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Dan Jason and Owen Bridge on Seed Saving in Canada

Thanks to Mike who mentioned these videos in a comment on my last post.  These videos are of Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds and The Plant Sanctuary for Canada, and Owen Bridge of Annapolis Valley Seeds, representing Canada’s two coasts at a Seedy Sunday event from earlier this year.

It’s really a great example on how in different parts of the world we have slightly different battles and laws, but in the end our overall problems and goals are the same.  Here is Europe we are fighting the battle of legalizing seed saving, but in North America they’re not only fighting to keep seed saving legal, but also facing the real prospect of aggressive police action if they are unsuccessful.

Recently some laws were changed in Canada and other parts of the world like Europe to protect the pharmaceutical industry from the competition of natural foods and herbal remedies.  This resulted in raids in Canada where unlicensed vitamins were confiscated by swat teams at gunpoint.  It’s very possible heirloom seed companies will one day see their stocks of seeds confiscated in the same way.

We all need to act locally and think globally.  We should grow seeds in our own gardens that are locally obtained and suitable for our local climate, but we shouldn’t forget seeds can be obtained elsewhere if necessary.  In the same way, we should be fighting our own battles locally, but not forgetting there’s a whole world out there with other people fighting the same battle.

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Resilient Seed

Ella von der Haide has produced Resilient Seed, a film about the action days in Brussels last April.  The film includes interviews with many interesting people who attended and/or organized the event.  If you know where to look there are a few glimpses of me, and Bifurcated Carrots is mentioned in the credits at the end.

This is the English version, and they’ve promised to make versions in other languages as time permits.  Especially as someone who participated, it’s really nice to watch the film and think back on a great weekend, with great people, that so many worked so hard to organize.

Untitled from sab inee on Vimeo.

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Is Pizza a Vegetable?

One of President Reagan’s claim to fame in the US was trying to declare tomato ketchup a vegetable for school lunches.  This would mean schools could serve hamburgers or fries, and as long as it came with ketchup it was a complete meal.

School children’s tastes have since evolved, and now pizza is the new hamburger.  With evolving foods comes the need to update laws.  In order to keep up with the times, the US congress declared pizza a vegetable because it has tomato paste on it.  This measure in congress was necessary in order to override the USDA’s advice to the contrary.

So what else comes with the tomato paste in school lunch pizza?  Courtesy of Kristin Wartman’s article on Grist, here’s a list of ingredients in ConAgra’s “traditional 4×6 school pizza”:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).

SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

That looks like a vegetable to me!  It’s that ‘nutrient blend’ in the shredded mozzarella cheese substitute that makes all the difference.

Lizz Winstead at the Guardian also wrote a piece on this.