Corruption of Food Production Thread

[Perelandra]

More Choice, and More Confusion, in Quest for Healthy Eating
Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

ATLANTA — Lisa Todd’s grocery cart reflects the ambivalence of many American shoppers.

Mr. Brown participates in the certified naturally grown program, a similar but less bureaucratically onerous alternative to the organic standards set by the federal government.
The label is less important. “They want food from healthy soil,” Mr. Brown said of his customers. “Taste is up there, too.”

Ms. Todd, 31, prowled the aisles of a busy Kroger store here last week. Her cart was a tumble of contradictions: organic cabbage and jar of Skippy peanut butter. A bag of kale and a four-pack of inexpensive white wine. Pineapples for juicing and processed deli meat.

The chicken, perhaps, summed it up best. A package of fryer parts from Tyson, the world’s largest poultry producer, sat next to a foam tray of organic chicken legs.

The conventional food was for her boyfriend, the more natural ingredients for her.

“We’re not 100 percent organic, obviously, but I try to be,” she said. “He doesn’t care, so I’m trying to maintain happiness in the relationship.”

Like many people who are seeking better-tasting, healthier food, Ms. Todd had heard about a recent study on organic food from Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy.

Based on data from 237 previously conducted studies, the Stanford report concluded that when it comes to certain nutrients, there is not much difference between organic and conventionally grown food.

But it also found that organic foods have 31 percent lower levels of pesticides, fewer food-borne pathogens and more phenols, a substance believed to help fight cancer.

For Ms. Todd and countless other shoppers, the study just added to the stress of figuring out what to eat. And it underscored the deep divisions at the nation’s dinner table, along with concerns among even food purists about the importance of federal organic standards.

“There’s complete confusion,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior food analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. “Most people have a randomly arranged set of diet principles. They buy organics sometimes. They buy based on price sometimes. Very few people are completely committed to any one cause.”

For some, the report gave credence to what many already believe: that organic food is not worth the price. Only 26 percent of Americans regularly buy organic food, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center poll. Price is usually why they do not. But it is a difficult choice for people who are trying to eat better.

JoAnne Grossman, 66, lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she spent a day last week working to turn a bumper crop of garden squash into zucchini bread. She and her husband, Steven, have been eating more organic food over the last year.

Her son has something to do with it. He is a high school teacher in the Washington area who also runs an organic farm. Still, the Stanford study made Ms. Grossman feel a bit better about not always going organic.

“It’s not cheap,” she said. “But the big thing for me is that I don’t like the pesticides and the chemicals they use to grow things like those monster red peppers. They’re too perfect.”

For the crowd that spends weekends at the farmers’ market and knows that Humboldt Fog is a type of cheese, the study was, at best, misunderstood and misinterpreted and, at worst, an indication of a conspiracy driven by large-scale, conventional agriculture.

“I was like, ‘Are you absolutely joking?’ ” asked Jeremy Bethel, 30, an owner of the Capra Gia Cheese Company. A constant at more than a dozen farmers’ markets in the Atlanta area, his company sells milk and cheese from 350 goats raised in Carrollton, Ga., and eggs from 400 chickens in Rome, Ga.

“They want to make organics sound bad because they see such a movement of people moving away from big agriculture,” Mr. Bethel said.

Yet among some farmers who reject conventional growing methods and customers who seek out their products, organic food — at least as it is defined by federal legislation signed in 2002 — is losing its luster even as the interest in healthier, more natural food continues to rise.

“You’re just paying $3,000 to the government to use the name organic,” said Mr. Bethel, citing what it might cost to certify an operation of his scale.

People have moved beyond organics, those on the forefront of the local food movement say. Over the last couple of decades, food has become a platform for social issues and environmental causes, a rallying point for improving schools and a marker of cultural status. Farmers’ markets are seen as an indicator of community revitalization, and visiting them is a regular weekend activity for families. The Department of Agriculture has counted 7,864 of them this year, an increase of 174 percent from 2000.

But organic food, especially products processed by large corporations, has become less a player in the front lines of the movement.

Though organic food has long been a rising star in the food industry, growing by almost 8 percent from 2009 to 2010, certified organic food still makes up less than 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales, according to the Organic Trade Association.

Farmland certified organic under the federal guidelines makes up less than 1 percent of all land used for crops and livestock, according to the Agriculture Department.

And increasingly, small-scale farmers like Greg Brown, who for six years has been growing okra, green beans and other vegetables on a few acres in Barnesville, Ga., are opting not to apply for federal organic certification.

He thought about going for an organic label, but the packet of requirements was more than an inch thick and the cost to get certified too high in proportion to his profit. Instead he farms under the less expensive certified naturally grown label, a national program that has sprung up as an alternative to the federal organic program and that has nearly 800 farms as members.

The program, which relies on farmers to inspect one another’s farms, does not certify processed foods like cereal. It requires that farmers use most of the same techniques as the federal organic program, but without the paperwork.

Customers seeking out Mr. Brown’s Greenleaf Farms okra and green beans are not really looking for a label, anyway, he said.

“They want food from healthy soil, and they want a direct line between the grower and their food,” he said. “Taste is up there, too.”

That, in many ways, was the idea behind the organic movement, which began as a postwar response to the effects of chemical fertilizer and the rise of industrial-scale farming. In the 1970s, Alice Waters and some other West Coast cooks started looking for produce that tasted better than what most restaurant supply companies were offering.

They found a small community of environmentally minded organic farmers who were picking their fruits and vegetables when they were ripe and were growing varieties designed for flavor, not shipping and storage.

From that relationship came California’s organic laws, which in turn became the basis for the national organic standards.

“I didn’t intend to seek out organic local food, said Ms. Waters said in an interview. “I was looking for taste.”

Like others, she thought the Stanford study was too narrowly focused on nutrients and had been largely misinterpreted.

“Taste is what’s going to get us to eat seven portions of fruits and vegetables a day,” she said. “To not consider taste and quality in this whole discussion is to completely miss the point about food.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/would-be-healthy-eaters-face-confusion-of-choices.html?smid=pl-share

[ninakat]

Published on Thursday, September 13, 2012 by Common Dreams
Big Ag Directly Funded Anti-Organics Stanford Study: Report
- Common Dreams staff

A study released last week by Stanford scientists, which claims organic foods are no more healthy than non-organic foods, was funded by corporate agriculture and biotechnology giants, according to a new report by the Cornucopia Institute.

"We were not one bit surprised to find that the agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows," said Charlotte Vallaeys, Food and Farm Policy Director at the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic farm policy organization.

On September 3, Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, released the research, garnishing widespread press coverage from corporate news outlets such as the New York Times, Associated Press, and CBS News. As the New York Times reported, the study "concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive."

However, as Cornucopia points out, a deeper examination of the actual research reveals "glaring errors, both in understanding the important and complex differences between organic and conventional foods and in the researchers’ flawed choice of research methods."

Environmental health advocates such as the Environmental Working Group and Mark Kastel of Cornucopia have been quick to point out the wealth of research ignored in the Stanford report, which reveals the obvious risks involved in producing and consuming non-organics; however, Stanford's spin was quickly and widely accepted by journalists without fact-checking and was rushed to the pages of major news outlets.

Now Cornucopia has revealed that the Stanford researchers have direct ties to big ag players, which stand to profit from an organics smear campaign.

"Make no mistake, the Stanford organics study is a fraud," says Mike Adams of Naturalnews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of Naturalsociety.org, who discovered the link between the organic study author and Big Tobacco. "To say that conventional foods are safe is like saying that cigarettes are safe. Both can be propagandized with fraudulent science funded by corporate donations to universities, and we’re seeing the same scientist who helped Big Tobacco now helping Big Biotech in their attempt to defraud the public."

"There was just no way that truly independent scientists with the expertise required to adequately answer such an important question would ignore the vast and growing body of scientific literature pointing to serious health risks from eating foods produced with synthetic chemicals," says Vallaeys.

Additionally, the study did, in fact, concede a few positive attributes to organic foods, including the fact that organic produce has fewer pesticide residues; however, such facts were buried in the presentation of the research by the Stanford researchers and public relations staff and were not widely reported by major news sources.

[crikkett]

GMO alert: Eating GM wheat may destroy your liver, warn scientists

Could eating meat raised on GM wheat destroy your liver, too, I wonder?

But I don't want to be their guinea pig, ya know?

Nor I.

Back in 2007, during the melamine scare, the USDA allowed melamine-laced dogfood to be fed to chickens being raised for human consumption, citing the fact that it would take lots more melamine to destroy a human kidney than a canine kidney.

It pissed me off to no end to learn that, because I was buying chicken to cook for my dog.

So when I read stories like this, I wonder, where will Big Ag decide to dump an entire crop of GM wheat that is unfit for human consumption? Into grass-fed beef, of course. Or into pigs and chickens.

[hanshan]

...

from:

More Choice, and More Confusion, in Quest for Healthy Eating

Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

ATLANTA


But it also found that organic foods have 31 percent lower levels of pesticides,
fewer food-borne pathogens and more phenols, a substance
believed to help fight cancer.

snip

“They want to make organics sound bad because they see such
a movement of people moving away from big agriculture,”
Mr. Bethel said.

snip

“You’re just paying $3,000 to the government to use the name organic,”
said Mr. Bethel, citing what it might cost to certify an operation of his scale.

snip

are opting not to apply for federal organic certification.

He thought about going for an organic label, but the
packet of requirements was more than an inch thick and
the cost to get certified too high in proportion
to his profit.

USDA intentionally destroyed the Organic concept,
as well as diluting the standards, at the behest of BigAg.

muddy the water, etc....

GMO alert: Eating GM wheat may destroy your liver, warn scientists

Could eating meat raised on GM wheat destroy your liver,
too, I wonder?

But I don't want to be their guinea pig, ya know?

Nor I.

Back in 2007, during the melamine scare, the USDA allowed
melamine-laced dogfood to be fed to chickens being raised
for human consumption, citing the fact that it would take
lots more melamine to destroy a human kidney than a canine kidney.

It pissed me off to no end to learn that, because I was
buying chicken to cook for my dog.

So when I read stories like this, I wonder, where will Big Ag
decide to dump an entire crop of GM wheat that is unfit for
human consumption? Into grass-fed beef, of course.
Or into pigs and chickens.

or, they could just send it to a third world country...


...

...

[ninakat]

Food on global casino
Sept. 12, 2012
Vandana Shiva

Food is our nourishment. It is the source of life. Growing food, processing, transforming and distributing it involves 70 per cent of humanity. Eating food involves all of us. Yet, it is not the culture or human rights that are shaping today’s dominant food economy. Rather speculation and profits are designing food production and distribution. Putting food on the global financial casino is a design for hunger.

After the US subprime crisis and the Wall Street crash, investors rushed to commodity markets, especially oil and agricultural commodities. While real production did not increase between 2005-2007, commodity speculation in food increased 160 per cent. Speculation pushed up prices and high prices pushed an additional 100 million to hunger. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan are all playing on the global food casino.

A 2008 advertisement of Deutsche Bank stated, “Do you enjoy rising prices? Everybody talks about commodities — with the Agriculture Euro Fund you can benefit from the increase in the value of the seven most important agricultural commodities.”

When speculation drives up prices, the rich investors get richer and the poor starve. The financial deregulation that destabilised the world’s financial system is now destabilising the world food system. The price rise is not just a result of supply and demand. It is predominantly a result of speculation. Between 2003 to 2008, commodity index speculation increased by 1,900 per cent from an estimated $13 billion to $260 billion. Thirty per cent of these index funds are invested in food commodities. As the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative states, “We live in a brave new world of 24-hour electronic trading, triggered by algorithms of composite price indices, fits of investor ‘lack of confidence’ and of unregulated ‘dark pools’ of more than $7 trillion in over the counter commodities derivatives trades.”

The world commodity trading has no relationship to food, to its diversity, to its growers or eaters, to the seasons, to sowing or harvesting. Food diversity is reduced to eight commodities and bundled into “composite price index”. Seasons are replaced by 24-hour trading. Food production driven by sunshine and photosynthesis is displaced by “dark pools of investment”. The tragedy is that this unreal world is creating hunger for real people in the real world.

In The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away with it — a cover story for Harper’s — Fredirick Kaufman says, “The history of food took an ominous turn in 1991, at a time when no one was paying much attention. That was the year Goldman Sachs decided our daily bread might make an excellent investment.”

And the entry of investors like Goldman Sachs, AIG Commodity Index, Bear Sterns, Oppenheiner and Pimco, Barclays allowed agribusiness to increase its profits. In the first quarter of 2008, Cargill attributed its 86 per cent jump in profits to commodity trading. ConAgra sold its trading arm to a hedge fund for $2.8 billion.

Gambling on the price of wheat for profits took food away from 250 million people. Speculation had separated the price of food from the value of food. As Austin Da-mani, a wheat broker, told Fred Kaufman, “We’re trading wheat, but its wheat we’re never going to see. It’s a cerebral experience”.

Food is an ecological experience, a sensory experience, a biological experience. With speculation it has been removed from its own reality. Grain markets have been transformed, with futures trading by the grain giants in Chicago, Kansas City and Minneapolis combined with speculation by investors. And as Mr Kaufman says, “Imaginary wheat bought anywhere affects real wheat bought everywhere.” So if we do not decommodify food more and more people will be denied food; as more and more money is poured into the global casino, the artificial processes of speculation are driving up prices of food and taking it beyond the reach of millions.

The rules of the World Trade Organisation, the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and the IMF and bilateral free trade agreements have forced the integration of local and national food economies into the global market. And now the global financial system is speculating on food commodities, influencing prices and the right to food of the poorest person in the remotest corner of the world.

The spike in the world food prices started to reappear in 2011. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, in January 2011, the food price index was up 3.4 per cent from December 2010. Cereal price index was three per cent above December, and at the highest level since July 2008, though still 11 per cent below its peak in April 2008.
In India, the prices of onion jumped from Rs. 11/kg in June 2010 to Rs. 75/kg in January 2011. While production of onion had gone up from 4.8 million tonnes in 2001-2002 to 12 million tonnes in 2009-2010, prices also went up, showing that in a speculation-driven market there is no correlation between production and prices. The price difference between wholesale and retail was 135 per cent.

Food that has been put on a global casino is serving speculative investors and agribusiness well, but it is not serving people. We need to get food off the global casino and back on people’s plates. Food democracy and food sovereignty can only be achieved by putting an end to financial speculation.

Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World Food Programme, related the Egyptian revolution of 2010 to the rise of food prices. “In many protests, demonstrators have brandished loaves of bread or displayed banners expressing anger about the rising cost of food stables such as lentils. When it comes to food, the margins between stability and chaos are perilously thin. Volatility on the markets can translate quickly to volatility on the streets and we all should remain vigilant.”

The growing concern about speculating on food has forced some banks to stop investing in food commodities. Germany’s Commerzbank and Austria’s Volksbanken have both removed agricultural products from their index fund products. Deutsche Bank had earlier done the same. It is time that every government and every financial institution put people’s right to food above the hunger for profits.

The writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

[2012 Countdown]

crosspost from just posted in OWS thread-

Occupy Monsanto GCU Field Agents Shutdown GMO Seed Distribution Facility
http://www.nationofchange.org/occupy-mo ... 1347627982

Published: Friday 14 September 2012

On Wednesday, September 12, activists calling themselves the Genetic Crimes Unit (GCU) shut down shipping and receiving access points at Monsanto’s Oxnard seed distribution facility located at 2700 Camino Del Sol. By peacefully blockading the exit and access points, the group effectively shut down the distribution of genetically engineered (GMO) seeds for a day.

Monsanto is the largest producer of GMO seeds and is being called out for their genetic crimes by a network called Occupy Monsanto. Today’s protest is the beginning of a series of over 65 different autonomous actions that officially start on September 17, the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Actions are planned in countries throughout the world, including the US, Germany, Canada, India, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Argentina, Australia, Spain, Russia, and Japan. More info as well as video available for media use of today action can be found here.

After occupying all three shipping and receiving entrances to the Monsanto facility using flashy theatrics, including a car with a giant “fish-corn” on top of it and a 6-foot high jail cell complete with someone dressed up like the CEO Hugh Grant of Monsanto inside. Eventually after 5.5 hours the fire department was called in and 9 anti-GMO activists were arrested and charged with trespassing.

“The reason I am occupying Monsanto and willing to put myself at risk of arrest is because Monsanto has genetically engineered food crops to contain novel untested compounds that result in more weed killer sprayed on our food, without informing consumers. Unlike most industrialized countries including every country in Europe, Japan and even China, in America right now there are no labels on our food informing us whether we are eating GMOs or not. We have a right to opt out of this experiment: it’s not up to chemical companies what I feed myself and my family. Monsanto has bought and sold both parties and has handpicked henchmen at FDA and USDA making sure we are kept in the dark. Monsanto is also currently fighting the California Prop 37 GMO labeling initiative that would give consumers the right to know if they are eating GMO foods. said GCU member Ariel Vegosen.

[hanshan]

...

After occupying all three shipping and receiving entrances to the Monsanto facility using flashy theatrics, including a car with a giant “fish-corn” on top of it and a 6-foot high jail cell complete with someone dressed up like the CEO Hugh Grant of Monsanto inside. Eventually after 5.5 hours the fire department was called in and 9 anti-GMO activists were arrested and charged with trespassing.

you can't make this stuff up


...

[MayDay]

...

After occupying all three shipping and receiving entrances to the Monsanto facility using flashy theatrics, including a car with a giant “fish-corn” on top of it and a 6-foot high jail cell complete with someone dressed up like the CEO Hugh Grant of Monsanto inside. Eventually after 5.5 hours the fire department was called in and 9 anti-GMO activists were arrested and charged with trespassing.

you can't make this stuff up


...

But isn't that the beauty of it? You can make this stuff up. You can jump right in and encourage your freinds to do likewise. This is a battle I personally feel we could win. Nearly everyone I speak to, left, right, outside and in between, is at least somewhat pissed off about Monsanto. Just like with OWS, we've picked the right target. If we can prove to people that we can actually shut down the most screwed up shit in our society through direct action, who knows where things could go from there!

[hanshan]

...

MayDay:

...This is a battle I personally feel we could win. ...

...

[Hammer of Los]

...

This is a battle I personally feel we could win.

Eat local fresh produce, organic if you can.

Go vegetarian.

Don't eat fast food crap.

Boycott GM.

...

[MayDay]

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/wh ... id=7505371

Which ‘organic’ companies want to keep GMO labeling in the dark?
Our writer breaks down a who’s who of Proposition 37

By Christine G.K. LaPado-Breglia
christinel@newsreview.com



This article was published on 09.06.12.



Horizon’s parent company, Dean Foods is one of dozens who have given money to fight labeling genetically modified organisms on food products.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PRISCILLA GARCIA

Those who want to eat organic and natural need to beware.

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization dedicated to “Promoting Economic Justice for Family Scale Farming,” as its motto puts it, recently came out with a detailed report that reveals which corporations have joined biotech giant Monsanto and industry leaders in fighting California’s Proposition 37, which would mandate labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, on food and other products.

The report reveals that Horizon, Silk, Kashi, Cascadian Farm, R.W. Knudsen Family and others are working to defeat the ballot measure.

“Consumers might be surprised to find out that brands hiding under ‘natural’ facades are in fact owned by multibillion-dollar corporations,” said Charlotte Vallaeys, Cornucopia’s director of farm and food policy, “[and] are contributing bushel baskets of cash to defeating Proposition 37.”

As the report pointed out, “mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food in California is viewed as a watershed event by many industry observers.” But companies are balking at the prospect of labeling GMOs, mostly because, as the report states, “many companies will find it logistically or economically difficult to produce foods with labels identifying GE for California while producing a different product line of foods for the rest of the country.”

It will cut into their bottom line, their profits, in other words.

Activists suggest that consumers cut into these sly companies’ profits now by not purchasing their products.

Of the $23.5 million donated so far to fight Prop. 37, here is the breakdown, by brand/corporation, according to the Cornucopia Institute:

Monsanto has doled out $4,208,000; PepsiCo (parent company of Izze Beverage Company and Naked Juice Company), $1,716,300; Coca-Cola (Honest Tea, Odwalla, Simply Orange Juice Company), $1,164,400; ConAgra (Alexia, Lightlife), $1,076,300; Kellogg Company (Kashi, MorningStar Farms, Gardenburger, Bear Naked), $632,500; General Mills (Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, Lärabar), $520,000; Smucker’s (R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic), $387,000; and Dean Foods (Horizon, Silk), $253,000.

Additionally, the Council for Biotechnology Information—which is made up of agricultural-pesticide giants Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer CropScience and BASF Plant Science—and the Grocery Manufacturers Association each have donated $375,000. And the Biotechnology Industry Organization has put in $250,000 toward trying to make sure Californians do not have access to accurate labeling of the food they buy, as far as GMO content goes.

Meanwhile, there are high-profile natural and organic brands who’ve given to Yes on 37, including Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps All One! soaps, Nature’s Path Organic cereals, Richvale-based Lundberg Family Farms rice, Nutiva coconut and hemp oils, Organic Valley milk, Amy’s Kitchen frozen meals, Eden Foods, Baby’s Only Organic baby formula, Straus Family Creamery dairy and Uncle Matt’s Organic juices.

Collectively, along with Illinois physician Dr. Joseph Mercola, Organic Consumers Association and Michael Funk, CEO of United Natural Foods Inc., they have donated $2.6 million toward the support of Prop. 37. But it’s a far cry from the big money donated by big corporations such as Monsanto, PepsiCo and Kellogg.

Meanwhile, certain companies that activist say probably should support Prop. 37 have yet to donate to the campaign, according to the Cornucopia Institute. These companies include Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market and Stonyfield Farm.

Interested parties can visit http://www.cornucopia.org to sign a petition that tells anti-Prop. 37 corporations that you won’t give them your business. The petition also thanks pro-37 companies and asks noncommittal companies, such as Trader Joe’s, to provide financial support.

[MayDay]

...

This is a battle I personally feel we could win.

Eat local fresh produce, organic if you can.

Go vegetarian.

Don't eat fast food crap.

Boycott GM.

...

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Many so called organic products already contain gmo additives, and as the article I posted above illustrates, the companies at fault are actually funding the fight against gmo labelling.

The only thing left for us to do about it is to #OccupyMonsanto, as they've already occupied our food supply.

[Hammer of Los]

...

I am sure you are right Mayday.

Give 'em hell!

...

[elpuma]

The problem is..... Profit is not sustainable. The current way we do business is not sustainable. If possible, take a moment and really delve into this, and you will see. As I type this, thousands of students are being readied at business schools all over the world to take their place at thousands of corporations.... Willing 'foot-soldiers' being trained to sustain our entrenched paradigm of business. Getting ready to 'innovate'. Really? What, and for whom?

But who is really benefiting. Just take a second and ask yourselves this very important question. What is the root of the problem? Why are we poisoning ourselves nutritionally and emotionally, and why do we continue to accept this concept of 'business'? When did this start, and how did it become such an accepted way of living?

"The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime,
forgotten because it was done neatly."

--Balzac

[Hammer of Los]

...

I see the System of Mammon crumbling.

...