STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment
June, 2002
Living Lightly
Irradiated
food: wave of the future or menace?
By
MYRTLE OSNER
If irradiation with low
grade nuclear by-products kills germs, why isn’t it good for us? After all,
the technique of irradiation has been used for decades to sterilize medical
products, and no one has complained.
A Modesto conference,
“Food Irradiation and Agriculture,” was sponsored by Public Citizen (a
national organization founded by Ralph Nader), Community Alliance with Family
Farmers, and the Sustainable Agriculture Working Group.
Food irradiation has been
around since the 1960s but has not been widespread. It was used chiefly during
the Vietnam and Korean wars to extend the keeping qualities of food for
soldiers. Irradiation at low doses does kill germs so the food doesn’t spoil
as fast. Consumer resistance is one of the reasons it hasn’t taken off. In our
area, Save Mart used to sell irradiated hamburger patties but stopped because it
wasn’t popular with consumers.
Objections to irradiation
stem from several sources.
1. Food irradiation changes
the chemical content of foods when it kills bacteria. Vitamins A, B1, C and E
are destroyed even at low dosages. Fatty acids in foods, under radiation, form
chemicals known as 2 DCBs, substances not found naturally anywhere on earth.
Most notable of their effects, say the researchers, are that they are growth
enhancers for some types of cancers. (They don’t necessarily cause cancer, but
make cancer grow faster if it is present already.)
2. Irradiated foods extend
the shelf life of foods, and thus may mask contamination, especially in meats.
Such contamination is especially prevalent today as factory farms and
slaughterhouses, which focus on speed and are not easily monitored, proliferate.
Furthermore, the industry, it has been shown, often raises meat in unsanitary
conditions. The term “vertical integration” describes the way in which the
meat industry is now owned. Enormous corporations start with the animal and
process it from birth to your table. The graphic examples of what happens have
been well documented on such shows as 60 minutes. (Most people have no idea
where their meat comes from; it’s hard to tell when you are in the store, far
from the source, when it isn’t even labeled.)
3. By extending shelf life,
shippers of food from all over the world compete with our local farmers. In most
developing countries, food safety and inspection, use of pesticides and
herbicides, and worker safety are non-existent. Cheap labor and danger to
workers go hand in hand. This is one of the threats of the “globalization”
of our food supply. By undercutting American farmers, our own agriculture is at
risk. Irradiation has been touted as a way to kill all the bugs hitching a ride
to our country and getting a foothold here, becoming environmental nightmares.
4. A by-product of the
nuclear industry, cobalt 60, is used in irradiation. It’s one way to use up
these degraded nuclear products, and the industry is anxious to find a use for
it. No safety margins have been established and no studies have been done about
what happens to humans when they eat irradiated food over time.
5. The irradiation industry
is pressing to be able to call irradiation “pasteurization.”This is
definitely deceptive. It is not pasteurization, and cannot be equated with
pasteurization of milk which has been used safely since the 1920s.
According to Public
Citizen, proper labeling should be insisted upon, so that the public will know
what they are getting. At this time, the Food and Drug Agency has not required
proper labeling. There is a symbol (see sidebar) but the label on the products
we were shown was so small you couldn’t read the writing without a magnifying
glass.
ACTION:
For further information, go to Public Citizen Critical Mass and Environmental
Program, www.citizen.org/cmep
Slow
Food means enjoying more than food
By
MYRTLE OSNER
According
to Utne Reader, the Slow Food movement
is mushrooming in such chi-chi places as Berkeley,
Portland, Oregon,
Brussels, and Rome.
Recently,
The Modesto Bee published an article
touting the Slow Food principles in,
of all places, Christopaolo’s in Ripon. Surprise! I don’t think of
Ripon as a leader in organic food
use, particularly. However, the
idea of Slow Food, eaten in comfortable community surroundings, has a definite
commercial appeal.
So,
what are the principles of the Slow Food movement? And can they apply to anyone?
The
answer depends on what you think of the Slow Food movement, now an organized
entity with an
office in Brussels, from which it lobbies the European Union on
agriculture and trade policy. The movement was first organized in the
small market town of Bra, in the Italian
Alps,
at least partly as an answer to globalization and the Fast Food
culture of McDonalds and its ilk.
Believing in the use of local foods, Slow
Food helps preserve and support traditional foods grown in local neighborhoods. It
defends the use of specialties such as the fine vegetables of certain localities
of France and Italy. At first, the movement was centered around fine wines and
endangered handmade cheeses, the making of which was known to only a few older
farmers.
Later,
in direct response to the opening of a McDonalds in Rome, Slow Food declared
that “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the
universal folly of Fast Life.” Slow Food’s symbol is the snail.
Slow
Food has developed
into an environmental political movement as well as a defense of good food. Moreover, it celebrates eating with friends and
families as one of the true pleasures of life.
In
an accompanying article in Utne Reader
(May/June 2002) , Alice Waters says that more and more people understand that we
are not just passive “consumers” of food, but “they embrace their roles as
creators, knowing that the foods they grow and purchase will create a different
future for themselves, their families, generations to come, and the natural
world.”
A
big supporter of organically grown food, Alice Waters tells us that our choices
will affect whether we have a sustainable future instead of a system that
destroys human health.
Also
part of the principles of Slow Food is the opportunity for families to pass on
their values to their children and friends with whom they eat. Kindness,
generosity, respect, reverence for life and nature are all implicit in the
values we should be instilling in our children. Nowadays, when so many working
parents are eating on the run, never sitting down to eat with their children,
they miss important opportunities
that often only come at the table.
Another
Utne Reader article, “Food Fast (Not
Fast Food)”,
interested me because I attend a lot of civic meetings and often find myself
preparing meals in a hurry. There are
stories on different kinds of food that can be prepared quickly, but the one
that interested me was from Portland, Oregon, where
the classic Japanese take-out food called bento
is popular and available. You could do almost any bento dish at home in a very short time. Heard of stir-fry? That’s
only one of the techniques to combine vegetables with small amounts of meat or
fish to make a nourishing fast food. Grilled meats and sushi are another. Bento is packed in its classic box — you can eat it quickly
anywhere.
Start
eating healthy food from local gardens. We have the best of all possible worlds
right at our doorstep. Any Thursday or Saturday you can buy food grown in the
Central Valley at the Farmer’s Market in downtown Modesto. Many other cities
have Farmer’s Markets also. More and more, you will find food grown
organically. But even if it is not, buy locally, not globally.
“Fresh
organic, local
produce from local farmers not only improves a meal, it prevents pollution,
saves fuel, and boosts your local economy.” — Jay Walljasper, editor of Utne Reader. “Eating is the most intimate relationship we have
with the environment. Three times a day, it’s how we can re-create the world.
We can shape a different future for our children, for farmworkers, the
landscape, wildlife, villages around the world, and genetic diversity.” —
Andrew Kimball, of the Center for Food Safety.
“Like
it or not, what we eat has consequences for us and for the world. Dinner is not
something that magically appears on our plates. In ordering a burger or making a
salad, we are inextricably linked to the land, cycles of rain and sunshine,
farmers and farm workers, compost or chemicals, processing facilities and truck
drivers, co-ops or corporations — to a whole web of ecological and human
activity.” — Jay Walljasper. Utne
Reader, 1624 Harmon Place, Minneapolis, MN.
For
more details on eating, and
support for local agriculture, refer to May/June Utne Reader article, “Home Grown,” which portrays three communities which successfully
matched
their farmers with their eaters, providing locally grown food. They were a part
of the Sustainable Agriculture movement: Athens, Ohio, Vancouver, British
Columbia, and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. People around the world are engaged in
urban agriculture, mainly for their own use.
The costs of moving food worldwide
are staggering, both monetarily and environmentally
. Think of the enormous fuel
costs and pollution of moving food from, say, South America to Modesto. And it
doesn’t have to be that way. Eat locally.
