By Audrey Sasson, cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)
I recently attended an event promoting Eric Holt-Giménez’s new book (co-authored by Raj Patel), Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric is the executive director of Food First and a powerful advocate for transforming our broken food system. His presentation unpacked the causes of hunger worldwide and promoted a reinvestment in local food systems as both a just and effective solution.
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.
(Originally published in The Forward)
Last November, I koshered my kitchen for the first time. I did so with the full understanding that my decision came with certain compromises, like giving up my favorite cheeses and my delicious but uncertified collection of vinegars. While a bit heartbreaking, these were sacrifices I was willing to make as I welcomed in my new lifestyle. If only I had known that I might have to give up salad, too.
Leafy salad greens, along with berries, asparagus and a variety of other produce, have come under serious scrutiny in the kosher world over the past decade. There’s nothing treyf about these particular fruits and vegetables, except that they have a tendency to attract insects, which are halachically forbidden. Once they are removed from a spinach leaf or the inside of a raspberry, the produce is theoretically fit to eat. But kosher agencies like the Orthodox Union and KOF-K argue that certain bugs (for example, aphids, thrips and mites) are too small to spot easily, but large and common enough to be compromising.
Did you know that McDonald’s is “going green?” In Germany, the red background behind the iconic golden arches is being replaced by green backgrounds. This redesign is just one example of blatant “greenwashing,” explained Denise Garbinski this afternoon at the Hazon Food Conference.
Garbinski, a Registered Dietitian, natural foods industry veteran, and founder of Botanical Nutrition, led a session titled “The Greenwashing of Food: Be an Informed Consumer,” part of the conference’s Food Justice track. Greenwashing, she explained, is the set of efforts a company takes to appear environmentally friendly, when in reality, the majority of their work is not. As “going green” becomes increasingly popular, for companies it means increased cash. And so, more and more food companies claim they are environmentally responsible. It turns out, that’s often not true. They’re simply repainting the background green.
I’m stuffed. Not from my Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family in the US – although everything on the table was delicious – but from five days of intellectual, spiritual, and gastronomical nourishment while participating in Hazon and Heschel’s first Israel Sustainable Food Tour. From November 15th though 19th, twenty-seven foodies and I explored Israel from the perspective of sustainable food. We met with farmers, chefs, community gardeners, a permaculture expert, a food scientist, volunteers at an innovative soup kitchen, the founder of a food co-op, an expert on food insecurity in Israel, and many other passionate people who shared their experiences working on sustainable food issues throughout the country.
If you are looking for a Chanukah gift for a foodie (say… yourself!), or some new recipes for any of the Jewish holidays, then there’s a new book out that will be of help. Aviva Allen, author of the 2007 The Organic Kosher Cookbook, has just released a Holiday Edition. Ms. Allen provided me with a free copy for this interview and review.
“These are the bad guys,” I whispered to myself in dismay as I exited the Natural Products Expo East at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Hall. I felt disappointed and ‘empty’, even though my bag was completely full of free food and beverage product samples. I came to this three day exhibition with high expectations. I envisioned a room full of like-minded entrepreneurs and retailers, dedicated to selling and promoting organic and environmentally sustainable products. Though businesses and their respective products were cannily marketed in this manner, they seemed anything but. It was a clear exhibition, rather, of how industry is undermining the true mission of the organic movement.
(Story excerpted from Tablet Magazine)
On the occasional Friday afternoon, a makeshift farmers market appears inside the popular soup shop Marakiya in Jerusalem’s city center. Israelis peruse the goods: dried figs, almonds, creamy labaneh, bottles of grape honey, and briny stuffed olives. It’s a familiar scene in a country known for its fresh produce and sumptuous food markets. But this souk aims to produce more than a good meal.
Behind one of the tables, Yahav Zohar, a 29-year-old tour guide and translator, chats with a customer about a bottle of organic olive oil. While his deep tan and scruffy beard might suggest otherwise, Zohar is not a farmer. Rather, he is something of an altruistic middleman—traveling once a week to the West Bank in search of growers and small-scale food producers whose products he buys and resells at a small markup. “The other day, I bought 500 eggs from a farmer at a shekel apiece,” he said. “In some cases, our purchases end up being a big share of a family’s income.”
What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.
What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?
What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?
What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.
If my summer were a cookbook, it would be called What to Expect When You’re Expecting— Expecting Company, That Is, and It’s a Heat Wave.
Yes, welcome to life in the global warming oven. We are on at least heat wave #3 of the summer here in usually temperate Portland, and I’ve had a potluck to attend or guests to host for all of them. And while the hot weather makes me want to eat ice cream three meals a day, I know I really shouldn’t.
Especially not when “eating” means “bringing to a potluck where it will sit out in the sun.”
So what has been on the menu? Lots, and I figured I’d share it in case you can’t stand the heat but still need to be in the kitchen.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m a member of the Tuv Ha’aretz at the JCC on the Palisades in beautiful Tenafly, New Jersey. Our farm has been hit by the weather pretty hard this year: from the tomato blight to the torrential spring/early summer rains to the above tornado, not much has been growing. What we have gotten is amazing: local, tasty organic produce. It’s a tension: we all want to support local farmers and preserve agricultural land in this corner of New Jersey. But we haven’t been getting as much as we expected and we’ve been getting a lot of summer squash.
Yesterday, we received a letter from our CSA coordinators that explained what had happened this summer and sharing the comments of many of our members. I am proud at how many people feel a stake in our farm and the fate of our farmers. Through weekly updates from Ted and Annemarie Stephens, and trips to visit the farm, we’ve built a connection to the people growing our food. We may be disappointed, but this summer has been financially devastating to the Stephens. Our CSA shares make a real difference. I also give our coordinators a lot of of credit both for being honest with us about how this summer has not always met up with our expectations and for reiterating their commitment to keeping this CSA going next year. I know I will be signing up again, and I hope many others do as well.
Read on after the jump for the letter!
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area tend to be a bit Bay Area-centric. We think we live in the best place in the country, if not the world. This especially applies to the foodies among us; my husband and I often remark over a simple dinner made with the freshest organic produce at how lucky we are to have access to such delicious, high quality food, all year-round.
And, of course, when it comes to food, I took it for granted that we are the headquarters of the new food movement: Alice Waters and Michael Pollan both live here, after all, and didn’t Hazon move its food conference to the Bay Area because it is the epicenter of all that is happening in food?
I thought so, until two weeks ago. That’s when my husband and I set out on a road trip vacation, through the Pacific Northwest. I’ll admit that as an almost-native Californian (I moved to the Golden State at age one-and-a-half) I had never visited my northern neighbors until recently.
Cross-posted from The Green Prophet
Organic food. It may cost more at the shopping till, but it delivers priceless benefits for biodiversity, animal welfare and rural economies, as well as reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Many people also believe, and there is some evidence to back this up, that food fertilised with compost instead of chemicals will be nutritionally superior.
It’s a debate that has been raging for decades, but the lack of scientific research has made claims by either side difficult to back up.
Until now, that is.
