Blog Posts: January 2013

By Kate Fried

Thanks in part to the consumer backlash against wasteful, unnecessary bottled water Nestlé’s sales figures are declining in the United States, Europe and Australia. The company has recently resorted to unorthodox, nay, illegal measures to maintain its stranglehold over the earth’s vital food and water resources. Even before the company’s share of the bottled water business fell by two percent in the west in 2011, Nestlé ripped a page from a James Bond villain’s playbook, turning to good old-fashioned espionage to protect its corporate interests. Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

If I were to ask you to imagine that the frying pan you use to prepare meals was slowly dosing you and your family with radiation, what would you say? Or how about the steel water bottle you use to tote water? It’s not a far cry from reality if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy have their way.

This past December, the DOE released a proposal to recycle an initial 14,000 tons of radioactive metals from nuclear reactors and weapons facilities back into commercial production for consumer goods. If it gets approved, you can bet they’ll dump more of this toxic nightmare into the supply chain. 

Sadly, this is nothing new. Since the 1980s, the DOE and the NRC have been cooking up a scheme to recycle radioactive scrap metals back into consumer products. These radioactive metals, which wouldn’t be labeled as such under DOE provisions, could be used to manufacture any of a wide variety of products from metal water bottles to your children’s braces. Read the full article…

Click image to enlarge. Image created by OtherWords cartoonist Khalil Bendib. Reprinted with permission.

Despite consumer opposition, the FDA is one step away from approving genetically engineered salmon.

By Wenonah Hauter
(Originally published by OtherWords.org)

While most Americans were enjoying the holiday season or stressing out over the nation’s imminent leap off the so-called fiscal cliff, the Food and Drug Administration delivered some big news as quietly as possible.

On December 21, the agency announced that AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon cleared the final hurdle before clinching FDA approval.

Despite insufficient testing and widespread consumer opposition, AquaBounty’s food experiment is dangerously close to becoming the first genetically engineered animal produced for human consumption. Yes, a newfangled fish may soon land on a dinner plate near you.

For those who have been following this news for the past several years, the timing of the FDA’s release of its draft Environmental Assessment — the Friday before Christmas — was no surprise. But the news was still frightening: The FDA may give this transgenic animal the green light under a new approval process that treats the fish as an “animal drug.”

Prefer your salmon without those eel genes spliced into its DNA? Pay close attention because this frankenfish may hit the market without any sort of label. Read the full article…

By Scott Edwards

Nutrient pollution trading, which includes nitrogen and phosphorous, has been a hot topic of conversation in the Chesapeake Bay watershed ever since EPA signed off on the controversial practice in its Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) at the end of 2010. Trading represents a recent trend that allows for the creation and exchange of credits for the “right” to pollute, instead of enforcing proven regulations that require companies to pollute less.

There are two common rationales offered by pollution trading proponents. First, it allows already existing sources of pollution like power plants and wastewater treatment plants, known as point sources, to purchase credits from farms instead of upgrading pollution control technologies to reduce their discharges. Since paying-off agricultural operations to self-certify that they’re reducing pollution down on the farm is cheaper than installing new equipment at power plants, it saves money — at least, for polluting industries.

Second, trading is also a way to allow for future growth by letting new discharges of pollution into already impaired waterways without first requiring the current sources to reduce their loads. Instead, it allows these new pollution sources to go online if they can find an existing source somewhere (not necessarily in the same waterway) who is willing to claim reductions in their own discharges to offset the new loads.

To date, much of the trading discussion has been theoretical, but as actual trades and offsets begin to take hold in the Bay watershed, illegal on-the-ground practices are becoming evident and it does not bode well for the Bay and local waterways.

Industry’s adherence to Clean Water Act (CWA) permits is the biggest success story in our 40-year effort to clean up our watersheds. Just this week Food & Water Watch filed a lawsuit against NRG Energy after discovering that three of its power plants in the Bay watershed have been exceeding their permit limits by many thousands of pounds of nitrogen each year. Both the company and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) were well aware of these violations but, to date, neither one has taken any steps to make sure the company reduced their discharges to comply with their permit limits. Read the full article…

Recent price collapse shakes European belief in emissions trading.

By Geert deCock

There are still some people, who deny that climate change is happening, though recent events – record droughts, frequent hurricanes, floods – are perfectly in line with the predictions by climate scientists. In the camp of those who do recognize climate change as a serious threat, there is another divisive issue about how to effectively and efficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The debate revolves in particular about the role that emissions trading should play. Emissions trading has received broad support among those political leaders in Europe and the U.S., who would like to see some action on addressing climate change. The European Union has led efforts to use emissions trading as a central policy to deliver on its climate targets. It established its Emission Trading System (ETS) in 2005 and the results so far have been underwhelming, to put it mildly. While the position of the ETS as Europe’s flagship policy was unquestionable until recently, last week’s price collapse led to an existential crisis for emissions trading in Europe.

What happened? The European Union and its Emission Trading System – the world’s largest carbon market – was supposed to be the cornerstone of the EU’s climate policy. However, carbon prices in Europe have been very volatile and they have been on a constant downward slide since early 2011. Over the last two years, prices have been sinking non-stop: From EUR 20 in early 2011, to about half at the end of 2011, to just EUR 5 per tonne of CO2 by the end of 2012. Despite this, policy-makers kept up the mantra that this system can be fixed. However, the tone of the debate changed, when carbon prices dropped to EUR 2.81 per tonne on January 24.

When the ETS was designed, it was expected that the prices of carbon credits would be around €30. Apart from a short peak, such high prices never materialized. Now, for the first time, key policy-makers in Brussels and across the EU admit the failure of the ETS to deliver emission reductions. For the first time, Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate, warned that the ETS is at risk of collapse, due to its low prices. The Italian Environment Minister Corrado Clini even went so far to describe the ETS as “irreparable” and expressed a move towards a carbon tax. Read the full article…

By: Alison K. Grass

Fracking causes many public health and environmental problems and the last thing that Pennsylvanians need is another way for the oil and gas industry to capitalize on the Marcellus Shale at the expense of their health and well-being. But Governor Corbett lured the multinational oil and gas giant, Shell Oil Company into the state to do just that. 

Corbett, who has received $1.8 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, forced through legislation in February 2012 that would exempt the company from property and corporate income taxes for 15 years if they build a petrochemical ethane cracker plant in the western part of the state.  A cracker plant creates chemicals like ethylene, in this case from Marcellus Shale gas, to manufacture plastics and fertilizer.  Read the full article…

herbicide-resistant weeds take over tractor

By Genna Reed

Last week, Dow announced that because the USDA has not yet approved its 2,4-D Corn “Enlist” variety yet, it will not be ready for planting until at least 2014. This is great news for all of the groups and individuals who have garnered over 400,000 petition signatures telling the USDA not to approve the toxic corn.

This delay is certainly worth celebrating, but the fight to stop the approval of this corn is not over. Dow has gained approval in Canada and Japan for its Enlist brand and is still ramping up production of its 2,4-D herbicide and 2,4-D-resistant corn seeds with every expectation that it will be approved in the U.S. Read the full article…

By Seth Gladstone

In our work to ban fracking across the United States, we talk quite a bit about the unacceptable dangers the extreme gas drilling process poses to our water. From toxic fracking chemicals leaching into underground drinking water sources to regular leaks and spills polluting surface lakes and streams, “Don’t frack our water” has become a primary rallying cry in the anti-fracking movement.

But an equally urgent plea has been gaining steam in places where fracking threatens to invade: “Don’t frack our food!” And in New York, where Governor Cuomo may decide in the next few weeks whether or not to open the state to fracking, the call to protect our food is coming most recently from a group of professionals who know as much about the subject as anyone: top chefs.

This week, more than 150 prominent New York chefs – including the culinary superstar Mario Batali – sent a letter to Cuomo urging him to ban fracking in their state. In the letter they state that “fracking leaks and spills have stunted and killed crops and livestock and sickened humans…. This is of great concern to our community because agriculture, food and beverage production, restaurants, and tourism are vital, growing, interdependent economic engines that rely on our famously pristine water and farmland for their success.”

Indeed, these top chefs have much to fear and much to lose from fracking in New York. But their letter also speaks to the long chain of food, agriculture and farming professionals throughout upstate New York who have everything to lose as well.

“Those of us who treasure and increasingly rely on locally sourced food and beverages are deeply concerned that fracking will destroy our state’s environment,” says Heather Carlucci, a chef and co-founder of Chefs for the Marcellus, a partner group that helped coordinate the letter delivery. “It could destroy upstate farms, which are celebrated around the world and contributes a huge amount to the state economy.”

Heather’s reading couldn’t be truer. In a new issue analysis from Food & Water Watch, the potential impacts of fracking on New York’s food, agriculture and farms are spelled out, and the facts aren’t pretty. As the report notes, New York is the third-largest dairy state in the nation and the second-largest producer of apples, maple syrup, cabbage and wine production, among many other crops. These products end up not just on the tables of fine restaurants in Manhattan, but in family kitchens across the northeast.

Tim Schwab

If the Food and Drug Administration is going to take the unprecedented action of approving the first ever genetically engineered (GE) food animal, GE salmon, shouldn’t the agency should have a pretty good idea of what this fish can and can’t do?

AquaBounty Technologies, the makers of GE salmon, have managed to convince everyone that GE salmon can grow two times faster than non-GE salmon, which is supposed to revolutionize aquaculture.

Unfortunately, AquaBounty can’t prove any of this. And independent salmon growers and scientists have called these purported growth rates misleading.

The data AquaBounty submitted to the FDA indeed shows that GE salmon can grow faster than non-GE salmon—but only up to size of 100 grams, which is one-fortieth of the typical 4 kilogram market weight for Atlantic salmon. And this growth advantage only exists in comparison to what appears to be a particularly slow-growing non-GE salmon, which makes GE salmon’s growth rates look phenomenally fast.

Source: AquaBounty

Source: SalmoBreed

Infuriated with AquaBounty’s hype, and in response to a graph the company promoted on their website (top, right), the salmon industry has fought back, with one company, SalmoBreed, releasing the devastating graph (bottom, right), showing that GE salmon actually grow SLOWER than non-GE salmon. Compare these growth rates to AquaBounty’s public-relations graph at top, which compares GE salmon to an unidentified (but apparently slow-growing) “standard salmon.”

Salmon growers have spent decades selectively breeding salmon for faster growth rates (and a host of other commercially relevant characteristics, like disease resistance), coaxing fast growth rates out of farmed Atlantic salmon. A public-private research institute in Norway says that the years of breeding work have produced growth rates twice as fast as wild salmon, reaching market weight in as little as 20 months. Read the full article…

By Hugh MacMillan

Today, Food & Water Watch joined with the Sierra Club, numerous other organizations, and more than 200,000 Americans in opposition to the oil and gas industry’s plans to export liquefied natural gas, which would make more profitable and thus intensify destructive drilling and fracking all across the country. Tomorrow, thousands of Americans will call the White House with this same message for President Obama to reject policies that promote fracking or the export of natural gas.

We submitted our own brief comments and signed on to additional comments identifying flaws in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) approach to looking at the cumulative economic impacts of expanded LNG exports.

As I blogged in November of last year, the headlines from the economic impacts report gave the oil and gas industry, and its financial backers on Wall Street, a huge gift. Selective reading of the study led many to conclude that LNG exports would be unequivocally good for the U.S. economy. A representative of Dominion Resources, for example, a company which seeks authority to export LNG from a facility in Cove Point, Maryland, was interviewed on E&E’s OnPoint on December 12, 2012 and said: “I told a friend of mine at DOE that there were babies conceived and birthed in the time that it took to get the report out, it’s a beautiful baby. That’s the thing. The delivery was successful and we’re happy with it….the net economics impacts are positive across the economic spectrum in the United States.”

But this could not be further from the truth. The report specifically states that those Americans who rely on income from wages “might not participate in these benefits.” That says it all—how many people do you know that don’t make a living working for wages, but who instead live off of their oil and gas industry investments? Not many? I didn’t think so.

The U.S. DOE will be making an enormous mistake if it allows the oil and gas industry, and its Wall Street backers, to make enormous profits from exporting gas at the public’s expense. LNG exports will intensify drilling and fracking, leaving communities across the country to bear the costs, but these costs are completely neglected in the agency’s assessment of the cumulative economic impacts.