Action Alert on Food Safety Legislation

From the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition...

FOOD SAFETY ACTION ALERT!
November 12, 2009
MAKE A CALL TO PROTECT FAMILY FARMS,
LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

CALL SENATOR CASEY THIS WEEK!

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee will take up S. 510, the Senate version of major food safety legislation already approved by the House of Representatives, next Wednesday, November 18.

The bill would put real teeth into federal regulation of large-scale food processing corporations to better protect consumers. However, the bill as written is also a serious threat to family farm value added processing, local and regional food systems, conservation and wildlife protection, and organic farming.

We need a food safety bill that cracks down on corporate bad actors without erecting new barriers to the growing healthy food movement based on small and mid-sized family farms, sustainable and organic production methods, and more local and regional food sourcing.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Organic Coalition, have fashioned five common sense amendments to S 510. We need your help to make them happen! The House has already passed their Bill. This is our last best chance to affect the final legislation.

Step 1: Make a Call

Please Call Senator Casey's office at (202) 224-6324 and ask for the aide in charge of food safety issues. Tell them you are a constituent and are calling to ask the Senator to support the amendments proposed by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Organic Coalition to the Food Safety Modernization Act. Specifically, ask your Senator to support the following key changes to the bill:

• The bill should direct FDA to narrow the kinds of value-added farm processing activities which are subject to FDA control and to base those regulations on sound risk analysis. (Current FDA rules assume without any scientific evidence that all farms which undertake any one of a long list of processing activities should be regulated.)
  

• The bill should direct FDA to ease compliance for organic farmers by integrating the FDA standards with the organic certification rules. FDA compliance should not jeopardize a farmer's ability to be organically certified under USDA's National Organic Program.
  

• The bill must provide small and mid-sized family farms that market value-added farm products with training and technical assistance in developing food safety plans for their farms.
  

• The bill should insist that FDA food safety standards and guidance will not contradict federal conservation, environmental, and wildlife standards and practices, and not force the farmer to choose which federal agency to obey and which to reject.
  

• Farmers who sell directly to consumers should not be required to keep records and be part of a federal "traceaback" system, and all other farms should not be required to maintain records electronically or any records beyond the first point of sale past the farmgate.
  

Step 2: Report Your Call

Let us know how your Senator responded by clicking here http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=iDwJjwNOL9Ow7ubh59KDmnf2vBJtLWG%2B and typing in a brief report.

Step 3: Learn More

For more information on the Senate Food Safety bill, please see NSAC's Talking Points here http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZMugpdHrZ%2B5jVzlGNRk2rHf2vBJtLWG%2B and its Policy Brief Food Safety on the Farm here: http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=N0qoiyP9CL10FyBbFnz%2Fjnf2vBJtLWG%2B

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Spooktacular Style

A little bit 'o everything here. No need to mince words. I'll just get to it.

First, and this is not the first study to reach this conclusion, but a new study from the United Nations concludes that, in Africa at least, yields on farms that are organic or "near-organic" have superior yields compared to large industrial farms.

The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming. It also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought.

Next, and this is very late in coming, but if you didn't read Michael Pollan's latest in the New York Times -- a letter to the next president -- please do so now. It's quite long, but well worth the read. At the heart of this letter is a central proposal, to return to a food system based on the power of sunshine.

Yet the sun still shines down on our land every day, and photosynthesis can still work its wonders wherever it does. If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence on oil and successfully resolarized, surely it is food.

More locally, Cafe Allegro, a Pittsburgh dining standard bearer for the better part of the last two decades, is closing. I never ate there, and had heard its better days were behind it. Nevertheless, it's sad to see.

Meanwhile, the Passport Cafe, a restaurant where I have only eaten lunch, gets raves from the City Paper.

The subtitle of Passport Café, a year-old restaurant in an upscale strip mall on Perrysville Highway, is "Global cuisine, local harvest." Worthy, to be sure, but ... not to put too fine a point on it, but lately every other restaurant we visit seems to tout a variation on this theme. What then, we wondered, would distinguish Passport Café? Let us count the ways.

That's a long way from this Post-Gazette review from nearly a year ago, not long after the restaurant opened.

With all this effort, I expected to be impressed. Instead, I found myself perplexed and disappointed.

When we eat steaks anymore, I've given up on the grill. Instead, I opt for the cast-iron, seared first on the stove top, and finished in the oven. While I enjoy a burger, the ones I make at home are just never that great. I place part of that blame on the grill and its lack of temperature control. I know it sounds like heresy, but I've been thinking if, for burgers, we should likewise abandon the grill altogether.

This, however, convinces me that a combination approach, may be worth at least one try. Now if I could only find those brioche buns!

More Taste Testing: Organic Processed Foods

Most of our shopping time in our Local Large Grocery Chain is spent in the produce and organic sections (although we almost never buy the organic produce, mostly because it usually looks terrible).

Over the last year or so, we’ve found organic processed foods that we don’t mind paying more for, mostly because they actually taste better than their nonorganic counterparts.

Among our favorites:

Arrow Head Mills Vermont Maple Granola – This stuff is hearty, not too sweet, the maple flavor is not overwhelming, and it’s got a great crunch. I’ve tried various granolas, both organic and conventional, and this is by far my favorite.

As mentioned previously, I have granola and fruit almost every morning in my yogurt. And maple, at least to me, is not intuitively something that would go with yogurt and fruit. But this maple granola absolutely works. I never get tired of it.

Clif Kid Organic Z Bar – This is a very new favorite. We’ve only discovered them in the last month or so, and although my 3-year-old daughter isn’t impressed, the men in the family – namely me and my six-year-old eating machine son – have been eating them up.

As the name implies, these energy bars are geared toward kids, but I’ve been eating them like crazy. Low in fat and sugar, high in protein, these bars remind me of a no-bake cookie. They are not overly sweet, and despite their small stature, they are a filling snack. And, best of all, you can get a 24 pack (peanut butter, chocolate chip, and chocolate brownie!) at Costco for a really reasonable price.

Nature’s Path Hot Instant Oatmeals – We typically get these in a variety pack. Not on the same par as the previous two items, but still pretty good. Substantial, nice texture, enjoyable flavor. Again, IMO, not on par with the other two, but worth buying.

Full Circle Fruit & Cereal Bars – Now, granted, these are not USDA organic. The ingredient list is littered with organic this and that, but there are some conventional ingredients as well. And while I don’t eat them, I have tasted them, and they’re pretty good. I feel much better purchasing these to put in my kids lunches every so often than I do similar cereal bars made with nothing but corn- and soy-based fillers and chemicals I can’t pronounce.

Scrapin’ Up the Bits, Lusty Bit Update Style

Ssshhhhh. I gotta secret. I got some insider information about those stickers. What stickers? Those stickers, the ones on the fruits and vegetables you buy in the grocery store. What is it? Well, as long as you promise to keep it quiet (h/t Sustainable Table):

• A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
• A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
• A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's genetically modified.

Of course, most of the organic apples and celery and the like I’ve seen in Giant Eagle recently looks more like prunes they’re so freakin’ wrinkly. So, yeah, I've been sticking to the conventionally grown stuff.

This is from last week, but it got buried somewhat by coverage of the presidential horse races. If you don’t like to watch sick animals being shoved around by forklifts or smacked in the head with electric prods, then just read this (but don’t watch this).

The long and short of it:

Video footage being released today shows workers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the "downer" cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals' noses -- all violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow disease, out of the food supply.

Moreover, the companies where these practices allegedly occurred are major suppliers of meat for the nation's school lunch programs, including in Maryland, according to a company official and federal documents.

Seriously, I really don’t know if I can eat a piece of meat anymore unless I have at least some indication that it didn’t come from a place like this!

It’s good to see that grocery stores are moving away from plastic, but I’m not even really sure what this particular journalist is trying to say about it.

While subbing tap water for bottled water is effortless, giving up plastic bags is an inconvenience.

Huh? She must usually write for the Style section.

Finally, some Lusty Bit updates. I’ve recently…

• made some additions to the Intertubes Stuff I like
• updated the recipes listing
• and I’m finally experimenting with a little more blog sophistication, adding “labels” to my posts. The labels – which are at the end of each post – are like key words, you can click on one of them and all of the posts with that same key word, that is, that are somehow related to the topic (e.g, milk labeling), will come up.