A Fishy Situation in Massachusetts

This month, The Boston Globe published the findings of a five-month investigation into the mislabeling of fish in Massachusetts. The study showed that consumers routinely overpay for less desirable species of seafood. In many cases, fish advertised as "local" were actually shipped in from thousands of miles away. The Globe reports.

The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name - 48 percent.

The results underscore the dramatic lack of oversight in the seafood business compared with other food industries such as meat and poultry.

Nationally, mislabeled fish is estimated to cost diners and the industry up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.

Following the publication of these findings, State officials vowed to improve oversight of seafood sales in Massachusetts. But the problem of seafood mislabeling is a national one.

A separate investigation by Consumer Reports found that 22 percent of fish in restaurants and stores were mislabeled and often replaced with a cheaper species. Even worse, tainted seafood is probably finding its way into America. MSNBC reports:

The U.S. imported more than 17.6 million tons of seafood in the last decade, according to a News21 analysis of import data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Only about 2 percent of imported seafood is inspected, and only 0.1 percent is tested for banned drug residues, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. That's especially alarming because 80 percent of the seafood in America is imported, according to the agency.

The FDA says it can't say for sure how many of the samples pass or fail.

But a News21 analysis of FDA import-refusal data reveals an unappetizing portrait. In more than half of cases when seafood is rejected, the fish has been deemed filthy, meaning it was spoiled or contained physical abnormalities, or it was contaminated with a food borne pathogen. About 20 percent of those cases involved salmonella.

The fact that only 2 percent of seafood is inspected is pretty stunning. But with the FDA generally considered to be underfunded, it seems unlikely that anything can be done to improve that statistic.

Still, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of problems with seafood, and companies are taking note.

Recently, Target announced that it will sell only sustainable and traceable seafood in its stores by 2015. Other stores, such as Wal-Mart, Safeway and Whole Foods, are also working to change their seafood policies to address concerns about overfishing.

Overfishing has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems, illustrating the vulnerability of fish populations. And this issue will need to be addressed within our lifetimes: In 2006, a study of catch data published in the journal Science predicted that if fishing rates continue apace, all the world's fisheries will have collapsed by 2048.

It's scary to contemplate that statistic. It's even more frightening that ecological issues aren't receiving the national attention that they clearly deserve.

Do Animals Have Rights?

The way someone answers the question posed in the title of this blog post is a good indicator of how open that person is to becoming vegan.

For instance, people who say, "Heck no," probably aren't going to be converting to veganism anytime soon. But those who believe that animals do have rights -- such as the right to live -- might be more open to the idea.

During the past two weeks, the question of whether animals have rights was an underlying theme in a couple prominent news stories.

If you live in or near New York City, you probably heard about the carriage horse that keeled over and died in Midtown last Sunday. The horse was trotting toward Central Park to begin its morning shift when it just collapsed. Since healthy horses normally don't just die in the street, the city is asking for an autopsy, though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a press conference on Wednesday that there was no evidence of abuse.

During that press conference, Mr. Bloomberg also dismissed calls for a ban on the carriage industry, citing its place in New York's history. The New York Times reports:

"I have no idea what goes through their minds," the mayor said of opponents of horse-drawn carriages.

"The horses here are supervised by the health department, the A.S.P.C.A.," he said. "They're well taken care of. And most of them wouldn't be alive if they didn't have a job."

While the quality of the horses' treatment is debatable (after all, horses aren't meant to live in urban environments) Mr. Bloomberg is right to say that many wouldn't be alive if they didn't have the carriage job.

Though the country's last meat processing plant that slaughtered horses for human consumption was closed five years ago, just as many American horses are still ending up on a dinner plates: according to a recent government study, horse slaughter is now taking place across the border in Mexico and Canada.

Though in recent weeks lawmakers have pushed Congress to take action, The Times reports that a resolution does not appear imminent:

"It's just a hot political issue," said Dr. Whitney Miller, a lobbyist for the American Veterinary Medical Association, which supports allowing horse slaughter. "It's hard to see something definitive happening."

The problem is that many people still view horses as livestock animals, similar to a cow, sheep or goat. Not to mention, in some places horse meat is prized as a delicacy. Still, the argument of "they're being killed anyway so we might as well be the ones doing it (and profiting off of it)" is pretty cynical.

But horses weren't the only animals getting slaughtered in the news this week. In Ohio, lions, tigers and bears were being killed in the double digits.

Last Tuesday Muskingum County Animal Farm owner Terry Thompson turned loose 56 animals and then shot himself to death. Sheriff's deputies in Zanesville, Ohio were issued shoot-to-kill orders, managing to kill 48 animals and capture six (a wolf was later found dead and a monkey is still on the loose).

The animals killed included 18 rare Bengal tigers (there are only 1,400 of the endangered cats left in the world) and 17 lions.

It's a tragedy that this happened, and though it's pretty galling that tranquilizers weren't used at all, I can understand that the police department was worried about the town's safety.

What I don't understand is why they allowed Mr. Thompson to run a farm in the first place. Time reports:

Thompson, 62, had had repeated run-ins with the law and his neighbors. Lutz said that the sheriff's office had received numerous complaints since 2004 about animals escaping onto neightbors' property. The sheriff's office also said that Thompson had been charged over the years with animal cruelty, animal neglect and allowing animals to roam.

He had gotten out of federal prison just last month after serving a year for possessing unregistered guns.

John Ellenberger, a neighbor, speculated that Thompson freed the animals to get back at neighbors and the police. "Nobody much cared for him," Ellenberger said.

How does someone who has just gotten out of federal prison assemble a zoo of more than 50 animals in a month? And more importantly, why is someone who has just gotten out of federal prison being allowed to build a private zoo that includes a cross section of some of the most dangerous animals in the world?

For starters, Ohio has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them. Governor John Kasich also allowed a statewide ban on the buying and selling of exotic pets to expire in April.

Above all, it's the complete disregard for animal rights that allowed this killing spree to happen. And that disregard isn't exclusive to Ohio, but rather endemic of a number of other state's in this country as well.

PETA is taking advantage of this animal media frenzy by filling a lawsuit against SeaWorld over the company's treatment of its killer whales. The 20-page complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Southern California to declare that the five whales are being held in slavery or involuntary servitude in violation of the 13th Amendment.

The lawsuit is unprecedented and will certainly fail; instead, PETA is using the legal action to stoke the debate about animal rights. And while most commentators have scoffed at this lawsuit, Stephen Colbert made a pretty good point about the idea that animals can't be equated to humans:

If corporations can be afforded the same rights as people, why can't animals? After all, they're quite the job creators: while the economy for us humans has imploded, the pet economy has continued to grow.

Eating for Two

Those trying to curb their food intake may want to reconsider their choices in dining partners.

A new study published this month by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that men eat more around women than they do around other men. Women, meanwhile, ate less around men than they did in the company of other women.

The study sampled 127 college student for a one-week period, mainly during the hours of lunch and dinner. Its findings suggest that unconscious scripts about how to eat are at work when people sit down to a meal with someone of either sex.

For example, when women ate with other women, they ordered on average 833 calories; but when they ate with men, they purchased only 721 calories.

Though these findings are in line with cultural expectations, the results for the study's male students are considerably more surprising. Researchers Molly Allen-O'Donnell and Marci Cottingham found that when men sat with other men, they ordered on average only 952 calories, but when they sat with women they ordered 1162 calories.

Allen-O'Donnell and Cottingham conjecture that this unexpected finding could mean that men purchase more calories in the company of women as a way to assert their masculinity. In fact, prior research supports this theory, concluding that smaller meals convey feminine impressions while larger meals communicate masculinity.

In the discussion section of their study, Allen-O'Donnell and Cottingham note that these finding have important implications when it comes to addressing eating disorders among young people, as well as the increase in obesity among both children and adults in the United States. They write:

Those who are trying to address these concerns should consider the importance of the role of gender and social context in developing solutions and meeting needs. Providing strictly nutritional information is not sufficient in helping individuals, families, schools, and society address these issues.

I'm not sure what these solutions would consist of (fewer dinner dates for men? more dinner dates for women?), but it's interesting to consider the influence of gender on our eating habits. And any information that helps us to be more deliberate in our eating decisions is certainly welcome.

Occupy Factory Farms

It has been difficult this week to focus on food-related issues when Occupy Wall Street is generating such incendiary news coverage, not to mention truly shocking "man on the street" video.

Indeed, if you want to see a scary video this weekend that's shot on a handheld camera, skip Paranormal Activity 3 and dive into this:

While this isn't the most vicious instance of police brutality at the protest - a quick search on YouTube will bring up plenty of those - it's particularly shocking because the man who was handcuffed and thrown to the ground was seemingly unaffiliated with the protest, and clearly did nothing to warrant such a violent arrest.

But it's videos like this one that have propelled Occupy Wall Street from a fringe movement to a substantial voice in the national conversation about our country's future.

And though Bill O'Riley and his ilk want to frame the protest in partisan terms, sympathizers of Occupy Wall Street are not limited to hippie socialist Nazis. So like it or not, Republican politicians will have to accept that many of the people involved in this protest speak for their constituents.

After all, there's plenty to be outraged about when the Securities and Exchange Commission is only making a company like Citigroup pay $285 million to settle a civil complaint, after the company stuffed its portfolios with risky mortgage-related investments, sold them to unsuspecting customers and then bet against them (to put that number into perspective: in its third quarter alone Citigroup earned profits of $3.8 billion).

Last time I checked Citigroup's actions are the definition of fraud, and I'm pretty sure if I did something similar I would be in jail right now.

So while some may want to dismiss Occupy Wall Street as unfocused or irrelevant, there's clearly a need for a national discussion on financial reform. But it's interesting that the protest didn't gain traction until videos of police brutality began to emerge. And I can't help but wonder how far along the movement would be if those videos hadn't been made.

For animal advocacy groups, the use of video to expose instances of animal welfare violations has been an important tool in the animal rights movement. After all, it's easy for supermarket shoppers to buy hamburgers, eggs or milk and never wonder about how that food was produced. And the agriculture industry would like to keep it that way.

In at least three states - Iowa, Florida and Minnesota - legislation is moving ahead that would make undercover investigations in factory farms, especially filming and photography, a crime. The purpose of this legislation is to hide factory-farming conditions from a public that is beginning to think seriously about animal rights and the way food is produced.

The bill proposed in Florida would make it a first-degree felony to film a farm without written permission from the owner (the maximum prison time for a first-degree felony in Florida is 30 years). Kansas and Montana, meanwhile, have already passed anti-whistleblower laws, though they aren't specifically aimed at secret filming in factory farms.

So under this legislation, videos such as the one below - produced by the animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals (MFA) - would become a thing of the past. Please note, the video is quite graphic:

This undercover investigation by the MFA revealed the shocking practices of one of the nation's largest pork producers - Iowa Select Farms in Kamrar, Iowa. Between April and June 2011 an MFA investigator documented the brutal abuse and confinement of mother sows and their piglets, which can be seen in the video.

ABC News followed up on the video, interviewing the executive director of the MFA to figure out how the organization gained access to Iowa's largest pig farm:

Gaining access as employees, "our investigators go in as eyes and ears for the public," said Nathan Runkle, executive director of Chicago-based Mercy for Animals. "They give their real names and real social security numbers and they shoot the video with a small undercover camera. Part of our message is there is not a single federal law that provides protection to factory animals. What we need are stricter, stronger laws."

Iowa Select Farms responded to the video by posting a statement from the company veterinarian, Dr. Howard Hill, on its website. Hill writes, "Iowa Select has a long-standing commitment to animal welfare." He goes on to say that the company has initiated an investigation, and then bizarrely condemns anyone who would "video tape what they believe is animal abuse if they had a chance to stop it."

Apparently this is all the MFA's fault for not stopping the abuse. Good thing Hill cleared that up for me.

The idea that someone could get 30 years of jail time for simply filming animal cruelty while the company committing the abuses suffers no repercussions is contemptible. Occupy Factory Farms, anyone?

'Sesame Street' Hit Hard - Debuts Starving Muppet

This week "Sesame Street" unveiled a new Muppet character named Lily, a 7-year-old girl representing one of the 17 million American children that the Department of Agriculture estimates are "food insecure," meaning their access to food is limited or uncertain. Here's a clip from this "very special episode":

In the show, "Growing Hope Against Hunger," the Muppets explore ways to help Lily, her family and the millions of children that Lily represents. In addition, Elmo and the rest of the Muppet gang learn about the importance of community gardens and food drives.

The special featured several mini-documentaries about children who have experienced hunger, and country singer Brad Paisley stopped by to help tackle this important issue.

I've volunteered at food hunger organizations before, and it's admirable that "Sesame Street" is bringing attention to this issue, even if the show is targeted at the preschool set. Food insecurity is on the rise in this country - 14.6 percent of U.S. households fell into the food-insecure category at some point in 2008. But thankfully the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, which I discussed last week, is helping to bolster child nutrition programs.

In reading about show's new Muppet I was surprised to learn that this is not the first time that "Sesame Street" has taken on social issues - previously it has dealt with issues of economic insecurity and children with parents in the military. Perhaps our politicians should be tuning into Sesame Street for a reality check...

Chicken Bares All in The New York Times: A Recipe For Controversy?

Two weeks ago I picked up the Dining section of The Times and thought, "Well that's a bit much."

Here's why:

This picture ran below the headline, "Chicken's Attraction Is Truly Skin Deep." Now, I usually don't read the Dining section (the articles tend to be about food I can't eat and restaurants I can't afford to eat at), but something about this story drew me in.

The article itself is actually pretty disgusting - writer Sarah DiGregorio profiles a couple of chefs who incorporate chicken skin into their dishes. She also discusses the problem of shrinkage ("When you render the fat from a piece of skin, it shrivels to about half its size") and conjectures that the chicken skin mania is all a product of our collective obsession with over-the-top foods (for evidence see the KFC Double Down sandwich).

While I might not be one for chicken skin tacos, I didn't find the article or its photograph to be all that offensive. If anything, it got a laugh out of me at eight in the morning, which is no small feat.

But PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - was less amused. In an interview with The Atlantic Wire the organization's founder and president Ingrid Newkirk called the photograph offensive, saying: "It's necrophilia. It's not amusing. It's just ghastly and sickly. It's not fitting for The New York Times."

The Gray Lady didn't offer The Atlantic Wire a response to Newkirk, but it did post a follow-up article about the photograph on its Lens blog.

Apparently Tiina Loite, a photo editor in the Dining section, and Fred Norgaard, an art director, came up with the idea for the shoot. Photographer Tony Cenicola then spent a day and a half trying to figure out how to make the chicken look alluring. Eventually he propped the chicken into its seductive pose using weights, chopsticks and wire; added some ambient lighting; and voilà - a chicken with attitude.

While the photograph wasn't the most enjoyable thing to look at over my morning cereal, PETA's overblown response is pretty ridiculous, if not very surprising. After all, PETA is almost as attention-crazed as Sarah Palin, evident in every advertisement in the organization's history (not to mention its forthcoming porn site, which will feature racy content alongside pictures of animals being abused).

That's not to say running the "Sexy Chicken" photograph was a good decision - it wasn't exactly The NY Times at its classiest. But at least it got me to read the Dining section. And when was the last time that part of the newspaper created a stir among anyone other than foodies?

The Media Takes a Bite Out of Chris Christie

If you search Google News for "Chris Christie Overweight," you get 169 results. Some articles ask "Is New Jersey Governor Too Overweight to Become President?" while others proclaim "Christie's weight is irrelevant."

Though it's ludicrous to say that that Mr. Christie's weight problem makes him ineligible for the presidency, it's pretty clear from the avalanche of editorials on the subject that it's not wholly irrelevant. Indeed, if he does decide to run in 2016 or 2020, I'm sure there will be even more articles on the subject, and no end of jokes about him storming the White House vegetable garden.

Many columnists have said that Mr. Christie's weight proves that he is undisciplined and therefore unfit to run the country. This is ridiculous. After all, President Obama only just quit smoking this summer, and there was never an outpouring of editorials about how his need for nicotine constituted a lack of discipline.

Some people (especially those who spend a lot of time watching the Fox News channel) would say that the disparity in how the media has treated Mr. Christie's weight and Mr. Obama's smoking is due to its liberal bias. More likely, it's the rarity of seeing a politician who is overweight that set columnists off. Indeed, there hasn't been an overweight president since Howard William Taft took office 100 years ago weighing in at over 300 pounds.

But while it is ridiculous to say that Mr. Christie's weight impinges on his character, it is worth discussing his heaviness in the same context as a candidate's age.

During the 2008 presidential race, John McCain's age - 72 at the time - received some attention because it meant that he was more likely to become incapacitated in office. The same holds true for Mr. Christie, as his current weight endangers his health and potentially exacerbates other ailments (he was hospitalized in July after an asthma attack).

Voters would therefore be prudent to consider whether a Christie presidency might be shortened by illness. But any other discussion of his weight makes for worthless commentary, and Letterman can certainly do better than the jokes he made about Mr. Christie's weight in his "Top 10" list last Tuesday.

Are the Kids All Right?

In previous posts I've discussed the alarming statistic that nearly 20 percent of children ages 6-11 years in the U.S. are obese. Fortunately, this statistic has also had an impact on the current administration - Michelle Obama announced a nationwide campaign called "Let's Move" in early 2010 to battle childhood obesity and towards the end of that year President Obama signed The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 into law.

The "Let's Move" campaign is comprised of four strategies to lower childhood obesity rates:

1. Get parents more informed about nutrition and exercise.
2. Improve the quality of food in schools.
3. Make healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families.
4. Focus more on physical education.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act targets the second and third objectives of the "Let's Move" campaign. Specifically, the bill authorizes funding for federal school meal and child nutrition programs and increases access to healthy food for low-income children. Some of the changes that the bill has made include:

• Gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines.
• Provides additional funding to schools that meet updated nutritional standards of federally subsidized lunches.
• Sets basic standards for school wellness policies including goals for nutrition promotion and education and physical activity.

All of this sounds very progressive, but you're probably wondering how much it costs - according to the White House, in addition to reauthorizing child nutrition programs for five years, the bill will provide $4.5 billion in new funding to these programs over 10 years. Figures like those make me miss the heady days of late 2010, when child nutrition legislation could get passed with a unanimous vote by the Senate and a vote of 264-157 in the House.

Of course, now we're in 2011, and economists are no longer making rosy projections about unemployment decreasing and consumer confidence bouncing back. Instead we have debt crises and double-dip recessions. So it's not surprising that public schools are worried about the rising costs of serving lunch. Reports The New York Times:

Under a little-noticed provision of the child nutrition bill signed by President Obama in December, which brought more fresh produce and less whole milk to cafeterias nationwide, school districts are required to start bringing their prices in line with what it costs to prepare the meals, eventually charging an average of $2.46 for the lunches they serve.

Right now, many schools charge less than the cost to prepare meals because the federal government provides financial help per meal for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. This provision has therefore contributed to price increases in a number of school districts this fall, and the worry is that more parents will be compelled to pack their children's lunches or skip on paying cafeteria lunch fees altogether.

But in California, that already seems to be happening, and not because of pricing. The NY Times reports that snack food trucks have begun popping up outside of schools, offering the sort of sweet and salty treats that are no longer available on cafeteria menus. It seems that teenagers will go out of their way - and spend more - to procure the unhealthy snacks that the child nutrition bill expelled from schools' lunch menus last December.

So when schools can't cover the cost of producing more nutritious lunches, and children avoid those meals anyway, how do we solve the problem of childhood obesity? In California they've added chocolate chip cookies to the menu in an attempt to lure students back from the food trucks, but somehow that doesn't seem like the solution.

In America, one in three children is overweight or obese, indicating that an unhealthy diet is considered culturally acceptable. Indeed, people often refer to veganism as a "radical diet," yet diets consisting of food high in calories, fat, saturated fat and sugar are never spoken of as extreme. It therefore seems like we won't see any real change in obesity statistics until nutrition education becomes more widespread.