Food Democracy

Plastic bags are made from oil: it takes about 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags, and the U.S. goes through 380 billion of them a year.

A statistics class at Indiana U did the math: more than 1.6 billion gallons of oil are used each year for plastic bags alone. The more we use plastic bags, the more we waste oil.

Compounding the problem is the fact that, not only do we make tons of plastic bags (and use lots of oil in the process) we only recycle 1 percent. One lousy percent. It’s pitiful.

But the plastic problem gets worse. Under perfect conditions a bag takes a thousand years to biodegrade, and in a landfill, plastic bags decompose even slower. If buried, they block the natural flow of oxygen and water through the soil. If burned, they release dangerous toxins and carcinogens into the air. The damage is even more severe when the bags end up in the ocean, where thousands of sea turtles and other marine life die each year after mistaking plastic bags for food. 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 »

Two weeks ago Tyson Foods Inc. killed and buried the carcasses of 15,000 hens in northwest Arkansas that tested positive for exposure to a strain of the avian flu that is not harmful to humans, state officials announced.

The affected chickens had antibodies of a mild or low pathogenic strain of bird flu called H7N3.

It is the deadly high pathogenic H5N1 strain, which has never been found in the United States, that worries scientists because it has spread to and killed people around the world.

The deadly H5N1 strain has spread to humans overseas who have been in close contact with infected chickens. So far there have been 376 human cases worldwide including 238 deaths.

A major worry among health experts is the H5N1 strain will mutate into a form that can be transmitted from human to human, raising the threat of a global pandemic that could kill millions.

Jon Fitch, director of the state’s Livestock and Poultry Commission, said routine blood tests conducted on May 30 found the possible exposure. Further tests done by the state and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the birds did not have active infections, but rather were exposed to a subtype of the disease.

“Even though the affected birds do not currently have the virus, the flock is being depopulated today as a precautionary measure and will not enter the human food chain. While the birds’ exposure to this strain of avian influenza poses no risk to human health, USDA’s policy is to eradicate all H5 and H7 subtypes,” the company, based in Springdale, Arkansas, said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

Police place South Korean flags on cargo containers that hold sand to form a barricade to block a protest march on a street leading to the U.S. embassy and the presidential Blue House in central Seoul June 10, 2008. The containers were welded together and on to the road. About one million people fearing infection of mad cow disease across the country demonstrated to demand full-scale renegotiation of a beef deal with the U.S. and the resignation of President Lee Myung-bak. Yesterday the entire cabinet offered to resign because of mounting public protests against the resumption of U.S. beef imports.

South Korea was the third-biggest buyer of U.S. beef before imposing a ban in December 2003 on concerns about the brain- wasting disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Scientists say BSE is spread in cattle by tainted animal feed. Eating contaminated meat from infected animals can cause a fatal human variant that has been blamed for the deaths of 151 people in the U.K., where it was first reported in the 1980s.

(Xinhua/Reuters Photo), www.chinaview.cn

The US salmonella outbreak has prompted McDonald’s restaurants across Canada to stop serving tomatoes temporarily. A notice posted at McDonald’s in Dartmouth and other parts of Nova Scotia on Saturday told customers that tomatoes are no longer on the menu for the time being but gave no reason.

A spokesman for McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada was not available Saturday, but the restaurant chain issued a statement saying it has temporarily removed tomatoes as a precautionary measure due to the situation in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »

The high-level food security summit that ended last night in Rome garnered another $6 billion in new funding to tackle the global food crisis.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said the figure of $6 billion is in addition to existing pledges of up to $7 billion that were also announced at the Conference on World Food Security.

The $13 billion amounts to nearly half the $30 billion a year the UN officials said is needed each year to eradicate hunger.

The funding will be going to smallholder farmers who need it most, said Holmes.

“We need to focus both on the immediate needs and on the longer-term issues starting right now and the focus is on the smallholder farmers in developing countries.”

“These are the people who need most help and where there is the most potential for increasing agricultural productivity and production,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, South Korea’s president said the country would resume full imports of American beef. Now, he says he won’t allow any beef from cattle more than 30 months old. The backpedaling came as tens of thousands took to the streets in public protest.

 Chung Woon-chun told reporters at a press conference that until the two sides reach an understanding on the age limit of cattle, South Korea will not post the revised sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards that were agreed on April 18. The move effectively maintains the ban on U.S. beef that has been in place since early October.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Swiss Federal Council (government) has voted to extend the country’s moratorium on genetically modified (GM) plants for a further three years beyond the current expiration date of November 2010, Dow Jones reports.

The extension is to allow time for a national research programme into the benefits and risks of GM crops to be completed and the results assessed. Questions over the biological safety of GM plants and the coexistence of GM, conventional and organic crops are being addressed.

The Council imposed a moratorium on the commercial cultivation of GM crops in 2005, on the basis that there was no demand for them in Switzerland at the time and that big gaps remained in scientific knowledge about the risks of this technology.

Shortly after that, the research programme was launched, and this is expected to reach a conclusion around the middle of 2012. However, the Council said last week that it must be allowed to take its course without political pressure.

According to the Council, the moratorium has not caused any obvious problems, either for the farming industry, researchers, or international relations. In fact, it claimed, Swiss farmers have benefited from being able to market their produce on international markets as GM-free.

http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/id102-50901/gm_crops_banned_in_switzerland_until_2012.html

It has been described as a global crisis pushing 100 million people into hunger, threatening to stoke social and political turmoil and set the fight against world poverty back by seven years.

Now, the food price crisis will be tackled by world leaders who meet in Rome next week to seek ways of reducing the suffering for the world’s poorest people and ensure the Earth can produce more food to sustain an ever growing population.

“It’s time for action,” said Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) who called the summit late last year before the full extent of the food price crisis was clear.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick underlined the urgency of the problem, announcing $1.2 billion in loans and grant financing for countries struggling with food and fuel costs.

“It is crucial that we focus on specific action,” he said. “This is not an issue like HIV/AIDS where you need some research breakthrough. People know what to do.”

A combination of factors, including poor harvests, low stocks and rising demand, have collided over the last one to two years to cause massive, sudden rises in many food commodity prices which very few people saw coming.

Food prices will remain high over the next decade even if they fall from current records, the FAO said in a report. 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 »