Where has all the food gone?

With a potentially devastating (read: another 4 years of Harper) election looming tomorrow, I can't help think about, well, food. Where is it? Why has nobody mentioned it during this election? In this of all years, I would have thought there was a chance to get food on the agenda. Until the bottom fell out of the economy last week, it's all there was in the news all year. Rising grain prices, reports in the Globe's business section about Saskatchewan farmers getting rich off the backs of people starving for wheat, E. Coli in peppers and tomatoes, melamine contamination (the most sinister of all food stories) in baby milk substitutes, Listeria in hospitals and seniors homes, the local food movement, the decline of BC's Agricultural Land Reserve....what does it take to get politicians to notice something?

If these things weren't enough, surely all the talk of Green Shifts and carbon taxes and environmental issues in general should have led someone to think about food, no? Apparently not. How can they not see that all of these things are connected?

Food imports are part of that economic system that's collapsing around us. We need two things to import food: (1) money to pay for it, and (2) someone to grow it, somewhere, who is willing to sell. If we don't have these, we had better learn to grow it for ourselves, which is going to get a lot harder if we keep building condos on all those farms. Still our agriculture ministries are mandated to export as much as they can of what we do grow.

Food just gets more and more centralized all the time. One little Listeria on one machine in one Maple Leaf plant killed and sickened people all over the country. I don't see how it's possible to add enough inspectors to protect us from a system so fragile that such a tiny thing can spread so far and wide.

Things are going horribly awry, and I fear all our potential leaders are too preoccupied with getting elected to notice.

So in the morning I will head down the street bright and early to vote. Not because I feel there is any great choice, but because that's just what I do. I've tried to not vote before but I just can't do it. Maybe it's an addiction (kind of like being a student....) or maybe it's just my silly commitment to democracy. I always get excited, nervous and giddy and that first date kind of way when I walk into a polling booth....

Terra Madre Forums

I may not have been blogging much of late, but I have been hosting one of a series of forums hosted by Slow Food in lead up to Terra Madre 2008 in October in Torino, Italy. For those of you not familiar with the event, Terra Madre "brings together food producers and workers from around the world, giving them the opportunity to discuss the major themes of food production. Together they share and compare the diverse and complex issues that underlie what “high-quality food” means to them: issues of environmental resources and planetary equilibrium, and aspects of taste, worker dignity, and consumer safety."

The online forums are available at http://forum.terramadre2008.org/. Each forum will culminate in a workshop at Terra Madre, facilitated by the online host. I am hosting the forum titled Stop the Cement - Preserving Farmland for Food, a discussion of issues facing protection of farmland globally that was jointly proposed by Heather Pritchard from Farm Folk City Folk and me. The forum focuses on the protection and preservation of agricultural land. Here is the complete description:

Preserving Farmland for Food

One of the biggest issues facing our ability to feed ourselves in the future is the protection and preservation of fertile land – and ensuring that land is used for food production and ecological services. Without adequate farmland and knowledgeable farmers to farm it, it will be impossible to produce enough food for a growing population.

Fertile land, much of which is located near cities, is at risk of land speculation and 'cementification' by commercial or residential development. Even protected farmland reserves may not be as secure as we think. Farmer attrition is becoming a serious problem as farmers either sell their land for retirement income or can’t find a new generation to take over the farm. In some regions, young people are interested in farming but can’t afford high land prices.

Through this forum STOPPING THE CEMENT, we hope to identify ways to protect farmland from price speculation, expropriation, and urban development; preserve indigenous rights to land for traditional hunting, gathering, fishing, and agricultural activities; educate and encourage the next generation of young farmers; and promote access to farmland for farmers. We also hope to highlight issues faced by communities from around the world related to farmland and farming the land. Ultimately, our goal is to share creative ways of preserving farmland for food and learn from the experiences of others.

I will be facilitating the actual workshop at Terra Madre in Torino, Italy in October, where I will also be representing the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems as an academic delegate to the meetings.

One more thing about corn syrup

Anyone who has been within a 5km radius of me in the past few years has probably heard me rant on about corn syrup, and I hinted at my feelings toward the substance here. Corn syrup — specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) — has been in the news lately because:
1. The food industry has been trying to promote it as a "natural" ingredient.
2. The US Food and Drug Administration recently reversed a ruling stating that HFCS could not be labeled as "natural" because it contained synthetic fixing agents.

Well, an article in FoodNavigator, a popular food industry news site, explains why:
The process sees the enzymes for making HFCS being fixed to a column by the use of a synthetic fixing agent called glutaraldehyde. However, this agent does not come into contact with the high dextrose equivalent corn starch hydrolysate and so it is not "considered to be included or added to the HFCS"

Sounds like typical regulatory doublespeak, right? Right. They are saying that although this chemical, glutaraldehyde, is used in manufacturing this "natural" substance (Side note: Since when are natural things manufactured?), it is not actually in the food. That's all well and good, but perhaps the FDA neglected to reflect on the toxicity of a chemical like glutaraldehyde. They should know all about it, because they have been strictly monitoring occupational exposure to it for over 60 years.

Now, I know a whole lot about this relatively obscure chemical. Perhaps ironically, I wrote my master's thesis on, of all things, glutaraldehyde, along with few other chemicals that were being introduced to eliminate the use of such a toxic substance altogether (summary here). Glutaraldehyde is long known to cause respiratory and skin allergies as well as a debilitating and little understood form of occupational asthma—not from ingesting it but from just being around it.

Glutaraldehyde is commonly used in leather tanning, and as a high level disinfectant for delicate hospital equipment. It is used to clean endoscopes and other medical equipment that can't be subject to heat sterilization. This stuff can kill tuberculosis and HIV, and they are using it to manufacture "natural" "food" products?! Something is not right here.

Definitions of natural notwithstanding, this leads me to another perhaps more serious concern. Because glutaraldehyde is so toxic, occupational health regulations require that its use be minimized in hospital settings and it can only when there is no safer alternative for cleaning medical equipment. So why are we exposing factory workers to it and putting them at risk of debilitating respiratory illness simply so we can use up all that subsidized American corn to make a cheaper form of sugar for food processing? I suspect that those handling the substance in these factories don't have the same level of protection as Canadian hospital workers.

The FDA, nor its Canadian counterpart Health Canada, does not have a spectacular record of protecting employees over ceding to industry demands. After two years of pestering both agencies, along with the manufacturers of glutaraldehyde and several supposedly safer alternatives, I found that it didn't take much for these companies to convince the regulators that their new thing was not only safe enough for market, but safe enough to relax occupational health regulations.

Still here

I've had reports of complaints regarding my absence from the blogworld. I apologize, with the excuse that my trip to India became very busy, with almost no free time for such endeavours. On the up side, I finished all the India based field research I had left to do for my thesis. I'm now taking a short vacation with friends (and a surprise visitor) in Israel, and head back toVancouver on Friday. I've been saving up stories and promise I will get up to date soon. Since this is the end of my research travel, I'll have to work on making my life in Vancouver more interesting so I'll still have something to write about!

Life in the Information Age

The saga of my complicated relationship with India continues. As I near the end of my last planned trip to India I am filled with mixed feelings. In many ways I am looking forward to ending my time of trying to live in two different countries, always packing up and moving to the other just as I get back into a routine in one. It's been an exhausting year and a half and it will be nice to stay away from airports and large backpacks for a while (notwhithstanding my Big Chill Revisited trip to Quebec in August to visit the old St.John's crowd). Still, when I think that in less than two weeks I will be leaving here with no idea when I will return makes me a little sad. I feel there is still so much to do, so much to see. I've met so many amazing people, and they keep introducing me to more. One thing I am looking forward to is that open, friendly Canadian style of communication....

It would be so much easier to, well, do anything, here if only people weren't so averse to sharing information. One of the NGOs I've been working with had a tendency to ask me why I wasn't at an event, organized by them, that was directly related to my research - the day after. I don't think they were keeping information from me, but it never occurred to anyone to tell me in advance. They seemed to think I would know. Direct and pointed questions are key, but you need to know what to ask. It's also important never to ask a question that could require an "I don't know" reply, because I have never heard these words uttered. This usually happens when asking directions, and if the person doesn't know they will make something up on the spot and tell you with the utmost surity how to get there.

Today was another example of how I will NOT miss this.

I was supposed to take a day trip by train to Alappuzha today to meet with a research contact. We spoke on the phone last night and decided to meet here in Thiruvananthapuram instead, since she has to come here on Monday. This means I could cancel my train ticket. Off I went to the station to make the cancellation and get a refund. I knew there was a separate reservations desk I needed to go to, but I couldn't find it so went to the information booth. I was told my morning ticket couldn't be refunded until after 8pm, and the return couldn't be refunded until today. So I left and went back this afternoon. I got in the wrong line up - 1/2 hour in the midday heat - to be told where the reservation office actually is, in another building. I went there and took a number to find there were 200 people ahead of me. I was clearing going to miss my afternoon appointment so I left and returned a couple of hours later. I was not looking forward to the wait so went to inquire that I could in fact get a refund. I was told I had to write a request for refund on a piece of white paper, which was procured for me with some difficulty, and I was directed to the station manager's office. The manager ripped up my request, wrote something on my ticket, and sent me directly to a wicket (no waiting!). Turns out I was too late to refund my morning ticket (why couldn't they do it last night!?) and because my return train was leaving within 4 hours I could only get a 50% refund. Again, why couldn't any have told me this earlier?! So I took my refund and left, thankful that at least I didn't wait for 3 hours in the line for what turned out to be $3.50. Cost for 3 rickshaw trips: $3.25.