genetically engineered food

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know

admin — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

As an ethically and environmentally aware feminist vegetarian, I view food and politics as ineluctably joined. Robert Paarlberg’s Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know challenged some of my basic ideas about hunger, famine, and the scope of issues contained by the term food politics, yet the book ignores some of the ways in which food is always simultaneously personal and political.

Food Politics covers a wide range of topics connected to the way we eat as well as to our food’s impact on the world around us at local and global levels. Paarlberg examines population growth, food costs, politics of chronic hunger and famine, farming technologies, food aid, obesity, environmentalism, agribusiness, fast food culture, organic and local food, GMOs, and the overarching structures that govern the world food system. At times Paarlberg oversimplifies complex problems, especially in his chapters “The Politics of Obesity” and “Agriculture, the Environment, and Farm Animals.” Moreover, although he supports his points with statistics and logical arguments, he frequently flattens alternative positions, sometimes inconsistently. For example, he suggests that vegetarianism has little global impact on the food supply in one context yet acknowledges the consumption of less red meat as a better way to reduce the environmental impact of food than eating local produce.

Paarlberg recognizes the significance of women’s labor in third-world farming systems. He addresses the political disenfranchisement of women in these economies when he depicts the problem of chronic undernutrition in “poor and hungry communities” where women are prevented from political action because they are, first, overextended by their duties as farmers and as caregivers for the children and elderly and, second, their socially marginalized status. Feminists doubtless know this and would like to see Paarlberg push his points further, as I wanted him to, but his attention to the gendered politics of undernutrition is significant.

Paarlberg considers the work of Rachel Carson and Frances Moore Lappé in dialogue with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, but he dismisses Frances Moore Lappé’s as a “young countercultural food activist.” Although Lappé was young when she published Diet for a Small Planet, she has created The Small Planet Institute and established a rich, innovative series of books, videos, teaching aids, and other resources about the politics and environmental impact of food. Although he supports some of Lappé’s points, he does so in a way that shifts their focus—he implies that her actions are good, but not for the reasons upon which she bases them, which is a partial, uneven, and reductive way to treat an argument.

The greatest flaw of Food Politics is Paarlberg’s oversimplification of other groups’ and individual’s claims. He provides useful and even groundbreaking information but only by suspending these fundamental components of food politics in a way that does not allow for the inextricability of belief or ideology from the way we eat.

Written by: Emily Bowles, August 7th 2010

Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating

admin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:05:00 +0000

By Lisa Jervis

PM Press

I’ve long enjoyed Lisa Jervis’ critical analysis, a woman best known in feminist circles as the co-founder of Bitch magazine. Growing into my own love of all things kitchen this past year, I fully expected to be won over by Cook Food; sadly, I was not.

It seems like a complicated time to write this book. Educated liberals finally care about “food studies” now that Michael Pollan is writing books about his omnivorous dilemma. At the same time, many progressives have long known about the risks associated with genetically modified foods and hydrogenated oils, the benefits of plant-based (or at least plant-heavy) diets, and the importance of eating slowly and locally. Many are also aware of how hard it is to find affordable, fresh produce in many areas of the country.

It’s hard to know to whom this book is marketed. Anyone who has read any of Michael Pollan’s books or articles in the New York Times Magazine is likely familiar with the concepts that influence Jervis’ writing. Yet because this short book mostly lacks larger systemic analysis about how gender, race, and speciesism plays into your dietary options and choices, it’s hard to know Jervis’ point of departure—and thus it’s difficult to gauge what ours should be.

Because the book is seemingly geared towards socially-conscious people without much experience in the kitchen, many recipes use basic vegan ingredients. This is both a strength and a weakness. While soy mayonnaise is never called for—which is great in terms of keeping the recipes as universal as possible—a meal based on tempeh and kale also isn’t often wildly appealing to people unfamiliar with vegetarian or vegan cooking. Jervis also admits that being from the Bay Area, her surroundings—plentiful farmers markets—influence her attitudes and writing. Unfortunately, that specific context doesn’t necessarily lend itself to using this book’s recipes across varying regions and availabilities.

A number of the recipes—five of the twenty—in Cook Food are modified from the originals found in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. While I appreciate Jervis’ honesty, none of the recipes are all that unique, which is noticeable even without reading her necessary disclosure. It seems a little tricky to call one’s book a "manualfesto" while borrowing so heavily from others' work.

Jervis states repeatedly that we should all do the best we can, but in the end, I’m not left very convinced that she believes you can manage your own kitchen without a plethora of local green grocers, markets that stock tofu, a pepper grinder, and quality cookware. That this book doesn’t win over a frugal vegan like myself cannot be considered a generalized condemnation of good work; a reviewer’s ego needs to be reigned in when personal essentializing overshadows objective judgment. Still, if I’m looking for a cozy vegan-ish book to gift to a friend, I’m afraid this won’t be the one.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, October 17th 2009

Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa

admin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:16:00 +0000

By Robert Paarlberg

Harvard University Press

As a mom who does what I can to buy organic food for my family, I completely understand the general distaste most of us have for genetically modified (GM) foods. The very thought of vegetables altered by scientists in labs seems creepy and somehow inherently wrong, doesn’t it? But when I read Starved for Science, I quickly realized that such a romanticized and emotional standpoint in such a critical debate as starvation is not only uninformed, it is just plain irresponsible. I also realized that, whether we like it or not, most of us are already eating GM foods on a daily basis.

In plain language and with plentiful sources to back up his positions, Paarlberg describes how in first world countries, where food is plentiful and obesity more of a problem than starvation, people can afford to pine for the days of small neighborhood farms - and can turn up their noses at the agribusiness and subsequent science that has allowed us to take for granted having not only enough to eat, but a wide choice in what and where we get our food. In Europe, the negative public opinion toward genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) has led to labeling and bans on imports suspected to be “contaminated” by genetically altered seeds. Greenpeace and many NGO’s are working actively to keep African farmers on small plots of land using techniques that date back thousands of years, but to the detriment and hardship of those very farmers.

Paarlberg describes how rich countries have come to fear and dislike GMO’s, stopping funding and support easily where food is in no shortage, and yet when it is convenient, still continue to fund their use in the pharmaceutical industry where a longevity benefit can be gained. And governments in African countries situated in urban areas that are highly influenced by European bias, both in cultural influence and monetary flow, follow suit. Therefore, they are not developing their own programs to find strains of seeds that could resist drought, and it isn’t worth enough money to anyone else to do so for them.

The majority of small farms in Africa are currently run by women, as men often leave to find other jobs in mines or more urban areas to supplement family incomes. Children stay out of school to help with the farming, and they do it all with wooden tools and poorly fed animal labor. Green movements in China and India have brought these countries to a position where starvation in no longer such a pressing issue; however, in Africa the problem is worse than ever.

Paarlberg admits to having kept his research a bit under wraps until now, knowing the reaction he would get from his own circle of friends and colleagues. It could be said that being ‘socially conscious’ has taken on certain assumptions (and presumptions) among the wealthier strata of our urban world with a borg-like uniformity, and in the case of poverty in Africa, maintaining a position of being purely organic could easily be likened to saying “let them eat cake.”

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 13th 2008

The Future of Food

admin — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:02:00 +0000

Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia

Lily Films

The Future of Food, written, directed, and produced by Deborah Koons Garcia, is a fascinating and chilling look into the state of the food industry in this country. Patented, unlabeled, genetically engineered foods, and the corporations behind them, could be the doom of the United States, if not the human race, if the present situation continues.

While biotechnology has always existed, the film points out that genetic engineering enters unknown territory. A central theme in the film is that genetically engineered food is hardly ever labeled as such, despite 80-90% of Americans stating that they want their food labeled. The Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act has been presented to Congress every year since 1999. It is still waiting to be voted on.

The film explains in detail why genetically altered food is so harmful. Problems like allergens, low nutritional value, immune system problems in animals and the general issue of genetically engineered seeds becoming sterile after one planting are all very serious. The possibility of sterile seeds blowing into normal crop fields has frightening potential ramifications. There are also problems concerning “superweeds,” or weeds that have become resistant to many pesticides, which cause farmers to spray more chemicals instead of less. The chemicals they use are similar to that of Agent Orange, which causes birth defects among other health problems.

The film also explains in detail how the government originally approved such genetically engineered technology; during the first Bush administration, vice president Dan Quayle ran something called the Competiveness Council, which called for no regulation of all genetically engineered foods. The idea was to be the first in the world to market such foods. While FDA scientists were outraged, and provided document after document saying this food needed to be tested, Quayle and his associates saw to it that the "no regulation" policy became official in 1992.

While the rest of the world is banning genetically engineered foods, this film painted a grim portrait of the future of “pharming” in the United States. Deborah Koons Garcia does an outstanding job painting a terrifying portrait of a little-known yet complicated problem in this country. The last words in the film, “It’s up to you,” absolutely ring true!

Written by: Kent Page McGroarty, May 13th 2007