Sampler Platter: "Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone" Edition

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Fri May 15, 2009 at 05:30:00 AM PDT

• Scientists with kitchen utensils and model-train glue represent the last hope for the Puget Sound's pinto abalone.

• We ain't gonna bring back paradise to the parking lots, but maybe we can make something out of them after all.  I remain a Kunstlerian skeptic about those places; but at least our thinking is on the right track these days...

• The online link is subscription-only, but if you have one Harper's has a great piece this month on Alaska's disappearing salmon.

• The birds and the bees still can't catch a break from DDT.

• Speaking of which, almost one in eight bird species worldwide currently face extinction.

• Yeah, when you're resorting to having to catch, sell and eat the babies of a popular fish species, that probably does not bode well for the future of said species...

• The number of eels in European waters are down by 95% over the last 25 years.

• The oldest surviving human culture in the Andes, who've been around for over 4,000 years, may soon become the latest victims of climate change.

• Let's close this out with a bit of good news - this piece of Ancient Oregon is now owned by all of us, and will be preserved forever.

Sampler Platter

by: Jill Richardson

Mon May 04, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PDT

• F is for France! The school lunch blog F is for French Fry reports that children in a French school dined on cucumbers with garlic and fine herbs; Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil; couscous; organic yogurt and an apple. You know, real food. This fantastic lunch cost $8.23 to produce, but the students pay less than half the cost (or less if they are from low-income families). THAT is what it looks like to care about the health of your children.

More below...

Earth Day Fish & Water Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Wed Apr 22, 2009 at 13:59:55 PM PDT

• The American pharmaceutical industry is still dumping hundreds of millions of pounds of drug residues into our water supplies.

• Two California-based environmentalists and researchers are cycling 2,000 miles down the Pacific Coast to raise awareness about the massive plastic soup in the North Pacific.  I can't even come up with the words to describe how angry the picture with this article makes me - an adult turtle who was grossly deformed by crawling into a plastic ring while young, and whose body grew around it.  

• And also (we all saw this one coming), the plastic-bag industry and the American Chemistry Council are kicking up the greenwashing a few notches.

• An article from Canada looks at the ongoing attempts at sustainability in sushi restaurants.

• A commonly used home garden pesticide, carbaryl, which is sold under the brand name "Sevin" (which has also been classified by EPA as a likely human carcinogen and is banned in the UK, Germany and several other countries...), has been identified as a threat to salmon and steelhead populations throughout the Northwest.

• The National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking our input as to how to form the rules protecting the now-endangered Cook Inlet (Alaska) beluga whales.

• A new study finds that the world's major rivers are drying up, and the Christian Science Monitor takes a look at how things might play out along the Colorado River for the Southwestern United States and Mexico.

• The European Union on Wednesday called for major cuts in the European commercial fishing fleet, and is cracking down on illegal fishing, to help overfished stocks recover.  88% of EU stocks are overfished, according to the commission.

Sunday Sampler Platter

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 14:55:03 PM PDT

• A bill currently in the Montana State Legislature, referred to by some as the Water Theft Bill, would allow gas companies more control over water pumped out of coalbed methane wells.  The magnificent trick by which this would be accomplished is in the bill's defining the water source as the (apparently magical) company's pipes, rather than the underground aquifers from which the pipes draw the water.

• An article in the Portland Mercury looks at the state of our school lunch program and the Farm to School Bill, HB 2800, which is currently in the Oregon State Legislature.

• The deadly infection that has been decimating bat populations in New York and New England for the past couple of years has spread into caves in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.  Bats are important pollinators and play a vital role in pest control.

• In good wildlife news: the City of Vancouver, BC has embarked on a project aimed at restoring the urban bee population, and Pacific herring are once again spawning in a once-toxic British Columbia creek.

• Yes, Virginia, Utah's odd liquor laws are finally changing!  A nice piece on home brewing from Ed Quillen...

• After a conference in Germany last month, an international consortium of industry, academic and government scientists will soon come out strongly against the FDA's assertion that the dangerous industrial chemical bisphenol a is "safe".

• If you're near Flemington, NJ on Saturday April 18th - stop by one of my old favorite market / delis, and celebrate Earth Day and Basil Bandwagon Natural Market's 16th anniversary with "Your Local Earth Fair'' from 10 am to 4 pm.  There will also be a pledge challenge in support of the fantastic Hunterdon Land Trust Alliance.

Our Dying Oceans

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

• Sea Cucumbers Threatened by Asian Trade
• Thirsty Cities, Dolphins, and Dead Clams
• Salmon: 'Alarm bell' for oceans rings in Washington
• Meet Menhaden: Before this ecologically critical fish vanishes
• A Study Finds Medicines in Fish
• Cat Got Your Fish? (About how 1/3 of all fish caught are turned into fish meal or fish oil, often for animal feed)
• Smithsonian Talk Explores How to Save World's Dwindling Seafood Supplies

There's just not any good news out there about fish, unless you count the articles by chefs talking about how good they taste (as well as this exchange about saving the oceans between Tom Philpott and Mark Bittman). And you know what else gets me? The Smithsonian talk is framed as saving "seafood" supplies - as if the residents of our oceans have only one purpose and that is being our dinners.

Fish Sampler Platter

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 17:49:58 PM PST

• In Another Bad Year for Wild-Salmon Barbie, Greenspace takes up the cause of the Chinook salmon in California:

  Last year the feds, for the first time ever, shut down the salmon season before it began. Although returns on some rivers are better this year, they're probably not enough to convince officials at the Pacific Fishery Management Council to let commercial anglers out of port.

• Also about salmon, fisheries officials are looking for ways to keep California sea lions from eating all the endangered fish. They claim they aren't going after all of the sea lions, just the ones who are real problems - and they might opt to relocate the sea lions instead of killing them. Still, the Humane Society is not terribly happy and rather concerned about what will happen.
  (Bad news update - The govt is going to proceed killing sea lions. First they will try to relocate them but after they run out of places to put them, they will kill them. I am very upset.)

• In the comments, JayinPortland tells about a store in Portland that allows customers to trace their fish back to the fisherman who caught them.

• Natasha Chart writes about eating safe fish - safe for the continuation of the fish species and ocean ecology, and safe for us to eat.

• Civil Eats asks us to stop picking on whales. Aaron French says that fisheries are looking for a scapegoat (or a scapewhale?) to blame depleted fish stocks on:

  Much to my surprise, there has been a scientific debate raging for decades about the role that whales play in depleting fish populations. The argument goes like this: whales eat fish, therefore we should kill whales to protect the fish.  And then get to eat the whales, too.

• In Big fish, little fish, Tom Philpott compares large and small fisheries. Small fisheries win on using less fuel, catching fish more efficiently, minimizing bycatch, and employing more people worldwide.

• The Monterey Bay Aquarium offers up a sustainable sushi pocket guide (PDF).

Fraudulent Foods

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Jan 24, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PST

This isn't terribly surprising to me, given what I've heard about cheese with milk protein concentrate (that's a fancy sounding word to mean the remains of milk after anything valuable has been removed... it's cheap and that's why they use it) and at one point there was some noise about re-defining chocolate so you could replace cocoa butter with cheaper ingredients.

Here's USA Today's list:

• Wild salmon: In a study, over half were actually farmed salmon.
• Red snapper: Sorry, it's usually actually tilapia.
• Olive oil: A percent of your oil may actually be a cheaper oil like soybean oil - or it might be olive oil, just a lower grade of it that is labeled and priced as extra virgin. (I recommend Temecula olive oil to make sure you're getting the real stuff)
• Honey: You might be getting beet sugar instead
• Maple syrup: This may be diluted with water or sugar
• Vanilla: Might actually be vanillin

Meat, Egg, Dairy, and Nut Consumption

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Jan 12, 2009 at 09:10:15 AM PST

For similar data on fruits, go here.
For data on vegetables, go here.
The original USDA ERS data is here.

"Organic" Fish: A Bad Decision by NOSB

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Nov 19, 2008 at 14:30:50 PM PST

Consumers Union sums up the problem with the new standards as follows:

Fish to be fed food other than 100% organic feed-the gold standard that must be met by other USDA-certified organic livestock;

Fishmeal used to feed farmed fish from wild fish-which has the potential to carry mercury and PCBs; and

Open net cages to be used-which flush pollution, disease and parasites from open net fish farms directly into the ocean, adversely impacting wild fish supply, sustainability and the health of the oceans.

When you eat an organic apple, you can feel good that you aren't biting into a bunch of pesticides or other toxins. When you drink a glass of organic milk, you can feel good that you won't be drinking antibiotics and growth hormones. But if this recommendation by NOSB becomes a reality, you will have no such assurances if you eat a "USDA Certified Organic" fish.

While some members of NOSB admitted they were under pressure to OK this from the aquaculture industry, it's clear what American consumers want:

Just this week, a Consumers Union Poll revealed that 93 percent of Americans think that fish labeled as "organic" should be produced by 100 percent organic feed, like all other organic animals. Nine in 10 consumers also agreed that "organic" fish farms should be required to recover waste and not pollute the environment and 57 percent are concerned about ocean pollution caused by "organic" fish farms. Nearly 30,000 signatures have been collected in favor of maintaining strong standards for the organic label for fish.

Something Fishy About Organic Standards

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 00:11:30 AM PST

With wild-caught fish the reason is quite simple: if the fish was wild, who the hell knows what it ate? I'd assume it probably ate food that was more natural than anything a fish might eat in captivity, but then there's the question of what kind of pollutants we lovely humans may have added to that wild fish's food. Hmm.

For farmed fish, here's the issue:

But under the proposed standard, farm-raised fish would be considered organic, even if what they eat includes fish meal, which is feed spiked with ground up wild fish.

So a wild fish is not organic, but farmed fish that eats wild fish is? How about not. I'll add to that my own personal concern with this that one of the major problems with some kinds of farmed fish is that it keeps the fish at the top of the food chain throughout their lives, whereas wild fish start lower down on the food chain and only achieve "top of the food chain" status in adulthood. This is significant because the higher you are on the food chain, the more pollutants you accumulate.

One more problem is:

The USDA requires that feed for cows, chickens and the like be 100 percent organic. But under the fish standard, non-organic feed initially would constitute up to 25 percent of the diet of an organically raised fish.

Perhaps NOSB should skip certifying fish and instead allow the MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) continue to provide the gold standard of seafood certification.

Groups opposing the proposed fish rules are Consumers Union, Food & Water Watch, Living Oceans Society, and the Center for Food Safety. I've included a statement from them below.

ACTION: Demand better organic standards for farmed fish!

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Oct 29, 2008 at 18:21:33 PM PDT

The board recommends that fish can be labeled 'organic' even if they've been fed wild fish, which come from polluted environments and are high in mercury and PCBs. Potentially toxic organic fish? That defeats the whole purpose.

And the board recommends fish raised in open ocean net pens be eligible for the organic label. This type of fish farming is highly polluting, as large amounts of waste are released into the environment.

Please sign the petition and then take action on the Center for Food Safety's site too. The deadline for commenting is MONDAY, November 3.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Check out this article on farmed salmon and sea lice. Also, I strongly recommend checking out Marion Nestle's book What to Eat. She goes into why farmed fish can be higher in PCBs and other toxins than wild fish. It's because essentially the farmed fish live their entire lives at the top of the food chain, where they take in much more contaminants than wild fish who do NOT start their lives at the top of the food chain.

Assholes You Should Know: Rick Berman

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Aug 12, 2008 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

I'd like to do this as a diary series, and I invite everyone here to join me in writing about other bigtime assholes whose names we should know - Terry Etherton (pro-rBGH blogger extraordinaire) and Dale Bauman (pro-rBGH scientific prostitute for Monsanto), etc. For some gooood info, check out the site Sourcewatch.