When you live in hard times, in times of war or strife, people begin to question their beliefs. During World War 1 (1914 to 1918) and World War 2 (1939 and 1945 ) the old optimistic liberalism was hard to maintain; how could we believe that all people were at heart truly good in light of all the horrible things happening in the world? Suddenly James Freeman Clarke’s articulation of “The Progress of mankind onward and upward forever” which had been so popular among Unitarians at the end of the 19th century seemed out of touch with the realities of the 20th century.
It was during these times that James Luther Adams helped find a new way for Unitarianism. Adams grew up as so many Unitarians did, in a fundamentalist household. His father was a traveling Baptist preacher, and often took his son “young Luther” along with him when he preached and James played violin for the hymns. Like so many other Unitarians, Adams followed a new road when he went to college (at the University of Minnesota). He became an atheist and a humanist, and eventually found himself at the Unitarian church. There he heard the preaching of John Dietrich, who preached a humanism that was both scientific and religious. A Unitarian professor, Frank Rarig, saw that deep below Adam’s outrage at religion persisted a religious impulse. In an autobiographical essay, Adams recalled that Rarig once told his student that Adam’s problem was that he had never come across a "self-critical religion." That being the case, it is not surprising that Adams found a home in Unitarianism. It was also Rarig who told Adams, much to the young man’s surprise, that he was bound for the ministry. Adam’s friends were shocked when their “raving humanist” friend headed off for Harvard Divinity School in 1924 to be come a Unitarian minister.
Adams’ fist settlement was at the Unitarian church in Salem Massachusetts (1927-34). While he was there, he continued to study, earning a master’s degree in comparative literature from Harvard, and then teaching in the English department at Boston University (1929-32). During this time there was a labor strike at the local textile mill. Workers, managers and the mill’s owners attended his church. The press was not covering the strike, so Adams used his pulpit to call for a public airing of grievances, which lead to press coverage and eventually a settlement between labor and management. Adams put to action his belief that if the liberal church did not stand up for the oppressed, if they were too bogged down in individualism to work for social justice, they were passively acting to maintain the status quo.
In 1935, Adams was invited to join the faculty at the UU seminary the Meadville/Lombard theological school. He accepted, but asked for a year to study in Europe before he began. Arriving in Europe in 1935, Adams witnessed the Nazi government in action. He was part of the Underground church movement, and was on one occasion questioned by the Gestapo, at risk of imprisonment for his actions. While in German Adams used his home movie camera to film great leaders like Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer who worked with the church-related resistance groups, and also the pro-Nazi leaders of the Christian Church. By the time he came back to the US, he was more convinced than ever that any church which could stand by and passively let such oppression happen, was irrelevant and impotent.
Adams was at Meadville/Lombard from 1936-1943 where he trained a generation of students for the ministry He then taught at University of Chicago from 1943-1956. While there he was a founding member and leader of the Independent Voters of Illinois whose mission is to increase voter registration and voter education in Illinois, and to be activists toward creating a more open and honest government. The organization is still working to create savvy voters and honest government today.
In 1957 Adams went to teach at Harvard Divinity School, and after retiring from Harvard in 1968 due to their mandatory retirement policy, continued teaching at Andover Newton (an ecumenical seminary where many UU ministers are trained). Adams was a brilliant teacher, attracting students from diverse faith traditions. He loved interdisciplinary conversations, even holding seminars on religion and law, and religion and business.
Adams also was a force for change in our denomination, serving on many committees at the UUA, including the first ever Commission on Appraisal 1934-36. The commission was called into being during the bleak period in Unitarian history which followed the great depression, and the wars in Europe. It was a time when many questioned the relevancy of Unitarianism. The commission posed the question: “Have we sufficient faith in our own future to warrant us in undertaking the arduous task of making ourselves fit to survive?” The commission’s work resulted in an important reorganization of the AUA. Adams’ call for change often rankled the UU establishment, but by the time of his retirement, he was widely respected.
JLA (as he was often affectionately called) helped our UU faith through a difficult transition. He helped articulate a contemporary liberal theology that is still at the core of who have become as a movement. He was a prolific writer, and articulated many important ideas, but I want to focus today one that is crucial to who we are today. Adams was grounded in a “pragmatic theory of meaning.” As British Psychologist Alexander Bain has said, “a belief is that upon which a person is prepared to act” (p. 117). Now remember Adams was a theology professor, so that means that he likes to trace every idea back to his roots. So if you read Adams pretty dense writings, he will introduce you to all kinds of important thinkers you may or may not have met before. In drawing out this pragmatic theory, he brings to our attention William James, who wrote that “a pragmatic theory of meaning would enable us to come into better working touch with reality” (p. 118. I really love this.) Theology can be so confusing. How can you really know the nature of God, what happens after you die, or how to be a good person? Do you just accept the statements of faith handed down by the church fathers? Do you look for an internal logic to a theological system? Do you apply scientific methodology? To William James, the pragmatic theory of meaning was a “method of settling metaphysical disputes which might otherwise be endless” So how do we decide whether a certain theological theory is better than another one? We see if there is any difference in the actions inspired by that theory. Said Charles Sanders Pierce “Different beliefs are distinguished by the different habits of action they involve.” So despite all the arguing over the centuries about, for example, whether Jesus was created by God or was around since the dawn of time just like God the Father, the pragmatists ask, “does either theory make any difference in how you act day to day?” James wrote that “an evening at a symphony concert has been wasted on a young man if on returning home he is not kinder to his grandmother”
I want to explore this point with a story from my own life. I went to seminary as an atheist-leaning agnostic. I was constantly looking for scientific proof for the existence of God, and finding none, thought it would be foolish to believe that God existed. Over the course of my years of seminary, I began to assemble a picture of “what kind of god I could believe in, if I believed in god”. But I had no proof about the ontological nature of God. So I was stuck. While studying systematic theology I followed the reasoned arguments of Paul Tillich as far as I could, but there was a point where reason left off. I burst into tears one day in my theology seminar. Professor Kimball responded “At some point it looks like the path ends and you have to leap. I can assure you that there is something beyond that point, but only you can make that leap.” Still I struggled and wrestled with these ideas that continued beyond the edge of reason and science. And when I finally leapt I took this rope with me as a safety line: “Will I be a better, more ethical, happier person if I believe than I am right now?” And clutching that line, I leapt. To this day I believe that what humans call God is a human construct, that a divine essence which pervades all life will never be replicated in a laboratory, can never be argued definitively with reason, but I notice that I am a happier, more generous person since I opened myself to certain ideas than I was before. It turns out the “pragmatic theory of meaning” helped me in just the way James described, “to help settle metaphysical disputes which might otherwise be endless.”
Adams editor, Max Stackhouse, wrote in a preface to one of his essays “More than one religious scholar, spotting Adams in the audience, has departed from the prepared text to say that ‘of course’ what he is presenting needs to be spelled out in concrete terms, but “for the moment” and “for the sake of precision” attention will focus on theory. But for Adams, precision is not gained by narrow focus on one level of meaning, but by integrating levels of meaning in a way that relates to practice.” To Adams, the point where theology meets our real lives, meets this time and this place is not a part of the conversation that can be put off for later. It is always at the center.
For Adams, the pragmatic theory is already there in traditional Christian thought. He finds it in the New Testament saying “By their fruits shall you know them.” [Matthew 7:16] Here in the sermon on the mount, Jesus is answering the question how we can know the difference between real prophets and false prophets. Jesus advises “Beware of false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” When I think back to Adam’s experience in Nazi Germany, I can see how he came to embrace this kind of theory- because he saw with his own eyes those leaders of the church who sided with the Nazis, those who passively let atrocities happen without speaking out, and those courageous folks who risked their lives and freedom to save lives and fight the spread of fascism. “You will know them by their fruits.”
This relationship between belief and action is crucial to our UU identity today. We have never had a Unitarian or Univeralist creed in our 400 year history, but have often gotten into theological arguments about where the limits of our faith are. Today the beliefs of Unitarian Universalists are more diverse than ever before. And so this litmus test is crucial for our contemporary identity- you know a good UU by his or her fruits.
This winter our congregation has heard a lot about social justice on these cold Sunday mornings. Lest you had been wondering “what does this have to do with being UU?” Adam’s theology helps us see how ethical living became so central to our movement. And Adams believed it wasn’t just the personal “fruits” by which we shall be known. He also believed strongly that the same standard should be applied to institutions. He said “No one can properly put faith in merely individual virtue, even though that is a prerequisite for societal virtues. The faith of the liberal must express itself in societal forms” (p. 18) Adams was referring to the social institutions of education, economy and politics. Because without these societal forms, you cannot create a free and just community.
Says Adams “The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions – social, economic and political—of the common life. ... Any other faith is thoroughly undependable; it is also, in the end impotent.” (p. 18)
Again, I have to imagine that witnessing so many churches passively give their power to shape history over to the Nazi regime must have had a deep impact on the formation of Adams’ theology. A faith that encourages piety, even one that encourages an ethical life, yet who would stand by and do nothing as atrocities unfolded around them is, in Adam’s words. “… a faith that enables history to crush humanity.” (p. 18) Adams draws on his Judeo Christian roots by seeing in the Hebrew Prophets the early exemplars of this -- those ethical prophets like Micah and Hosea who challenged the standing order of things in ancient Israel, who challenged the waste and privilege of the kings and those in power. He sees today’s liberals as contemporary prophets, responsible for calling to account the institutions of our time.
In 1961, when the Unitarians and Universalists merged, we accepted 7 principles which we covenant to affirm and promote. The 4th of these is “A free and responsible search for Truth and Meaning.” And how can we, a people without a creed, a people who don’t have a unifying holy book to guide our way, how can we know what is truth? How can we find meaning? Our own Unitarian Theologian helped shine a light in a dark time for our world, a time when our faith was languishing, by offering an answer. We will know truth, we will find meaning, because it “helps us come into better working touch with reality (James p. 118). Adams encourages us to ask of any idea we encounter - Does it lead to ethical action? Does it lead us to act in history to make a more just world? Does it inspire in each of us to make a commitment to action on the part of justice? James Luther Adams offers to us the same advice we read in the gospel of Matthew “by their fruits they will be k nown.”
Resources
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/adams.html “JAMES LUTHER ADAMS: THEOLOGIAN OF POWER 1901-1994” by George Kimmich Beach, Faculty of Divinity Memorial Minute, Harvard University
http://www.iviipo.org/index.htm
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/jameslutheradams.html
James Luther Adams On Being Human Religiously (Max L. Stackhouse ed.) UUA 1996.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Ethical Eating: After Lunch (February 7, 2010)
Ethical Eating- After Lunch
A few months back I preached a sermon called “The Ethics of Lunch” in which I challenged each of us to think carefully about the food we chose to bring to the lunch table. Just last month we gathered here for an Ethical Eating Potluck, and the kitchen was overflowing with delicious food prepared with organic veggies, local bread and eggs and lots of creativity and love. Many of us have chosen this year to acknowledge our power as consumers to influence the marketplace and to make choices with mindfulness. But what if we didn’t have a choice? After we watched “Food Inc.” here together last month I started to realize that we can’t take our power to choose for granted. I believe that in order to eat ethically, we need to protect the truly free marketplace, with a genuine diversity of growers, of crops and of growing methods in our own community and in local communities all over the world. To protect these rights, there is work that must happen after lunch- in court rooms and in capitols to preserve our access to ethically grown and harvested food.
There is an amazingly complex web of issues that emerges as we start to pay attention to food politics, so I want to focus on just 3 areas today: The right to know what is in our food, our need for small scale alternatives to industrial agriculture, and the right of all people and communities around the world to food security and sovereignty.
Let’s start with the right to know. We can’t make informed choices if we don’t know how our food was made or where it comes from. On the one hand we’ve made some progress in this area- there is a common standard for “organic” now, and the nutritional information on packaged food is something I use every day as I decide what to eat. But still manufacturers are not required to include information about whether your food includes genetically modified materials. “Neither the FDA, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done any long-term human health or environmental impact studies of GE foods or crops” In 2000 the FDA said labeling would be voluntary, and so far not a single company hasd stepped forward so far to label genetically modified food. How can I make a choice about the genetically modified food already on my grocery store shelves without the kind of labeling laws in all 15 European countries, Russia, China, Japan and in fact most of the developed countries of the world? We aren’t really free to choose, if we don’t know what is in our food.
The next example is right out of science fiction – cloning animals for meat. Did you know that although cloned animals are tracked, there is no mechanism for tracking meat that comes from cloned animals? And the offspring of cloned animals are not tracked at all. The National Academy of Sciences has called for post-market tracking of the meat of cloned animals and their offspring, but because such tracking is not required, it is possible that offspring of cloned cows are in the food stream right now. There is no way of knowing for sure. Even though a majority of Americans have expressed a desire for labeling of food from cloned animals, the FDA said they will not requires such labeling.
In January of 2008 the FDA issued a report concluding that “meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day” and approved food from cloned animals.
Margaret Mellon, Director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists offered a different opinion saying: “Animal cloning is a controversial technology with few, if any, benefits to consumers. Most cloned animals have severe defects and are more likely to die at an early age than ordinary farm animals. Although successful clones may appear normal, the possibility remains that some may harbor subtle genetic defects that could impair their health or make them unsafe for consumption. The FDA should have required that cloned products be labeled as such and kept them off the market at least until it established a mandatory tracking system to allow retailers to avoid purchasing the products.”
Other countries have already asked that cloned meat be restricted while we have the time to research more subtle and long term health effects and ethical issues. So what’s our rush? We have learned from the flood of genetically engineered plants into our ecology that once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s impossible to control. Now, before any cloned meat goes to market, is the time to create a tracking system for cloned animals, and the offspring of cloned animals, and to call for the labeling of the meat of cloned animals. How can we make a wise and ethical decision if we don’t have the right to know?
This leads us right to my next area of concern: how can we chose if there is no longer any choice in the marketplace? If we don’t protect diversity of farming methods, and the diversity of our seed stock, there could be no choice to make. Take, for example, genetic engineering. For such a young industry, I was amazed to find that through licensing agreements with seed companies, Monsanto genes are in about 96 percent of U.S. soybean crops and 80 percent of all corn crops. That’s a lot of power for one company to have over this country’s food supply. The power is shored up because Biotech companies like Monsanto require growers who use the patented seeds to sign a “technology use agreement” which says the farmer can not save the seeds produced from their harvest. Since time immemorial, farmers have saved seeds from one year to make sure they can plant again the following year. The 3rd century Rabbi ‘Ahai ben Josiah wrote “He who purchases grain in the market place, to what may he be likened? To an infant whose mother died; although he is taken from door to door to other wet nurses, he is not satisfied... He who eats of his own is like an infant raised at its mother’s breast” By growing patented seeds, by giving up their right to save seeds, the farmers are giving up the source of their sustainable nourishment- their seed stock. In so doing, they are also giving up a lot of independence, and adding to the power of Monsanto and other corporations. It sounds like these companies are becoming “too big to fail.” because their failure would take the whole food system with them.
But even farmers and consumers who do not choose the patented crops are effected by the Monsanto products, because these genes don’t stay where you put them. In 2001, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across the miles, by GM pollen. That is to say that even the corn in the birthplace of corn now includes DNA material from the GE corn, because corm is an airborne fertilizer.
Says the Center for Food Safety: “Farmers' fundamental right to sow the crop of their choice is eliminated when it is contaminated with transgenes, and so is the public's ability to support meaningful organic food and feed production.” These “Genes on the loose” lead to an amazing lawsuit in Canada in which Monsanto sued Percy Schmeiser, a farmer who had been growing canola for 40 years. Schmeiser plants his crops most years from seeds saved from the previous year. He claims that he has never bought seeds from Monsanto, but that “more than 320 hectares of his land is now ‘contaminated’ by Monsanto's herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready canola” For this Monsanto sued Schmeiser for planting the patented seeds without paying royalties on it. Hundreds of such lawsuits have been filed by Monsanto against farmers in both Canada and the US. Most reach out-of-court settlements. But Schmeiser fought back. “He claims Monsanto investigators trespassed on his land -- and that company seed could easily have blown on to his soil from passing canola-laden trucks. "I never put those plants on my land," says Schmeiser." Well, the courts found for Monsanto both at the trial and the appeal, and Schmeiser was ordered to pay nearly $20,000 in damages and $150,000 for Monsanto’s legal fees. They argued that he knew there was cross contamination in the seeds he saved from his harvest, and planted them despite the contamination without paying royalties. The Supreme Court ultimately said Schmeiser did not have to pay damages to Monsanto, because he did not gain from the actions- that is to say, having the Monsanto patented genes in his seeds did not improve his crop productivity. Schmeiser counter-sued in small claims court, refused to sign a gag order, and won $660, the cost of cleaning up the contaminated seed off his land. A protracted legal fight against such a litigious corporation with a team of its own attorneys has ruined many farmers. It took 8 years for Schmeiser to win that battle, and most farmers choose not to fight.
Another David v Goliath is the story of Bev Eggleston who wanted to create a small, local meat processing plant. Those of you who watched Food Inc. last month remember Polyface Farm, which feed its cattle on grass and provides a sustainable alternative to the High Density Feed lots that produce most of America’s meat. We observed the stark contrast of the open air processing of chickens at Polyface farms with the huge industrial slaughterhouses we saw. Well Bev wanted to help Joel be able to process his grass fed beef locally, and mortgaged himself to the hilt to build a processing plant for the state’s grass farmers. Patiently Bev took his new plant through the tedious and exacting process by which the USDA was approved his plant, then after he’d been open for business just a short time, the USDA pulled their inspector, saying that Bev wasn’t processing enough animals to justify their time. That is to say- only large scale processing is effectively legal. These stories about Bev Eggleston and Percy Schmeiser illustrate my point that in order to retain our right to choose small scale local agriculture, we must make sure that corporations like Monsanto and Government offices like the USDA are not putting obstacles in the way of farmers who opt out of the industrial agriculture system. If we appreciate corn without GMOs, and locally grown grass-fed beef, we have to watch the backs of the farmers that feed us, or we will be left with no choice at all.
The final issue I’d like to address this morning is food security. We need to make sure that the policies of our own government and the international banking system do not undermine the food security of local communities around the world. We’ve all had the people of Haiti on our minds lately, so I thought I would try to learn more about their history. In order to receive international aid and development loans from the International Monetary Fund, beginning in the 1980s Haiti was required to open its doors to more imports and reduced tariffs. Since that time total rice consumption has roughly doubled, but imports from the US are 30 times what they imported in 1985, while local production has been reduced by almost 40% since the 1980s . But Haiti and the US are not competing on an even playing field- US rice production is subsidized, while Haitian farmers receive no subsidies or government support. Global Exchange says that the deal with the IMF actually prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers
Over 2/3 of the Haitian population grows rice or is employed by related industries like trading and milling. When Haitian farms had to close down, many people lost their means to support their families. Farmers went to the city to provide cheap labor in factories, but there were not enough factory jobs to go around. And so the average income per person dropped by almost half. (Dobbs) There was plenty of cheap rice, but with family incomes falling, hunger swept the country.
This story is repeated in countries around the world. When our subsidized surplus is exported as aide to struggling nations, the short term fix leads to longer term poverty as the artificially lowered food prices destabilize local economies resulting in increased poverty and hunger. Under the guise of food security, our subsidized crops have flooded the world markets and our own markets. We need to change our picture of “food security” from a big brother who can produce huge amounts of corn and soy and rice with great consistency and sameness, to a picture of the safety that food diversity provides. When field after field is planted with plants which are genetically almost identical, if they encounter a disease they are not resistant to, it can destroy all of those crops in a single blow, whereas in a polyculture, some portion of the crop will usually survive due to the resistance provided by their diversity. Any financial adviser will tell you to “diversify your portfolio” well, we have invested all our food security in just 3 crops (Corn, soy and wheat), have bread them to be standardized, intentionally reducing diversity, and have spread these crops all over the world, even to countries like Kenya where the imported plants struggle, especially in times of drought.
Today in Kenya, drought is threatening the food security for around 31.5 million people, and more than one million face imminent starvation. The western food crops grown there are not sustainable in their arid climate, and are depleting the soil. In order to create more sustainable food security, folks like Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a horticultural scientist, are trying to re-introduce native plants to farmers, to markets, and to local dinner tables. Says Abukutsa-Onyango: “Today, spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth can be found in Nairobi supermarkets and restaurants, after years of being spurned by the well-fed as food only for the poor, and by the poor themselves as alternatives only in times of extreme hunger,”
Efforts like this to shore up local subsistence-scale farms and local eco-systems, provide not only support for local economies, and food security for local communities, but they diversity the infra-structure to provide a needed safety net for that time when a system too big to fail, finally does fail.
Right now our policies treat agriculture as just one more industry in the marketplace, but agriculture is different from other industries- because you can’t eat iPods or running shoes. Food is necessary for life. Our policies should create food security for every person on this planet rather than adding barriers to people’s production of their own food. For too long we have assumed that it was fine for countries to rely heavily on food imports from around the globe, but as we come to a time of peak oil, relying on fossil fuel intensive transport of the very stuff of life is dangerous to all who rely on those imports at the expense of local agriculture. It is irresponsible for US policy and World Bank policy to undermine, through so called “free trade” the development and survival of local subsistence agriculture in favor of international imports of food. We must support and promote Food security and Food Sovereignty in which communities are able to define their own means of production of food, because food is a basic human right.”
In an age when most of the food in our supermarkets is produced by a handful of companies using only a few strains of corn and soy patented by a couple of larger corporations, our ability to choose food that is truly good for ourselves, our neighbors and our planet is in real jeopardy. If we want to live out our Unitarian Universalist principles through ethical eating, our work continues after lunch is over. Let us work together to protect our right to know how our food is produced, let us protect alternative methods of production by supporting farmers and businesses who opt out of the industrial system, and let us work to ensure the food sovereignty of local communities all over the world, that each community may produce their own food in a way that supports their local economies and sustains the land they tend. After the meal is over, our work as advocates has just begun.
End Notes
1. http://truefoodnow.org/campaigns/genetically-engineered-foods/ge-crops/myths-realities-of-ge-crops/
2. “Cloned Animals on the Dinner Plate?” from Food and Water Watch http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/foodsafety/food-technologies/cloning/cloned-animals-dinner and http://www.citizen.org/documents/clonefactsheet.pdf
3. http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/safetyhealth/animalcloning/default.htm
4. Organic Consumers Association “Take Action: FDA Approves Food from Clones” http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6433
5. http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/fda-oks-cloned-meat-0096.html
6. “Monsanto Focus of Antitrust Investigation” CBS News St. Louis Oct 8 2009 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/08/business/main5372772.shtml
7. quoted in Ellen F. Davis. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. p. 21
8. George Monbiotm “The Fake Persuaders” in guardian.co.uk. This story bumps against our other theme about our right to know- since Biotech companies lobbied the journal to retract the article, the first time Nature has ever bowed to such pressure. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/may14/greenpolitics.digitalmedia
10. http://ga3.org/campaign/alfalfaEIS
11. Mark Nichols. “Monsanto vs Schmeiser”, Excerpt from Macleans Magazine. May 17, 1999.
12. Doug Pibel. “A Farmer Rounds Up Monsanto.” Yes Magazine. posted Mar 03, 2009 http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/3360
13. Michael Polan. Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 246
14. “Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice” TED Case Studies Number 725 Hune 2004 by Hosine Georges. http://www1.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm
15. Dobbs, Michael. "Free Market Left Haiti's Rice Growers Behind." Washington Post: Thursday, April 12, 2003, page A1. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/217.html
16. http://usfoodcrisisgroup.org/files/food_crisis_backgrounder_111208.pdf “Backgrounder on the Global Food Crisis” by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis.
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security
18. Wendell Berry. The Pleasures of Eating
19. Dobbs, Michael. "Free Market Left Haiti's Rice Growers Behind." Washington Post: Thursday, April 12, 2003, page A1. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/217.html
20. The 2007 study "Down to Earth" by World Bank economists Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery found economic growth of the agriculture sector is at least twice as effective at reducing poverty as any other sector. cited in http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=2754 “Food crisis forces new look at farming” by Joel Millman and Roger Thurow. Wall Street Journal. 06-10-2008.
A few months back I preached a sermon called “The Ethics of Lunch” in which I challenged each of us to think carefully about the food we chose to bring to the lunch table. Just last month we gathered here for an Ethical Eating Potluck, and the kitchen was overflowing with delicious food prepared with organic veggies, local bread and eggs and lots of creativity and love. Many of us have chosen this year to acknowledge our power as consumers to influence the marketplace and to make choices with mindfulness. But what if we didn’t have a choice? After we watched “Food Inc.” here together last month I started to realize that we can’t take our power to choose for granted. I believe that in order to eat ethically, we need to protect the truly free marketplace, with a genuine diversity of growers, of crops and of growing methods in our own community and in local communities all over the world. To protect these rights, there is work that must happen after lunch- in court rooms and in capitols to preserve our access to ethically grown and harvested food.
There is an amazingly complex web of issues that emerges as we start to pay attention to food politics, so I want to focus on just 3 areas today: The right to know what is in our food, our need for small scale alternatives to industrial agriculture, and the right of all people and communities around the world to food security and sovereignty.
Let’s start with the right to know. We can’t make informed choices if we don’t know how our food was made or where it comes from. On the one hand we’ve made some progress in this area- there is a common standard for “organic” now, and the nutritional information on packaged food is something I use every day as I decide what to eat. But still manufacturers are not required to include information about whether your food includes genetically modified materials. “Neither the FDA, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done any long-term human health or environmental impact studies of GE foods or crops” In 2000 the FDA said labeling would be voluntary, and so far not a single company hasd stepped forward so far to label genetically modified food. How can I make a choice about the genetically modified food already on my grocery store shelves without the kind of labeling laws in all 15 European countries, Russia, China, Japan and in fact most of the developed countries of the world? We aren’t really free to choose, if we don’t know what is in our food.
The next example is right out of science fiction – cloning animals for meat. Did you know that although cloned animals are tracked, there is no mechanism for tracking meat that comes from cloned animals? And the offspring of cloned animals are not tracked at all. The National Academy of Sciences has called for post-market tracking of the meat of cloned animals and their offspring, but because such tracking is not required, it is possible that offspring of cloned cows are in the food stream right now. There is no way of knowing for sure. Even though a majority of Americans have expressed a desire for labeling of food from cloned animals, the FDA said they will not requires such labeling.
In January of 2008 the FDA issued a report concluding that “meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day” and approved food from cloned animals.
Margaret Mellon, Director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists offered a different opinion saying: “Animal cloning is a controversial technology with few, if any, benefits to consumers. Most cloned animals have severe defects and are more likely to die at an early age than ordinary farm animals. Although successful clones may appear normal, the possibility remains that some may harbor subtle genetic defects that could impair their health or make them unsafe for consumption. The FDA should have required that cloned products be labeled as such and kept them off the market at least until it established a mandatory tracking system to allow retailers to avoid purchasing the products.”
Other countries have already asked that cloned meat be restricted while we have the time to research more subtle and long term health effects and ethical issues. So what’s our rush? We have learned from the flood of genetically engineered plants into our ecology that once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s impossible to control. Now, before any cloned meat goes to market, is the time to create a tracking system for cloned animals, and the offspring of cloned animals, and to call for the labeling of the meat of cloned animals. How can we make a wise and ethical decision if we don’t have the right to know?
This leads us right to my next area of concern: how can we chose if there is no longer any choice in the marketplace? If we don’t protect diversity of farming methods, and the diversity of our seed stock, there could be no choice to make. Take, for example, genetic engineering. For such a young industry, I was amazed to find that through licensing agreements with seed companies, Monsanto genes are in about 96 percent of U.S. soybean crops and 80 percent of all corn crops. That’s a lot of power for one company to have over this country’s food supply. The power is shored up because Biotech companies like Monsanto require growers who use the patented seeds to sign a “technology use agreement” which says the farmer can not save the seeds produced from their harvest. Since time immemorial, farmers have saved seeds from one year to make sure they can plant again the following year. The 3rd century Rabbi ‘Ahai ben Josiah wrote “He who purchases grain in the market place, to what may he be likened? To an infant whose mother died; although he is taken from door to door to other wet nurses, he is not satisfied... He who eats of his own is like an infant raised at its mother’s breast” By growing patented seeds, by giving up their right to save seeds, the farmers are giving up the source of their sustainable nourishment- their seed stock. In so doing, they are also giving up a lot of independence, and adding to the power of Monsanto and other corporations. It sounds like these companies are becoming “too big to fail.” because their failure would take the whole food system with them.
But even farmers and consumers who do not choose the patented crops are effected by the Monsanto products, because these genes don’t stay where you put them. In 2001, two researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across the miles, by GM pollen. That is to say that even the corn in the birthplace of corn now includes DNA material from the GE corn, because corm is an airborne fertilizer.
Says the Center for Food Safety: “Farmers' fundamental right to sow the crop of their choice is eliminated when it is contaminated with transgenes, and so is the public's ability to support meaningful organic food and feed production.” These “Genes on the loose” lead to an amazing lawsuit in Canada in which Monsanto sued Percy Schmeiser, a farmer who had been growing canola for 40 years. Schmeiser plants his crops most years from seeds saved from the previous year. He claims that he has never bought seeds from Monsanto, but that “more than 320 hectares of his land is now ‘contaminated’ by Monsanto's herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready canola” For this Monsanto sued Schmeiser for planting the patented seeds without paying royalties on it. Hundreds of such lawsuits have been filed by Monsanto against farmers in both Canada and the US. Most reach out-of-court settlements. But Schmeiser fought back. “He claims Monsanto investigators trespassed on his land -- and that company seed could easily have blown on to his soil from passing canola-laden trucks. "I never put those plants on my land," says Schmeiser." Well, the courts found for Monsanto both at the trial and the appeal, and Schmeiser was ordered to pay nearly $20,000 in damages and $150,000 for Monsanto’s legal fees. They argued that he knew there was cross contamination in the seeds he saved from his harvest, and planted them despite the contamination without paying royalties. The Supreme Court ultimately said Schmeiser did not have to pay damages to Monsanto, because he did not gain from the actions- that is to say, having the Monsanto patented genes in his seeds did not improve his crop productivity. Schmeiser counter-sued in small claims court, refused to sign a gag order, and won $660, the cost of cleaning up the contaminated seed off his land. A protracted legal fight against such a litigious corporation with a team of its own attorneys has ruined many farmers. It took 8 years for Schmeiser to win that battle, and most farmers choose not to fight.
Another David v Goliath is the story of Bev Eggleston who wanted to create a small, local meat processing plant. Those of you who watched Food Inc. last month remember Polyface Farm, which feed its cattle on grass and provides a sustainable alternative to the High Density Feed lots that produce most of America’s meat. We observed the stark contrast of the open air processing of chickens at Polyface farms with the huge industrial slaughterhouses we saw. Well Bev wanted to help Joel be able to process his grass fed beef locally, and mortgaged himself to the hilt to build a processing plant for the state’s grass farmers. Patiently Bev took his new plant through the tedious and exacting process by which the USDA was approved his plant, then after he’d been open for business just a short time, the USDA pulled their inspector, saying that Bev wasn’t processing enough animals to justify their time. That is to say- only large scale processing is effectively legal. These stories about Bev Eggleston and Percy Schmeiser illustrate my point that in order to retain our right to choose small scale local agriculture, we must make sure that corporations like Monsanto and Government offices like the USDA are not putting obstacles in the way of farmers who opt out of the industrial agriculture system. If we appreciate corn without GMOs, and locally grown grass-fed beef, we have to watch the backs of the farmers that feed us, or we will be left with no choice at all.
The final issue I’d like to address this morning is food security. We need to make sure that the policies of our own government and the international banking system do not undermine the food security of local communities around the world. We’ve all had the people of Haiti on our minds lately, so I thought I would try to learn more about their history. In order to receive international aid and development loans from the International Monetary Fund, beginning in the 1980s Haiti was required to open its doors to more imports and reduced tariffs. Since that time total rice consumption has roughly doubled, but imports from the US are 30 times what they imported in 1985, while local production has been reduced by almost 40% since the 1980s . But Haiti and the US are not competing on an even playing field- US rice production is subsidized, while Haitian farmers receive no subsidies or government support. Global Exchange says that the deal with the IMF actually prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers
Over 2/3 of the Haitian population grows rice or is employed by related industries like trading and milling. When Haitian farms had to close down, many people lost their means to support their families. Farmers went to the city to provide cheap labor in factories, but there were not enough factory jobs to go around. And so the average income per person dropped by almost half. (Dobbs) There was plenty of cheap rice, but with family incomes falling, hunger swept the country.
This story is repeated in countries around the world. When our subsidized surplus is exported as aide to struggling nations, the short term fix leads to longer term poverty as the artificially lowered food prices destabilize local economies resulting in increased poverty and hunger. Under the guise of food security, our subsidized crops have flooded the world markets and our own markets. We need to change our picture of “food security” from a big brother who can produce huge amounts of corn and soy and rice with great consistency and sameness, to a picture of the safety that food diversity provides. When field after field is planted with plants which are genetically almost identical, if they encounter a disease they are not resistant to, it can destroy all of those crops in a single blow, whereas in a polyculture, some portion of the crop will usually survive due to the resistance provided by their diversity. Any financial adviser will tell you to “diversify your portfolio” well, we have invested all our food security in just 3 crops (Corn, soy and wheat), have bread them to be standardized, intentionally reducing diversity, and have spread these crops all over the world, even to countries like Kenya where the imported plants struggle, especially in times of drought.
Today in Kenya, drought is threatening the food security for around 31.5 million people, and more than one million face imminent starvation. The western food crops grown there are not sustainable in their arid climate, and are depleting the soil. In order to create more sustainable food security, folks like Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a horticultural scientist, are trying to re-introduce native plants to farmers, to markets, and to local dinner tables. Says Abukutsa-Onyango: “Today, spider plant, African nightshade and vegetable amaranth can be found in Nairobi supermarkets and restaurants, after years of being spurned by the well-fed as food only for the poor, and by the poor themselves as alternatives only in times of extreme hunger,”
Efforts like this to shore up local subsistence-scale farms and local eco-systems, provide not only support for local economies, and food security for local communities, but they diversity the infra-structure to provide a needed safety net for that time when a system too big to fail, finally does fail.
Right now our policies treat agriculture as just one more industry in the marketplace, but agriculture is different from other industries- because you can’t eat iPods or running shoes. Food is necessary for life. Our policies should create food security for every person on this planet rather than adding barriers to people’s production of their own food. For too long we have assumed that it was fine for countries to rely heavily on food imports from around the globe, but as we come to a time of peak oil, relying on fossil fuel intensive transport of the very stuff of life is dangerous to all who rely on those imports at the expense of local agriculture. It is irresponsible for US policy and World Bank policy to undermine, through so called “free trade” the development and survival of local subsistence agriculture in favor of international imports of food. We must support and promote Food security and Food Sovereignty in which communities are able to define their own means of production of food, because food is a basic human right.”
In an age when most of the food in our supermarkets is produced by a handful of companies using only a few strains of corn and soy patented by a couple of larger corporations, our ability to choose food that is truly good for ourselves, our neighbors and our planet is in real jeopardy. If we want to live out our Unitarian Universalist principles through ethical eating, our work continues after lunch is over. Let us work together to protect our right to know how our food is produced, let us protect alternative methods of production by supporting farmers and businesses who opt out of the industrial system, and let us work to ensure the food sovereignty of local communities all over the world, that each community may produce their own food in a way that supports their local economies and sustains the land they tend. After the meal is over, our work as advocates has just begun.
End Notes
1. http://truefoodnow.org/campaigns/genetically-engineered-foods/ge-crops/myths-realities-of-ge-crops/
2. “Cloned Animals on the Dinner Plate?” from Food and Water Watch http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/foodsafety/food-technologies/cloning/cloned-animals-dinner and http://www.citizen.org/documents/clonefactsheet.pdf
3. http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/safetyhealth/animalcloning/default.htm
4. Organic Consumers Association “Take Action: FDA Approves Food from Clones” http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6433
5. http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/fda-oks-cloned-meat-0096.html
6. “Monsanto Focus of Antitrust Investigation” CBS News St. Louis Oct 8 2009 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/08/business/main5372772.shtml
7. quoted in Ellen F. Davis. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. p. 21
8. George Monbiotm “The Fake Persuaders” in guardian.co.uk. This story bumps against our other theme about our right to know- since Biotech companies lobbied the journal to retract the article, the first time Nature has ever bowed to such pressure. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/may14/greenpolitics.digitalmedia
10. http://ga3.org/campaign/alfalfaEIS
11. Mark Nichols. “Monsanto vs Schmeiser”, Excerpt from Macleans Magazine. May 17, 1999.
12. Doug Pibel. “A Farmer Rounds Up Monsanto.” Yes Magazine. posted Mar 03, 2009 http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/3360
13. Michael Polan. Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 246
14. “Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice” TED Case Studies Number 725 Hune 2004 by Hosine Georges. http://www1.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm
15. Dobbs, Michael. "Free Market Left Haiti's Rice Growers Behind." Washington Post: Thursday, April 12, 2003, page A1. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/217.html
16. http://usfoodcrisisgroup.org/files/food_crisis_backgrounder_111208.pdf “Backgrounder on the Global Food Crisis” by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis.
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security
18. Wendell Berry. The Pleasures of Eating
19. Dobbs, Michael. "Free Market Left Haiti's Rice Growers Behind." Washington Post: Thursday, April 12, 2003, page A1. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/217.html
20. The 2007 study "Down to Earth" by World Bank economists Luc Christiaensen and Lionel Demery found economic growth of the agriculture sector is at least twice as effective at reducing poverty as any other sector. cited in http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=2754 “Food crisis forces new look at farming” by Joel Millman and Roger Thurow. Wall Street Journal. 06-10-2008.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)