Gulf Spill Raises Questions About Imported Seafood

  • Right now, Congress is considering a bill that would give the FDA a lot more authority over imported seafood. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is looming over the seafood industry. Prices for things like shrimp and crab are going up. It might mean we’ll see even more imported seafood in the coming months. But as Tanya Ott reports, some people are questioning the safety of imported seafood:

Transcript

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is looming over the seafood industry. Prices for things like shrimp and crab are going up. It might mean we’ll see even more imported seafood in the coming months. But as Tanya Ott reports, some people are questioning the safety of imported seafood:

Tom Robey runs around like a mad man. Or maybe a mad scientist. His laboratory is the kitchen.

“This is the beginning of New Orleans barbecue sauce for our shrimp dish. So it’s brown garlic and black pepper and rosemary and beer.”

Robey is executive chef at Veranda on Highland in Birmingham, Alabama. His specialty is regional seafood: Louisiana crawfish, Florida crab, Alabama shrimp.

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last month spewing oil into the Gulf, Robey shelled out nearly 3-thousand dollars to stockpile 600 pounds of shrimp.

And it’s a good thing, because officials closed some of the fishing grounds. It’s not clear how extensive and long-term the damage to Gulf seafood will be. Early tests don’t show substantial chemical contamination, but monitoring might have to continue for decades. Meanwhile, industry officials expect a shortage of domestic seafood. And other countries are ready to fill the gap.

We already import about 80% of our seafood. But the oil spill is expected to drive that number higher.

Tom Robey says he’ll take seafood off the menu before he serves imports.

“I’m nervous about, like, how that seafood was handled, how it was fed, if it was farmed raised. I mean every day there’s some kind of recall one or another coming from China.”

He may have reason to be nervous.

“I think it’s really a buyer beware issue.”

Caroline Smith DeWaal is director of food safety for the Washington DC-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. She says when state regulators tested imported shrimp they found it was contaminated with antibiotics and other chemical residues that are illegal in the US. Dewaal says there’s evidence some imported shrimp are grown in contaminated ponds.

Supporters of the industry say – while some tests have caught problems – that doesn’t mean all imported seafood is bad.

Norbert Sporns say there’s no need to worry. He’s CEO of a Seattle-based company called HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries. They farm tilapia – mostly in China. Sporns says the US has an international certification process that is rigorous and will catch potential problems.

“Prior to export we are subject to a series of tests. Once a product lands in the United States there are other tests that can be administered by the FDA on a spot check basis, so there are multiple levels of security in place.”

But the FDA only inspects about 2 percent of imports.

Ken Albala is a food historian at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He teaches about food policy and environmental issues. He says the cattle industry has been tightly regulated, but:

“Fishing hasn’t been.. And when you’re talking about a several thousand pound cow versus a bass – let alone a shrimp. I don’t see how they could ever begin to inspect consistently what’s coming in from abroad. Definitely not.”

Right now, Congress is considering a bill that would give the FDA a lot more authority over imported seafood. So far, the bill has passed the house and is waiting to be picked up in the Senate.

So – consumers who want to eat shrimp – and boy do we love our shrimp! – are faced with two choices:

Trust that random spot checks find any problems with seafood imports…

Or pay more for domestic, wild harvested shrimp …

And that price could go even higher if the oil spill in the gulf contaminates a good part of the domestic supply.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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New Food Safety Law?

  • Representative Bart Stupak has investigated food contamination problems from peanut butter to spinach. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

A bill to make the food system safer is stalled in the Senate. Lester Graham reports… the bill’s supporters in the House say they hope for a Senate vote soon.

Transcript

A bill to make the food system safer is stalled in the Senate. Lester Graham reports… the bill’s supporters in the House say they hope for a Senate vote soon.

Representative Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan, has investigated food contamination problems from peanut butter to spinach. The House has already passed a bill Stupak supported to keep track of food in case there is a contamination problem.

“Traceability from the time it’s planted in the field, harvested in the field, processed at the warehouse, shipped to the store that traceability is a big part of it.”

“There’s been a lot of concern about overlap of agency responsibility and gaps in responsibility. Will the legislation address that?”

“I think some of those gaps have been closed. Not all of them! But, I think some of them have been. I would still rather see us limit where food enters this country so you can have some control over it and by control I just mean inspection.”

Stupak says the Senate will likely take it up the food safety bill once the Senators finish with Wall Street financial overhaul legislation.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Is It Grassroots or Astroturf?

  • President Barack Obama speaks at a townhall meeting on healthcare reform. (Photo by Chuck Kennedy, courtesy of the White House)

Big industry is planning to target several
key US Senators who’ll vote on a climate
bill this fall. Lester Graham reports an
industry-funded group plans to hold 19
rallies at Senators’ townhall meetings:

Transcript

Big industry is planning to target several
key US Senators who’ll vote on a climate
bill this fall. Lester Graham reports an
industry-funded group plans to hold 19
rallies at Senators’ townhall meetings:

Rallies on health insurance reform can be pretty rowdy at times. It looks like you can expect the same over climate change legislation.

The American Petroleum Institute, and other big industry types formed a group called “Energy Citizens.”

They say the current climate change bill will mean higher energy prices and the loss of millions of jobs. A video on their website portrays everyday folks opposed to the idea.

“The principle of the government trying to help the environment is a good thing, but I don’t think this legislation is the best way to go about it.”

A memo from the American Petroleum Institute to oil company execs encourages getting those kind of people to townhall meetings. Environmental groups say it’s a fake grassroots movement.

A spokesperson for the Petroleum industry says oil companies are not against climate change legislation, just the climate legislation being considered by Congress.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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New Company Leaves Old Messes Behind

  • More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:

Transcript

The new General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, wants to create a clean, green image with its Chevy Volt electric car. But GM might have a bit of an environmental PR problem on its hands. Tamara Keith explains:

Automakers used to use mercury switches for lights and anti-lock brakes. But when old cars are scrapped and melted down, those parts turn into toxic air pollution.

So automakers and environmental groups created a program to recycle the mercury.

More than half of the mercury switches still on the road are in GM’s cars. But, since filing for bankruptcy, GM stopped paying into the program.

Rich Bell is president of the program, and he also works at Ford.

“None of our members are interested in paying for GM’s environmental legacy issues, and so we’re looking for a path forward, and we’re kind of in the midst of that now.”

In a statement, the new GM said those cars with mercury switches were made by the old GM.

The new GM that emerged from bankruptcy is not responsible for those old switches.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Fighting Over Oil and Water

  • The richest oil shale deposits lie in the Piceance Basin, which runs northwest of the town of Rifle, Colorado. The bands of dark grey along the edge of this snow- capped ridge are oil shale. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

In the future, keeping your gas tank full could make disputes over water in the American
West a lot worse. It’s because energy companies hope to develop the oil shale industry.
Getting oil from shale requires lots of water, and the richest oil shale deposits happen to be
in the dry state of Colorado. Shawn Allee headed there to see why a fight over water and
oil could be in the works:

Transcript

In the future, keeping your gas tank full could make disputes over water in the American
West a lot worse. It’s because energy companies hope to develop the oil shale industry.
Getting oil from shale requires lots of water, and the richest oil shale deposits happen to be
in the dry state of Colorado. Shawn Allee headed there to see why a fight over water and
oil could be in the works:

Oil companies have their eyes on vast oil shale deposits in western Colorado, Utah and
Wyoming.

The federal government says companies could pull 800 billion barrels of oil out of that shale.

That’s about three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Oil shale’s an impressive resource but it depends on water and there’s not much available
there.

How much would an oil shale industry need?

Shell Oil PR guy Tracy Boyd says the simple answer is that it will likely take his company
three barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil.

It’s because oil shale doesn’t really have oil in it – it’s got something called kerogen.

“You can heat this kerogen up. If you do it really slow, which we do for about 3.5 –
4 years, by putting heaters down in the rock formation, (you) produce a crude-oil
like material but with a little processing this is the first product we get out of it
which basically transportation fuels.”

Heating the ground require loads of electricity from new power plants and generators, and
they’d be cooled by water.

Oil companies are just experimenting with shale right now, but they’re securing rights to
water just in case.

Shell’s latest water claim is on Colorado’s Yampa River.

When Shell filed its court papers – some town governments warned they might fight the
claim.

One of these towns was Parker – a Denver suburb hundreds of miles east of the oil shale
region.

Frank Jaeger runs Parker’s water district.

Jaeger says, like other Colorado cities, Parker plans to expand.

“We know approximately what our numbers are and it will be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 150,000 people. In order to assure 150,000 people for another
150 years from now, I have to be proactive, I have to be at the front of the line for
the next drop of water available in the State of Colorado.”

Oil shale developers and cities across Colorado are set to fight over the water they might
need for the future, but some feel oil companies already have an edge.

“They’re actually one step ahead of the game.”

David Ableson is with Western Resource Advocates, an environmental group.

Ableson says energy companies tried developing oil shale several times in the last century.

They failed, but each time, they bought more water rights – just in case.

Now, they’ve got loads of water rights – and if the industry takes off, they’ll use them.

That could stop cities like Denver and its suburbs from getting water they hoped to have for
new homes and businesses.

Ableson says this isn’t just a Colorado fight, though.

He says some congressmen sell the idea of oil shale as an energy source the whole country
can depend on – even though its future could get tied up in Colorado water courts.

“And so, folks who are looking at this issue who do not live in CO, UT, or WY, need
to understand that when an elected official says, “this can solve our energy woes,”
that it’s actually a far more complicated situation than that and if there are severe
water impacts, that makes it much less likely that you could develop that
resource.”

The energy industry claims the concern over water is overblown – they say they just might
not need all that much water.

Ableson says that’s only true if oil shale fails. But if it succeeds, and we fill up on oil shale
gasoline – he predicts some towns or industries in the West will be left dry.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Microwave Popcorn Disease

  • Federal agencies have been aware of a link between artificial butter flavoring in microwave popcorn and a debilitating respiratory illness. The illness has shown up in factory workers - and recently one consumer of microwave popcorn made the news when he also got sick. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Microwave popcorn lovers are thinking twice about their favorite snack. Lester
Graham reports, a lung disease associated with popcorn packers might be a risk for
some popcorn snackers:

Transcript

Microwave popcorn lovers are thinking twice about their favorite snack. Lester
Graham reports, a lung disease associated with popcorn packers might be a risk for
some popcorn snackers:

For years federal agencies have been aware that there’s a link between an artificial
butter flavoring and lung disease. Some workers at factories that pack popcorn in
microwavable bags are exposed to the chemical diacetyl. It causes a debilitating
respiratory illness thatís now called “popcorn workers lung.”


No one really thought consumers were at any risk, since exposure to diacetyl is
limited. But a recent New York Times article revealed a microwave popcorn lover
who ate two bags a day and stuck his nose into the bag to inhale the buttery odor of
diacetyl also contracted “popcorn workers lung.”


Congress is pressuring various federal agencies to set a health standard for
exposure to diacetyl to protect workers in popcorn packaging factories and other
industries that use the chemical.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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China’s Co2 Emissions on the Rise

China is now producing more carbon dioxide emissions than the United
States. Lester Graham reports experts expected China to become the
leader in CO2 emissions, but not so soon:

Transcript

China is now producing more carbon dioxide emissions than the United
States. Lester Graham reports experts expected China to become the
leader in CO2 emissions, but not so soon:


Just last year, experts were predicting China CO2 emissions would
exceed U.S. emissions by as soon as 2009. Turns out, China was already
there.


The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency estimates China’s CO2
emissions for last year, 2006, were 8% higher than the United States.
CO2 is the main greenhouse gas which most scientists believe is
contributing to climate change and global warming.


Expanding Chinese industry relies more heavily on coal for fuel than
many U.S. based industries. The new estimate will likely fuel
President George Bush’s arguments that China and other developing
nations must do more to reduce emissions.


But… the 300 million people in the U.S. are still pumping out four times the CO2 emissions
per person than China with its more than 1 billion people.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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States Silent on Great Lakes Withdrawal Regs

A year ago, governors of all eight Great Lakes states endorsed a
multi-state compact to protect the lakes against plans to pump water out of
the basin. Bill Cohen reports… a full year later, not one state legislature
has actually approved the compact:

Transcript

A year ago, governors of all eight Great Lakes states endorsed a multi-state compact
to protect the
lakes against plans to pump water out of the basin. Bill Cohen reports… a full year
later, not one
state legislature has actually approved the compact:


Most states haven’t even gotten one of their legislative chambers to okay the
compact. Most
people think the compact is to protect against shipping millions of gallons of water
to foreign
countries, but the biggest roadblock has been the fear that each state would be
giving up the right
to allow water diversions for its own cities and industries.


Molly Flannagan with the National Wildlife Federation says environmental activists
are not giving
up. She says 2006 has been a year to educate lawmakers:


“We had four states that had legislation introduced this year. We’re expecting to
have more states
introducing legislation next year. I think this is the year really of building
momentum towards
getting the compact done, hopefully in 2007 or 2008.”


Backers of the plan are also seeking approval from Quebec and Ontario.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bill Cohen.

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Car Sharing Gets Profitable

  • Through car sharing programs, users rent cars on an hourly basis. (Photo courtesy of Zipcar)

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day.
It’s commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans,
renting a car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour
is often called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment
because its users only get the car when they need the car. They usually
take buses and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big
cities on the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair
of private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby
has this report:

Transcript

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day. It’s
commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans, renting a
car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour is often
called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment because its
users only get the car when they need the car. They usually take buses
and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big cities on
the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair of
private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now, those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd
Melby has this report:


For the past six months, a nonprofit called the Neighborhood Energy
Consortium has had the Minneapolis/St. Paul car sharing market to itself.
The non-profit group has raised about $450,000 to buy 12 cars. Those
energy-efficient hybrids have attracted about 140 people to join the
HourCar program. That’s Hour with an “H.”


(Sound of bus stop and rumble of passing truck)


On this Saturday morning, Mary Solac is shivering at a bus stop, waiting
for a ride to go pick up her HourCar. Despite the obvious inconvenience,
she says it’s worth it.


“You don’t have to worry about insurance. You don’t have to worry
about gas. It’s like okay, I’m paying what I’m paying and I don’t have to
worry about fixing the blasted car either.”


After a short bus ride, Solac does have to worry about more mundane car
concerns… such as scraping the ice and snow off the window.


(Sound of ice/snow scraping on the windshield)


To date, Solac’s only choice for renting a car by the hour has been
HourCar. That’s about to change.


The nation’s largest car sharing company — Zipcar of Boston — is
invading HourCar’s Minneapolis turf. Nearly 50,000 people now take
turns driving about 500 Zipcars, mostly in Boston, New York and
Washington, D.C.


Scott Griffith is the CEO of Zipcar.


“Over the last several years, we’ve really focused on those cities and getting
them past profitability, past the break even point, to prove that at the
metro market level, that we can make money in this business.”


That track record enticed a venture capital firm to invest $10 million in
Zipcar.


Another big new company is also getting an influx of cash. The nation’s
second-largest car sharing company — Flexcar of Seattle — is about half
as big as Zipcar. It too has a new investor: AOL Founder Stephen Case.
He rented a Flexcar, liked it and bought the company.


In Chicago, Flexcar has paired with a local nonprofit to put 47 cars on
the street.


Zipcar, meanwhile, is also trying to get into Chicago. It wants
government agencies in the Windy City to commit to using its cars
before entering the market. The company hopes that happens sometime
this year.


Business professor Alfred Marcus at the University of Minnesota says it’s
not unusual for emerging businesses to seek government help like this.


“To get this sector going, to stimulate it, it makes sense for their to be
some public involvement, but you would hope this could take off on its
own. I think this is transitional – these public and private partnerships,
and that’s very typical when industries start.”


In Minneapolis/St. Paul, the University of Minnesota is guaranteeing
Zipcar a $1,500 per month per vehicle subsidy, but once Zipcar meets the
$1,500 minimum, that subsidy goes away. Zipcar says it expects to do
just that in three months.


At the moment, Zipcar is growing fast. It had revenues of about $15
million in 2005. CEO Griffith says it expects to double that this year, but
Alfred Marcus with the University of Minnesota says over the long-term,
Zipcar faces big hurdles.


Zipcar has only had success in large, densely-populated cities. Its target
market is young people without cars who are highly price sensitive, and
then there’s the question of where to keep the cars. They have to be
conveniently located to the people who might want to use them.


Marcus says that if these start-ups continue to grow, someday they might
be gobbled up by bigger companies.


“The ultimate aim of Flexcars or Zipcars may be to build up a fringe
business, get it going and have a rental car company buy them or have even
have a conventional automobile company by them.”


But the car-sharing company owners say they have other plans. Zipcar
boss Scott Griffith says he’s working on a 10-year plan to make Zipcar an
international company. Flexcar owner Stephen Case says he bought that
firm “to build it” and not to “flip it.”


For the GLRC, I’m Todd Melby.

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Ten Threats: Pollution Hot Spots

  • Ruddiman Pond has been listed as a Great Lakes 'Area of Concern' for more than 18 years. (Photo by Michael Leland).

For decades, heavy industries made the Great Lakes a center of manufacturing
and employment for the United States. Those factories also left polluted waters
in many areas. In 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation
that promised to clean the Lakes’ pollution hot spots, known as Areas of Concern.
So far, work has only begun at three of those sites. Reporter Michael Leland
visited one of them:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our guide
in the series, Lester Graham, says one of the threats identified by experts
across the region is known as “Areas of Concern.”


For decades, heavy industries made the Great Lakes a center of manufacturing
and employment for the United States. Those factories also left polluted waters
in many areas. In 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation
that promised to clean the Lakes’ pollution hot spots, known as Areas of Concern.
So far, work has only begun at three of those sites. Reporter Michael Leland
visited one of them:


Picture what you might think one of these heavily polluted sites looks like.
Did you think of a big park in a quiet neighborhood, with lots of tall
trees, and a bandstand next to a lagoon? No? Well, welcome to McGraft Park
in Muskegon, Michigan, the home of Ruddiman Pond, one of the most polluted
spots in the Great Lakes.


“This little lagoon here is a sediment basin. It is a sediment trap.”


Rick Rideske is a research scientist at the Annis Water Resource Institute
in Muskegon. It studies the quality of Michigan’s lakes and rivers.


“All of the contaminated sediment from the upper part of the watershed has made
its way down here and is being deposited. They are taking out, in some places,
15 feet of contaminated sediment.”


Beginning in the 1930’s, heavy industries began setting up shop along
Ruddiman Creek, a few miles from the park. Many dumped their toxic wastes
into nearby storm sewers, which emptied into the creek, and flowed toward
Ruddiman Pond. Toxic heavy metals like chromium and lead, along with
hazardous chemicals like PCB’s, settled to the bottom. It’s been a long
time since the pond has been safe for swimming.


Rideske points to a yellow sign nailed to a tree next to the pond. It says,
“No entry. Hazardous substances.”


“If you look at that sign over there, that sign was put up in maybe 1997, 98.
You can see the tree has grown over the sign.”


But beyond that sign is some hope for Ruddiman Creek and Pond. Workers are
scooping toxic mud from the bottom of the lagoon. The material is trucked
to a landfill licensed to receive toxic stuff like this. The project should
be finished by next summer.


Ruddiman Creek and Pond make up one of 43 pollution hot spots in the Great
Lakes that the U.S. and Canada call Areas of Concern. So far, two in Canada
have been cleaned up. Ruddiman Creek is one of only three in the U.S. being
cleaned.


David Ullirch would like to see that work move a lot faster. He directs the Great
Lakes Initiative. It’s a group of mayors and other officials from the U.S. and
Canada that works to preserve the Lakes.


“This is a serious problem, not only in terms of a threat to the natural environment,
there are public health issues associated with them and often, even worse, is that
they are a stigma to those areas, whether it is Waukegan Harbor, or Gary, Indiana, or
Ashtabula Harbor, these are things that these cities have had to live with for
years, and it’s time to get them cleaned up and get on with it.”


The government is supposed to provide 270-million dollars over five years to
clean up the Areas of Concern in the United States, but so far, congress
has appropriated only about 35-million dollars. That relatively small amount
of cash has limited the number of cleanups that can be started, and it frustrates
Dennis Schornack. He’s the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission.
It’s a watchdog group that monitors the water quality treaty between the U.S. and
Canada.


“These areas were identified back in 1987, and only two, both of which are in Canada,
have been delisted since that time. At that pace of progress, it will be 400 years
before we are so-called clean, and I think that is very disappointing.”


In the case of Ruddiman Creek, they’re glad at least one site is being cleaned up.
Rick Rideske of the Annis Institute says the fact that it’s in a neighborhood park
played a big role in attracting the attention, and government cash needed to clean
it up.


“It really took the local residents, public advisory council, we have a Ruddiman
Creek Task Force, which is made of local people from this neighborhood. They called
frequently state representatives, federal representatives. Getting this site on the
priority list was a community effort for a lot of people.”


Rideske and people who live near McGraft Park are looking forward to celebrating a
small victory in the fight to restore the Great Lakes, and they’re looking forward to
taking down that yellow warning sign next year.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

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