Tell FDA and Big Pharma – Don’t leave us in the Dark! Safeguard antibiotics by disclosing use in livestock and poultry production

Every year, nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics are used in livestock and poultry in the U.S. — four times the amount prescribed for treating infections in people. Around half these antibiotics are nearly identical to human drugs.

This huge and unnecessary use of antibiotics in food animals creates the perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant superbugs that can spread back to vets, to food handlers, to consumers and to farmers.That’s about all we know, unfortunately. Along with the rest of the public, health professionals remain in the dark about information critically important to our patients and to the public’s health.

The FDA is currently accepting comments on what additional information it should collect and then publicly report from the drug, meat and animal feed industries. The FDA urgently needs to hear from you before Monday, November 26th. We need more data on animal antibiotic sales and use to be reported so that public health officials can help track and stop these dangerous superbugs where they start.

Act Now: Tell the FDA to make livestock and poultry antibiotic use public!

Go healthy with greens, fresh or frozen

Nov8

Our contest winner, Donna King (right), braved the elements to share her delicious “Donna’s Greens and Cornbread.”

Cold, rainy weather put a damper on the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market October 13 Greens Cook-off and Green Tomato Festival. Our contest winner, Donna King, braved the elements to share her delicious “Donna’s Greens and Cornbread.”

Don’t let the weather fool you. Now is the perfect time of year for cooking greens. Greens like collards and kale can keep on growing and producing into December. Greens are easy to preserve in your freezer, too.

Here’s how. For collards, cut of the stalks and cut out the thick center stem. Fold the leaves and cut into bite size pieces. Heat a large pot of water on the stove to boiling. Blanche a couple big handfuls of greens in the boiling water for two minutes. Scoop out with a large slotted spoon or colander with a handle. Let drain and cool in another colander. Press out excess water (or spin it out with a salad spinner). Freeze in freezer bags.

While fresh always tastes best, the frozen greens sure taste good during those long winter months when locally grown produce is less available. Plus, your frozen greens provide you with lots of nutritional benefits. Research shows frozen vegetables have almost as much nutritional value as fresh—especially if you are buying them from a local source.

Michigan companies fund the defeat of food labeling proposal in California

Nov7

Reposted from GRIID.org

One outcome of the 2012 elections was the defeat of Proposal 37 in California, a proposal that sought to require that food sold in the state included labeling, particularly if there were any GMOs – Genetically Modified Organisms.

It was an issue that generated a ton of money, particularly from the corporate forces in opposition to complete transparency about what is in the food that people are eating.

The most recent data shows that groups wanting food labeling in California raised a few million dollars, compared to the nearly $50 million raised by food corporations opposed to telling people what they are really eating.

According to an article by Jill Richardson:

Coca-Cola might not want to label the genetically engineered corn used to make the high fructose corn syrup in its sodas, but it also owns organic and “natural” brands like Honest Tea and Odwalla. Likewise, PepsiCo, owner of Izze and Naked Juice, donated $1.7 million to oppose Prop 37 – more than every other donor except Monsanto and DuPont, and even more than the other four major biotech corporations (Bayer, BASF, Dow, and Syngenta).

Other brands owned by Prop 37-opposing corporations include Lightlife and Alexia (owned by Conagra); Kashi, Gardenburger, Bear Naked, and Morningstar Farms (Kellogg); Cascadian Farm Organic, Muir Glen and Larabar (General Mills); R.W. Knudsen Farms and Santa Cruz Organic (Smucker); and Silk and Horizon Organic (Dean Foods).

Looking at the list of corporations named, one can see that there are two based in Michigan – Dow and Kellogg. Monsanto was by far that largest contributor to the defeat of Prop 37, but Dow contributed $2 million and Kellogg chipped in $790,700.

This is just one more example of how companies like Dow and Kellogg, despite all their claims to be environmentally and socially responsible companies are simply committed to making a profit.

The defeat of the public’s right to know what it is eating is just one more reason to not financially support companies like Kellogg, Dow and Coca Coal by boycotting them. However, boycotting these companies is not enough, they must be confronted by a resistance movement that can put them out of business since they continue to demonstrate that they do not care about the public well being.

How to grow a microgreens fall crop

Nov6

This information was written by Rachel McKay. OKT recently provided seeds for fall microgreens to its container gardeners and others.

Microgreens method of growing

Many greens can be successfully grown using the microgreens method. Examples of easy-to-grow greens are
spinach, lettuce, arugula, kale, collards, mustard, chard, and beetgreens.

Scatter your greens seeds broadcast (meaning to sprinkle them evenly over the soil). If you are planning on planting in a container, select one that is wide and fairly shallow.
Water regularly, keeping in a fair amount of sunlight.
The seedlings will emerge quickly, within a week usually. The first set of leaves that emerge are called the seed leaves, they are round and smooth and plain. When the second set of leaves emerges, these are called the “true leaves”, you will notice that they are much more textured and more closely resemble the leaves of the mature plant.
At this point you may harvest your crop by snipping the plants at the root. If you harvest at the root you will only get one harvest out of your crop, but this will be a tender, sweet, and highly nutritious harvest.

Baby greens method

If you wish to extend your growing season further than you may want to use the “baby greens” method.

Follow all of the above instructions, but instead of harvesting after the first set of true leaves emerges, let the plant mature further until at least two or three more sets of leaves emerge.
Notice that the tip of the plant contains young developing leaves, these are called the heart leaves. Leave these intact as well as the set of true leaves directly below them and snip off the other leaves at the stalk, leaving the stalk itself standing.
Your seedlings will continue to grow and develop; repeat this process to harvest more baby leaves.

Increase in Chemical Industry campaign contributions connected to the rise of Fracking

Nov1

re-posted from GRIID.org

Determined to block efforts to strengthen the 36-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act, chemical interests have invested $375 million since 2005 to elect and influence industry-friendly political leaders, Common Cause said in a report released today.

“The dimensions of chemical industry spending documented in this study, ‘Toxic Spending,’ are staggering,” said James Browning, Common Cause’s regional director for state operations and a principal author of the report. “By following the money, we see how and why the industry has been so successful in blocking attempts to strengthen the Toxic Substances Control Act.”

The report provides us with several important pieces of information; 1) how much money the chemical industry is spending to influence policy and elections, 2) which candidates and members of Congress are the recipients of this money and 3) the relationship between the increase in chemical company financial contributions at a time when fracking is exploding across the country.

Since 2005, the Chemical Industry has spent about $375 million in either lobbying or campaign contributions in order to influence policy, particularly to fight the Toxic Substance Control Act.

The recipients of the Chemical Industry’s contributions are from all over the country as you can see from this first chart.

In addition to funding candidates, the Chemical Industry has been spending lots of money to produce political ads for candidates. For example, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the American Chemistry Council has spent more than $200,000 to convince voters to reelect House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R).

The American Chemistry Council is the trade association representing the Chemical Industry, which includes roughly 150 companies involved in manufacturing and marketing chemicals. In this second chart, you can see how much money the Chemical Industry has spent on political advertising in 2012, which includes data on Michigan Representatives Fred Upton and Dave Camp.

Lastly, the increase in Chemical Industry spending on elections is in part due to the escalation in drilling for natural gas through the method known as fracking. Obtaining gas through fracking requires large amounts of “fracking fluid”—a mixture of dozens of chemicals whose effects on groundwater quality are still being studied by the EPA. Many states now require disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking but grant exemptions for chemicals that companies deem to be proprietary information, or “trade secrets.”

According to the Common Cause report,“Natural gas obtained from fracking will rise from 16 percent of all U.S. natural gas production in 2009 to 45 percent by 2035, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.12, 13 And after gas is removed from the ground, it can be sent to a chemical plant to help make more complicated chemicals that end up in consumer products.”

Here is a clear example of how corporate interests are interconnected, with the chemical industry connected to the oil & gas industry. This is important to understand if grassroots movements are going to defeat the power of these industries and prevent further environmental devastation and negative consequences to human health.

November-December Events

Nov1

Proposal 3 promotes Michigan’s public health

Oct30

reposted from The Holland Sentinel

By Joyce Stein

Increasing Michigan’s renewable energy standard to 25 percent by 2025 is the most important public health ballot initiative in decades.

That’s why the Michigan Nurses Association was one of the first organizations to endorse Proposal 3, joining a diverse and bipartisan coalition of supporters, including nurses, doctors and scientists.

As a neonatal nurse for more than 30 years, I’ve seen the dangerous effects of pollution on babies.

Proposal 3 can help us use more clean renewable energy for our electricity needs — and reduce our reliance on dirty coal and foreign oil. Today, nearly 60 percent of our electricity comes from coal, and all of that coal is imported.

Michigan coal plants release fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, heavy metals, carbon dioxide, benzenes and radionuclides. Coal pollution also contains arsenic and mercury, a potent neurotoxin that impairs the development of infants’ brains.

Coal pollution causes asthma attacks and contributes to lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart tissue damage, potentially fatal cardiac rhythmic disturbances, strokes, and impaired neurological and intellectual development in children.

Michigan’s coal plants ranked third worst for impact on people of color, behind Illinois and Indiana. Every year, coal pollution is responsible for 176 premature deaths in Michigan — more than any other state.

All our coal is imported, meaning Michigan families and businesses send more than $1.7 billion each year to other states. The cost of delivering coal is also going up, increasing 71 percent since 2006 alone.

Michigan’s dependence on coal is shipping our money and jobs to other states — and it’s putting our public health at serious risk.

By passing Proposal 3, Michigan will get 25 percent of our electricity from clean, renewable, Michigan-made energy sources such as wind and solar. That not only keeps our money in Michigan, it will also create 94,000 jobs, according to estimates by Michigan State University economists.

More than 30 other states have measures similar to Proposal 3, including our Midwest neighbors Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa. If these states can make more electricity from clean, renewable energy sources — and reduce coal pollution in the process — so can Michigan.

Moving to clean, renewable energy — as Proposal 3 does — reduces pollution, protects our Great Lakes and water, and is better for the health of Michigan families and our kids.

— Joyce Stein is a registered nurse at the University of Michigan Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Food+Justice=Democracy: Conference report back

Oct29

Our Kitchen Table joined hundreds of food justice advocates for Food+Justice=Democracy, a conference held in Minneapolis September 24–26. One of the primary features of the conference was the use of a People’s Movement Assembly process to craft principles around food justice. These principles were drafted in six concurrent sessions that were focused on different themes pertaining to food justice:

■ Historical Trauma

■ Local Foods, Community Development and Public Investment

■ Food Sovereignty

■ Hunger Relief, Health Disparities and the Industrial Food System

■ Land

■ Labor and Immigration

Those participating reached consensus on the following principles.

PRINCIPLES OF FOOD JUSTICE

Historical Trauma

1. At the household level we need to practice awareness of how our meal choices may help us practice the values of a just food system. May every family take note of and deepen the practice of food justice every day.

2. (Foundational) Acknowledge as fundamental in our consideration of food justice that we cannot deliver food justice without addressing historical trauma and the way it requires an intersectional analysis of our relationship with the land, with each other, with the economy, across cultures, and with our food and other consumption choices.

3. Food injustice creates and reinforces health disparities, land loss, historical trauma, cultural genocide, and structural racism, classism, and sexism.

4. The Interdependence Principle: Everything is interrelated. We must break down barriers that isolate us and reinforce a segregated worldview. We must put policy and practice in place that help us move to understanding and interdependence.

5. Struggle around meaning and understandings as part of our core work. An aspect of historical trauma is “divide and conquer,” and we cannot allow that pattern in our movement(s).

Local Food System, Community Development, and Public Investment: Good, healthy food and community wellbeing are basic human rights.

FOOD JUSTICE is the right of communities everywhere to produce, process, distribute, access, and eat good food regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, ability, religion, or community. Includes:

■ Freedom from exploitation

■ Ensures the rights of workers to fair labor practices

■ Values-based: respect, empathy, pluralism, valuing knowledge

■ Racial Justice: dismantling of racism and white privilege

■ Gender equity

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY is the right of people to define their own food, agriculture, livestock, and fisheries systems.

■ Environmental stewardship (subsidiarity)

■ Recognize indigenous rights to lands, territory, and resources that they possess by

ƒ reasons of traditional ownership.

■ Recognize people’s rights to:

ƒ sustainable livelihoods

ƒ consume, barter, keep, donate, gift, process, distribute, grow, and sell food

ƒ local ownership of all aspects of the community food value chain

COMMUNITY FOOD SECURITY is the condition in which all people at all times have access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food, outside emergency food situations.

Hunger Relief, Health Disparities, and the Industrial Food System

Because the emergency food system perpetuates food insecurity and health disparities; and because the emergency food system is sustained by the corporate food industry; and because these opportunities exist:

■ institutional racism can be eliminated

■ local and regional food systems can be reclaimed by engaged communities in a democratic process

■ health care reform can focus on prevention and nutrition

■ communities have demonstrated throughout time that they can care for one another and themselves;

We commit to these actions:

■ mandating a living wage and supporting living wage campaigns

■ dismantling structural racism

■ building and providing education necessary for food sovereignty for all

■ demand healthcare that promotes wellness

■ demand a social covenant that meets all people’s needs with dignity and participatory decision making

■ organize across the food chain to mandate that corporations implement transparent practices of fair,

clean, and just foodLand

In a fair, just, and sustainable food system:

1. All people recognize themselves as part of the Land, Air, Water, and Sky (LAWS), and uphold the rights of nature to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate.

2. All people have access to places to produce or procure their own food, and the means (knowledge and physical resources) to do so.

3. Control of land is not used to exploit or oppress people, including migrant peoples; it is used to enhance the health, wealth, and dignity of all living beings.

4. Decisions about land use are made at the local level/by the people who are most affected, through transparent, equitable processes, to uphold principles 1, 2, and 3.

Labor and Immigration

Because the majority of food chain workers are immigrants and people of color; and because structural racism and inequality in the food system means these communities are disproportionately targeted and impacted; and because of corporate consolidation and the need to bring sustainable food (supply?) chains to scale:

We commit to building a food system that shifts the dominant narrative about sustainability in a manner that prioritizes workers’ rights, and that respects to rights of food chain workers, including the right to organize a path to legalization for undocumented workers and a living wage for all workers, farmers, and fisherfolk.

Because we need

■ fair food procurement

■ Immigration reform

■ collaborative messaging to UNDO racism both individually and corporately

■ to have leadership be those directly affected

■ to support/work towards the ownership over the means of production

We commit to creating strategic alliances, including non-food organizations and joint campaigns around food and farm justice issues.

We commit to strengthening fair food procurement campaigns and policies.

Toxic-Free and Climate-Just Food System

■ A just food and water system works to reverse climate change by becoming agro-ecologically (2) independent of fossil fuels while adapting to climate change in ways that address its inequities.

■ A just food and water system is predicated on Public Policy processes in which communities make free,

prior, and informed decisions to protect and affirm the interdependent web of life.

■ In a just food and water system, communities, farmers, and workers thrive in a healthy environment

that is free of toxic chemicals.

■ In a just food and water system, corporations are not persons; are banned from using their money for

lobbying and political campaigns; and the revolving door is closed.

1. Language copied from the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, Chapter 7, Article 31.

2. Agro-ecological = agriculture that is in harmony with nature, which upholds the principle of food sovereignty

Do We Really Need Industrial Agriculture to Feed the World?

Oct26

This video is re-posted from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy via GRIID.org.

Have you heard the myth that we need industrial agriculture to feed the world?

The biggest players in the food industry—from pesticide pushers to fertilizer makers to food processors and manufacturers—spend billions of dollars every year not selling food, but selling the idea that we need their products to feed the world. But, do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world? Can sustainably grown food deliver the quantity and quality we need—today and in the future? Our first Food MythBusters film answers these questions and more in under seven minutes.

Our Kitchen Table

Growing Justice

Tell the FDA to make animal antibiotic use public!