Article Section: Environment and Natural Resources in The Positive Voices
Recent Articles in Environment and Natural Resources
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Community gardens don’t excuse what Kraft did to American food
by Kristi Ceccarossi
A few weeks ago, a churchyard near my city apartment was converted into a garden. A group of local volunteers hammered together raised beds, trucked in new soil, and planted berries, tomatoes and greens with the hope of growing fresh food for a local soup kitchen.
It doesn’t get much warmer and fuzzier than that, but I’m pretty repulsed by it.
As someone who advocates for a more localized food system where we can all have a stronger connection to what we’re eating and to the backstory of how it was grown, you’d think I’d support this kind of project. And I would, were it not for the fact that it was built in partnership with Triscuit. Yes, the cracker company, which is owned by Kraft Foods, Inc., the world’s second- largest food corporation.
This spring, to mark what is the start of the growing season for most of us,…
E. coli-laden romaine lettuce recently sickened dozens of Americans in five states, as a food-related listeria outbreak killed at least two Texans.
These were just the latest in a string of similar incidents. An endless deluge of foodborne illness outbreaks demands the reevaluation of our food system.
But Americans need to adopt a broader approach to evaluating the quality of their food, from soil to plate. We must consider the integrity of the overall production process in addition to evaluating the immediate safety of the food that reaches the consumer. While outbreaks and hospitalizations grab headlines, there are unseen other costs to our current production system.
Food integrity considers all players involved in the lifecycle of food production: the health and wellness of associated citizens, the environment, and product itself. Safeguarding the process ultimately yields the safe food consumers want to eat.
Foodborne illness sickens over 76 million Americans every…
As an old TV ad used to say: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."
Monsanto Corp., however, still has not taken Mother's advice. This giant chemical maker became a veritable Frankenstein in the 1990s, genetically engineering new organisms in an effort to fool Mother Nature for fun and profit. But Momma got mad--and now she's kicking Monsanto's butt all across the country.
Here's the background: Monsanto marketed a weedkiller labeled "Roundup" to farmers. But the weedkiller also tended to kill the crops. Thus, Monsanto's mad scientists artificially manipulated the genes of corn, cotton and soybean seeds to produce crops that--hocus pocus!--could absorb mega doses of Roundup without croaking. These patented seeds, called "Roundup Ready," helped Monsanto sell oceans of weedkiller.
But Mother Nature's weeds are smarter than the Frankensteins in Monsanto's labs, and they've quickly evolved into tenacious superweeds that Roundup can't kill. There are now 10 resistant…
The Clean Water Act protected the nation’s waters for decades, from the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, to small headwater streams and associated wetlands. Yet Congress and the Supreme Court have allowed the act to falter for the past nine years.
Environmental Protection Agency regulators have revealed that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations, involving chemicals and hazardous waste being dumped into bodies of water, are being stalled. Confusion from Clean Water Act court decisions has caused these pollution infractions, which endanger our health and environment, to languish. This is inexcusable.
Thankfully, there’s some hope on the horizon. Rep.
James Oberstar (D-MN) recently introduced “America’s Commitment to Clean Water Act.” It would move to fix the law and reinstate historic protection for streams and lakes against waste disposal, oil spills, and destruction.
Passing this bill is crucial to providing Americans with clean water to drink and safe places to swim,…
It turns out crime pays.
Big time. BP, the oil company responsible for what may become the largest oil spill of all time in the United States has been breaking the law, again and again.
And each time, the company formerly known as British Petroleum has learned its lesson: Keep breaking the law. Corporations can get away with murder and environmental devastation, and make billions doing it.
For example, last year BP paid the largest penalty in the history of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for willful negligence that led to the death of 15 workers and the injury of 170 others in a March 2005 refinery explosion in Texas City. The fine amounted to $87.43 million.
That may sound like a lot, but BP made $163 billion in profits between 2001 and 2009, and another $5.6 billion in the first three months of 2010. Along the way, it…
