There are alternative methods to starting your grill, other than lighter fluid (Source: Frettie at Wikimedia Commons)
Backyard grilling is a great American summertime tradition. But, there’s some concern about grilling contributing to air pollution. Lester Graham reports you can reduce the pollution… it all depends on what you use:
Transcript
Backyard grilling is a great American summertime tradition. But, there’s some concern about grilling contributing to air pollution. Lester Graham reports you can reduce the pollution… it all depends on what you use:
So, let’s say you’ve got your charcoal. And now you’re squirting it with lighter fluid to get the fire going.
“Oooo. (laugh) Well, lighter fluid contains something called volatile organic compounds and helps to form a pollutant called ground level ozone.”
Beth Gorman is with the the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality in Tuscon. She says that ozone contributes to smog.
“This is a bad thing that we don’t want to breathe.”
And, lighter fluid residue can end up getting on your grilled veggies or burgers.
Gorman suggests a charcoal chimney which can get your charcoal lighted in no time, or an electric charcoal starter.
If you’re thinking a gas grill pollutes less, experts say when you consider the total carbon footprint, charcoal wins because it comes from a renewable resource: trees.
A jellyfish under the Ross Sea ice, on October 14, 2005 (Photo by Henry Kaiser, courtesy of the National Science Foundation)
Some scientists are warning
that as overfishing and climate
change affect the world’s oceans,
jellyfish will take over the
ecosystem. That could mean that
eventually, if you cast a net
into the ocean all you’d haul
in would be jelly blobs. But
as Ann Dornfeld reports, such
warnings may be premature:
Transcript
Some scientists are warning
that as overfishing and climate
change affect the world’s oceans,
jellyfish will take over the
ecosystem. That could mean that
eventually, if you cast a net
into the ocean all you’d haul
in would be jelly blobs. But
as Ann Dornfeld reports, such
warnings may be premature:
The theory goes like this. Overfishing is removing the main jellyfish predators from the oceans. And warming oceans could be more hospitable to jellies.
A new report published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution says jellyfish are already taking over. Its authors point to recent big jellyfish blooms as evidence.
But not everyone’s convinced.
“I think there’s a set of people that are sensationalizing the jellyfish bloom issue.”
University of Washington researcher Claudia Mills has been studying jellies for 30 years.
“I do think that probably jellyfish blooms are on the increase. But the problem is, we have so little baseline data that it’s almost impossible to really, honestly know that.”
Mills says there’s hardly any historical data on jellyfish populations, and not even much recent data.
She says it could be that the future of the world’s oceans is gelatinous and tentacled… or the blooms could just be cyclical.
They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field. (Photo courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology)
A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:
Bigeye tuna are getting overfished in the wild.
So a company called Hawaii Oceanic Technology wants to raise tuna in giant underwater cages off the coast of Hawaii.
They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field.
Bill Spencer is president and CEO of the company. He says they’ll raise 20,000 fish in each cage. The tuna will get up to 100 pounds each.
“They’re typically a schooling type fish so they’d be able to swim around in the Oceansphere so we think that would give them the ability to get the kind of muscle tone that would be appreciated by the consumers.”
There are real concerns about pollution and that fish will escape and spread disease to wild fish.
Spencer says ocean currents will sweep away fish feces so they won’t concentrate, and he says the cages are built so tuna can’t escape.
Another scare came a few years ago, when spinach was found to be tainted with E. Coli (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
In the wake of this year’s tainted peanut butter scare, Congress is getting ready to approve changes to the Food and Drug Administration. Lawmakers want to give the American public more confidence in the safety of the food supply system. But some people doubt they will be able to
make real change. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
In the wake of this year’s tainted peanut butter scare,
Congress is getting ready to approve changes to the Food
and Drug Administration. Lawmakers want to give the
American public more confidence in the safety of the food
supply system. But some people doubt they will be able to
make real change. Julie Grant reports:
Gwen Rosenberg is a mom. She has four boys to feed. So
she’d like to be able to trust that the food supply is safe.
But when Rosenberg heard that 8 people died after eating
peanut products earlier this year, and hundreds more got
sick, it confirmed her beliefs: that the Food and Drug
Administration isn’t making sure food is safe.
“There shouldn’t be stories that come out that reveal that the
peanut plant hasn’t been inspected for years. Or when it
was inspected, there was rat feces. They’re not doing their
job.”
Rosenberg wants the FDA to crack down on food
manufacturers. She says they need inspect more – and shut
down facilities when they find dangerous conditions. She
was appalled when she realized the FDA has no authority to
recall tainted foods.
“The fact that they don’t have recall authority essentially
neuters the FDA. I mean, how are we supposed to take
anything they say or do seriously if they end result is, ‘well,
we can’t force you to do this?’ Well, thanks for the
community service message not to eat the tainted peanut
butter, but you’re not actually making me any safer.”
In the case of the Peanut Corporation of America, a test
found salmonella in its products. It retested. When the test
came out negative, it went ahead and shipped out the
products.
And the FDA had no recall authority. Congressman Bart
Stupak says that’s just wrong. He’s co-sponsoring a food
safety bill that would give the FDA some authority in cases
like this.
“What the FDA can do, shut ‘er down. Prove to me that you
cleaned it up. Prove to me, where did you destroy this
product. Give me the facts. They can’t give you the facts,
shut ‘er down right now. Let’s not wait ten days.”
But leaders in the FDA don’t think recall authority would
have made much difference in the tainted peanut product
case.
David Acheson is Associate Commissioner for foods at the
FDA. Once people started getting sick, he says most
companies using the Peanut Corporation of America’s
products voluntarily recalled their cookies and crackers.
“There’s no suggestion that having mandatory recall is a
panacea to solving food safety problems. It’s one more tool
that would be used from time to time when the situation
warrants it, but it’s not the answer to modernizing food
safety.”
Acheson says the real problem is that the FDA is so busy
reacting to public health threats – to putting out fires – that it
can’t get ahead of the problems and fix the food safety
system.
He says the food system needs preventive controls.
There are a lot of points in the food supply chain where
hazards can creep in: when the food is being grown,
processed, distributed, or sold in a store. Acheson says the
food industry needs to identify control points for each food –
where they are most at risk at becoming unsafe.
“Is it a wild animal in a field, is it the water supply for the
spinach, is it the temperature in my freezer in a retail store.
And all these things in between where things can go wrong
and food can either become contaminated or if there is a low
level of contamination then bacteria can grow.”
Once those control points are identified, Acheson says the
FDA needs to do more inspections – to make sure food is
being handlled safely from farms fields to grocery stores.
But that’s going to cost money.
So Congress is considering charging companies fees to pay
for those inspections.
Food manufacturers don’t like that idea. We contacted
several companies, but none of them, not even the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, would comment for this story.
Foraging for fruit from people’s yards is one thing. Foraging for fruit in people’s alleys, another. Woody Sandberg says he avoids foraging in alleys where people conduct business. (Photo by Louise Baker)
The foragers don’t stop with fruit. They forage and dumpster dive and scavenge so habitually that during the short mapping ride they also found (and took) a clipboard, a pair of gloves, and a bread pan laying on the side of the road. (Photo by Louise Baker)
Woody Sandberg stares into a tree with fruit he does not recognize. He sampled the fruit and still wasn’t sure, so he took a picture of the tree, then rode off. (Photo by Louise Baker)
Woody Sandberg squeezes a foraged lemon into his water bottle. (Photo by Louise Baker)
With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:
Transcript
With everybody looking for ways to save money, free food has never looked better. Devin Browne followed around a group of people who forage for fruit in the city. They look for fruit trees on private and public property to see what they can grab:
It’s perfectly legal here in Los Angeles to pick fruit from trees that are planted on private property as long as the fruit drops into a public space — like a sidewalk or an alley.
There are rules, though, to proper, legal urban foraging and the group Fallen Fruit knows them well. Woody Sandberg is with the group.
“You’re not allowed to reach across someone’s fence. You’re not allowed to reach into someone’s yard. You’re not allowed to crawl up people’s fences or lean ladders on their fences.”
Most of the people in Fallen Fruit ride bikes, sometimes mopeds. A lot of them carry fruit pickers on their back like you might carry a bow and arrow. There’s something almost primal in the way they all look together, fanning out into the street like a band of hunter/gatherers in search of fresh food.
(sound of street and birds)
“We’re looking for trees or any thing that produces food that hangs over the fence so we can pick it and eat it.”
Sandberg’s not actually picking fruit today – he’s just finding the best places to forage.
Later, they’ll go on a harvest ride. Then they’ll make jam and juice and beer with the fruit they’ve found. Today, the mission is just to make maps of where the trees are.
“Over here we got nopalitos and a lime and some nasturiums.”
People sitting on their porches seem not to mind at all when the group stops outside their house. No one in Fallen Fruit can remember a time when a fruit tree owner yelled or screamed or tried to kick ‘em off the sidewalk.
(sound of foragers giving directions to each other)
Which none of the foragers seem surprised by. Fallen Fruit is highly convinced of their mission. Part of this sense of legitimacy comes from the fact that the group originally conceived of itself in biblical terms.
The name Fallen Fruit even comes from a verse in Leviticus: “You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.”
The founders also thought that cities should start planting fruit trees in public spaces, instead of thirsty, frivolous plants.
But fruit trees are oddly political. And city officials say there are reasons why they do not and will not plant them in public space.
The first reason LA’s Chief Forrester, George Gonzalez, gave had to do with people tripping and falling on fruit & then suing the city.
“One of the main reasons is a potential liability from fruit—fruit drop.”
He also said that trends in tree-planting have changed and they like to plant hearty , drought-resistant trees now.
“Also, fruit trees require more water.”
And then, there are the rats.
“Rodents love fruit trees… yes.”
Still, the City regularly gives away fruit trees to people who want to plant them in their yards.
It’s part of the mayor’s Million Trees LA pledge. Like Sandberg, Gonzalez sees fruit trees on private space as a way to benefit the public good.
“Cause when they look at a map and see it dotted everywhere with fruit trees hanging over the fence I think its going to blow people’s minds about how much food is out there. Because the current mindset is that food is in the grocery store.”
It’s a mindset not even the most dedicated of fruit foragers can escape.
After the mapping mission, Woody Sandberg left on his bike for the supermarket, because, he says, unfortunately chocolate soymilk doesn’t grow on trees.
The reported number of salmonella cases has not gone down since 1996 (Source: Gene.Arboit at Wikimedia Commons)
Government agencies admit they need to do a better job at keeping food safe. Kyle Norris has more:
Transcript
Government agencies admit they need to do a better job at keeping food safe. Kyle Norris has more:
When you discover people are getting sick from a food bourne illness like salmonella, you want to stop others from getting sick from it as fast as possible.
A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Food & Drug Administration, and the Department of Agriculture finds the government is not getting any faster.
The report found the number of reported salmonella cases each year is about 15 people in 100,000. That has not gone down since 1996.
Lola Russell is a spokeswoman for the CDC.
“We are planning to increase the capacity of state health departments so that outbreaks can be better detected and investigated.”
Russell says the CDC will work to get more “boots on the ground” to detect an outbreak. The report also indicated the FDA is looking at the best options to prevent food borne illnesses in the first place.
Cement kilns produce mercury, which gets into the fish we eat making it unsafe (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
After years of urging, the US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing regulations to cut down on pollution from cement kilns. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
After years of urging the US Environmental Protection Agency is proposing regulations to cut down on pollution from cement kilns. Lester Graham reports:
Cement – the stuff used to make concrete – is made by baking limestone and other ingredients at really high temperatures in huge coal-burning ovens.
Burning the coal and baking the stone both release mercury. The mercury gets into the food chain and contaminates fish.
Mercury is a neuro-toxin, so eating contaminated fish can cause health problems, including IQ loss.
For 20 years Congress and the courts have been telling the EPA to do something about mercury pollution from cement kilns.
Jim Pew is a staff attorney with Earth Justice, an environmental group. It’s sued the EPA over the issue.
“The government response until now has not been to try to get mercury under control, since everybody agrees it’s a problem. The response has been to tell people ‘mercury is out there, so don’t eat the fish.’”
Under the EPA proposal, cement kilns would have to clean up the mercury and other pollution emitted from their smokestacks.
A new study out of Baylor University finds our pharmaceuticals are getting into fish and other aquatic life (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
There’s something fishy with pharmaceuticals. Lester Graham reports researchers find the drugs we take end up in some fish:
Transcript
There’s something fishy with pharmaceuticals. Lester Graham reports researchers find the drugs we take end up in some fish:
If you’re a fish living anywhere near a wastewater treatment plant, you’re swimming in drugs.
A new study out of Baylor University finds our pharmaceuticals are getting into fish and other aquatic life.
Bryan Brooks is one of the researchers.
“In many cases we really don’t know the full potential effects of these kind of drugs on aquatic life.”
This is just the latest research that shows the stuff we take passes through us, and ends up in the water.
There’s not a lot you can do about that, but Brooks says at least don’t flush unused medications down the toilet.
“Perhaps the most appropriate way to dispose of unused medications is directly to landfill when it’s properly packaged.”
The FDA says, mix the drugs with something nasty like kitty litter or old coffee grounds so kids won’t be interested. Then put it all in a sealed bag or can with a lid so it doesn’t leak out of a garbage bag.
Some farmers think this spot is a perfect place for a White House organic farm. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:
Transcript
Some people think American agriculture needs a makeover. They question why we waste so much fuel moving food long distances. A growing movement is calling for farmers and everybody else to produce more locally-grown, organic food. Shawn Allee reports some people want the President to set a good example:
Last October Michael Pollan published a letter to the President in the New York Times.
Pollan is a sort of agricultural policy gadfly. His open letter to the President was full of big, policy-wonkish ideas about how to encourage local food production. But Pollan also wrote one small suggestion. NPR’s Terry Gross picked up on it.
GROSS: “You would like the next president to instead of having a White House lawn to basically have a White House garden. The president would set an example for the rest of us by having this garden of locally-grown foods?” (laughs)
POLLAN: “Now why is that preposterous, Terry? I mean, that’s actually one of the more practical things I proposed.”
Pollan went into how the President could even share some of his veggies with food banks.
POLLAN:” So you have this powerful image of the White House feeding Americans. What could be better than that?”
Some people heard this interview or read Pollon’s article and thought, “right on” – there should be a White House farmer. One family from central Illinois was especially intrigued. Terra Brockman talked about it with her father and sister.
BROCKMAN: “Well, it’s a great idea, but why don’t we bring it down to earth and make it real?”
ALLEE: “So, basically you translated it into reality by creating a contest on a Web site. White House Farmer dot com, as I understand it.”
BROCKMAN: “Yeah, we figured it was a way that we could get it out nationally without much time or money and ask people all across the country, ‘who do you think would be a good White House farmer?’ and have people nominate their farmers.”
Now, Brockman built her contest Web site even though President Obama never even talked about the idea of a White House farmer. But she’s hopeful because the White House actually has an agricultural past. At one time sheep grazed on the White House lawn, and during World War II Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden there.
BROCKMAN: “It’s not like this is so, so way out there. And really, whatever the President does is pretty symbolic and people do pay attention.”
People paid attention to White Houser Farmer dot com, anyway.
The site gathered around 57 thousand online votes in just a few days.
And exactly who is the unofficial new White House Farmer?
That would be Claire Strader, from Madison, Wisconsin.
Strader invited me to see the land she works.
STRADER: “We’re at Troy Gardens. It’s in a parcel of land in the city of Madison, on the North Side. I haven’t actually seen the farm for a few months because the snow’s been so deep.”
ALLEE: “Can we get closer to the farm area?”
STRADER: “Yeah.”
Strader is the head farmer at Troy Gardens. She trains city people to grow food here. She also makes the soil fertile through organic growing techniques.
STRADER: “You can just start to see now, the green flush over the whole field. That’s our cover crop of rye. It looks really good. I’m happy to see it.”
ALLEE: “Could you tear yourself away to go to DC and leave all this behind?”
STRADER: “It would be difficult to pick up and leave it behind, but it would be a tremendous honor and a lot of potential to spread the good word of organic agriculture and the positive impacts that would have on our country in the future. It would be hard to accept and hard to reject.”
Even with a White House Farmer chosen for him, President Obama still hasn’t said anything about the idea.
But Strader says she and some top contest vote-getters are trying to sway him – even if he’d pick someone else to run his garden.
Strader says she loves the idea of cucumbers and zucchinis growing at the White House… even if she’s not there to pick them.
Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going
on.
(Photo by Stephen Ausmus, courtesy of the USDA)
A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:
Transcript
A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:
The US, Canada, and Norway are some of the countries doing the best job.
That means they’re fishing in a responsible way.
But they all come in at 60%. That’d be a D, maybe a D-plus.
Tony Pitcher is the main author of the study.
“Wasn’t very encouraging actually that even the top scoring countries were
not really that good. So it wasn’t anything to write home about – we were
at the top but it wasn’t a great field. At the bottom end some countries
were just disastrous. More than half the countries didn’t even pass the
40%.”
Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going
on. There’s illegal fishing. And there’s a big problem with nets and traps
getting lost. They can snare marine mammals, birds and fish.
Tony Pitcher says it’s not always easy to know where your fish came from.
But he says you can look for a blue and white label when you’re shopping.
It’ll say Marine Stewardship Council on it.
There are alternative methods to starting your grill, other than lighter fluid (Source: Frettie at Wikimedia Commons)
