Terrain » Summer 2004

Mendocino Magic

Linnea Due — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:54:59 +0000

Two things have become clear since the victory of Mendocino County’s anti-GMO ballot initiative in the March elections: One, that Measure H founders caught only the first wave of what looks to be a tsunami of US efforts to declare particular localities GMO-free, and two, that the wave represents grassroots politics at its most energetic. Although industry interests outspent those who favored a ban on GMO organisms by a factor of six to one, H passed with a hefty 57 percent of the vote, giving new hope to groups deflated by the November 2002 defeat of an Oregon law that would have required genetically engineered food to be labeled.
Els Cooperrider, one of the authors of H, expects that opponents will try to challenge the initiative in court. On the day following the election, a disappointed spokesperson for CropLife America, a lobbying group for fertilizer and pesticide makers, said that it’s “not acceptable” to the biotech industry for counties—or for that matter, countries and states—to create GMO-free zones. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. Following H’s success, workers began gathering petitions or planning campaigns in thirteen other California counties, with next-door Humboldt County furthest ahead in its petition drive to put a similar initiative on the November ballot.
Meanwhile, across the country, Vermont state senators voted unanimously on March 12 to hold biotech companies liable if GM crops contaminate other crops. The bill, called the Farmer Protection Act, now goes to the House. Hawai’i coffee growers are considering a ban, and a number of Midwestern states have tried to pass legislation that would restrict corporate agriculture in favor of family farms.
Monsanto seems to be feeling the heat—or the wheat. At a wheat industry meeting, the company announced that it may release its GM wheat only in the US, rather than in the US and Canada as long planned. According to Reuters writer Carey Gillam, Monsanto officials said the company was facing such stiff opposition in Canada to its GM wheat that it might have to go with “alternative strategies” in its introduction. US wheat industry spokespeople reacted with concern, saying that Canadian farmers would gain a marketing edge, as buyers could avoid GM wheat simply by purchasing from Canada.
Mendocino’s Cooperrider described the battle to pass H as “truly grassroots, and that’s how we were able to stave off $710,000 from the industry, approximately $55 per voter.” Still, sour-grapers are claiming that H is symbolic, since it doesn’t apply to state, federal, or Native lands. “Of course it doesn’t apply to Native lands,” Cooperrider says, “but its application to other areas has not been determined.” And as for Native lands, Cooperrider says Mendocino’s largest tribe, the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, passed a similar ban on GMOs in January, and other groups are also considering bans.

Poison with a Promise

Mary Vance — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:53:28 +0000

This fall, the California Department of Fish & Game will begin poisoning a section of Alpine County’s Silver King Creek, home to the native Paiute cutthroat trout, the rarest trout in America. The idea is to eliminate the nonnative trout that pose dangers to the Paiute of hybridization and competition for food.
After being listed as an endangered species, the Paiute’s status was reclassified to “threatened” in 1975 to allow regulated angling. This January, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed the $500,000 Silver King project to restore a pure population of the Paiute, with the goal of eventually delisting it. But using rotenone, an organic, plant-derived insecticide, to kill the nonnative trout has raised criticism from residents and from environmental organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are very concerned about the effects of the use of this poison,” says Nancy Erman, professor emeritus of aquatic ecology at UC Davis.
Rotenone, which has been used for fishery management for over 50 years with varied results, would be applied for up to three years. Rotenone has some toxicity to all animals but is particularly effective in killing fish because it inhibits gill-breathing animals’ use of oxygen.
Critics of the plan point out that the California Department of Fish & Game continues to stock nonnative fish in area creeks for angling. “It’s a very difficult and complex situation,” says the Center for Biological Diversity’s Peter Galvin. “The larger issue is one of land management: when nonnative species are gaining advancement, the root causes need to be addressed in a holistic fashion.”

Galvin points out that the planted nonnative fish can migrate from one stream to another, where they can mate with the Paiute. “Fish and Game is biting its own hand in the recovery process by continuing to stock nonnative species,” he says. The section of creek to be poisoned is a nine-mile stretch of the upper portion of Silver King Creek, which flows into the Carson River, south of Lake Tahoe. Potassium permanganate, a neutralizing agent, will be used to prevent the poison from spreading into other sections of the creek.
Rotenone has a spotty history when used as a fish management tool. Some critics say it kills amphibians while failing to rid areas of the target fish. USFWS biologist Chad Mellison insists those accusations are false. “We’ve tried to get the story straight and want to dispel any accusations that rotenone treatments have failed in the past.” Rotenone has been used in the Silver King Creek basin on several different occasions with success; there are four other locations in the area where the Paiute has been restored.
In 1997, the California Department of Fish and Game dumped 16,000 gallons of rotenone into Plumas County’s Lake Davis to rid it of the growing pike population that was threatening the lake’s native trout. The poisoning resulted in contaminated groundwater and a lawsuit that cost the state $9.7 million. Less than two years after the poisoning, pike began to reappear in the lake. “There are far more errors in rotenone projects than successes. Even after the species is restored, hybridization almost always recurs,” charges Erman.
At Silver King, the poison will be applied once a year, about 10 to 12 gallons at a time, with the treatment’s effectiveness assessed after each application. Once the nonnative species are killed off, the area will be stocked with genetically pure source populations of Paiute.
Erman believes rotenone carries potentially significant environmental consequences. “There are at least two studies showing major changes in the composition of invertebrates in the Silver King area, meaning there are very severe effects to non-target species,” she says. Erman says there is also an indirect impact on the food chain, which could lead to extinction of some of the non-target species, such as the mountain yellow-legged frog, a species proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act. “Rotenone kills all gill-breathing animals, not just fish, and studies have shown that some invertebrate taxa are permanently eliminated,” she says. She believes that there are viable alternatives, such as net fishing, to using rotenone.
Galvin says viable options have not been explored. “We want a more analytical study of the effects on the environment, as well as the nonchemical alternatives. The Forest Service and Fish and Game have been less than willing to fully debate possible alternatives.”
Once all criteria in the recovery plan are met, management passes to the state, which may open that section of the creek to angling. “We have an opportunity to restore a rare species and create a very unique trout fishery,” says Bob Williams, supervisor for Nevada Fish & Wildlife.
“The real purpose of this project is to set up a fishery in the future,” says Erman, pointing out that the four creeks in which the Paiute have been restored are too remote for angling. “The nonnative fish that now exist in that section of Silver King Creek were planted by Fish and Game, and they are planning to use rotenone to correct this.”
Galvin believes the project only addresses the symptoms. “If you don’t take systematic action in treating the problem, you have to keep treating the same problem again and again.”

Marooned in a Sea of Homes

Stephanie Pool — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:52:23 +0000

Meandering creeks, shady canyons, historical sites, and rare species make the rolling foothills of the Black Diamond Mine Regional Preserve an East Bay treasure. Any fair Saturday turns out park visitors in force, seeking light breezes and an unspoiled landscape. As hikers and bikers crest the hills to gaze at the sweeping eastern vista, something familiar intrudes in the mid-distance—cookie-cutter homes created by developers intent on continuing Antioch’s lock on the list of the region’s top-ten fastest growing cities.
From the sanctity of the preserve, that future seems far off. As the terrain levels at the base of the hills, the big swath of open land that borders the park seems impregnable to the creep of homes—hikers would be excused for thinking it’s part of the park. In reality, this land, once used for grazing, is now known as Future Urban Area 1 (FUA-1), and these quiet acres are about an inch from the bulldozer.
This May, the Antioch City Council will likely pass the plan to allow development of FUA-1, paving the way for construction as early as this summer. The Bay Area’s largest proposed development, with up to 4,000 units, FUA-1 is serving as the quintessential example of Antioch’s elected officials’ attitude toward ever-eastward expansion. “The Antioch City Council looks at sprawling auto-dependent growth as the way to grow,” says Jeremy Madsen of Greenbelt Alliance. “They have a 1950s mentality, where other communities in the area have at least a 1990s approach to growth.”
In Contra Costa County from 1998-2000, 4,798 acres of agricultural and grazing land were swallowed up, according to a study by the Department of Conservation. Antioch, in particular, has grown at a breakneck pace; in 1990 the population stood at around 62,200, while in 2000 it had reached about 90,500. Antioch’s skyrocketing growth is attributed to its abundance of cheap land and, claim some citizens and activists, city officials’ close relations with developers. Critics charge that the city’s laissez-faire stance has attracted sprawl developers, creating a carnival atmosphere of irresponsible growth.
The city annexed the four square miles bordering the Black Diamond Mines in the early 1990s. Now more than ten developers have submitted proposals to build on the acreage. City officials maintain that the development is necessary to meet the city’s estimated demand for housing. In the eyes of the city council, FUA-1 is just another way in which Antioch is doing its part to mitigate the Bay Area’s housing crisis.
“Frankly, Antioch doesn’t need it,” Madsen says. “They should focus on developing within the city.” There is undeveloped acreage within the urban footprint, a fact pointed out by many FUA-1 adversaries, who believe the city council should address housing demand by focusing growth on infill projects. Some suggest revitalizing the downtown as a way to preserve open space while providing housing for working people. These methods, they point out, take advantage of existing infrastructure—roads, sewer systems, power lines—or upgrade those elements.
But the strongest opposition from the community comes from the perception that Antioch is plenty crowded already. According to a poll conducted by Citizens for a Better Antioch, 19 in 20 citizens are opposed to FUA-1—mainly due to fears that the development will aggravate existing problems such as traffic congestion and school crowding.
Highway 4, which connects Antioch with I-80, is notorious for gridlock, and the city projects 70,000 to 140,000 additional car trips a day as a consequence of FUA-1. Some improvements to the highway are planned.
Other concerns are ecologically based. The site serves as home to a virtual Who’s Who of Contra Costa County’s threatened and endangered species—the San Joaquin kit fox, California red-legged frog, the tiger salamander. Says Brad Olson, an environmental program manager for the East Bay Regional Parks District, “the open-space character would be lost. Isolated pieces of open space scattered throughout the valley would exist, but it would be fragmented and disturbed and lose a lot of its value as a resource for species in the area.” Moreover, access to the wildlife corridor southeast of the park through Lone Tree, Horse, Deer, and Briones valleys connecting with the public land of Round Valley and Los Vaqueros would be significantly limited by FUA-1. “With the development of these movement corridors,” explains Olson, “the resources in the park would be increasingly isolated.”
A point of special contention is the land that forms the park boundary. The old Higgins Ranch is arguably the most picturesque piece of land, with rolling hills creating breathtaking views perfect for luxury estate homes—exactly what Zeka, one of the primary developers, is planning for the 680-acre parcel. Environmentalists argue that the site is of the greatest ecological sensitivity. This portion of Sand Creek Valley is habitat for species that do not live in other parts of the valley, says Olson, and it is even more valuable for wildlife because it connects with the preserve.
The East Bay Regional Parks District is calling for a buffer zone between the acres of homes and Black Diamond Mines. Olson says the buffer, in addition to being an important mitigation for wildlife, presents “a question of aesthetics” as homes would be visible from the hiking paths. He adds that people need some sort of buffer zone to enjoy the park: “People using the trails and campgrounds wouldn’t be as affected by the noise and blight from the development.”
Activists fear that the new suburb could be a catalyst for further sprawl. East of FUA-1 lie two other tracts of open space. Included in the city’s general plan last year, these properties, known as Roddy Ranch and Ginochio, total roughly 2,900 acres and could contain an estimated 2,700 homes. The approval of FUA-1 would act as a step toward the development of these grazing lands.
The council appears determined to sign the papers welcoming the ’dozers. “I’m just waiting for sweetheart deals to come through,” worries Dave Walters, president of Citizens for a Better Antioch, “which would piecemeal the project, making it harder to referendum.” A policy known as the alternative planning process could break up FUA-1 into approximately 6 to 10 smaller developments. All these would be signed off separately, meaning that opponents would have to collect signatures from voters multiple times in last-ditch efforts to save each parcel.
Madsen believes the partitioning is “another way to get around public opposition. The citizens are very dedicated but they are not professionals. They have jobs and kids and they can’t be attending city council meetings for months on end to oppose each and every piece of development. The city council knows that.”

Paradise Found (Almost)

Melissa Pamer — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:51:49 +0000

Watching a snowy egret dodge trash along the shore, one finds it hard to imagine that Oakland’s Lake Merritt was once a paradise for fish and birds. Only a few decades ago, the lake was fed by four creeks, its depth ranging six to nine feet as it drained and swelled with San Francisco Bay’s tides. In 1870, the lake—actually a tidal lagoon—was named the nation’s first wildlife refuge, becoming a model for the national park system.
But as the city filled in marshland along the lake’s perimeter, tidal flow was restricted. With less seawater flushing the lake out, water quality deteriorated. Several fish kills filled the lake with rotting striped bass. Though constrained tidal flow is still a problem, trash also threatens the lake’s health. Volunteers pull between one and ten thousand pounds of refuse from the lake every month.
“It’s like tilting at windmills,” says Richard Bailey, executive director of the Lake Merritt Institute. According to Bailey, volunteers fight an endless battle against cigarette butts, plastic bags, and “huge quantities of styrofoam.” Over the years, lake cleanups have turned up furniture, car parts, TV sets, and once, a set of dentures.
In March and April, the Oakland City Council approved design contracts for two lake projects—a new boathouse and major restructuring of the 12th Street lanes, making way for a five-acre park and expanded bike and walking paths. (Don’t hold your breath; construction won’t begin until June 2006.) The 12th Street project alone will eat up a $43 million chunk of Oakland’s Measure DD, a $198 million bond measure voters passed in 2002. Thanks to DD, the city has already installed runoff filters, minimizing the need for trash removal. Eventually, most of the lake’s seven square miles of urban watershed—covering an area from the Oakland hills to Piedmont and around the lake—will be filtered.
Today, if you’re lucky, you can catch a glimpse of the salmon, halibut, and shiner surfperch that make an occasional appearance in the lake. Bailey hopes the fish will become a regular feature once the gates from the channel to the bay are widened as part of the new 12th Street project. “It’s a slow process,” Bailey warns, but he predicts that over the next decade Oaklanders will see a much healthier Lake Merritt.

Prescription Rice

Melissa Pamer — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:50:57 +0000

In his classic Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, Shizuo Tsuji sings the praises of one of the world’s staples: “Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows—precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled in diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a cataract of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant.”
Farmers in California’s flat, hazy rice fields have worked for years to realize this vision, spending millions of dollars and refining standards in an effort to please the demanding Japanese palate and gain a toehold in its lucrative market. And it’s beginning to work: roughly 40 percent of the rice grown in California goes to Japan. Climate and soil conditions in the Sacramento Valley provide an ideal environment for growing the premium rice desired in Japan, but trade barriers and prejudices against foreign rice have not been easily overcome. Just in the past few years California’s rice has finally earned some respect in Japan and other finicky Asian markets, and last year’s crop could achieve the best return for farmers in the state’s history. But now California farmers worry that the purity of their rice, its hard-won status, and their own livelihood may become casualties of the global debate on genetic modification.
At issue is a new kind of rice—a new kind of farm crop, in fact—that is genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals. Using the same recombinant DNA techniques that have created GE foods, biotechnology companies are now making plants like rice, corn, and tobacco into “factories” for producing medically useful compounds. Plants with altered genes are grown like normal crops, in a field or greenhouse, and then are processed and refined after harvesting. The purified products of these novel “pharm” crops can be vaccines, antibodies, or proteins for use in drugs. But critics worry that “pharming” poses the threat of contamination to non-GE food crops, through seed mixing or pollen drift.
Over the past few months, a small Sacramento-based biotechnology company’s aim to expand its experimental crop of pharmaceutical rice has caused a shake-up in the normally hermetic California rice industry. In October of last year, Ventria BioScience petitioned the California Rice Commission (CRC) for permission to grow 120 acres of two varieties of rice engineered to produce artificial versions of two human proteins—lysozyme and lactoferrin—which occur naturally in breast milk and tears. Founded in 1993, Ventria has planted small research plots in Northern California since 1997 with US Department of Agriculture approval, but its bid to expand production brought the company and the Sacramento Valley a flurry of national media attention: this would be the first time in the nation that such crops were grown on a commercial scale. It’s possible that Ventria’s expansion might have passed unnoticed with other crops, but the CRC retains a measure of control over the planting of any new rice variety. Ventria’s plans were subject to state approval, first by a CRC advisory board, then by the state agriculture secretary.
Ventria’s petition set off a review process. Under a 2000 law called the Rice Certification Act, the CRC board is charged with creating growing and processing restrictions for rice varieties of “commercial impact,” but the board cannot stop any specific variety from being grown, no matter how controversial. Eventually the company agreed to plant commercially only in ten Southern California counties, each more than 100 miles from the nearest food rice farm. Some farmers were not appeased.
“One little slip. One slip, that’s all it’s gonna take. If there’s a mistake, the farmer is going to pay—big time,” rice farmer Joe Carrancho told the CRC advisory board as it prepared to vote on Ventria’s protocol in late March. In work boots and dusty blue overalls, Carrancho held up a chart showing 100 percent opposition to GMO wheat from Japanese consumers. “We are fearful,” he said.
Despite the concerns voiced by environmental and advocacy groups, the state-appointed advisory board voted six to five in favor of an emergency approval—speeding up a normal four-month review and public comment process into ten days—so that Ventria might obtain approval in time for spring planting. By this point, news of Ventria’s intentions had gotten out, and opponents flooded the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) with complaints, including a petition signed by 70 farmers. Still, says Greg Massa, one of the rice farmers who led the fight against Ventria’s plans, “We were not optimistic.”
As farmers awaited word on a decision, the Japan Rice Retailers’ Association sent a letter to the CDFA and the CRC that validated many growers’ concerns. “From the viewpoint of the rice wholesalers and retailers in Japan,” it read, “it is certain that the commercialization of GM rice in the US will evoke a distrust of the US rice as a whole among Japanese consumers, since we think it is practically impossible to guarantee no GM rice contamination in non-GM US rice… If the GM rice is actually commercialized in the US, we shall strongly request the Japanese government to take necessary measures not to import any California rice to Japan.”
Soon after the release of the Japanese statement, the CDFA rejected the request for emergency processing, sending Ventria’s proposal back to the CRC for further clarification—much to the relief of farmers and activists. Ventria’s proposal now faces a lengthier review process and further negotiations with the rice commission, and, critically, a stall in the process. As a result of all the legal wrangling, it’s likely that Ventria will miss the seasonal window for planting in California this year.
But the controversy over pharma rice is far from over. Ventria may still gain state approval to grow its crop commercially in the next few months or next year, and as soon as the company obtains a 2004 federal permit, it can continue to sow research plots in undisclosed locations in Northern California. But California’s rice farmers consider themselves lucky: It’s only because of strict government regulation over the California state rice industry that Ventria must vet its plans at the state level at all. Midwestern farmers have little or no chance to comment on pharming that might be happening next door.
“I think it was a victory, but it’s just one step in the whole war,” says Massa. “Farmers need help on this GMO issue because we’re fighting the big battles with some fairly major corporations and they have a lot of money and a lot of power and the only way we can beat them is public outcry.”

Until now, this new generation of GMOs has flown under the public’s radar. The “plant-made pharmaceutical” industry, which has been gathering steam since the early 1990s, has kept out of the spotlight so far partly because pharm crops are still in field- test phase. Field tests generally involve only a few acres at a time—in 2002, the entire biotech industry planted only 130 acres of pharmaceutical crops. As for the products of these crops, none has received approval for human consumption from the US Food and Drug Administration. According to Lisa Dry, a spokesperson for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the industry is “in its infancy.”
Each pharm crop requires a yearly federal permit from APHIS (USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). In the application, companies must describe planting and harvesting strategies, explaining how they’ll prevent contamination of the food supply. But most of that information is withheld from the public as “confidential business information,” which can make it difficult for outside experts to review the safety of specific procedures. In Ventria’s case, local rice farmers don’t know where the company’s research plots are, despite the fact that its rice has been grown in the Sacramento Valley since 1997. “They were quite secretive about what they’re doing and where they’re doing it,” says Bryce Lundberg, an organic rice grower .
In the end, it took a band of environmental activists to blow Ventria’s cover. In 2001, a Greenpeace researcher discovered a test field of Ventria’s rice in the Sacramento Valley’s Sutter County. Donning biohazard suits, Greenpeace activists protested the Ventria plots with huge dummy syringes and banners declaring “This Rice is a Drug.”
Criticism also came from more conservative quarters. In February 2002, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report calling for regulatory reform, suggesting a detailed review of the potential environmental effects of transgenic plants and broader public and scientific involvement in the USDA approval process. In July 2002, the anti-GMO advocacy group Genetically Engineered Food Alert issued a comprehensive report on pharming, which advocated a ban on open-air pharmaceutical crops. The report warned of a StarLink-like contamination of the food supply—a reference to the 2000 incident in which GE corn that had not been approved for human consumption was found in taco shells.
In October 2002, those fears were validated. In a Nebraska field, APHIS inspectors discovered that biotech company ProdiGene had failed to remove volunteer pharma corn plants from a crop of conventionally grown soybeans. In violation of APHIS’ regulations, the company had planted soybeans on land where an experimental plot of corn engineered to produce a pig vaccine grew the year before. When corn seeds remaining in the soil sprouted up among the soy, the field was harvested anyway, despite a directive from APHIS to the contrary, and the beans were sent to storage with the pharma corn mixed in. ProdiGene was fined and forced to buy back more than a half-million bushels of the contaminated soy at a cost of close to $3 million.
After the ProdiGene incident, the USDA tightened the reins on growing conditions for pharmaceutical crops. In January 2004, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced the Department’s intention to overhaul its biotech regulations and develop a comprehensive environmental impact statement—a process that may take many months. Complicating the regulatory web further, the FDA has not issued any decision on how plant-made pharmaceuticals will be regulated as drugs. “The regulatory system is playing catch-up to an industry that’s moving forward without proper oversight,” says Greg Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
A lot of the debate boils down to whether food and feed crops should be used as pharmaceutical “factories.” A number of mainstream food processing and manufacturing organizations have publicly called for stricter regulation of pharma crops. Even Nature Biotechnology, an industry research journal, criticized biotech companies for not being “sensible” about the use of food crops. The magazine’s February 2004 editorial suggested a way to prevent an impending controversy: “Simply don’t use food plants for producing drugs. Why not? Precisely because they are food plants.”
Ventria officials have kept largely silent on the controversy (calls to the company were not returned), but CEO Scott Deeter gave one explanation for his company’s determination to grow pharmaceuticals in food crops before a USDA advisory committee in June 2003. “We know a lot about the biology of rice,” he said. “Grains have a natural protein storage mechanism,” and are “highly scalable,” making them much more affordable than current fermentation methods of producing pharmaceutical proteins, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The two proteins Ventria is developing could help treat the “more than 3.8 million children under five that die every year due to respiratory infection and diarrheal disease.” Reducing the price tag for those proteins by as much as 90 percent, the company seeks to bring “low-cost solutions” to developing countries. “We’re solving world problems,” says Deeter. “We want to save two million kids a year. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning.”
But Bill Freese, a research analyst for Friends of the Earth, says there’s no evidence to show that plant-made pharmaceutical proteins are safe, especially for children, who experience higher levels of allergic reactions. Naturally occurring human forms of lactoferrin and lysozyme together can kill bacteria, but the pharma versions, says Freese, “aren’t human proteins.” Critics also question how Ventria’s proteins will be delivered, especially considering that the FDA hasn’t made a decision on how such plant-made drug products will be regulated. Ventria may seek to deliver its product as a “medical food,” another largely unregulated category. Press accounts have also mentioned potential marketing of Ventria’s proteins as nutritional supplements, which undergo far less scrutiny from the FDA than drugs but can’t carry the same health claims on the label.
Deeter has said that he hopes to see his products on the market by 2006, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be grown in California. The state regulatory process has been a challenge, and Deeter told the Sacramento Business Journal that the company is looking elsewhere, even in South America, for permanent production and research facilities.
Should Ventria pack up shop, that may silence some of its California critics, but not all. There is no field for pharma crops far enough away to suit Massa: “Drugs, chemicals, plastics—whatever they come up with—should not be grown in a food crop.”

Farming for Black Gold

Carol Hunter — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:38:53 +0000

Ken Beer has a farm in the Central Valley, just about 20 miles south of Sacramento. The fifty-year-old farmer’s face is lined and weathered from many years of living on the land. But while his neighbors raise dairy cattle, alfalfa and winter wheat, Beer’s farm is filled with row upon row of white, circular tanks that hold about one million pounds of California white sturgeon.
On a clear October day, Beer explains the workings of his unusual farm as we watch maturing female sturgeon swim graceful circles in one of his 75,000 gallon tanks. They are big, most over six feet long, but are surprisingly hard to see in the dark water—just dim shapes moving in the murky depths and short dorsal fins breaking the surface. They don’t seem to mind when I put my hand into the cold water and let my fingers slide over their slick skin, tracing the bony ridges along their backs. Suddenly, one knocks against the on-demand feeder, releasing a few pellets into the water, and the fish interrupt their circling to thrash on the surface and slurp up some food, revealing a glimpse of white lips and gaping mouths.
“They can’t see very well,” says Beer, watching the circling shadows. “They don’t really respond when you come up to them. They find their food by sense of smell.”
Beer has been caring for some of these fish for over 12 years, raising them from tiny fry to 100-pound behemoths through a daily supply of food pellets and a constant flow of clean, oxygenated water. In less than a month he will find out how well his investment paid off. For inside the belly of each mature female Beer hopes he’ll find the black gold of the sea: caviar.
For connoisseurs and gourmets, choices about caviar are usually pretty simple. Beluga or osetra? One ounce or two? But now, people like Ken Beer are allowing consumers to face a more profound choice: wild … or farm-raised?
Caviar has long been equated with luxury, the food of kings and czars. But while the sturgeons that produce caviar were once abundant in the oceans, lakes, and seas of the northern hemisphere, they have been fished to dangerously low levels around the world. In North America, five of the nine species of sturgeon and closely related paddlefish are federally listed as endangered, while in the Caspian Sea, which historically has been home to the world’s largest abundance of sturgeon, annual catches have dropped by 95 percent in the last hundred years, from over 20,000 tons in the early 1900s to only 1000 tons in the late 1990s. While many government and international agencies have tried to regulate sturgeon fisheries, the high price of caviar, which can sell for well over $100 an ounce, continues to draw poachers and black market smugglers into an illegal trade.
That same high value has also drawn a trio of California fish-farm entrepreneurs—Ken Beer’s The Fishery, Stolt Sea Farm, and Tsar Nicoulai Caviar—which, together with a little fresh water and aquaculture expertise, have turned a small section of the state’s Central Valley into the caviar-farming capital of the world, producing a gourmet product that is competing with Caspian imports. Environmentalists hope that the sturgeon circling at Ken Beer’s farm will help take the pressure off the wild fish populations half a world away.
Sturgeon farming may be relatively new to California, but this is not the first time the US has produced quality caviar. The first American caviar boom started in the mid-1800s, with an intensive sturgeon fishing industry springing up practically overnight. The rush hit hardest along the Delaware River, where a town called Caviar, New Jersey once had 22 caviar and sturgeon wholesalers in the late 1890s.
At the time it seemed that the stock of sturgeon could never be exhausted. Thousands of the spawning fish fought their way up America’s great rivers each year, their bellies almost bursting with black roe. Most of the caviar was packed in barrels and shipped off to European markets. Sturgeon eggs were so abundant that they were even given away as snacks in local saloons. But by the 1920s the stocks were already hopelessly overtaxed. Fishermen were pulling up empty nets, or just a few juvenile fish with empty bellies. The American caviar rush was over.
Until humans intervened, sturgeon lived successfully for millennia. According to fossil records, sturgeon ancestors, virtually identical to today’s species, swam the rivers and seas over 250 million years ago, before most dinosaurs roamed the earth or joined them in the sea. While young sturgeons have a high mortality rate, adults can reach enormous size, outgrowing most natural predators. Sturgeon, in fact, are the largest freshwater fish on the planet, with the largest specimen on record, a member of the giant beluga sturgeon species Huso huso, reaching whale-like proportions, at 4,570 pounds and 28 feet in length. These fish also have impressive longevity—many species have a lifespan of over one hundred years—and are relatively fecund, with females easily producing 10 million eggs each spawning cycle.
The species’ last Old World holdout exists in the Caspian Sea, where a tightly regulated fishery under the former Soviet Union kept populations under relative control. But when the USSR collapsed in 1991, the fisheries went completely unregulated. In the Volga River, which provides the spawning ground for an estimated 75 percent of the Caspian Sea’s sturgeon catch, the number of spawning beluga sturgeon dropped by almost 75 percent in the first six years after the Soviet Union’s demise. In 1997, the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) added all sturgeon species worldwide to its Appendix II listing of threatened species, requiring careful regulation of fishing and trade, but by that time the fisheries were firmly in the hand of the Russian mafia and illegal trade of caviar had grown to an estimated 10 times the amount of legal trade.
Since the CITES listing in 1997, steps have been taken to help preserve sturgeon in the Caspian Sea. The Caspian states started conducting annual trawl surveys to estimate sturgeon populations and have set up hatchery programs to help these populations recover from the loss of spawning grounds, and governments have started cracking down on poachers and smugglers. But some environmental groups fear the current efforts are not enough to save the species. They have petitioned to add beluga sturgeon to the US endangered species act, which would prohibit the sale of beluga caviar in America. These same groups have promoted farmed caviar as an alternative to the Caspian catch and a way to help preserve the remaining sturgeon.
Ken Beer wasn’t thinking of saving threatened species when he started studying sturgeon aquaculture 25 years ago. He had been raising catfish for about three years and was thinking of ways to make his farm more efficient. At the time, Beer was topping off his giant, earth-lined catfish ponds, some covering over 10 acres, by pumping in water from the aquifer beneath his land. It was clear, pristine water—drinking-water quality—that came out at a constant cold temperature. But catfish thrive in warm, muddy ponds with a complex community of algae and microorganisms. The water quality in the huge ponds was mostly determined by the living ecosystem, not the small amount of water added to replace evaporation. To Beer, it seemed like a waste. “It always bothered me that we had this wonderful water and put it into muddy catfish ponds,” he said. “That’s 68 degree water. Too warm for trout, too cold for catfish.” It turned out to be perfect for sturgeon, which do much better in controlled tanks than muddy ponds. Now Beer is able to get two “crops” out of the same water, using the pristine well water for his sturgeon tanks, then recycling it to keep his catfish ponds full.
Beer didn’t know how well things would work out back in 1979, when he started studying sturgeon aquaculture as a UC Davis graduate student. At the time, there was a lot of money available to research the aquaculture of white sturgeon, the species native to California rivers. But it was a brand-new field, and research was sorely needed.
“There was very little known about the white sturgeon,” said Beer. “We needed to find its life history, population statistics, its life span, embryonic development, how to grow it, how to spawn it. We were pretty clueless.”
Beer’s advisor at UC Davis, professor Serge Doroshov, agrees. “It’s a very large fish, and there was no information on how it would behave in aquacultures.” In wild populations, the maturation age in females was determined to be between 15 and 30 years, which would make raising sturgeon for caviar prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, research showed that, with more nutritious food and a controlled environment, the fish mature much faster in captivity, around seven to 10 years, making sturgeon farming economically feasible.
Beer calls those early years of sturgeon farming the “wild west.” White sturgeon is a threatened species and the state allows only a limited amount of recreational fishing, so Beer and others pursuing sturgeon aquaculture needed to get a special permit from California Department of Fish and Game to take spawning females and establish their stock. They hired sport fishermen to get a few females, and Beer remembers getting calls from crazy fishermen in the middle of the night and trucking down some back road to haul in a slippery, spawning 50-pound fish.
Because sturgeon farming uses a land-based facility with fresh water, it avoids many of the harmful environmental effects of other aquaculture, like open-water salmon farming. There are no escapes and mixing of gene pools, no contamination of wild species with diseases or parasites, and no flow of wastes directly into any open water resource. At Beer’s farm, water from the sturgeon tanks is used to keep the catfish ponds full and to irrigate his neighbors’ crops.
However, sturgeon farming still has an environmental footprint. Beer pumps 3,000 gallons a minute of water at each of his two sites to keep a fresh flow through his sturgeon tanks. It’s an incredible amount of water, especially for a drought-prone state like California, but Beer says it’s pretty typical for a farm like his. The water table for his land hasn’t dropped over the last 20 years, he says, and since the runoff is used to irrigate his neighbors’ fields, it lets them avoid pumping their own water from the ground. Beer is hoping to improve on his water recycling efforts in the future and be able to grow more fish without increasing his water use.
Water isn’t the only resource these fish consume. The growing sturgeon are fed a diet of pellets made from vegetable products and fish proteins, which often come from species caught by accident in fishing industry or from small fish like anchovies, which have their own harmful fishing practices. But sturgeon are pretty good at converting food into fish, Beer says, providing about one pound of meat for every 1.5 to 2 pounds of fish food. At three years old, the sex of the fish is determined and the males are sold for meat. The females are left to mature until they are seven years old, when they are checked each year for maturing eggs. Beer has some fish that are 13 years old, still with no sign of ripening caviar
As a small farmer, Beer does not have the capacity to market and promote a luxury product like caviar, or to raise spawning stock to continue the species. His fish begin and end their lives at Stolt Sea Farm, a multinational aquaculture corporation with its caviar headquarters just down the road. In the late spring, Beer gets his yearly crop of fish, 150,000 of them, as two-day-old fry sent down from Stolt, wrapped snugly in 20-pound plastic bags filled with water and pure oxygen. The females spend the next seven to 15 years circling in Beer’s ponds. Then, when Beer determines that they are bearing maturing eggs, they are sent back to Stolt for the final stage of their journey.
Beer’s farm is miniscule compared to Stolt, which produces everything from Chilean Atlantic salmon to Australian blue fin tuna. But Stolt’s California farms are all about white sturgeon—and their precious caviar. The company owns four locations where the fish are spawned, raised, matured, processed into meat and caviar, and marketed throughout the nation and around the world.
On a November day, I visit one of Stolt’s farms south of Sacramento, tucked along a dirt road behind a field of cattle. As I approach the tank, I see three men dressed in black waders and yellow slickers standing up to their hips in the cold water. The men are in the process of checking a group of female sturgeon, aged seven to 10, for ripe eggs, determining which ones will be ready for caviar production in the spring and which need a few more years to mature. Peter Strufenegger, Stolt’s general production manager, is standing at the ready, clipboard in hand. The men gather around a shallow gray plastic tub where several adult sturgeons, subdued with a light anesthetic called Aqui-S, undulate languidly.
One young man grabs the nearest fish, flips her onto her back, and jabs a small pocket knife into her white underbelly. Grabbing a plastic tube tied around his neck, he inserts one end of the tube into the bleeding incision and sucks a bit of what’s inside into the straw, spitting it back on his hand to see what it looks like. They are white, immature eggs, not ready for caviar.
“One year,” he says, flipping the 100 pound fish into a net on the right. “Confirm, one year,” says Strufenegger, marking his chart. Immature fish like this one will be returned to the tank, to swim in peace for another year before they are checked again for caviar. Meanwhile, the site manager, Brendan Moore, checks another fish, jabbing her belly and spitting out a cluster of dark beads.
“Black eggs,” he calls, in a loud auctioneer-like voice. “Black eggs,” Strufenegger confirms, marking it down on his clipboard. Moore and another man wrestle the thrashing female out of the gray container and into the net on the left, on top of another waiting fish.
Another man samples a female’s eggs and eyes them suspiciously, then looks up at Strufenegger, showing him the gray beads on his palm. Strufenegger takes the eggs in his hand and looks at them. “Those are okay,” he says. “Black eggs,” the man calls and pushes the fish to the net on the left. Strufenegger marks off the sheet, then puts one of the eggs in his mouth.
“You taste them?” I ask, and he nods. “What do they taste like?” He scrapes one into my palm and I put the bead in my mouth, rolling it with my tongue and finally popping through the outer coating. It’s round and a little mushy. “They don’t taste like much now,” he says. I concur.
But Stolt hopes the eggs will taste like something in the spring. Today, these “black egg” females will be loaded onto a truck and moved to a special tank at a different farm, where colder water will allow the immature eggs to ripen.
With caviar, timing is especially crucial. There is a critical window when the eggs are fully mature, but have not yet separated from the ovary. These eggs will have the firm pop so desired in premium grade caviar. Once the eggs are ready to for fertilization, they produce pores to let in the sperm, which also results in mushy caviar. There is no way to know the exact stage of development without opening up the fish.
If everything goes according to plan, these females, averaging over 100 pounds each, will produce 10 to 25 percent of their body weight in high quality caviar. The eggs are lightly salted and vacuum-sealed in special tins imported from Italy, then held for sale until the next holiday season. Around Christmas time next year, they will be sold under the Sterling Caviar label at $38 an ounce, much less than the $160 price tag of the highest grade imported caviar.
But getting people to buy the farmed caviar hasn’t always been easy. Chuck Edwards, marketing manager for Stolt Sea Farm, said, “We couldn’t just call up a chef and get him to accept the product. They would say, ‘Yes, but people who come into our restaurant ask for beluga.’”
On thing the enterprise had going for it was that farmed sturgeon produce an excellent caviar. “We found out right away that the quality of this fish’s caviar competes head to head with imported caviar,” said Edwards. Aquaculturists can control every variable in the sturgeons’ environment, from water quality and to type of food. Wild fish can be exposed to contaminants like PCBs or other pollutants. When they are caught, they may thrash around, get stressed out, and often lie in a boat for some time before they are processed. Aquaculture critics will often say that farmed fish tastes farmed, but Beer thinks poor quality simply comes from bad farming practices. “In the wild, when you catch a fish you get what you get,” he said. “On a farm the food is consistent. If the product tastes bad, it’s our fault.”
The fact that wild sturgeons are threatened by overfishing hasn’t hurt business. “As we fit into sustainable fish farming and have a sustainable product, with all that publicity the Caspian Sea has received, I think we’ve gotten a lot of play marketwise for that,” says Edwards. Several prominent chefs have taken a stand against overfishing by serving only farm-raised caviar in their restaurants.
One of these is Jardinière, a trendy San Francisco restaurant famous for its commitment to sustainably produced seafood. I met with Larry Bain, Jardinière’s director of operations, one evening to discuss the decision to switch to farmed caviar two years ago. As the staff below bustles about, shining silverware and deciding where to seat the night’s reservations, Bain waxes poetic about caviar.
“Why is it so delicious and fabulous?” he asks incredulously, leaning in across the table. He can hardly believe I have never tasted the stuff. “When caviar is good, it gives you this incredible array of experience,” he begins, almost closing his eyes. “It is beautiful to look at, with a depth and glow that can only be found in rare gemstones, like black pearls. The aroma is very distinct. Good caviar smells like you are standing on the edge of a fresh rushing river. There is a tinge of ozone. When you put it in your mouth, it has a remarkable texture; the eggs are silky and pop when you press them against the roof of your mouth. It’s like taking a little, lovely sip of ocean.”
He pauses, then opens his eyes. “Of course, there is also the sense of luxury,” he says. “I think everybody who orders caviar orders it for that reason. People like eating things that are expensive and rare.”
For Jardinière’s upscale clients—the opera house set, Bain explains—luxury is a must. And for some, luxury means imported Russian caviar. Bain remembers being called over one evening by an older woman at table 52 and asked about the farmed caviar. When Bain explained the decision to switch to a more sustainable product, the woman would have none of it. She said she always ate Caspian Sea caviar and that’s all she would eat. She seemed almost delighted to know that it was an endangered species and that she might be the last one to eat it.
“For me, it’s a challenge,” says Bain. “The caviar has to be delicious. There can absolutely be no compromise on flavor. But then we ask is it sustainable for the planet? Is it sustainable for people?”
Not all of Jardinière’s clients are as rigid as the woman at table 52. Bain says he sees more and more customers who are educated and concerned about overfishing. Will enough people decide to curb their appetite for a luxury food to save a species that has existed for 250 million years? For now, the six to eight pounds of caviar served each week at Jardinière is that much less taken from the Caspian Sea. It’s a small, but significant, step.

Nothing Beats the Real Thing

Linda Graham — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:30:44 +0000

Juicy slices of guava, kumquats, grapefruits, oranges, apples, strawberries, and carrots flared out in front of me—at least for a moment, because soon all the little hands were taking them away faster than I could chop. I stood in Malcolm X Elementary School’s blooming, magical garden at a homemade wooden stand, passing out the delicious treats. Throngs of kindergarten through fifth graders enthusiastically raced for these fresh tastes from the Tuesday Berkeley Farmers’ Market: fruits and vegetables from Swanton Berry Farm, Smit Ranch, Brokaw Farms, Guru Ram Das Orchards, and Full Belly Farm.
March was National Nutrition Month, which generates all kinds of activities in Berkeley elementary schools. As the local farmers’ market rep, my role is to show up with boxes of fresh produce and discuss the importance of nutrition. I can talk all I want, but it’s the tasting that demonstrates the superiority of fruits and vegetables straight from the soil.
“What is that? Can you eat the seeds?” asked an excited young girl.
“It’s a guava, and the seeds are good for you,” I replied.
Then came the challenge of getting the kids to eat the skins of kumquats, which look like little baby oranges. “Should I really eat it?” a boy asked doubtfully.
“Let’s all eat one at the same time!” I suggested.
Five kids got in on the action while I counted “One….two…..three!!!!!” As we simultaneously chomped on our kumquats, one girl scrunched her face up while the rest of us chewed with huge smiles. Yum!
The Nutrition Month visit is only one of the ways the Berkeley Farmers’ Market staff works with Berkeley Schools. The Ecology Center’s Schools to Farms Program brings us right to the classroom. We focus on schools in which at least fifty percent of the students qualify for free school lunches. This year, starting in April, we’re emphasizing nutrition and agriculture education for fourth graders, including all kinds of activities and games involving organic farming and pesticide use, the food pyramid, vitamins and minerals, fats and oils, and California agricultural history. This summer, we’ll lead school field trips to the Tuesday Farmers’ Market to introduce kids to their connection to community agriculture.
After my produce boxes were emptied and my stand cleared out, I packed up as Malcolm X’s school gardener, Rivka, led a strawberry planting in celebration of the work of Cesar Chavez. As I walked away, the gleeful sounds of kids digging filled the air.

Meat Is a Hot Potato

Penny Leff — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:29:23 +0000

Making policy can be tough work, especially when those policies affect what we eat. Last fall, an application from sausage-maker Fatted Calf Charcuterie to sell at the Saturday farmers’ market raised questions about what, if any, animal products are appropriate to offer. Animal products have been sold at the markets since the Ecology Center started managing them in 1987: several farmers sell eggs; Redwood Hill goat farm sells cheese and yogurt, and Full Belly Farm sells wool and sheepskins, alongside carrots and sunflowers. In season, fishers sell fresh-caught salmon and crab, and free-range chicken is part of many prepared lunch plates.
Fatted Calf’s sausages and salamis are made from Niman Ranch pork, beef and lamb; its duck meat comes from Liberty Duck. Both suppliers have a reputation for hormone-free meat, humane treatment of animals, and practices that sustain pastures and waterways. The animals are pasture-raised, then fed grains for several weeks before they’re slaughtered. None of that changed the views of some committee members who feel selling meat at the market contradicts the Ecology Center’s mission to promote sustainable living.
These members pointed out that there is simply not enough land to grow enough meat to satisfy worldwide consumption. The annual beef intake of an average American family of four requires more than 260 gallons of fuel and releases 2.5 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, as much as driving six months in an average car. Nearly half the water the US uses goes to grow feed and provide drinking water for cattle and other livestock. Cattle-grazing on public lands is its own controversy, with cattle degrading the land by stripping vegetation and compacting the earth. Wild animals disappear, exterminated by cattlemen or out-competed. Even humane ranching practices may not be sustainable where over six billion people are trying to live.
Yet most people shopping at the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets are not vegetarian, and they buy meat somewhere. Offering space to the Fatted Calf Charcuterie gives these shoppers the chance to buy healthful meats from a local producer. Some customers come to the market for the sausages, and these shoppers then support the fruit and vegetable farmers.
It was a tough decision for the committee to make, but in the end, we invited Fatted Calf to sell at the Saturday market, on the condition that the company display information about the farming methods of the ranchers who supply their ingredients. The Ecology Center posts information about the environmental unsustainability of meat. The sausages and other products have been very popular.
Would you like to help decide policy? The farmers’ market committee is looking for new members from the community. The committee meets monthly for potlucks and discussion. Call (510) 548-3333 or email bfm@ecologycenter.org.

Garbage Guru

Chris Terry — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:28:58 +0000

Ever wondered what kind of person it takes to run a recycling program? How about a seasoned nonprofit organizer, who has “an accidental interest in recycling”? Or a civil engineer who lived in Japan for five years? If Dave Williamson doesn’t run an average recycling program, it’s because he isn’t your average garbageman. On June 5, Williamson, head of Berkeley’s curbside recycling program, will receive the Crissy Field Center Community Environmental Hero Award.
According to Linda Graham, the Ecology Center employee who nominated him for the award, “While Dave runs an excellent program and is a major advocate and educator in recycling, this is only a backdrop for his accomplishments,” which are both national and international in scope.
Williamson has been in the recycling business for 15 years. “Garbage is a social commons,” he explains. “Working at Urban Ore taught me about reuse and extended value,” which convinced him that recycling alone wasn’t enough—stopping waste at the source is equally important.
“A lot of our technology isn’t technically driven, but socially driven,” he says. He has a particular bone to pick with plastic. “People have this idea that plastic just happens, so we have to deal with it. Well, the truth is, somebody, somewhere, made a conscious decision to use plastic, even though it’s not recyclable in the true sense of the word. If we had producer responsibility from the get-go, we wouldn’t have so much of it.” To this end, he helped found the International Plastics Task Force, an organization dedicated to educating the public and reducing plastic use, particularly in developing nations.
A pioneer in alternative fuel use, three years ago Williamson became the first person in the nation to convert his fleet of recycling trucks to run exclusively on pure biodiesel. Because of his leadership, all large trucks operated by the City of Berkeley are now powered by biodiesel, and other cities have taken notice.
International collaborations are another focus. Working with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Williamson hosted three Zero Waste Fellows, hailing from South Africa, the Philippines, and India. “Working with this group was an enriching experience,” he says, “Each one of them taught me something—I’ve kind of had my mind expanded.”
Asked why he chose to work at the recycling center instead of as a civil engineer, Williamson says, “I’ve never wanted to work for a large organization. I wanted to work in a small group, with community impact—it sounds corny, but it’s important. Quite frankly, here, I’m essentially a truck dispatcher and I don’t make a lot of money, but I have a lot of impact.”
The award will be presented at the Crissy Field Center at 2 PM. A life-size image of Williamson will be on display there for the coming year, accompanied by a video about his work.

Hard Choices

Amy Standen — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 06:28:52 +0000

Elsewhere in this magazine, writer Christy Harrison profiles a cafe owner who struggles to provide a socially responsible sandwich. Multiply that quandary by a thousand and you can imagine what it’s like to be Jill Stapleton, who, with the help of EC staffers and volunteers, runs the Ecology Center bookstore on San Pablo Avenue.
Items are priced with lower markups than most stores to make green products available to the community. “The concept is that the store is part of education,” says Beck Cowles, who runs the EC’s Environmental Resource Center. “It’s a source to help people lead more sustainable lives, not a fundraising effort.”
That policy keeps items cheaper, but it doesn’t always make them cheap. Straddling the line between ecological and social impact and affordability is a daily challenge.
About a year ago, Stapleton and Cowles co-wrote a guide to product selection. Stapleton, who spends about three hours a day researching products, says that environmental impact is just one in a list of considerations: “What’s the product’s ecological impact? What are the labor issues around its production? Does [carrying it] support small business efforts? Is it affordable? Is it sellable?”

Cowles and Stapleton avoid products that seem “over-consumerist” or have “absolutely no use.” Those determinations aren’t always easy to make. “You can be more or less of a purist,” says Stapleton. “Everything’s a judgment call.”
Stocking the shelves is a lot like anything else environmentalists do: it’s full of compromises and hard choices. Reducing dependence on plastics and other petroleum products, for example, has long been a focus of the Ecology Center. So Stapleton seeks out products that can do some of the same household jobs that plastic containers do. “We have this line of 100 percent recycled glass,” explains Stapleton. “It’s refillable juice containers, place settings, and a lot of it is the best kind of recycled glass, because it’s colored. But it comes from Spain.” Shipping items long distances presents its own array of issues, so what’s the lesser evil? Plastic dependency, or the impacts of shipping? This kind of conundrum, says Stapleton, “is part of holding all these considerations in tension. But in this case, we came down on the side of having the product. Because it’s just so essential to get plastic out of the kitchen.”
Those recycled glass containers are inexpensive and sell well. But there’s no escaping the fact that eco-and socially responsible products tend to cost more than what you pay at Wal-Mart. “People living on low incomes can’t always afford green products. And that’s really frustrating,” says Cowles. “It turns our center into a place that’s not affordable for some items, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Cowles and Stapleton are doing what they can: the store now offers make-it-yourself household cleaning products, including washing soda, borax, baking soda, potash. “You can easily make an effective, cheaper, better cleaning product,” explains Cowles. “And they’re in bulk, so there’s almost no packaging.”
Stapleton adds new products to store shelves each week, but she and Cowles have set their sights on an even wider selection. “I’d love to have a center where you could get everything you need for your week’s supply that’s not food,” says Stapleton. “But that’s not possible right now.”