Demanding Safe Food

...Your position has to be very uncompromising: you want them to not use food irradiation, period...

...And then, at the end of the line, the proposed solution is to expose contaminated meat to the waste products of the nuclear industry, to irradiation—equivalent to tens of millions of chest x-rays—and then say the meat is safe to eat...

...buy organic...

...People came together in the fall with their harvest to share facilities, canning and making relish and tomato sauce— everything they needed to get through these long winters...

...This is one of the primary challenges faced by food safety and agricultural activists...

...And we are severing that relationship, by running people off the land, by keeping people from producing food for themselves, by putting people out of their kitchens, which is happening now with the proliferation of pre-cut produce and the explosion of fast foods...

...Industrializing the food supply has had devastating consequences, in terms of how we relate to the natural world...

...It must be about how we treat animals, our relationship to the land, social justice issues, resource consumption, and conservation...

...We held demonstrations and rallies in front of corporate headquarters and in supermarkets...

...We built a huge grassroots activist movement and went after the fruit and vegetable and the pork and poultry industries with creative advertisements in their own trade publications, and with phone calls and letters to thousands of executives...

...It is not about a federal bureaucracy stamping our food as safe, but about assurance by familiarity...

...But irradiation allows the causes of contamination to flourish...

...And for me, living on a farm, living off the grid with a solar house in the middle of the woods, slows me down...

...Claire Cummings: Food & Water has been an uncompromising voice against threats to food safety...

...I learned that activist leaders have to be careful about our campaigns...

...And to raise diners' consciousness of where their meal comes from, the menu of the Gabriela Restaurant in Santa Cruz carries the names of the fanners who supplied the ingredients...

...It used to be that "putting foods by" was a community-building experience...

...The talk wafting over the smoke and the sizzle will be about taste, yes, but the real meat of the conversation will be sustainable cuisine—what it is, why it matters, and how to practice and promote it...

...Demanding Safe Food An Interview with Food & Water's Michael Colby by Claire Cummings Michael Colby is a leading advocate for safe food and executive director of Food & Water, a Walden, Vermont-based nonprofit organization that publishes the Food <S Water Journal and educates the public about threats to the integrity of our food and water supply...

...And we also have people who want healthy, nutritious food...

...Food irradiation, for instance, is supposed to solve the problem of dirty industrialized food...

...According to the American Cancer Society, 40 percent of people in this country will get cancer in their lifetime...

...We have to disconnect ourselves from the notions of bigger and faster and address the anonymity of consumption—not knowing or even caring where your food comes from...

...It doesn't get much more northern than where we are, and we are able to substantially feed our family on the food that we raise and grow...

...Honest Weight is a fairly typical, midsized co-op (2,800 members, founded in 1076...

...MC: I found out that the issues never go away and I can probably never get away from the issues...

...FOR PEOPLE, NOT PROFIT by Amy Poe Gallons of midnight oil have been burned by activists and deep thinkers who seek to roll back corporate domination of agriculture...

...Some people see this growth as positive—there are more foods produced with fewer pesticides—but centralization doesn't address the industrial ills of our food supply...

...It isn't...

...We have to go deeper than that, while making sure that we don't become surrogates for the public in terms of their own involvement in their communities, food safety, or environmental issues...

...If organic agriculture is going to be saved, it's got to reconnect with its roots as a political and social movement...

...The keys to Honest Weight's success, says general manager William Zietlow, are low overhead, a loyal working-member base, and maybe a soupcon of divine intervention...

...What brings together culinary artists like Rick Bayless of the Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago, Nora Pouillon of Nora and Asia Nora in Washington, D.C., and Jesse Cool of the Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park, California, is their commitment to "advancing sustainable food choices for the next century...

...about sustainable food choices...

...For more information, contact Chefs Collaborative 2000, 25 First Street, Cambridge, MA 02141, 617/621-yooo, www.chefnet.com/cc2000...

...Food irradiation is still a huge battle, but largely through the work of Food & Water, this technology is still not in the marketplace...

...a lack of inspectors because corporations are allowed to police themselves...

...In doing that, we take into our bodies something that has learned how to live in harmony with the land...

...We have farmers who wish to farm safely, for their own health and the health of their land, and to make a living through farming...

...There are production line speeds that make meat processing one of the most dangerous jobs in the country...

...They will also learn about the Collaborative s Adopt-a-School project—newly launched at the benefit dinner—which will send chefs into schools across the country to interest children in healthy and sustainable cuisine...

...Everyone deserves access to healthy foods rather than foods that are laden with poisons that cause disease...

...When you go to your northern-climate grocery store in the winter and pick up oranges and bananas, that choice contributes to the use of fossil fuels and reinforces an industrialized, nationalized food system...

...And it worked...

...We have to make sure that we are not promoting false promises just like food corporations are promoting false simplicity...

...Your local co-op may be a tiny storefront or a 20,000-square-foot supermarket with a salad bar...

...These problems can't be dealt with quickly and simply...

...factory farms with crowded, inhumane conditions...

...They will discuss issues such as the proposed Organic Standards Act and farm-raised fish and shellfish...

...Local chapters in more than 20 cities—New York, Detroit, Miami, Portland, New Orleans—have their own retreats and meetings, and new chapters form every few months...

...We now have to create the next food movement—a movement that goes beyond what chemicals you can or cannot use to finding ways of reconnecting with the food supply locally...

...CC: If the solution is a decentralized food system, what kind of changes do people need to make in our buying and eating habits...

...Disengaging from the industrial food supply starts with our We now have to go beyond what chemicals you can and cannot use to finding ways of reconnecting with the food supply locally...

...their plans usually hinge on the joint interests of consumer and grower...

...buy affordable...

...Unfortunately, we are not taking the time necessary to step back, take a breath, think about the bigger picture, and think strategically...

...MC: We try to bring balance to the movement...

...Tell us about these threats, and their causes...

...One of the eight cardinal principles of the Collaborative's charter reads: "Sound food choices emphasize locally grown, seasonally fresh and whole or minimally processed ingredients...

...Established in 1993 by the Cambridge-based Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, Chefs Collaborative 2000 provides a nationwide network for over 1,000 chefs who want their work to send a message Top: Rick Bayless, chairman of the board for Chefs Collaborative 2000 and chef/owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago...

...He lives with his family on Wild Madder Farm, which sells organic produce to two local farmer's markets...

...Ultimately, we have to localize our diets to the greatest extent possible...

...What they want, in addition to unfettered growth in the organic sector, is regulatory cover—to produce organic food on a massive scale and for international trade...

...We are always looking for the next piece of paper, the next horror story, the next person who can articulate the problems beautifully...

...It gives me hope that we, the beneficiaries, might be able to follow suit...

...My co-op, the Honest Weight Food Co-operative in Albany, New York, is one of more than 500 member-owned, democratically governed, retail food co-operatives across the country...

...They don't just bring you food irradiation and toxic pesticides, they bring with that a whole ideology, which is about centralization, about monopolization, about getting big or getting out of business...

...Bottom: Odessa Piper, chef/owner of L'Etoile in Madison...

...She trucks over to the wholesale market in nearby Menands at 6 a.m...

...The vast majority of co-ops, like most of us, navigate a shifting maze of dietary compromises.The best juggle three overlapping mandates: buy local...

...MC: We are not saying that everyone will have to move to the country and grow their own food...

...MC: Food & Water has been opposed to the idea of national organic standards from the beginning because what organic agriculture should be about is decentralized, sustainable methods of producing food...

...We currently have two food systems: one that is supposedly safe and expensive, and one that is largely toxic and cheap...

...she's been getting to know these growers for more than a decade, getting to know who's trying, whom to trust...

...At the top of the Collaborative's agenda is strengthening connections between the farm and the restaurant...

...Organic agriculture is booming, so it has caught the attention of multinational food conglomerates...

...There, she gets the chance to inquire about growing practices...

...The disengagement of the public is the number one enemy of Food & Water...

...Also how long it takes to build a tractor shed...

...We go after the folks who have the power, directly, tenaciously, and in a way that empowers our constituency...

...The irradiation process does not kill off all of the pathogens...

...Last winter, she promoted hothouse tomatoes, grown in a simple greenhouse heated by a woodstove—a risky enterprise in upstate New York...

...Food is one of the last remaining connections that many people have to anything natural...

...You cannot have a national set of standards for something that prides itself on being about localized social and environmental conditions...

...The ultimate goal has got to be one safe and sustainable food supply, locally produced, rooted in social and cultural values, and available to everyone...

...The United States spends, per capita, the least amount on food safety and pretends that these two phenomena are not linked...

...It's up to us, the leaders of social movements, to figure out how to get the public excited again about the political process...

...It helps me to disengage from the energy-sapping pace of normal life, and take time to think and to rest...

...This has enormous ramifications for small farmers, rural communities, and culture as a whole...

...Less notice has been paid to food coops...

...Honest Weight manager Gayle Anderson is an early riser...

...The Center for co-operatives houses a library on food co-ops and can be reached at 230 Taylor Hall, 427 Lorch St., Madison, WI 53706, 00K/262-3981...

...Participating chefs regularly send out their "foragers" to local farms and farmer's markets...

...Technologies like irradiation and pesticides come with false promises that they will solve problems...

...Food co-op buyers are ideally positioned to have a positive influence on local supply and demand...

...As Piper sees it, those relationships embrace not just the area farmers and cheesemakers but her restaurant's patrons as well: "There is a beautiful energy that relates to things that grow nearby, and powerful intangibles that come from eating foods from places where we dwell...

...The best agricultural relationship is direct eye-to-eye contact between the producer and the consumer...

...What did you discover...

...These developments glorify consumption at the expense of celebrating sustainable production...

...We have to be careful that we don't put out one urgent action alert after another, adding to the quickening pace of life and this obsession with gathering information...

...CC: You took some time off last fall to focus on your farming and to reflect on your work at Food & Water, something that activists don't do nearly enough...

...A longer version of this article originally appeared in Food & Water Journal...

...During the four days that follow, over a hundred chefs from as many cities will exchange ideas and expertise on purchasing for sustainability, on cooking seasonally and locally, on composting...

...It faces competition from three conventional supermarket chains caught up in a multi-year market war...

...I like to say they are the missing link in any food chain...

...The Greater Boston chapter is one of several that distributes to area restaurants a "fresh sheet" listing fruits and vegetables that are being harvested locally that week...

...Michael Colby: Food and Waterworks on food irradia tion, toxic pesticides, and food biotechnology, but you have to go beyond these threats to their source, which is the industrialization of the food supply, and to the environmental threats posed by agribusinesses and their technologies...

...Co-ops depend on their members for capital, typically $50 to $100 per member, and sometimes labor...

...As leaders in a multi-billion-dollar industry, these chefs are seizing the opportunity to influence people's food preferences and bring media attention to questions of food safety and sustainability...

...How did we get to the place where "the people" are so powerless...

...How are we going to articulate the information we get in a way that sets the public on fire, that gets them interested, energized, and gets the ball rolling toward real change...

...We are doing two things: focusing on short-term implications, like carcinogens in food, and on the big picture: How did we get into the situation where so much of our lives are industrialized...

...We have to replace these concepts with celebrations of local production and consumption...

...We have to provide people with some hope, and also some art...

...I think that is what we try to do at Food & Water...

...It reduces the nutritional value of the food and introduces a whole new host of chemicals, mutagens, and carcinogens to people and to our environment...

...personal diet...

...CC: What is Food & Water's approach to these problems...

...Claire Cummings is an environmental lawyer, activist, and writer, a former organic farmer, and food and farming editor for KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California...

...CC: Organic farming and food production started out 30 years ago as a counterculture movement, but now it is a 4.5-bil-lion-dollar-a-year business, often referred to as an "industry," How do the proposed USDA national standards threaten organic agriculture and how can we preserve the original values of the organic movement...

...It is just impossible...

...and growing monopolization, where now only four corporations control 90 percent of the red-meat industry...

...We need to be linking these two as intimately as possible, particularly when we are in the middle of a cancer epidemic...

...The food co-operatives that began around the organic movement had the motto of "Food for People, Not for Profit...

...Art plays a critical role, as does humor, in social change...

...The grower uses no chemicals, and his plants are fertilized by live-in bumblebees...

...There are so many organizations and individuals focused on legislative and regulatory battles, and those battles are necessary, but so much of the movement's energy is devoted to them...

...Monica Pope of Boulevard Bistro in Houston holds successful "tasting events," where local growers offer samples of their produce to area chefs...

...In return, they provide low prices and a return on equity, in the form of discounts or a. share of annual profits...

...Odessa Piper, chef and owner of L'Etoile in Madison, Wisconsin, sums up the belief of many who have joined Chefs Collaborative 2000 in her restaurant's mission statement: "As people who make our livelihood with naturally raised foods from our region, we are in a partnership with the land and are learning from it that sustainabilitv is achieved when all relationships prosper...

...That will mean some sacrificing...

...Nevertheless, co-op sales soared 57 percent last year...

...They are members of Chefs Collaborative 2000, and the dinner marks the beginning of their fifth annual retreat...

...Amy Poe is the outreach coordinator for Honest Wight...

...As they rush to throw up so-called supercenters as large as small shopping plazas, the big three have been quick to hitch a ride on the natural foods express...

...Most sell natural foods and ban certain products, such as refined sugar, bioengineered foods, artificial additives, and hydrogenated oils...

...But people can shorten the distance between themselves and their food producers by belonging to a co-operative, getting to know the people that produce or supply their food, joining a CSA (community supported agriculture), or shopping at farmer's markets...

...Instead, we go at the puppeteers—the corporations that hold the strings, controlling legislators, the President, and the regulatory bodies...

...We have succeeded thus far by educating and activating the public and by going after the targets that have the power...

...CHEFS TAKING A STAND FOR SUSTAINABLE CUISINE This June in Arizona, ten well-known chefs from New England to California will join their Phoenix counterparts to cook a gala outdoor dinner, using ingredients from their home regions...