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GM Medicine Rice

The US Department of Agriculture appears to be in the final stages of approval for commercial planting of a variety of rice genetically modified with human DNA. This is the first of what is expected to be a large number of crops developed to produce medicine. This particular variety of rice will contain a medicine used to treat diarrhoea and dehydration. Future GM crops are planned for treating diseases like measles, cancer treatments and contraceptives.

What this means is if pollen escapes from these commercial farms and contaminates similar food crops, then our food will likely contain the same medicines. How likely is this to happen? The company producing this variety of rice says there is “no risk”. Consider that Europe recently discovered that supposedly non GM rice imported from the US was in fact contaminated with an unapproved GM variety, that had unknowingly escaped from a research facility. Because there is no regular testing, this contamination went undetected for unknown period, but was probably months or years.

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Vegetarian is the New Prius

This article is about a month old now, but Kathy Freston wrote a really thought provoking article on how what we eat can have a bigger impact on global warming and other environmental issues than the car we drive.

For those people living outside of the US, or perhaps North America, a Prius is a hybrid electric car marketed by Toyota. Together with other hybrid cars and light trucks, they have become popular among people who want to drive a more fuel efficient car.

In the US more petroleum products are consumed each year producing food than by private cars. In addition, a stunning amount of water is consumed and vast quantities of chemicals and animal wastes are released into the environment. This is primarily because of the centralized food distribution and processing system that by now feeds almost everyone living in a developed country. Of course these problems are magnified in the context of meat production, because first crops have to be grown for animal feed, then the animals have to be raised, and the amount of feed they consume is enormous when compared to the meat produced.

Almost all of these problems are avoided when we eat foods that are organically and locally produced. If we eat in-season vegetables we grow ourselves or buy from a local organic farmer, the environmental impact is a tiny fraction of what it is when we buy out-of-season conventionally grown produce shipped in from far away. The same comparison can be made when we buy local, organic and grass fed eggs, meats and dairy products, versus conventional products.

Since most of us will continue to eat conventional food products, one of the most important environmentally friendly choices we can make is by eating fewer meats and other animal products. It can be better for your health too!

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Highest Soy Prices in 30 years

The highest soy prices in 30 years are forecast for 2007 in Europe. This is according to a Dutch language article on the Wervel website.

With prices expected to be roughly 50% higher than in 2006, and since nearly all meat, dairy and processed foods in Europe are based on soy, European consumers are likely to see sharply higher food prices this year.

Why are soy prices going up? It turns out large numbers of US farmers are abandoning soy crops in favor of growing corn (maize), and this is causing a world wide shortage of soy.

Why are US farmers switching to corn? The use of corn based ethanol is growing in popularity as an automotive fuel in the US, and this is causing shortages of this grain and forcing the price of it up. Farmers simply see more profit in growing corn.

Since nearly all meat, dairy and processed foods in the US are based on corn, higher grain prices will likely result in sharply higher food prices for US consumers as well.

Undeniably this is good news for small farmers, many of whom have been expected to produce below their own costs for many years and could now possibly make a profit. Unfortunately not many of these farms producing corn are independently owned anymore, most are owned by large corporations who stand to benefit the most.

I guess for most of us these price increases won’t be a big concern, after all the average person in Europe or the US pays about 10% of their income for food. If this should double, most of us will get by.

The real problem is the rest of the world, since food prices are very much a global phenomenon. In many places in the world people use a much higher percentage of their income to feed themselves. To double the price of their food potentially means they can only eat half as much. This could be a huge problem for the developing world.

It takes the same amount of corn to feed one person for a year, as it does to produce 25 US gallons of ethanol. This is about the size of the fuel tank in an average SUV. If someone drives an SUV, and fills their tank twice a month, this is the same as feeding 24 people for a year. In addition, ethanol pollutes the air more than normal gasoline.

Why is ethanol becoming so popular in the US? After all, isn’t it a good thing for America to reduce their dependence on foreign oil? Reducing their dependence on foreign oil would be a good thing, but it turns out that producing corn based ethanol consumes twice as much energy than what would be in the final product. The majority of this energy comes from fossil fuel based sources, powering tractors and trucks that plow the fields and transport the grain and producing chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are based on petroleum products. There is hope for a technological breakthrough to improve the way ethanol is produced and make it more energy efficient, but that is simply not there yet. This means in the coming year the US consumption of fossil fuels and production of greenhouse gases is set to sharply increase, all in the name of using a supposedly environmentally friendly automotive fuel.

Besides increases in greenhouse gases, other environmental consequences are likely to be equally devastating. When soy beans are grown, they fix their own nitrogen. In plain speaking terms, they produce their own fertilizer and leave the ground in a better state than before they were grown. Commercial production of corn on the other hand is very detrimental to the environment. Corn requires significant levels of fertilizers and pesticides, and rapidly degrades the topsoil. According to Harper’s Magazine, in their February 2004 article, “The Oil We Eat“, the entire state of Iowa is about six feet (almost 2 meters) lower than before WWII, primarily due to animal feed grain production and the associated loss of topsoil.

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Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

What more can you say?

Michael Pollan, perhaps best known for his recent book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” explains what the title of this post means in a 12 page article in today’s New York Times Magazine.

Because politically it’s not possible to say we should eat less food, it takes someone like Pollan to expose all the misleading healthy eating advice we are assaulted with on a daily basis. As well as exposing all the lies, he then goes on to offer advice on what to eat that would be hard for anyone to ignore.

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Bird Flu Season

As we come up on bird flu season again this year, it seems like a good time to post about the ‘other side’ of the story. We are all familiar with what’s in the news about bird flu. The basic theme is wild birds carry the infection along their migratory routes, infecting everything from chickens to cats and people. Large factory farms are vulnerable, but are also the best cared for places, as the chickens are all in one place. The biggest problem in the spread of bird flu are small farmers and individuals raising chickens outside, as these animals are difficult to track and slaughter in case of a bird flu outbreak. Chicken and eggs are safe to eat, we are told over and over! Eat more food!

What’s not frequently mentioned is the story behind these factory chicken farms. These indoor farms contain tens of thousands of birds and recently have been operated at levels of hundreds of thousands. They are very dirty places, and breeding grounds for diseases. Only a small amount of space is allocated to each bird, and their beaks are cut off to keep them from killing and injuring each other. In the case of ‘free range’, a small door on the side of the building lets the birds wander out onto a small grassy area if they choose. If they choose is the key word here, because the breed of chicken in these farms do not generally choose to go outside. The outdoor area is often not big enough, should the birds all decide to go out at the same time.

This special breed of chicken used in these farms is only suitable for being raised indoors, and one of it’s characteristics is a very weak immune system. It’s immune system is so weak, that generally at any sign of infectious disease all of the chickens must be very quickly destroyed or brought to market. Any human visitors to these farms must be carefully managed, and generally they have to be suited from head to toe in a plastic hazardous materials suit fitted with a respirator. In fact the risk of infection is so high that during bird flu outbreaks the doors on ‘free range’ farms have to be closed because the risk of a bird walking outside and contracting bird flu is so great.

It’s increasingly the view of scientists and other people involved in the bird flu issue that it is not so much of an issue of wild birds causing bird flu, but rather the factory farms are the source of bird flu and the wild birds simply spread the disease. It’s a growing travesty that people who raise small numbers of poultry outdoors are being victimized by bird flu because the birds they raise, with their normal immune systems, are the solution to the problem not the cause.

What about the farmers who operate these large farms? Last year in Europe chicken farmers were awarded substantial compensation because the bird flu scare resulted in low demand for their products. This would seem to suggest that whether or not we are even interested in these products, we still have to pay for them with our taxes, and farmers will continue to be paid for producing them.

If you are interested in reading more on this issue, GRAIN has a collection of articles here.