Policy

Earlier this week, USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack appointed 25 new members to the Fruit and Vegetable Advisory Committee for a two-year term -- including FOUR New Yorkers! Considering that several counties in NY State were declared disaster areas by the USDA this past fall due to heavy rains and the state's ag supply chain is severely broken this is uber good news for local farmers and eaters and everyone in between in the channels of distribution.

I decided to research the newly appointed NYers, and was pleased to dig up the following:

- Robert Nolan, Deer Run Farms, Brookhaven, Suffolk Country, Long Island (Lighthearted Locavore territory) - Nolan operates a small, 30-acre family farm that grows specialty lettuces, chicory, and escarole. He is also the former president of the LI Farm Bureau and 4th generation farmer. For many years, Nolan has been involved with educating Long Island children on where their food comes from.

-Brent Roggie, National Grape Co-op Association (think Welch's Foods, Inc. makers of grape juice and jams), the town of Westfield in Chautaugua Country. There's not much info on Roggie on the internet, but I'm happy to share the importance of the grape co-op to New York. Welch's is a top 100 food processor in the US and concord grapes are considered a "superfood" for their antioxidant power. NY State is considered the (concord) grape belt of the US - read more about juicy, purple concords from my Nov. 2008 post.

A sign-on campaign for the first-ever and groundbreaking (if I do say so myself) NYC Food Pledge and Food Charter launched on Friday night.

I am a proud committee member and inaugural signatory. It's an incredibly comprehensive and well thought through document that takes a systems approach to address the social, environmental and economic impacts that food and agriculture have on New York and the planet.

Please sign on via this LINK.

NYC FOOD CHARTER
10 PRINCIPLES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM

Food has a profound effect on the health and well-being of a community. The purpose of the NYC Sustainable Food Charter is to set forth the values and principles essential to a just, vibrant, and sustainable food system, and to spur the creation of such a food system for all New Yorkers.

1. Human Right
Access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is recognized internationally to be a basic human right. New York City should fully develop its foodshed and improve distribution systems in order to ensure easy access to healthy, sustainable food in all communities, particularly those with limited resources or at high risk for diet-related illnesses.

2. Equality
The harmful environmental, economic, and health consequences of the existing food system fall disproportionately on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. New York City should erase this disparity and should combat hunger, obesity, and diabetes.

3. Health

A few weeks ago, Consumer Reports published a report on BPA in canned foods which tested the levels of the chemical in all the cans and noted that

Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA.

The FDA will be revisiting the issue of BPA in food again because a congressional subcommittee determined that the original guidelines were based too heavily on studies sponsored by the American Plastics Council.

BPA is the abbreviation for Bisphenol A, an important building block for plastics used in many products. It is a know endocrine-disruptor, which is why The Endocrine Society recently spoke out against its widespread use citing evidence of the effects on evidence of the effects "on male and female reproduction, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, among other mechanisms. "

The plastic industry claims that the dose makes the poison and levels of BPA in our environment are too low to case harm. A recent Google Search on BPA turned up a rebuttal to Consumer Reports by the Statistical Assessment Service as the first result. The group's funding the murky, but they also rebut global warming.

Crosspost from Lighthearted Locavore Blog....According to the Wall Street Journal, the Towns of Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island are suing New York State's Department of Environmental Control (DEC) for its new fishing regulations because the State forgot to ask the Town's permission. Interestingly, Andrew Cuomo, NYS Attorney General, is not coming to the DEC's defense. And, local fisherman and town trustees are fighting for their rights -- recreational and commercial fisherman alike -- based on a Colonial Law, the Dongan Patent which says that Towns have jurisdiction over the fishing (and not the State or Federal Governments).

Long Island Fishing License Comes with A Colonial Catch, Wall St. Journal, 11/10/09

This week, the NY Times reported on a study by NYU and Yale that suggests that New York's fast food calorie labeling requirement may not be changing many consumers' ordering and eating behavior. Confoundingly, the Times reports:

Last Thursday, Food advocates, locavores and other interested participants from all over the country bubbled over with enthusiasm at the US Department of Agriculture’s first ever live Facebook chat.

The “Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer” team at the USDA hosted the interactive conversation which featured a streaming video question and answer format with Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan.

For about a half an hour, Merrigan gave thoughtful answers to questions on topics that ranged from farm to institution to restaurant supported agriculture and beginner farmer programs to the importance of local and regional agriculture to build wealth in rural communities and connect urban dwellers (and children) to where their food comes from.

In this Sunday's NY Times was yet another excellent article in the annals describing the dangers of a huge, inscrutible food system that combines (and recombines) scraps of meat from many different producers without holding them accountable for their wholesomeness. (Wait. That sounds strangely like the way mortgages were wontonly issued for over a decade!) Reporter Micheal Moss recounts the story of how a young Minnesota woman contracted E. coli from poorly handled ground beef sold by Cargil. It uses company and USDA documents to highlight the flaws in a system (or lack of a system) of regulation and consumer protection when it comes to the safety of meat. But beware the unintended consquences of more regulation on promoting a healthier food system.

Last month, the University of Vermont's Honors College held a three-day food systems seminar for 30 university professors as part of its summer program for educators. They defined food systems, discussed the benefits and challenges of local and regional supply chains, visited a Burlington, VT farm, picked berries and cooked. On the second day, a full morning was devoted to farm-to-school food systems with a focus on New York City Public School Food case study and the Vermont school system's farm to school program.

Co-presenters on school food included: Chef Jorge Collazo, Executive Chef of New York City Public Schools Office of School Food, Megan Camp, of Shelburne (VT) Farms and FEED, the farm-to-school organization in Vermont, and myself, Lexi Van de Walle, editor of the Lighthearted Locavore blog, member of the NYC Alliance for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and presenter and organizer for the Slow Food Long Island's School Food Lunch Eat-in.