You want safe shrimp to eat; restaurant owners want a good product to sell; chefs want delicious ingredients from which to create a winning menu; and domestic shrimpers need our business to survive as an industry. It’s one big circle – and our choices in one area impact others. This circle was made obvious by voices raised in New Orleans at the 2008 Women Chefs and Restaurateurs National Conference.

The attending women were eager to hear from Food & Water Watch, who sent me to get out the word about the health and environmental price of cheap imported shrimp. Chefs and restaurants got tips and important information about how they can improve their shrimp purchasing practices in the panel, "There’s Something About Shrimp."

 "The only way to make sure that we are getting safe seafood and that we continue to have a domestic industry to supply us with it is to shift demand. "

A lot is at stake for shrimp, and audience members got a well-rounded perspective on the issue from our esteemed panel. Panelists included moderator Leigh Belanger from the Chef’s Collaborative, local New Orleans shrimper Ray Brandhurst, chef of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, Tory McPhail, and Brennan Group operations head Haley Bitterman.

Giant shrimp buffets and growing portion sizes are just two reasons why demand for cheap, imported shrimp has grown immensely (learn more in our report Suspicious Shrimp). The safer, sustainable domestic shrimpers have lost and gone out of business. In addition, natural disasters such as hurricanes have wreaked havoc on shrimpers' boats and the industry’s infrastructure.

Ray, an innovative entrepreneur, talked about how the direct-purchasing relationships that he established with local restaurants have kept him afloat. He’s even begun shipping his shrimp directly to restaurants throughout the country via FedEx.

The overarching message from the panel was clear – eat domestic shrimp. The only way to make sure that we are getting safe seafood and that we continue to have a domestic industry to supply us with it is to shift demand. And we all have a part to play in that – whether we’re consumers, shrimpers, or chefs. To find out more about industrially produced shrimp and why you may want to avoid it, check out our Suspicious Shrimp report.

What in the world does irradiation – zapping the life, essence, and nutrients out of our food – have to do with global trade?

Everything. Bombarding fruits, veggies and meat with ionizing radiation that busts molecules and begets new types of matter is part of the global agribusiness agenda to remake farms, both here and abroad, into factories. The corporate cadre’s relentless drive for maximizing profit demands that the mass manufacture of food happen in countries with cheap labor costs and non-existent environmental rules.

Our political leaders and their big business handlers sing the praises of corporate-managed trade, which the media they own prefer to call free trade. Sounds better. They don’t tell us about the fly-infested fruit shipped across the Pacific or the filthy meat trucked over the border. They don’t have to. Irradiation will mask any grossness covering the imported food.

The World Bank works hand-in-hand with the World Trade Organization to pressure developing nations to grow cash crops to export to rich countries. The idea behind the export-oriented orthodoxy is that developing countries could use earnings from selling cotton or cocoa beans to buy imported corn or wheat. Of course, it is an advantage for giant food corporations that are looking for the cheapest place to buy the raw commodities they need. Free trade encourages farmers to abandon growing food to cultivate non-food cash crops like tea, rubber and coffee.

Today, almost half of the world’s population grows food for their families and communities. They grow staples and a mix of diverse crops. They have developed their own seed varieties, fertilizers, and pest management. They live in communities where the concept of the commons is strong, resulting in shared seeds, water, and labor. Unfortunately, this kind of local self-sufficiency is scorned by multinational corporations and the institutions they influence.

Jayson Cainglet, a Filipino activist working to stop irradiation and save family farming in the Philippines, spoke about this in the new book Zapped! Irradiation and the Death of Food: “Irradiation, if widely adopted, will facilitate this type of food production. Irradiation is designed to cover up inherent problems in production methods that agribusiness employs, but small-scale farms do not rely on these technologies.”

-Robert Schubert
email • bio

What happens to a nation's farmers when the amount of imported food doubles within 10 years? In the United States, the value of agricultural products coming from overseas soared from $30 billion in 1995 to $60 billion last year.

Larry Thompson’s family has grown strawberries in Boring, Oregon since 1947, when “five acres was all you needed to make a living.”  Today, imports from Mexico and Chile make turning a profit more difficult.

Last year, $220 million worth of strawberries were imported into the United States, and only $1.5 million were grown domestically. The low wages paid to farm workers abroad make imported berries cheaper. Thompson used to sell his berries to processors, but now with prices so low, he only sells directly to the public.

To grow strawberries today, “you have to love it,” says Thompson, who now works seven days or 96 hours a week to keep up.  Many farmers have given up the crop all together. If this trend continues, Oregonians could lose all access to local berries.

Food & Water Watch regularly profiles crops in crisis on our website and in our Food Alert newsletter.  To find out what you can do to protect local food, sign up for our email lists and tell Congress to expand country-of-origin-labeling.

Consumers and family farmers and ranchers have been fighting for years to require labeling about where food comes from. Now, after months of headlines about tainted food imports and years of delay by Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is starting to write the rules for how the labeling program will work for meat and produce and is asking for comments about the existing rules for seafood.

Click here to tell USDA to write rules that cover as much food as possible. Specifically, USDA should limit exemptions for "processed" foods and allow farmers, ranchers, and fishermen to use common sense record keeping systems to keep costs down.

Lately, numerous safety problems have been found in a variety of products from China, including tainted pet food and toxic toothpaste. What’s a consumer to do?

Well…

To put your mind at ease, China decided to execute Zheng Xiaoyu, the head of the Beijing's food and drug agency on July 12. But before his departure, Zheng wrote a confession acknowledging the fact that during his eight-year tenure, he had the audacity to accept gifts and bribes from eight, count them eight, drug companies that sought special favors.

But China’s not the only culprit. Need I mention the black pepper with a side order of salmonella from India? Or how about that crabmeat from Mexico that is far too filthy to eat. Let’s not even talk about the mislabeled candy from Denmark. Sadly, it appears that China is not the only country with food safety woes. (As a side note, they also export toys that are chock full of lead paint. Poor Mattel.)

Worried? Us, too. That’s why we’re working not only to improve government inspection of imported food, but also increase the number of inspections. Consumers need government inspectors to watch over the industry and make sure that dangerous bugs like E. coli and Salmonella don’t contaminate our food. You can learn about food safety issues here. If you’re concerned about the safety of your seafood, check out this section.

Take action. Ask your retailer or restaurant where your food comes from. While you’re at it, you might as well tell Congress that you want more information about where your food was produced. Check out this latest food safety victory as well.

We've mentioned before that labels revealing the origin of fresh and frozen food would be invaluable tools for consumers deciding what foods they wish to buy for their families. We know you think so too. 

Back in March we revealed polling results where 82% of participating consumer expressed a desire to see mandatory country-of-origin labeling on their food. Since China's recent food safety woes started making the news, that support has only grown stronger. Consumers Union conducted a poll that revealed 92% support for COOL. Ninety-two percent of you thought it was ridiculous that you could easily tell where your t-shirt was made but not where your fruit, vegetables, or meat was grown.

One company in Utah has taken matters into their own hands and will begin labeling their food "China Free." That's not really the universal information we were hoping for but it's good to see someone taking country-of-origin labeling seriously. Now only if we could get USDA or Congress to do the same.

It’s in hog feed; it’s in poultry feed; it’s in fish feed. It’s melamine, known as plastic to the rest of us, yum!

Kona Blue, the industrial fish farming operation that Food & Water Watch criticized in our Seas of Doubt report and here on the blog, has announced that its fish were fed melamine laced feed and has suspended sales.

The whole melamine experience just highlights the woefully inadequate job the federal government is doing at protecting American consumers in the face of rising imports. Yesterday, Food & Water Watch released a little analysis of import refusals for veterinary drug residues in seafood (again, yum!). It turns out that without increasing inspections, contaminated shipments are up dramatically in the first four months of 2007. Read the whole analysis here.

Has the Office of the United States Trade Representative got a deal for you. If you eat irradiated mangos from India . . . well, that’s it, really.

For the past 18 years, the United States has refused to import mangos from India because they might carry the mango seed weevil, which could damage Florida mangos or other crops. But, for the past several months, the USTR has been negotiating a deal where we accept irradiated mangos from India and India accepts Harley Davidson motorcycles (which apparently involves changing Indian air pollution standards).

While it seems that the motorcycle deal has fallen through, we still get the mangos. Unfortunately between delays in country of origin labeling regulations and plans to eliminated the irradiated label, you may not even know if the mango you are considering in the grocery store is an irradiated one from India.

You could, of course, tell the FDA and USDA that you won’t stand for that kind of treatment. Just because Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (pictured) eats irradiated mangos doesn’t mean you should have to.

Added 5-22-2007:  See our irradiation campaign page for more about this expensive, impractical, ineffective and potentially dangerous technology.

Sometimes we public interest advocates feel like we are screaming into the wind: "FDA needs more inspectors! We're not keeping up with imports! FDA and USDA need Congress to provide statutory authority for the agencies to force recalls rather than depending on voluntary actions by the food companies themselves!" You know, riveting, witty stuff.

The approach of the cartoonist is refreshing:

Tom Toles in this morning's Washington Post