Take Action This Weekend on Proposed 'Naturally Raised' Meat Label

One of my favorite sources for food politics info, The Ethicurean (Chew the Right Thing) has a great opportunity for us all to do something in the wake of the Scary Meat Sitch in this country. Or, to clarify, we can complain to the USDA about proposed meat labelling that will make it even harder to figure out the backstory on meat in the stores. The USDA's proposing creating a new labelling requirement for 'naturally raised' meat that requires said meat to be free of hormones and antibiotics. So far, so good, right? Well, that meat can come from animals who have had zero access to grass, the outdoors, zero natural insemination, zero regulation of whether or not said livestock operations are polluting the air and water with animal waste (intersex fish ring a bell?), and zero attention paid to whether or not the animals were raised humanely. Remind anyone else of the watered-down organics labelling that infuriated so many small farmers?

Here's the thing -- to have an opportunity to register your comment, you have to do it by Monday, March 3! Check out the Ethicurean's post to hear their full take, or just click through to the commenting section below. I have included my response and Ethicurean's talking points below.

Here's the link to give the USDA your comments.

MamaBird's comment: "I completely agree with the Ethicurean talking points (see below) and am outraged that the USDA would want to further obscure meat labeling. I would love to be able to buy my meat in a regular grocery store instead of travelling to pick up meat from a farm, but I can't currently tell from labels which producers are using the methods I support in meat production. I'm not a vegetarian, by the way, just a concerned mother who wants to have quality meat for her kids. Meat that's been grass-fed, meat that is from animals who have had access to pasture, who haven't been horribly overcrowded or fed antibiotics or homones (that are polluting our waterways!), meat from NON-downer animals. Please don't make it any harder for me to buy meat that's safe for my family and good for the environment."


Ethicurean 'naturally raised' meat commentary info:

Important: All comments must reference "Docket No. AMS-LS-07-0131".

Also: Be sure to include your name, address, and if appropriate, affiliation(s) and/or interest(s) in the issue.

Remember: The public comment deadline is March 3, 2008.

Talking Points

• The proposed "naturally raised" standard fails to address many of the high standards consumers expect from sustainable livestock production, including animal welfare, access to pasture, and conservation and environmental requirements. Quite simply, the "naturally raised" label as proposed would not mean what consumers would think it implies and should be abandoned.
• With its less than comprehensive definition of "naturally raised" and seemingly similar relationship to other labels, the proposed label would confuse consumers. It could also undermine the consumer confidence in all other label claims, including the well-established and trusted "certified organic" label which numerous producers have built their respective businesses around.
• The naturally raised label claim would completely defeat a very important purpose of providing the label in the first place – to provide clear and reliable signals to consumers who want to make informed, environmentally-friendly, and healthy choices about their food purchases.
• The implementation of a "naturally raised" claim would further mislead consumers who are already uncertain and skeptical about the meaning of the "natural" label claim currently overseen by USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The natural claim refers to processing of meat whereas the naturally raised claim refers to the production of livestock. The implementation of two distinct claims, both using the term "natural" yet addressing completely distinct issues and administered by two separate agencies will create confusion for consumers and farmers alike.
• Hormone and antibiotic supplementation and the use of animal byproducts as a feed source are extremely important issues that could be succinctly and accurately addressed through individual labeling claim standards. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service had previously proposed the development of "no antibiotics used" and "no supplemental hormones used" labels, both of which would provide clear and reliable signals to consumers. This approach would provide consumers with clear, reliable signals that will allow them the opportunity to make informed decisions about what they are purchasing, while sustaining their confidence in the integrity of all USDA process-verified labels.

*Photo courtesy of kovic at SXC - apologies for the cute, anthropomorphized kissing cow images right next to thoughts of your burgers....

**Also, I promise that I will post about something other than horrifying food issues some day soon!
Read more!

Another Scientist's Take on Hermaphrodite Fish

I think we're all on the same page about the hermaphrodite fish surfacing in our waterways. In case you missed the first installment, Dr. Alan S. Kolok (an environmental toxicologist who's researched the effects of estrogenic compounds in wastewater treatment on the feminization of male fish) let Surely You Nest know that, although hormones are indeed untreated pollutants at this time, the real danger's not in the tap water we drink but the swimming holes we might choose. He convinced me to lose the bottled water, go back to the tap and resume filtering.

Up today is an interview with an environmental, analytical, and marine chemistry professor who's also studying estrogens in our waterways. My eternal gratitude to Dr. Yuegang Zuo, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Marine Sciences and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, for taking the time to answer my questions. Dr. Zuo recently conducted a study entitled Monitoring Estrogenic Hormones - Undesired Fish Contraceptives, and Investigating Their Sources, Transportation and Fate in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. I so appreciate his taking the time to consider my basic questions about water quality and safety.

My quick-and-dirty on this interview? Dr. Zuo notes that, although they're not yet designed to remove hormones, current wastewater treatment processes actually do take care of some percentage of the estrogens. Glad to hear it. Also, he notes that livestock operations in the Midwest actually are polluting drinking water sources with hormones (scratch the tapwater there, folks. And if you live in D.C., make sure your water's lead-free before jumping on the local water bandwagon). Sounds like on many fronts, more research is needed. Many thanks to Dr. Zuo and Dr. Kolok for the ongoing work they're doing to figure out the causes of intersex fish and ramifications of hormones in our waterways.

***

Dear Dr. Zuo:

Please forgive this intrusion into your professional life, but I am a resident of Washington, DC who is concerned about the large numbers of intersex fish in the Potomac. I've contacted my local officials and WASA, the local water authority, and was told that since this is an "emerging pollutant of concern" that's not covered by the Clean Water Act, no action's being taken to treat DC water.

Thank for your interest in the current research on estrogens and other endocrine disrupting pollutants in our aquatic environment. Your local officials and WASA were right that estrogens and other endocrine disrupting chemicals are a group of emerging environmental pollutants;

Furthermore, WASA indicated that there are no existing methods to treat wastewater to remove hormones. Just from surfing online, this seems not to be the case.

current waste water treatment processes are not designed to decompose these compounds; and they are not regulated by the environmental protection agency.

Do you know of cities in which wastewater treatment removes chemicals including estrogen?

Although the current waste water treatment processes are not designed to eliminate these pollutants, they do remove a significant fraction of these pollutant ranged from 10 ~ 90%. Both chlorination, UV-irradiation, microbial degradation and ozonation processes, which commonly used for the wastewater and drinking water treatment, can remove the concerned pollutants at least partially. However, the removal efficiency of the concerned pollutants has not been well studied yet.

Do you have any advice for me as I attempt to figure out a)how to get my water treatment facility to take this issue seriously?...and b)whether or not the hormones in my public water supply are of concern for my (small) children?

So far, most problems are associated with waste water effluents and livestock operation. Except sites contaminated by livestock operation in some Midwest locations, we have not noticed any drinking water contaminations by estrogenic hormones. To make sure, you may check if your city drinking water source is not contaminated by waste water effluents and livestock operation.

Best regards,

Yuegang Zuo, Ph.D.
Professor of Environmental, Analytical and Marine Chemistry
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

*photo courtesy of GNewman at sxc
Read more!

Food Fascination

Lately, like everyone, I've been riveted by the Sinclair-esque downer cows (via Gristmill) in our meat supply. My favorite description of the situation (at Eating Liberally) called out the meat plants for "bovine water boarding."

Sometimes, in fact oftentimes, the frugal thing to do (bagging lunches) is also healthier. Last I checked, there weren't very many organic, free-range, locally- and sustainably-farmed, whole-grain, additive-, preservative-, and synthetic dye-free items on the school lunch menu.

But I figured last week was the safest time in history to relent and let our kid get a much-desired Hot Lunch or two since all of the bad press caused our school district to yank meat, recall or no, from the menus. C'mon, didn't you trade your lunches back in the day? Hostess Ding-Dongs being the platinum currency of lunchbox wampum. Kids can't do that now, what with food allergies on the rise and all. So to take an item off the Delightfully Forbidden Fruit list you have to bend the rules now and again.

EGirl had a (persistant organic pollutant-laced) fish sandwich (on white GMO bread) and some (bGH) cheese pizza. But her favorite part (and my favorite description?) was the milk: "Mom, it was chocolate and even though it wasn't organic? It tasted so cold and delicious that it seemed like it really was." Ah, everlasting sweetness.

Below: less musing, more foodbits...

• This cool tool at Foodsel allows you to see nifty visual guides to food contents. Like if you eat a Krispy Kreme, what does that really mean? Why, a fifth of a stick of butter and four sugar cubes just went down your gullet. But you got 16 batteries' worth of energy. And if you're my weight, to burn off the calories, you could play lawn darts for two hours and 16 minutes. (via Lifehacker)
• This nifty little list by Kid Safe Seafood answers the question on a lot of parents' minds -- just tell me what fish is safe for the little ones to eat. A-OK to gobble = shrimp, scallops, salmon, cod, crayfish, mussels, and tilapia. (via Green Mom Finds)
• Rocket fuel's in all of our food. Sigh. (chipper fact courtesy of EWG).
  
• Get rid of those teflon pans, easy to clean though they may be. (more EWG).
  
• Americans may be fatter than the French because we look to external cues to tell us when to stop eating (like whether The Daily Show's still running) rather than internal cues like satiety. Blame it on the Clean Plate Club, eh? (via Science Daily)
• A tip from Zen Habits to help you stop eating sweets after dinner: brush your teeth right away. You won't want to mess with your minty freshness. Plus, you can get your kids on the path to bedtime pronto.
  
• An aside in a recent Gristmill story about wine and chocolate pairings noted that highbrow chocolate is fair trade because really expensive chocolate is made from custom grown cacao and therefore is free of forced child labor. It's also relatively pesticide-free, labeling or no, so gobble up that Valrhona.
• Safeway's getting on board with animal rights. (also via Grist) First an organic line and now bunny-love? More to love than just the hook-ups....
• Button mushrooms are just as healthy if not healthier than highbrow expensive fungi like shitaake or porcini. Mmmmmmushroooms. (via Science Daily)
• Here's a thorough piece at the Boulder explaining the debate about big organic milk producers like oh-horror-a ahem Aurora and whether or not they are fauxbies breaking the spirit of organics or the real deal. (via chewswise)
• Another reason to bag the nuggets? Runoff from conventional poultry farms is polluting waterways like the Chesapeake Bay. (via NPR)
  
• Cool resource: a list of high fiber veggies. Apparently avocados have way more fiber than carrots. Who'da thunkit? (from A Veggie Venture)

Happy Wednesday!

*Photo via sxc - for more of ramasamy chidambaram's work, see http://www.studiosrishti.com

Read more!

Sneaker Save: Recycling Running Shoes

Directly related to my New Year's resolve to exercise more aka Stay Alive Longer, I recently realized I needed new kicks. But what to do with the old ones? Easy...stick them in the front hall closet! Until I was reminded by a timely Green As a Thistle post to recycle the old ones. I also consulted my bookmarked Tiny Choices’ post on recycling running shoes to figure out what to do.

My favorite ideas:

• Giving them to shoes4africa.org if they have some miles left in them. Better they be used by a runner than trashed. Email tobytanser@aol.com for info about where to send your shoes (you'll mail them to Africa yourself unless you can drop them off in Manhattan, and, as Tiny Choices points out, if they're stolen, it's probably by someone who, well, needs sneakers).
  
• Sending the sneaks back to Nike in Oregon (but check if you're going this route as they have local drop-off points in many cities) so that they can be ground up and made into playing fields, helping close the loop on the shoe production process via the Reuse-A-Shoe program.
  

*Photo courtesy of Bazil Raubach.SXC (it's his daughter, not me, sigh).
Read more!

Baby Steps, and Baby Yourself

Occasionally I hear groans when I bring up my 47,000th environmental, human rights, sustainability or health concern -- groans of Ah, Live Your Life! Be Happy! To this I say: I am happy. I am happiest when devouring information.

I'm with Wendell Berry: "Be joyful though you've considered all the facts."

I may not dwell on the many quandaries of modern life (pollution, finances, chemical contamination, nutritional demands vs. taste vs. time etc. etc.), but I'm surely going to consider them. Closely (smile).

Hey, everybody's fascinated by something. Everyone's trying to grow. I may not be simpatico to your goals. But I am taking my own little baby steps. Laughing at myself, recognizing my limits, and staying open to new information.

The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all
(Love those Indigo Girls!)

I hope we can up the kindness level when it comes to self-assessment on whatever front matters to us. Because that's usually what's going on, right? Every single person I know is trying extremely hard to be a conscientious steward of our world's resources and to do the best for themselves and their loved ones. And every single person I know is too busy trying to figure out how to balance the 47,000 things they value to judge someone else for their choices. (Yes, I do live in a kind of Lake Wobegon of spectacular adults, as a fatter of mact.)

So when one of my nearest and dearest emailed me in a panic about what to do about flowers because she was having a house guest and couldn't find pesticide-free, fair trade flowers that wouldn't deplete her retirement account, I realized I had to toss some love in her direction (I know you're reading!) and address effort. Effort is important. And so is being kind to yourself and recognizing that many different things have value. For the wonderful woman in question, being one of the kindest hostesses on the planet is a pretty important factor to consider. Human relationships matter.

I've been thinking about this for awhile in terms of my own self-improvement efforts, and as usual, found lots of inspiration from others. Here is some commentary on seeking perfection while working for change that really spoke to me. Turning to some of my daily blog-reads:

1. In response to a reader question about which type of cooking source was the most environmental choice, Greenpa at Little Blog in the Big Woods responded: What kind of cooking do you do? What kinds do you LIKE to do? Are you allergic to woodsmoke? Do you enjoy cutting, splitting, handling firewood, or are you really too busy? How much "extra" time do you have- either to wrangle wood, or propane containers?- Etc. Hopefully you get the idea. Who you are- what you need- and even what makes you happy- all these considerations are genuinely IMPORTANT to the answer. You are important. We need to remember that. "Sustainable" practices WON'T be- if they make people miserable, and they won't stick to them. Which seems obvious, but quite a few enthusiasts will, in the excitement of the moment, adopt practices that they can't/won't - uh, sustain. Because in their enthusiasm for the greater good, and the benefit to the planet, they forgot- WE are part of the planet we're trying to save here- and we matter, too.
2. Then there's the interviews Tiny Choices does with regular folk like you and me. One interviewee named Frank Gibson had this to say when asked, "What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you would like every single person to adopt?" Honestly, I would like everybody to simply start thinking! Thinking about their purchases, their employment, their transport, their food, their government, and the Big Picture. We can’t all be experts on climate change, or agribusiness, or civic engineering, but we can all do the things that we know for sure will help, starting on a household scale.
   
3. It's like ZenHabits author Leo noted in this post about trying to eat more healthily: How did I get from Point A (junk food junkie) to Point B (much healthier diet)? I’ll let you in on my secret (and it’s not a secret if you’re one of the many people who discovered this already): I didn’t go from Point A to Point B. It’s more like Point A to Point Z, with lots of points in between.

I love the concept of kaizen or continual improvement. Baby steps, my friends, baby steps. Baby yourself...and let's baby each other.

Read more!

No-Guilt Manifesto

The following No-Guilt Manifesto is not mine; repeat, these are not my words (that's for Hillary Clinton) but I love the sisterhood they can inspire. They are taken verbatim from a fantastic, anonymous post yesterday on the DC Urban Moms and Dads' Forums. My response is at the end.

**

"I do not feel guilty!

I do not feel guilty that my 10 month old still has a pacifier and I am not going to take it away because you, random woman at the pizza place, told me she didn't need it anymore.

I do not feel guilty that I work three days a week and send my daughter to daycare and I am not going to change my lifestyle because you, friend of a friend that I just met, made a whiney "awwww" sound when you found that information out.

I do not feel guilty that my daughter was fed from a bottle from the day she was born and that I switched to Target brand after my Doctor told me that they're all the same.

I do not feel guilty that only some of the foods she eats are organic.

I do not feel guilty that I didn't even once make her babyfood.

I do not feel guilty that my daughter watched TV sometimes and I watch it nearly all day while she plays and I play with her.

I do not feel guilty that my daughter has no set sleeping schedule except at night, and that even then she stays up later if we're doing something.

I do not feel guilty that I let her cry it out to get her to sleep at night. Not Ferber....CIO.....she now sleeps from 7:30PM - 8AM on average.

I do not feel bad when my baby cries while I am changing her diaper to go to sleep, this is to everyone that has seen her cry while I put her sleeper on and looked at her with pity as if something bad is happening to her. I am TAKING CARE OF HER. It's not like I'm smacking her in the face. I'm changing her diaper, putting cream on her and putting on her sleeper, so stop looking at me like she's being punished.

I only feel a little guilty that my house is not babyproofed at all even though my daughter is crawling. I'm watching her like a hawk to see what she's interested in getting into so that I know how to babyproof it. My nephew figured out how to open the "locked" kitchen cabinets about 1/2 a minute after he figured out how to stand next to them. I can't figure out what to do!

I will not feel guilty either. All that giving me dirty looks and nasty comments is going to do is make me irritated with you. I love my child and my child loves me and I am only trying to be as good a Parent as my Parents....who bottle fed me, sent me to daycare, fed me prepared baby food, didn't baby proof (although I do feel like I have to get on that!) and let us do CIO.

Please stop giving people dirty looks. We all do what we think is best. My baby is clean, fed, loved, played with, snuggled and most importantly of all....she is happy!" --Anonymous

SurelyYouNest to Anonymous:

SPEAKING of not feeling guilty, I want to chime in and say that if I *feel* like making homemade baby food in my fair-trade, egalitarian-wood-toys, Bisphenol-A-free, omega-3 sustainable fish-eating, Mother Cruncha household (slight exaggeration but you get my drift), stop feeling so pressured to BE like me.

The world's a big place, and I honestly don't have time (what with all the steaming of organic, locavore vegetables and grinding of the whole wheat kernels to soak and ferment to get the maximum nutrition) to give two scoops of sugar what YOU'RE up to, except maybe being your own funny, witty self with your own values. I probably have a lot to learn from you, so tell me about the fun stuff you're doing. Or avoid me like the plague if I am not your type. Stop presuming that people who make different choices are judging YOU and relax.

Most of us are not prosyletizing. If people are really giving you dirty looks, fire away. But if someone's talking about something she loves (and trust me, I like plenty besides nutrition and health, but I am really into that too), she may just be excited about what she's up to. Not telling you that you have to drink the preservative-free, no artificial sweeteners, no synthetic dyes Kool-Aid. Just a thought.

And I also *love* your no-guilt manifesto. Just think it should apply across the board (even if I decide to nurse my kids until they are in junior high). Read more!

Button Fleurs

Button flowers are a great way to reuse random buttons, beads, and art supplies. All you need is some green florist wire (make sure it's thin enough -- bring a button with you to test). Then thread your buttons (I like putting beads at the very top and also mixing them into the stems) and twist, twist, twist. Sparkly pipe cleaners to tie your bunch together are a bonus.


I originally found (and bought) button flowers on Princess Lasertron's etsy shop, but I think she's in Amsterdam, so instead of keeping her custom order queue lined up into the summer, I decided to teach myself how to make them on my own! I made three bunches of these a couple weeks ago for my Handmade Giveaway. Very satisfying.


Button flowers, IMHO, are the perfect multi-purpose gift. Housewarming? Check. Hostess gift? Check. Kid's birthday party offering? Check. Bouquet for tiny dancer's first ballet recital? Check. Token of love for a 96 year old woman who doesn't need anything but deserves to be showered with attention? Check.




P.S. Altho I wouldn't let them get gnawed on, these flowers are resilient in the hands of tiny monsters. Love 'em! Read more!