In a move that is exciting aquaculture (actually a real word) folks and distressing environmental people, the USDA has cleared the way to allow fish producers to label farmed fish as “organic.”  Let’s listen in on the Washington Post, which wrote an article on this today and even managed to throw the word “vexed” in there:

The question of whether farmed fish could be labeled organic — especially carnivorous species such as salmon that live in open-ocean net pens and consume vast amounts of smaller fish — has vexed scientists and federal regulators for years. The standards approved yesterday by the National Organic Standards Board would allow organic fish farmers to use wild fish as part of their feed mix provided it did not exceed 25 percent of the total and did not come from forage species, such as menhaden, that have declined sharply as the demand for farmed fish has skyrocketed.

Environmental folks aren’t too happy about the part of that quote that says fish farmers can use 25% wild fish as their feed mix.  All other feed for “organic” animals must itself be 100% organic.  “They [environmentalists] also noted that open-net pens can harm the environment by allowing fish waste and disease to pollute the ocean.”  That, of course, is code for the fact that fish poop in the ocean.  Gross.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

Necklacing Returns to South Africa, Tutu Calls for Peace, and History Repeats Itself

Ted Kennedy’s Malignant Brain Tumor: Sad News, But the Work Goes On

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Nicole Hughes:

Bush’s Food Aid Package Promotes Use of GMOs

Gas Prices Exceed Those of 1973 Oil Crisis

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Andy Kondrat:

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Cost US 38 Trillion Annually

USDA Budget Squeeze Forces Agency to Stop Tracking Pesticide Use

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Jon Popham:

Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Celebration!

Smokey the Bear: Environmental Icon

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Giulia Rozzi:

Suicide Tourism in New York City

Kristin Davis and Her Solar Powered Home

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Gina Telaroli:

Media That Matters Film Festival Premieres on May 28th

Top 10 Ways Indiana Jones Saved the World: Part #1

The USDA has announced that due to budget constraints, it is unwillingly shutting down the only national public survey that tracks and measures pesticide use on crops.   Looks like we need Food & Water Watch more than ever now.   Because the report soaked up $8 million of the USDA’s $160 million annual budget, it’s just not a feasible expense anymore, even though the agency admits the data is “actually needed” by the public.

From the Contra Costa Times, probably the only newspaper in the world to have printed my name (and even then in the Walnut Creek Journal insert, but still),

Eliminating the program “will mean farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer,” said Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau.

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Thousands of farmers are removing themselves from the American government’s biggest land and wildlife conservation program to date, which pays farmers annually to not cultivate their croplands. These annual payments, say farmers, pale in comparison to what they could be making with the recent boom in the cost of commodities.

The Conservation Reserve Program began 25 years ago, and includes approximately 35 million acres, or 8% of the total cropland in the United States. Last fall, farmers took back areas equaling the landmass of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan Surfaces 120 Years Later

Hallelujah For American Idol, Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen

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Nicole:

Google Gives Free Voicemail to San Francisco Homeless

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Turnes 80

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Giulia:

Patrick Swayze’s Cancer Battle

Koby Bryant’s PSA for ASR

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Gina:

Reese’s Empowering Bracelet

“Chop Shop” - Dreams In a Place of Despair

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Kerry:

Bamboo Laptop: Will Apple Be Green with Envy?

The Explosive Truth About Twinkies

There are simple carbohydrates, complex carbohydrates, and then there’s the Twinkie, made from military industrial-complex carbohydrates. It’s got some of the same ingredients as tracer bullets and artillery shells, as I learned from reading Steve Ettlinger’s Twinkie, Deconstructed.

Ettlinger’s book, just out in paperback, documents the 39 ingredients it now takes to make a Twinkie, many of them minerals and chemicals, some derived from crude oil. This petroleum-based pastry is about a million food miles removed from your grandma’s yellow sponge cake, which had a shelf life of maybe two days, max.

Today’s Twinkie, on the other hand, stays frighteningly “fresh” for an unnaturally long time (officially, 25 days, but we all know it’s really more like 25 months.) Real butter turns rancid too fast, so the Twinkie gets its butter-like taste and texture from petrochemical-based ingredients like diacetyl, a close cousin to acetylene welding gas, and butyric acid, a flavor which Ettlinger gleefully informs us is “a natural component of Parmesan cheese, rancid butter, and, unbelievably, vomit and perspiration.”

Twinkie, Deconstructed may amaze and appall you, but the fact is that while a Twinkie is not particularly good for you, it’s not all that bad for you, either. It’s just an amalgam of industrial ingredients and artificial flavors posing as an actual pastry. How did we ever fall for this oily oblong cake with the mystery “cream” filling?

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