Stop Using Technology and Eat Real Food

This week has been packed with news on protein. Here’s a run down mixed up with a bit of commentary.

First, due to consumer demand, the USDA is allowing public schools to opt-out of using Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings (BLBT) aka ‘Pink Slime” in their school lunches. 

Next comes two voices of support for a new soy-based chicken product - two voices who couldn’t be more different. Mark Bittman and a leading Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins just announced that they think Savage River Farms’ new soy-based chicken is delicious and investment-worthy, respectively. 

I find it exciting that a well respected VC firm like KP is getting interested in ag and solving our food and resource problems. But I find it disturbing that Bittman did not mention concerns of using organic or non-gmo soy for Savage River’s products. 

Our Problem with Protein is not the animal, it’s the volume of which we eat, which Bittman acknowledges, and also the feed that most of them are given; soy and corn. Almost 90% of the corn and soy that is grown in the US is genetically modified. These are crops that are reliant on pesticides and chemicals to survive, thrive, grow, be harvested, processed, and end up on your plate or in your animals. Creating a soy-based chicken-like product will not prevent the runoff from pesticides, the nutrient-deplention of our soil from monoculture, or bring back the diversity in our whole, real foods that we need to see from organic farming.

In addition to these problems with non-organic soy production, soy in general isn’t even that good for you. Just read this run down of its link to Alzheimer’s, increased Cancer rates, reduced Sperm count, and even some countries’ advice to parents not to feed it to children.

The answer to our food problem is to eat real, organically grown, whole foods. This is includes real animal products. The nutritional make-up of which has yet to be manufactured by scientists. We just need not give in to our savage instincts and over-eat animals like we do now. 

Eat less, eat better, know your source. If you don’t know how your animals were raised, or what they ate, or how they lived, ASK. Ask your retailer, grocery store manager, restaurant owner, butcher, whomever. Just. Please. Ask.

We as humans need protein to survive, but soy is not the answer to a sustainable protein system.

Cost Cutting Means Getting GMOs to Market Faster

America’s debt is now as big as our economy. You read that right.

In attempts to cut federal spending, the USDA has announced several major changes afoot, claiming that these streamlined operational processes will save $150M annually (a tiny amount given that our debts are over $15.2 Trillion). 

The plan is being called the Blue Print for Stronger Service; press release here. All of the changes give way for pause and analysis, and the language for every USDA Department Fact Sheet is very vague. 

Very concerning is a mandate to reduce the time it takes to approve Genetically Engineered Plant products. This bullet point is found on the Marketing and Regulatory page, and is in bold italics below:

 APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) is dramatically reducing times for programmatic processes and procedures, cutting wait time by 20 to 76 percent and enhancing business competiveness, by:

• Streamlining risk assessment and rulemaking processes for imported animal and plant products;
• Reducing length and variability of time it takes to make determinations on petitions for nonregulated status for genetically engineered plants; and  
• Streamlining the enforcement process against those who jeopardize plant and animal health and animal welfare focus on the most serious violators and resolve typical cases in substantially less time.

With Secretary Vilsack as a known GMO advocate, this addition comes to no surprise. How they plan to do this is still a question mark. 

This pending policy change is yet another reason to support the labeling of GMO foods. Very limited information is known on both the short and long term affects of feeding ourselves genetically modified foods. And when research is done, to negative results, strong efforts are made against the release of that information. What we are seeing, however, are studies showing significant adverse health effects from consuming the pesticide, Roudup, used to grow GMO crops.

This simply shows that we do not know enough to tell the public that these foods are safe to eat and feed our children, and that is should be our right as citizens to know what we are eating. 

Whether you support biotech and genetically engineered foods, it’s hard to deny that we, as Americans, should have the knowledge to give us the freedom to choose.