Liking London

Mar 28

week or so ago I attended a reading by Ekstasis authors, in celebration of the Pacific Rim Review of Books. Richard Olafson introduces…

Among others, our excellent Saskatchewanian Glen Sorestad read, and so did the wondrous Yvonne Blomer.

I’m enjoying the bee-keeping course a lot. Here’s how you wrap up your hives and throw them in the back of your truck to take them for a drive. If you listen closely you can hear them hum…

And now, here I am on the other side of the pond once more. I arrived yesterday and after a reviving nap and shower bustled off to the Olivier to catch Much Ado About Nothing, which was nothing short of awesome. Zoe Wanamaker, Simon Russell Beale and everyone — all wonderful. Sets, staging, music, dancing — all wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I laughed, I cried, and I particularly enjoyed the reaction of the many school kids in the audience, who hooted and hollered and clapped upside down and backwards at the end.

I settled in that evening to a gorgeous box of booty from Ottolenghi – roasted aubergines with braised shallots, coriander, chili and green tahini; roasted beets with sunflower seeds, chard, chervil and maple sherry dressing; some soft, tasty new potatoes in mustard sauce; and a couple of slices of char-grilled fillet of beef with dijon mustard, coriander and honey sauce. With a glass of Barbera to wash it down. Looks like I will just miss the publication of Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, but we can still catch some great recipes in the Guardian.

Carrie has sent forth the challenge to participate in NaPoWriMo over April (National Poetry Month) which sounds like an excellent idea. We poets can show those novelists what’s what, eh?

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Growth hormones in dairy, and National Poetry Month in Canada

Mar 22

Shocked by a grim if slightly dated tale about rBST – recombinant bovine somatotropin, marketed under the name “Nutrilac” – a synthetic hormone, developed by Monsanto through genetic engineering, that increases a cow’s ability to produce milk – which is allowed in US dairy cattle but banned in Canada and the EU. Despite intense lobbying by Monsanto, and a made-in-Canada whistle-blower scandal, eventually further study showed cause for concern over introducing it to the human food chain: but it is even more harmful to the health of dairy cattle, who suffer greater risk of lameness, infections and sterility when given it.

Bear that in mind when buying anything containing dairy products from the US. I’m not sure if there are any regulations at all that limit the use of US dairy products in this country – the regs only say we can’t give the hormones to our cattle. A number of dairy producers in the US now label their products as hormone-free, which is causing Monsanto to protest that such claims might make consumers think the hormone-free products are in some way ‘better’ than those which are produced with the benefits of Monsanto’s chemicals. Gosh…

More about milk another day. Meanwhile, National Poetry Month looms in Canada, and starting April 1st, the League of Canadian Poets will showcase poems by its members on a blog, whose theme is “Poetry Without Borders.”

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GM canola and alfalfa, and a little poetry news

Mar 20

I’ve been discovering some shocking things about genetically modified foods in Canada this week, and so will all of you with televisions that can be tuned to Global for a documentary on Saturday night, March 23 at 7pm (dunno if it’s the same outside BC). Hijacked Future is about GM foods, but also about the stranglehold that large, profit-driven corporations are securing on the world’s food supply, while we consumers blithely carry on as it it were the most natural thing in the world for farmers to be forced to buy new seeds every year instead of saving and planting their own stocks, developed for local ecosystems and disease resistance.

Stephen Hume‘s article in the Vancouver Sun this week previews it nicely:

“…it’s fascinating to observe how we appear to be collectively sleepwalking toward … a potential catastrophe with that most strategic of all things, a sustainable, secure, equitably distributed global food supply… [Hijacked Future] takes dead aim at the question of whether it’s in our best national interests as informed, intelligent citizens of a global civilization to snooze while a few giant trans-national corporations succeed in their attempt to monopolize food production.”

I learned a bit about organic farming, too, and the loss of Canada’s organic canola crops, both as a commercial crop and as an invaluable rotation crop. It appears that because of the (non-organic) genetically-modified canola in our fields, over 90% of all canola – including organic – has been contaminated now. This has caused a significant loss of livelihood to organic farmers, so two Saskatchewan canola farmers tried to bring a class action suit against Monsanto, on behalf of all certified organic farmers, but our very own supreme court told them in December they couldn’t. The farmers are currently considering their options. Percy Schmeiser is our best documented case of unwanted GM crops intruding on private land against the wishes and intent of a farmer, and our higher courts did a less than heroic job there too. Although he’s just won – wait for it – $660 from Monsanto in a small claims settlement for costs involved in cleaning the GM canola off his fields.

Thank heavens for the farmers, consumers, environmentalists and courts of California, who were able to call the USDA on its ill-judged approval of genetically modified alfalfa. Alfalfa is hardly a glamour crop, being mostly known as animal feed, but it is also a crucial rotation crop for organic farmers. In both these roles, it sits at the bottom of our food chain, and we should – must – pay attention to what happens to it, or risk losing organic farming forever.

And on the poetry side of things, if you want a little extra CanLit reading you can sign up for The New Quarterly‘s new e-newsletter.

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The difficulty of eating local

Mar 17

One of the difficulties of trying to eat local food is that you can’t trust food labels, at least not in Canada. Last October, CBC’s Marketplace broadcast an enlightening program about the meaning of the ‘Product of Canada’ label, which you can watch again online, in which they revealed that this branding means that 51% of the production costs (not even the content) were spent in Canada. This is allowed thanks to legislation created in 1985, when 20% of Canadian food was imported; now we’re at the 40% stage, it is starting to sound downright silly, let alone outdated.

So in the example given, of Highliner frozen fish products branded ‘Product of Canada’, the fish may have been farmed in Vietnam, Indonesia or China and then shipped frozen to Canada for processing, becoming Canadian somewhere en route. When the program-makers went to Lunenburg, the published address for Highliner, they were told that no fishing boats had come in there for six or seven years.

All of which is problematic to consumers: they can’t make informed choices, because the information they’re using is flawed and misleading. They can’t vote with their wallets against poor labour practices, potentially unsafe food production practices, unsustainable fishing practices, or unsound ecological practices, and they can’t even support local producers because they cannot tell (from packaged goods anyway) which products are truly local.

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Slow cider and fast poetry

Mar 14

Got to my first meeting of the Slow Island gang – in fact our Slow Food convivium‘s AGM, held at Sea Cider Farm, where we sipped and sampled our way through the evening, gazing out across the young apple trees to little James Island, where a couple of the young members are starting an organic farm. Quite a task, given they can’t live on the island, and everything they need has to be ferried across (but all in all a much better idea than the island’s last role as a TNT factory).

Sinclair Philip, Mara Jernigan and Nick Versteeg raised all kinds of issues, from Terra Madre to the destruction of Garry Oak meadows by Vancouver Island developers.

One thing Nick raised was the trade sanction wickedness Canada is doing now, which is being under-reported in the press. I suggest to all of us in this country that we drop a line to our MPs and register our dissatisfaction with the idea of Canada using trade sanctions to try to force genetically modified products on Europe, which surely has the sovereignty to decide what it allows into the farms and kitchens of its member states.

Basically, since 2003, GM-producing countries, including the US, Canada and Argentina, have been lobbying the WTO to force Europe to allow GMO imports. And in 2006, the WTO agreed that the EU had to allow GMO imports whether they wanted them or not. Unfortunately, Europe is not one country, and its 27 member states are not generally in favour of allowing GM products (– and really, is the power of collective dissent against economic pressure from others not one of the very points of trade organisations?). The US is holding its economic cudgel off until June of this year, but Canada’s deadline to have the EU comply with the WTO was February 11.

Speaking of dates, as I’m sure all the church-goers know, we’ll have to get our greens on early this year, as St Patrick’s Day has been moved to 15 March, by order of the Vatican, because this year’s early Easter causes 17 March to fall in Holy Week. Apparently no liturgical feast may take place during Holy Week, so St Patrick had to move aside.

Last night, St Patrick’s Eve, as it were, was also the reading at Planet Earth Poetry by visiting Saskatchewanian Glen Sorestad, who gave us a delightful display of his wares,

handsomely introduced by Susan Stenson

And then there were signings

and off we all disappeared into the night.

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