Heifers at Timber Ridge Cattle Co., an operation in Osceola, Iowa, that feeds some of its cattle flax seed.
Photo: Courtesy of Timber Ridge Cattle Co.

Post by Eliza Barclay, The Salt at NPR Food (5/17/13)

Flax is the oily seed usually spotted in the nutritional supplement or cereal aisle. It’s marketed as a superfood because of its high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and fiber.

Omega-3s may do all kinds of good things for humans – like protect against Alzheimer’s, heart disease and even cancer — so it seems reasonable to think they could also protect the health of animals.

That’s what got Jim Drouillard, a professor of animal sciences and industry at Kansas State University, wondering whether flax might be good for beef cattle. In a series of experiments over the last 10 years, he found that feeding flax seed to cattle in the five months before slaughter reduced inflammation and the need for antibiotics, and offset some of the negative effects of a corn-based diet. It also had an unexpected benefit for consumers.

“We were interested in improving the health of the animals, but we also saw that we could get large increase in omega-3s in the [meat],” Drouillard tells The Salt.

Drouillard had stumbled upon omega-3 enriched beef, and some people who sell beef took notice. Their hunch was that consumers might prefer to get their omega-3s from beef rather than salmon, tuna or walnuts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture got on board, too.

“Assuming a lot of people are not going to eat flax or be able to afford salmon, one of our arguments [for flax-fed beef] is that there are a lot of people who like to eat beef,” says Scott Kronberg, a research animal scientist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service who has done his own research on the benefits of flax-fed beef.

NBO3 launched its enriched ground beef at the Tops grocery chain in New York in March. Photo: Courtesy of NBO3

And in Osceola, Iowa, Peter Woltz is giving his cattle flax for the omega-3 enriched beef sticks, summer sausage and jerky products he sells online and at farmers markets under the brand name Timber Ridge.

Before he got into the flax-fed beef business, Woltz used to raise cattle on a conventional feedlot. But he says he decided to sell it because it required too much crisis management.

“There’s always the risk of disease,” he says, “so you have a very active antibiotic program, and sometimes you give it to them whether they need it or not. That turned me off.”

When Woltz heard that there were opportunities to produce “all natural” beef without hormones, additives or antibiotics, he was intrigued. “It sounded like a more sane, responsible way of producing beef,” he says. Drouillard’s flax feed also appealed to him as a way to make a niche product.

About one-fifth of Woltz’s cattle now eat flax in the last 100 days before slaughter, when it makes up about 8 of their feed. And he says those cows are healthier than the ones that don’t get flax.

“It was a real surprise to us how big the health benefits to the [flax-fed] herd were,” he says. “Pinkeye outbreaks are very common in raising cattle, but in six years of doing this, I have never seen a flax-fed cow with pinkeye.”

Woltz says he believes his herd of flax-fed cattle will continue to grow. “It’s just a question of how fast do we want to expand the herd.”

But Kronberg of the USDA cautions that the economics of flax-fed beef aren’t yet well understood. “Flax is pretty expensive nowadays, and the profitability of beef production is not always so good,” he says. “So it will be interesting to see how these companies do.”

Across the pond in Europe, animal science researchers are enthusiastic about flax, too. They’re feeding it to dairy cattle to improve their digestive health and reduce methane emissions from their belching.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The U.S. Capitol building. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food (5/16/13)

Two seemingly common-sense, bipartisan food reforms have gotten mugged on Capitol Hill in recent days. If you’re a loyal reader of The Salt, you’ve heard of them.

First, there’s the proposal — backed by an odd-couple alliance of egg producers and animal-welfare activists — to set minimum standards for the housing of egg-laying chickens. Second, the Obama administration wants to change the way the United States provides food aid to people in foreign countries, buying more of that food close to where it’s needed.

Neither proposal seems, at first glance, controversial. Changing the rules for food aid should save money, according to most independent analyses, allowing the program to feed more hungry people. Similar reforms, in fact, were proposed by President George W. Bush. The “egg bill,” meanwhile, is a remarkable instance of pragmatic compromise between bitter adversaries.

Any change, however, threatens somebody, and both of these proposals have run afoul of politically well-connected people.

In the case of food aid, the skeptics include American shippers and dock workers, who will get slightly less work if the U.S. sends cash to buy food abroad. They, in turn, have a powerful friend in Congress: Sen. Barbara Mikulski, proud native of the port city of Baltimore and chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In an e-mail to NPR, Mikulski wrote that “we need to find a sensible center that will allow us to implement smart reforms without jeopardizing U.S. jobs, particularly those in the maritime industry.”

In part because of Mikulski’s resistance, advocates of reform are now trying a different route entirely — a free-standing bill that’s been introduced by Edward Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Its prospects are uncertain.

The “egg bill,” meanwhile, has some influential supporters. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack brings it up frequently as an exemplary compromise between large-scale agriculture and its critics. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, actually tried to include it in her draft of the farm bill, which is up for renewal (again) this year.

Pork and beef producers, however, object in principle to the notion of federal regulation of farm animal housing — even though, in this case, the egg producers themselves are asking for federal regulations as a way to pre-empt state rules that are more troublesome.

When the agriculture committees of both House and Senate finished their versions of the farm bill this week, all mention of guaranteed living space for egg-laying hens had vanished.

In fact, the House committee adopted a provision that could make it more difficult for states to set such standards. This amendment, offered by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, would prohibit any effort by state governments to control the way that their food is produced by out-of-state farmers. The measure is aimed specifically at California’s Proposition 2, which is set to ban farmers in Iowa or Idaho from selling their eggs in California if those eggs come from chickens housed in traditional cages.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A farmer holds Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” soybean seeds at his family farm in Bunceton, Mo. Photo: Dan Gill/AP

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Post by Nina Totenberg, The Salt at NPR Food (5/13/13)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that when farmers use patented seed for more than one planting in violation of their licensing agreements, they are liable for damages.

Billed as David vs. Goliath, the case pitted an Indiana farmer against the agribusiness behemoth Monsanto.

Almost all the soybean farmers in the U.S. use seed that is genetically altered to be resistant to weed killers like Roundup. That allows farmers to spray for weeds without killing the soybeans. But the seed is three times more expensive than regular unpatented seed, so some farmers have tried to use regenerated seed to save money.

Case in point, 75-year-old farmer Hugh Bowman, who regularly bought Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant soybean seed for his first growth and signed a licensing agreement promising to use all the seed and not to use any regenerated seed for future use. But Bowman also had other riskier, lower-yield plantings, and for those, he wanted “a cheap source of seed.”

So he went to the local grain elevator where farmers drop off their harvested soybeans, and he bought and planted some of those, knowing that those beans would likely also be Roundup-resistant.

He eventually produced eight separate crop yields using the second and third generations of the grain elevator seed, and he was quite open about what he was doing.

“I couldn’t imagine that they’d give a rat’s behind,” he said.

But they — namely, Monsanto — did. The company sued Bowman, as it has sued other farmers. Bowman lost in the lower courts and was ordered to pay $84,000 in damages to Monsanto. He appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There the question before the justices pitted two legal doctrines against each other. One doctrine, known technically as patent exhaustion, says that once you buy a product — say, a cellphone — you can do with it whatever you want. You can use it, sell it, give it to your kids, whatever. But a second patent doctrine says you are forbidden to copy it.

So which rule applied in Bowman’s case? The Supreme Court said unanimously that Bowman’s actions amounted to illegal copying of a patented product, a sort of farming piracy.

Writing for the high court, Justice Elena Kagan said that Bowman is perfectly free to purchase grain elevator beans to eat or feed to livestock, or even to resell, but he could not do what he, in fact, did: plant the beans from the grain elevator in his own fields, test them for weed resistance, and then harvest, re-harvest and re-harvest multiple times, without paying Monsanto for use of its patented product.

Without this protection for Monsanto, said Kagan, the company would get “scant benefit” from its invention, and Bowman and other farmers would reap great rewards from the weed-resistant seed without paying for it.

Kagan also rejected Bowman’s argument that since soybeans naturally self-replicate by sprouting, it was the soybean, not Bowman himself, that made replications of the Monsanto’s patented invention.

“We think the blame-the-bean defense tough to credit,” said Kagan. Bowman, she noted, “was not a passive observer of his soybeans multiplication.” Instead, Bowman himself produced eight separate crop yields using the grain elevator beans to maximize regeneration of the beans.

Monsanto and other agribusiness enterprises were predictably pleased by the decision.

“The court’s ruling today ensures that long-standing principles of patent law apply to breakthrough 21st century technologies,” said David Snively, Monsanto’s executive vice president and general counsel. “The ruling also provides assurance to all inventors throughout the public and private sectors that they can and should continue to invest in innovation that feeds people, improves lives, creates jobs and allows America to keep its competitive edge.”

Meanwhile, critics of the industry were just as predictably disappointed. Andrew Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, called the decision a “disaster” for farmers and consumers, because it ensures that Monsanto’s soybean seed patent will dominate the market even more, meaning that prices for both farmers and consumers will soar.

The court’s decision, however, was explicitly limited to cases like Bowman’s, where an individual takes steps to replicate a patented product. Justice Kagan said the court was not deciding how to handle all self-replicating products — products that range from patented DNA molecules to computer software.

Or as John Whelan, George Washington University associate dean of intellectual property law put it, the court has “left for another day” the question of how to treat a product that “automatically reproduces itself with no intervention.” In the modern world of complex new inventions, it seems the court is not eager to get ahead of itself.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Eat less salt, but not too much less. Photo: iStockPhoto.com

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Post by Allison Aubrey, The Salt at NPR Food (5/15/13)

Americans are repeatedly told to cut back on salt to reduce the risk of heart disease. But there are new questions being raised about the possible risks of reducing sodium too much.

So, how low should we go? Currently, the government recommends that Americans should aim for 2,300 milligrams per day. And people older than 50, as well as those with high blood pressure, diabetes or kidney disease are advised to reduce sodium even further, down to 1,500 mg per day.

But a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine concludes in a new report that “the evidence on direct health outcomes does not support recommendations to lower sodium intake … to or even below 1,500 mg per day.”

Why? We asked the committee chairman, Brian Strom, a dean and professor of public health at the University of Pennsylvania, to summarize the panel’s findings for us. “The net conclusion is that people who are eating too much sodium should lower their sodium, but it is possible that if you lower it too much you may do harm.”

Strom says a lot more research is needed to better understand how ultra-low-sodium diets may be beneficial or harmful. Strom pointed to an Italian study of people with congestive heart failure as an example of research that has hinted that diets too low in sodium may be problematic for certain people.

“The people on the low-sodium diet actually did worse [compared to those on medium-sodium diets],” says Strom. “They had more hospital re-admissions and they had a higher mortality rate.” He says it’s unclear if the results would be the same for Americans with congestive heart failure, since treatments here are different than they are in Italy. But, he says, the findings raise questions.

The American Heart Association, which recommends a low-sodium (1,500 mg) diet for all Americans, released a statement stating that it disagrees with the key findings of the new report.

And some preventive health experts are critical, too. The World Health Organization has concluded that elevated blood pressure is the leading cause of preventable death, which suggests that staving off high blood pressure with low-sodium diets is an important strategy.

“Sodium reduction remains a critically important component of public health efforts designed to … prevent cardiovascular disease,” Lawrence Appel of Johns Hopkins University writes in an email.

Appel points out that the studies that suggest that low-sodium diets are harmful tend to focus on “sick populations in which illness leads to low sodium intake rather than the reverse.”

Some groups of Americans, including older adults and African-Americans, are especially sensitive to the blood-pressure lowering effects of cutting sodium, Appel says. So the strategy of aiming for low-salt diets has “tremendous potential to reduce racial disparities in blood pressure-related cardiovascular disease.”

The bottom line, according to Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is that Americans are eating way too much salt, on average about 3,400 milligrams a day.

“And we know that too much is harmful,” she says. “It increases blood pressure, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.”

And she says focusing on the potential risks of a very-low-sodium diet distracts from the more important conversation about how to get Americans to start consuming less.

To better understand just how much salt is found in the typical lunch out, I met Liebman at a food court.

Our first stop was McDonalds, where it turns out burgers have about twice as much salt as the fries: 1,000 mg, and up to 2,000 if you get the Angus bacon burger, Liebman says.

Put the burger and fries together and you’ve already reached the recommended daily sodium intake. Liebman says it’s a similar story at every chain, from Subway to Chipotle to Pizzeria Uno. (McDonalds has pledged to reduce sodium 15 percent across its menu by 2015.)

So even though the new study raises questions about potential harms of ultra-low-sodium diets, with a food supply like ours, most of us consume way too much salt, not too little.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Microscopic bugs called cheese mites are responsible for giving Mimolette its distinctive rind and flavor. Photo: Chris Waits/Flickr

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Post by Deena Prichep, The Salt at NPR Food (5/11/13)

The Food and Drug Administration is currently embroiled in a surprisingly heated culinary standoff — pitting French cheese-makers (and American cheese-lovers) against regulators, all because of one very small problem: cheese mites.

Cheese mites are microscopic little bugs that live on the surfaces of aged cheeses, munching the microscopic molds that grow there. For many aged cheeses, they’re something of an industry nuisance, gently brushed off the cheeses. But for Mimolette, a bright orange French cheese, they’re actually encouraged.

The mites munch on the rind for a few years and then are removed — usually with a blast of compressed air and a bit of hand-brushing — before Mimolette is sold. But there are always a few hiding behind. And now the FDA is cracking down.

According to the FDA’s Patricia El-Hinnawy, there’s no official limit, but the target is no more than six mites per square inch. For Mimolette, that’s a near impossible standard.

Benoit de Vitton is the North American representative for Isigny, one of the largest producers of Mimolette. In March, de Vitton began receiving letters from each of the dozen importers he works with, saying that their Mimolette shipments had been detained.

De Vitton estimates that he now has about a ton of cheese sitting in FDA warehouses in New Jersey. “They say the product, because of the mites, it is not proper for human consumption,” de Vitton sighs.

Ironically, de Vitton notes that Mimolette itself is rumored to have been created because of import issues in the 17th century. “The French were at war with Holland, and the king didn’t want any more Dutch Gouda coming to France. So he asked to create kind of the same cheese.”

But in the 21st century, do we need a cheese ban? Microbiologist Rachel Dutton runs a cheese lab at Harvard University, and we checked in with her about the dangers of mites. Dutton notes that there have been some reports of mite allergies, but they seem to be restricted to people who have come into contact with large numbers of mites.

And Dutton says that while we may not like to think about bugs, they’re a part of what makes cheese so delicious.

“Cheese is absolutely alive,” Dutton laughs. And all of that life — the molds, bacteria, yeasts and mites — help make cheese what it is. Dutton says that the mites on Mimolette can contribute flavors of their own (they have a somewhat earthy smell), and by eating into the rind, they can also increase aeration — and the surface area in which the other microbes can do their work.

Dutton understands that this doesn’t sound appealing, but implores people to realize the good work of these bugs. “There definitely are microbes that can spoil food and make either it bad for you to eat or just sort of gross. But any time you eat a piece of cheese or a bite of yogurt, have a piece of bread or a glass of wine — these are all examples of foods fermented by different types of microbes.”

Throughout France, cheese lovers have been rallying in support of Mimolette. There are radio stories, YouTube videos — there’s even an ex-pat Save the Mimolette Facebook campaign (of course).

In America, the response is a bit more subdued. Some cheesemongers are buying up the limited supply, but most are content to shrug it off. Sasha Davies, of Cyril’s cheese/wine bar in Portland, is nervous about what the mite crackdown could mean for other aged cheeses, but in general is fine reaching for an aged Gouda instead of Mimolette.

“I find I can scratch the itch I feel for Mimolette with a lot of other cheeses,” she admits.

Davies says that the fervor for Mimolette isn’t just about its caramel notes or lactic tang or bright orange color.

“There are cheeses that — even though I think they taste delicious, they tug at my heartstrings, either because I love the person that makes them, or I have this great memory of being in a special place,” she says. “Food is never really just food.”

And for many French people, Mimolette brings a taste of memory, family and home — as well as mites.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Through the City Land Application of Biosolids Program in Geneva, Ill., the fertilizer supplement is provided to local farmers at no cost. Photo: City of Geneva/Flickr

Post by Eliza Barclay, The Salt at NPR Food (5/12/13)

Any gardener will tell you that compost is “black gold,” essential to cultivating vigorous, flavorful crops. But it always feels like there’s never enough, and its weight and bulk make it tough stuff to cart around.

I belong to a community garden in Washington, D.C., that can’t get its hands on enough compost. So you can imagine my delight when I learned that the U.S. Composting Council was connecting community gardeners with free material from local facilities through its Million Tomato Compost Campaign.

I signed us up last month, and was promptly contacted by Clara Mills, the environmental coordinator for Spotsylvania County in central Virginia. Mills volunteered to deliver a dump truck full of compost to our garden from her facility, an hour away. It sounded too good to be true. Then one of my fellow gardeners noticed the source of the Spotsylvania compost: biosolids, or human poop that’s been treated and transformed into organic fertilizer.

About 50 percent of the biosolids produced in the U.S. are returned to farmland through a process that is heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Even so, some people – including the Sierra Club — remain skeptical of the use of this waste product in food production. They worry that heavy metals, pathogens or pharmaceuticals might survive the treatment process and contaminate crops. So what’s an urban gardener to do in light of mixed perceptions about whether it’s OK to use poop to grow your food?

I set out to investigate this, hoping that whatever I learned would help my garden decide whether to accept the donation or not.

First, remember that for thousands of years, before the invention of synthetic fertilizer in 1913, many farmers utilized their decomposed sewage, sometimes called “night soil,” to replenish the soil with nutrients lost in farming. The Chinese were especially adept at using human waste this way – one historical account notes that in 1908, a contractor paid the city of Shanghai $31,000 in gold for the privilege of collecting 78,000 tons of human waste and carting it off to spread on fields.

When growing urban areas required that sewage be piped outside of the city, the practice dropped off and attention turned to improving wastewater treatment to avoid polluting waterways. Raw waste is, of course, nasty stuff until all the dangerous bacteria have been killed off, either by heat or anaerobic digestion.

But the sludge was still piling up in landfills, so scientists began testing how to use it in agriculture safely; the waste was a free source of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, afterall. And letting it sit in landfills or incinerating it created its own environmental issues. By the 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency created strict standards with two tiers for biosolids still in use today. To sell Class A biosolids to farmers and gardeners, facilities have to ensure that there are no dangerous heavy metals or bacteria in the end product.

The ick factor, however, has not faded entirely. While plenty of large-scale farms like this one in Kansas City, Mo., use biosolids, they are not officially allowed in organic agriculture. Bowing to public input, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided in 2000 to prohibit the use of sludge in the National Organic Program. This was in spite of the fact that “there is no current scientific evidence that use of sewage sludge in the production of foods presents unacceptable risks to the environment or human health,” USDA spokesman Samuel Jones tells The Salt.

A handful of activists have also sounded the alarm on the widespread use of biosolids in conventional agriculture. They allege, among other things, that the EPA-approved treatment of biosolids doesn’t address all the possible contaminants in the waste.

A National Academy of Sciences report in 2002 also stated that while there have been some anecdotal stories of adverse health effects from exposure to biosolids, there are no studies that prove a causal link. Still, the NAS said that since biosolids may contain substances like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, more epidemiological research was needed to explore possible health effects of using them to grow food. (Currently, the U.S. Geological Service is investigating exactly what happens to plants when biosolids are applied to soil.)

Still, some scientists argue that over the years, the biosolids industry has gotten much better at keeping contaminants out of the final product.

“We have systemically looked at all kinds of potential hazards,” says Ian Pepper, a professor and director of the Environmental Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona who has been studying biosolids for 30 years. “Invariably we’ve found that the risks are much lower than those suggested by environmental activists.”

And other proponents say that it’s hard to prove that biosolids are a significant source of contaminants.

“These compounds are ubiquitous in the environment – in the soil, water, within our bodies,” says Neil Zahradka, who overseas biosolids for the state of Virginia’s department of environmental quality. “So the question is: If it’s in the biosolids, then is that a problem? None of studies so far have been able to conclusively say that yes there’s an issue here.”

As for the pathogens, Zahradka contends that the composting process, one of a few different treatment methods (and the one used in Spotsylvania County, which offered compost to my garden), eliminates them.

Here’s how it works: Spotsylvania receives the raw sewage and mixes it with mulch. The carbon in the mulch speeds up the decomposition process, and generates heat. The material reaches 160 plus degrees for 21 days, says Mills. That’s enough to kill all harmful bacteria, she says. But the facility also tests the material regularly to be sure the pathogens and dangerous heavy metals are below detectable levels.

So will my garden be using these biosolids anytime soon? We’ll have to take a vote to decide. In the meantime, it’s interesting to see other urban gardeners getting on board with biosolids.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Vegetables. Photo: Getty Images

Six years ago, Mark Bittman was a full-time omnivore. But then a doctor told him to turn vegan for health reasons, and suddenly Mark found himself facing a world void of meat, dairy, or processed foods. So the New York Times food writer decided to personalize his vegan diet and allow for some cheating. He called it “Vegan Before 6,” or “VB6,” and says it helped him improve his health and focus on cooking at home. Mark Bittman talks about his new book, and how a full-time meat lover adapted to part-time veganism.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guest:

• Mark Bittman, food writer, columnist for The New York Times, and author of books including “VB6: Eating Vegan Before 6,” “Food Matters” and “How to Cook Everything.”

More info:
• Next Meal: Engineering Food : A half-hour documentary from KQED Science
• VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good : amazon.com

Wrigley took its new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum off the market after it prompted FDA scrutiny of caffeinated foods. Photo: Wrigley Incorporated

On April 30, the day after Alert Energy launched, the Food and Drug Administration said it was going to take a “fresh look” at caffeinated foods, particularly their effect on children and teenagers.

Being out front on caffeinated confections evidently wasn’t a comfortable place to be.

Yesterday, the Wrigley Co. said it has “paused” sales of Alert Energy, which came in brightly-colored packages. Each pellet of gum contained 40 milligrams of caffeine, about the amount in a half-cup of coffee.

“After discussions with the FDA, we have a greater appreciation for its concern about the proliferation of caffeine in the nation’s food supply,” Casey Keller, Wrigley’s president for North America, said in a statement.

Keller called for “changes in the regulatory framework to better guide the consumers and the industry about the appropriate level and use of caffeinated products.”

The surge of caffeinated energy drink and, to a lesser extent, food products, has alarmed pediatricians. In 2011 the American Academy of Pediatrics said that children and teenagers should avoid caffeinated drinks, since caffeine boosts heart rate, interferes with sleep, and increases anxiety.

Alert Energy was marketed “in a safe and responsible manner to consumers 25 years and older,” Keller’s statement said.

No word on how that might have been enforced, since nobody’s carding kids who buy gum at the local mini-mart.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Tom Llewellyn, a volunteer with the Proposition 37 campaign, chants at a rally in Santa Cruz on Nov. 4, 2012, two days before the election. Prop 37 lost with 49 percent of the vote. Credit: Gabriela Quirós, KQED

Genetically engineered foods, also referred to as genetically modified organisms (GMO), genetically modified foods or biotech foods, has sparked plenty of debate in recent years. Last November, California voters failed to pass Proposition 37, which would have required all genetically engineered foods to be labeled in the state. But Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressman Peter DeFazio are introducing a bill that would require similar labeling by the FDA. Their joint statement says, “According to surveys, more than 90 percent of Americans support the labeling of genetically engineered foods. In fact, many consumers are surprised to learn that GE foods are not already labeled.”

This rice at UC Davis has been genetically engineered to tolerate the droughts that are already becoming more common with climate change. Credit: Gabriela Quirós, KQED

Gabriela Quirós, the producer of a special half-hour documentary, Next Meal: Engineering Food, commented via email about why this subject generates so much discussion with the public.

“Many people are very interested in knowing where their food comes from and how it’s made. In the particular case of genetically engineered crops, in the past 15 years, U.S. farmers have rapidly started growing genetically engineered crops to the point where about 90 percent of all the soybeans, cotton, corn and sugarbeets grown in the United States are now genetically engineered. But the farmers and the seed companies didn’t ask consumers what they thought about genetically engineered food – these seeds were just adopted like any other farming technology. And so I think that some consumers are wary, in part because there wasn’t much of a discussion before the technology was rolled out.”

In the course of producing Next Meal, which explores how genetically engineered crops are made as well as their benefits and drawbacks, Gabriela discovered more facts about a unique tomato: Flavr Savr.

“The Flavr Savr tomato was the first genetically engineered food to be sold to consumers. A company in Davis flipped a tomato gene around so that tomatoes would stay firm on the vine for longer. The idea was for the tomatoes to get flavorful but not become mushy when they were transported. What I didn’t know was that these tomatoes were very popular with consumers when they were first sold, in 1994. What made them disappear wasn’t opposition to the tomatoes; it was a series of bad business decisions by the company that designed them, and the fact that the genetic engineering didn’t quite work — the tomatoes didn’t stay firm for longer on the vine and ended up requiring careful transportation, just like any other tomato.”

The main challenge of working on the special was the enormous scope of the topic. “I would have liked to have more time. The documentary is 30 minutes long. Genetically engineered crops touch on science, of course, but also on environmental, legal and social issues, just to name a few. We didn’t have time to go as in-depth into some aspects of the story. That said, we did cover a lot of ground!”

UC Berkeley biologist Peggy Lemaux is genetically engineering sorghum to make it more easily digestible. Sorghum, a cereal related to corn, is a staple food for 300 million people in Africa. Credit: Arwen Curry, KQED

Gabriela also noted that one of her favorite moments was filming “the process of genetically engineering a cereal called sorghum, at UC Berkeley. I think viewers will enjoy this scene in the film. You see the little sorghum embryos being plucked out of the immature seeds.”

KQED Science on Google+ is hosting a Hangout on Air about genetically engineered food 5/8 at 11am (PST). Gabriela will be joined by UC Berkeley biologist Peggy Lemaux and UC Davis biologist Eduardo Blumwald. RSVP for the online round table discussion.

Watch the archived Google+ Hangout from 5/8/13:

And Next Meal: Engineering Food will premiere tomorrow night (5/8) on KQED Channel 9 at 7:30pm (PST). Starting on May 9, the program airs on PBS stations throughout California. In October, it airs again on KQED and on five PBS stations nationwide in Seattle, Wisconsin, Cleveland, North Carolina and Nebraska.

Watch Next Meal: Engineering Food online:

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part One: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Berkeley’s beloved school gardening and cooking program, where public school children plant peas, cook kale, and chase chickens–all while discovering connections to nature, science, language, math, health, nutrition and other life lessons–is in dire straits due to pending federal funding cuts.

Come October, the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) edible education efforts will lose $1.9 million of U.S. Department of Agriculture financing (administered through the Network for a Healthy California) for 14 school cooking and garden programs, from the preschool through high school level. Unless replacement income is found, such cuts would essentially gut the district program, considered a model around the country.

“BUSD schools are deeply committed to saving their garden and cooking programs and are working closely with their principals, PTAs, the school district, and the extended community to raise funds for the coming year and beyond,” says Marian Mabel, a parent at Malcolm X Elementary and member of a group called the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance, which was launched last year when Malcolm X, along with two other schools, looked set to lose their federal funds. (The alliance successfully lobbied the school board for a year of bridge funding, which, ultimately, wasn’t needed when a one-year extension of federal monies was granted.)

Now, district officials, individual schools, and a core of parent volunteers are scrambling to try and save the program, which began as a community effort 15 years ago. And prominent local restaurateurs and chefs have stepped up to show their support too.

The cooking and gardening movement in Berkeley’s schools, documented in a series of short videos under the Lunch Love Community umbrella (featured in a 2011 BAB post), has received federal funds for 12 years. But recent changes in federal funding priorities and state administering of these monies, along with changing demographics in BUSD schools, has lead to a pending shift in the allocation of resources. Despite last year’s one-year reprieve from the feds, no such extension of support is expected for the next school year, given changes to U.S. government guidelines with the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Two: Students at Le Conte Elementary School in Berkeley. Photo: Sophie Constantinou

The school district saw the cuts coming. So last November, the superintendent convened an advisory committee on garden and cooking to identify and secure both short-term bridge funding and long-term sustainable funding, through major donor and corporate giving campaigns, public-private partnerships, and other fundraising efforts, all of which are either in the works or being explored. At a school board meeting on Wednesday, committee members will make a case for a commitment of $300,000 a year for two years to help maintain the program, according to Melanie Parker, interim supervisor for the BUSD’s Gardening and Cooking Nutrition Program. (Last year the district pledged up to $350,000 for the three schools facing cuts to their programs for this school year.)

The committee has outlined four tiers of funding options for the immediate future. These range from a fully-funded program costing $2 million a year, to a worst case scenario situation of part-time staff offering limited instruction and charged with keeping the gardens alive at about $250,000 a year. The largest cost of the program, not surprisingly, is salaries and benefits for cooking and gardening teachers and assistants. While most of these employees work part-time, they are paid the full-time equivalent of between $25,000 and $50,000. Many of these instructors, adored by students, parents, and school officials alike, have been working in the schools since the start of this program and the thought of losing their educational experience and institutional wisdom is viewed as a potentially devastating blow to the program.

The BUSD committee is recommending funding at a reduced level, what they’re calling a “tier two scenario” or a 50 percent cut in program costs for a total of $1.04 million a year, which translates into fewer students receiving instruction and reduced staffing hours. “The committee felt it was important to be realistic about how much money we could raise — and raising $4 million over the next two years to maintain our current programs felt incredibly challenging,” says Parker, who noted a recent $100,000 infusion of state funds that has been committed to the cause courtesy of the City of Berkeley’s Public Health Department. Still, she acknowledges, there is a long way to go to secure full funding for next fall.

Fourteen of Berkeley’s 19 schools have gotten federal funding in the past, money designed to benefit schools with significant low-income populations. The programs slated to lose their funding come October include Berkeley High School, Berkeley Technology Academy, Longfellow and Willard middle schools. Seven elementary schools face cuts, including Emerson, John Muir, LeConte, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Thousand Oaks and Washington. Hopkins, Franklin and King preschools will also be impacted by the loss of income.

The community is gearing up to raise funds and awareness on many levels. A Change.org petition is gathering signatures in support of the campaign. Individual schools are writing grant proposals and holding plant sales, movie nights, and fun runs to support cooking and gardening instruction. Meanwhile, a city-wide Dine Out event is slated for May 30, with prominent local food businesses and restaurants in the mix such as the Cheese Board, Comal, Gather, Ippuku, La Note, and Revival Bar + Kitchen, who are all donating a percentage of sales to the classroom campaign.

For some who have signed on in support it’s both a professional and personal cause. “My three kids have benefited from the cooking and gardening programs at BUSD; my oldest daughter says the garden program at Willard was the only thing that got her through middle school,” says Christian Geideman, owner-chef of the critically-acclaimed Ippuku, featuring izakaya-style dining in downtown Berkeley. “And my youngest still talks about Farmer Ben and the chickens at Le Conte Elementary.” Geideman sees the benefits of such programs beyond the school years. “The restaurant industry is a major employer in our area, imagine how much teenagers could learn in four years that could prepare them for culinary careers,” he says. “I know that as a troubled teen I could have benefited from such a program; it should be expanded at Berkeley High, not cut.”

Geideman’s partner in work and life, Erinn Geideman, discovered first hand the positive effects of the program when she worked as an assistant to Washington Elementary’s cooking teacher Carrie Fehr. “At the elementary school age it’s mostly about giving them access to the process: peeling, chopping and handling food,” says Erinn Giedeman. “When you teach a small child how to cut their own food it gives them a real sense of accomplishment. And when they taste what they’ve created it’s exciting and fills the kids with pride.” Many students, Erinn Geideman also noted, mentioned sharing the recipes at home with their families, an important aspect of a program that emphasizes healthy, seasonal eating geared towards fruit, vegetable, and whole grain recipes, designed with obesity and diabetes prevention in mind. The value of such edible education programs are hard to quantify in terms of test scores but one measure in a UC Berkeley study found that young students routinely exposed to fruits and vegetables through cooking and gardening instruction ate 1.5 more servings of produce a day compared with kids with fewer opportunities to dig in the dirt and work the stove at school.

The best known cooking and gardening program in Berkeley schools, King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard, is not impacted by the cuts, as its programs are paid for by the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters. But the ESP (formerly the Chez Panisse Foundation) project staff are working with the BUSD community to come up with a financial plan for the future of its imperiled programs. “The loss of federal funding to support BUSD’s garden and cooking programs is a tragedy and ample evidence, if any were needed, that the call for this transformational change–to bring kids in the public schools into a healthy and delicious relationship with food–needs to get still louder,” says Katrina Heron, executive director of ESP.

Kyle Cornforth, director of ESY Berkeley, is on the superintendent’s advisory committee and active in the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance and the alliance’s Marian Mabel says Cornforth has been instrumental in providing assistance to help strengthen the curriculum components of the BUSD’s cooking and gardening instruction to make the strongest possible case that such programs are indispensable to students. To that end, the committee is re-envisioning the program at a district-wide level (for all schools, including four elementary schools currently ineligible for federal funds) and seek to integrate the program into Common Core State Standards and what’s known as 2020 Vision, Berkeley’s effort to end racial disparities in academic achievement.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Three: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Mindful of what is happening across the bay in Berkeley, Education Outside (formerly the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance) is working hard to tie outdoor education in San Francisco public schools to core curriculum such as science, in a program launched three years ago. It’s also trying to keep costs in check, by hiring young, service corps members for $25,000 a year to run these programs, set to be in 21 K-5 schools this fall. “What is happening in Berkeley is instructive, it shows how easily these kinds of programs can be cut or lopped off, that’s why we’re focusing on making them an integral part of every student’s day,” says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, Education Outside’s executive director. “We never use the term ‘gardening’ or ‘cooking,’ which suggest that they’re extra programs not integral to curriculum.”

Back in the East Bay, another relatively new model for providing edible education is coming to Oakland schools this fall, via a national program known as FoodCorps, which places a service member in a school for a year to help tend or build a school garden, improve school cafeteria food, and talk up healthy eating with students. It costs FoodCorps about $32,500 to put a service member in a school, including a $15,000 stipend, a $5,550 Americorps award, and health benefits. FoodCorps has partnered with the Edible Schoolyard Project for a summer academy geared towards FoodCorps fellows, service members with one year of experience, who are training to become peer-mentors at sites around the country.

For now, in Berkeley the focus remains on saving a lauded program many years in the making. “What’s in jeopardy is losing the groundwork from developing a nationally-recognized program,” says Willard Middle School parent Cindy Tsai Schultz, who is on the school’s gardening and cooking committee. “In 1995 at Willard, Matt Tsang, our gardening coordinator, started with two small planter boxes. Today we have a model program with a flourishing garden, six chickens, and gardening and cooking classes that integrate nutrition education with math and science,” she adds. “Our garden produces enough food for cooking classes for over 500 children. The garden also provides a safe and peaceful place and offers students a sense of security. We can’t lose the last 15 years of hard work and kids’ strong connection with the program. We can’t let all that nurturing turn to weeds.”

Donations to the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program can be made through the Berkeley Public Education Foundation, when making a donation through BPEF, specify that the contribution is earmarked for the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program. For information on volunteer opportunities for the Dine Out fundraiser, to offer suggestions for major funders, or to donate email: berkeleyfundraiser@gmail.com.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Four: Students at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley.
Photo: Rivka Mason

A thriving sanctuary at school. Photo: Rivka Mason