In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, our friend and trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments, from slavery and colonialism to famine and genocide—and to our current moment, wherein Big Food exacerbates climate change, plunders our planet, and sickens its people. Even still, Bittman refuses to concede that the battle is lost, pointing to activists, workers, and governments around the world who are choosing well-being over corporate greed and gluttony, and fighting to free society from Big Food’s grip.

Sweeping, impassioned, and ultimately full of hope, Animal, Vegetable, Junk reveals not only how food has shaped our past, but also how we can transform it to reclaim our future.

The post Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal appeared first on Real Food Media.

For decades, data on pesticide exposure has been vague and non-existent. Anna Lappé talks to the researchers who have put hard numbers to unintentional pesticide poisonings and fatalities globally.

Last December, four researchers from Germany, Malaysia, and the United States published the results of a systematic review estimating the number of unintentional pesticide poisonings and fatalities globally. The conclusion was startling: An estimated 44 percent of farmers, farmworkers, and pesticide applicators experience at least one incident of acute pesticide poisoning on the job every year, and 11,000 die annually from accidental pesticide poisoning.

We’ve been hearing more and more about the impact of pesticides on insects, other wildlife, and ecosystems, but this research puts a magnifying glass on another huge concern about the explosive use of pesticides around the world: their impact on people.

When I learned about this study, I thought: finally. For years, I had been tracking the global estimates for pesticide poisonings and fatalities. Over this time, I had noticed something strange—the numbers I saw reported in various outlets had stayed the same, about 1 million pesticide poisonings and about 200,000 fatalities, annually. The fatality figure made headlines most recently in 2017 when the United Nations released a report on pesticides and human rights, and one article after another repeated the figure like it was breaking news: “U.N. report estimates pesticides kill 200,000 people per year,” read one headline.

But dig behind these headlines and you would find these numbers were old—really old. The poisoning and fatality estimates that we’d been hearing for years actually came from a 1990 World Health Organization (WHO) report. In other words, we have not had solid global data on how many people are getting sick and dying every year from pesticide exposure for decades—and even that 1990 figure was more back-of-the-napkin math than systematic review.

This new study—based on a review of more than 170 studies from 140 countries—finally provides up-to-date estimates for occupational pesticide poisoning incidents and unintentional fatalities. The conclusions should alarm us all and kick policy makers into gear on long-standing commitments to crack down on the world’s most toxic pesticides, like the insecticide chlorpyrifos still widely used even though it’s a known brain-damaging chemical with no safe level of exposure for children.

I had a chance to dive into the study with two of its authors, Wolfgang Boedeker, an epidemiologist and board member of Pesticide Action Network-Germany, and Emily Marquez, a staff scientist with the Pesticide Action Network-North America. Boedeker shared what this study reveals about how widespread pesticide poisonings are and Marquez helped highlight what can do about it, particularly in the United States.

Let’s start with a definition: systematic. Your paper looks at unintentional acute pesticide poisoning (UAPP). What qualifies as a UAPP?

Boedeker: WHO defines acute pesticide poisoning as when one or more symptoms—such as headaches or dizziness, developing a rash, or feeling dizzy or nauseous—have been reported by workers or farmers within 48 hours of contact with these chemicals. In most cases, these poisonings are experienced as unspecific symptoms after you’ve used pesticides in your field. They may show up a couple of hours after applying pesticides, then be gone again.

What you found about the prevalence of UAPPs was shocking: You estimate that 44 percent of all farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year. But what about the person who may ask, “So what? A farmer feels a little sick in their field, why should we care about these illnesses—and not just mortality?”

Boedeker: If you get intoxicated by pesticide poisoning, you get sick, you often can’t work, you lose income. And, every acute exposure can lead to long-term, chronic disease. Acute intoxication is an unacceptable sign of an exposure to dangerous chemicals. We have to take it very seriously. This is one of the key messages in this paper: not just to look to the fatal intoxication, but enlarge our perspective to the non-fatal intoxication because these poisonings are an expression of dangerous exposure to chemicals.

Many of these acute exposures can lead to chronic illnesses, like cancer. We didn’t include an investigation into that literature because it would have made this study much more complicated, but we need a systematic review on the chronic effects of pesticides, too. And while in this study, we didn’t include the public health effects of the uptake of pesticides via food either, we know there are residues in food and drinking water—and that’s another important issue that needs systematic review. systematic

You estimate 11,000 fatalities every year from unanticipated pesticide poisonings, a much lower figure than the previous one from WHO, but notably, yours does not include fatalities from intentional poisoning. And, your paper notes how widespread that is: An estimated 14 million people have died by suicide using pesticides since the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s.

Boedeker: Right. Our fatality figure is lower but as you say we don’t include suicides. Suicides by pesticide poisoning have been investigated for a long while now, and yes, the numbers are alarming.

One reason for the number of poisonings is that pesticide use has skyrocketed: up 81 percent in the past 35 years. In certain regions, you note, that increase has been dramatic. South America saw almost a 500 percent increase while Europe saw just a 3 percent bump.

Boedeker: Yes, the profile of pesticide use has changed dramatically in these 35 years. The amount of pesticides used has grown and the size of rural populations has become larger, so more people are being exposed to more pesticides.

What did you find in terms of geographic hotspots for pesticide poisonings?

Boedeker: Countries in the Global South are most affected, which is to be expected: Not only are these regions where pesticide use is high, but also where there are fewer protective measures against exposure.

What did you hope for the report’s impact?

Boedeker: Our first aim was to have a more reliable figure on pesticide poisoning. The old figure was still cited in every policy paper when it comes to the public health impacts of pesticide use. We wanted to widen the scope beyond fatal poisoning. Secondly, our hope was to show that even after decades of policy interventions, pesticide poisoning is still a big problem. While our number of fatalities is smaller than the old figure, our UAPP figure is so much higher. Our analysis shows that this is a big public health problem and there is urgent need to address it.

What are policy approaches that could address this crisis?

Boedeker: There was a push years ago to stop the export to the Global South of highly hazardous pesticides, or HHPs, but then it got quiet. [There are nearly 300 HHPs on the market, these are pesticides that are known to be highly toxic to humans, linked to cancer or endocrine disruption or those that have shown to be particularly damaging to the environment]. We have a new push for this discussion based on this data. In Germany, for instance, we have governmental discussions on the prohibition of the export of HHPs and we are hoping to see this throughout Europe.

Marquez: Pesticide Action Network-North America got its start campaigning on the export of HHPs banned in the United States but sold in other countries where they weren’t banned. It’s important to keep watchdogging this, as PAN Germany, PAN Europe, and other partners in PAN International like Public Eye do with their “double standards” campaigns.

Right, there’s been organizing around HHPs for a long time. In your paper, you mention a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recommendation for a progressive ban on highly hazardous pesticides, so what happened?

Boedeker: We haven’t seen more progress on this ban, I believe, because of successful international lobbying by the chemical industry, which has made sure these recommendations have not come far. There is a United Nations ethical code of conduct on pesticide use and management with clear messages that these pesticides—which are dangerous and not to be used in certain conditions because they need to be applied with protective measures—should not be exported or used in certain countries. We hope this study will help policy makers realize how getting these codes of conduct in place, and putting real restrictions on HHPs, is an urgent public health issue.

What are national policy priorities that you think could make a difference?

Marquez: In the United States, I think we could do a lot more to prevent pesticide poisonings in agriculture by strengthening protections for farmworkers. Every year in California, for example, there is news about farmworkers—sometimes large groups, all at the same time—getting poisoned while they’re working. Another very important way to get at this problem is transitioning off agriculture that depends so heavily on pesticides to manage the system. Research on nonchemical alternatives to pesticides is really important and it doesn’t get as much funding as it needs.

And what can we do as individuals?

Marquez: As a voter, I would pay attention to what your representatives have to say about farmworkers, supporting small farmers, and research initiatives on non-chemical alternatives to pesticides—especially if you are from a state that has a lot of agriculture. You can also engage your local representative and ask them what they’re doing about pesticide poisonings. Any place where pesticides get used has the potential for people to get poisoned.

There are other policy processes you can engage in—some states have taken the step of banning or phasing out a particular pesticide, for example, as with action around the insecticide chlorpyrifos in Hawaii, New York, and California. Five other states are now pursuing regulatory action on the insecticide. There are other processes, too, like participating in comment periods in your state or county or weighing in during comment periods from national agencies. Our organization, Pesticide Action Network, provides updates on key comment periods for public engagement, helping people around the country engage in these important policy battles.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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If you are able, consider donating all or part of your stimulus check to an organization that is working to address immediate needs and build long-term power around the US. Support a group in your community or check out our suggestions below: 

Alianza Nacional de Campesinas

The first national, women-led, farmworker women’s organization is working closely with member organizations and farmworker advocacy groups to address the challenges and needs specific to farmworker women around the nation. 

DONATE

First Nations Development Institute’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund

The Navajo Nation has the third-highest coronavirus infection rate. Native communities that have been consistently divested from are suffering from a lack of access to resources as basic as clean water. 

DONATE

Food Chain Workers Alliance

People who work all along the food chain have lacked access to paid sick leave, living wages, job security, and other foundations of safe, dignified work. The Food Chain Workers Alliance works with grassroots labor organizations across the US to fight for fair working conditions.

DONATE

National Domestic Workers Alliance Coronavirus Care Fund

Caregivers across the spectrum, from in-home caretakers to house cleaners—many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are women of color—are without a safety net during this time. 

DONATE

National Black Food & Justice Alliance Mutual Aid Fund

This mutual aid fund will re-grant money to Black farmers and land stewards ramping up food production for communities across the country. 

DONATE

One Fair Wage Emergency Fund

With many workers earning only the federally mandated minimum wage of $2.13 for tipped workers, tipped workers were struggling before COVID-19—and things have only gotten worse. This fund provides cash assistance to those who need it most.  

DONATE

Restaurant Opportunities Center United Disaster Relief Fund

By one estimate, 75 percent of restaurants could go out of business during this crisis. ROC United put together a disaster relief fund to support restaurant workers in danger of losing their jobs.

DONATE

Soul Fire Farm

Soul Fire Farm has been inspiring BIack, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers around the world by decentering whiteness in agrarianism (check out the Real Food Reads book and podcast episode, Farming While Black). During the crisis, they’ve held regular virtual convenings to assess needs and build solidarity, as well as provide food for members of their community.

DONATE

The post Use Your Stimulus Check to Support Farmers & Food Workers appeared first on Real Food Media.

Although the majority of farms in the United States have US-born owners who identify as white, a growing number of new farmers are immigrants. Many of them are from Mexico and originally came to the United States looking for work in agriculture.

In The New American Farmer, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern explores the experiences of Latino/a immigrant farmers as they transition from farmworkers to farm owners, offering a new perspective on racial inequity and sustainable farming. She finds that many of these new farmers rely on farming practices from their home countries—including growing multiple crops simultaneously, using integrated pest management, maintaining small-scale production, and employing family labor.

Drawing on extensive interviews with farmers and organizers, Minkoff-Zern describes the social, economic, and political barriers immigrant farmers must overcome, from navigating USDA bureaucracy to exclusion from opportunities based on race. Immigrant farmers, with their knowledge and experience of alternative farming practices, are actively and substantially contributing to the movement for a more sustainable food system—scholars and food activists should take notice.

Click here to download the open-access book. 

The post The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability appeared first on Real Food Media.

The Labor of Lunch aims to spark a progressive movement that will transform food in American schools, and with it the lives of thousands of low-paid cafeteria workers and the millions of children they feed. By providing a feminist history of the US National School Lunch Program, Jennifer E. Gaddis recasts the humble school lunch as an important and often overlooked form of public care. Through vivid narration and a dose of much needed imagination, The Labor of Lunch offers a stirring call to action and a blueprint for school lunch reforms capable of delivering a healthier, more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.

Check out the Labor of Lunch YouTube playlist!

The post The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools appeared first on Real Food Media.

By the late nineteenth century, Americans rich and poor had come to expect high-quality fresh beef with almost every meal. Beef production in the United States had gone from small-scale, localized operations to a highly centralized industry spanning the country, with cattle bred on ranches in the rural West, slaughtered in Chicago, and consumed in the nation’s rapidly growing cities. Red Meat Republic tells the remarkable story of the violent conflict over who would reap the benefits of this new industry and who would bear its heavy costs.

Joshua Specht puts people at the heart of his story—the big cattle ranchers who helped to drive the nation’s westward expansion, the meatpackers who created a radically new kind of industrialized slaughterhouse, and the stockyard workers who were subjected to the shocking and unsanitary conditions described by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle. Specht brings to life a turbulent era marked by Indian wars, Chicago labor unrest, and food riots in the streets of New York. He shows how the enduring success of the cattle-beef complex—centralized, low cost, and meatpacker dominated—was a consequence of the meatpackers’ ability to make their interests overlap with those of a hungry public, while the interests of struggling ranchers, desperate workers, and bankrupt butchers took a backseat. America—and the American table—would never be the same again.

A compelling and unfailingly enjoyable read, Red Meat Republic reveals the complex history of exploitation and innovation behind the food we consume today.

The post Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America appeared first on Real Food Media.

ICE officials raided numerous Mississippi food processing plants on August 7, arresting 680 mostly Latin-American workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in over ten years.

The raids happened just as Donald Trump was arriving at El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latinx city where a white nationalist linked to the white supremacist theory of a “Hispanic invasion” was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead in the border city.

Coordinated attacks by 600 ICE agents took place in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie, and Sebastapol. Family and friends watched as arrested workers filled several buses at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. They were taken to a military hangar to be “processed”, i.e. be interviewed about their immigration status and have their identification documents reviewed.

Entire communities are reeling in pain today as loved ones are torn from them violently and permanently. Mothers will go to bed tonight without their children, brothers and sisters will not know whether they will ever see each other again, and children are left without parents to care for them.

For a community already under attack by informal white supremacist organizations, to have ICE and the full power of the executive branch of the US government targeting them is devastating.

Despite the fear and shock brought to all of our immigrant and indigenous migrant communities, food system workers, farmers, and organizers nationwide unite in solidarity with the workers in Mississippi. Our siblings working to put food on their table and your table in Mississippi are the latest casualties of a system that attempts to destroy our will. But we will not only survive —we will thrive as our resolve becomes focused on “our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

• We demand an immediate moratorium on all immigration enforcement activities until Congress approves a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
• We demand that all workers captured in today’s raids be immediately released.
• We demand that all camps where children are being held be immediately shuttered and the children reunited with their families.

Until this is done we are all in a state of siege and none of us is safe. FCWA and HEAL have established a “bail fund” to help food workers and their families when they’re arrested by ICE.

Click here to visit HEAL Food Alliance and see the full list of signatories.

Donate to the Emergency Fund for Detained Workers 

The post Joint Statement: Defending Immigrant Workers Means Defending Us All appeared first on Real Food Media.

Many of us have been or will be food workers at some point, working for tips or low wages, working while sick or without health insurance, and even experiencing harassment or other abuses. Many of the workers who tend and harvest crops and cook and serve food can’t even afford healthy food for themselves and their families. It doesn’t have to be this way.

This May Day, as we head to the streets to support workers’ rights and protect the gains of past labor organizing (little things like the weekend and 8-hour work day) we’re also excited to launch our Building Power With Food Workers organizing toolkit. It’s the first of three organizing toolkits we’re rolling out to help you get active and inspire others to come together for healthy, fair, and sustainable food.

The toolkit includes educational materials, short films, discussion questions, activities, recipes, a glossary, and more, to explore on your own or with a group. It also includes resources to help you organize a fun and engaging film screening event around food worker justice. Check out the toolkit here.

We can transform the food system by standing up—as workers and with workers.

Get the Building Power with Food Workers toolkit 

Header photo: Fibonacci Blue

The post May Day Launch of Our Food Workers Toolkit appeared first on Real Food Media.

Our food system needs radical transformation. It also needs healing from a long history of oppression and exploitation. This healing can only happen if we create spaces for honest conversation, trust, and relationship-building across the food chain. That’s what makes HEAL Food Alliance—a multi-sector, multi-racial coalition building collective power—so special.

Christina and Tanya—a.k.a. Real Food Media’s official (unofficial) Midwest Contingent—had the honor of participating in HEAL’s 2nd Annual Summit in Cleveland, Ohio, last month. As the hotel lobby began buzzing with energy and heartfelt hugs, it felt like a family reunion descended on Cleveland. We were just plain giddy to connect with so many of our partners including Good Food Purchasing Program coalitions from around the country, the Center for Good Food Purchasing, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and fabulous Real Food Media advisors Neshani Jani, Dara Cooper, and Anim Steel. (Little did we know, Dara, co-founder of the Black Food & Justice Alliance, would soon be awarded the James Beard Leadership Award—congrats Dara!)

This year’s theme was Good Food Rising! and it was in full effect. This was authentic movement-building: issues framed by community leaders; stories of both trauma and triumph; and delicious, real food. (A big shout out to Rid-All Green Partnership, a 26-acre farm and education center in Cleveland’s Lee-Miles neighborhood, for providing us with such lovingly prepared food and an inspiring—if a bit chilly!—farm tour.) 

Perhaps most powerful? Naming names. As many participants noted, there are few “food” spaces where words like capitalism and white supremacy are used without apology. Where land reform is a banner struggle. And where the prison-industrial complex is called out for its role in perpetuating a violent food system and foreclosing community-based alternatives. And as both a grounding and a reminder of our collective history, there was the 80-foot-long food justice timeline created by Minneapolis organizers and shipped to the Summit for participants to interact with.

Needless to say, we came away with a lot to think about—and work on—to better support this growing movement of movements. 

Follow HEAL Food Alliance on Facebook and Twitter check out more photos from the Summit. HEAL is now on Instagram too!

The post HEALing Together: Report Back from HEAL Food Alliance’s 2nd Annual Summit appeared first on Real Food Media.

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