Good Food is Everybody's Business
Last summer’s recall of more than 550 million eggs contaminated with Salmonella was the largest in US history and most likely the largest ever in the world. While we still hold the dubious title of most eggs recalled because of bacterial contamination, Germany is dealing with an egg recall because of chemical contamination.
Terry Branstad, Governor-elect of Iowa, is considering deregulating factory farms and he has called for producers to double their production by 2050. That’s a big deal since Iowa already has more factory farms than any other state in America.
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has called for “a new paradigm of coexistence and cooperation” for both genetically engineered and non-GE agricultural approaches. In other words, a truce with companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, BASF, Bayer Crop Science, and others, are the USDA’s way of dealing with the issues of genetically engineered plant and animals. Can we really say this an agreement between equals?
[Op-Ed] While government and NGOs are working to increase gardening and farming in the city, there are lots of developer/engineering schemes to incorporate food production in high density projects – and make as much money as possible doing it. I suggest we first concentrate on the basic principles of ecology and try for once to design with – rather than against – nature.
There is a long list of people asking the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), “What part of ‘NO’ don’t you understand?” So why has the California DPR approved the use of methyl iodide in strawberry fields?
It has been obvious from the beginning that farmers and food professionals of all kinds are committed to providing the safest food possible and limiting the “unintended consequences” that such a law could bring with it. Food safety is just part of good – and sustainable – agricultural practices; the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) recently published Sixteen Food Safety Tenets for Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems.
Rachel Carson warned us of the dangers of pesticides in Silent Spring. And it took years for poisons like DDT to be outlawed. However, we’re still dumping millions of pounds of pesticides on farms every year. All these millions of pounds are getting into places where they don’t belong. Onto crops in fields near those sprayed and into the bodies of farm workers, their children, and those families living near large scale agriculture.
Food safety by small processors is an important issue. However, the truth can easily get lost when one starts talking from the unscientific, fuzzy thinking, side. Folklore isn’t going to get us the rules we need to keep small businesses operating in the food sector.
