The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear a first-time case about the risks of genetically engineered crops. Named Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the case before the high court will be yet another step in an ongoing battle waged by the Center for Food Safety to protect consumers and the environment from potentially harmful effects of genetically engineered (GE) crops.

Howdy!
It’s been sometime since I wrote on JCarrot, but I have some big news and I’m asking for your help!

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. USDA failed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) before deregulating the crop. An EIS is a rigorous analysis of the potential significant impacts of a federal decision. The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the GE plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an EIS.

Recently, while sitting in a waiting room, I casually flipped through Audubon magazine.  Suddenly, my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.  What?!  A Monsanto advertisement in an environmental magazine?

Audubon’s mission statement says: “Audubon magazine provides a place where nature enthusiasts, outdoor adventurers, and socially conscious consumers can discover, connect with, and be inspired by the natural world’s extraordinary beauty and diversity.”  Monsanto—of Agent Orange,  farmer-suing, seed-patenting , genome-tinkering , and crop-spraying fame—is hardly a logical bed fellow.

You can see the ad for yourself, here.  What’s truly infuriating about seeing the ad in Audubon magazine is that Monsanto is clearly targeting the environmental and food justice crowd.  Buzz words like “a changing climate,” “conserve more,” “use…fewer resources,” and “sustainable agriculture” give the illusion that Monsanto is on our side.  They are anything but.

Never one to bite my tongue, I sent Audubon an e-mail:

I was horrified to see a print ad for Monsanto in your magazine.  Monsanto is a foe of the environment, and their advertisement was nothing but propaganda.  Your magazine stands for environmental protection and advancement; Monsanto stands for big business at the expense of farmers, the environment, and health.  The vast majority of Monsanto’s attempts at genetic engineering ultimately increases pollution and endangers the public with unknown health risks.  I urge you to sever your business dealings with Monsanto.

The publisher of Audubon magazine promptly wrote me back:

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals is not for the faint of heart. His recent article in the New York Times (excerpted from the first chapter) includes stories of his grand-mother, a holocaust survivor, which he uses to define himself as well as frame his book. The Jew and The Carrot’s Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus wrote a nice post about it, including:

“But I what I found most moving was the way he connected his own ethical commitment to vegetarianism to his grandmother’s commitment to kashrut, even under the most extreme circumstances. She gets the last word in the dialogue he recalls,

The other day my boyfriend and I were enjoying a Sunday walk in Brooklyn when we ran into his friend Ana, her partner and their adorable new baby.  Among the introductions and pleasantries she mentioned that she was distributing her film FRESH.  “Here, tell me what you think of it,” she said handing me a copy, knowing I was a food writer.

So, one night a while later my boyfriend and I tucked into the sofa and watched FRESH, the new film by Ana Sofia Joanes.  As someone who has seen Food Inc and has read a lot of Michael Pollan, the material was not new to me, however I found the material’s presentation (forgive the pun) fresh.  I had found Food Inc to be a good film, but heavy on the propaganda.  I felt that FRESH got its message across in a far more even-handed way.  The film invoked a pretty good discussion, and I was happy to see on their website they had some additional educational materials and even a call for recipes.  But you don’t have to be a Jew and the Carrot writer or have chance encounters with the director to see this film.  If you live in the New York area there will be a screening this Tuesday.

In another important case against Monsanto and the USDA, the Center for Food Safety has again prevailed, demonstrating that GMOs pose serious risk of harm to organic farmers and consumers, and that the USDA is failing to sufficiently protect us from the contamination that can result from the planting of these crops – this time in Sugar beets! As lead counsel for CFS on this case, I’m excited to share the news with you!

A Federal Court ruled yesterday that the Bush USDA’s approval of genetically engineered (GE) “RoundUp Ready” sugar beets was unlawful. The Court ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the crop on farmers and the environment.

It seemed like a great way to kill two birds with one stone.  Now I’m wondering if it’s killing—or at least harming—me.

Welcome to my water dilemma.

Last year, my concerns were mounting about both the evils of inherent in the privatization of water and the health risks of exposure to Bisphenol A,  used to produce many common plastics.  So the members of our household stopped using the Brita filter, and started toting straight-from-the-tap goodness with us wherever we went.  Toting it in SIGG water bottles, which were sold as a plastic-free, all aluminum alternative to BPA-laden bottles.

Trust the Swiss their website said.

Yeah, trust the Swiss . . . to sell you out to the Nazis.

Last night I went to hear Joel Salatin, of Polyface Farms in Virginia, speak at a benefit for the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, one of my favorite farmer’s markets here in Portland. Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and more recently in the film Food, Inc. (BTW, if you haven’t seen the film, go, this minute, and take everyone you know, even if you have to drag them kicking and screaming).

The Faith Leaders for Environmental Justice. It’s an unwieldy name, but to the point. They are an interdenominational umbrella group of clerics andorganizations working at translating environmental consciousness into social justice. Based out of NY, and working mostly in and around the city, the group is co-chaired by NY Faith and Justice (a largely Christian organization) and We ACT for Environmental Justice, but includes a number of representatives from interfaith groups, including our very own Hazon. They host talks, run initiatives and are dedicated to improving the lives of those in lower income communities in the five boroughs.  They take the wild and crazy position that these communities foot the bill for our collective enviro-sins. See? It’s not just about saving baby seals…

When it comes to food, I’ve acted the part of intercessor more than once in my life. I’ve given propagandistic explanations of what CAFO’s are. I’ve pressured room mates and lovers, gently but manipulatively, to give up corn syrup and non-organic produce. I’ve been even more sneaky and covert. When my little sister, who will eat only four things, revealed that she was under the misapprehension that kosher meat was ethically raised, I didn’t disabuse her.

The kosher food industry has been playing its undeserved part as moral intercessor for a while now. An article like this one in Food Quality, shows that non-Jews invest our religious standards for food as a moral litmus that corresponds to their ethics. This revelation makes me feel proud, but also somewhat angry. The world thinks so highly of us that they’re willing to trust our standards, but Agriprocessors showed that the laws of kashrut have nothing to do with the laws of the rest of the world.

Reports released this week disclosed that many foods made with high fructose corn syrup are contaminated with mercury, and that the FDA has known about this since 2005. Testing on supermarket foods with HFCS found detectable levels of mercury in nearly a third of products with HFCS.

Meanwhile, the Corn Refiners Association stands by its assertion that corn syrup is safe. And yes, the FDA did recently give the corn industry permission to refer to corn syrup as a “natural ingredient.”

Umami is so hot right now. Barbara Kingsolver talked about it in her food movement tome “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, NPR covered it, it’s been scientifically proven, and now it’s basis of a new Kikkoman advertising campaign, one that tells folks they can add umami to any dish to make it dazzling.

So what is umami? It’s glutamate, a non-essential amino acid that breaks down proteins in food. It also has the effect of exciting the neurotransmitters in human brains. When it’s bound to other amino acids, as in whole foods like tomatoes, asparagus, cheeses and meats, it has no adverse effects and makes life better from the tongue on down. When it’s free-floating though, as it is when used as an additive in the form of Monosodium glutamate and it’s many incarnations, in any savory processed food, and, unfortunately, in some delicious by-products like brewer’s yeast, that old neurotransmitter stimulation gets out of control. In up to 25 percent of the population (depending on your source, of course), MSG can cause side effects from over-stimulation of neurotransmitters. The side effects include a range of neurological and cardiac responses from the mild and incident-specific to the life-inhibiting and permanent, depending on the person doing the eating and the amount that they consume. (This article has a list, though I can’t vouch for or against their sources)

In Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, one of her characters is sitting in a diner with visitors from another planet. One of the aliens picks up a container of non-dairy creamer and says “Trudy, this is what we’re made of.”

In homage, for years, in my family, whenever we ate something that was super-processed, we referred to it as “alien food.” As in, “What is this soup made of?” “Aliens.” There is even a cake that my mother makes from a mix that we just refer to as “aliens cake.” This Kahn-Troster-ism can be very confusing if you join our clan at a later date, as my husband discovered when he innocently asked what was for dessert, and got the answer “aliens.” Alien food was not something we were defensive about, but the fact that it had its own term signified how small a part of our diet highly-processed food was. And any time I indulge in something with a long list of unpronounceable, unrecognizable ingredients, or with no real nutritional value, I think “This is what we’re made of.”

The more I get involvement in the food movement, though, the more I realize that we’re made of aliens, too.

Last week the New Yorker published a longish piece (registration required) about Orthodox rabbis who criss-cross China certifying that various food manufacturing companies are adhering by all the rules of kashrut. It’s a fascinating little piece about what it really means to be a mashgiach, or a person who checks that food is kosher. Here’s a part that caught my eye:

How does the process of kosher certification inspection work? Here’s a composite scenario, as I witnessed it.
The Schmooze: This takes place in the conference room, which is perhaps adorned with a wood-and-brass captain’s wheel from a ship. On the wall, there might be a framed certificate for “High Tech Enterprise 2006″ or a large painted sign with an adage in English. “Only Faulty Product, No Captious Customer” and “People and Products Working Together” were two that I saw. Among those in attendance could be a plant supervisor, an engineer, an export manager, a sales representative, and a factory-hired translator. There is always a lot of chuckling–about what, I don’t think anyone present ever has a clue. Finally, the mashgiach turns on his laptop, signaling that it is time for…
The Review of the Raw Materials… More

(Emphasis mine.)

What struck me is this whole issue of everyone laughing for no reason, a point that is picked up again later in the article. To me, that’s a little microcosm of everything that’s going on in the kashrut industry. Everyone is smiling and chuckling and looking jolly and pious, but no one really knows what’s happening.