Oy Vey It's A Food Newsletter: Volume 2, Issue 11
The newsletter for people who love walkable cities and don't believe that consumption is a radical solution to society's problems.
Hey Friend,
Feeling pretty bummed out and burned out by the continued onslaught of shitty political and legislative news. Especially this week’s major back-to-back-to-back Supreme Court rulings undoing progressive programs and protections. At least I have the return of Futurama to look forward to next month?
Hope this meme gives you a temporary break from our doomscape!
And if you don’t get it, I’ll briefly explain the joke to you (because jokes are always funnier when you have to explain them) - vegan restaurants, food trucks, pop-ups etc. tend to have weird, or maybe just untraditional and inconsistent hours. You probably could have inferred that yourself but who am I to assume?!
-Kay
What I’ve Read
A California Bill Could Reveal Corporate America’s Climate Secrets - California SB-253 Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act passed the Senate on May 30th. It would require companies that generate over $1 billion per year operating in California to disclose greenhouse gas emissions across their supply chains. Legal requirements in climate disclosures like GHG emissions are sparse so this is a step towards progress. As reported by Sentient Media, I’m sure lobbyists will do their best to make sure this bill fizzles.
USDA Launches Effort to Strengthen Substantiation of Animal-Raising Claims - The USDA announced that the FSIS and ARS offices have a plan to strengthen the substantiation required for companies to make animal-raising marketing claims. The type of claims of interest are things like “grass-fed” and “free-range” but they will also be investigating other claims like "raised with(out) antibiotics”. I know that regulating previously voluntary marketing claims usually just results in companies switching up their language to skirt legal requirements but still manipulate consumers but this is so long overdue! At least, maybe all the media and companies that have been slamming vegan/plant-based/animal-free meat marketing and labeling language will be distracted by this and focus more on this and less on their allegations that consumers are too ignorant to understand the difference between chicken nuggets and plant-based chicken nuggets.
How South Korea Puts Its Food Scraps to Good Use - Food waste is a popular topic, but I’ve really only learned about it through a very U.S.-centric lens. Shocker. This coverage of South Korea’s food waste efforts, both historical and current, was quite interesting. South Korea, while not perfect in its food waste innovations, seems to be a model for many countries looking to improve their food waste, upcycling, and diversion efforts.
Daily Harvest recall: How a rare new ingredient sent customers to the ER - An update to last year’s Daily Harvest recall that I previously covered. The Daily Harvest Lentil + Leek Crumbles made hundreds of people ill and sent 133 people to the hospital due to their reactions. The company initiated a recall in April 2022 but not before 39 people had to have their gallbladder removed. The CEO finally spoke out, though didn’t say anything significant beyond a very PR-washed statement of events. The most interesting point mentioned in this article is that Daily Harvest relied on their supplier that the flour that went into their item was Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). As also mentioned in all coverage of this incident, this shows the gaps in the FDA’s GRAS process and food safety regulation in general.
Why Living Above the Poverty Line Doesn’t Guarantee Food Security - This article provides a good history of how food security, federal food assistance programs, and poverty measurements came to be and are dependent upon each other. It also shares recent research that presents an alternative measure of poverty to the current federal poverty threshold; the self-sufficiency standard. This proposed measurement incorporates expenses like childcare, health care costs, transportation, and food, you know all the real-life shit that impacts your ability to live.
Why don't politicians talk about meat? The political psychology of human-animal relations in elections - An interesting political science and psychological look into how voters react to “political attention on animals and animal-friendly candidates of diverse backgrounds”. There were 2 studies introduced and discussed in this research. A couple of the general conclusions I find most interesting are a confirmation that voter reactions to climate policy are partisan and there was no backlash from voters of both parties when political attention focuses on farm animal rights.
Beef Dodged Fake Meat’s Threat, But Is Still No Match for Chicken - This article says exactly what I’ve been saying for years; plant-based, vegan, and animal-free meats are (unfortunately) not seriously threatening animal-based meats. Our products make up a very small market share and the variety of “threats” to animal ag are coming from within their own industry. According to this article people in the U.S. are eating more and more chicken and consumption of cow beef has stagnated and, for the past couple of decades, is on somewhat of a decline. While I obviously do not support the consumption of cows or chickens and the industrialized animal agriculture system, it is interesting to read more about consumer preferences and “food” choices. Please note, the I did not dig into the methodology behind the chart below but I included it to show that whatever metric used for U.S. adults who eat “neither” is incredibly small when compared to eating chickens or cows or both. This is disheartening for multiple reasons, one main reason is that the reporting seems to confirm all the progress vegans think we’re making in changing consumption habits is yet to be significant (and obviously systems change is lagging even further behind).
Q&Kay
Changing this up a bit today, I have a question for YOU!
If you haven’t seen my soft launch on Instagram, my partner and I are moving apartments! Don’t worry, we’re staying in the Bay Area as my partner works at a local hospital (clap for healthcare heroes!!). The apartment search process was terrible, we’ve been actively looking since October and run into a lot of landlord issues on top of a competitive and fucking expensive market.
We’re typically hesitant to do much with our spaces because, since our college days, we tend to move every year or so. But not this time! We would like to actually put some effort into our new place to make it look like more of an ~adult~ apartment. I spend a looooot of time at home alternating between being on my computer at my desk and being on my phone on the couch.
While we have many skills, neither of us has much of an eye for interior design or decorating. We are very budget conscious (most of our current furniture and artwork I found for free on the streets) and will be thrifting and looking at Facebook (ew) Marketplace but I’d love to know any recommendations (or discounts or other hookups) this community has for budget-friendly, renter-friendly, vegan-friendly home decor. Send me your favorite brands, local stores, mood boards, or anything else you think will help us transform this apartment.
P.S. Thank you to the friends who have already reached out with some suggestions, I am writing them all down!
P.P.S. Want to contribute to our apartment decorating budget or buy me a coffee to get me through moving? Will happily accept a lil venmo (@kayla-kaplan) or an upgrade to a paid subscription! Not sure if you’ve heard (jk yes I am) but damn the Bay Area is such an expensive place to live!
P.P.P.S. Want to monetarily support me in a different way? Consider hiring me for speaking engagements, partnerships, or freelance projects! Please email oyveyitskay@gmail.com.
As always, you can submit a question for a future Q&Kay here!
Kvetch Sesh
If this newsletter is your only source of food systems news, you may not have heard that on Wednesday June 21st the USDA granted regulatory approval for UPSIDE Foods and Good Meat to sell cultivated (lab-grown) chicken in the U.S.
If you are even tangentially aware of the industry news, I’m guessing you’ve also seen this coverage nonstop since last Wednesday. If you are also in the Bay Area you’ll also likely hear about it in local news considering both companies are based here and UPSIDE Foods’ chicken will supposedly be added to the menu of San Francisco’s Bar Crenn later this year.
Sample of news coverage:
‘No kill’ meat, grown from animal cells, is now approved for sale in the U.S. (NPR)
US approves chicken made from cultivated cells, the nation’s first ‘lab-grown’ meat (AP News)
Lab-Grown Chicken Can Now Be Sold in the U.S. But Good Luck Finding Some To Buy (Time)
Lab-Grown Meat Approved to Sell for the First Time in the U.S. (NYT)
Everything You Need To Know About Lab-Grown Meat Now That It’s Here (Forbes)
Lab-grown meat doesn’t involve slaughter. Does that mean it’s kosher or halal? (CNN)
PS I did an IG live chat on this subject a few months ago with Rabbi Jonathan Bernhard! You can watch here.
Lab-Grown Meat Approved for Sale: What You Need to Know (Scientific American)
Okay, you’ve got the idea.
Let me acknowledge that I don’t have any revelations for you or insights that can’t be found from all of the other credible news sources. I’m not making wild guesses about how long it will take to hit supermarket shelves, how much it will cost diners in restaurants, I’m not running to make reservations to try it, I recognize there are serious ethical concerns we will continue to grapple with, and I’m not going to add onto the fearmongering over the safety of these products.
I do, however, have an existentialist kvetch.
In classic Oy Vey It’s Kay fashion, this kvetch was inspired by one closing line of an article. A line that I’m sure wasn’t intended to be that deep or taken literally. Regardless, it started my brain on a thought spiral.
The article Lifelong Vegetarian Tries Lab-Grown Wagyu Beef ends on a quote, “‘There were horses before cars, and cows before cultivated,’” by Ohayu Valley CEO and founder Jess Kreiger. While at first, this seemed like a great analogy, the more I thought about it the more my thoughts turned into, oh-shit-let’s-hope-the-cultivated-meat-revolution-doesn’t-follow-the-car-revolution.
At this point, I’ll also acknowledge my bias on this subject. I hate living in neighborhoods and cities that aren’t walkable and lack comprehensive public transportation. In general, I just really hate driving.
Automobiles first came about in the mid to late 1800s, though the official timeline is a bit controversial. And here we are in 2023 where people who have the means and ability to choose to do otherwise continue using horses for recreation, entertainment, policing, sport, labor, etc. We’ve had centuries of innovation and development in those areas and have yet to give up domesticating and commodifying horses.
By failing to do so we perpetuate the selfishness of acting like horses, among other animals, are on this earth for human use. We’ve yet to fully divest from using horses or, perhaps even more shamefully, we have yet to make the much needed improvements for the welfare of “working” horses in sectors like the horse carriage industry. This failure continues well over a century after our society fundamentally shifted away from horses as the main mode of transportation.
Within this time, car companies and their fossil fuel counterparts have completely restructured our lives, in some ways for the better in terms of convenience and efficiency, and since World War II in ways mainly to the detriment of our climate, public transportation options, and communities. These corporations, along with our government, designed a car-centric society to keep car sales high, despite the injustices and inequities this shift created.
Will the innovation of cultivated meat, like the innovation of cars, be structured around promoting consumption in order to maximize profits for food and agriculture corporations, who typically do not conduct business to promote the interests and welfare of their stakeholders outside of C-Suites and Wall Street?
As we know, history tends to repeat itself. The history of innovation, in general, has seemed to create an increasingly dystopic albeit more convenient future. I am not naive enough to believe that cultivated meat will be the magic solution to our climate crisis, food security, poor worker treatment, and systemic cruelty to animals.
We've seen so much development in food technology and production within our lifetimes and we’ve continued to see it focused on individualistic, consumption-driven change. After the last decade or so of plant-based and/or animal-free food innovations, and the many previous decades of neoliberalism and American capitalism, it doesn’t seem cynical to expect anything from this industry beyond a newer iteration of the industrialized food system controlled by a handful of conglomerates like we know today. It seems exceptionally realistic.
Acknowledging the existential crossroads brought about by human innovation does not negate the milestone achieved last week in cellular agriculture. Or at least it doesn’t to me. I may not be optimistic that new this technology will live up to its disruptive revolutionary potential but that won’t stop me from recognizing the benefits it can bring.
I will continue supporting movements that organize for system-wide changes and the protection of human rights, animal rights, and the environment. I will continue to monitor developments, research, and future achievements in this field. I will continue to hold out hope that cellular agriculture technology will make improvements to price parity, nutrition, animal welfare, and food accessibility as a byproduct of companies iterating and selling more of their new things.
Yes, I told you I am aware the cars to cultivated analogy wasn’t supposed to be this deep, but I couldn’t help it.
What are your thoughts on cultivated meat? I’d love if you’d share in the comments below!
Interesting thoughts on the cultivated meat. To be honest, I haven’t formed my opinion yet but I think it will be a lot easier once it’s an option to consider for the public. It’ll be interesting to see how everything plays out
Cannot wait to see how you decorate! I love resale shops for furniture.