All Entries Tagged With: "food"

What People Think About Emerging Food Technology

What People Think About Emerging Food Technology

People remain cautious about the emergence of new food technologies according to a review of existing research, published by the Food Standards Agency.

The report, which looks at research since 1999, brings together knowledge from the UK and beyond, on public opinion about up-and-coming food technologies, such as nanotechnologies and cloning. The findings will help to shape the FSA’s future work on emerging technologies.

According to the research, GM and animal cloning remain the areas of most concern for people. However, the review also showed that food technologies tended not to be a burning issue for the vast majority of people and often did not generate strong opinions

via What People Think About Emerging Food Technology.

Staving off the global food crisis

Staving off the global food crisis

THE END OF FOOD

by Paul Roberts

Sometimes an author gets lucky, or is truly prescient. He can work for years researching a complex and obscure topic, only to see it hit the headlines just as his book is published. Suddenly, the topic is hot.

Food is hot. If high supermarket prices have not grabbed the average citizen’s attention, the world food crisis surely has. With food riots from Haiti to Egypt and panic-buying of rice in Hong Kong and Vietnam, food scarcity is the topic of the day. Following on from his earlier best-selling book The End of Oil, Paul Roberts’s The End of Food taps into these timely concerns.

Staving off the global food crisis

L. LIWANAG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Supporters of the Gabriela political party protest against rising food prices near president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s palace in the Philippines in April.

Food crises tend to recur in history. The most severe in recent times was the world food crisis of 1973–75. Even the Old Testament of the Bible talks of years of glut and famine, and the role of good governance in smoothing out supply.

Are our worries about food different this time? Perhaps in the future we will see constantly high prices, the re-establishment of food scarcity in the developed world after decades of surplus, and widespread hunger. Or perhaps a technological solution will lessen the tension between a growing human population and the natural resources that feed it. Will there be a continuation of the trends that Roberts documents so well, of perpetually lower prices, greater reliance on world trade to source the cheapest commodities, the spread of meat-intensive diets with increasing affluence, and more land used to grow corn for ethanol to fuel our cars?

via Access : Staving off the global food crisis : Nature.

Why What’s For Dinner May Be About to Change

Why What’s For Dinner May Be About to Change  -By Gwen Schantz

From a White House garden to rule changes at factory farms, the era of industrial ag calling the shots is changing.

Industrial Agriculture is sooo 20th century. As America moves forward with a new agenda of change, our food system is getting a green, healthy makeover that promises to leave thousands of food and farm advocates with nothing to do.

For decades, foodies, animal welfare advocates, labor and environmentalists have joined together in an effort to educate their peers and affect policy change with the broad goal of improving the way our food is grown, processed, distributed and eaten. They’ve snuck into animal factories with hidden cameras, staged protests in Washington and boycotted fast food establishments. They’ve shopped at farmers markets and planted seeds in community gardens. They’ve formed a massive and remarkably powerful food and farm movement, and in general, they’ve kept quite busy reaching for a goal that until recently seemed completely futile and utterly out of reach.

But soon these dedicated food fighters may find themselves with little to do but sit down and eat.

via Why What’s For Dinner May Be About to Change | Environment | AlterNet.

Great Tech Innovation: Find Food Health and Safety Info From Your Phone

Great Tech Innovation: Find Food Health and Safety Info From Your Phone

Use your phone to access Goodguide.com and check product information on a free, socially conscious, ethical-shopping Web site.

The price of a dysfunctional food system is a potentially dangerous dinner. To put it bluntly, in our profit-driven food system, the very nutrients needed to stay alive could kill you. If it’s not Chinese melamine in your milk, it’s American E.coli in your spinach. If it’s not the salmonella in your peanut butter from Georgia, it’s that same bug in your Mexican green chilies. Consumers — health conscious or not — have a right to be paranoid.

What’s to be done?

via Great Tech Innovation: Find Food Health and Safety Info From Your Phone | Environment | AlterNet.

Seeds of Domination – Part 1

Monsanto

The Organization for Competitive Markets is concerned America is headed toward monopoly over agriculture seeds. This would mean a monopoly on our food supply.

One company, Monsanto, has biotechnology patent control over 80% of our corn and 90% of our soybeans. If this persists, more farmers may go bankrupt and we will have to import more of our food.

YouTube – Seeds of Domination – Part 1.

YouTube – Seeds of Domination – Part 2.
YouTube – Seeds of Domination – Part 3.

Pathogens in Our Pork

Pathogens in Our Pork

We don’t add antibiotics to baby food and Cocoa Puffs so that children get fewer ear infections. That’s because we understand that the overuse of antibiotics is already creating “superbugs” resistant to medication.

Yet we continue to allow agribusiness companies to add antibiotics to animal feed so that piglets stay healthy and don’t get ear infections. Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the United States go to healthy livestock, according to a careful study by the Union of Concerned Scientists — and that’s one reason we’re seeing the rise of pathogens that defy antibiotics.

These dangerous pathogens are now even in our food supply. Five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana tested positive for MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — according to a peer-reviewed study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology last year. And a recent study of retail meats in the Washington, D.C., area found MRSA in one pork sample, out of 300, according to Jianghong Meng, the University of Maryland scholar who conducted the study.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Pathogens in Our Pork – NYTimes.com.

Obama: Food Safety System A Health Hazard – CBS News

Obama: Food Safety System A Health Hazard

Says Overhaul Is Needed As He Announces Picks To Oversee FDA

AP) President Barack Obama says the nation’s decades-old food safety system is a “hazard to public health” and in need of an overhaul, starting with the selection of a new head of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. Obama used his weekly radio and video address to announce the nomination of former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg as FDA commissioner, and his choice of Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein as her deputy.

The president also said he was creating a Food Safety Working Group to coordinate food safety laws throughout government and advise him on how to update them. Many of these laws, essential to safeguarding the public from disease, haven’t been touched since they were written in the time of President Theodore Roosevelt, he said.

via Obama: Food Safety System A Health Hazard – CBS News.

Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You?

Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You?

Corporate-grown Vegetables have 40% fewer nutrients than Veggies 50 years ago

Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence?

The Gist:

If the economy isn’t grim enough for you, just check out the February issue of the Journal of HortScience, which contains a report on the sorry state of American fruits and veggies. Apparently produce in the U.S. not only tastes worse than it did in your grandparents’ days, it also contains fewer nutrients — at least according to Donald R. Davis, a former research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Davis claims the average vegetable found in today’s supermarket is anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago. (Read about Americans’ Incredible, Edible Front Lawns.)

Highlight Reel:

1. On the Difficulty of Comparing “Then” and “Now:” Davis is quick to note that historical data can sometimes be misleading, if not altogether inaccurate. Take early measurements of iron in foods:

via Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You? – TIME.

Rising food prices will mean devastation for the bottom billion

Rising food prices will mean devastation for the bottom billion

Food security is non-negotiable; we must provide more food and we must ensure that people have access to it. We are not “out of the woods” in terms of the food crisis. Food prices have fallen since the highs of 2008, but for the world’s “bottom billion” that record increase in food prices has had a devastating effect, pushing a further one hundred million people into food poverty. For instance, in Malawi, maize is 100 per cent more expensive than a year ago, while the price of wheat in Afghanistan is 60 per cent higher. Food security will increasingly become an issue of peace and stability.

No nation can solve world hunger alone – we have to tackle it in a collaborative and cohesive way. We need to produce double the amount of food by 2030 and this will require innovative approaches. We need a food assistance plan of self-reliance, not charity; and the work must be led by nations, international players, like WFP, and the private sector.

African farmers can make a valuable contribution to tackling food poverty. Already 80 per cent of the cash for food the WFP buys for its programmes comes from the developing world and great progress is being achieved in Africa. Ethiopia was a top priority for food assistance three years ago; now it is producing a food surplus. The key to success is improvements in infrastructure; farmers need better access to markets.

Despite the severity of the current financial situation, we must not let the issue of food security be set aside. In fact, the world’s most vulnerable will be hurt most by the economic crisis as their income is hit.

via Josette Sheeran: Rising food prices will mean devastation for the bottom billion – Commentators, Opinion – The Independent.

Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates

Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates

By Jane Black

President Obama’s choice of organics expert Kathleen Merrigan for the No. 2 spot at the Agriculture Department was immediately welcomed by sustainable agriculture and food policy advocates who have been lobbying hard for progressive appointments at an agency that has historically has emphasized programs that support commercial farming.

“We think it’s great news,” said David Murphy, director of Food Democracy Now, an Iowa-based nonprofit that has petitioned for the appointment of a dozen “sustainability oriented” candidates for high-level USDA positions. “Merrigan has a fantastic background in supporting sustainable agriculture. She is the type of person we really believe should be leading change for 21st century agriculture.”

via Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates | 44 | washingtonpost.com.

John Kinsman: Nation’s food system nearly broke

opinion: John Kinsman: Nation’s food system nearly broke.

As our government enacts a stimulus package and President Barack Obama announces bold initiatives to stem home mortgage foreclosures, disaster threatens family farmers and their communities.

The government’s response to plummeting commodity prices and tightening credit markets leads to the basic question: Who will produce our food? This is a worldwide crisis. U.S. policy and the demand for deregulation at all levels — from food production to financial markets — contribute greatly to the global collapse. The solution must be grounded in food sovereignty so that all farmers and their communities can regain control over their food supply. This response makes sense here in Wisconsin and was the global message from the 500+ farmer leaders at the Via Campesina conference in Mozambique in October.

Many U.S. farmers are going out of business because they receive prices equal to about one half their cost to produce our food. How long could any enterprise receiving half the amount of its input costs stay in business? As an example, dairy farmers in the Northeast and Midwest must be paid between 30 and 35 cents per pound for their milk to pay production costs and provide basic living expenses. Until 1980, farmers received a price equal to 80 percent of parity, meaning that farmers’ purchasing power kept up with the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, a 1981 political decision discontinued parity, and today the dairy farmers’ share is below 40 percent.

Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates

Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates

By Jane Black

President Obama’s choice of organics expert Kathleen Merrigan for the No. 2 spot at the Agriculture Department was immediately welcomed by sustainable agriculture and food policy advocates who have been lobbying hard for progressive appointments at an agency that has historically has emphasized programs that support commercial farming.

“We think it’s great news,” said David Murphy, director of Food Democracy Now, an Iowa-based nonprofit that has petitioned for the appointment of a dozen “sustainability oriented” candidates for high-level USDA positions. “Merrigan has a fantastic background in supporting sustainable agriculture. She is the type of person we really believe should be leading change for 21st century agriculture.”

via Selection of Organic Food Policy Expert at Ag. Hailed by Advocates | 44 | washingtonpost.com.

YouTube – Great Depression Cooking Ep:3 – Poorman’s Meal

YouTube – Great Depression Cooking Ep:3 – Poorman’s Meal.

91 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. Learn how to make simple yet delicious dishes while listening to stories from the Depression.