The article is one of an increasing number of investigative pieces which have highlighted the massive pollution problems caused by intensive livestock farming systems – and the fact that we, as taxpayers, are the ones who are currently picking up the bill.

Farming today
Ask the average man or woman in the street to describe a modern farm and it is pretty likely that you’ll still get a rose-tinted description of a traditional family farm, as it was some time ago. Many people still have no idea how the vast majority of their food is produced today. And big farming business wants to keep it that way, believe me.

Before the industrialization of our farming systems in the 1940s-50s, U.S. farming mainly consisted of small family farms working in relative harmony with their surrounding environment. In the spring and summer months, farmers would grow crops and grass to feed their families and livestock, selling the excess to local communities and businesses. The crops would take up nutrients from the soil, which would be utilized by the livestock to produce milk, eggs or meat for human consumption. Over the winter months, the animals would be housed in barns with straw bedding and fed hay. In the spring, the farmers would clear out the straw bedding – now thoroughly mixed with manure – and spread it on the land, thereby returning some of the nutrients that the cattle had consumed back to the soil for the following season’s crops and pasture.

Sustainable family farms do still exist. And, thanks to mounting consumer interest in how food is produced, their number is growing. Animal Welfare Approved farmers across the U.S. seek to work in balance with their environment. They grow grass to feed their livestock, returning manure back to the land. It’s called the natural nutrient cycle.

Spread manure on healthy pastures at the right levels and the worms and micro-organisms that live in the soil will quickly break it down into a more stable form of nutrients, readily available to growing plants. This is a natural process, one that has happened since time immemorial. It’s what the soil critters are designed to do.

Problems with the system
The system described works amazingly well. However, spread too much manure and things quickly start to get out of hand. The soil life cannot cope and the manure is no longer absorbed into the soil. Instead, it sits on the surface, creating increasingly toxic conditions for the friendly soil critters below. Exposed to the weather, the soluble nutrients in the manure – particularly nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous – start to leech away, finding their way into streams and waterways. And this is exactly what is happening on intensive livestock units across the U.S. on a truly massive scale.

The trouble is that these industrial farming units aren’t designed to work with Mother Nature. Gone is the concept of the “natural nutrient cycle”—instead, these industrial units, with their tens of thousands of housed pigs or cattle, or hundreds of thousands of chickens, are now producing so much waste manure that they simply don’t know what to do with it. It’s happening on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend. And we are all paying for it.

According to the National Hog Farmer’s latest State of the Industry Report, over 116 million hogs were slaughtered in the U.S. last year. But even this figure is dwarfed by the total number of chickens raised for meat and egg production: in 2007, U.S. farmers produced 8.9 billion broiler chickens, while the national flock produced over 90 billion eggs.

Smithfield–the world’s largest pork processor–slaughtered and processed over 27 million pigs in 2005 in the U.S. alone. The Washington Post article reports that livestock produce three times more excrement than humans, so just one of Smithfield’s 500,000 pig units will produce more excrement than the 1.5 million humans living in Manhattan. And we are now learning that the way this manure is stored and managed is having a profound effect on the environment.

Most factory farms collect their waste manure in huge nearby open tanks or cesspools. Some of these lagoons are as big as several football fields, each holding hundreds of thousands–if not millions–of gallons of putrefying manure. Being exposed to the elements, they emit toxic gases such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, as well as methane, a key greenhouse gas.

As the waste is expensive to store–and even more expensive to transport–some industrial systems periodically pump the waste out of the lagoons and spray it on the surrounding fields. The problem is that it is often sprayed at such high rates–or at such frequencies–that the soil and plants cannot even begin absorb it.

This “over-application” leads to run-off, where the water-soluble nutrients find their way into our waterways and groundwater systems in vast quantities, polluting our drinking water and rivers, leaving our waterways dead–and directly contributing to the 230 recognized oxygen-deprived dead zones along the U.S. coast.

For various reasons, the regulatory system just hasn’t been able to keep up. The industrial farming lobby is very quick to pull out the “financial threat to the family farm” card and run cap in hand to the government whenever they come under pressure to adopt more environmentally friendly techniques. Yet it is clear that most farming today is about as far from the traditional family farm as you can get.

Who’s paying?
With all this fresh in your mind it might infuriate you to hear that the factory farms aren’t the only ones who are paying to clear up the mess. In fact, taxpayers are contributing significant sums of money, too.

For example, Maryland Department of Agriculture’s manure transport program is a government-funded service for intensive livestock farmers. Under the program, “farmers who have inadequate cropland to fully utilize their manure may apply for grants to transport excess waste to other farms or alternative use facilities that can use the product safely.” So although the factory farming system is effectively designed to fail when it comes to its own waste management, the taxpayer is still expected to help subsidize the disposal of waste manure. Go figure…

So what is the industry doing?
One green solution put forward by the intensive poultry industry is to convert the excess waste manure into fertilizer pellets for sale to homeowners. In 2001, Perdue Farms, one of the leading poultry processors in the US, opened the Perdue AgriRecycle plant in Blades, Delaware, after environmental regulations around the Chesapeake Bay were tightened when research showed that phosphorus in agricultural runoff was polluting the waters of the Bay.

This development sounds like a good idea until you find out that this plant–the largest in the region–handles less than 10% of the poultry manure on the Delmarva Peninsula alone.

So why don’t Perdue and other companies just build more plants to deal with the waste problem they have created? Well, the fact is that Perdue isn’t planning on building any further facilities in the very near future because people just aren’t buying the pelleted manure fertilizer. In addition, there is no more taxpayer money available to help pay for the construction. (The kind taxpayers of Delaware contributed a significant portion of the cost to help build Perdue’s flagship manure processing plant.)

Ok, so you might argue that I’m being a little harsh on these multi-million dollar companies and their failure so far to take any real responsibility for the mess they are making of this planet. In a world of diminishing oil reserves and the threat of climate change, you could argue that it is important to see farming move towards better use of its wastes. But while some might regard such poultry manure processing facilities as a step in the right direction, the reality is that it’s a bit like using Scotch tape to patch a crack in a dam.

The fact is that when your farming system involves feeding huge quantities of feed to massive concentrations of animals in a very small area, it’s pretty obvious that you’re going to get a massive output of manure as well as huge animal welfare issues–and all of the other problems associated with factory farming that I’ve mentioned many times before.

My question is this: why are we spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to help prop up an unsustainable factory farming industry? We shouldn’t be spending more taxpayers’ money to help these factory farms to dispose of the billions of gallons of putrefying waste manure they are producing each year. Instead, we should be looking at ways of getting rid of the centralized, industrial farming systems which produce it in the first place, and helping the remaining family farms to adopt truly sustainable farming practices.

Photo courtesy of Reclaiming Food & Farming.

The key message is that there is no doubt about the direct links between the overuse of antibiotics in intensive farming and the rise of bacteria that are resistant to common antibiotics. The major culprit at the moment is Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus – more commonly known as MRSA.

What happened?

So what’s the problem with MRSA and how has it developed? There are many different MRSA strains but, as the name suggests, all MRSA bacteria are resistant to certain important antibiotics. The effect of this is that if you are infected with MRSA it is much more difficult for your doctor to find an antibiotic that will help you. Some estimates put the number of Americans suffering from MRSA infections at 90,000 per year – leading to nearly 20,000 deaths. As you can see, this is a serious problem.

So how has MRSA developed?  Staphylococcus aureus is a very common bacteria in humans, often found on the skin, in the nose, or in the mouth. But how did it get to be so deadly? To understand that we have to look at what has been going on in some of the largest and most intensive farms in the U.S. since the 1950s.

As farming became more intensive and animals were kept in ever greater numbers, farmers inevitably found that pests and diseases began to spread more easily. In effect, the intensive system made the animals sick. When animals are sick they don’t grow as fast – and may even die. But rather than changing the system to one that was better for the animals, the industry realized that it could “solve” the problem more inexpensively by routinely adding low doses of antibiotics to the animals’ feed and water. This medication worked very well at keeping the animals alive and growing. However, as more and more bacteria were being exposed to antibiotics – especially at low doses – the risk that they might develop resistance also grew.

Scientists have known for many years that bacteria can mutate to become resistant to antibiotics or pick up genetic material from other bacteria that have survived the antibiotic use, and then further spread this within the bacterial population. And this is exactly what has been happening on intensive farms across the U.S. over the last few decades.

Part of the problem with this overuse of low-dose antibiotics is the fact that while the low dose kills off the more susceptible bacteria first, it leaves behind those bacteria that aren’t susceptible – in other words, the ones that show resistance. And because the farmers generally use the same antibiotics over and over again, in the end the only bacteria left are those that are resistant. Without anything to control them, these resistant bacteria can multiply and easily spread from animal to animal, and then from farm to farm.

However, the real problems occur when antibiotic resistance spreads to bacteria that can make humans sick. This is why we are now seeing the emergence of antibiotic resistant diseases like MRSA in humans – and we are fast running out of options to treat these new diseases.

But it’s not too late!

Let’s make one thing clear: we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and ban all antibiotics in animal agriculture. Antibiotics are a vital weapon against serious diseases in both animals and humans, and we know that the treatment of individual sick animals does not contribute to the rise of resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. We’ve know this for almost as long as antibiotics have been used as “growth promoters” in agriculture. As early as 1948, the British journal the Veterinary Record reported concerns about the potential development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria:

The present enormous consumption of the drug (penicillin) can be accounted for only by a good deal of indiscriminate use and it is generally considered that widespread use particularly of inadequate doses is a potent factor in breeding resistant strains of bacteria.

The good news is that countries like Denmark that have recently banned the indiscriminate use of antibiotics for growth promotion and other non-therapeutic reasons are now reporting a sharp fall in the incidence of resistant bacteria. So it’s not too late! We can do something about not just stopping the development of new strains of resistant bacteria, but also reducing the incidence of the ones that are already out there.

The key to stopping all non-therapeutic use of antibiotics – and reducing the need for therapeutic doses – is not to blindly carry on with farming systems in which we are simply trying to prevent exposure to disease. What we need to do is to encourage farming systems in which we are actively managing animals so they can develop strong natural immune systems – a concept sometimes called “positive health. “

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that the kind of farms we are talking about are the kind of farms that are Animal Welfare Approved. Research shows that animals that are under stress have reduced immunity. And if animals are kept on farms where they are not overcrowded, where they have access to pasture and space to move around, where they are fed a diet that matches their natural needs, and where they are managed to promote health and well-being, then the levels of stress and the incidence of disease – and the need for antibiotics – is much, much lower. In many cases AWA farmers cannot recall the last time they had to use antibiotics. It is that simple.

Making the right choice

The CBS report ended by saying that if consumers want to make sure that they don’t buy products with a risk of MRSA, then they should look for meat which is labeled “no antibiotics ever.”  But while this seems like a straightforward way to ensure that consumers  aren’t at risk, I am afraid it isn’t quite as simple as that.

The MRSA found on meat gets there during the slaughter and butchery process. As mentioned above, MRSA normally lives on the skin, so an animal that carries MRSA doesn’t automatically have the bug in its meat – but the bug could be transferred to the meat during processing. The problem is that the slaughterplant worker or butcher could then transfer it to any other meat they touch. So while it may be true that meat from animals reared without the use of antibiotics might have a lower risk of carrying MRSA, just saying “I’ll buy meat from animals raised without antibiotics” doesn’t actually do anything to help solve the problem.

The solution lies in looking at the causes of MRSA – intensive farming that relies on excessive amounts of low-dose antibiotics – and putting a stop to the continued non-therapeutic use of these vital medicines on which these farming systems are so dependent.

Just like guns, antibiotics themselves are not the problem. The irresponsible use of antibiotics is the problem. And it’s not the farmers that are at fault; it is the farming systems which result in the need for indiscriminate antibiotic use.

Selected projects include mobile housing for pigs, sheep and poultry, and stunning equipment for humane slaughter. A number of proposals were funded to incorporate breeding stock that is better suited to pasture-based management. “Choosing from among the many worthy proposals was a difficult task,” remarked Program Director Andrew Gunther. “But we are confident that the projects that have been selected for funding will contribute to positive developments in high-welfare pasture-based farming.”

Gunther continued, “Based on the success of last year’s projects, we anticipate a continued positive impact on farms and farm animals across the nation. As more farmers adopt sustainable farming methods such as those outlined by AWA, we all see the benefits – in terms of animal welfare, farm profitability and environmental stewardship.” A major emphasis of the AWA grants program is to assist farmers in reaching compliance with Animal Welfare Approved standards, ranked for two years running as the highest of any third-party certifier. Through these grants, AWA seeks to support the efforts of those who are exemplifying the best high-welfare practices, and also to fund the development of new practices that can be adopted on other farms.  “Farmers are truly the greatest innovators,” says Gunther. “What we do as an organization is set the standards. There is no single right way to achieve them, which is why we end up with a myriad of creative, industrious solutions that can be implemented how and where they work best.”

The on-farm benefits of the grant program often extend beyond the grantee, as an emphasis was placed on projects that could impact other farms in the region. For instance, a slaughter facility in Idaho has been awarded funds to purchase a stunning knife, facilitating compliance with AWA slaughter standards. The stunning knife will increase welfare and reduce stress (both human and animal) during processing. In addition to the inherent welfare improvements, this has the added benefit of making it possible for area farms to achieve AWA standards, which include using a compliant plant. One project in South Carolina involves setting up a local hatchery for non-industrial turkeys. The availability of healthy birds adapted to life on pasture will positively impact production among turkey growers in that area. Another project in North Carolina will provide new breeding stock to members of a pastured pork cooperative. These new genetics will improve mothering abilities, body conformation and suitability for outdoor management–and incorporate these qualities into the breeding herd. The resulting genetic improvement will benefit not only the member-farmers, but also other growers in the area.

Also funded in the 2009-2010 cycle were hatcheries in Wisconsin and Oregon (for chicken and ducks, respectively). The focus on poultry genetics is key to ensuring high welfare in pasture-based operations. Gunther explained, “Since most of the genetic stock available to farmers is adapted to industrial systems, we can’t expect those animals to do well on pasture. Our goal is to increase the availability of animals that are adapted to life outdoors on pasture or range. Pasture- and range-based management is the fundamental requirement of our standards – it is what sets us apart as a program and food label.” He went on, “We are proving our commitment to our ideals by funding projects that will have concrete, positive results for both farm animals and farmers.”

Selected proposals for 2010 include:

7B Bar Ranch, Roopville, GA, predator prevention
Albert D. Jones Farm, Chinquapin, NC, genetic improvement, pigs
Bedinger Farm, Catlin, IL, genetic improvement, sheep
Border Springs Farm, Patrick Springs, VA, genetic improvement, poultry
Carolina Heritage Farm, Pamplico, SC, outdoor access, pigs
Circle O Livestock, Vale, OR, genetic improvement, pigs
Coulee View Farm, Wauzeka, WI, genetic improvement, poultry
D&A Farms, Autryville, NC, genetic improvement, pigs
Davis Creek Farm, Lovingston, VA, improvements in slaughter process
Dogwood Nursery Farms, LLC, Maple Hill, NC, genetic improvement, poultry
DreamCatcher Farm, Louisville, KY, mobile housing, cattle, pigs and sheep
East Fork Farm, Marshall, NC, breeding system, rabbits
Eden Earthworks, Mountain View, HI, improvements in slaughter process
Ellis Family Farms, Benton Harbor, MI, pasture improvement, poultry
Generation Farm, Walnut Cove, NC, genetic improvement, sheep
Grassy Way Organics, Arena, WI, mobile housing, cattle
H&H Farm, Pink Hill, NC, pasture rotation, pigs
Hight Farms, Macon, NC, mobile housing, pigs
HomeGrown Poultry LLC, New Plymouth, ID, improvements in slaughter process, poultry
JJR Family Farm, Tebbetts, MO, mobile housing, poultry
Jones Farms, GrassRoots Pork Co., Beaulaville, NC, genetic improvement, pigs
Lil’ Farm, Hillsborough, NC, mobile housing and feeding equipment, poultry
M.R. Goats, Worthington, WV, mobile housing, goats
Organic Pastures Dairy Co, LLC, Fresno, CA, mobile housing, cattle
Patient Wait Farms, Piedmont, SC, genetic improvement, poultry
The Boondockers Farm, Creswell, OR, genetic improvement, poultry
Vargo Farms, Bullock, NC, mobile housing, pigs
Yoder’s Natural Farm, Bloomfield, IA, improved pasture and water access, cattle and poultry

In falsely marketing its chicken meat as produced from birds “raised without antibiotics” while still feeding them antibiotics, Tyson Foods was shamelessly exploiting the growing public concern over the excessive use of antibiotics in industrial farming, particularly in the form of non-therapeutic growth promoters.

But while the intensive meat industry continues to vigorously oppose any attempts to reduce antibiotic use in farming, the irony is that Tyson Foods may well have inadvertently shot itself in the foot by publicly admitting that the overuse of certain antibiotics in industrial farming really is a threat to human health.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria

The practice of feeding farm animals low doses of antibiotics in food and water began back in the 1950s, and has since become standard practice. Nowadays, virtually all intensively farmed animals will receive low levels of antibiotics in their feed, water or by injection throughout their lives as so called “growth promoters” to help maximize production and minimize costs. This approach allows today’s intensive poultry farmers, for example, to keep tens of thousands of chickens indoors in an unnatural state of false health, whereby the low-level antibiotics suppress key diseases which would otherwise spread like wildfire in such close-confined and all too often unsanitary environments. Sound too good to be true? Well, it is.

Mounting scientific evidence now suggests that Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are a breeding ground for diseases that pose a real threat to human health. Indeed, the routine low-level, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as growth promoters to suppress diseases – rather than as a therapeutic treatment for outright cure – is leading to the development and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the animal and human population.

Key antibiotic-resistant bacteria are now starting to hit humans hard, with various emerging resistant strains of E. coli, salmonella and MRSA, to name just a few. The US Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy claims that MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections are up more than 50% since 1987, while some estimate that antibiotic resistant infections are increasing healthcare costs by $4-5 billion a year. It is clear that antibiotic resistant disease represents a ticking time bomb for human health – and people are finally waking up to this fact.

False marketing

In a rather cynical attempt to capitalize on this growing public concern, in 2007, Tyson Foods began marketing its chicken as “raised without antibiotics” after first gaining approval from the USDA to do so. But the problem was that Tyson Foods wasn’t telling the USDA the whole story; after finding out that the company was still including ionophores in its poultry feed, the USDA quickly revoked its decision.

Classified by the USDA as antibiotics, ionophores are a group of animal medicines commonly added to industrial poultry feed to help prevent coccidiosis, an intestinal parasite. Ionophores are just one of several groups of antibiotics that are used by the major industrial farming businesses; the problem is that many are also vital for treating disease in humans.

Initially, Tyson’s legal team tried to argue that ionophores weren’t officially classified as antibiotics, but the USDA quickly reaffirmed that they were and that Tyson must therefore stop selling its chicken as “raised without antibiotics.”

Tyson approached the USDA again, this time arguing that because ionophores were not actually used in human medicine, their use in farming could not lead to the possible emergence of diseases with antibiotic resistance to important human drugs. On this basis, Tyson said that they were willing to compromise and would modify their labels to state “chicken raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans.” But it never got that far; once Tyson’s key competitors got wind of the issue, they filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Tyson Foods’ labeling ideas constituted false advertising. In June 2008, Tyson Foods voluntarily withdrew the label entirely, and finally settled the case in early 2010.

Tyson backfires…

But while many journalists will simply dismiss this whole episode as yet another damning indictment of our troubled food and farming systems, this story might not end there: for Tyson Foods has inadvertently shot itself – and the industrial food lobby – in the foot.

By modifying its label from “chicken raised without antibiotics” to “chicken raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans,” Tyson Foods is implicitly admitting that the non-ionophore antibiotics used in industrial farming “impact antibiotic resistance in humans.” It’s there in black and white for us all to see (http://www.tyson.com/Corporate/PressRoom/ViewArticle.aspx?id=2955).

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that about 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals, so it’s understandable that you might think that this practice is essential for the production of our meat. But the US farming industry is already four years behind the European Union, 14 years behind Denmark and 24 years behind Sweden in banning the non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in farm animal production. All of these countries have taken positive action to protect the long-term viability of their citizens and the antibiotics that protect them against disease. And, unless I’ve missed something, I am pretty sure that all of these countries still have a thriving livestock farming industry. Indeed, early evidence suggests that the antibiotic bans are already leading to a lower prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in animal bacterial populations – and increased livestock growth rates. It seems that managing animals in order to make sure they don’t get ill in the first place leads to more productive animals. Common sense, don’t you think?

Industry opposition

So why does the US industrial farming industry – including the American Farm Bureau, American Meat Institute and the National Pork Producers Council – still have such an issue with recent proposals which seek only to reduce the (mis)use of antibiotics in agriculture and preserve these tools which are so vital for the protection of human health?

Well, the sad truth is that intensive farming operations have knowingly profited from the misuse of medically important antibiotics for years, at the expense of human health and animal welfare. How else can you explain their dogged opposition to the introduction of simple safeguards that would help to prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of life-threatening diseases, such as E. coli and MRSA?

In 2008, after a lengthy independent investigation to assess the farm animal industry’s impact on the public’s health, the environment, farm communities and animal welfare, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production called for stricter regulation of antibiotic use in large-scale animal operations, stating that “the present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health.” Without any real research its calls were refuted by the industrial farming lobby, which claimed that limiting antibiotic use would threaten animal health and welfare and increase the risk of food-borne disease.

PAMTA – a step in the right direction

Similarly, the recent proposal to introduce the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) is at risk of being derailed by the intensive farming lobby – despite the fact that the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the National Association of County and City Health Departments and hundreds of other health, consumer, environmental, agricultural, and humane organizations all support the legislation.

PAMTA would still allow therapeutic use of antibiotics to treat sick animals, but would prohibit the non-therapeutic feeding of medically important antibiotics to livestock, as well as require any antibiotics that are destined for non-therapeutic livestock use to undergo safety tests to ensure that they will not harm human health due to antibiotic resistance. Surely this is just plain commonsense?

Yet the industrial farming lobby – and even the usually very enlightened American Veterinary Medical Association – is forcefully opposing PAMTA, claiming that animal health and welfare would suffer and food-borne diseases would increase. Again, as far as I am aware, I’m not hearing regular reports of mass public food poisoning incidents from countries which have banned non-therapeutic use of antibiotics.

We’re already doing it – naturally…

The truth is that farmers don’t need to use non-therapeutic antibiotic treatments in order to keep their animals healthy and productive. Just like farmers in other countries, thousands of farmers across the USA – including Animal Welfare Approved farmers – already rear their livestock without ongoing reliance on non-therapeutic antibiotics.

AWA farmers maintain herd health through vaccination, pasture management, exceptional hygiene, and the reduction of stress which weakens animal immune systems. Of course, if an animal is sick and needs medical treatment AWA standards allow the use of antibiotics, where appropriate. It’s just plain old reasonable farming; nothing more, nothing less.

Despite its continued opposition to PAMTA and the Pew Commission, Tyson Foods has now openly admitted that some antibiotics used in agriculture risk creating “antibiotic resistance in humans.” We also know from experience here and in Europe that we can farm successfully without reliance on these growth promoters. We cannot afford to allow industrial farming to carry on misusing antibiotics for profit, at the expense of public health and animal welfare. It is time that we stop using antibiotics to prop up unsustainable and poor welfare farming systems, and instead do everything we can to ensure that these remarkable medicinal tools remain as effective as possible for treating killer human diseases. The alternative is simply unthinkable.

To investigate some of these issues, Animal Welfare Approved sponsored a one-week, three-city tour for the UK Dinner Lady, Jeanette Orrey.  Jeanette is credited with changing school food in the UK, and AWA sponsored this visit to promote cross cultural dialogue and share her experiences with people working to make change in several US school districts. Following two days in New York City, the tour continued south (via Amtrak), as Jeanette was guided along by AWA staffers Andrew Gunther, Brigid Sweeney and Beth Hauptle, joined Chef Bill Telepan and Nancy Easton, both of NYC nonprofit Wellness in the Schools. (Pictured above:  Nancy Easton and Chef Bill Telepan from Wellness in the Schools in NYC talk with Greg Strella, Farm Manager of Great Kids Farm, a part of the Baltimore Public School system.  The farm currently grows crops and raises chickens and goats.)

On Wednesday as the tour continued, we visited with the Baltimore City Public Schools’ Great Kids Farm and a Culinary Center where students in the program prepared lunch for us.  Tony Geraci has been lauded for the efforts he is making in changing food in the schools in Baltimore and his plans are impressive.  The visit was covered by the Baltimore Sun.

On Thursday we hosted a luncheon at the Arlington location of Jaleo (ThinkFoodGroup), and shared meaningful dialogue about school lunches with representatives from the Arlington, VA school district, Alex Ashbrook, Director of DC Hunger Solutions, Maria Enie and Brandi Horton from Vanguard Communications and others committed to childhood nutrition and school food. (Right:  Andrew Gunther, Jeanette Orrey, Nancy Easton and Bill Telepan on Amtrak to Baltimore.)

On Thursday, we visited Washington-Lee High School, a high school in the Arlington Public School system. Arlington is a county (and city) adjacent to Washington, DC, across the Potomac River. We were hosted by Amy Maclosky, Director of Food Service and Mary Beth Chambers, Assistant Superintendent, Management and Finance Services. We were impressed with the efforts being made by this school district and the openness to share information and desire to effect positive change. AWA is looking forward to working with Arlington to identify local farms and help raise awareness among the staff and students about “where our food comes from.”

The trip concluded yesterday as Jeanette traveled back to the UK. We are all looking forward to the next steps and for the opportunity to draw upon her many years of experience in making change happen. More in depth coverage of the trip will be featured in our next newsletter. (Right:  Jeanette meets cafeteria workers at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, VA.)

During her stay, Orrey met with the following:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director
Mary Beth Chambers, Assistant Superintendent, Management and Finance Services

(Above: Students in one of Baltimore City Public Schools’ culinary centers proudly prepared a delicious gourmet lunch for Jeanette and the other visitors!)

We are headed to Baltimore this morning on an early train.  Yesterday while meeting with Queens Farm we got a call from Tony Geraci (soon to be dubbed the US Dinner Man?!), Director of Food and Nutrition Services for Baltimore City Public Schools.  He prepared us for our reception at the train station in Baltimore, where we will be greeted by a camera crew from a Baltimore City High School.  The students are excited to meet us and we are looking forward to a productive day!  We’re going to have lunch prepared by high school students in the culinary program as well as visit with Greg Strella, the Farm Manager of the Great Kids Farm, actually owned by the school system.

More to come tomorrow.

We were joined by our friend Bill Telepan, of Telepan restaurant of course, and Nancy Easton, both with Wellness in the Schools, a non-profit working to support healthy school food in NYC.

Hosts:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director

Jeanette Orrey is the School Meals Policy Advisor to the Soil Association. Jeanette’s achievements and guidance were central to the success of the Food For Life campaign and an inspiration for Jamie Oliver’s fight to improve school meals. Her life has been a whirlwind of training, lecturing, meetings with ministers and, of course, awards ceremonies. She has received recognition of her work from, amongst others, Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ (2003); The Observer (2004); Good Housekeeping (2005) and the Guild of Food Writers (2006) for her book ‘The Dinner Lady’.

We’ve got to run off now to visit the Queens County Farm Museum and our friends Amy Fischetti-Boncardo and Michael Grady Robertson, but we wanted to post a few photos of our first day.

More to come!

Jeanette Orrey, UK Pioneer in Reforming School Lunches, Visits US

Animal Welfare Approved, the nation’s leading certification label for family farmers raising their animals with high welfare standards, is hosting Jeanette Orrey, the United Kingdom’s famous “Dinner Lady” (that would be a lunch lady on this side of the pond) the week of January 11th. Orrey is a leader in the U.K.’s efforts to provide school lunches made of fresh, local organic food. She will be visiting with school officials, farmers and proponents of healthy school lunches in New York City, Baltimore, Maryland and Arlington, Virginia.

According to Andrew Gunther, Program Director for Animal Welfare Approved, Orrey’s work in the U.K. dovetails nicely with the U.S. movement to educate children about food and improve school lunches. “Right now, U.S. work focuses very strongly on fresh fruits and vegetables,” he says. “Jeanette began by sourcing beef from local farmers for her school, so we felt her work would be of interest to her U.S. counterparts. Farmers in the Animal Welfare Approved program provide healthy, safe, nutritionally superior products which should be part of any child’s school-provided lunch. To this end, being a part of the dialogue regarding healthy eating by our nation’s youth and in our nation’s schools helps us to achieve our mission of promoting our family farmers while ensuring children receive the best food possible.”

Accompanying Orrey on her journey will be Animal Welfare Approved staff, Bill Telepan, chef/owner of Manhattan’s Telepan Restaurant, and Nancy Easton, a New York City teacher for 20 years. Telepan is a long-time Animal Welfare Approved supporter and a board member of Wellness in the Schools. Wellness in the Schools is a grassroots organization that promotes children’s environmental health, nutrition and fitness within the New York City public schools. Easton co-founded Wellness in the Schools and serves on its board. The New York City school system serves approximately 1.1 million students.

“We’re excited to join the conversation about the best way to serve safe, nutritious and delicious food in schools,” Gunther commented. “Each country faces different challenges in achieving the same goal and everyone is looking forward to talking shop and exchanging ideas and stories. It’s a coming together of those dedicated to serving great food in schools.”

During her stay, Orrey will meet with the following proponents of healthy school lunches in addition to visiting a number of schools in each of the three school districts:

New York City Department of Education
Eric Goldstein, Chief Executive Officer for Nutrition and Transportation
Dianne Frankel, Director of Operations
Chef Jorge Collazo, SchoolFood Executive Chef
Stephen O’Brien, Director of Food and Food Support

Queens County Farm Museum, NYC
Amy Fischetti-Boncardo, Executive Director
Michael Grady Robertson, Director of Agriculture

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD
Tony Geraci, Director of Food and Nutrition Services
Greg Strella, Farm Manager, Great Kids Farm

ThinkFoodGroup, Washington, DC
Richard Brandenburg, Kitchen Director

Arlington County Public Schools, VA
Amy Maclosky, Food Service Director

Jeanette Orrey is the School Meals Policy Advisor to the Soil Association. Jeanette’s achievements and guidance were central to the success of the Food For Life campaign and an inspiration for Jamie Oliver’s fight to improve school meals. Her life has been a whirlwind of training, lecturing, meetings with ministers and, of course, awards ceremonies. She has received recognition of her work from, amongst others, Radio 4’s ‘The Food Programme’ (2003); The Observer (2004); Good Housekeeping (2005) and the Guild of Food Writers (2006) for her book ‘The Dinner Lady’.

According to LancasterOnline.com’s Mary Beth Schweigert, lack of oversight in National Organic Program has created a “chasm between consumer expectations and actual industry practices.” Ms. Schweigert notes the challenges that the NOP, now in its twelfth year, faces in terms of its dual mission to protect agriculture while simultaneously protecting the consumer.

The NOP has drawn significant criticism on its lax pasture requirements – 80,000 public comments to be exact. However, even adequate standards are only as good as the enforcement behind them. Schweigert reports a startlingly low number of citations in the first seven years of the program – only $20,000 for three fraudulent operators in a $23 billion U.S. organic food industry.

National Organic Coalition (an industry watchdog group) policy coordinator Liana Hoodes responded to this issue, explaining that strong national organic regulations are worthless without consistent oversight and enforcement. She added, “It will either clean up its act or get surpassed by many other labels.”

Cow burps are the most recent in the list of accused contributors to global warming from the livestock sector. However, a simple measurement of methane production does not tell the whole story. A new report by the Soil Association reevaluates greenhouse gas production in agriculture, taking into account the grazing system – not just the “end product.”

This controversy erupted in recent years as figures emerged about agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. As we discussed in our November 16, 2009 blog, “Beware of Bad Science,” grassfed cattle actually produce fewer emissions than those finished in feedlots, simply because of the carbon sequestration in their pasture-based systems. The new Soil Association report confirms this and adds new data to support the position.

Highlights from the report include:

• The current greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting systems ignore soil carbon impact. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific advisers, 89% of agriculture’s GHG mitigation potential resides in improving soil carbon levels.
• On average, organic farming practices produce 28% higher soil carbon levels than non-organic farming in Northern Europe, and 20% for all countries studied (in Europe, North America and Australasia).

• If UK farmers converted cultivated land to organic farming, the carbon “savings” would be the equivalent of taking nearly a million family cars off the road.

Download the entire report, Soil Carbon and organic farming. A review of the evidence of agriculture’s potential to combat climate change.