whirlwind

Amazing enough, it has been 10 days since my last blog. What a whirlwind. Guess you can say I am in the thick of it.

Since it would be utterly boring (for you) to recreate my school week, I thought today would be a good one to give highlights from. It(Thursday) is my longest day and today is quite a nice replica of the engagement occurring in my neck of the woods.

8:00 coffee in hand, walk into US Agriculture and take my normal spot. Today we are finishing up a movie called King Corn. If you have ever wondered about US Ag, The Farm Bill, Subsidies, OR if you have ever eaten in America, this movie is worth a viewing. In fact, add it to your Netflicks right now & pop some popcorn. It sums up so much of the work I am doing.



Next class, Ag, Science and Policy. I had a quiz on pesticides. We talked about alternative methods to agriculture.

Since I work in Chinatown, I took myself to lunch at a Pho restaurant and finished up some reading for my policy class. We were discussing How a Bill Becomes a Law, the legislator and the
controversial Food for Peace program that a professor at Tufts is instrumental in developing.

This video was shown from the CARE website and I have to admit, made me a bit emotional.
It's called the Girl Effect:
http://www.care.org/getinvolved/girleffect/index.asp

After class I road bikes and met up with my friend Angel to see my "hero" Marion Nestle speak at Harvard Book Store. She is publicizing her new book: Pet Food Politics, The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine. I follow her What to Eat Blog, which is wonderful. The Pet food book talks about the recalls in pet food after pets began to get sick and die. Frightening, they found out the food was all basically coming from the same place and that the protein source was coming from China. Apparently there is a history of "faking" how much protein is in something by adding a high nitrogen industrial chemical called melamine. The high nitrogen part was giving animals crystalized kidneys and they were dying. Oddly enough much of the supplement additives we(America) uses, comes from, you guessed it, China. Oh, and the supplement, like the pet food industry is not regulated.
NEWSFLASH--- Melamine was recently found in BABY FORMULA in China.

To end this entry on an up note,
"Do Food Policy and Change the World" -Marion Nestle is what was written in my copy.