"food politics" news and stories

Our food system may not be perfect, but we have to admit we've come a long way since last December, with a new eye for public health and environmental responsibility. Here's a 2010 recap of the top stories worth a revisit before we move forward into the new year.

Redefining Organic
Until February 2010, the term "organic" was taken pretty loosely. Consumers weren't too sure what the organic stamp actually guaranteed. So the USDA released new rules, including the minimum time animals should have access to pasture: 4 months each year, with 30 percent of their diet sourced from said pasture.

Sustainable Seafood
In 2010, people weren't just concerned for their own health; they started really thinking about the health of what they ate as they reached for more locally grown, sustainably raised foods, and nothing became more political than seafood. We become more aware of the Seafood Watch Guide, which tells us which fish are sustainable to consume and where we can find it. We learned that bluefin tuna, a popular fish used in sushi, was going extinct and there was no move by the U.S. to protect it. And we saw the beginning of the battle over the first genetically engineered animal: salmon, which is yet to be approved but may face required labeling.

New York Cracks Down For Health
Mayor Bloomberg started this year off with a war against health-plaguing substances in New York City restaurants, which are historically models for restaurants across the country. We said good-bye to trans fats and almost lost salt and bake sales, too. In came proposed taxes to high-sugar items, as well as menu labeling and letter grades.

Sarah Palin is going head-to-head with Michele Obama's efforts to get healthier meals into America's public schools, reports Bloomberg Business Week. The would-be president's latest challenge to the President's wife came as a protest to Pennsylvania Board of Education guidelines that would limit holiday and birthday celebrations -- and thus cake, cookies and candy -- at school. Last week, reported ABC News, Palin showed up at a Bucks Country fundraiser bearing 200 cookies to protest "nanny state" regulations she said were best left to parents.

Next year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will issue a new version of its controversial food pyramid, which will surely influence what will be served in school cafeterias down the line. Will sugar-coated Sarah and her Tea Party pals swallow any of this? Fat chance. Just look at what happened in Britain a few years ago when a school district banned hamburgers, fries and other fast-food favorites from the lunchroom, while at the same time not letting children who weren't going directly home for lunch leave the grounds. The New York Times reported that mothers, who acquired the nickname "meat-pie mums," began sneaking the forbidden food to their kids over schoolyard fences.

Who's right? Take our poll.

Last month, as they've done every five years since 1980, the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) released their proposed changes to the USDA Dietary Guidelines, more commonly known as the food pyramid, which will be finalized by the end of the year. The recommendations were open to written public comment until last Thursday -- at a public hearing in D.C. on July 8, nearly 50 industry advocates had their say. The concern remains: How will the public react to the update?

More after the jump...

The CAFO Reader is meaty. Maybe it's the fact that I read it while on vacation in Iowa, smack dab in the very heart of hog and egg laying hen confinement operations. These industrial "farms" have been here for years. Pass them on the highway, and the smell can be eye-watering, even if you can't see the operation itself from the road. Locals are fond of saying, "That's the smell of money." And it is, but too often that cash doesn't make it back into the very communities where these operations live.

That's just one of the points editor Daniel Imhoff makes as he sets out on a myth-busting mission in this book. Chapters are voiced by some of the most notable thinkers in our country's sustainable food movement -- Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry Fred Kirschenmann, Dan Barber, Tom Philpott, and Eric Schlosser among them.

From intensively farmed beef, pork, chicken, fish, dairy and eggs -- the curtain of "Big Agriculture" is pulled back with fact-driven arguments on the true costs of pollution, animal cruelty, overuse of antibiotics, immigrant labor and more, which many feel has mired our food system. Republican speech writer Matthew Scully says "instead of redesigning the factory farm to suit the animals, they are redesigning the animals to suit the factory farm."

The life of a golden beet isn't really a very glamorous one. We don't get out very much, we tend to be a bit grubby and we've got this embarrassing dry skin problem.

So imagine how surprised I was to find out that I've somehow become a symbol of everything that's wrong with food these days; according to this funny lady Carla Spartos, I'm nothing less than a nightstick in the hands of the food police, the so-called "Gourmonsters" who are trying to bully us all into eating our vegetables and threatening to steal our Ho Hos.

While I appreciate the shout-out -- it's nice to know that Alice Waters wants to dress me up in a fancy vinaigrette -- I've got to say that all of the attention seems a little misplaced.

Read why after the jump.