Food Democracy

1. Which biotech corporation was involved in research on uranium for the Manhattan Project and operated a nuclear facility for the US government until the late 1980s? ANSWER: Monsanto

2. Name two biotech corporations that were once part of the German chemical firm at the financial core of the Nazi regime and which supplied Zyklon-B during the extermination phase of the Holocaust? ANSWER: Bayer and BASF

3. Which biotech firm other than Monsanto was a major supplier of Agent Orange, as well as manufacturing napalm? ANSWER: Dow

4. In relation to which Alabama town, where the undertaker who lived across the street from the Monsanto plant said he always thought he was burying too many children, was the company found guilty of conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society”? ANSWER: Anniston Read the rest of this entry »

Nebraska Beef, Ltd., an Omaha, Neb., establishment is recalling approximately 531,707 pounds of ground beef components that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced today.

The problem was discovered by FSIS through traceback investigations and ground beef samples collected from two federally inspected establishments positive for E. coli O157:H7, as well as multiple samples of Kroger brand ground beef positive for E. coli O157:H7.

Kroger brand ground beef samples were collected by the Michigan and Ohio Departments of Agriculture and Health from patients in Michigan and Ohio. Nebraska Beef, Ltd., was identified as a common supplier to those stores in addition to two federally inspected establishments where FSIS obtained a positive ground beef sample that was matched to the outbreak strain identified in Michigan and Ohio.

The epidemiological investigations and a case control study conducted by the Michigan and Ohio Departments of Agriculture and Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that there is an association between the ground beef products and 35 illnesses reported in Michigan (17) and Ohio (18).

See related story: Yet another sad tale of ground beef contaminated with EColi

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Don’t know if it’s the water, could be pesticides, but one thing’s for certain, men in mid-Missouri have much lower sperm counts. The problem has been going on for years with no definitive answers. And there’s plenty of evidence to show the problem is much broader and more widespread.

The story:

Two years ago when fertility specialist Gil Wilshire came to Columbia from his practice in New Jersey, one detail jumped out at him. His male patients in Mid-Missouri were much less fertile than those he treated on the East Coast.

“Nobody I saw had a normal sperm count,” said Wilshire, a reproductive endocrinologist at Mid-Missouri Reproductive Medicine and Surgery Inc. “It took about two or three weeks until a normal semen analysis came through the door. I kept asking myself, ‘Am I in a hellhole of toxins?’ “

Danny Schust, another endocrinologist who arrived here from Harvard University in 2006, had an almost identical experience. He was accustomed to treating men with low sperm counts, but those he saw in Missouri all had low counts.

“I went to” an andrologist at the Missouri Center for Reproductive Medicine and Fertility. “And I said, ‘Are you guys doing something different here because I never see normal sperm counts?’ ” Schust recalled. “And she was like, ‘No, this is Missouri sperm.’ ” Read the rest of this entry »

Coca-Cola is phasing out the use of the controversial additive sodium benzoate in Diet Coke because of consumer demand for more natural products. The company said it began removing the preservative (E211) from production lines in January, and so it should be out of circulation by the end of the year. However, the additive removal is only currently planned for products sold in Britain. The Coca-Cola Company could not confirm if any other countries would follow suit.

A spokesperson also said that there are no current plans to remove sodium benzoate from any other of its brands, such as Fanta, Sprite, Oasis and regular Coca-Cola.

“The product is very important technically, especially in fruit-based drinks,” said a spokesperson. “We are currently able to remove it from Diet Coke and we will look at removing it from products where technically possible.”

Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative in soft drinks, jams, fruit juices, pickles, shrimp, pharmaceuticals (especially cough syrups), and soy sauces. It primarily prevents them from going moldy. Recent studies have highlighted health concerns from its use.

However, Coca-Cola insisted the move was not a result of the studies and its removal from Diet Coke is simply a response to consumer preferences for natural. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know? The Consumer Price Index for April showed the highest food price inflation in 17 years.

There are a number of factors contributing to higher food prices including higher energy costs, growing global food demand and changing weather patterns. However, policies for subsidizing and mandating the conversion of corn to fuel are the only part of the food inflation equation that Congress controls. 

Last year, food-to-fuel policies led to ¼ of U.S. corn being turned into ethanol. That number will rise to over 30% this year. By 2012 as much as 40% of our corn and 30% of our vegetable oils could be be diverted to fuel production.

This diversion of food crops is reducing the supply of food and feed and contributing to food price inflation. Today, food prices in the US are rising at twice the rate of inflation. Globally, food prices rose 83% in the last 3 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Germany has banned a family of pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The German Federal Office of Consumer protection and Food Safety (BVL) has suspended the registration for eight pesticide seed treatment products used in rapeseed oil and sweetcorn.

The move follows reports from German beekeepers in the Baden-Württemberg region that two thirds of their bees died earlier this month following the application of a pesticide called clothianidin.

“It’s a real bee emergency,” said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeepers’ Association. “50-60% of the bees have died on average and some beekeepers have lost all their hives.”

Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical, produced by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer, is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It was applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine this spring. The seeds are treated in advance of being planted or are sprayed while in the field. Read the rest of this entry »

The head chef of one of Melbourne’s best-known restaurants has called on consumers to boycott establishments that don’t commit to being GM-free.

“I know it sounds scary … but unless a massive amount of people go against (GM), nothing is going to be done to stop it,” Geraud Fabre, head chef of the famous France-Soir restaurant, says.

“I don’t say it to get more customers, but I reckon … if people close their restaurants because there are no customers … it would make the Government realise they shouldn’t (allow genetically modified crops in Australia).”

Fabre is one of a number of top chefs nationally who have signed an anti-GM chefs’ charter designed to pressure state and federal governments to prevent the introduction of genetically engineered crops into Australia.

The GM-Free Chefs’ Charter, calls for strict labelling of GM foods. The chefs who sign up to it believe GM foods pose a risk to their clientele and the nation as a whole, it says. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers and farmers will soon be on their own when it comes to finding out which pesticides are being sprayed on everything from corn to apples.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it plans to do away with publishing its national survey tracking pesticide use, despite opposition from prominent scientists, the nation’s largest farming organizations and environmental groups.

“If you don’t know what’s being used, then you don’t know what to look for,” said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center, a nonprofit in Enterprise, Ore. “In the absence of information, people can be lulled into thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in this country.”

Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency’s detailed annual report to learn which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow. Read the rest of this entry »

China has placed three more U.S. processors on its list of banned importers, according to a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service report. Until further notice, products produced or stored at Swift Pork Co., Louisville, Ky.; Mountaire Farms, Lumber Bridge, N.C.; and Meadowbrook Farms Cooperative, Rantoul, Ill., are ineligible to export to China, effective immediately. Meat and poultry products produced at other facilities from raw materials originating from these establishments are not eligible for export products to China either. Read the rest of this entry »

An international conference agreed Friday to hold producers or handlers of genetically engineered organisms liable for damage their products cause to native plants or animals when transported across borders.

The agreement, concluding a five-day, 147-nation conference in Bonn, Germany, will be refined into an accord that will have the force of law for its signatories _ a process expected to take two years, said the German government representative, Ursula Heinen.

The agreement would not be legally binding on the United States, however, since Washington has not ratified the 1992 Biodiversity Convention and is not a party to the convention’s Cartagena Protocol on the safety of biotech products, which came into force in 2003, conference spokesman David Ainsworth said. Read the rest of this entry »