Organic Schmorganic update

Byoliveridley

I blogged about this recently, and it looks like we’re one step closer to “primarily organic” food. The USDA moves forward in its plan to sneak in 5% non-organic content into organic food. Note that with fat-heavy ingredients such as fish oil, even 5% can carry a significant punch of bioaccumulative nasties including pesticides, PCBs, mercury, etc. But that should be an isolated case. Fish oil made for EU consumption is already tested extensively for these compounds. So, most manufacturers should already be producing the clean stuff. In the end, the health effects of this change are likely to be very minor.

Couldn’t they just call it 95% organic? Can’t we be trusted to do basic math? it could be a competition. “My bar is 97% organic, is yours only 95??” – Truth in labeling!

Nonorganic ingredients get tentative OK – Los Angeles Times

The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave interim approval Friday to a controversial proposal to allow 38 nonorganic ingredients to be used in foods carrying the “USDA Organic” seal. But the agency also allowed an extra 60 days for public comment.

Manufacturers of organic foods had pushed for the change, arguing that the 38 items are minor ingredients in their products and are difficult to find in organic form. But consumers opposed to the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones in food production bombarded the USDA with more than 1,000 complaints last month.

“If the label says organic, everything in that food should be organic,” wrote Kimberly Wilson of Austin, Texas, in one typical comment. “If they put something in the food that isn’t organic, they shouldn’t be able to call it organic. No exception.”

The list approved Friday includes 19 food colorings, two starches, hops, sausage casings, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin, celery powder, dill weed oil, frozen lemongrass, Wakame seaweed, Turkish bay leaves and whey protein concentrate.

Manufacturers will be allowed to use conventionally grown versions of these ingredients in foods carrying the USDA seal, provided that they can’t find organic equivalents and that nonorganics comprise no more than 5% of the product.

Similar Posts

  • | | |

    Diacetyl hits the big time

    Byoliveridley

    It’s well known that occupational exposure to various pollutants including pesticides, manufacturing raw materials, and in this case, flavoring agents, is a serious problem affecting millions of factory and farm workers all over the world.

    Which is why it is interesting when one case of a man contracting an illness possibly linked to at-home diacetyl exposure makes much more splashy news than the well documented cases of many workers dying of such exposure at work. It is unfortunate, but people working at factories and in farms are somehow expected to handle higher levels of exposure and risk. The assumption is that they are protected by agencies such as OSHA, and that they will provided with protective wear, etc. But, when the agencies drop the ball on protecting workers, it takes an “escape” of the incident into the ambient realm for the news agencies to pick it up as a headline.

    I guess the good thing now is that this diacetyl issue is blown open, and should result in reform, because alternatives are available.

    Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit – New York Times

    A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants.

    Lung specialists and even a top industry official say the case, the first of its kind, raises serious concerns about the safety of microwave butter-flavored popcorn.

    “We’ve all been working on the workplace safety side of this, but the potential for consumer exposure is very concerning,” said John B. Hallagan, general counsel for the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, a trade association of companies that make butter flavorings for popcorn producers. “Are there other cases out there? There could be.”

    A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said that the agency was considering the case as part of a review of the safety of diacetyl, which adds the buttery taste to many microwave popcorns, including Orville Redenbacher and Act II.

    Meanwhile, ConAgra, the biggest manufacturer of popcorn, announces plans to drop diacetyl at some undetermined “later date”. Weird, their website’s currently down!

  • Indian Recipes on Youtube

    Byoliveridley

    YouTube – Manjulaskitchen’s Channel

    [youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxK5n3J9pdY’]
    Good recipes in general, but note that she does not use any onion or garlic, which means she’s probably Jain.

    Apart from not eating meat, fish and eggs, strict Jains do not eat onions and garlic because they increase sexual desires. Strict Jains also do not eat any root vegetables like potatoes because smaller insects are killed in their harvest and the vegetable itself will have millions of bacteria

    In a sign of surprising maturity, I will desist from any editorializing and note that to incorporate onions and garlic, chop 1 large onion (white or red, I use red)  fine and add right after the green chillis. When the onions are mostly done, add 2-3 cloves worth of finely minced garlic and fry for a minute before going through with the rest of the recipe. This dish is usually eaten with raw onions on the side…

    Blogged with the Flock Browser
  • |

    Tom Philpott Speaks at UNC

    Byoliveridley

    Tom Phipott is the co-founder and co-director of Maverick Farms, an educational non-profit farm dedicated to promoting family farming as a community resource and reconnecting local food networks”. He also blogs at the grist about food issues. Check him out at UNC tomorrow.

    Writing for Public(s):
    For whom do we write? why?
    How can we write our research in more relevant and resonant ways?

    WEDS Feb 13,
    4:30-6:30pm, Alumni 313

    Blogged with Flock

    Tags: ,

  • | |

    Hog Factories are Evil Part 1232

    Byoliveridley

    This rather interesting study tracks the movement and evolution of antibiotic resistance from hog cesspools (lagoons) caused by factory production (hog farming) of pig meat. You see, in order to pack that many hogs together and not cause them to keel over and die from disease, they have to be pumped full of antibiotics. Guess where the antibiotics end up? In their “refuse”.

    As always, I leave you with The Meatrix if you want to know more about factory farming.

    Antibiotic Resistance Tracked From Hog Farms to Groundwater

    The routine use of antibiotics in swine production can have unintended consequences, with antibiotic resistance genes sometimes leaking from waste lagoons into groundwater, according to new research from the University of Illinois.

    Researchers report that some genes found in hog waste lagoons are transferred, “like batons,” from one bacterial species to another. This migration across species and into new environments sometimes dilutes, and sometimes amplifies, genes conferring antibiotic resistance, they say.

    The new report, in the August issue of “Applied and Environmental Microbiology,” tracks the passage of tetracycline resistance genes from hog waste lagoons into groundwater wells at two Illinois swine facilities.

    Tetracycline is widely used in swine production. It is injected into the animals to treat or prevent disease, and is often used as an additive in hog feed to boost the animals’ growth.

    Its near-continuous use in some hog farms promotes the evolution of tetracycline-resistant strains in the animals’ digestive tracts and manure.

    This is the first study to take a broad sample of tetracycline resistance genes in a landscape dominated by hog farming, said principal investigator R.I. Mackie, a professor in the University of Illinois-Champaign department of animal sciences and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology.

  • |

    Adventures with Red River : Part I

    Byoliveridley
    Red River, so polarizing

    Anyone want? I don’t think this household is ever going to consume. About 80% of original capacity

    I posted this on social media last week and an interesting conversation ensued. I was hoping someone would take the cereal off my hands as it had sat in my pantry for a while. This is not what happened. Instead, there was a fun discussion on this iconic Canadian cereal which, incidentally, got bought by a US company, then retired last year (per wikipedia). The taste and texture of red river cereal are a polarizing topic, and the cereal was frequently associated with grandparents of the prairies!

    The Red River in Manitoba is marked in Canadian history for the oppression and violence of the Canadian colonial government (pdf) against Louis Riel and the provisional Métis government established there.

    No one took the box off my hands, but many ideas were offered. So, challenge accepted. I’ll try and finish this box off!

    Basic Savoury Hot Cereal

    I am watching my sugar intake, so I usually eat my oatmeal savoury. Given mornings are busy, I needed to do something easy and almost unattended. So, took my cereal bowl, added a 1/3 cup of Red River, a bit more than 2/3rd cup water and put it in the Instant Pot to cook at high pressure for 10 minutes. Key here is to use pot in pot mode where your cooking bowl sits on a trivet inside the main pot, which has a cup of water in it to provide the steam. This approach is painless, less work than microwaving oatmeal even and no extra dishes. Half an hour later (I did this while I was making coffee), the pressure released and I opened the Instant Pot up to a fluffy, well cooked, but nicely textured hot cereal. My kid even had a few spoons with honey and they’ve sworn off oatmeal recently!

    I added some yogurt, chopped up strawberries and cashews, and some store-bought coriander chutney for flavour. This was tasty! I liked it quite a bit more than oatmeal. There was more texture and body, and the porridge’s taste was nutty, but neutral enough to not get in the way of all the fruit and coriander chutney flavour bombs.

    So, this is a keeper and the toppings will vary, so will the flavours.