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Are San Francisco oysters a wilderness wrecker or a pollution solution?

by NielPostma231 Posted on February 13, 2013

Are San Francisco oysters a wilderness wrecker or a pollution solution?

By Susie Cagle

OrinZebest

The San Francisco Bay Area has been having some mixed feelings about oysters lately: Are they good for the environment, bad for the environment, or just treats for happy-hour drinkers at the downtown Ferry Building?

Just north of San Francisco in Point Reyes, Drakes Bay Oyster Co. has been fighting to keep harvesting oysters on what was set to become protected wilderness land on Jan. 1. Local environmentalists are split on whether fewer oysters will allow the estuary to “quickly regain its wilderness characteristics” or instead/also lead to a big unfiltered load of seal poop in that wilderness. (Wilderness: It’s kind of gross!)

Either way, we’ll soon find out, as Drakes Bay just lost its federal appeal to stay beyond a Feb. 28 deadline.

Meanwhile, some miles east across the bay on the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, Christopher Lim and the Watershed Project are bringing oysters back. The bay had a large native oyster habitat that was wiped out by overharvesting and hydraulic mining. From KQED:

“Oysters, I think, definitely have that connection to people whether it’s through food … (or) the history of oysters in San Francisco Bay,” Lim said. “Part of the reason we would like to restore oysters is because we know of their ecosystem benefits in the Bay, and they were probably here in much greater numbers in the past.” …

Olympias, the only oyster species native to the Bay, are smaller — around two inches long — than the larger and more fast-growing Pacific you probably ordered at a restaurant. Lim said he enjoys the taste of Olympia oysters, but he makes one thing clear.

“The oysters that we’re researching here … we’re not meaning for them to be eaten,” he said. “We’re doing it for the ecosystem benefits that oysters bring to the shoreline and to the subtidal habitat.”

The Bay Area has that Wild West pioneer spirit, though, Christopher Lim. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if you attract some rogue divers out there searching for a snack.

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Fish DNA database aims to fight seafood fraud and promote conservation

by olikellopas Posted on February 7, 2013

Fish DNA database aims to fight seafood fraud and promote conservation

By Susie Cagle

Matthew Kenrick

Over the past few years, the FDA has been compiling a fish DNA library to help combat seafood fraud. But despite its best efforts, many sushi eaters and other seafood diners are still chowing down on mislabeled and unsustainable fish species on the regular.

Now a Canadian team has gone a step further, compiling a DNA barcoding library of tens of thousands of Atlantic ocean fishes, and making much of it available directly to other research scientists and the public. You can thank Canadian biologist Paul Bentzen and his colleagues at Dalhousie University. Yes, despite the funny name, this is a real university. From Phys.org:

According to Paul Bentzen, Professor in the Department of Biology, “With growing pressures from fisheries, climate change and invasive species, it is more important than ever to monitor and understand biodiversity in the sea, and how it is changing. Our database provides a new tool for species identification that will help us monitor biodiversity. The availability of ever easier to use DNA sequencing technology can make almost anyone ‘expert’ at identifying species — and all it takes is a scrap of tissue.”

He continued, “There can be many steps in the supply chain between when the fish leaves the water and when it appears on a plate. With many desirable species becoming ever more scarce and expensive, there will always be temptation to substitute a cheaper fish (or an illegally harvested one) for a legal, more expensive one. We know it happens. DNA data never lie, unlike some seafood labels and restaurant menus. With the DNA database, it will be easier to detect seafood fraud when it happens.”

The database aims to fight fraud with readily available public information. The problem: It’s only searchable by wonky scientific names and jargon. That means it’s useful to other scientists, but not so useful to regular people. Until this kind of info gets funneled into an easily parse-able application, consumers and policy-makers will likely just feel like they’re drowning in data.

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The USDA is gearing up to steal candy from babies

by Myrna Posted on February 7, 2013

The USDA is gearing up to steal candy from babies

By Susie Cagle

The USDA seems a little conflicted about what it wants you to eat, kids. A year ago, it put out new rules intended to make school lunches healthier. Then in December, it backed away from restrictions on servings of meat and grains. Now the agency says it wants to crack down on greasy ‘n’ sweet snacks sold both in vending machines and in school lunches. From the Associated Press:

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers. …

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have “a la carte” lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

Let’s just hope the USDA doesn’t backtrack on these new standards.

The proposed rules would apply to anything sold directly by the schools, but not fundraising bake sales or after-school event concessions, where a lot of parents would probably be pretty annoyed about having to eat low-fat hamburgers and baked chips.

Another school lunch change in the works: The USDA is launching a pilot program to test out Greek yogurt as a protein-packed alternative to meat. Somehow I think that’s more likely to excite dairy farmers than grade-school kids, though.

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Dodge made ‘God made a farmer’ Super Bowl ad, and I made an angry face

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on February 4, 2013

Dodge made ‘God made a farmer’ Super Bowl ad, and I made an angry face

By Susie Cagle

Farmers: We like them! So does Dodge, I guess, because there’s not any other clear reason why the American car company would make this ad except to try to associate itself with a trade close to America’s scrappy — and white male — identity.

From Dodge’s portrayal, you’d hardly know that almost a third of farm operators are women, and the population of farm owners of color is growing by full percentage points each year. You’d also hardly know who does most of the work on most of those farms.

American farm worker conditions are likened to “modern slavery,” where a precarious force of 50 to 80 percent undocumented workers picks the vast majority of our produce by hand, earning, on average, about $10,000 each year, though the majority of these workers are also parents supporting children. The numbers vary from state to state, but a large proportion of that workforce that spends each day picking food has to pay for their own sustenance with food stamps. The cheapest Dodge Ram pickup costs more than two years of their salary.

“To the farmer in all of us,” Dodge proclaims at the end of the ad. The farmer in me doesn’t really want a pickup truck, though — she’d much rather pay those field workers 40 percent more, passing along most of the cost to massive corporate distributors such that the average person would only pay $5 more each year for the tiniest (tiniest!) bit of labor ethics and human decency with their supper.

But you know, that’s just my farmer. What does yours think?

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Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on January 31, 2013

Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

By Susie Cagle

Want to be able to tell the difference between a natural fish and a genetically engineered frankensalmon in the dystopian food future? It looks like you may not be required to live on the crunchy West Coast for that.

After California’s GMO-labeling Proposition 37 failed to pass last fall, bills that would require labels for genetically modified food are rolling in Oregon and Washington, and similar initiatives are picking up steam in Minnesota, Missouri, and New Mexico, as well as in Connecticut and Vermont, where GMO-labeling legislation failed to pass last year amid threats of legal action from Monsanto.

New Mexico could be the first state to pass such a law. State Sen. Peter Wirth of Santa Fe, who is sponsoring the legislation, says the bill is aimed at “leveling the playing field” for food actually grown in fields.

Minnesota is home to the headquarters of General Mills, Hormel, Cargill, and Land-O-Lakes, which were all big contributors to the fight against Prop 37, but citizens groups are pushing legislators to pass a label law there too (and the local Fox affiliate covers them pretty appropriately). Meanwhile, Missouri’s legislation would just target genetically modified meat and fish.

The most interesting take on the national GMO label fight comes from the belly of the beast: the International Dairy Foods Association, which just had its annual meeting. From Meat Poultry News:

Connie Tipton, president and chief executive officer of the International Dairy Foods Association, urged food and beverage manufacturers to not rest on their laurels following the defeat of Proposition 37, legislation that would have required the labeling of bioengineered foods sold in California, this past November. Tipton spoke Jan. 28 at the IDFA’s annual Dairy Forum meeting.

“The drumbeat for GMO labeling is as loud as ever and proponents are taking their show on the road,” she said. “They are training their eyes on other states… Moreover, they learned from their mistakes. We anticipate that these new initiatives will be better written with a better ground game to push them forward.”

Tipton added that Walmart’s GMO-labeling efforts were cause for concern.

“It announced this past summer it planned to sell a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by Monsanto. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of us were scratching our heads when Wal-Mart added that it would label the product as containing GMO ingredients – even though the Food and Drug Administration has already said the product is safe. Given Wal-Mart’s size and market share, there are legitimate concerns that its decision on GMO labeling will force other retailers to march in lockstep behind the industry giant.

March in lockstep, eh? This is starting to sound familiar (and fascist), though GMO-labeling fascism seems more appealing than frankenfood-fascism, but maybe that’s just me.

Not to be completely outdone by states with fewer organic quinoa points-of-sale, supporters of California’s Proposition 37 have licked their wounds and swear to be back with another campaign to label GMOs next year.

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When trees die, so do we

by Myrna Posted on January 25, 2013

When trees die, so do we

By Susie Cagle

Trees! Everyone loves trees. They soak up carbon, make stuff pretty, and have been shown to keep crime down in cities. It’s pretty clear our fates are tied to the trees’. Sooo, what happens when they all die? Uhh, so do we.

friendshipgoodtimes

Millions of ash trees in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. are being chomped to bits by a beetle called the emerald ash borer. But those beetles aren’t just hurting trees. From Discovery:

[I]n the neighborhoods hit by the beetle that kills ash trees, researchers noticed a stark rise in human mortality from cardiovascular and lower respiratory disease: there were 15,000 more deaths from cardiovascular disease, or 16.7 additional deaths per year per 100,000 adults, and 6,000 more deaths from lower respiratory disease than in unaffected areas, or 6.8 additional deaths per year per 100,000 adults.

Research forester Geoffrey Donovan, who headed up the study, said that tree death is tied to human death across places with very different demographics and other living conditions.

Our biggest, oldest trees are dying out worldwide, presenting problems not just for the animals that live in them, but the animals that live near them, who also like to breathe clean air. (You know, us.)

Pretty sure the Lorax would say: “I speak for the trees, for they have no tongues. But if they did they’d say ohhh god.”

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Could the sharing economy kill public transit?

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 24, 2013

Could the sharing economy kill public transit?

By Susie Cagle

Ken Schmier is a Bay Area transit guru. He’s essentially responsible for the limitless Muni Fast Pass in San Francisco, and created the NextBus application in the 2000s to help people catch those ever-elusive city buses. But now Schmier is thinking transit may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

“Frankly,” the Bay Area attorney and businessman told Next City, “I think transit agencies are obsolete.”

Blame that damn sharing economy.

Schmier is now all about what he calls “Micro-Transit” — in other words, ride-sharing, or turning regular cars into taxis.

The Bay Area already has Casual Car Pool, a long-standing ride-share project that relies on a vintage website and message board instead of the smartphones and big money of new ride-sharing ventures. It’s kind of an organized form of hitchhiking, and it really works.

Schmier wants to make this general idea more efficient, scalable, and tech-savvy. From Next City:

His vision, detailed in a white paper shared with Next City, is to put radio-frequency identification chips into the hands of passengers — in key fobs, transit cards or even driver’s licenses. Willing drivers, in turn, would be equipped with readers. When a potential passenger comes within scanning distance of a participating car, the driver’s picture would appear on an external display, and the rider’s on an internal one, confirming that both have gone through a background check.

Making the moment ripe for Micro-Transit, concludes Schmier, is that the technology is newly affordable: About $2 for the chip and $200 for the reader.

As for passengers getting where they need to go, drivers might opt for a signal showing the direction the car is heading. Longer trips could require hops between cars.

The program is good for cities, says Schmier. Tapping private cars’ “excess capacity,” i.e. empty seats, cuts down on underused public transportation, creates feeder lines to high-traffic trains and buses, and saves gas.

As for providing incentive enough to make drivers willing to let a stranger in their car, Schmier envisions a small fee — 50 cents or a dollar — that would be deposited in their Micro-Transit account for each rider picked up. Or, drivers might opt for high-occupancy vehicle credit.

Schmier’s plan might make sense for less dense regions full of cars, like the Bay. And in a lot of ways, it’s more in the spirit of the sharing economy than many of the new ride-share start-ups driven by a profit motive. But if our goal is more dense, livable, transitable cities, cars ain’t gonna cut it, no matter how many of us we try to cram into each one.

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A be-nice, don’t-hog-the-road guide for cyclists

by Larissaiyb Posted on January 22, 2013

A be-nice, don’t-hog-the-road guide for cyclists

By Susie Cagle

Pro tip: Here is how not to ride your bike in a city unless you want people to think you are a total dick.

To that end, Transportation Alternatives has a new Street Code for Cyclists handbook. It’s specific to New York City’s rules of the road, but a lot of what’s in here is basic common sense for bicycling commuters.

Sarah Becan

The No. 1 message: Biking may in fact rule, but pedestrians are the real road royalty.

We know — and studies show — that more bicyclists make cycling safer and safer cycling will encourage more people to get out and ride. This is a virtuous cycle that we can work together to continue. In this effort the public’s perception of cyclists matters as much as, if not more than, any new bike lane or scores of new riders. …

Here’s a simple proposition: always yield to pedestrians. …

Cyclists often know, in painful detail, the fear and havoc that automobiles can bring to NYC streets. Let’s not pose a similar threat to pedestrians in the walking capital of the world. Instead, let’s seize this opportunity to usher in a new era of safer, saner travel.

Some of this is common sense. Encouraging not just lawful but courteous behavior toward everyone who shares the road is a great ideal, and studies have indeed shown that making cycling safer is what encourages people to choose two wheels over four.

More than 50,000 cyclists are injured on the road each year — almost as high as the number of pedestrians injured, though more pedestrian accidents prove fatal. Rarely are any of those injuries caused by bike-on-ped accidents (though it does sometimes happen, and can be fatal). But both drivers and walkers complain about out-of-control, law-flouting bike-riders from sea to shining sea. It’s a common argument against adding cycling lanes to roads: Won’t those just attract more bike-riding hoodlums who already think they can take the lane??

It’s important that the public perceive cycling as nothing like that Premium Rush movie if we want to make more people comfortable on the roads and break down barriers between four-wheel, two-wheel, and no-wheel groups.

But why does the onus for safety so often fall on cyclists? They’re not the ones routinely maiming and killing people with speeding, two-ton hunks of metal. Maybe a friendly Driving Rules handbook is in order — “rules” as in “guidelines,” not “is awesome.”

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There’s a hole in my plastic-bag law

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 19, 2013

There’s a hole in my plastic-bag law

By Susie Cagle

Alameda County, Calif., where I live, has banned stores from giving out plastic bags as of Jan. 1. It’s great news that was a long time coming, considering the county is home to eco-minded cities Berkeley and Oakland.

The county suffers from its fair share of local plastic bag pollution. “Each year, the equivalent of 100,000 kitchen garbage bags worth of litter end up in our local waterways, including an estimated 1 million disposable plastic bags,” says Jim Scanlin, manager of Alameda County’s Clean Water Program. And without a water treatment plant, all that plastic flows directly into local creeks and San Francisco Bay.

Most businesses have switched to paper bags. But because of a loophole in the law, they actually don’t have to — they can simply call a plastic bag “reusable,” like this awesome one I got from my local liquor store the other day.

You can tell it’s a “reusable” plastic bag and not one of those regular garbagey plastic bags because not only does it say “reusable” on it, but it is also green! And it cost me 10 cents, like all bags do now, as an incentive for customers to bring their own to the store.

I’ve already seen three of these in gutters between my house and said liquor store, on their way to a garbage patch. Good job, plastic bag ban, keep up the good work!

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How to get absolutely freaking (almost) everywhere in California without a car

by LeannqOsborn Posted on January 17, 2013

How to get absolutely freaking (almost) everywhere in California without a car

By Susie Cagle

Outside of its cities (and inside a lot of them, too), California is a typical car-happy American state, with about .84 cars for every person. With its miles and miles of looping roadway and ingrained car culture, it can be easy to forget how many other forms of transportation there are in the Golden State, too.

Enter the California Rail Map, one giant badass master map of California’s trains, buses, and ferries, showing routes to 500+ destinations throughout the state.

Click to embiggen.

Hey, look at that, you can take the train all the way from Oakland to Tijuana. Of course, it doesn’t say how long it’ll take to get there … See you guys next week!

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