Ethical Eating, part 2: Looking for Answers from What Would Jesus Eat?: Our tendency to look for magic bullets and instant answers only substitutes one problem for another. Global vegetarianism won’t save the world, neither will going totally local.

Study: Healthy ‘Depots’ Discovered in Beef Brisket: from Beef Myths. the fat in beef brisket from corn-fed steers contains nearly 50 percent oleic acid, and oleic acid increases the longer cattle are fed a corn-based diet, according to research by Steve Smith at Texas A&M University.

Obesity and Climate Change? from economic sense. Something that sounds like it could have come out of the Onion; Environmentalists claim the obese are major contributors to global warming. So how does how an obese individual’s carbon footprint from sitting on the couch all day compare with that of “some skinny Barbie girl” driving to a smoothie bar after work, having an organic smoothie, then driving to a climate controlled gym to spend 2 hours utilizing their electric powered equipment before stopping by the local organic market? [Sara’s n.b. I am NOT implying that obese people all sit on the couch all day, nor that I agree with the conclusion] A pretty good summary and discussion can be found on Blogher.com

Is it possible to Eat Healthy on a Budget? Another Blogher discussion about how the least healthy foods are often the least expensive. Lots of good links here and some encouraging words.

How to teach Sustainability: from Slowfood Blog. The author of a program to teach sustainability in schools states that “Education for Sustainability” is much different from “greening.” Education for sustainability looks to integrate children with the natural world not disintegrate their relationship with it.

Are Organic Tomatoes Better? a story from NPR.org. A UC Davis study has found that organically grown tomatoes are richer in certain kinds of flavonoids than conventionally grown tomatoes. The lead scientist points out many confounding factors. The answer may be more linked to nitrogen availability (lower in organic fertilizers) than the organic process itself. An unusually balanced set of conclusions that seek not to convert the world to nor discount the value of organic growing methods.

The Onion on GM Tomatoes: As long as we’ve already mention The Onion and organic tomatoes, I thought we ought to inclue this link (found through Gristmill). Apparently Geneticists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a tomato with a 31 percent larger price tag than a typical specimen of the vine-ripened fruit through gene-splicing.

Oh yeah, like I’m going to be able to address that in a single blog post….

When you get down to it, what we eat and how it is produced is the Meta-issue of this blog. Our questions about food safety, technology, health, environment, food prices and availability, environmental impact, etc. all end up being answered by the choices we make as consumers (what we buy), and as producers (how we grow it).

So much of what I read is narrowly focused on a single problem or single solution. In a larger context there is an entire web of cause and effect around each of these single issues. We have a food system that cannot be separated from our economic, environmental, political and ethical/religious systems.

If we were to design a food system from scratch, what would it look like? Let’s start by creating a wish list. Please give us your opinions about what should be on our list, and in what order of importance.

• Safe: By most accounts we have the safest food supply in the world, in terms of food-borne illnesses. How do changes in how our food is produced affect safety (i.e. locally produced without USDA oversight, non-pastuerized milk, intensive/monoculture vs. extensive/mixed systems).
• Affordable: Americans spend less of their disposable income on food than almost any other country. Can we/should we be willing to pay higher prices in order to achieve some of our other food goals? What about the impact on those with lower incomes?
• Nutritious: The basic purpose of food is to nourish us. In reality, flavor, convenience and price probably play a larger role in our choices.
• Sustainable: We need to produce our food in a way that doesn’t rob Peter to pay Paul. Can we be truly sustainable without decreasing our food supply and having devastating effects on some of the other issues here?
• Environmentally responsible: Notice the avoidance of the term “friendly” here. If we really were going to be environmentally friendly, we’d choose not to perpetuate our species. Given that we choose to exists, how can we care for the earth and still meet our food needs?
• Practical: It’s common knowledge that fresh is best, but let’s face it, most of us ‘give’ on other issues for convenience. I bet most people wouldn’t put “easy” high on the list of food priorities, but voting with their dollars shows otherwise.
• Ethical: Food issues are tied at a gut level to our belief system. Don’t try to talk an ethically-motivated vegan out of their position through scientific arguments. What is “ethical” in food production? Do we hold our food production system to a higher ethical standard than we do our other consumer goods (sweat shops in India for textiles, environmental impact of steel/plastic/transportation)?
• Feasible: I”m a big local food supporter, but realize that a totally local food system is not currently feasible in many areas of the country. Many of the production methods I use myself on my own ranch are difficult (impossible?) to implement on a national scale.

What did I miss? How do these rank in importance relative to each other?

I love Wired magazine — love, love, love it — because it’s forward thinking, filled with new ideas, geeky-hip (like I hope I am) and, most of all, is not afraid to break taboos to get us looking at things in new, arguably more rational ways.

Case in point is this month’s cover story, “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green,” which tells us that “winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism’s sacred cows.” The article then goes on to suggest 10 “Green Heresies” we may all need to embrace if we are committed to slowing down/reversing the carbon emissions choking our planet.

Two of those heresies directly relate to our interests here at Down to Earth:

Heresy No. 3: Organics Are Not the Answer. Wired explains how conventional agriculture can be easier on the Planet.

Heresy No. 6: Accept Genetic Engineering. Feeding the more than six billion people exacts a heavy environmental toll. The only way to make it easier on Mother Earth is to use science to create super-efficient foodstuffs, which could put a real dent in global emissions.

After years of helping run an organic restaurant, no one was more surprised than I was to find out that the organic label was a marketing designation not supported by science.  The locovores (like Sara) have it right when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint.

Men are from Science, Women are from Fashion and Style: Blogher (cyber-central for women bloggers) chews through the NYT’s placement in the Style section of an article about how women are behind in science. Made me wonder about science education (or lack thereof) and how it affects our ability to think critically and intelligently about some of the food issues we discuss here.

Farm Bill Passes, Vetoed, Veto (sort of) overridden: From American Farmland Trust. Although a seemingly dry topic, the 2008 Farm Bill has some important provisions for nutrition programs, farmland preservation, healthy and local foods and conservation progams.

Who Eats Rice, Anyway? From Chow. A discussion of how agricultural research budgets across the world have declined dramatically in the last few decades—bottoming out in time for this year’s food crisis. The US is in the midst of slashing support for research that focuses on improving crops vital to agriculture in poor countries.

Which Pots and Pans are Safest - Unearthing My Mother’s Cookware: From The Not Quite Crunchy Parent. Turns out Mom might have known best, after all.

Déjà chew: The food price crisis in context : A guest post on Ethicurean that shows the solution to the world’s food crisis is not a simple matter of people food vs. animal feed nor crops for food vs. crops for fuel.

Toilet Paper Rolls? Yes, Toilet Paper Rolls From Green Mom Finds. 101 things to do with a toilet paper roll before you recycle it (102 if you count the original intended use).

There was a very uplifting article in the New York Times this week on inner city gardens. (discovered via Chow). I find these kind of projects inspiring for so many reasons; making fresh produce available, beautification of formerly derelict spots, providing work opportunities for youth and the homeless. Not least of all, is reconnecting people with food at its roots.

I think one of the biggest wasted opportunities of the Bush administration’s tenure was Hurricane Katrina. Wouldn’t it have been a great chance to reconstruct the most devastated areas with community or rooftop gardens? My favorite chapter in “Good News For a Change” (by David Suzuki and Holly Dressel) is the one about Cuba’s move toward more urban food production, forced by their isolation from global food sources.

I spent an afternoon with Dan Rather last year during an on-site interview on cloned animals in the food supply. The best part of the afternoon was talking with him about his views on people’s disconnects with agriculture and the source of their food. He said he thought it would be great to have a series of “Ag Disneylands” where people could come and see plant and animal agriculture as it really is. Perhaps that would help bridge the chasm of understanding between producers and consumers.

We’re starting a new feature this week: a digest of links I and my partners-in-blogging-crime have come across recently. Many of which we’d love to have featured full-length analyses, but the rest of life intervened. Some are great resources and some are merely interesting.

Clash over CO2 and food miles. Is African agriculture more eco-friendly?

New Food Safety Rules May Do More Harm Than Good . The food safety regulations established in response to the spinach E. coli outbreak are threatening environmentally friendly farming practices.

The great organic myths: Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can’t afford.

Organic Myths Rebutted.

More Choice for Women Means More Sustainability. Expanding the capacity of all women to choose when to bear children is thus the surest route to achieving an environmentally sustainable population.

Eating Fresh and Seasonal. Seasonal guides to help you navigate the world of produce from the supermarket to your kitchen

And one that we will be posting more on soon, Pew Commission Says Industrial Scale Farm Animal Production Poses “Unacceptable” Risks to Public Health, Environment

New Scientist: Environment posted about a paper entitled “Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the US”. It’s also gotten coverage from National Geographic, Mother Jones and other sources. It has been quoted around the blogosphere as a mandate to reduce or eliminate red meat in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

Unfortunately, only a lay-person’s version of the paper is available online. The authors were kind enough to send me the original paper in all its science-geek glory.

The paper is very well written and fair. When the author doesn’t really have a dog in the fight, I’m much less suspect of the conclusions. In the original paper, the authors are very careful to point out that their results are, of necessity, based on industry averages for the source data. The inputs about red meat production, therefor, are based on industry standard production practices. For beef production, this means a calf is typically born and raised to weaning on one farm, sold to another producer for growing out on another pasture-based system or grain/forage mix, then finished on a high-grain diet in a concentrated facility. The total GHG footprint of red meat production under this scenario is high compared to other food types.

The “local” component of GHG emission come from the miles the food travels between final production and the point of sale. For red meat, this is a very small portion (9%) of the total GHG emissions. Much of the remaining GHG emissions are the result of transporting feed to the animal.

My argument with blanket conclusions such as “eating red meat is bad for the environment” is that locally produced red meat, or meat produced under production systems such as pasture-based, are not going to have the same impacts. I am attempting to gather unbiased data on relative impacts of tilled food (veggies and cereal grains) versus foods that are produced without tillage. I’ll post on them as I get them.

Eating red meat from a local producer that brings cattle in from all over the country and trucks in feed may not reduce your GHG as much as buying single-ranch, completely pasture-raised beef from across the country. Likewise, red meat from your local producer may be less GHG intense than eggs from a chain natural foods store.

My take-away message from the paper is that “local” is not a silver bullet for reducing your GHG footprint. Neither, however, is elimination of red meat, dairy or other food classes. Similarly, organic may not be less GHG-intense than non-organic (traditional or other alternative). As with many of the issues we discuss here, attention to what you are buying, common sense and an open mind will guide you to wiser choices than any hard-and-fast rule.

The seemingly unlikely partnership of organic farming and GMOs is in the news again in the Washington Post. This article supports Lisa’s post from earlier this month, and again challenges us to abandon caricatures and look at the synergies.

The article also mentions a new book entitled Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak, a wife and husband team of plant geneticist and organic farmer. The Amazon.com review characterizes it as:

“a tale of two marriages. The first is that of Raoul and Pam, the authors, and is a tale of the passions of an organic farmer and a plant genetic scientist. The second is the potential marriage of two technologies-organic agriculture and genetic engineering. Like all good marriages, both include shared values, lively tensions, and reinvigorating complementarities. “

I succumbed and ordered it. I’ll read it as soon as my few minutes of spare time allow and post my review.

This is a bit off-topic for Down to Earth, but it is an issue of concern to parents. My question — should it be? I honestly don’t know and want our favorite science geek’s — Sara’s — feedback.

There’s been a lot of media commentary lately about possible dangers from plastic softeners called pthalates, which include chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) and diisononyl phthalate (DINP). They are often used in children’s toys and in baby bottles. Lick a rubber duckie — isn’t it nasty? To us maybe, but not so much to teething babies. And imagine my alarm — both my children were primarily breast fed, but we used our fair share of plastic bottles as well (heated in the microwave!! So shoot a working mother!!). Not to mention those delightful drooling years of watching a newly-minted crawler cruise around with something — anything — plastic and soothing in their teething mouths.

Below are links to two articles on this topic. One is the lead piece in today’s Washington Post, which lays out one side of the issue very well. “The Plastics Revolution: It Changed Our World, But Are We Trading Convenience for Safety?” According to this article, “independent panels sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration examined the data on plastics safety and drew conflicting conclusions.” It then goes into a veritable “he said, she said” of industry, activists and scientists on both sides essentially calling the other side morally bankrupt.

The other is by the founder and former leader of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, using the BPA issue as an example of “why he left Greenpeace.” Moore (who, admittedly, many dismiss as a corporate shill) says it’s the lack of respect for science in the enviro community that drove him away from Greenpeace. He cites the furor over plastic softeners as a case in point. He quotes the Consumer Product Safety Commission saying “If DINP is to be replaced in children’s products . . . the potential risks of substitutes must be considered. Weaker or more brittle plastics might break and result in a choking hazard. Other plasticizers might not be as well studied as DINP.”

Anyway — we may not be eating DINP and BPA, but our babies and toddlers are. (And we are too, because they are included tupperware and the trays in frozen food entrees and just about everything else.)

Sara — science geek — help a troubled mom!

Update: There’s a new article on threats from plastics in the New York Times.

TAGS: plastics

There’s an interesting article in a recent post on the NY Times Dot Earth blog: “Can People Have Meat and a Planet, Too? The first international conference on manufacturing meat was held earlier this month in Norway. Manufactured meat is produced by growing muscle cells in culture in a laboratory. The technology can produce ground-meat type products such as chicken nuggets and burgers. It is a long way from being economically more feasible than current production. There are also numerous regulatory issues and product safety testing, so it will be years before this becomes a consumer choice issue.

I admit my first reaction was envisioning “Soylent Chicken” and a big yuck!

Taking a second, more practical look, however, one can see some advantages: Cultured meat avoids animal welfare issues (”no animals were harmed in the making of this Happy Meal”) because no animals are involved. Theoretically, cultured meat is produced with less impact on the environment. Because it is produced under controlled conditions, food safety should be higher and nutritional profiles can also be modified and improved.

I’ve been listening to NPR’s Morning Edition series on food shortages and rising food costs worldwide. I was surprised to hear this is the 3rd year in a row that world food production has fallen short of world food consumption. The answer to increased production needs has been more industrialized agriculture; bringing along with it environmental and welfare concerns. There is no doubt that concentrated animal protein production produces environmental pollutants and costs more in terms of fossil fuels than pasture-based production. Contrary to the blanket statement that eating meat is bad for the environment, grazing animals are much more efficient at converting solar energy(via vegetation) to protein than we are.

I am a big proponent (and producer) of local, pasture-based agricultural products. I am also a beef connoisseur; I can describe a unique flavor and texture profile for each animal we have harvested, and even give them “Wine Spectator” type ratings in my mind. For my family and my customers, there is no doubt this is a great option. But what about the rest of the country and the world? My beef is priced equal or just above the top meat-case beef at the upscale local grocery. I can’t sell it any cheaper or I can’t pay my ranch mortgage. Can we feed the world without industrialized agriculture?

The Dot Earth article quotes Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University’s Program for the Human Environment as saying that the trend toward concentrated food production will eventually lead to manufactured meat. When it comes down to it, I think I feel the same way about “cultured meat” that I did about “Textured vegetable protein” when it came out. I don’t think I’ll have any desire to eat it myself, but I can see where it meets some needs.