Thanksgiving in 2014

                                  
Since its inception, Thanksgiving has been about sharing food, family and diplomacy; pass the stuffing, not the stereotypes. But lately, a new feud is brewing...a food fight. Do you see meat in the classic cornucopia image displayed above? Neither do I.
But I like meat. I'm not crazy about turkey actually, but ham, lamb, beef, chicken, I do eat all of those. And of course, I'll eat turkey tomorrow.
But what about my sister who is vegetarian (this week)? Or my dad who is adamantly attached to creamed corn even though we tell him it's not very healthy and terrible for his arteries?
Can we all still enjoy Thanksgiving together? Will food become a taboo subject at the dinner table like politics and religion?
I say, NO! Have a healthy serving of debate, disagreement and diversity this season, try a few new recipes, respectfully preserve some traditional ones, and just keep it coming til you run out of pie (and wine and beer, I would imagine). All that arguing will help burn off some of these excessive calories we've all decided to ingest anyway. Enjoy!
Some helpful suggestions:

Homemade cranberry sauce

homemade creamed corn,

pumpkin pie or

BPA free cans of cranberry sauce, corn and pumpkin

Vegan recipe suggestions for sides/turkey alternative

Safety tips for turkey

Happy Thanksgiving.


Maya Missaghi, William Mitchell College of Law
Photo credit: http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/cornucopia.html

Vegans in FAVOR of engineered food? Pass the "mayo"

In an ironic twist, a small San Francisco start-up, Hampton Creek, is standing up for engineered mayo and giant corporation Unilever is pushing for the real deal.

As outlined in the L.A. Times, the dispute is about eggs: is that what makes mayonnaise genuine? Unilever is arguing that Hampton Creek is guilty of false advertising since its product "Just Mayo" does not contain any eggs. Ironically, this is the point of the product, since it is meant to be a vegan substitute for egg-based and therefore animal based mayonnaise. 

Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick's position is that he's not disagreeing with the importance of eggs, but says he is absolved of any false advertising claims because his product is simply called "mayo" not "mayonnaise", thereby alerting his customers to the fact that this spread is different to old-fashioned, formal mayonnaise. 

The FDA's definition of mayonnaise does make eggs and integral part of the equation. But is it really deceptive to call a product "mayo" if your target audience is people looking for alternative solutions to traditional recipes? What do they need to call it, "I can't believe it's not mayo"?

Everyone is waiting with bated breath to see how this turns out. Meanwhile, Hampton Creek is getting free advertising and product placements all over the place. Good for them,

Maya Missaghi, William Mitchell College of Law

photo credit: Richard Levine/Corbis; Courtesy of Hampton Creek

Sodas taxed in Berkeley, and yet another reason to move to Hawaii

Tuesday's votes have established that although a soda tax was defeated in San Francisco, it's standing its ground across the bay in Berkeley, One food writer who lives in Berkeley and supports the tax does wonder if it'll have the desired effect of reducing the amount of soda people drink. But it's exciting to see it happening somewhere besides West Virginia. Let's see what happens.

In other news, the Hawaii islands of Maui and Molokai have voted in a moratorium on the use of genetically modified or engineered crops. This means that any genetic modification and engineering operations in the county have to stop until an environmental and public health study is conducted and finds the proposed practice involving GMO's to be safe and harmless. This has big consequences in Hawaii as many large companies love the tropical climate and have been growing crops abundantly there.

Mobile Market Bringing Healthy to Food Desert

Did you know the Twin Cities ranks in the top five in urban “food deserts,” which are geographic areas where affordable and nutritious food is difficult to obtain, particularly for those without access to an automobile?
Leah and Mike Driscoll knew. And to help mitigate the problem, they have created Twin Cities Mobile Market, a grocery store on wheels that brings affordable, healthy food directly into under-resourced neighborhoods. It fills a gap between food shelves and full-service supermarkets by providing a wide selection of fresh foods at below-market prices in areas where access to healthy food is limited.
 The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation helped get the project off the ground, and by the end of October, Mobile Market plans to be serving areas in St. Paul, including Frogtown, the East Side, North End and West Side, with the goal to expand the program into Minneapolis.  The Market will operate from Tuesday through Saturday, with 16 stops initially scheduled.

You can read more about the Mobile Market here

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
photo credit: innoveproject.org

California's Anti-Antibiotics Bill a No-Go: Is voluntary goodwill enough?

CA Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the state's bill attempting to ban the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and require a veterinarian prescription for a livestock antibiotic. This would mean that animal producers couldn't introduce antibiotics into their animals' environment in any capacity without a "veterinarty-client-patient relationship"; without it, administering antibiotics would become criminal activity under this bill.

Not too surprisingly, that goal didn't get the governor's approval. And from a constitutional law perspective, it's not hard to see why: there are less restrictive ways to regulate food practices and protect public welfare. As a prime example, the voluntary Federal Drug Administration standard that phases-out antibiotic use for growth promotion is seemingly doing a fairly effective job of encouraging food producers to stop antibiotic use on their own. “This action promotes the judicious use of important antimicrobials, which protects public health and, at the same time, ensures that sick and at-risk animals receive the therapy they need,” says CVM Director Bernadette Dunham, DVM, Ph.D. “We realize that these steps represent changes for veterinarians and animal producers, and we have been working to make this transition as seamless as possible.”

Recently, Perdue and Tyson have taken a first step in making the transition to antibiotic-free food production. But although it is definitely in the right direction, this step needs to be looked at more closely. Both companies announced they were no longer going to use antibiotics used by humans in their chicken hatcheries. This technically means that there is no risk of overexposure on our part to antibiotics we use to get better, which means we won't become prematurely immune to their beneficial effects.
Perdue also does not feed its chickens any antibiotics for growth promotion purposes; the same cannot be said for Tyson yet.

The misleading thing about chicken and antibiotics is that as much as these sorts of actions should be encouraged, they are not as meaningful as they would be in the beef and pork industries. This is because all chicken is “antibiotic-free” in the sense that no antibiotic residues are present in the meat due to the withdrawal periods and other precautions required by the government and observed by the chicken companies, according to the National Chicken Council.

So interestingly, this means that antibiotic use in chickens is primarily an animal welfare issue; humans are not theoretically much at risk due to the withdrawal period. But these companies are changing their policies, since we the consumers are getting more and more grossed out by the thought of the Little Red Hen being injected with antimicrobial drugs just so we can have bigger animals and cheap meat.
When will Bessie the Cow and Percy Pig be as ethically treated across the board?

FSMA Revisions seek to better balance organic and conventional farmer interests

 

The FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rule revisions have gained the Organic Trade Association (OTA)'s approval. The revisions strive to respect organic methods of farming while keeping the goal of increasing contamination prevention as much as possible.

Lydia Zuraw summarized the changes made in her Food Safety News article of September 19th:

"Some of the most technical challenges to implementing the Act involve the produce safety rule. In the new language,
- FDA changes the microbial standard for water that is directly applied during the growing of produce,
-proposes a tiered and more targeted approach to testing each source of untreated water,
-removes the nine-month interval for between application of raw manure and harvest of a crop (deferring a decision on an appropriate interval until it conducts more research),
-eliminates the 45-day minimum application interval for compost, and
-redefines a “farm” so that farms that pack or hold food from neighboring farms won’t be subject to both the produce rule and the preventive controls for human food rules."
 
Taking a closer look at a couple of these, this means compost use is being encouraged (since farmers can apply compost whenever they like and not worry that it's too close to harvesting time) and though raw manure use is not as favored (because, you know, fecal waste and all that), the FDA is clearly making a huge effort to recognize the smelly goodness of "“untreated biological soil amendments of animal origin” and regulate its usage in a rational, respectful way.

The elimination of the nine-month interval between manure application and harvesting makes sense because otherwise organic farmers cannot rotate crops (presumably calling for different growth and harvesting intervals than 9 months) and must fall in line to the conventional routine of planting the same thing in the same spot.

Ironically, the biodiversity that crop rotation encourages can increase crop yield in the long run by improving soil nutrient levels and resistance to erosion, weeds and insects. Presumably this is because no one insect or weed "scavenger" population is allowed to thrive for too long since their meal keeps changing...I just made that up, but maybe?

For the full Act text, click here

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
photo credit: http://www.123rf.com/photo_14295589_farmer-works-with-manure-at-farm.html

Tomatoes No Cash Crop

                                     


Tomato growers trying to recoup their massive lost profits from an ultimately inaccurate Salmonella source diagnosis by the FDA lost their case today; food safety warnings were NOT ruled to be government takings and therefore the FDA is not responsible for the dramatic dip in tomato sales in 2008 (due to the FDA's accusation that tomatoes were to blame. It turned out it was peppers.)

As near to impossible as it is to pinpoint the source of food borne illness, today's ruling makes it clear that at least as far as the FDA's work is concerned, people matter more than profits. Today's ruling protects the FDA's legitimate attempts to investigate food borne illness and its origins, as well as squashing any tomato grower's illusions of grandeur.

Maya Missaghi, J.D. expected January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law
photo credit: licensing.pixels.com