Bill C-474 (Protecting Farmers from Economic Harm of GE Crops)
Release Date: 03/29/2010
The Importance of Garlic to Small-Scale Farmers
Deconstructing Dinner
Across the US and Canada, there is an exciting emergence of a unique type of food festival – a festival for garlic! When looking at a map of where garlic festivals are emerging, it’s clear that garlic knows no geographic boundaries – it’s a food that grows well in most climates across the continent. This popularity of garlic festivals appears to be communicating an important story – a story of our longing to connect and celebrate with one another around food, a story of people wanting to make more flavorful dinners, and a story of a food that has become an incredibly important crop...
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Genetically Engineered Honey?
Deconstructing Dinner
Honey – one of the most natural foods. In the supermarket, honey is found labelled as coming from clover, buckwheat, alfalfa or maybe orange blossom. The label might just read ‘honey’ without any indication of its source of nectar. But is the nectar source even important to those of us wishing to become more conscientious eaters? As Deconstructing Dinner has discovered, there is a curiosity surrounding honey – a curiosity, which has rarely, if ever, been spoken…. until now! It turns out, in Canada, 80% of all the honey produced in the country is from the nectar of canola – yet,...
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How Organic is an 'Organic' Egg?
Deconstructing Dinner
Deconstructing Dinner's sits down with Mark Kastel - the co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute - a populist farm policy research group based in Wisconsin. Mark and Jon discuss the changing face of organic food. Using eggs as an example - Mark explains how eaters can exercise a more discriminating awareness when purchasing 'organic' eggs. Features: Mark Kastel, Co-Founder, (La Farge, WI)
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Year-Round vs. Seasonal Eating
Deconstructing Dinner
It's not uncommon for most of us eaters to view the system supplying us with food as being separate from us, but on this podcast, one of Canada's most recognized food policy analysts offers his perspectives which suggest otherwise. Instead, the food system has in many ways been designed to satisfy the demands that we make every day to eat the same food, year-round, regardless of season, geography or climate. It seems that we eaters, have become so accustomed to that fresh tomato slice on our sandwich, that glass of orange juice in the morning, or that salad of fresh greens, that these...
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Conventional vs. Organic Wheat
Deconstructing Dinner
On this all-new podcast, Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman examines some of the key differences between conventional and organically produced wheat. Features: Stephen Jones, Director, Washington State University Research Station (Mount Vernon, WA) Kevin Christenson, Owner, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill (Burlington, WA) Sam Lucy, Farmer, Bluebird Grain Farms (Winthrop, WA) Roy Lawrence, Farmer, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC) Scott Mangold, Baker, Breadfarm (Edison, WA)
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A Farewell... For Now! (incl. Update on Eggs Investigation)
Deconstructing Dinner
This episode #193 marks the final broadcast of Deconstructing Dinner before we embark on a much-needed break. Producer & Host Jon Steinman speaks about the need to step away from producing new shows and what future might lie ahead. Jon also shares some reflections on the past 5 years of producing this weekly one-hour radio show and podcast, and offers suggestions to those involved in the responsible food movement - a movement which this show has helped track its evolution and certainly one that this show has in many ways been a part of. Also on the show - a brief update (regrettably...
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The Local Grain Revolution XII (Year 3 & Lopez Island Grain Project)
Deconstructing Dinner
Since March 2008, Deconstructing Dinner has been tracking the evolution of the Kootenay Grain CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the interior of British Columbia. The project is Canada's first community supported agriculture project for grain and it's been quite a while since we've checked in with how it's evolved throughout it's third year. Also on this part 12 of the series, we learn about the many grain projects underway elsewhere in Canada and the United States, all of which have been inspired by this very Local Grain Revolution series! Specifically, we travel to Lopez Island,...
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Exploring Ethnobiology IV (The Immaterial Components of Food Sovereignty / Comparing 17th/18th Century Cereal Grain Productivity Among Iroquois and Europeans)
Deconstructing Dinner
Exploring Ethnobiology is a new series Deconstructing Dinner has been airing since June. Through a scientific lens, ethnobiology examines the relationships between humans and their surrounding plants, animals and ecosystems. With seemingly more and more people becoming interested in developing closer relationships with our surroundings (our food, the earth), there's much we can all learn from ethnobiologists, and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained. Food sovereignty is also a subject that permeates much of what...
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TED Talks on Food w/Jamie Oliver, Carolyn Steel & Christien Meindertsma
Deconstructing Dinner
has become an incredibly popular series of conferences featuring inspiring speakers from around the world. TED is a small non-profit devoted to what they call - "Ideas Worth Spreading." Starting out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment & Design, TED has since broadened its scope to include two annual conferences in California, a global conference in the UK and many on-line resources where more than 700 TEDTalks are now available. TED believes in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. With a number...
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Produce to the People
Deconstructing Dinner
Deconstructing Dinner has long been exploring the many ways through which farmers, businesses, organizations and communities are accessing food using new and innovative models. On today's broadcast we hear more of those examples shared as part of the March 2010 panel - Produce to the People, hosted by the San Francisco based CUESA. The Produce to the People panel examined a few inspiring models for getting fresh, local food to residents in the San Francisco Bay area of California and featured Grayson James of Petaluma Bounty, Melanine Cheng of FarmsReach and Christine Cherdboonmuang of the...
info_outlineDeconstructing Dinner has long been at the forefront of covering anything and everything to do with the presence of genetically engineered (GE) foods.
The latest on the issue from Canada's capital is Bill C-474 - a bill introduced by Member of Paliament Alex Atamanenko. The bill was debated in the House of Commons for one-hour on March 17 and is calling for a change in the way GE seeds are approved in Canada. Back in 2009, Canada's primary market for flax - the European Union, blocked all shipments of Canadian flax after tests there discovered the presence of a GE flax that was once cultivated in Canada but de-registered in 2001. The proposed Bill C-474 was developed with the hope of preventing any future scenario like this unfolding again by requiring that all approvals of GE seeds go through an economic impact assessment in addition to the already-in-place health and environmental assessments. In other words, had such an assessment been in place in 1996 when the flax was first permitted, an economic impact assessment might have prevented the 2009 setback to Canada's flax industry from ever happening. Proponents of the bill hope it will prevent the future release of GE alfalfa and wheat into Canadian soil.
On today's episode we'll listen to Members of Parliament debate the issue in the House of Commons. Deconstructing Dinner also followed up with Liberal MP Francis Valeriote who supports the bill being sent to committee, but nevertheless shared many critical remarks in the House that are requiring some... deconstructing.
Guests/Voices
Alex Atamanenko, member of parliament, BC Southern Interior, New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) (Castlegar, BC) - Atamanenko is the NDP's critic on Agriculture & Agri-Food and Food Security. He sits on the Standing Committee on Agriculture & Agri-Food.
Francis Valeriote, member of parliament, Guelph, Liberal Party of Canada (Guelph, ON) - Valeriote sits on the Standing Committee on Agriculture & Agri-Food.
David Anderson, member of parliament, Cypress-Hills Grassland, Conservative Party of Canada (Frontier, SK) - Anderson is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and to the Minister of Agriculture & Agri-Food for the Canadian Wheat Board.
Pierre Lemieux, member of parliament, Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Conservative Party of Canada (Casselman, ON) - Lemieux is Canada's Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. He sits on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
Larry Miller, member of parliament, Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, Conservative Party of Canada (Wiarton, ON) - Miller is the Chair of the Standing Committee on Agriculture & Agri-Food.
Jim Maloway, member of parliament, Elmwood Transcona, New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) (Winnipeg, MB)