Sometimes it's better to be illusioned

For some time I have been drinking soy milk - using the real thing in my tea, but otherwise sticking to soy beverage, or milk in fermented or cultured forms. I've developed a real fondness for Silk Very Vanilla.

I've taken care over the years to read the labels, and try to buy only organic soy products. It's not that I am so much worried about health risks - I just don't want to support the corporations who patent GMOs.

Well, it turns out, I wasn't paying attention - or thinking about the implications of organic.

There is now nothing on the Silk label which says organic, and most of their soy beans come from China. Even many beans purported to be organic (though it's difficult to assess) come from China or Brazil.

Silk is now part of Dean Foods, a large food product conglomerate. With the acquisition came the shift to Chinese soy, and, of course, the failure to continue to support organic soy production in this country, as the Organic Bytes newsletter points out. What could have been a force for market-based agricultural reform in this country became just another globally sourcing corporation, doing it as cheaply as possible.

Organic Bytes information source is the Cornucopia Institute
http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/05/soy-report-and-scorecard/
and there you can find a full report and a rating of all the soy products companies.
http://www.cornucopia.org/soysurvey/
Five bean companies produce soy foods which are wholly organic, made from small farm, US grown soy beans. The zero and one bean companies got there primarily by not disclosing much.
In the middle are companies that most likely do not use GMOs, but may use dangerous solvents (hexane) in production.

Most of the private labels and brands you would recognize at any super market are disastrous. Eden Soy is the only beverage brand I recognized with the coveted 5 bean rating.

I did, though, find good reviews (you can get the full info on any manufacturer by clicking on its name in the survey) of several companies whose other soy products I buy in the 4 bean section.

I got so interested in it all that I moved on to Cornucopia's updated organic dairy survey. I was so pleased that little Loleta Cheese in Humboldt County got 5 cows! Many northern California dairies got 4 cows, as did Sunnyside Organic Milk, the house brand of several regional grocery chains. So if you go to Raley's, Lucky or Food Maxx, don't spend more for the national brand organic milk with the bucolic scene on the label. Choose the less expensive Sunnyside Brand from Stockton, California - the most transparent store brand in either study.

COOL

I've finally done some reading up on the Country of Origin Labeling regulations which went into effect September 30 - except that there is a 6 month grace period.

The faqs at USDA could be better written, but here they are
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5071922

It seems pretty clear to me that these regulations are next to meaningless.

Fish and shellfish have had to be labeled since 2005, but I still find my questions are not always answered at the supermarket. And if you go to a fishmonger that doesn't sell produce, they don't have to disclose country of origin. Ditto a butcher.

In all cases, any food that has had something done to it other than something mechanical (slicing or dicing or grinding in the case of meat, but not peanuts) is exempt.

The produce department of your supermarket must inform you, but the deli department does not need to.

Only fresh and frozen foods are covered. Canned and dried foods have had something done to them.

Chicken that is grown here and goes to China to be cut up - well, you won't be told that.

Offal - not covered. So those chicken livers, where all the toxins are concentrated - who knows where they are from. Only muscle meats are covered.

Labeling does not need to be readable with the naked eye. The USDA notes that stickering of fruit and veg is not 100% effective. No kidding. You need a magnifying glass for much of it.

Foods that are combined with other foods are not covered. Frozen peas, si. Frozen peas and carrots, not necessary. Breaded chicken or fish pieces, no.

Which reminds me - grain products are not covered. This is only about perishable food, which I guess means food that will deteriorate rapidly without refrigeration or freezing.

Some things not covered by COOL legislation are covered by tariff laws. Things that you've noticed have been labeled with their countries of origin for years would be because of this.

It seems to me the best tack is still to ask. If enough of us ask enough questions of our retailers we will encourage them to know where things come from, not just prices. If enough of us not only question, but refuse to buy products whose origins are muddy, and tell retailers about it, we may eventually skew the system so it works to our benefit. Right now it's a nod to us and endless exceptions responding to pressures of various trade groups.

Here's a one page summary
http://www.consumersunion.org/pdf/CU-Cool-Tool.pdf

I'm off to the garden where I know the origin of my produce. Santa Rosa Creek, Laguna de Santa Rosa, Russian River watersheds, California floristic region, North America.

Why is it that when I want to participate in the consumer culture...

I fail so miserably.

These days I am looking for a couple of ingredients for holiday baking, and looking, and looking, and looking...

Over the years I developed a recipe for what I call a California fruitcake - because it has lots of dried fruit soaked in plenty of alcohol rather than the nasty bits of candied tropical fruit, faux cherries, etc., and plenty of California nuts. Just think - a pretty much local seasonal treat. The backbone of this cake is dried pears. But I can't find any anywhere around here. I now have checked five markets - a national chain, a regional chain, a local market, a health food co-op and whatever Trader Joe's is - a transnational specialty food emporium? I used to always get these at Trader Joe's when it was a California chain, but the choices in dried fruit have been greatly reduced, and many of them are imported. You can get dried pears in mixed dried fruit - but both the national brand, Sunmaid, and a small organic label I found are not California fruit, but from China or Argentina, if I recall correctly.

Some of the best pears in California come from the region north of here where I am working with the congregations. Today I drove by the Safeway in Lakeport, where they had a rather tattered banner flapping "We have Lake County Pears" - but the only dried ones were the imported jobs in the Sunmaid mixture, and the weekend produce manager said there were no dried pears on her order sheets.

I'm now wondering if the fruit and nut emporia between here and Sacramento might be the places to check - but I've just had a trip over that way, and don't expect another until next year.

So, I tried the internet, where the best prices on California dried pears are kosher markets in New York and New Jersey.

The other item I've been looking for is rolled rye, which I use in some yeast baking items. Heck, you can even get rolled quinoa in the bulk bins - but only rye flour (no pumpernickel) and rolled rye as one of the four in a rolled cereal flakes melange. This is now a several year quest. I may have to order a case of it from Bob's Red Mill in Oregon if I want to ever make those great rye rolls again.

Marion Nestle videos

Well, I would have preferred more shots of the food and fewer of the shopping guy, but you can get the lowdown on food shopping from Marion Nestle in video short form on the Treehugger blog.

Start here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/thtv_green_produce.php

Dairy confessions and information

Confession: I do experience some guilt when, for ease and convenience, I buy something other than a local product which I know is available at another stop. I have felt that way for some time about my habit of picking up a quart of milk (for my tea) when in Trader Joe's - no longer a funky California company, but a nationwide one, and German owned.

Information: Then yesterday I actually read the milk carton (why have I never done this, when I read all the other labels?) and found out - lo and behold - it is milk from Northern California, bovine growth hormone free.

Then I got sceptical, so I decided to track down where it was from. There is a note on the carton with the number of the plant where it was packed (pasteurized). I never did find an on-line directory to lead me to the specific plant. But I did find a list of state codes. Any beginning with 06 are California.

You probably already know this, and I've just been a blind consumer.
But in case you don't, here is a list:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/ims-toc.html#nucs

To market, to market

I've been thinking a lot recently about industrial organic, and who buys (can afford) organic food. Several articles this week have converged on this topic.

A friend sent me a link to a Globe and Mail article - another person, this time a Canadian sociologist, questioning what happened to the environmental and economic justice values of the organic farming movement. She suggests that most organics are really "yuppie chow." (I like that!)

Irena Knezevick writes in her paper (as quoted by the G&M)
"Organic foods have less and less to do with the ethics of environmentalism, anti-globalization and social justice, indeed less to do with organic agriculture as a concept, but more and more with hip consumerism, cultural and economic capital and the moral pedestals of those who have the luxury to make such purchasing choices."

This brought to mind my own modest consumer research project last week. I decided that if we are having an Oliver's Market (high end local rising chain) in my neighborhood, I had better overcome my reverse snobbery and try once again shopping there. I had to pass by the one in Cotati between my book group and a potluck, so I stopped in. The people - not the staff, the people who shop there - really do seem part of the yuppie chow crowd, a group with which I would prefer not to identify. But focusing on the merchandise, what I saw was that there was a lot of local food, things were well labeled, and the specials were worth shopping. Standard prices are high, but when something is on sale it really is. And 60+ get a 10% discount on Wednesdays.

The Globe and Mail article also touches on a lot of the problems we hope our U.S. Farm Bill will address: declining numbers of farmers, loss of small diversified farms, erosion of quality in rural life, excessive subsidies for industrial agriculture. It reminded me of meeting with some rural folks from Saskatchewan when I went to the Anglican Church's General Synod in 1989. Amazing that there is just beginning to be some wider recognition (outside of those who live and minister in rural North America) of the problems almost 20 years later.

Read about it here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070530.wfood30/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20070530.wfood30

Back to organics. There was also an interesting article in the news feed I get from the BBC earlier in the week. The modest proposal of the Soil Association, which certifies organics, is to remove the certification from food stuffs flown into Britain, since clearly food miles are part of the equation if one really cares about the planet. (Rather than just one's own personal health - when any organic, even one that's travelled halfway around the world will do.)

Here's the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6694251.stm
The accompanying video clip is worth watching. Apparently part of the problem is that most organic produce is imported, and most of the UK produce on offer in supermarkets is conventionally grown. A basket of local seasonal produce racked up a total of 1100 food miles; while a basket of organics rang up 32,000 food miles. No - no mistake on those zeroes - organic asparagus flown from Thailand to Britain will do that, especially if you throw in lots of fruit from Israel and South America.

One more note: I finally saw both in print and on television (what was I watching? reading?) ads for Target's "Archer Farms" line. Talk about greenwashing! It's like they watched the Meatrix and created a caricature of the caricature of the happy farm shown there.
See and hear it here:
http://sites.target.com/site/en/supertarget/archer_farms.jsp#
Aw shucks!

Why didn't I think of this?

I'm spending time with the web today, reviewing and updating resources for the upcoming inaugural meeting of our diocesan ecological network on June 2.

Here's one thing I stumbled upon - an acronym that makes sense:

LOAF
Locally produced
Organically grown
Animal friendly
Fairly traded

If you read the article below you'll have to do a little Brit to American translating, but it's quite an interesting and balanced piece. And how about that acronym?
http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/loaf-principles.htm

On the same site I read about supermarket tours. What a concept. Helping people to read labels, ask questions, and pursue the LOAF principles when they shop.

Is local the answer?

Today I went to Target, something I don't do that often, and discovered they now have their own brand of industrial organic food.

This reminded me that I wanted to say some more about local eating, and about the detractors from that movement.

Over the last two months several people have called to my attention an article in The Economist, print edition of December 7, 2006. Called "Ethical Food?" it raised yet more questions about shopping one's way to a healthy planet. (If you subscribe to either the print or on-line version of the magazine you can access the article at the web site. If not, check the print version at your local library. There's no free linking with The Economist.)

Some of the article made good sense, reminding us yet one more time that shopping is not the answer, but concerted political action. I wonder though, about people who have to engage at the level of shopping before they start thinking politically (and we hope, eventually questioning shopping as their entry point!). Is shopping a place to start for some folks, just not the place to stop?

The article also made a good point about fair trade crops. Fair trade may contribute to economic justice for growers now, but if fair trade encourages mono-cropping, in the long run it's not going to be good for the planet or for the grower's community.

There some silly stuff in the article, though. Like a comment that growing lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to the UK uses less energy than just growing the lamb in the UK in the first place. How could this be? We know for humans one pound of body weight equals about 3500 Kcals. Presumably it would be about the same for warm blooded creatures of similar body temperature and metabolic rate. And presumably a pound of lamb takes the same number of calories to produce whichever hemisphere you are in. Then the energy needed to ship would be added to that. If someone reading this understands how shipping something half way around the globe takes less energy, please add a comment!

But this is quibbling. As one of my colleagues here pointed out, the thing that is not considered in The Economist article is the value to the human community of the locavore movement. It's not just the cost to the planet which we must consider, but also the value in rebuilding communities, in fostering human connections - in ways that often feedback to the health of the planet.