Maine Farm Bureau, the Maine Department of Agriculture, the town of Bucksport, the Down East Business Alliance and individual farmers testified in favor of the resolve. There was no opposition. Copyright 2007 Bangor Daily News 5. World Food Prices Rise as Grain Crops Become Bio-Fuel Diverson of U.S. Grain to Fuel is Raising World Food Prices If you think you are spending more each week at the supermarket, you may be right. The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide. Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in 10 years, and rice prices are rising too. In addition, soybean futures have risen by half. A Bloomberg analysis notes that the soaring use of corn as the feedstock for fuel ethanol "is creating unintended consequences throughout the global food chain." The countries initially hit by rising food prices are those where corn is the staple food. In Mexico, one of more than 20 countries with a corn-based diet, the price of tortillas is up by 60 percent. Angry Mexicans in crowds of up to 75,000 have taken to the streets in protest, forcing the government to institute price controls on tortillas. Food prices are also rising in China, India, and the United States, countries that contain 40 percent of the world's people. While relatively little corn is eaten directly in these countries, vast quantities are consumed indirectly in meat, milk, and eggs in both China and the United States. Rising grain and soybean prices are driving up meat and egg prices in China. January pork prices were up 20 percent above a year earlier, eggs were up 16 percent, while beef, which is less dependent on grain, was up 6 percent. In India, the overall food price index in January 2007 was 10 percent higher than a year earlier. The price of wheat, the staple food in northern India, has jumped 11 percent, moving above the world market price. In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the wholesale price of chicken in 2007 will be 10 percent higher on average than in 2006, the price of a dozen eggs will be up a whopping 21 percent, and milk will be 14 percent higher. And this is only the beginning. In the past, food price rises have usually been weather related and always temporary. This situation is different. As more and more fuel ethanol distilleries are built, world grain prices are starting to move up toward their oil-equivalent value in what appears to be the beginning of a long-term rise. The food and energy economies, historically separate, are now merging. In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will move it into the energy economy. As the price of oil climbs so will the price of food. Some 16 percent of the 2006 U.S. grain harvest was used to produce ethanol. With 80 or so ethanol distilleries now under construction, enough to more than double existing ethanol production capacity, nearly a third of the 2008 grain harvest will be going to ethanol. Since the United States is the leading exporter of grain, shipping more than Canada, Australia, and Argentina combined, what happens to the U.S. grain crop affects the entire world. With the massive diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars, exports will drop. The world's breadbasket is fast becoming the U.S. fuel tank. The number of hungry people in the world has been declining for several decades, but in the late 1990s the trend reversed and the number began to rise. The United Nations currently lists 34 countries as needing emergency food assistance. Many of these are considered failed and failing states, including Chad, Iraq, Liberia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe. Since food aid programs typically have fixed budgets, if the price of grain doubles, food aid will be reduced by half. Urban food protests in response to rising food prices in low and middle income countries, such as Mexico, could lead to political instability that would add to the growing list of failed and failing states. At some point, spreading political instability could disrupt global economic progress. Against this backdrop, Washington is consumed with "ethanol euphoria." President Bush in his State of the Union address set a production goal for 2017 of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels, including grain-based and cellulosic ethanol, and liquefied coal. Given the current difficulties in producing cellulosic ethanol at a competitive cost and given the mounting public opposition to liquefied coal, which is far more carbon-intensive than gasoline, most of the fuel to meet this goal might well have to come from grain. This could take most of the U.S. grain harvest, leaving little grain to meet U.S. needs, much less those of the hundred or so countries that import grain. The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's 2 billion poorest people. The risk is that millions of those on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder will start falling off as higher food prices drop their consumption below the survival level. In February 2007 the World Food Programme Director James T. Morris reported that 18,000 children are now dying every day from hunger and malnutrition. This daily loss of life is six times the number of U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq over the last four years. There are alternatives to this grim scenario. A rise in auto fuel efficiency standards of 20 percent, phased in over the next decade would save as much oil as converting the entire U.S. grain harvest into ethanol. One option that is gaining momentum is a shift to plug-in hybrids. Adding a second storage battery to a gas-electric hybrid car along with a plug-in capacity so that the batteries can be recharged at night allows most short-distance driving -- daily commuting and grocery shopping, for example -- to be done with electricity. If this shift were accompanied by investment in thousands of wind farms that could feed cheap electricity into the grid, then cars could run largely on electricity for the equivalent cost of $1 per gallon gasoline. Encouragingly, three auto manufacturers -- Toyota, Nissan, and GM -- have announced plans to bring plug-in hybrid cars to market. Plug-In Partners, which is spearheading a national campaign to shift to plug-in hybrid cars, already has 508 partners, including electrical utilities, corporations, state and city governments, and farm and environmental groups. Among its fast-growing list of partners are the American Public Power Association, Electric Power Research Institute, American Wind Energy Association, American Corn Growers Association, and the cities of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and Boston. Already a number of Partners have collectively pledged to purchase for their own fleets more than 8,000 plug-in hybrids as soon as they reach the market. Ethanol euphoria is not an acceptable substitute for a carefully thought through policy. For Washington, it is time to decide whether to continue with the current policy of subsidizing more and more grain-based fuel distilleries or to encourage a shift to more fuel-efficient cars and a new automotive fuel economy centered on plug-in hybrid cars and wind energy. The choice is between a future of rising world food prices, spreading hunger, and growing political FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Copyright 2007 Earth Policy Institute 6. Federal Legislation Attempts to Reform Meat Monopolies RANCHERS SUPPORT BILL TO RESTORE COMPETITIVE, FAIR MARKETS Billings, Montana -- Western ranchers are applauding legislation introduced today to return competition and fairness to the nation’s cattle markets. Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (Rep.-Wyoming) has introduced the Captive Supply Reform Act, S. 1017, with bipartisan support. The bill would limit meatpacker control of the cattle market by requiring more transparent transactions and firm base prices for cattle supplied under advance contracts. Four multi-national packing firms control the markets, in part through captive supplies, or cattle owned or contracted by the packers. “It’s time for Congress to step up to the plate and support Sen. Enzi’s reforms,” said Mabel Dobbs, a rancher from Weiser, Idaho, and chair of the Livestock Committee for the Billings-based Western Organization of Resource Councils. “Ranchers want and deserve to earn a fair price in an open, competitive livestock market.” Dobbs said the packers use captive supplies to manipulate the price paid to family farmers and ranchers for their livestock for nearly 20 years. “It’s time to fix the livestock markets,” she said. “Meatpackers profit at the expense of hard-working producers by controlling prices,” said Dan Teigen, a member of Montana’s Northern Plains Resource Council and the WORC Livestock Committee. “Senator Enzi’s proposal is a market-based solution that restores competition to the packer-controlled livestock markets we face today. This change would cost virtually nothing for the federal government to implement, but would pay dividends to rural communities throughout this country. Every senator with cattle in his or her state should support this bill.” Cosponsors are Senators Byron Dorgan (Dem.-North Dakota), Kent Conrad (Dem.-North Dakota), Chuck Grassley (Rep.-Iowa), and Craig Thomas (Rep.-Wyoming). “Ranchers owe a big ‘thank you’ to these senators for their efforts to regain a true livestock market,” Dobbs said. The livestock market is broken. Big meatpackers are taking advantage of honest, hardworking family farmers and ranchers by price fixing. Fair and open livestock markets enable farmers and ranchers, auction yard owners and feeders to keep their independence, run their businesses, provide for their families and build their rural communities. It is time to fix the broken livestock market. The Captive Supply Reform Act, S. 1017, would fix the problems without banning use of captive supplies. The bill would restore competition in the market for livestock contracts by
WORC is a network of grassroots organizations from seven states that includes 9,700 members and 45 local community groups. WORC represents farmers, ranchers, and consumers in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wyoming. FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.worc.org/media/csra3_07.htm 7. Mayor Bloomberg Changes the Way the Big Apple Eats Farewell, French Fries! Hello, Sliced Apples! NEW YORK’S mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, loves popcorn and merlot, but not always at the same time. He watches his weight carefully, but more often than not a hamburger will do for lunch, with maybe a little cream cheese on a cracker for a snack. The mayor’s a charmer at the dinner parties he gives at his Upper East Side town house, but pot pies, fried chicken and ice cream sundaes are more likely to be on the menu than foie gras and miso-soaked sea bass. In other words, from a culinary point of view, he has sweater-vest taste on a billionaire’s budget. But from a policy perspective, Mr. Bloomberg has taken on more food issues, and provoked more controversy, than any New York mayor before him. As a result, he has the potential to change the way more New Yorkers eat — whether in the haughtiest dining rooms or the poorest home kitchens — than all the city’s food activists and restaurant critics combined. “A lot of what he’s doing is likely to be happening nationally over time,” said Tim Zagat, the co-founder of the guides that bear his name. “The government’s involvement in what we’re eating is going to be increasingly visible as a way to make people healthier.” From the start, Mayor Bloomberg muscled his way into the city’s restaurants on a health platform. He banned smoking in bars and small restaurants. (Lighting up in restaurants with more than 35 seats had already been outlawed.) More recently, he shot down trans fat, forced large restaurant chains to post calorie counts and took on a cutting-edge culinary technique called sous vide. Bar owners threatened to pull him from office over the first move, and restaurant owners are still grumbling over the others. The mayor’s raucous takeover of the public school system in 2002 led to a culinary bonus for the city’s 1.1 million school children. They now have an executive chef, whole wheat bread, salad bars and little plastic bags of sliced New York state apples. Even before the very public rat infestations and a string of high-profile closings, health inspectors were already making about 15,000 more restaurants visits annually than they did four years ago. In January and February, the health department closed 147 restaurants, double the number for the same two months last year. And the Mayor has now turned his attention to hunger and poverty, working with the City Council to get more people to sign up for food stamps and looking with renewed vigor at how to get healthy food to people who live in neighborhoods with no grocery stores. Perhaps the biggest statement Mayor Bloomberg has made about food policy came in the form of a hire. In January, Benjamin Thomases, 31, a New Yorker who holds an MBA from Columbia University, became the first official charged with coordinating the city’s policies on food. “This is a very important moment for the city,” said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, a Greenmarket regular who has a strong following among New York health and food advocacy groups and who pressed the mayor for the position. Still, people engaged in agricultural reform, anti-hunger workers and even the average food-obsessed New Yorker wonder whether the Mayor is actually leading the city’s current food revolution or merely walking in front of a social change that was well under way before he took office. It’s easy to see a dawning awareness in City Hall that government can help people eat better. But it’s not as easy to find a singular grand vision, or even much of a pattern, behind the intersection of food and city government. The mayor declined an interview with The New York Times on this subject and has never presented an overarching view on food policy. “On food issues they’re very peculiar, this Bloomberg administration,” said Toni Liquori, an educator who has worked on food and public health projects in New York City for more than 20 years, including administering a $2 million Kellogg Foundation grant to improve the eating habits and health of New York City school children. “What ends up happening is that one issue will pierce through and someone will charge with it, like trans fats or school meals,” she said. “But you also have a sense that it’s not like the administration is driving anything full tilt. It’s not as if they have embraced the full connection on food.” Anti-hunger advocates, who have long been skeptical of Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment to the poor, credit the Mayor for taking a more serious interest in food as it relates to poverty this term. “The tools are now all in place to achieve significant progress, but it depends on whether the city decides to use the tools,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and former member of the Clinton administration. “It took Nixon to go to China,” he said. “Maybe it’ll take a Republican billionaire to have real progress on hunger and poverty.” In many American cities, agricultural politics are being argued at the bar and alpha moms are organizing to take back school cafeterias. Chefs are making heroes out of cattle ranchers and the obesity crisis has prompted a new look at how and what to feed the poor. In an effort to build a cohesive public policy that brings all those food-related movements together, a handful of cities began forming food policy councils in the late 1990s. The organizations, which are in part designed to advise governments on matters of food, usually include anyone who might have a stake in an urban diet. The councils with the most power are seated in city or state health departments, and might include farmers, food bank managers, school principals, backyard gardeners, grocers, chefs, labor leaders and clergy. Both Berkeley and San Francisco have played with the model, as have Hartford, Conn., Toronto and Portland, Ore. Last week, New York state agricultural officials announced that the state would soon have its first food-policy council. The nearest thing New York city government has now is Mr. Thomases, the food czar, who works deep inside the enormous collection of city departments called Health and Human Services. In an interview, however, he said that his job is not to set policy or offer vision. “I prefer not to think of myself as the food czar,” said Mr. Thomases, who is making $85,000 a year, a figure that some in City Hall say would be higher if the position held more power. Rather, his job is to make some sense of the myriad ways the city feeds people. He will be the glue that helps hold it together, said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor under whom Mr. Thomases serves. His main mechanism will be an interdepartmental food policy task force, which had its first meeting in February. He has also reached out to groups outside government, including large food manufacturers as well as the New York City Food Systems Network, an informal nexus for people who work in hunger, nutrition, agriculture and other food-related endeavors. And while organizations like food councils and positions like Mr. Thomases’ are a start, no major American city has yet established a Department of Food, in the way New York has a Department of Cultural Affairs or a Department of Environmental Protection. Although Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, recently weighed in on the 2007 Farm Bill and many mayors have taken up the anti-obesity cause, no mayor of a large urban city has stood up and become, in essence, the Alice Waters of city food politics. In the Bloomberg administration, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden is as close as it gets. As head of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, he has done more to change the mayor’s thinking about the government’s role in how we eat than anyone else in the administration. Mayor Bloomberg, who has donated millions to the Johns Hopkins school of public health that bears his name, brought in the antismoking, TB-fighting Dr. Frieden early on. Though he’s been labeled both a zealot and a revolutionary, Dr. Frieden doesn’t see himself as either. And he doesn’t see the changes in how New York eats as part of any larger foodie revolution. The city, he points out, has had a long history of making people healthier by controlling food. In 1918, the Board of Health condemned oyster beds in the East River because they were contaminated with typhoid. Today, typhoid isn’t killing New Yorkers. Heart disease is. “Obesity and diabetes are now the only health problems in the United States getting worse,” Dr. Frieden said. In light of the epidemic, Mayor Bloomberg’s hand in changing New York’s diet “has been relatively restrained,” he said. Dr. Frieden, who has a runner’s body even though he swears he can’t lay off desserts, said it took a little bit of convincing to get the mayor behind the trans fat ban. But in the end, as with the smoking ban, it all came down to one question. The mayor asked, “Are you certain this is going to save lives?” Not all of Dr. Freiden’s efforts to alter New York’s food landscape have been successful. He realizes that a law forcing large restaurant chains to post calorie counts as prominently as menu prices might face a court challenge. And although the department often trots out its Healthy Bodegas Initiative as an example of innovative food policy work, the project has not gotten very far. The idea was to encourage bodegas in neighborhoods with poverty and health problems to sell more nutritious food. An effort to get more 1 percent milk into some stores worked, but an attempt to persuade 60 bodegas in East Harlem and the South Bronx to sell packages of sliced New York apples and carrots didn’t take off. The program began in all 60 in December, but as of last week, no one could say how many bodegas still sold the snacks, and a department spokeswoman called it a preliminary effort that bogged down by distribution problems. Despite those stumbles, many in city government feel empowered under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership to take on food-related projects. The Department for the Aging is rethinking the Meals on Wheels programs and wondering about how to serve more culturally appropriate meals at senior centers populated by people with, say, roots in China or Italy. The New York City health code was amended last spring so that day-care providers must offer their charges fewer calories. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development will open two 20,000-square-foot urban farms this summer on vacant city land. Ms. Gibbs, a tough and experienced bureaucrat who started with the Giuliani administration, gets a twinkle in her eye when she starts to contemplate the ways food issues might come together in the city. “There’s no doubt in my mind there’s something about food in the air that people are picking up,” she said. On the other hand, chefs are mixed on Mr. Bloomberg’s food record — especially the few who got hit with fines last year for cooking sous vide, which involves vacuum-sealing food in plastic and cooking it slowly in water that’s barely hot. Fearing the practice could infect diners with pathogens like botulism, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has restricted its use while it develops regulations. “In the restaurant industry, we see the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as a division of tax and finance,” said Colin Alevras, the chef and co-owner of the Tasting Room, who doesn’t think Mr. Bloomberg is a serious food guy. Former Mayor Ed Koch, a man who knows a thing or two about the headaches of trying to run New York as well as the pleasures of eating in its restaurants, counters that the mayor really is a food guy. “And he has a great cache of wine,” Mr. Koch said. Although he’s a little disappointed he wasn’t tapped to serve as the city’s official taster, he does have a little piece of advice for Mayor Bloomberg as he works on food policy: Don’t forget that eating is about pleasure, and food is supposed to taste good. “You don’t want to leave food policy to a doctor,” said Mr. Koch. “Because a doctor cuts out everything.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 8. Northeast Ag Works! Identifies Unique Needs of Northeast Agriculture http://www.northeastagworks.org Northeast Ag Works! is a region-wide project to propose, promote and support public policies that foster and sustain our region’s agriculture and food system. They promote a regionalist framework to evaluate and promote public farm and food policies at all levels; they address federal, state and inter-state policy barriers and opportunities. They provide legislators and advocates with research, tools, resources and forums. At their website (http://www.northeastagworks.org/4.html) you can download these documents:
9. Federal Legislation Proposes to Outlaw Antibiotics in Food February 12, 2007 Washington, D.C. – Today, Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Olympia Snowe and Representative Louise Slaughter introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act of 2007. The increased use of antibiotics in livestock has created microbes resistant to all but the newest and most expensive drugs. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Human Treatment Act of 2007 will protect the health of Americans by phasing out the non-therapeutic use in livestock of medically important antibiotics, unless their manufacturers can show that they pose no danger to the public health. “Unfortunately, in recent years, we have done too little to prevent the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and other germs, and many of our most powerful drugs are no longer effective.” Senator Kennedy said, “The nation is clearly at risk of an epidemic outbreak of food poisoning caused by drug-resistant bacteria or other germs. In recent years, many nations, including the United States, have been plagued by outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. It is time to put public safety first and stop this promiscuous use of drugs essential for protecting human health. "The effectiveness of infectious disease fighting antibiotics continues to be compromised by their overuse for agricultural purposes," Snowe said "and each year we fail to take action on this critical issue increases the risk that drug-resistant bacteria will threaten the health of the American people. To ensure the effectiveness of these life saving medicines - the overuse of antibiotics must be a public health priority." "When we go to the grocery store, we should expect that the food we buy will not inadvertently expose our families to dangerous strains of resistant bacteria. However, the practice of over-using antibiotics in raising livestock - even when animals are not sick - is one of the leading contributors to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As a result, our risk of exposure to increasingly stronger bacteria is becoming a frightening reality," said Rep Slaughter. "It is imperative that Congress enact this critical piece of legislation to protect the integrity of our antibiotics and the future health of our families." Background The widespread use of antibiotics beginning in the 1940's provided – for the first time in history– effective treatments for infectious diseases. These miracle drugs have saved countless lives, but they are losing their effectiveness. Antibiotics that once had the power to cure dangerous infections are now often useless, because microbes have become resistant to all but the newest and most expensive drugs – and some “superbugs” are impervious to any weapons in the medical arsenal. Resistance to antibiotics takes a heavy toll on patients across the nation. The World Health Organization estimates that 14,000 Americans die every year from drug-resistant infections. This means that one American dies from a resistant infection every 38 minutes. It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs – but that’s exactly what’s happening in farms all over America. Over 20 million pounds of antibiotics are fed to farm animals every year. That’s more than is used in all of medicine. These precious drugs aren’t even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America. Every family is potentially at risk. The most vulnerable among us – children, elderly, persons with HIV/AIDS – are particularly endangered by resistant infections. At a time when the nation is relying on antibiotics and other medications to protect our homeland’s security from the grave threat of bioterrorism, we can no longer squander these precious weapons in the fight against disease by feeding them indiscriminately to livestock. Provisions of the Legislation
The below provisions are in the Senate bill:
http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=d609aaf1-1067-4461-9cce-87a7c31f278a 10. Soil Fertility, Biofuels & Carbon Sequestration: local agriculture and global climate Soil Fertility, Biofuels & Carbon Sequestration: local agriculture and global climate Sunday, May 20, 2:00-5:00 pm, This workshop will:
Sustainable soil renewal begins with abundant minerals, local materials and natural methods. Soil life density and diversity rebound rapidly with properly applied minerals, organic matter and inoculants. Ultimately, carbon holds minerals and microbes in soil. Pyrolysis—low temperature, low oxygen burning—extracts biofuels from organic matter, with an organic charcoal by-product. Thus reduced, carbon is stable in soil, where it retains water and nutrients, supplies housing for bacteria, fungi & all, creates "microbial reefs." This extraction of energy and carbon is carbon negative. Even when biofuels are burned, this still sequesters more carbon than is released. If carbon and minerals are returned to soil, next year's growth is thicker and quicker, to sequester more carbon. Synergy in successive seasons accelerates carbon removal and increases nutrient density. Kyoto Protocol cap & trade carbon exchange economics allow farmers to be paid for carbon captured in soil—paid to farm sustainably, while producing food, fiber, biofuel & biochar. Scientists calculate soil can sequester as much carbon as fossil fuels release annually.
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