This op-ed article examines the environmental sustainability of fish oil as more and more consumers are reportedly choosing supplements “as a guilt-free way of getting their omega-3 fatty acids.” According to author Paul Greenberg, most fish oil “comes from a creature upon which the entire Atlantic coastal ecosystem relies, a bigheaded, smelly, foot-long member of the herring family called menhaden,” which one historian has apparently likened to the passenger pigeon in terms of rapid population decline. Once harvested for fertilizer and lamp oil, “trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chicken and pets” after the advent of petroleum-based lamps. “Today,” writes Greenberg, “hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint,‘buttery spread,’ salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children.” He argues that menhaden “keep the water clean,” claiming that the “muddy brown color of the…
Category Archives Media Coverage
Writing for the European Parliament’s news, policy and information service, Sir Paul McCartney in this article urges members of Parliament (MEPs) and other government stakeholders to promote “meat free Mondays,” a campaign calling on consumers to eat less meat in an effort to slow climate change. According to McCartney, who also brought his message to the Global Warming and Food Policy Conference held December 3, “having one designated meat-free day a week is a meaningful change that everyone can make—that goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues all at once.” He subsequently appeals to “world leaders converging on Copenhagen for the climate change talks to remember that sustainable food policy is an essential weapon in the fight against global warming.” The article cites a 2006 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which apparently “warned that emissions from global livestock production comprise…
Noting the absence of significant regulatory oversight, this article discusses the use of nanotechnology in foods, food packaging and food supplements. While the Food and Drug Administration has decided not to regulate products according to the technology used, it will apparently issue a guidance document on nanotechnology in 2010. The article cautions that “companies need to realize the EU, Canada and the State of California have all requested information from manufacturers of nanoscale products.” According to the market data on nanotechnology, while little food with nanotech ingredients are on grocery store shelves today, food packaging is an active application that accounts for billions in sales. Manufacturers are apparently using the technology to develop “improved tastes, color, flavor, texture and consistency of foodstuffs, increased absorption and bioavailability of nutrients and health supplements, new food packaging materials with improved mechanical, barrier and antimicrobial properties, and nano-sensors for traceability and monitoring the condition…
“Flavor chemicals often make up less than one percent of the ingredients in processed foods, and many flavorists regard the terms ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ as largely meaningless—an indulgence for consumers who happen to believe that one is more likely to be toxic than another, even if the perception is not necessarily true,” writes The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian in this article examining the history of the food flavoring industry. Shadowing a flavorist who works for the Swiss company Givaudan, Khatchadourian reports that this $20 billion per year sector has evolved from “simple and direct” applications of natural additives or essential oils to a precise molecular science. “Once you begin to consider the natural world at a molecular level, the boundaries that separate one fruit from another begin to seem like artifice,” he notes, adding that both the technology and the secretive business culture present unique regulatory challenges. “The flavor industry…
This New York Times special report chronicles a growing movement among organic dairy farmers to overturn state bans on the sale of unpasteurized milk. According to the report, 28 states currently allow sales of raw milk “in some form,” but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed the product “inherently dangerous” and banned its interstate sale. Yet one advocacy group has reportedly claimed that farmers could receive $5 to $7 per gallon for raw milk sold directly to consumers. “Now, the weak market for pasteurized milk and its effect on dairy farmers is motivating some states to reconsider their ban,” maintains the article, which cites raw milk proponents who “say that pasteurization kills enzymes and bacteria that are nutritionally beneficial and aid in digestion and diminishes vitamin content.” FDA officials, however, have apparently refuted these touted health benefits. The Times observes that the agency is currently reviewing its 60-day…
“How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner?,” asks Elizabeth Kolbert in this review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest nonfiction work, Eating Animals. According to Kolbert, Foer attempts to tackle this inconsistency through a series of vignettes exploring the human relationship to food animal production and criticizing the impact of so-called factory farms on “inter-species alliances.” The novelist also takes issue with food writer and activist Michael Pollan’s support for non-industrial livestock practices, describing the argument in favor of responsible meat consumption as “unpersuasive.” Foer maintains that an emphasis on organic or humane animal husbandry serves only to obfuscate the moral issues at stake. “Although he never specifically equates ‘concentrated animal feeding operations’ with the Final Solution, the German model of at once seeing and not seeing clearly informs Foer’s thinking,” notes Kolbert. “The…
Describing the world’s tuna trade as “an awesome 21st century hunt,” Mahr’s article explores how “for some species of tuna, the chase is becoming unsustainable.” In 1950, she reports, about 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide while in 2008, that number hit nearly 6 million tons. Particularly worrisome are the dwindling numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, which the World Wildlife Fund estimates could disappear in the Mediterranean as early as 2012, Mahr writes. She quotes a spokesperson for the Center for the Future of the Oceans at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California as saying that Atlantic bluefin tuna has become “the poster child of overfishing worldwide” and that “the hunt is relentless. These are the wolves, grizzly bears, lions and tigers of the ocean. If you take the top predators out, the ecosystem begins to get out of balance.
The third in a five-part series about genetically modified (GM) crops, this article focuses on the frustrations of importers and exporters over stringent European rules about even trace amounts of GM material in conventional crops. Apparently, European regulators have stopped more than 10 soybean or soy meal shipments from the United States this year because they contained GM corn dust, which had not been cleared for import in Europe. The cross-contamination apparently occurs when silos, trains and ships are not cleaned after GM crops are stored or transported in them. With pressure from European farmers who need the soy products to feed their cattle and pigs, the EU reportedly approved the GM corn on November 2, 2009. Agricultural trade will apparently face new strains as GM traits used worldwide quadruple in the next five years. According to European Agriculture Minister Mariann Fischer Boel, “The result is that a growing number…
The New York Times invited several agriculture experts and activists to participate in its October 26, 2009, “Room For Debate” column, which addressed the potential of genetically modified (GM) crops to alleviate world hunger and protect the environment. Although essays by both Raj Patel of the Institute for Food and Development Policy and North Carolina State University Professor Michael Roberts underscored the political challenges facing the next Green Revolution, Cornell University Professor and 2001 World Food Prize Laureate Per Pinstrup-Andersen remained cautiously optimistic about bioengineering. “While new technology must be tested before it is commercially released, we should be mindful of the risks of not releasing it at all,” he wrote. Oxford University economist Paul Collier echoed this response, describing the GM crop debate as “contaminated by political and aesthetic prejudices: hostility to U.S. corporations, fear of big science and romanticism about local, organic production.” But Vandana Shiva, founder of…
A high tax on meat is needed for meat-eaters to consume less, ultimately resulting in multiple benefits to human health, animal welfare and the environment, writes Peter Singer, a Princeton University bioethics professor and author of Animal Liberation and co-author of The Ethics of What We Eat, in an October 25, 2009, guest column in the New York Daily News. He advocates a 50 percent tax on the retail value of meat, but “if it is not enough to bring about the change we need, then, like cigarette taxes, it will need to go higher.” Singer advocates a tax on all meat, fearing “a tax on red meat alone would merely push meat-eaters to chicken.” Americans, Singer writes, have “been ignoring the cow in the room. That’s right, cow. We don’t eat elephants. But the reasons for a tax on beef and other meats are stronger than those for discouraging consumption…
