Oy Vey It's - The End of November

There is a reeeaally cute dog picture at the bottom of this newsletter

kay(la) kaplan

Nov 18, 2022

Hi friend!

Did you see the wonderful new logo my friend Dvorah kindly designed for me?

Ok now that you’ve appreciated it fully, here’s your meme and we can get into the news!

mentalhealthfemme

A post shared by Ericka Gail M.S.Ed (@mentalhealthfemme)

What I’ve Read

Food Security Is Good. But Who Provides Meal Security? - The term “meal security” is new to me, it’s been a while since I was in the field researching and writing about food security, but is a term that encapsulates an incredibly important point I am very familiar with. We, as in the general public and food or nutrition professionals, often focus our work on getting people food. That’s the end goal, make sure people have food. But having food, or access to food, does not mean you have the means or ability to transform the ingredients that are food, into a meal. Barriers can include poor dental health or other health conditions that prevent you from being able to consume or process food, inconsistent or lack of access to a kitchen and cooking equipment, inconsistent or lack of access to utilities needed to cook, and other factors like the time, knowledge, or physical ability to prepare and cook food. This article touches on some new updates to the Thrifty Food Plan and the difficulty the government has with actually meeting the needs of real people experiencing situations that can not accounted for by their algorithms and spreadsheets. It also calls attention to how the burden of feeding and cooking often falls upon women, specifically Black, Indigenous, and Latina women who are obviously not compensated for this labor.
If this work interests you consider subscribing to the author’s Substack; Antiracist Dietitian.
The meat you eat is already fake - This is a wonderful article to send to the next person who tells you animal-free meat is fake, scary, or unnatural. The author briefly takes us through the history of selective breeding and calls out the “torturous conditions” farmed chickens live in as they spend their lives in, “near catatonic passivity”. It even addresses the genetically modified fish people consume and why it’s so difficult to find wild-caught or heritage breeds of animals; spoiler alert, humans have exploited them to near extinction. Top quote from this article, if I had to choose one, “The idea that the chicken consumers eat today is ‘natural’ is a fantasy.
Animal Agriculture Is Dangerous Work. The People Who Do It Have Few Protections. - (CW: detailed descriptions of bodily harm) This is a really long article but absolutely worth the read as it covers the difficulties animal agriculture workers face, the history of OSHA and OSHA exemptions, and so much more. Here are the “Investigation Highlights” provided at the top of the article:
1. Ninety percent of the animals grown for food in America are raised in concentrated animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs. Each one houses at least 1,000 cows, 2,500 hogs, or 125,000 chickens.
2. As CAFOs growing chickens, hogs, cattle and dairy cows become larger and more automated and efficient, the workers inside are less protected by federal OSHA.
3. Federal OSHA protections don’t apply to workers on farms with 10 or fewer workers due to a 46-year-old budget rider intended to protect family farms. Today, that exempts 96 percent of the animal-ag operations that hire workers from OSHA oversight.
4. Agricultural work is meanwhile some of the most dangerous work in the country, ranking third in fatal injuries among all occupations.
- Porkopolis is a book mentioned in the article, if you are interested in reading it, consider purchasing it through my affiliate link.
Labor Department Finds 31 Children Cleaning Meatpacking Plants - The Labor Department began conducting an investigation into Packers Sanitation Services, a contractor hired by “hundreds of slaughtering and meatpacking plants across the country”, in August. The Labor Department investigation has found that Packers hired 31 children between the ages of 13-17 to clean dangerous machinery with corrosive chemicals working overnight shifts. So far the investigation found that children were working at Turkey Valley Farms in Minnesota and JBS USA Plants in Minnesota and Nebraska. Many of these children do not speak English and suffered severe injuries along with exhaustion causing them difficulty in school. The meatpacking and slaughterhouse facilities obviously claim innocence but this is another notch in their demonstrated history of being evil, especially JBS. JBS mistreats workers, provides unsafe working conditions, allegedly price-fixes (allegedly because they have paid millions to settle lawsuits rather than try to prove their innocence), kills billions of animals, and other disgusting things I’m sure they will forever try to prevent the public from knowing.
Food-industry front group: The International Food Information Council (IFIC) - I just love when Marion Nestle calls the industry out by tying all the strings together with well referenced points. The food industry, even large nonprofit associations that are typically in good standing, is sketchy and often deliberately obfuscates its funding which obfuscates the biases in their work.
- Read the report her article is referring to that concludes, “IFIC uses media outlets to preemptively counter information about the negative health impacts of added sugars and ultra-processed foods, and promotes a personal-responsibility narrative about dietary intake and health.”
Meal Startup Daily Harvest Sales Fall by Half in Four Months - An update on the Daily Harvest food illness outbreak that occurred in early summer. As a quick refresher, DH issued a voluntary recall for 28,000 of their lentil meals as it sent dozens of people to the hospital with severe GI sickness and liver issues. Aside from the recall, one of the consequences of making people ill and not handling the incident well is that DH sales dropped by 55% when comparing September 2022 to May 2022 sales. LOL that, “The startup said there was no connection between its food illness episode and its decline in sales”. Sure sure, totally, yeah…Of course people’s habits are changing as the country has decided we are no longer taking the pandemic seriously, so people aren’t buying as many meal kits or cooking at home as much, but you would think that 3-4 months of constant negative press about your food sending people to the hospital would also likely cause those sales to dip.
- Bonus, Maintenance Phase recently released a very detailed podcast covering the Daily Harvest food illness incident and the weird regulation around meal kits that differs from other packaged foods. They even mention GRAS, one of my top food regulation pet peeves that pisses me off to no end!!
KFC apologises after German Kristallnacht promotion - If you are not aware, the horrible November 1938 pogrom, sometimes called Kristallnacht or The Night of Broken Glass, is often thought to be one of the official beginning events of what became the Holocaust. It represents a night of absolute terror and KFC Germany sent out a promotion via their app on the anniversary of that Pogrom that said, “It’s Memorial Day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”. Unfuckingbelievable. Of course KFC Germany “sincerely apologized”, but instead of taking full accountability they shifted the blame onto the automated push notification service they use that sends out promos based on a calendar that includes national observances. It’s not us, it’s just the app we programmed and use!
FDA Completes First Pre-Market Consultation for Human Food Made Using Animal Cell Culture Technology - This was huge breaking news this week and I have seen articles covering the announcement everyyyywhere. But if you’re not in my little niche food industry media world let me be the first to tell you; The FDA conducted its first pre-market consultation on UPSIDE Foods’ cell-cultured chicken and has no further questions at this time. The reason that it’s a big deal is because this was one of the major hurdles cell-cultured meat needed to clear before being able to put their products out on the market. (Read that again, this was ONE of the hurdles, the announcement is about a PRE-MARKET consultation, it won’t be hitting the market yet but it is still a big fuckin deal!) If you wanna get geeky with me you can read the full 23 page FDA memorandum, if you don’t here’s one important quote: “In summary, we did not identify any properties of the cells as described that would render them different from other cells with respect to safety for food use.”
US farms lobby to use ‘cruellest’ killing method as bird flu rages - (CW: this gets graphic) The bird flu I touched on in the last newsletter is continuing with a death count at approximately 49 million “poultry” birds, though it’s hard to tell specifically how many died of the flu and how many were killed by the farmers. In the U.S. poultry producers can get permission to use a technique called ventilation shutdown plus or VSD+ after a case of bird flu is detected. VSD+ works by exposing the birds to high heat for at least three hours inducing heatstroke and death. It has been a top choice for poultry farmers lately. Fucking horrible, but it gets worse…The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture has asked the USDA to make VSD+ the standard method of “culling”, which means it would not need prior approval. Other countries dealing with bird flu consider the method too inhumane to use, but it’s the cheapest option so naturally it’s the top choice for the U.S. and truly terrifying.
- Speaking of poultry…did you know that After gun rights groups, poultry is the next most Republican-leaning industry in the US? According to OpenSecrets Republican candidates, parties, and outside money groups received $4 million during the 2022 election cycle.

Q&Kay

Q: “hello! longtime vegetarian here, but i've been trying to ramp up more on my knowledge the intersection of food/climate/people/politics. I'm already following a lot more vegan accounts ... any particular books you'd recommend as a good entry point for the (relative) neophyte? I saw Animal, Vegetable, Junk in your Bookshop list and thought that might be a good start but open to others. thanks so much for sharing all of your knowledge!”

Kay: Oh you want book recommendations?! I got you!!! As someone who reads pretty much whatever I can about food, I am fairly picky. There are a lot of books on food that meet the topics you’re asking about that I wouldn’t recommend and even the ones I’m sharing below aren’t 1000% perfect, but I still find them to be important, well-written, and impactful reads within the subjects you’re interested in.

Books about food/climate/people/politics that are good for neophytes:
(in no particular ranked order)

Food Politics by Marion Nestle - The forward of this 3rd version of the book was written by Michael Pollan who I do not recommend, but we will forgive that because this book is absolutely iconic and has been for decades! It was one of the earlier books calling out the influences of the food industry in health and nutrition and she is an excellent writer who makes these concepts very clear.
Big Hunger by Andrew Fisher - Explains why the U.S. has made an industry out of food charity and the corporate players that uphold this industry for their own benefit. If we have spent decades fighting hunger through charity and donations and hunger and food insecurity are continuing to increase, shouldn’t we reevaluate and come at the problem of hunger from a different, public health approach? I cited this in my research a few years back and spoke about some of the themes mentioned in this book at a conference and people from food charity groups walked out on me. I stand by it!
Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning by Saru Jayaraman et. al - Various authors discuss issues in the food system relating to corporate power and solutions that people have successfully tried.
Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation by Jasmin Singer - A collection of essays that covers a range of topics that intersect with veganism, all with the primary focus on prioritizing racial equity.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - Okay this book is quite old but literally helped to revolutionize food regulation in the U.S. Its influence was tremendous as it exposed the horrors of Chicago’s meatpacking industry told as a narrative story from the perspective of a Lithuanian immigrant.
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman - I hate that he included “suicidal” in the title but I do think this book gives a great historical look at food and our food system. His writing is captivating and he explains concepts well.
Red Earth White Lies by Vine Deloris, JR - This book is written by a historian who grappled with how modern science positions itself superior to Indigenous identity and knowledge, thus the things we know as scientific fact, may not be 100% correct. Modern western science has a lot of gross roots that still have a hold on us today and I think it’s incredibly important to listen to the histories and scientific explanations that differ from what we’re taught in U.S. schools. This isn’t specifically about food but it is about the earth, environment, people, science, and history.
Franchise by Marcia Chatelain - A very in depth investigation into the relationship between Black communities and McDonald’s. It taught me a lot and shows how food is inherently political and tied to racial justice, power, and identity.

I welcome others to add their recommendations in the comments and if you ever want to have a little book club or discussion about any of them I would be more than happy to do so!

Submit your Q&Kay here!

(The links provided here are all my affiliate links for Bookshop, if you do purchase any of these new I would really appreciate the use of my links to monetarily support my work!)

Kvetch Sesh

I have a couple kvetch seshes in the works but there has been so much food systems news to kvetch about recently, that by the time I got all my articles in here and realized how long it was already I decided to save the kvetch!

Instead I want to share an opportunity for further learning!

Planetary Health Collective, a nonprofit offering food and climate resource for nutrition professionals, is launching a Food & Climate Foundations Course in January. For $60 you get access to the entire 3 course series covering: Eating for the Planet, Demystifying Food Systems Policy, and Bringing Planetary Health to Your Plate: An Introduction to Climate-Smart Dining. This is not sponsored, I am involved with PHC, on the policy and writing teams, and personally know how incredible the experts teaching these courses are so I wanted to share! These courses are open to everyone, regardless of academic or professional background, as long as you are interested in the learning more about the course objectives.

P.S. All sessions will be held (virtually) live and recordings will be sent out just in case the dates/times don’t work for your schedule!
P.P.S. If you’re an RDN, these courses are CEU eligible!