Sorry if I've been absent a lot frequently - the kind (and unaware) neighbor who was providing me with free wireless all these months suddenly got a password. I have yet to bite the bullet and sign up for Internet (or perhaps a couple of Internets) that I pay for. I suppose I'll do so soon.
To make up for the absence of a VMD diary yesterday, I'd like to share several good news stories I've come across lately - two relating to genetically engineered foods and one related to chocolate.
Here's the short version of the news:
Just some food for thought (oops! no pun intended) while you read through these three stories. Some would call the anti-industrialization of food, anti-GMO crowd a bunch of Luddites for fighting "progress." But true progress should be good for us, and the "progress" introduced in our food supply over the last half century or so has been bad for us. It's hurt our health, our environment, and our communities. It's been great for ADM, Tyson, Cargill, and many, many politicians. But that doesn't make it progress.
If we oppose the agenda of Monsanto and others, does that mean we're calling for a return to the past? Well if you see Monsanto's role as triumphantly carrying the torch of progress forward, then perhaps the answer is yes. But I don't think so. I, for one, don't want us to go backwards. Instead, I want us to redefine the word progress. True progress to me means using the most up to date science to work with nature to improve the flavor, freshness, and healthfulness of our food, to prevent people in America and around the world from going hungry to the best of our ability, to help both urban and rural communities thrive, to preserve and protect diversity of wildlife, and to quit dumping pollutants into our land, water, and air. My agenda might not help Monsanto so much, but Monsanto's a corporation, not a person, and it shouldn't get to vote.
I feel better now that I've gotten that out, so here's the news.
GE Alfalfa... Adios for Now
FYI - this story isn't exactly breaking, but I haven't diaried on it yet since it happened. A coalition of groups led by the Center for Food Safety brought a case against Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" GE alfalfa. Roundup Ready means that it will survive when you spray it with Monsanto's herbicide, Roundup. Everything else around it dies and... voila! monoculture! US District Court Judge Charles R. Breyerof the Northern District of California ruled in favor of farmers, consumers, and environmentalists, ordering that a full Environmental Impact Statement must be carried out for GE alfalfa. In other words, the USDA had failed to fully review the environmental impacts of Roundup Ready alfalfa (as required by law), going along with Monsanto's plan to ram GE alfalfa right through the legalization process with minimal oversight.
The decision may prevent this season’s sales and planting of Monsanto’s GM alfalfa and future submissions of other GE crops for commercial deregulation.
Another goddamn liberal activist judge, I guess :) Why else would he care about trivial details like science??
In his ruling, the judge consistently found USDA’s arguments unconvincing, without scientific basis, and/or contrary to the law. For example:
• The judge found that plaintiffs’ concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate natural and organic alfalfa are valid, stating that USDA’s opposing arguments were "not convincing" and do not demonstrate the "hard look" required by federal environmental laws. The ruling went on to note that "...For those farmers who choose to grow nongenetically engineered alfalfa, the possibility that their crops will be infected with the engineered gene is tantamount to the elimination of all alfalfa; they cannot grow their chosen crop."
• USDA argued that, based on a legal technicality, the agency did not have to address the economic risks to organic and conventional growers whose alfalfa crop could be contaminated by Monsanto’s GE variety. But the judge found that USDA "overstates the law...Economic effects are relevant "when they are ‘interrelated’ with ‘natural or physical environmental effects.’...Here, the economic effects on the organic and conventional farmers of the government’s deregulation decision are interrelated with, and, indeed, a direct result of, the effect on the physical environment."
• Judge Breyer found that USDA failed to address the problem of Roundupresistant "superweeds" that could follow commercial planting of GE alfalfa. Commenting on the agency’s refusal to assess this risk, the judge noted "Nothing in NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), the relevant regulations, or the caselaw supports such a cavalier response."
Why is this a big deal? I mean, the only person I ever knew who ate alfalfa was my pet rabbit when I was a kid. Turns out it's our fourth most widely grown crop. OK, so that makes it a big deal. And besides that, this case sets an important precedent for regulation of future GE crops.
According to Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety:
Not only has a Federal Court recognized that USDA failed to consider the environmental and economic threats posed by GE alfalfa, but it has also questioned whether any agency in the federal government is looking at the cumulative impacts of GE crop approvals.
Also, GE alfalfa hurts our export markets. Other countries aren't as interested in giving Monsanto whatever it wants as we are, and our two biggest alfalfa customers (Japan and S. Korea) warn that they won't import ANY US alfalfa if we grow ANY GE alfalfa in our country. Yikes! (The USDA's response? Exports to Japan wouldn't be harmed if we legalize growing GE alfalfa. Yeah... because every time we legalize GE crops, we NEVER find it popping up in places it shouldn't be.)
Last, consider that alfalfa feeds dairy cows and beef cattle, and it's also important in pork, lamb, sheep, and honey production. And don't forget people too... alfalfa sprouts are delicious in sandwiches. If the genes for GE alfalfa get loose, contaminating America's alfalfa supply, then the significance of buying organic sprouts and/or organic meats and dairy is lost. Your organic milk is organic because the cows that produced the milk ate an organic, GMO-free diet. If the organic alfalfa that cow eats gets contaminated with GE genes, then why bother paying a premium for organic milk at all?
My favorite quote on this subject is this one:
Pat Trask of Trask Family Seeds, a South Dakota conventional alfalfa grower and plaintiff in the case stated: "It’s a great day for God’s own alfalfa."
California's AB 541: The Food and Farm Protection Act
My source for this story is CCOF's Spring 2007 publication of Certified Organic. AB 541:
- Establishes the right of farmers and landowners to compensation for economic losses due to genetic contamination of their crops.
- Protects farmers from being sued by a GE manufacturer if their crop is contaminated by that company's GE product.
- Establishes a county-level GE crop notification process so that farmers can trace contamination to the GE manufacturer.
- Protects the food supply by prohibiting the open-field cultivation of genetically engineered food crops used to produce drugs and biologics such as hormones and antibiotics.
A 14-member coalition of agriculture, environmental, food safety, and natural food industry businesses are sponsoring this bill. They call it a reasonable, fair, and coherent way to address risks of GMOs without banning them outright. So far, AB 541 passed out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee (4/10/07) and moved to the Assembly Agriculture Committee floor (4/25/07). In other words, it's far from a done deal just yet. Keep an eye out for future developments.
Consumers Win on Chocolate Issue!
You can check out the BBC story, but the summary of what happened is pretty simple. Masterfoods, parent company of Mars, announced plans to begin using rennet in its chocolate. Rennet, often used in cheese, is "a natural complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach to digest the mother's milk."
When Masterfoods announced this, UK vegetarians went nuts, mobilizing a phone and email campaign and even getting 40 members of parliament on record to oppose the use of rennet in chocolate... all within a WEEK. Masterfoods folded like a cheap deck of cards, admitting that the "consumer is our boss."
I'm not trying to make any claim that what is good for vegetarians is good for everybody. Rather, it's good for everybody that consumers (IF they mobilize) still have some power over megacorporations' actions.
So that's your good food news. Back to my idea that true progress involves working WITH nature, allow me to ramble on a bit about some thoughts I've had.
Lately I've spent quite a bit of time "out in nature" with the first unofficial chapter of "Hiking Liberally" (as a few of us Kossacks who go hiking a couple times a week jokingly call ourselves). My hiking buddy from my vacation to Kauai a year and a half ago would giggle because, as she points out, everything is nature and we can't separate ourselves from the environment around us, no matter how hard we try. Still, there's certainly a difference between man-made surroundings and the Southern California chaparral landscape in the mountains where we hike.
One major perk of SoCal is its lack of mosquitoes, and while I'm thrilled that there's nothing out here to make me itch (ok, except for poison oak), I was rather shocked at first to learn about the number of natural things that can kill ya - everything from mountain lions to rattlesnakes. Fortunately, I have yet to see either. I have seen tons of lizards, three snakes (of the non-rattle variety), a coyote, a mule deer, tarantula hawks, and tons of interesting plants (including one called "bush monkeyflower").
All this stuff lives together and reproduces without any sort of help from us humans (unless you count the pets of humans that become coyote food). I guess it all goes to show that nature knows what it's doing even when we aren't there to plan it, study it, and re-engineer it. Kriser pointed out an orange spaghetti-looking plant parasite (dodder) that, with no chlorophyll of its own, grows all over plants and steals the energy it produces. She also explained how tarantula hawks (big ugly bugs we saw flying around at the summit of Iron Mountain) reproduce by biting a tarantula, dragging it into a hole, and laying eggs inside it, essentually using the (now in very sad shape) tarantula as an incubator. (Somehow I have a hunch that even the most cruel factory farm would be hard pressed to come up with any practices as sick and twisted as that.)
Here's the point I'm driving at... I don't believe in any god and I never felt anything at all as a kid, sitting in a synogogue reciting prayers in Hebrew. (BTW, I'm not out to tell anyone that they should or shouldn't believe in god(s) or participate in organized religion). But isn't the incredible complexity and diversity of our world amazing? I feel like the structured and institutionalized "religion" I was taught as a kid is very disconnected from the natural world, although it certainly had its purpose (The "thou shalt not kill" thing was really a good one!).
I don't see nature as a personified god of any sort, but if there's one thing that is all powerful and all knowing, it is the laws of our natural world. And I do think we should be in awe of it, much more than we are (particularly those who think they can treat genes like legos to make new and better foods). If all people could just get out for a hike in the woods, the prairie, the desert, or wherever once in a while - if they could just think about the wonders of the natural world that require no human touch to keep them going - maybe we'd find a way to live that respects our environment, our food crops and animals, and our own bodies more than we currently do.