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Parents warned to avoid ham in bowel cancer alert
Jane Kirby, The Independent
Parents should not give their children ham sandwiches in their packed lunches, a charity warned today.
Youngsters need to get into the habit of avoiding processed meats like ham, salami, hot dogs and bacon, it said.
According to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), there is “convincing evidence” that eating processed meat increases the risk of bowel cancer.
Scientists estimate about 3,700 bowel cancer cases could be prevented each year in the UK if everyone ate less than 70g of processed meat a week, which is roughly the equivalent of three rashers of bacon…
(17 August 2009)
Paris rooftops swarm with bees as urban honey industry takes off
Charles Bremner, the Times
Tourists are not the only species swarming on the Champs Élysées this August. Also enjoying the sunshine are squadrons of bees, part of a fast-multiplying population that is making honey a new Parisian industry.
The Tuileries, Luxembourg and other lesser gardens of Paris are now home to hundreds of thousands of bees that are far more productive than their country cousins.
“There are a huge quantity of flowers in Paris,” said Yves Védrenne, the general secretary of the National Apiculture Union. As well as the city’s lush parks and gardens, the boulevards and edges of motorways offer pollen well suited to bees, such as acacias, limes and chestnuts.
Not only is the city largely free from the pesticides and fertilisers that are killing the countryside bees, the warmth of the urban area promotes earlier breeding…
(18 August 2009)
Urban agriculture key to alleviating world hunger
Molly Slothower, bizcommunity
The urban poor have been hit the hardest by the global hunger epidemic, which has been fueled by the ongoing food, economic, financial, and environmental crises.
Getting healthy food into cities in sufficient quantities is an extremely difficult task. For the first time in the history of mankind, over half the world’s population lives in cities. Reached in 2007, that portion is projected to increase dramatically in the next few decades. About a third of all city dwellers, about one billion people worldwide, live in slums. The cost of importing food from rural areas is too much for many of the urban poor to bear.
For much of this population, growing food is the only way to survive and make a living. The practice of growing plants and raising livestock in empty lots, in pots in homes and on stairways and rooftops, on community land in parks or near water sources, or on small plots of land owned by families makes up a half or more of the food required in some cities in the developing world, particularly in Africa and Asia.
In 2003 alone, 49% of families living within the borders of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, farmed, and most of those families farmed for basic survival and food security. In the early 1990s, 70% of the poultry products consumed in the city were produced inside Kampala.
…Urban agriculture plays a critical role in public health in cities during the food crisis, and not just for the large urban portion of the one billion people in the world who live in hunger. Less income means people are less likely to eat healthy foods…
(11 August 2009)
Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food
Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine
Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon — circa 2009.
(See TIME’s photo-essay “From Farm to Fork.”)
Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair’s landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can’t even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.
And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America’s obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. “The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us,” says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)…
(21 August 2009)
thanks to kalpa for point out this significant and somewhat surprising article and the one below. Also see the related commentary on grist.
Lot’s on kalpa’s blog this week, including one that she calls one of the most important ag stories “Swine flu jumps again _ to turkeys in Chile _ but scientists see no dangerous mutation yet”, new citrus diseases moving up from Mexico, dying cattle in Argentina causing the need for beef imports, and prisoners helping to grow food for struggling food banks. -KS
The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2009 FAO report
Trade and Markets Division , Food and Agriculture Division of the United Nations
In the second half of 2006, world prices of most major food commodities began to climb. By the first half of 2008, international US dollar prices of cereals had reached their highest levels in almost 30 years, threatening the food security of the poor worldwide and provoking widespread international concern over an apparent world food crisis. While the second half of 2008 saw a rapid fall in international food prices as oil prices tumbled and the financial crisis and global recession reduced demand, prices are well above the levels seen in recent years and are expected to remain so. Many poor consumers still face high or rising food prices. Furthermore, while international food prices may have fallen, many of the adverse supply and market conditions remain unchanged. The fall in prices was not caused by any widespread expansion in food availability. In most developing countries, there was no positive supply response to high food prices. Therefore, it is timely to review what happened and why, and to consider what lessons (especially for policy) might be learned.
While the broad facts of the “soaring food prices” episode may be well known, questions remain concerning the relative importance of the various factors suggested as being responsible, whether new developments have led to a fundamental change in market behaviour, and whether high prices might be expected to be the norm from now on. How governments and the international community should respond depends on the answers to these questions. Furthermore, while the dramatic price increases and the plight of poor consumers dominated the world’s media, the impact on poor agricultural producers attracted far less attention. Following years of low agricultural product prices, high prices should have been an opportunity for poor producers to improve their incomes and an incentive to increase their output for the benefit of all. Why was this apparently not so?
(2009)
The whole 68-page report can be downloaded here. -KS
