But when I think about technology, I also think about Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, caught up in the gears, swept up by giant metal wheels then dumped out some other end. I think of technologies in which it’s not the people who are in charge, but the machines.

Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, 1936. Used under license from SuperStock. Modern Times © Roy Export SAS.

Genetically engineered foods have the potential to be like that. We create them by taking a piece of genetic material from one species and splicing it into another, to confer desirable characteristics from the donor species onto the recipient. So a cold-water gene from a fish was crafted into a tomato, years ago, and there have been many such experiments since. But once we engineer a food species, there’s a high probability we lose control.  Genetically engineered canola seeds scatter on the wind and mix with conventional (or even chemical-free organic) canola. Genetically fancy fish or pigs could mate with the traditional kind. Pretty soon it’s not us in charge, but the technology.

There’s another way in which genetically engineered foods take control away from most of us. Whether or not you believe such high-tech foods are superior to the regular kind (and critics say there’s little evidence of upside to GE foods, and much evidence of potential downside), genetically tweaked foods have the consequence of controlling ownership and power in fewer hands. That’s because large biotechnology enterprises seek, and are granted, patents over these novel plants or animals, plus over the offspring of those species.  That means most of us are no longer in charge of our food. Someone else is.

I’ve been thinking about the loss of control that can come with technology after hearing of the probable demise of the genetically engineered pig. It’s a win for opponents of genetic engineering (which is also known by supporters under the gentler term ‘genetic modification.’) The so-called EnviroPig, as the genetically tweaked animal is called, has lost its major funding source and may never come to market, according to articles in the Globe and Mail[i], and from the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network[ii].  Promoted by a team at the University of Guelph, the EnviroPig was designed to produce manure containing less phosphorus than that of normal pigs, a result of the addition of a piece of mouse DNA plus genes from e. coli bacteria that altered the pigs’ digestive systems. Less phosphorus in livestock manure would mean less pollution from the many pigs held in factory farms. But according to media reports this week, the industry association Ontario Pork says it is redirecting its funding of the EnviroPig to alternative research projects.  This while the pig project is still awaiting government approval in Canada and the United States for development and commercialization.

Supporters of EnviroPig say they’ll keep looking for other funding sources. But opponents are pleased that this controversial initiative may be off the table for now.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a better idea than genetically engineering pigs for less phosphorus. It’s true that livestock in Canada and elsewhere often produce more manure than can serve as useful fertilizer. The waste can then pollute water and soil – and that waste contains phosphorus along with nitrogen and other chemicals including antibiotics and further pharmaceuticals fed to the animals. Excess manure also releases large amounts of greenhouse gases and other toxins.  The better idea is this — and it’s not only mine but that of a growing number of health and environmental experts around the world.  Let’s eat less meat. Let’s cut down on our intake of animal products to moderate levels, so we can raise animals naturally and within the capacity of local ecosystems to feed them and to absorb their waste.  I discuss this in my upcoming book High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat, which will be released by New Society Publishers later this year.[iii] I welcome your comments.

[ii] We Stopped the GM Pig. Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. http://www.cban.ca/Resources/Topics/Enviropig. April, 2012.

[iii] http://www.newsociety.com/Books/H/High-Steaks

(1) There’s plenty of food to go around, but still 850 million or more human beings are undernourished or starving.

(2) More than a billion global citizens are too heavy for optimal health.  According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, one-third (34.4%) of Americans qualify as obese, and almost one-quarter (24.1%) of Canadians do.[i]

(3) A lot of people subsist mostly on ultra-processed foods containing excessive salts, fats, sugars and chemicals.[ii]

(4) Food systems are owned and controlled by a small number of corporate agribusinesses, and local communities often don’t have much decision-making ability over food production.

We need wholesale transformation of our food systems, I thought. How could people’s growing their own herbs and salads do much more than make us feel good?

Then something happened to change my mind, to make me realize the power of urban agriculture.  My husband and I were traveling, and in London, England noticed a museum exhibit called The Ministry of Food.  We went, and found it breathtaking to discover how Britain fed its 50 million citizens during WWII.  I wrote an earlier blog post about this, so you can read more detail.[iii]

This was Victory Gardens, and much more.  It was government commitment to food sustainability.  It was buy-in from the populace of the idea of feeding yourself.  People dug up every possible square foot of land and planted crops and seeds, especially for nutritious sustenance like potatoes and hearty vegetables. They accepted rationing of imported goods like sugar, or ones that were resource-intensive to produce, like meat and dairy.  This was ‘the home front,’ a part of the war effort to which every person could contribute.  The program fed the population successfully during a long and painful war.  Nor did people become undernourished from the rationing and home production. Medical analyses show that Britons during the war were healthier – with much smaller disparities in physical well-being between rich and poor – than they were previously, or have been since.

Getting your hands in the dirt wasn’t easy.  Nor was it easy to do without luxuries to which people had become accustomed.  But most citizens were onside, because they knew they were at war.  According to eminent historian Tony Judt: “the British proved remarkably tolerant of their deprivations – in part because of a belief that these were, at least, shared fairly across the community.”[iv] But they were at war, while today the imperative is less clear. Yet many believe we are indeed in an undeclared war for the health of the planet and survival of humanity.

The case of the Ministry of Food taught me that urban agriculture can indeed change the world, if…

If it is widespread.  If it is taken seriously.  If it is engaged in by a large percentage of the population.  For those in Vancouver and cities everywhere who saw that before I did, and who have been on the frontlines of urban agriculture, I thank and congratulate you. My niece Christine Boyle is one social activist who has, as shown here with her wheelbarrow!  To get involved in Urban Agriculture, look for your nearest Farmers’ Market societies, other community food projects, and your local ‘transition’ initiative[v] helping communities become resilient in a coming world beyond fossil fuels.

[ii] Carlos Monteiro. The Big Issue is Ultra-Processing. World Nutrition, 1(6) 2010.

[iii] Could We Learn From the Ministry of Food? July 8, 2010. eleanorboyle.com/blog/

[iv] Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, NY/London: Penguin. 2005, p. 163.

[v] Transition Network. http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

The problem is, that’s irrelevant.  No-one I know ever claimed that organic food has more vitamins or minerals in it.  What organic food does have is fewer  pesticides,  antibiotics in the case of animal-source foods, and other potentially harmful chemicals.  So what organic food offers is less of the bad stuff.  It’s pretty straightforward.  But that fact has trouble getting traction because of the dominance of the red herring in the discussion — the constant repetition of that empty phrase that organic food has equivalent nutrient content.

The harmful effects are well-established of the chemicals used in conventional farming.  For example, many of the pesticides are organophosphates that directly interfere with humans’ and animals’ brain neurotransmitter systems.  Get enough of these pesticides in your system, and you won’t be able to function normally and healthfully.

On top of all that was the release  in October 2011 by the U.S.-based Rodale Institute for agricultural research of the results of their 30-year side-by-side study on organic versus conventional farming methods.  The study showed that organic farming is superior to the chemical kind.  After an initial period of transition from conventional to organic farming, producers found that organic methods produced as much food, and more in drought conditions (of which more are predicted in coming years), that organic farming used less energy and that it was often more profitable. (http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years)

If we’re going to compare organic to conventional, let’s ask the right questions.  For example, if our question is ‘Which one is cheaper?’ then the answer will be conventional.  But where our health and communities are at stake, we might want to consider alternative points of view.

It’s been months since I’ve written regularly.  Life has been busy.  But I’m back.  And this week I’ve been thinking about two popular songs of the past 100 years and their relevance to rural life.

How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm… after they’ve experienced the big city?  That’s what a popular song asked early in the 20th C.   How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm? (After They’ve Seen Paree) was a well-known tune during WWI.  Written by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis with music by Walter Donaldson, it was published in 1918, and performed by many artists in the post-war years.  The song expressed the expansiveness of a generation whose lives had been rocked by a calamitous conflict, but who suddenly had new options for their own lives.  The song also expresses the excitement of urban life that many of us feel.

But if we in North America, and elsewhere, are going to produce food sustainably we’ll need to revitalize rural areas, and that will mean helping some people move in the opposite direction — back to the farm.  Thankfully, while urban life has its allure, there are those who’d love to have that new, old option.   There are those who long for rural spaces and who would happily move to an acreage if small-scale food production offered a decent living.  So there are increasing movements today to help young people realize that dream and encourage more to consider farm life.

Just this week I received an email from a health action group, outlining proposed U.S. legislation called the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act of 2011, to recruit men and woman to become farmers and produce healthy food.  There are discussions for modern ‘Homestead Acts’ to help repopulate rural areas. Environmentalist Bill McKibben notes that the number of farms is actually increasing in some parts of the U.S, as serious people begin to realize the role of small-scale agriculture in sustainability.  People may have asked 90 years ago how ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, but when Elton John released Goodbye Yellow Brick Road more than 50 years later, singing about a man who happily left city life to return to his plow and his family farm, that album sold more than 30 million copies.

Would you move back to the farm, after you’d seen Paree?

When incidents like this occur, too often vegetables are considered the problem.  Having first read about this on the front page of the International Herald Tribune, I therefore wrote this letter to the editor there:

In reference to your May 30 article on the unfortunate E. coli outbreak in Germany, it is important to realize that vegetables are not to blame.  E. coli is a product of the mammalian gut.  In most such contamination cases the bacterial source is livestock manure, mountains of which emanate from today’s voluminous industrial production of poultry, pigs, and cattle.  While small amounts of organic manure are good fertilizer, there is now so much animal waste on the planet that it is routinely dumped in excess on plant crops.  The solution is not to stop eating vegetables, but for large-sale meat consumers to cut back their intake of animal products to moderate levels, which would allow such foods to be made sustainably, and incidentally compassionately.   The science demonstrates that the amounts of meat now eaten by the average European, American, Canadian, Australian, and some others are impossible to produce within the carrying capacity of the planet.  The results are significant contributions to climate change, pollution of water supplies, loss of rainforest and undermining of biodiversity, and other environmental crises.  There is nothing wrong with livestock, and nothing wrong with meat — in small amounts.  Eating less meat is a step toward addressing the problem.

I’ll let you know if they print it, and I welcome your comments.

The bread can be almost any type that can be cut into small rounds or squares.  Toast the bread.  Then pile with the following topping, to make perhaps 10 individual bruschetta.  Topping: 2-3 tomatoes chopped into tiny pieces, half a tsp of chopped garlic, 1 tsp dried basil, lots of fresh basil, a little salt and pepper, 2-3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 2-3 tablespoons good quality olive oil.   Pile the topping onto the toasted bread bits, and serve.

This dish has a history, of course, and afficionados have strong opinions about the details.  Some people feel you should rub garlic onto the toast before adding topping.     Others use hearty bread, untoasted.  And there are loads of other variations.  Have fun with it.

One way is to eat locally made, organic food from small-scale producers.

Another is to cut down on processed, highly packaged foods, most of which come from industrial factory operations controlled from afar.

Another is to eat less meat, and consume animal products that are sustainably and compassionately made.

Additionally, we can support groups that work toward local, community control of food systems, that work toward a world in which small-scale farmers can make a good living, and that are designing policy to take back rural communities from agribusiness.  Such groups include the BC Food Systems Network, Food Secure Canada, Beyond Factory Farming, and others.   Their web addresses are on this site.

Supporting community through our food choices addresses the last of the Five Key Challenges for Food Systems that I outlined previously:

• To feed a large and growing world population
• To produce food ecologically
• To consume food for human health
• To act compassionately toward all living beings
• To support community well-being.

Thanks for being with me on this brief series of posts.    Please let us know about your own food experiences and thoughts.

While the number of farms has declined in Canada, the size of remaining farms has climbed. We need to create conditions in which small farms can survive and thrive.

I hold the belief that human beings have the moral right to use non-human animals for some purposes.  I may be wrong on this, and God’s not talking.   But I also believe we have a responsibility to treat animals as well as possible and not to inflict suffering.  This is hardly a radical idea.  Yet most of us continue to support factory farming by buying cheap chicken and conventional milk and eggs, bacon from mass producers, and beef from cattle feedlots.

This touches on the fourth of the Five Key Challenges for Food Systems that I outlined previously:

• To feed a large and growing world population
• To produce food ecologically
• To consume food for human health
• To act compassionately toward all living beings
• To support community well-being.

We can make food choices that are kind and compassionate toward livestock.  We can do this by refusing to support factory farming.  We can do it by buying animal products that were made in small-scale, natural environments where the animals lived decent lives stewarded by people who recognized their physical, emotional, and social needs.

Having written extensively on the scientific evidence for animal sentience, based on my background in neuroscience, psychology, and food policy, I feel strongly on this topic.  You can read one of my articles on it, commissioned by Compassion in World Farming, at: http://www.ciwf.org.uk/animal_sentience/science/guest_articles/default.aspx. I welcome your comments.

• To feed a large and growing world population
• To produce food ecologically
• To consume food for human health
• To act compassionately toward all living beings
• To support community well-being.

In our grandparents’ day, people who died young generally succumbed to infectious diseases such as flus and tuberculosis.  Today those who die young fall prey mostly to heart disease, cancers, and stroke.   Human ingenuity came up with antibiotics to fight infectious disease.  But meanwhile we’ve acted in ways that have increased our vulnerability to illnesses of our time.

Almost all disease is multifactorial, meaning that pathology has multiple causes.   The sole exceptions are clearly-genetic conditions such as Huntington’s Disease.  Almost all others  have many contributions — a little genetic predisposition, but also environmental factors  including everything from exposure to toxins in our childhood neighbourhoods, to too much intake of high-fat or pesticide-laced foods.

The fact that food choices play a role in health and disease gives us three or more opportunities a day to do the right thing for our bodies.   I’ll quote Michael Pollan’s wonderful dictum:  ‘Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.’   In the last post I showed an image of the ingredient list from a jar of ‘gourmet’ antipasto.  It takes effort to learn that foods with such labels aren’t necessarily healthy, but they’re not.   Let’s eat real food.  If you have additional specific ideas on how we can do so, please comment.

That we should also eat ‘not too much,’ as Michael Pollan advises, is difficult but essential.  Our evolutionary brains aren’t wired to cope with the excessive amounts of food available, and many of us are overweight or even obese.  My elderly father made a fascinating observation recently. Almost 90 years old, he has all his cognitive faculties and also gets out of the home, drives, and walks, most days.   A big fan of eating sparingly, my father has observed that:  “There are no overweight men over 80.”  By and large, they’re gone.  Some women seem to be able to carry a few extra pounds and still live into their 80s, but anecdotal evidence suggests that men, at least, cannot.

Industrial agriculture, with its pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, also undermine human health.  So does factory farming with its heavy use of antibiotics — which has been demonstrated as the likely main cause of antibiotic-resistant disease today.   Food systems are challenged to contribute to human health.  The fact that those systems are producing edible substances isn’t  enough.  We need better production priorities, and better food choices, for health.  For example, if you need a snack this afternoon, consider an organic apple.   This hasn’t been easy for me.  As a salt-and-sugar enthusiast, I had to work hard over time to choose fresh fruit instead of cookies.  But now apples and me are an item.  Join me in eating for health.

Couldn’t find an organic brand, so bought a ‘gourmet’ one.  Sigh.  Of course that doesn’t mean anything, other than that these particular food producers know how to tap into trends.  At least the popcorn was tasty.

Here’s a label from a brand of antipasto that is called ‘gourmet’ in large letters on the front of the jar.  How about all those ingredients?  

As Michael Pollan says in his entertaining little book Food Rules: ‘Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.’ (Rule #3) and: ‘Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.’ (Rule #6)

‘Gourmet’ does not necessarily equal ‘healthy.’   Gourmet does not necessarily mean anything good at all.   This example is a useful reminder about  empty food terms.  Among these are ‘natural,’ ‘light,’ and, notoriously, ‘lite.’   As for ‘gourmet,’  I’m going to try to stop falling for it.