is our food supply safe?

here's a dirty secret that the food industry doesn't want you to know: food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants.

holy crap, batman - no wonder toxic stuff keeps winding up in our groceries!

mines = poisoned water

and - just weeks after dubya pushed through an exemption for mines that allows them to dump waste into rivers and streams, the water supply of a town in tn is found to be full of arsenic - a common component of mine runoff.

doh!

factory farms get to pollute, period

you've got to wonder how much the corporations behind our factory farms paid for this particular pair of get-out-of-jail free cards: first, they're now allowed to dump their waste into waterways without restriction, and second, they no longer have to report release of hazardous emissions into the air.

factory farms account for slightly more than 6% of current u.s. greenhouse gases, which may be a big part of why the white house fought so long and hard to deny the facts regarding greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

kinda makes you wonder why we even have an epa, doesn't it? ah well - maybe the next talking head in the white house will do better for us. he could hardly do worse. in the meantime, here's a citizen's guide to confronting factory farms. (merry christmas.)

killer whales starving

puget sound, with its chinook salmon supply, used to boast a large, stable population of orcas. then the bush administration's concerted efforts to kill the chinook fishery (to support salmon farms, power plants, and rerouting of vital salmon spawning areas for water use and game fishing) paid off in an unexpected and highly noticeable way:

the puget sound orcas are starving to death.

tilapia tickling

have you noticed that, almost overnight, almost every restaurant that you go to has tilapia on the menu? 8 years or so ago, no one outside of africa (tilapia's country of origin) had ever heard of it and - hey presto! - suddenly it's the 3rd most consumed food fish after salmon and carp derivatives.

a freshwater fish, tilapia is actually a common name given to more than a hundred different species of fish (kinda like 'chilean sea bass'). because they tolerate high concentrations well and eat inexpensive cereal (unlike salmon), they have become extremely popular at fish farms, particularly in taiwan, thailand, indonesia, and the philipines.

(we'll let you decide for yourself whether or not to eat it.)

how not to run out of fish

ever seen what a bottom trawl net does to the sea floor? imagine one of those old, grainy nuclear weapons test films: it's like that. the problem is, not only does it gather up whatever the fishing crew is looking for - it also kills literally everything else. it's kind of like dropping a neutron bomb on the chicago stockyards because you fancy a bit of barbecue.

the problem is, we assume that the supply of fish is endless, and that they belong to anyone that catches them. that kind of thinking will lead to the end of almost every commercial fishing stock within the next 20 years or so.

solution? award ownership of the fishing stocks to the community, almost like a stock grant. because the value of the stock goes up if the fish actually still exist, the community has a vested interest in making sure that the fish continue to exist.

doh!

love that dirty water

do you drink bottled water? yeah? well, have we got a clip for you:

the environmental working group, a non-profit, sent samples of the 10 most popular bottled water brands to labs at the university of iowa. their findings? it's no better than tap water - just more expensive.

every time you crack a cold one, here's a list of the ingredients that you may be getting:

disinfection products

trihalomethanes

caffeine

tylenol

nitrate

industrial chemicals

arsenic

bacteria

enjoy!

dead water

thanks largely to fertilizer runoff from farms and pond leakage from fish farms, coastal waters around the world are effectively dead - that is, they no longer contain enough oxygen to support life.

although the area affected is small compared to total ocean volume, the affected areas are prime fisheries. also, many folks that have come into contact with water from the dead zones have developed skin lesions and other illnesses.

unfortunately, unless we push the dept. of agriculture to limit the amount and kinds of fertilizers that commercial farms can use - which the current administration is resisting - the dead areas will continue to grow at their current rate, doubling in size every 10 years.

teach a man to fish...

... and he still can't eat great lakes fish without getting sick.

after the jump, you'll read that 4 out of 10 freshwater fish in this country are in trouble, mostly due to pollution (and yes, that fertilizer you use on your lawn counts).

having grown up on lake huron, worked next to lake st. clair, and now nestled just below lake erie, we've got kind of a thing for the great lakes. bad enough that we allowed crap like zebra mussels to be discharged from bilge and ballast tanks and still do too little to prevent similar incursions from happening every day, but now we've got to kill off our fish and poison lakeside cities in a bad repeat of the 70's? didn't these morons ever see the lorax?

government literally in bed with oil companies

if you think the government and the oil industry are a little too close for comfort, you're not imagining things: government brokers that regulate and collect federal oil royalties have reportedly been sleeping with oil company employees, rigging contracts, and accepting bribes.

so will this affect the offshore drilling debate? who's kidding who: of course not! the money involved is simply too big, and the campaign contributions and other perks are simply too attractive for mere politicians to resist.

meanwhile, the oil industry is experiencing a huge increase in its death toll, largely due to hiring people with little or no experience, lax enforcement of safety standards, and extremely long hours.

we've got rat tart, rat pie, rat tartare...

aside from being a nifty monty python sketch, eating rats is common in much of the world (including medieval england). not because of religious or ethnic tradition, but because it's all most can afford.

so what does it tell you when even the rat meat in camboldia is too expensive for most of the peasants?

(and in case you're thinking, 'hey, well, they eat dogs and whatnot anyway there, right?', the biodiversity decline rate, coupled with the ever-accelerating pace of climate change, leads us to the following prediction: deep-fried rats here in the u.s. in let's say - oh - 40 years. with morlock politics no more than 25 years after that. have you seen our new chest freezer, by the way?)

groceries put bite on consumers

first, our apologies for that headline. the staff was probably drunk at the time (they usually are), and those responsible have been sacked.

now the bad news: as if gas prices weren't eating enough of your wallet, and the fact that you've been paying the same amount for less food in the container, food prices are about to take their biggest jump in nearly 20 years. thank exxon and the other oil companies plus china for a sizable chunk of that.

(you were planning to lose some weight anyway, right?)

and not a drop to drink

most towns don't test their drinking water for anywhere near all of the contaminants that currently appear, but one of the toxins that most do test for - arsenic - appears to be linked with the growing epidemic of type 2 diabetes.

and - just to make your day complete - it turns out that the fruit drinks that you've been chugging as an alternative to calorie-heavy soda contribute to diabetes, too.

(our solution: homebrewed beer. or mead. or, heck, even potane. you may end up with a spare tire, but you'll avoid having to shoot up insulin, going blind, or developing abcesses on the bottoms of your feet. you're welcome.)