NEWSINGREDIENTS & LABELING

Nearly 1,000 people have joined a popular campaign on Change.org asking Multnomah County Commissioners to pass restrictions on the sale of children’s products that contain bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical compound linked to various health issues, at their commission meeting on Thursday.

Studies have linked BPA, an endocrine-disrupting chemical, to cancers, cardiovascular disease, early onset puberty, diabetes, and other health issues. BPA is found in everything from the linings of canned foods to sippy cups to credit card receipts.

Susan Beal, a local author and mother of two, launched the campaign on Change.org, which asks the commissioners to support a county-wide ban sponsored by County Chair Jeff Cogen. The ban would apply to sippy cups, baby bottles, and reusable water bottles.

Gestation crates are some of the cruelest and most unsanitary devices found on factory farms. These enclosures — largely used by major pork producers like Smithfield Foods — keep breeding sows locked in cages so small they can't even turn around. Sows frequently develop sores and infections from staying in the same position for long periods of time, and the boredom causes the animals to engage in repetitive behaviors like bar biting and head swaying.

That's why activists and organizations are working towards shifting businesses away from gestation crates. One of their main targets is the fast food industry.

With cheap pork meals like McRibs, Egg McMuffins, and Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers popping up on fast food menus across the U.S., it's certainly an industry that's ripe for a change. As a result of pressure from food safety and animal welfare advocates, some restaurant chains have already made moves in the right direction:

• Burger King said in 2007 that it would gradually eliminate gestation crate pork from its supply chain.
• At least 10 percent of Wendy's pork products already come from suppliers that don't use gestation crates.
• And 10 years ago, McDonald's announced that moving towards gestation crate-free pork was "at the top of its agenda."

Threatened sharks just swam a little closer to conservation. After many people signed a petition urging the Food Network to stop featuring shark as food, the media company removed all shark recipes from its popular Web site and issued a statement on the future use of shark at the network.

“As a policy, Food Network and Cooking Channel do not incorporate or showcase recipes that involve animals on endangered species list or the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, with the recent addition of sharks to those watch-lists, we will make sure that future content does not highlight shark as an ingredient. We understand there are many species with sustainability concerns, and we make efforts to stay informed and pass that information onto our audience.”-- Susan Stockton, Food Network Kitchens

After Change.org member, Jessica Belsky, launched the petition targeting the Food Network, the media company removed recipes from its Web site and issued a statement in fewer than 10 days. More than 30,000 people eventually joined the online campaign, many after the Food Network had already committed to go shark-free.

The commitment from the Food Network is certainly much-needed. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), nearly one-third of shark species are currently threatened with extinction, largely due to the demand for shark fin soup and shark meat. Some shark populations have declined by as much as 90 percent in recent years!

Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” - an annual, week-long series featuring shark-centric television programming - kicked off this Sunday, July 31st. The same week as the hugely popular series, tens of thousands of environmental activists are joining Change.org campaigns to promote shark conservation.

“Sharks are apex predators, which means they are crucial to the health of oceanic ecosystems,” said Sarah Parsons, Senior Organizer at Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing platform for social change. “A whopping one-third of shark species are currently threatened with extinction. During Shark Week, the most popular shark programming, many non-profits and individuals are voicing their concern for struggling sharks.”

More than 25,000 people have already joined shark campaigns on Change.org, like the campaign asking California lawmakers to pass a ban on the sale of shark fin, and a campaign asking the Food Network to stop featuring recipes that include shark meat. Concerned viewers can help protect threatened sharks by signing one or all of these petitions currently hosted on the site:

1) Get Shark Meat Off the Food Network
The Food Network features recipes on its television programming and Web site and in its magazine. Some of those recipes include shark meat as a main ingredient. One Change.org member started a petition asking Food Network execs to immediately remove shark recipes from the Web site and enact a network-wide policy where shark is never featured as a recipe ingredient.
Food Network petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/food-network-stop-featuring-shark-as-food

Back in the day when the real Bob Evans was around, he and his wife, Jewell, raised their six kids in a large, brick farmhouse that they affectionately called "Homestead." It was here that the family opened a sausage shop in their front yard and later went on to open the first Bob Evans Restaurant and General Store.

This story, along with snapshots of the original farmhouse, are the pictures that the Bob Evans restaurant chain paints for you when you visit the company's Web site. The company even boasts that by eating at its establishments, you can "discover farm-fresh goodness."

So you may be shocked to learn that the eggs Bob Evans uses in its food come from hens who don't roam freely on a farm. Rather, the chain sources its eggs from hens that are crammed inside teeny cages, forced to live their lives in a space no bigger than an 8x10 sheet of notebook paper.

Struggling sharks may finally be swimming towards some safer waters. Yesterday, the California State Assembly passed AB 376 with a final vote of 65-8. The bill — which bans the purchase, sale, and possession of shark fins — is now heading for a vote in the Senate this June.

The Assembly approval of AB 376 is a huge coup for sustainable foodies and environmentalists — the bill was controversial, to say the least. Many notable people — including San Francisco mayor Ed Lee and Assemblyman Leland Yee — criticized the legislation, saying that it infringed on the culture of Chinese Americans. Shark fin soup is Chinese delicacy and status symbol, traditionally served at important events like banquets and weddings.

But many other folks — including a significant portion of California's Asian American community — supported the bill. The Asian Pacific American (APA) Ocean Harmony Alliance, for example, started a petition on Change.org urging lawmakers to vote in favor of the proposed shark fin ban. The APA Ocean Harmony Alliance is coalition made up of Asian American organizations, community leaders, celebrities, and elected officials. Over the past few weeks, more than 14,000 concerned Change.org members have signed the coalition's petition asking California lawmakers to approve AB 376.

When food is labeled "organic," you expect that it was produced in a way that is good for both the environment and your health. Unfortunately it seems that up in Canada, that accountability might not be the case for much longer.

The Canadian General Standards Board is considering certifying some net cage-raised salmon (aka farmed salmon) as organic. But here's the problem: The net-cage method of raising salmon oftentimes harms marine life and aquatic ecosystems. Other animals can get caught in the nets, farm-raised salmon can escape and mate with wild salmon (messing up their genetics), and the nets allow waste from the farm back out into the ocean, which pollutes the water.

There are other issues with certifying farmed salmon as organic, too. Under the proposed guidelines, cage-raised salmon could still be labeled organic even if producers use synthetic pesticides in the fish's water. These harmful pesticides would inevitably spread out into the ocean, threatening wild animals like lobsters. "Organic" farms would also be allowed to feed the salmon non-organic feed consisting of wild fish, which could deplete the ocean of wild fish populations, further exacerbating already-struggling wild fisheries.  Non-organic wild feed can also contain toxins, which may pose a threat to consumers. Under traditional standards, none of these practices would be allowed on a certified organic farm — they fly in the face of the organic movement's core principles.

It seems like bisphenol-A (BPA) is found in virtually everything these days. Canned foods and beverages, plastic bottles, credit card receipts, even dental sealants contain the hormone-disrupting chemical. But there's one place where BPA won't lurk for much longer — Kroger grocery store-brand products.

Kroger, a national supermarket chain, recently committed to phase BPA out of its store-brand foods and beverages as well as its cash register receipts. By the end of 2011, all Kroger stores will have switched to BPA-free receipt paper. Eventually the store plans to eliminate BPA from the can linings of its Kroger, Value Brand, Private Selection, Comforts, Mirra, Active Lifestyle, and Fresh Selections products.

"While there is no conclusive scientific evidence that this minimal exposure to BPA in can linings poses any risks to consumers, Kroger has begun a process that we believe will result in the removal of BPA in the linings of canned goods in all of our corporate brand items," Keith Dailey, a Kroger spokesman, recently said.

Two 15-year-old Girl Scouts — Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen — have been working tirelessly to protect rainforests in Indonesia. While tens of thousands of people have expressed their support for the two Scouts' work, one group surprisingly refuses to join the girls — Girl Scouts of the USA, the national Girl Scouts organization.

Yesterday, Madison and Rhiannon partnered with Rainforest Action Network and Change.org in a social media day of action. The task at hand? Push Girl Scouts' CEO, Kathy Cloninger, to eliminate rainforest-destroying palm oil from all Girl Scout cookies. More than 56,000 Change.org members had already requested that Cloninger ditch palm oil, and the social media day of action was intended to turn up the pressure.

Hundreds of concerned citizens — including current and former Girl Scouts — participated in the day of action, tweeting at the Girl Scouts USA and writing on the organization's Facebook wall. But in a surprising act of censorship, Girl Scouts USA deleted palm oil-related comments from its wall shortly after the messages started rolling in. They also shut off users' abilities to post on the official Girl Scouts USA Facebook page, limiting subsequent palm oil comments to a single thread on the Facebook page.

But wait, it gets worse.

Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and Samoas may taste sugary, but the Girl Scout cookies' environmental reputation is seriously sour. The treats are responsible for threatening the survival of endangered species like orangutans and destroying pristine rainforest in Indonesia.

There is a way to make these cookies as sweet as the Girl Scouts that sell them, though. You can push Girl Scouts USA to greenify their cookies, and all it takes is a Facebook and/or Twitter account.

But first, here's the backstory on the the desserts' deforestation dilemma. Girl Scout cookies contain palm oil, one of the most unsustainable ingredients around. Most palm oil plantation operators clear-cut pristine rainforest and bulldoze peatlands in order to plant row upon row of oil palm trees. Not only does this deforestation contribute to climate change (Indonesia is the third-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases, largely because of the country's deforestation), it threatens species like orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and rhinos that call these regions home.