Blog Posts: Questionable technologies

Assembly Members Linda Stender and David Wolfe with GE Labeling activists (FWW’s Jim Walsh back left) at the New Jersey Statehouse

By Seth Gladstone

Of the many busy days at the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton, February 21 stood out. Legislators and hurried staffers weaved through the crowded hallways from committee hearings to caucus meetings and back. Lobbyists and reporters moved from hushed conversations to new hushed conversations. And activists devoted to causes ranging from gun control to education reform to Lou Gehrig’s Disease gathered in meeting rooms and offices to press their cases with lawmakers.

But perhaps the broadest and most diverse group of activists at the Statehouse that day were gathered for a single, united cause: the launch of a statewide campaign seeking legislation requiring the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods in New Jersey. Along with Food & Water Watch, a mix of activists and advocates from environmental, labor, health, student, farming, faith and business organizations were joined to tell legislators and the press, “Let me decide” when it comes to GE foods.

“Over the years, consumers have fought for labeling of calorie counts, fat content and ingredients lists so they can make smarter, healthier choices for their families,” said Jim Walsh, Food & Water Watch’s Eastern Region Director. “But as food production technology evolves, so should our food labeling. Consumers have a right to know which products on market shelves contain genetically engineered ingredients. In short, let us decide.”

Amanda Nesheiwat, a student leader with NJ Sustainable Collegiate Partners, echoed Jim’s sentiment. “Just as we label food with allergy warnings, we should label GE foods. The health risks tied to GE foods are reason enough not to give corporations the power to dictate the decisions that consumers should be able to make on their own,” she said.

 Joining the activists at the Statehouse were two state legislators representing two different political parties, both pledging their commitment to do all they could among their peers to move GE labeling legislation in the coming weeks and months. Assembly Members David Wolfe (R) and Linda Stender (D) both spoke passionately about their own personal motivations – family health, constituency health, and community health – for working hard to make a GE labeling law a reality in New Jersey.

 On a busy day at the Statehouse, optimism ran strong that New Jersey might become the first state in the union to label genetically engineered foods. The campaign marches on.

By Nisha Swinton

Supporters of the “Right to Know GMO CT” coalition united at the Legislative Office Building on Feb. 8 to ask the Connecticut General Assembly a candid question: Are you standing up for consumers’ rights to know whether or not the food they eat and feed their families with has been genetically engineered?
 
Food & Water Watch is excited to support the great work and grassroots power that GMO-free CT has initiated to pass groundbreaking legislation to label genetically engineered foods in Connecticut. The growing Connecticut Coalition includes GMO-Free CT, NOFA CT, Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch and many others – over 100 local, state and national organizations who are committed to ensuring Connecticut consumers know whether their foods are genetically engineered. Over the past few weeks alone, 109 businesses and organizations across the state have joined the coalition, 180 residents have attended campaign action meetings, and grassroots leaders have scheduled over 20 educational events around the state (for a full events listings visit: see www.gmofreect.org).

The vast majority of processed foods contain GE ingredients, which are largely untested, unlabeled, and potentially unsafe. Unfortunately, far too many American consumers remain clueless about whether or not their food is genetically engineered, but Connecticut residents are sharp, informed, driven and refuse to sit back in silence when it comes to demanding that GE food be labeled. Perhaps the most critical action we can take right now towards creating and sustaining an honest food system is to label GE foods. Once these foods are labeled, all consumers – regardless of where their live or how much money they make – become empowered with the knowledge to choose safety over processed chemicals.
 
“As someone who has lived in the Hartford area all of my life and worked as a reporter for several of the state’s newspapers, I am keenly aware of the sophistication and intelligence among Connecticut residents. I have faith that business owners, residents and coalition allies will not stop fighting until they know for certain that GE food labeling will become a way of life,” says Joanna Smiley, Food & Water Watch Public Relations Volunteer.
 
Rep. Phil Miller, D-Essex, and Diana Urban, D- North Stonington, in separate committees, introduced a bill to label GE foods, which is currently in the revisor’s office. Next steps and the exact timeframe is still to be determined, but we will keep building public support and awareness for the bill.

By Walker Foley 

Before you continue reading this post, check this out. Food & Water Watch’s infographic colorfully explains how antibiotics get into our foods and make Americans sick.

Don’t let those bright pastels fool you; the factory-farmed meat industry is cooking up a sci-fi thriller that endangers the health of every American while the FDA sits on the sidelines and watches. Food & Water Watch released a new report last week that examines the growing overuse and abuse of antibiotics on factory farms. Simply put, factory farms are breeding resistant bacteria that are making their way into our meat and environment and contributing to making antibiotics ineffective. Read the full report for the meat and potatoes of this issue, but here are a few facts to get you started:

ONE: Misuse of Antibiotics

80 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are used for agricultural purposes. Against the warnings of the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the Infectious Disease Society of America and the World Health Organization — really, the list goes on and on — it’s common practice on factory farms to routinely give low dosages of antibiotics to healthy livestock, to prevent disease and promote growth. This process is commonly referred to as subtherapeutic use, because the drugs aren’t being used to treat sick animals.

Read the full article…

By Genna Reed

Because of restrictions in technology use agreements, researchers are often unable to get access to seeds for independent feeding trials to test the safety of genetically engineered (GE) food and animal feed. One of the few scientists that has succeeded in obtaining seed and doing longer term feeding studies on rats is Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team from the University of Caen’s Institute of Biology in France.

His new two-year feeding study was just published in the most recent issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology. Past studies were cited in our GE Foods Overview report including a 2007 study, which found significant liver and kidney impairment of rats that were fed insect-resistant Bt corn, concluding that, “with the present data it cannot be concluded that GE corn MON863 is a safe product.” Another study published in 2009 found that glyphosate caused DNA damage to human cells even at lower exposure levels than those recommended by the herbicide’s manufacturer. Read the full article…

By Tim Schwab

Last week, President Obama visited Albany, New York to tout the role that academic institutions like the University of Albany’s NanoCollege play in driving “the future of our economy.”

Unique in academia, Albany’s NanoCollege is dedicated to tinkering with tiny nanoparticles to create new materials that are increasingly used in consumer products. Nanomaterials could revolutionize your kitchen, for example, by making your ketchup easier to pour and your cutlery sterile through the use of embedded nano-pesticides.

If these innovations sound more like gimmicks than miracles, it’s because they are.  The promise and potential of nanotechnology is, predictably, being used by industry to gloss over the need for regulations, consumer protections and more science about the safety of these nanomaterials. It’s the same logic that brought us “better living through chemistry” – and lead paint and asbestos in our homes or dangerous agrochemicals like DDT in the environment. Read the full article…

By Darcey Rakestraw

After I wrote a blog last week about banned pesticides and nuclear fallout in tea—looking at how the Fukushima disaster and use of banned pesticides in the growing of tea might affect consumers—I immediately wanted to work on a blog showing the other side of the coin: how environmental disasters harm the very farmers that seek to bring us our food sustainably.

That’s why we work on energy issues like fracking. The oil and gas industry injects millions of gallons of a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure to fracture rocks deep below ground and release oil or natural gas, posing a risk to not only surface waterways (from spills or inadequate treatment of waste) but also groundwater resources. Read the full article…

by Patty Lovera

It’s been a busy week for the folks who work hard to put the green sheen on Walmart’s public image. To counter the spin, Food & Water Watch and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance have put together the Top 10 Ways Walmart Fails on Sustainability for a little reality check. Check out my blog on Grist for an explanation of why it’s important for all of us to let Walmart know we see through their green smokescreen.

By Walker Foley

Some consumer advocates are marking a swift victory after Beef Products Inc. announced the shutdown of three of its four factories last week. But pink slime is just the frothy tip of the repulsive, risky, potentially unsafe meat iceberg floating in our food supply.

In case you’ve been out of the country for the past two weeks and missed the pink slime hysteria, here’s the gist. In 2002, USDA microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein dubbed BPI’s lean, finely textured beef trimmings (LFTB) “pink slime.” Zirnstein’s neologism lay dormant for the next 10 years until mainstream media and consumer activists rallied around the term and asked not, “Where’s the beef,” but, “What’s the beef?”

LFTB is made from all the leftover fatty bits too hard to traditionally separate and package. So, BPI’s facilities spin the bits in a high-temperature, high-speed centrifuge to separate the fat from the meat. Then they bathe the meat in an ammonia solution to kill harmful strains of E. coli and other bacteria, grind it up, and mix it into the ground beef we then slap on the grill or roll into meatballs.

Food industry scientists are asserting the slime is safe, as is the USDA and even some consumer advocates.

“Pink slime” is not the only industrialized meat treated with unappetizing chemicals. The USDA sanctions the use of chlorine, tri-sodium phosphate (that is normally used to clean cement) and hypobromous acid (that is used to clean swimming pools) to treat poultry for salmonella and sterilize feces that might still be on carcasses because the production line speeds are too excessive and cannot be visually detected.  Sure, it might be safe to eat, but as with “pink slime,” it speaks to a food safety system that is increasingly reliant on chemical cocktails that don’t have to be labeled on the products that are treated and, thus, keep consumers in the dark about how their food is produced.

While chasing the pink slime story, the media missed a much bigger threat to our food’s safety. Granted, HIMP — the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)-based Inspection Models Project – isn’t as memorable of a catch phrase as pink slime, but its implications are more sickening.

Since 1998, the USDA has been experimenting with this program that gives the job of monitoring the safety and quality of poultry to the poultry processors and drastically increases the number of birds federal inspectors must examine at a time. Food & Water Watch has found evidence of food contamination in many of the test slaughter facilities, including bits of beak, feathers, lungs, oil glands, bile and even fecal matter still on carcasses after employee inspection. In 2011, some of the chicken facilities’ average error rate was 64 percent, but anywhere between 87 and 100 percent in turkey slaughter facilities.

Why are they moving the responsibility of food regulation from food regulators to food producers? To save money! Of course, proper consumer safety has a price, but so do the lives of the thousands of Americans who get sick and even die from foodborne illnesses lurking in the meat we eat.

Perhaps The Young Turks can put it better:

Doo Doo Chicken: The Next Pink Slime.

You know things are bad when USDA meat inspectors join consumer advocates and concerned citizens to protest on the steps of the USDA, which happened today. Among the signs calling on USDA not to put chicken company profits ahead of consumer safety, and folks in chicken suits, the union for USDA inspectors and Food & Water Watch spoke to the crowd about how expansion of the HIMP program jeopardizes food safety.

While members of the media did come out to cover the rally, HIMP probably won’t make tomorrow’s front-page news or the lead punch lines of the late-night talk circuit. But if the program is expanded, which could happen as soon as October, we could be seeing a lot more headlines about serious food-related illnesses crop up. Which is downright repulsive. 

By Tim Schwab

The American Standard Champion 4 toilet is something to behold. The simple perch, elegant design, and accelerator flush valve make it, I’m told, a superior vessel for waste evacuation. And the technical department at American Standard has made some convincing videos to prove their point, demonstrating the Champ’s flawless devouring of 24 golf balls, 8 large hot dogs, or 100 cotton balls.

In what I would also categorize as superfluous, American Standard advertises the Champion 4′s EverClean surface that destroys bacteria, rendering bygone the days of scrubbing the commode. This is where American Standard really starts to lose me. Am I crazy to think that putting pesticides in toilets is a) unnecessary b) potentially harmful to my health and c) bad for the environment? 

Read the full article…

Frankencorn Says: "GE Food Good!"

By Darcey Rakestraw

This week Kellogg’s unveiled a new cereal named “Totes Amazeballs,” as recently suggested by a musician in a tweet to the company. Apparently, it’s just the latest in a trend of celebrity-inspired cereals in the UK.

This got us here at Food & Water Watch thinking about the fact that most people don’t realize their favorite breakfast cereals may contain potentially risky genetically engineered ingredients. So we jumped on the bandwagon and created our own cereal as well.

Genetically engineered (GE) corn and soy have been around for years in processed foods from cereals to cookies, candy bars, snack chips and beyond. And genetically engineered sugar beets now provide GE sugar used in some processed foods like cereal. Last year, the Cornucopia Institute tested several breakfast cereals—marketed as “natural,” no less—and found they contained high levels of GE ingredients. (Here’s a tip: one way to avoid GE cereals is to stick to those labeled certified organic —genetically engineered ingredients are not allowed under the certified organic label.) Read the full article…