Are All Sugar Beets Created Equal?

by biodiversity intern Alaine Janosy

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are being introduced into our food system regularly, and there is no easy way for consumers to know if what they are eating is GM or non-GM. Since the United States has not issued any legislation related to genetically engineered (GE) products since 1986, the general public is left to their own devices when trying to determine the genetic origins of their food. If companies are going to continue to splice genes into plants to make them insect resistance or herbicide tolerant there should be a labeling requirement so each of us can make the personal choice whether or not to ingest them. No new legislation in 23 years is a little ridiculous considering how prolific GMs are becoming in our food system.
Lacking all-encompassing federal legislation, the issue will continue to be handled on a case-by-case basis, generally as a result of a law suit being brought once the GM food has already been in our food system for months, if not years, in courtrooms nationwide, as it was on Monday, September 21, 2009, in Federal District Court in San Francisco. The source of the debate, the sugar beet, which has long been a source of sugar in the United States, and accounts for about 30% of sugar production worldwide.

Although sugar beets have been processed for sugar in the United States since the mid-1800s, it was only recently that genetically modified (GM) sugar beets began to be planted. During the spring of 2008 the first ‘Roundup resistant’ sugar beets were planted. These beets contain a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to the chemical weed killer, Roundup, produced and sold by Monsanto, a global provider of agricultural products for farmers. Monsanto also licenses the gene that makes the beets ‘Roundup resistant.’

More after the jump

September Youth Programs Recap

The new school year has only just begun and already students in the Slow Food network have explored new communities, connected with our partners and forged relationships with new student activists.  As I begin my second fall with Slow Food on Campus, it is inspiring to see how many more young people are interested in getting involved to make a difference in their community.  To give you a sense of how students are already engaged check out what our youth network has been up to in September.

Students from the University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded in 2004 by Slow Food, were in New York City for one of the programs thematic study trips, or stage.  The University’s goal is to create an international research and education center for those working on renewing farming methods, protecting biodiversity, and building an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science.  To enhance the student’s international understanding, stages are planned all over the world.  This fall a group of 12 students visited New York City and the surrounding area for ten days of visits to farms, producers, markets and local food cultural events.  Those of us who helped to shepherd the students through their itinerary wished we could have taken ten days off to accompany them on all of the site visits.

For the last 5 years, the Student / Farmworker Alliance (SFA) has set aside a weekend to bring together the organization’s broad network of allies to connect and deepen their work in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  The weekend is called the Encuentro.  I attended this year.  It was my first visit to Florida, where almost everyday there are massive thunderstorms in the middle of the afternoon.  The experience changed my understanding of fairness in the food system and reaffirmed my personal motivation to work for food justice. 

And, since the Encuentro, two major wins have been made public with the support of the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Agriculture.  The food service provider Compass and major tomato grower East Coast Growers and Packers have come to the table and negotiated Fair Food agreements with the CIW.  For the details of these negotiations, check out articles from The Nation and the Washington Post.

And, this past weekend, the Yale Student Environmental Coalition and NextGEN hosted a College Environmental Activist Leadership Conference at Yale.  This exciting conference played host to more than 200 college leaders, many of whom were new to environmental activism.  Gordon Jenkins, Slow Food USA’s Advocacy Coordinator, and I presented a workshop entitled ‘Shifting Attitudes Towards Food’ where we discussed changing attitudes as a tactic for the larger goal of altering the food system. 

Needless to say, our youth network is already busy and it’s only the end of September.  We are all excited to see how things will take off with our fall program to draw attention to Good, Clean and Fair.

The Power of Eating Together

by Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel
This post originally appeared on the Atlantic Food Channel

Letting go is hard for me. I want to touch everything. I have strong and specific opinions about the things I love: I have opinions about how fine to chop parsley and I am adamant about how close together to plant lettuce. Different varieties of head lettuce even get different spacing. I think it makes a difference. I like to think I’m right. But I’m learning to let go.

In my heart, I believe that a community’s collective creativity is always more rich, more inspired, and more impactful than any one individual’s. My mind sometimes gets in the way of my acting on that belief, but my experience keeps reinforcing the notion that large numbers of inspired people, on a mission, left to their own devices, will do brilliant and beautiful things. More and more, I am learning that my job at Slow Food USA is to create a context, offer some direction and support, and then get out of the way.

Nothing has taught me this more than the events that unfolded on Labor Day’s National Day of Action launching the Time for Lunch campaign.

The idea was simple: let’s see if we can organize a series of demonstrations, part pot-luck, part sit-in, all over the country on one day, where people share food they believe in and demand legislation that gives kids real food in school. We will call the events Eat-Ins. If it works, it will be like a virtual march on Washington. The collective story will be told on the Internet and in the media.

We wanted to tell Congress that this is an issue that matters to a lot of Americans, and in the process we wanted to strengthen both the local communities where the events took place, and the national network of people working to change the way food and farming happen in America. We aimed for 100 demonstrations in 25 states. By the time Labor Day rolled around, we had 307 events confirmed, and we had demonstrations in every state in the nation.

More after the jump

DISEASE DRIVEN EARNINGS: Is It Time for a New Prescription For Generation Rx?

by Robyn O’Brien

Today’s headlines are enough to make any mother wary. As we battle our toddlers in the grocery store, we hardly have the energy left to decipher the headlines: Organics aren’t healthier, death panels await health care reform, bankers receive record bonuses, swine flu pandemics swirl .  What has happened to the world that our children are inheriting?  And does anyone care?
Perhaps we should.  Because the children of today represent the economy of tomorrow.  Today’s parents and grandparents are raising the “think tanks” that are going to be the solutions to tomorrow’s problems .  Today’s children will reinvent energy technology, redefine reform and regulations and enhance agricultural productivity in ways that we can not even begin to imagine.  But only if we give them the tools with which to do it. 
Obama insisting on school and education, with the support of Laura Bush, is a start.  But more fundamentally, what about health? Today, 1 in 3 American children now has autism, allergies, ADHD or asthma.  90% of the worlds ADHD medications are prescribed to the American kids, while the US only represent 5% of the world’s population. According to MSNBC, sales of EpiPens are up, while test scores are down.  And according to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 2 African American kids and 1 in 3 Caucasian kids born in the year 2000 (that is this year’s 4th Graders) will be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood. 
And while Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart formulate their products differently for children overseas (with reduced fat, salt and synthetic ingredient content), our National School Lunch Program continues to be a dumping ground for the remnants of the agrichemical corporations who are unable to dispose of their technology laced corn and soy in grocery stores, restaurants or to the livestock industry.  And while we allocate $600 billion to the Pentagon in 2009, we only allocated $9 billion to the National School Lunch Program and a meager $2.4 billion to the FDA. 
And we wonder why our children have earned the title “Generation Rx” or why our economy is heaving under the burden of health care costs. 

More after the jump

Vote With Your Fork To Save Wild Salmon!

by Biodiversity Intern Regina Fitzsimmons

Trout Unlimited—the nation’s largest coldwater fisheries conservation organization—has asked Slow Food Seattle and Seattle Chef’s Collaborative to partner in a public awareness campaign to protect the wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon.  These three organizations are asking their neighbors and community members to “Vote with their Fork.”  Trout Unlimited hopes that people will seek out and eat at restaurants that are serving wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon on their menus and in so doing, support a sustainable food source that has renewed itself for the past 9,000 years that salmon have returned to Bristol Bay.

These fish need our protection now.  Pebble Mine is attempting to set up new open pit mining operations (to the tune of $345-500 billion) at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a territory prone to earthquakes.  Pebble Mine wants to extract gold – a non-renewable resource that could be mined 50 years before running out.  (FYI, as you can read in our previous blog post from last January, the EPA ranks open pit mining as the most polluting industry in the nation.)

If Pebble Mine were able to set up camp on the banks of Bristol Bay, the development and pollution would be irreversibly harmful to the watershed and the 80 million wild salmon that migrate back to the Bay each year, not to mention the animals one notch up the food chain that depend on wild salmon for sustenance.  What’s more, Bristol Bay is home to many people who also rely on the Bay’s fisheries for their income.  If the sockeye faded off the world fishery stage, there would be an international crisis; Bristol Bay salmon make up 40% of the world’s sockeye salmon. 

More after the jump

Touring campaigns for students to look out for this fall

by youth programs intern Heather Teige

Students, as you transition back into a new school year and find yourselves thinking about exciting opportunities and events to organize on - campus, take a closer look at Food Not Lawns, The Beehive Design Collective, and Fair Food Across Borders.

Founded by Heather C. Flores, Food Not Lawns’ goal is to encourage and promote food sustainability by growing food in our own backyards. They focus on deepening community ties through gardening and offer advice on how to start a local Food Not Lawns chapter, as well as the how-to’s of organizing a community seed swap.

The Beehive Design Collective is a grassroots collective that works by creating social discourse through images. Their belief is that images are a more accessible medium, and that they allow people-despite their social background- to better engage urgent social matters. On an international level they are most known for their graphic campaigns which address globalization and the global justice movement.

Fair Food Across Borders is a Chiapas Media Project (CMP)/Promedios advocacy campaign geared to expose human rights injustices inflicted on Mexican migrant workers by Mexican agribusiness camps. They aim to accomplish this by providing video equipment and training to marginalized indigenous populations in Southern Mexico so that they may create their own media.

Be sure to keep a lookout as all three of these initiatives will be touring this fall. Securing a visit to your campus would create a greater campus awareness of current issues, the opportunity to engage them in a creative manner, and the possibility of making great connections.

[images courtesy of Fair Food Across Borders (Rodrigo Cruz) and The Beehive Design Collective]

Across America, Eating for a Cause

by Slow Food USA President, Josh Viertel
This post originally appeared on the Atlantic Monthly Food Channel, the day before the National Day of Action for the Time for Lunch campaign. Check out the Food Channel for Corby Kummer’s reflection on the first Eat-in, a year ago.

I was lucky to attend an Eat-In in Chicago, on August 26, organized by Slow Food Chicago‘s Lynn Peemoeller and her team. It rained all morning, and, as if by divine intervention, stopped about 20 minutes before the event kicked off.

A big, beautiful table sat in the middle of Daley Plaza, abounding with local peaches and plums. People from all over the city had come for the meal: young people from Growing Power, friends from Windy City Harvest, representatives from the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force, and state representative, soon-to-be senator Julie Hamos.

The whole staff of Angelic Organics showed up wearing cardboard hats with messages like “I grow my own tomatoes: Ask me how,” “I keep bees: Ask me how,” “I raise goats: Ask me how!”

And the Cornettes were there. They were my favorites. These advocates for urban agriculture made corn-ear costumes, salt and pepper shaker costumes, and a stick of butter costume. And their costumes were made out of cut up seed-bags for round-up ready, genetically modified corn. Good movements incorporate good theater. Just being right isn’t enough. No movement is worth being part of that doesn’t inspire creativity, art, a sense of humor to change the system. In Chicago, they were inspired.

On Labor Day, we are going to see this kind of creativity and dedication all over the country, in 300 locations, in every state as people gather for a Day of Action to kick off the Time for Lunch campaign. The campaign aims to update the National School Lunch Program (which expires in Sept. 2009) so that schools have the ability to serve food that benefits our children’s health, rather than the fast food and junk food that makes them sick. We’re telling Congress that it’s time to provide America’s children with real food: food that tastes good, is good for us, is good for the planet, and is good for the people who work to grow and prepare it.

You should come to one. They are easy to find. Just use this map or search by state. While you’re there, sign the Time for Lunch petition.

More after the jump

Labor Day Potlucks—with a purpose

by Gordon Jenkins
This post originally appeared on The Atlantic Monthly Food Channel

On Labor Day, people in nearly 300 cities and towns across America will gather in public places, sit down, and share a meal together. We will do it for two reasons: one personal, one political. The personal reason is that we love to cook and share food. Nourishing people, making them smile and momentarily making life good is something that we find deeply satisfying—and at potlucks, we share this feeling en masse.

The political reason to organize potlucks is actually the same motive. Potlucks bring people together. And people who come together in the spirit of goodwill and for the joy of sharing food are more likely to stand together when political push comes to shove. If you’re an organizer, potlucks can be one of your best agents of change: rather than goad people to name enemies and point fingers, you can gather them for something that they enjoy doing and that replenishes their will to fight. Potlucks are a ripe opportunity for inviting people who may not have sat at the same table together in the past and then celebrating what we all have in common: the need to eat and the need for support.

On Labor Day, the tens of thousands of us who will sit down together in public parks, on school grounds, at churches, and in front of City Halls will do it for an overtly political purpose: to tell Congress to stop giving our children food that hurts them. We’re calling these events “Eat-Ins,” because they’re part potluck, part sit-in. They are a launching-point of the Time for Lunch campaign, the goals of which are to give schools the ability to serve real food at lunch and to link local schools to local farms. The Eat-Ins that take place on Labor Day will rally support for the cause by organizing communities, getting some media attention and thereby sending a clear message to Congress: It’s time to provide America’s children with food that benefits their health, not food that makes them sick.

My colleagues and I organized the first Eat-In a year ago in San Francisco. The event brought together more than 250 young people, most of them fresh out of college. The day before, we had formed teams and piled into apartment kitchens across the city to cook up our favorite dishes. On Labor Day, the final day of the Slow Food Nation extravaganza, we showed up at Dolores Park armed with our dishes. We sat down on a grassy hill and we took turns rousing nearby sunbathers with rallying cries about our intention to take back the American food system in the name of everyday people. And then we sat down to eat.

More after the jump

Eat-ins out in the wild, wild west

by campaign intern Alex Tung

The Time For Lunch Campaign’s National Day of Action is only four days away! As Slow Food USA’s staff, volunteers and Eat-In organizers nationwide are busy making final preparations, I’d like to share our excitement by giving you a short preview of a few of the fine, innovative Eat-Ins that I’ve been following in my time here as a Regional Coordinator for the campaign. (As you’ll see, I’ve mostly worked with organizers in the West.)

Some Slow Food chapters have done a great job reaching out to their local school districts and working directly with city officials. Attendees at Slow Food Boulder, CO‘s Eat-In on the Boulder County Courthouse Lawn will hear stories from individuals who work hard to provide the food in Boulder’s schools. They include Boulder Valley School District’s School Food Project’s member and parent Syliva Tawse, the Growe Foundation’s School Gardens program and the Parent Education Network and St. Vrain Valley School District‘s Director of Nutrition. The potluck-style picnic will be complemented by tasty food samples made with locally sourced ingredients by students of the Culinary School of the Rockies. There will even be fun activities for children and a bluegrass band!

Others have made headway by bringing together new groups of people. At the Eat-In in Salt Lake City, UT you can share a dish with Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and Dave Everett from the Salt Lake City Mayor’s office, who will be at Slow Food Utah‘s Eat-In to show their support for giving kids real food at school. They will be joined by Primary Children’s Hospital Pediatric Dietitian Margaret Braae, and Valerie Hammel, who spearheaded the Open Classroom‘s “Real Food Lunch Program.”  Volunteers at the family-friendly event will help kids plant seeds in little pots they can take home and watch grow. Children can also participate in fun games with local apples as prizes.

A few chapters have had to be creative about their location. To beat the heat, the Slow Food Phoenix’s Eat-In in Phoenix, AZ will be an indoor even—a “bring your own” picnic and a potluck dessert buffet at the Home Arts Building at the Arizona State Fairgrounds. Attendees can expect to see local chefs leading cooking demonstrations for kids, and interactive booths on topics ranging from “seed planting” to “a nutrition pyramid bean bag toss” and a “school garden complete with plants and bales of hay.” Strolling the event and entertaining kids and parents alike will be a trio of veggies and fruits to promote healthy eating.

In Portland, OR, real food and creativity will set the stage for “re-framing an abandoned lot as an urban grid of neighborhoods and gardens.” Teaming up with the the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and their annual Time-Based Art Festival, Slow Food Portland will take over the lawn of the old Washington High School with a flurry of planting, harvesting, and cooking. At this sprawling picnic surrounded by temporary gardens, participants will be fed wood-fired flatbreads and joined by local food organizations.

At present, 295 Eat-Ins are scheduled to take place on Labor Day, September 7th 2009. The better we tell the stories from the Eat-Ins, the more people we’ll reach—so if you are attending an Eat-In on Labor Day, please take pictures and videos and upload them to Flickr with the tag “timeforlunch.” Post about it on your blog and email us the link (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Tell your friends, your neighbors, your local farmers and your elected officials.

Looking for an Eat-In near you? Visit the Time for Lunch website, here.

What Congress Eats for Lunch

by Slow Food USA intern Jocelynne Tan

The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization this fall, which means Congress will be debating whether it can afford to provide kids with food that benefits their health. This is a worthwhile time to examine the lunch that Congress eats everyday.

In March 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began a “Green the Capitol” initiative, aiming not only to transform the nation’s legislative buildings into more environmentally friendly landmarks but also to overhaul the House of Representatives’ cafeterias. Her efforts have led to the House cafeterias making the switch to more organic, local, and healthy offerings at lunch time. Typical fare on offer includes salad bars, stir fry, taqueria, paninis, sushi, and in the restaurants, more gourmet items, such as roast beef with mushrooms and glazed rockfish. These dishes have not replaced old favorites like pizza, fries, or chicken fingers, but even the classics have been revamped so as not to include trans fats, and the entire menu is geared towards being fresh, local, and sustainable.

Similar efforts were made in the Senate in 2008 by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was in charge of the committee that oversaw the funds that paid for the Senate cafeterias. Unlike the Senate eateries, which were, until recently, government-run, the House cafeterias have been privatized since the 1980s. Restaurant Associates of New York is the current House contractor and has been so efficient in catering to hungry House staffers that it has been able to turn an annual profit since 2003, with the most recent figure cited being $1.2 million. These profits are directed as commission to the House. For those who worry that taxpayers are footing the bill for these “elite foods,” Perry Plumart, deputy director of the House’s environmental effort, has been quoted as saying, “The cafeterias are not subsidized…In fact, we make money and Restaurant Associates makes money.”

More after the jump