Plants
Agriculture's Drinking Problem
Published August 03, 2009 @ 02:47PM PT
The industrial agricultural establishment would like us to save our worries for tomorrow. It being tomorrow, I thought I'd focus a lot this week on the resource depletion issues that threaten synthetic agriculture beyond its directly negative impacts on ecosystem diversity.
The threat, in fact, is that industrial food production is reaching the limits of its ability to do that which is its best selling feature: produce lots of food at minimal direct monetary cost. Its wasteful, negligent consumption of basic, raw materials necessary to growing food are running up against the sort of finite material limits that neoliberal economists and business magnates like to pretend don't matter.
Today, a couple readings on water scarcity from books that I highly recommend picking up when you get a chance:
Organic Complications
Published August 03, 2009 @ 12:03PM PT
So, there was a very narrowly focused literature review put out by Britain's pro-GMO Food Standards Agency that was widely reported to claim that there weren't any health benefits from organic food.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the FSA's theory of pesticide is "don't worry, be happy", as Geoffrey Lean of the Telegraph notes, and indeed the report completely ignores the potential health benefits of lower pesticide exposure. As Lean says in closing;
... It reminds me of a minister who used to complain that there was a "myth" that pesticides were "toxic". What, I asked him, would be the use of one that wasn't? Answer came there none.
Worse, the review seems to have excluded studies indicating a greater nutrient density in organic foods. Other nutrient differences reported are probably a result of the fact that conventional agriculture destroys and degrades soil, in a number of ways, and food managed solely for high yields in dying soil doesn't appear to be as good for you as food grown in healthier soil.
Has it, however, been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are nutritional differences between conventional and organic foods over and above the products of our chemical warfare industry? Some evidence suggests that's the case, but as many have pointed out, the body of research to date is minimal. So if the claim that organics are more nutritious (as opposed to less contaminated) needs more support, the claim that they aren't is on even thinner ice.
Nutritionism and Guilt vs Coffee
Published July 07, 2009 @ 12:52PM PT
This is some weapons-grade nonsense:
... Coffee is a toxin that shuts down the cleansing process of the body and locks other toxins such as fat inside the body. Therefore, it is wise to quit drinking coffee if you are serious about losing weight.
Just a day ago, I was reading about how my beloved (yeah, I'm objective) coffee can help reverse the effects of dementia in old age, some toxin,* and this relates sidewise to understanding why describing fat as a toxin is just plain ignorant.
In fact, fat has a lot of bearing on the proper function of the brain and our bodies, notably in the myelin sheathing that surrounds our nerve cells.
Myelin is made primarily of fats and lipids and its destruction in diseases like multiple sclerosis slows nerve impulse transmission so badly that victims begin to lose all functions mediated by the brain and spinal cord. It's the electrical insulation properties of fat that are responsible for the fact that "nerve impulses in unmyelinated neurones have a maximum speed of around 1 m/s, [while] in myelinated neurones they travel at 100 m/s."
A human body that regarded fat as a toxin would destroy its own nerve casings. Therefore, if coffee really prevented your body from recognizing fat as toxic, the proper response would be to have it all the time.
But does caffeine affect fat retention one way or another? As a stimulant, and stimulants are generally appetite suppressants, you might even expect it to cause weight loss. Katherine Zeratsky, a registered dietitian at the Mayo Clinic, says coffee has no measurable effect on long-term weight, except that excess consumption of high calorie coffee drinks has the same likely effect as consuming lots of other high calorie foods.
So, to recap - Fat isn't a toxin. Coffee doesn't seem to affect weight, but the things you add to it might.
So what's left to say? That there's an endless market for hashing over every little facet of people's diets looking for hidden guilt using unsupported assertions that can contradict basic biological principles. That it's humorously easy to jump the gun and assume that something people like, coffee, is by definition bad for us. Meh.
Take away some of those unfounded assumptions and there isn't anything to that article but the idea that a person needs to be 'cleansed.' Sounds like a bunch of distracting, pseudo-religious claptrap to me. You want to worry about a toxins that improperly accumulate in the body, worry about bisphenol A or pthalates, or any of the other weird chemicals that leach out of our ubiquitous plastic food packaging.
Again, again and again: Guilt culture and nutritionism act as a hindrance to sensible discussions about food and sustainability. They are wasteful diversions from serious questions concerning recent declines in public health, which you would think people would know better than to blame on foods that humans have been ingesting for millenia.
* To be extremely clear: Dementia is multi-causal and I found no mention in publicly available news articles linking coffee's anti-Alzheimer's effects to fat regulation. When causation is first established in health studies, it can take quite a lot of work to determine the mechanism because living systems are complicated and we don't understand them as well as we'd like. It wasn't my idea to connect these concepts together, hence, the debunking.
(Photo credit: Il Quoquo on Flickr.)
GMO Grapes
Published July 06, 2009 @ 04:07AM PT
The SO and I were talking just last night about what a complete and utter sh*t fit would probably rip through France if genetically modified grapes were ever introduced. Also, Italy.
Not that it's unreasonable. They have centuries worth of branding to protect. Costa Rica has the same attitude towards coffee, of which there are two varieties; Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta.
C. arabica produces a less bitter, high quality bean, and it needs high elevation. C. robusta can grow in lowland areas, but the quality is considered very poor. Costa Rican law prohibits growing C. robusta anywhere at all, on account of wanting to maintain their reputation and secure the best possible price on glutted international markets for their prized coffee crop.
So anyway, I'm looking through the news today and, wouldn't you know it, someone's gone and made genetically modified grapes. I have a hard time believing that they'll be allowed in countries that are so very proud of their heritage vineyards.
(Photo credit: by david.nikonvscanon on Flickr.)
Biotech On Trial
Published June 24, 2009 @ 11:56PM PT
So a court has once again ruled against GE/GMO alfalfa. Jill Richardson writes:
Two years ago, a district court ruled that the USDA did not do its homework before approving genetically engineered alfalfa. The USDA approved GE alfalfa without a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which the court ruled was a violation of U.S. law. Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld that decision and its resulting ban on GE alfalfa (pending a full EIS).
... Following that decision, Monsanto Company and Forage Genetics (who entered into the suit as Defendant-Intervenors) requested the appellate court to rehear the case. The news today is that the court denied their request and thus reaffirmed the earlier decision in full. ...
There were the findings in that first alfalfa case, as reported by the Center for Food Safety:
* The judge found that plaintiffs' concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate natural and organic alfalfa are valid, stating that USDA's opposing arguments were "not convincing" and do not demonstrate the "hard look" required by federal environmental laws. The ruling went on to note that "&For those farmers who choose to grow non-genetically engineered alfalfa, the possibility that their crops will be infected with the engineered gene is tantamount to the elimination of all alfalfa; they cannot grow their chosen crop."
* USDA argued that, based on a legal technicality, the agency did not have to address the economic risks to organic and conventional growers whose alfalfa crop could be contaminated by Monsanto's GE variety. But the judge found that USDA "overstates the law." ...
Shorter version: A federal judge ruled that crop contamination by genetically engineered foods is a serious problem and the pro-Monsanto USDA argued that it shouldn't matter.
Anyone making the stupid argument that contamination doesn't happen? No. Because the discussion happened in a federal court and there, as opposed to the venue provided by the comments of this blog, you can go to jail for lying.
You may have noticed that the particular breed they were talking about was Roundup Ready, a spin off of their many popular Roundup/glyphosate-resistant crops. Glyphosate seems, according to data accepted by government regulators, to be safer for humans and animals than other pesticides.
However, as I noted not too long ago, pure glyphosate isn't sprayed on crops. It's mixed with ingredients that, because they aren't directly responsible for the desired effect of killing plants, don't have to be listed on the label because they can legally be described as inert, or in other words, as having no effect.
Glyphosate is supposed to be safer for aquatic organisms because it tends to settle out of water in its pure form, but it's commonly mixed with chemicals whose sole purpose is to make it more water soluble, in which case it appears to be a hazard to aquatic life. As for the effects of Roundup's 'inert' ingredients on humans:
Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup's inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. ...
Surprise!
Thank goodness there's at least one less Roundup Ready crop on the market to be spreading this plague farther still.
(Photo credit: daryl_mitchell on Flickr.)
World According To Monsanto, pt 7, Informed Consent
Published June 24, 2009 @ 07:24AM PT
Would it be all right with you if your parents, if you are an adult on your own recognizance, were still allowed to decide what cities or towns you could live in? Would your answer be any different if your parents were real estate agents and would probably make good decisions?
Would it be all right with you if the government made up a national menu and required you to eat only that food to conform? Would your answer be any different if the menu contained your favorite foods?
Well, I think I'd have to say no on both counts, and in case of both contingencies.
Believing in self-determination, free will and informed consent as I do, I couldn't approve of such policies. This is the level of choice that I see being removed from each of us when the government refuses to require the labeling of transgenic foods.
By way of self-reported studies and captive university research laboratories whose future grant funding depends on the favor of the biotech industry, the FDA has approved numerous transgenic crops that are processed in the regular food supply and sold to an unsuspecting marketplace.
They've been allowed to patent self-replicating, living organisms and release them into the wild without the public even having a chance to debate the implications.
'Oh,' the biotech folks will say, and have said in the comments at this blog, 'but you can buy organic food.'
First, it's as ridiculous that I should have to pay a premium to have food that wasn't sprayed with poison in the first as that I should have to pay a premium in order to know what I'm eating. Second, I can't be sure that I know what I'm eating, not even if I buy organics.
World According to Monsanto, pt 5, Consensus
Published June 19, 2009 @ 10:26AM PT
Seed magazine hosts a discussion of GMO crops, with three cheerleaders, plus Tom Philpott and Raj Patel, who do a good job poking holes in the opposition case. Key takeaways:
- There isn't scientific consensus.
- There hasn't been adequate safety testing.
- Other promising methods of improving farming get starved of funding in favor of profitable GMO research that benefits private companies.
From Philpott:
... Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility. If the reproductive system can be viewed as a proxy for broad health, then the Austrian study raises serious questions about the effects of consuming foods derived from transgenic crops—i.e., upwards of 70 percent of the products found on U.S. supermarket shelves.
... The Austrian results raise an obvious question: why did the first multigenerational study of the health effects of GMOs emerge more than a decade after their broad introduction in the United States?
... A recent event reported by the New York Times illustrates the lack of independence—and thus, arguably, rigor—that surrounds too much GMO research. A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.” The Times reported that because of draconian intellectual property laws, scientists can’t grow GMO crops for research purposes without gaining permission from the corporations that own the germplasm—permission which is sometimes denied or granted only on condition that the companies can review findings before publication.
Stunningly, “The researchers … withheld their names [from the EPA letter] because they feared being cut off from research by the companies,” The Times reports. So this is the sort of scientific consensus around GMOs that environmentalist should bow to—one literally based on fear among tenured faculty? ...
Philpott also points to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which ends up recommending an approach that leans heavily towards the agroecological and encourages crop diversification, while warning against the effects of restrictive intellectual property laws and the search for technological magic bullets. That's the international scientific consensus on agriculture, where they say outright that much of what's being done right now in agriculture isn't sustainable.
And of course, there's the consensus among US government regulatory agencies on the safety of genetically modified foods, because that government is riddled with former Monsanto employees who don't require all GMO crops to be submitted for independent safety testing. Or, at least, if government employees think otherwise, they're not going to be allowed to say so without a lawsuit.
