In a state which owns the role as largest agricultural exporter in the country, how its largest city deals with food policy is important, not only for the state, but the nation as a whole. Such is the case with Los Angeles, California, a place where local produce runs abound. The problem is, it’s not only support for local food production that’s integral for regional food policy, but it’s the distribution of it.

According to the 2005 LA County Health Survey, only 14.6 percent of adults eat over five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Add that to a population over half (55.5 percent) of which is either obese or overweight, and it’s easy to posit the correlation between good food and improved health.

This week the Los Angeles Food Policy Task Force, established last year by the L.A. Board of Public Works, released a its report, “Good Food for All Agenda: Creating a New Regional Food System for Los Angeles.” The report focuses not only environmental concerns related to the LA food system, but also the political and social side of things. With studies showing that there is a direct correlation between income and health, these are the issues that local, and national, leaders have to start taking a serious look at, and it’s good to see one of the nation’s most abundant agricultural regions starting to do so.

In the land of plenty, the report paints a grim picture of the reality for many LA residents:

A block from backyard vegetable gardens whose vitality could make you gasp, displays of cheap-calorie, high-profit, chemical-laden snacks, and vivid, sugary sodas all but crowd out the produce sections of neighborhood markets. Children eat prepackaged school lunches designed to ease the problems of distribution rather than nutrition. Billions of consumer dollars that could go towards sustainable, fairly priced locally grown food goes out of the region and out of the country. Improbably, even here, many thousands of Angeleno families go hungry each day.

Local food can’t just be a trend or a movement, it has to be practical, affordable and accessible, and when we’re talking about environmental, social and political issues, this is something that all cities across the country should be considering.

The report also calls for the city to establish a Good Food council, which would aid in connecting the dots between all the groups within the city that are doing work that’s related; focusing on local food means strengthening the community around it. University researchers can work with soup kitchens and activists can work with industry professionals.

You can read the full report here.

Image: djjewelz

If you’ve ever seen the movie Chinatown, in which private investigator Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) stumbles upon a gigantic water scandal in the course of investigating an adultery case in Los Angeles, then you know that California’s water issues go way back.

Water is contentious here because we have so little of it and need so much. California is one of the world’s most valuable agricultural areas. The state supplies over half of U.S. fruits, nuts and vegetables and over 90 percent of U.S. almonds, artichokes, avocados, broccoli and processing tomatoes, yet, most of the water used to grow these crops comes from the extreme northeast part of the state.

Early in the history of California, we built a series of dams, canals, and aqueducts to transfer the Sierra snowpack to agricultural and urban areas. Without this water, most of the areas where we grow crops and many of our urban centers would be virtual deserts.

Warmer temperatures over the past few years and irregular precipitation have left the state with a less dependable Sierra snowpack. Court decisions to protect fish, such as the endangered Delta Smelt, have meant that the water diverted from the delta to farms and urban areas has been cut by as much as 30 percent. And the state’s population is still growing and expected to continue to do so.

With lower deliveries, water agencies across the state are worried about being able to supply their growing customer base. The issue has been framed as a fight between farmers and fishermen, north and south, and rural and urban.

The current situation recently led to the revival of an old idea that was once one of California’s most contentious water battles – a Peripheral Canal. The original Peripheral Canal was proposed in the early 1980s as a way to divert water south from the Sacramento River and the delta. It sparked an epic north vs. south campaign battle, with the north accusing Southern California of attempting to abscond with water that wasn’t rightfully theirs.

The California Water Bond of 2010, (or Proposition 18) created a new water war this past spring and summer until it was removed from the ballot in September by the California Legislature. The unpopular bill was not expected to pass in November so lawmakers postponed it until 2012, in hopes that the public would be more receptive to the bill at a later date.

The bill was to provide ecosystem restoration, groundwater cleanup, funding for safe drinking water, water education, recycling, and drought relief, but the bulk of the money was to go to dams (which, under the bill, could be partially owned by private corporations) and a new peripheral canal. This Civil Eats article summarizes the different issues well. Despite several worthy environmental projects contained in the bill, many activist groups saw it as a way to subsidize water for large agribusiness concerns, while leading the way toward privatization at taxpayer’s expense. Other environmental groups saw the restoration efforts as nothing more than remediation for the damage caused by the new diversion and storage systems that were the true crux of the bill.

The list of groups that opposed the bill included The Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, United Farmworkers, Restore the Delta, the Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fishermens’ Association, and many more. Supporters included Meg Whitman, California Chamber of Commerce, and most of the state water agencies, and a few environmental groups such as Save the Redwoods League and the Nature Conservancy.

Because the bill is due to be resurrected in two years, environmental groups, government agencies, and ag groups are working to educate the public about the state’s water issues.

I recently attended a panel discussion entitled Portioning California’s Water for Farms, Fish, and Families at the David Brower Center in Berkeley CA. The event was sponsored by the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, the San Francisco Professional Food Society (SFPFS), the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), and Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE).

The panel was billed as an educational session for food professionals and concerned citizens. Panelists were to discuss the need to consider fish, wildlife, farms, and urban areas when setting water policy. Unfortunately the panel was largely made up of bureaucrats and water lawyers talking to one another in insider water language. Panelists summarized the positions of their various constituencies on the water issues, failing to connect the dots in a way that would have helped the audience relate. These long individual summaries did not leave much time for questions from the audience that could have served to bring the discussion closer to home. I can’t say I didn’t learn anything, but as an educational session, it was mixed.

The panel’s moderator was Tina Cannon Leahy, Principal Consultant, California Assembly, Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee. Panelists included: Laura King Moon, Assistant General Manager, State Water Contractors; Campbell Ingram, Program Manager, California Water Program, The Nature Conservancy; Barry Epstein, Partner, Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley LLC; Brian Leahy, Assistant Director, Division of Land Resource Protection, California Department of Conservation; and Tim Ramirez, Natural Resources Division Manager, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and Dave Runsten, Community Alliance with Family Farmers.

Here’s what I did learn: Almost everyone on the panel seemed to be for the Water Bill. One audience member spoke up and asked how delta farmers could be expected to subsidize developers and big ag. She identified herself as a 3^rd generation delta farmer and stated that the delta farmers are NOT for this bill. I would have liked to have seen some other viewpoints represented on the panel, and not just in the audience. There was some valuable talk of conservation efforts by municipalities and farmers, but I would have liked to have heard more.

Bottom line is this: We don’t have enough water, yet we need to continue to produce food, supply our cities, and protect our ecosystem. Therefore, we need to educate ourselves about where our water comes from and how it’s used, learn how to conserve, and get involved in 2012. And this isn’t just a California problem. It’s a global problem.

Here are some good places to start to learn more about water as a global problem:

Film: Blue Gold: World Water Wars

Book: Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: DSearls

Squeezing community after community, farmer after farmer, and attempting to camouflage and clean up its heavily packaged inventory with so-called green initiatives, the behemoth Walmart appears more tenacious than bed bugs as it keeps creeping in expected and unexpected places around the globe.

The discount retail giant, which operates in 14 countries, has now set its blights on Africa, namely the Johannesburg-based Massmart with an offer of $4.2 billion to buy out the business. Massmart is a combo of Walmart and Home Depot and the biggest peddler of basic foods in the region, selling in 14 sub-Saharan countries with sales of about $6.8 billion this year. No wonder Walmart is considered a global superpower. It is more than a force to reckon with; it is a planet with a life force of its own.

It’s hard to believe this is what Sam Walton had in mind in 1962 when he set up shop. Yet in the nearly five decades since the enterprising son of an Oklahoma farmer founded the discount chain, it has morphed into one of the 100 most powerful economies in the world, ranking #19. Meanwhile, it has emerged as the anti-green in putting mom and pop stores out of business, planting its own cheap farm sources and peddling affordable bulk to a growing base of consumers buying the concept that quantity over quality is the way to get ahead.

The post-war aspiration of a car in every garage has been reinvented as the goal of a flat screen in every den, as Walmart makes it possible for low-income families to afford the luxuries that define the viral American dream. In fact, the company operates like bankrupt attorneys, growing fatter during a recession, benefiting from hard times. And as the economy recovers, sales at Walmart suffer. That tells you something about perception.

In efforts to recover, the company is doing what it has trained serotonin seeking consumers to do: Go shopping. After using up its credit allowance in small towns and suburbs, it is trying to locate urban hoods that have rejected the retailer in years past, along with new international ventures like Africa. It figures it can disguise its box stores and still offer cheap goods that will appeal to cash-poor shoppers in cities like New York and Chicago.

But we wonder if Walmart’s journey will end when its influence peddling no longer charms decision makers or when consumers can no longer fill their trucks with gas to drive to the stores to load up their reusable bags.

According to Joel Makower, Executive Editor of GreenBiz. com, the company’s influence is huge but doesn’t guarantee a sustainability as a business.

“I don’t believe Walmart will ever be a sustainable business in the classic definition of being able to operate indefinitely in the way they current do,” he tells me. “Eventually, they’ll run out of resources of permission to operate or something else. But I also believe that they are extremely resourceful and clever and powerful, so like so many other companies, they may find a pathway through this. Time will tell.”

Meantime, Makower points out that box stores aren’t the enemy of the green good movement, arguing that they might work to introduce local and organic ideology to the masses.

“Farmers markets are flourishing in record numbers, and more big stores – including Walmart and Whole Foods – are learning how to source locally when possible and affordable,” he suggests. “And these big players have scale, which we need to make these products mainstream and affordable. If we relegate green products to a few small niche players, we simply won’t make the different we need to make.”

Still, its a mixed grocery bag, according to food writer Vanessa Barrington, who says Walmart’s touted Heritage Agriculture  Program is just another scam to undercut farmers, citing the profit margin in 2006 when farmers received a mere 19 cents for every $1 consumers spent on food. She says the company could end up displacing the very farmers it set out to support with this initiative. In other words, there’s no business like show business.

“The problem is that Walmart doesn’t do anything without a compelling business reason,” Barrington wrote in a recent EcoSalon article. And often when a whale as large as Walmart moves an inch, it displaces everything around it.

Is there cause for concern? Makower believes Walmart may look unbeatable on the outside but is a long way off from from truly transforming into the good, green, sustainable brand the marketing geniuses are spinning.

“What makes Walmart interesting is its influence, both upstream with its 60,000-plus suppliers, and downstream to its 300 million or so consumers,” he observes. “They can make a big different. If they can succeed as a business along the way, that’s terrific, but they’re a long way from that.”

Images: Koonisutra, Walmart

The Pacific Northwest has an obsession with local food; an obsession that started long before eating local became a trend. With ample orchards, farms, vineyards and a healthy coastline the region is known for its year-round bounty, and in an area that’s so rich in all kinds of food, working with the local community to put food on the table is not only a sustainable choice, but an economic one. A choice that ultimately builds community and makes the region stronger.

But with so many farmers, fishermen and foodies, how does one keep track of all the options? Food Hub might just be the answer.

Launched by Portland-based non-profit Ecotrust, Food Hub combines the functionalities of a social network with smart marketing strategies that put an emphasis on local, allowing food service professionals who want to buy local food to easily access growers and processors that have exactly what they’re looking for. In fact, Ecotrust’s vice-president of food and farms Deborah Kane went as far as to call it “the Facebook of local food, or the Match.com for food buyers and food sellers.”

Although focused on the professional side of the food industry – the website can only be accessed by regional food buyers and sellers – Food Hub will have a very direct effect on Northwest consumers, who will quickly reap the benefits. As of last month the site had over 600 members, and that included buyers for not only restaurants, but schools, hospitals and resorts.

Supported by various foundations and individuals, Ecotrust also worked closely with the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Washington State Department of Agriculture to develop Food Hub, proof that institutions can be visionaries when it comes to food policy.

While many of us foodies have made a conscious effort to buy local and support the food culture of the regions that we live in, large scale alimentary change has to be teamed with infrastructural shifts, and if it’s successful in the coming months, Food Hub could easily become that model.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

A 2002 application of soil fumigant metam-sodium sickened over 260 residents in Arvin, California. Initial reports by country officials indicated that only one person was affected, but door-to-door community surveys found that residents had suffered a variety of symptoms including eye irritation, nausea, vomiting, and breathing difficulties. Metam-sodium is an acutely toxic chemical linked to cancer and reproductive disorders.

These are just two of the many incidents of pesticide exposure endured by workers and residents in the Central Valley.

When most of us think about pesticides, it’s often in the context of buying organic food to avoid ingesting chemicals or exposing our children.

If we’re a little further along in our awareness of the dangers of pesticides, we might go so far as to think about how pesticides harm the ecosystem, and pollute air and water.

But because agricultural workers live in areas invisible to most of us, we may not be aware that the people who harvest our food live and work immersed in a toxic stew of chemicals like methyl iodide (a pesticide linked to cancer and miscarriages), chlorpyrifos (an insecticide linked to endocrine disruption, asthmas, and nervous system disorders), and atrazine (an herbicide associated with hormone disruptions that is banned in Europe).

California, being the produce basket of the country, accounts for 20-25% of all pesticide use in the country. About one-third of total pesticide use in the state is known to be toxic to humans. Children are particularly vulnerable because their smaller, developing bodies can’t take the toxic load. Add to that the fact that many are exposed in the womb and you can see why shorter, unhealthier lives are not unusual in farmworker communities.

This injustice is directly linked to race, class, and poverty. According to a 2003 paper, Farmworker Women and Pesticides in California’s Central Valley, published by The Pesticide Action Network, farm workers in California who harvest our food number over 700,000 and are mainly people of color. Not only do they work in pesticide-soaked fields but they also live adjacent to these fields and are exposed to contaminated dust, air, and water 24-7. Their children go to schools that are located near farms where chemicals are used regularly. Farm workers rarely have health insurance and access to medical care is limited due to language and transportation barriers.

Updated with additional information as of 11-14-2011: From the same paper, due to lack of cheap health insurance or medical assistance to aid California Farm workers to get access to health care, 20% of those surveyed have never been to a doctor. Farmworkers are not able to leave their work to visit clinics, which are only available from 9am-5pm. Leaving their work equals no payment.

Though California worker safety laws require training on handling pesticides, the farm workers interviewed for the paper reported rarely receiving any training or safety gear. Most workers don’t report exposure incidents to their employers or officials out of fear they will lose their jobs. Compensation for medical bills is practically unheard of. The four California counties with the highest pesticide use are also the four poorest counties in California. Fresno, Kern, Kings, and Tulare counties have an average per capita income of $19,733 as compared to $29,856 for the state. This is not surprising as the people with the least economic power have historically been the people most exposed to contaminated workplaces and neighborhoods.

But the people most affected by pesticides are fighting for environmental justice in farm worker communities, and women are leading the charge. Through community organizing, female leaders and residents of these communities are fighting for cleaner air and water, medical care and reimbursement for victims, and regulatory phase out of some of the most dangerous chemicals.

A slide show, 25 Stories from the Central Valley, by UC Santa Cruz graduate student Tracy Perkins, is part of a larger public art project that documents the daily lives of the people who live in the Central Valley, and shows first-hand what they are up against. It features women like Irma Medellin and Teresa DeAnda, who are working to make the Central Valley safer for residents and workers.

Irma Medellin has also been instrumental in working for stronger regulations regarding buffer zones around areas where pesticides are applied.

In addition to her own non-profit organization, El Quinto Sol, dedicated to ensuring the community has a voice in matters of health and environmental justice, Medellin was an organizer with the BioDrift Project- a joint effort by El Quinto Sol, Californians for Pesticide Reform, Commonweal, and Pesticide Action Network.

The project trains local residents to use a device called a Drift Catcher to monitor the pesticides in the air around their homes and workplaces and use the data to push for stronger regulation.

Over three years, residents of the Central Valley town of Lindsay collected data on airborne pesticides. Combined with urine tests of residents, the project determined that at least one of the pesticides drifting over their neighborhood was also in their bodies. More than 91% of those tested had above-average levels of breakdown products of the pesticide chlorpyrifos in their urine. The proof resulted in the creation of buffer zones around schools and residential areas.

Teresa DeAnda has lived across from heavily sprayed fields of grapes and then almonds in Earlimart, CA all of her life. “I’ve always been here. Taking it my whole life,” she said. Finally, she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Her work was instrumental in the passage of SB 391, the Pesticide Drift Exposure Response Act that was passed in 2004.

A pesticide cloud over Earlimart in 1999 inspired Teresa to began attending county meetings to learn more about pesticides and their health risks. But it was a series of pesticide accidents in 2002 in Arvin, and again October 3, 2003 in Weedpatch, and the following night in Lamont, that made Teresa an activist.

In the last two incidents, opposite sides of the same field were sprayed on consecutive nights with chloropicrin, a teargas-like chemical used during World War I. Residents living nearby had immediate reactions ranging from vomiting, to difficulty breathing. In the first incident, 24 residents were affected. Firefighters responding to 911 calls gave a cursory sniff of gas stoves and water heaters, saying they detected nothing. Residents were ignored when they told firefighters that the problem was pesticides from an adjacent field.

The next night, October 4, an apartment complex on the other side of the field in Lamont, housing over 100 residents, was enveloped in the same chemical. Terrified parents called 911 asking for help for sick children. They were told to stay in their homes and apartments and calm down. No help was sent. Finally a small caravan of residents left the complex, only to encounter a roadblock preventing them from leaving. One man, desperate with worry for his three sick daughters, simply drove around the roadblock to a nearby parking lot. Others followed and gathered in the parking lot to wait for medical help.

When emergency crews arrived, the people were quarantined on tarps on the ground for several hours with no food and little water. They were given one chance to go to the hospital, but those that weren’t in acute breathing distress declined, as most had no money or medical insurance. No other medical care was offered that night, though later, due to public pressure, local clinics offered help whether or not residents could pay.

Through her community work over the years, Teresa had developed a relationship with Senator Dean Florez. After she heard about the last two incidents, she called him to set up a hearing. She then organized the victims of the incidents to attend and testify.

Describing the day of the hearing as “the best day of my life,” she recounted how victims described their experiences in honest detail, many breaking down in tears.

The hearing led directly to the passage of the Pesticide Drift Exposure Response Act, SB 391, barely a year later, and the bill was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Act ensures that people who are exposed to pesticide drift receive immediate and proper treatment. It stipulates that people will be reimbursed for medical bills incurred from the exposure. It also requires the California Environmental Protection Agency to establish minimum standard protocols for pesticide application and to incorporate a pesticide drift component in their area plans.

“There has to be an awakening for everybody who buys fresh fruits and vegetables. When they are enjoying those grapes, or that apple, they have to think, “˜at whose expense was this grown? Who was made sick by the pesticides used to grow this crop?’,” said Teresa.

Learn more about pesticides and the specific pesticides found on your everyday produce. Check out Pesticide Action Network’s searchable database and mobile ap, What’s on my food? to find out what’s on your food.

HT: Erik Vance, Tracy Perkins

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: de Harris via Flickr

Did you know that global livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than transportation? According to Mark Bittman, eating less meat could have a greater affect on the environment than reducing the mileage we put on our cars!

As the Food Revolution’s grumblings grow louder, more practical guides to eating are becoming available to help us make sense of all the food and health information we’re bombarded with. Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating is one such book, written by Mark Bittman – a food journalist, culinary aficionado, and cookbook writer, who is perhaps best known for his cookbook, How to Cook Everything, first published in 1998.

Focused on making sustainable, lifestyle change, Food Matters includes a practical guide to eating with specific meal plans and simple, daily recipes to follow. Additionally, the book discusses agriculture, food and American eating habits, the environmental impact of our eating culture and a brief history of how we got where we are today.

Written as a personal account and journey about changing his own eating habits, Bittman makes a compelling argument as to why the rest of us should follow his lead. After all, who wouldn’t want to lose weight, be healthier, save money and reduce global warming? Count me in!

Your iPod can run off the grid with this solar powered iPod Case Charger.

Give someone Wheels When They Need Them with a ZipCar membership.

Great for hot and cold beverages, this tumbler will save a lot of trees and CO2 used to produce coffee cups. To emphasize your point, toss in a gold tone coffee filter to cut down on the paper ones that get pitched each day.

Your favorite tea lover can brew on the run with this combination tumbler-infuser.

Green those meals with a CSA Membership (Community Supported Agriculture). This site will find the closet farm throughout the U.S. for you to purchase from.

Rid friends and family of energy vampires with the Smart Strip Power Strip.

Power small electronics like a GPS or cell phone, with the Solio Solar Universal Charger.

Get your colleagues to ditch the plastic utensils in the office kitchen with reusable bamboo tableware that works great on the go. Utensil holders give plastic bottles a second shot at a useful life, and an opportunity to stay out of our landfills. Made out of RPET (recycled PET plastic).

Chico has taken the reusable shopping bag one step farther with The Messenger, a super hip bag that folds into a small pouch.

Instead of a gift card to the local mall, try the gift that keeps on giving with Microplace.com, a Microfinance organization that serves a range of focuses from Fair Trade to women.

Main image: alan_cleaver2000

You gonna eat that? Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that once planted in the wild, genetically modified organisms, such as bio-engineered fruit, grain or vegetables can change native, wild plant neighbors’ DNA. In the future, food activists worry, you might not even have a dietary choice.

A flurry of news stories, blog posts and Tweets have “cropped up” in recent weeks around this study and related events. Even teenagers are dialed into the debate over the merits and dangers of GMOs, says Jenny Kessler, who founded and directs the Garden Program at The Automotive High School in Brooklyn, New York.

Kessler teaches English, ESL and a class called “Food, Land and You.” Through this coursework or participation in the Garden Program, Automotive students learn about farming and industrial agriculture and gain hands-on experience cultivating and cooking food.

“Some of my students agree with economist Jeffrey Sachs that genetically modified crops should be used to alleviate world hunger now, since they can grow on depleted land in bad conditions,” Kessler says, “but most are concerned that GMOs aren’t tested enough before they enter our mainstream food supply. Or they worry that modified seeds and cross-pollination will make natural products scarce and expensive, or even extinct.”

The Garden Program group (as seen on Flickr.com/autogarden) wishes for – after a personal visit from Anna Lappe or Michael Pollan – better information about the effect of modified crops on human and plant health, and to inspire Americans to buy more locally produced food.

Basic reading:

“A report by a team from the United States and China appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [where] researchers point out that gene flow between crops and their wild relatives is common and difficult to contain. They note concerns that wild plants could, as a result, gain genetically engineered resistances. And these could affect the natural balance in their environment.” -US News And World Report feature

“Bayer CropScience AG is responsible for financial damage sustained by Missouri farmers when their rice crops were contaminated by genetically modified seeds, the growers’ lawyer told a federal court jury in St. Louis”¦Testing of one of the “˜LibertyLink’ [rice] strains at Louisiana State University was completed in 2001. While there has never been a specifically identified contamination event”¦studies suggest an event of cross-pollination with ordinary rice or a mixing of regular and genetically modified seed occurred then.” -BoingBoing.net opinion, discussion

“The debate over genetically modified crops has flared up in India, where critics have stalled the commercial release of insect-resistant eggplant, despite recent approval from the country’s biotechnology regulatory committee.” -

Economist Jeffrey Sachs’ official bio, including recent news by and about him

EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by new EcoSalon writer and columnist Lora Kolodny.

Image: liangjinjian

At first, it seems extremely eco-friendly, the biannual Compost Giveaway Events every fall and spring in San Francisco hosted by the city’s Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

Residents are offered free compost to produce soil for community and school gardens and local backyards. It’s the green and organic thing to do.

The problem is the mulch isn’t made of food scraps and manure but a combination of toxic sewage sludge from waste water treatment, green waste, yard waste and wood chips.

What’s in sewage sludge? Stuff that’s foul and harmful to people and other living things.

The True Food Network, which is leading a petition drive against the latest giveaway argues sewage sludge is shown by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to contain heavy metals, pathogens, pharmaceuticals, PCB’s, flame retardants and endocrine disruptors. In addition, organic pollutants are present in sludge samples, such as polybrominated diphenal ethers (PMDEs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, DDT degradation products, chlordadanes, synthetic musk products, triclosan and tributytin.

“Residents may be led to believe that the city’s sludge compost is organic,” says the network. “The USDA’s National Organic Program’s (NOP) regulations, however, strictly forbid the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer or soil amendment, no matter if it is composted or otherwise treated. This compost is by no means organic.”

The Center for Food Safety and the Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems filed a petition with Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s Mayor and Ed Harrington, General Manager of SFPUC, asking them to immediately and permanently suspend the sewage sludge compost giveaways for the fall. Residents are asked to join the letter writing campaign to protect the health of its gardeners.

Image: SfLatchkey

As the recession cuts deeper into the profits of big food companies, many brands are downsizing their portions in a bid to cut costs. In some cases, they are also downgrading their ingredients. But as chocolate giant Cadbury is discovering – you mess with your iconic brands at your peril.

Cadbury’s current advertising campaign involves eyebrow gymnastics from two children. Meanwhile, it has made some eyebrow-raising changes to the formulation of its popular Dairy Milk block in Australia and New Zealand. The new chocolate block is smaller, contains fewer cocoa solids (you know, the part that actually makes it chocolate) and it contains environmentally destructive palm oil. It now finds itself at the centre of a PR storm, having incurred the wrath of shoppers, foodies and environmentalists alike. Whittakers, a rival chocolate brand in New Zealand, is taking advantage of the furore with this comparative shopping ad.

The first change is simple – the 250g block now weighs just 200g. The packaging has been redesigned and the squares of chocolate shrunken so the block actually appears to be the same size. Chocolate lovers are furious at the resizing and the fact that the price has not dropped accordingly and have formed a protest site, at choclovers.org, and have been spreading the message via Twitter and a Facebook protest group. Cadbury says in the FAQ on its website (Australia and New Zealand) that it has actually reduced the wholesale price but it’s up to retailers whether to pass it on.

Product resizing is annoying for consumers but nothing new – and given that people eat more when the serving sizes are bigger, it might not be such a bad thing for the public health. It’s the second change that is more concerning from an environmentalist’s point of view.

Cadbury has reduced the amount of cocoa solids from 26% to 21% and added nasty vegetable fats – specifically palm oil – to compensate. The company claims that it’s done this, not to save costs as you might think, but to improve the customer experience.

We have done this for a number of reasons. Primarily it is because our consumers have been telling us that we could improve their enjoyment of our chocolate by making it slightly softer to bite. Vegetable fat helps deliver this softness whilst at the same time maintaining our chocolate’s great taste.

As a chocolate lover myself, I’m not so credulous that I believe that Cadbury has done this for my benefit. I know a bit about food and chocolate and there is no doubt that palm oil is a poor substitute for the real thing. I am pretty sure most chocolate fans would feel the same way – despite what Cadbury’s “independent research” might show. I’m probably not their market, though – I tend to go for more quality brands such as Green & Black’s, the organic brand now owned by Cadbury, and Lindt.

However, there are millions of people who do buy Cadbury chocolate so the formulation of their products is part of a bigger problem. The forests of southeast Asia have been ravaged by deforestation, spelling disaster for wildlife such as orangutans and tigers and for the climate. Palm oil production is one of the leading causes of this – both historically and currently.

The main customers of palm oil are food manufacturers looking for cheap fats – though demand is also rising because of its utility as a biofuel. The rainforest of the Congo could be next, with China set to establish a giant palm oil plantation in the African country. It is ironic that Cadbury’s last big advertising campaign involved a gorilla.

Cadbury claims:

We are Board members of the RSPO [Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil] and purchase Green Palm certificates that independently certify the fact that the palm oil we purchase has come from sustainable sources.

The RSPO has a set of standards, its Principles & Criteria, that define practices for sustainable palm oil production. These include the use of appropriate best practices by growers and millers, the responsible development of new plantings and environmental responsibility and the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity.

All well and good, except that the RSPO is widely regarded as greenwash – members have to do little more than pay a membership fee. Even the bible for big business, the Wall Street Journal reports that it’s a problem. The Green Palm Certificates, meanwhile, allow backers to invest in sustainable production without necessarily using the product. Even if Cadbury could be certain that it is buying palm oil from sustainable sources, which is dubious, it is still creating new demand for palm oil. Replacing existing palm oil for a ‘sustainable’ alternative is one thing, but it does not help matters if it is additional consumption.

No one seems convinced – and the backlash is huge. In most recent news, the Auckland Zoo has stopped stocking Cadbury, in the name of the orangutans.

Image via Treehugger