The ethics of eating meat

A great essay on the ethics of eating meat from Jay Bost, a New York Times reader who's made the journey from being vegetarian to vegan to meat eating. Well worth a read. He includes a nice quote from Aldo Leopold:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

The latest on vitamin D

It's not just for bone density anymore.

93%

The vast majority of Americans believe that foods containing genetically modified crops should be labeled:

In a nationwide telephone poll conducted in October 2010 by Thomson Reuters and National Public Radio, 93 percent said if a food has been genetically engineered or has genetically engineered ingredients, it should say so on its label — a number that has been consistent since genetically modified crops were introduced. (New York Times)

I first worked on the issue back in 2002 when I was active in the failed attempt to pass Measure 27 in Oregon. Somehow, despite the strong public support for labeling, it still hasn't happened.

If you're part of the 93%, let Congress know here.

Fishy

It sucks that you can't trust anyone:

Recent studies by researchers in North America and Europe harnessing the new techniques have consistently found that 20 to 25 percent of the seafood products they check are fraudulently identified, fish geneticists say.

Labeling regulation means little if the “grouper” is really catfish or if gulf shrimp were spawned on a farm in Thailand.

Environmentalists, scientists and foodies are complaining that regulators are lax in policing seafood, and have been slow to adopt the latest scientific tools even though they are now readily available and easy to use.

Particularly because it's so important that consumers choose their seafood wisely.

Some people are blogging; I am not

My web pal Sally recently sent me a couple of blogs to check out. One had this really intriguing cake recipe (Orange Olive Oil Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce) that I can't wait to try, and the other had a nice post about a trip to Bangkok which reminded me of my own visit there...

Reading both also reminded me that I haven't been writing much lately, which led me to pen this unlikely explanation in an email to Sally: "I've just been enjoying the turn of the season even as things remain the same in a brand new world." ;-)

Alfalfa irony

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently approved the use of genetically modified alfalfa. I love the irony in this comment from an agribusiness spokesperson:

Critics of planting restrictions said they were concerned that the approach used in alfalfa would eventually be extended to other crops, causing restrictions on the growing of corn, soybeans and cotton, the vast majority of which are already genetically engineered.

“It’s like a Pandora’s box,” said Keith Menchey, manager of science and environmental issues for the National Cotton Council of America. Critics also said that the growing of alfalfa based on pollen drift concerns would undermine Washington’s efforts to persuade other countries to accept genetically modified crops. The Agriculture Department first approved the commercial planting of the genetically engineered alfalfa in 2005. But some environmental groups and alfalfa seed producers sued.

Mr. Menchey thinks that allowing the government to take action to prevent the unintended introduction of Monsanto's Roundup resistance genes into non-engineered alfalfa represents a Pandora's box problem, while I think the real Pandora's box is putting the gene in alfalfa seeds in the first place.

Unfortunately the government sided with Menchey and Monsanto. Sigh.

I WROTE my Representative, Earl Blumenauer, about the issue. Here is his response:

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). I appreciate hearing from you.

Experience has demonstrated that GMOs may pose significant risks to the existing food system. Seeds from genetically modified crops can migrate to neighboring fields or farmland, leading to the creation of monocultures which are dangerously vulnerable to disease and exposing small-farmers to potential claims of patent–infringement.

Furthermore, the potential risks to human health posed by GMOs are still poorly understood. A recent study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that certain varieties of genetically modified corn caused long-term organ damage in rats. Offspring of rats fed genetically modified soy have also shown abnormally low birth-weights and increased sterility. And investigators in India have documented fertility problems, premature births, and other serious health problems among buffaloes fed genetically modified cottonseed.

Given the seriousness of these findings, it makes sense to proceed with caution when it comes to approving new or existing GMOs for commercial use. I have strong concerns about the deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa, and I hope that Agriculture Secretary Vilsack will reconsider this decision. I have also expressed my concerns about genetically engineered (GE) salmon, specifically, to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, and hope the FDA will study this issue further to determine the environmental, ecological, and public health impact of GE salmon.

I strongly support mandatory labeling for foods that contain GMOs. Consumers have a right to this information, and I will continue pushing for stronger consumer protections when it comes to food safety.

Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue. Please continue to be in touch.

Sincerely,

Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress

Allergy or not an allergy?

Here's an interesting article that clarifies the difference between food allergies and food intolerance:

Part of the confusion is over what is a food allergy and what is a food intolerance, Dr. [Matthew J.] Fenton said. Allergies involve the immune system, while intolerances generally do not. For example, a headache from sulfites in wine is not a food allergy. It is an intolerance. The same is true for lactose intolerance, caused by the lack of an enzyme needed to digest sugar in milk.

And other medical conditions can make people think they have food allergies, Dr. Fenton said. For example, people sometimes interpret acid reflux symptoms after eating a particular food as an allergy.

More on the superweeds

More on the superweed story in today's New York Times, including comments from Michael Pollan:

A few lessons may be drawn from this story:

1. A product like Roundup Ready soy is not, as Monsanto likes to claim, “sustainable.” Like any such industrial approach to an agronomic problem — like any pesticide or herbicide — this one is only temporary, and destroys the conditions on which it depends. Lucky for Monsanto, the effectiveness of Roundup lasted almost exactly as long as its patent protection.

2. Genetically modified crops are not, as Monsanto suggests, a shiny new paradigm. This is the same-old pesticide treadmill, in which the farmer gets hooked on a chemical fix that needs to be upgraded every few years as it loses its effectiveness.

3. Monocultures are inherently precarious. The very success of Roundup Ready crops have been their undoing, since so many acres were planted with the same seed, and doused with the same chemical, resistance came quickly. Resilience, and long-term sustainability, comes from diversifying fields, not planting them all to the same kind of seed.

Read on.

Don't bet against the birds and the bees

Or, for that matter, against the mosquitoes and the weeds.

New research has determined that a single, easily inherited gene can make mosquitoes indifferent to the insect repellent DEET.

And on a growing number of farms around the world, including many here in America, genetic engineering has turned out to not be such a miracle after all. Heavy use of Roundup since Monstanto introduced genetically modified crops that were impervious to the herbicide has demonstrated, once again, how quickly evolution can work:

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn.

One of the qualities that made Roundup unique is that it degrades quickly in the environment. Farmers are now having to turn to older herbicides that are much more toxic.

And what's Monsanto doing now? In it's apparently infinite lack of wisdom, it's working on new crops that are resistant to other herbicides. You gotta wonder how long it'll take them to produce a generation of weeds that nothing will kill.

Oh, and by the way, thirty-eight years after DDT was banned, it's still present in our food supply:

Recent studies sketch a complex profile of legacy contaminants in U.S. food - a profusion of chemicals in trace amounts, pervasive but uneven across the food supply, occurring sometimes by themselves, but more often in combination with others. Included are DDT and several lesser-known organochlorine pesticides as well as industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were used until the late 1970s in electrical equipment.

This picture raises a host of equally complicated questions: Are small amounts of these chemicals dangerous, by themselves or in mixtures? Why are they still around and how are they getting into our food?

And how about: Will we ever learn?

Coffee and tea ward off type 2 diabetes

And it appears the more coffee you drink (caffeinated or decaf), the greater the protective effect.

Reducing healthcare costs

Atul Gawande has a great article in the New Yorker about how the Senate healthcare reform bill would reduce healthcare costs. Unlike expanding coverage, there's no simple solution to the cost problem, so the legislation authorizes dozens of "experiments" to find what works, just as was done a century ago when food costs were high in America and half of people worked in the agricultural sector:

There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen. Problems of the second kind, by contrast, are never solved, exactly; they are managed. Reforming the agricultural system so that it serves the country’s needs has been a process, involving millions of farmers pursuing their individual interests. This could not happen by fiat. There was no one-time fix. The same goes for reforming the health-care system so that it serves the country’s needs. No nation has escaped the cost problem: the expenditure curves have outpaced inflation around the world. Nobody has found a master switch that you can flip to make the problem go away. If we want to start solving it, we first need to recognize that there is no technical solution.

For chocolate lovers everywhere

A couple of cups of skim milk cocoa a day appear to raise good cholesterol and reduce inflammation, potentially serving to ward off cardiovascular disease. Yum :-P

The Ag Industry Empire Strikes Back

A California Polytechnic Institute donor has threatened to withhold his $500,000 donation to the school if food writer Michael Pollan is allowed to speak there. Seems this donor--who works for a company that runs a large California cattle feedlot--thinks that Pollan's ideas might just make things tougher for the agriculture industry if they take root with the public.

And yes, he has some real wacko ideas. Like eating real food! LOL

If you haven't seen The Meatrix, check it our here.

Ignoring their own long term interests...

The American Farm Bureau is about to begin a major campaign to defeat legislation that seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. You'd think farmers of all people would realize how much they have to lose from global warming... the USDA has already begun spelling out the potential impacts.

Advice on eating...

Michael Pollan, my favorite food and nutrition writer, began collecting common sense rules and recommendations for eating well earlier this year. Here are his twenty favorite responses (he received thousands), and here's my favorite of his twenty (though I also loved rules 17 and 18 which both deal with being present to what we eat):

"If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry."

-- Emma Fogt

(Previous posts on Pollan here and here.)

Be wary of frozen hamburger

While ground meat generally carries a higher risk of contamination than other cuts, frozen hamburger patties merit particular caution:

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria....

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.

Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies.

Manure and other agricultural run-off in your drinking water

As industrial farms house increasingly larger herds, the contamination of wells, watersheds, and rivers and streams is becoming a more urgent problem. As noted in this New York Times article, a single cow produces as much waste as eighteen people.

Tests of [Wisconsin resident Lisa Barnard's] water showed it contained E. coli, coliform bacteria and other contaminants found in manure. Last year, her 5-year-old son developed ear infections that eventually required an operation. Her doctor told her they were most likely caused by bathing in polluted water, she said.

Yet runoff from all but the largest farms is essentially unregulated by many of the federal laws intended to prevent pollution and protect drinking water sources. The Clean Water Act of 1972 largely regulates only chemicals or contaminants that move through pipes or ditches, which means it does not typically apply to waste that is sprayed on a field and seeps into groundwater.

As a result, many of the agricultural pollutants that contaminate drinking water sources are often subject only to state or county regulations. And those laws have failed to protect some residents living nearby.

Wine

I'm enjoying a glass of Surh Luchtel Mosaique, a boutique wine made by the brother of my best friend from Stanford.

Nice!

Organic dairies are hurting...

so buy a gallon of organic milk today. :-)

Yum...

Last night I went to my friend Jen's barbecue. My contribution was corn on the cob, half grilled in foil with sprigs of rosemary and the other half grilled in the husk and served with cilantro pesto, chipotle aioli, and cotija cheese. That aioli had quite a kick! ;-)

Corn on the cob always reminds me of an old Father Guido Sarducci commentary on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Through the miracle of the internet, I just found the transcript from the May 12, 1979 episode when it appeared:

I read about this other planet, too, in the same book. [ holds out his fists ] It's-a like, the sun is-a here and the Earth is-a here.. and on-a the other side-a of the sun, there's this other planet we can't see, you know, because the sun is-a blocking it from us.. but it's-a just-a like-a the Earth in every single way, it's like a mirror planet of Earth. There's only one difference, and it's that they eat-a corn on-a the cob-a like-a this.. [ demonstrates eating corn on the cob North-South instead of West-East ] That's it! That's the only difference. I'm not going there, you know, it's-a too messy. I'm used to eating it-a like-a this.. [ demonstrates West-East eating structure ] I just don't want-a change, habit like.

My god, thirty years ago!