Neighborhood Stabilization Program
We did some work for Mercy Housing Lakefront this summer. MHL is very much involved in the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. NSP is a huge program in Chicago, one that few know much about. This video helps explain it very well.
You trust her to feed you, now trust her to lead you
You can follow Ina’s write-in campaign to replace Roland Burris on her Facebook page or on Twitter.
100,000+ Americans write to FDA demanding reduction in antibiotics in food animal production
More than 100,000 citizens join scientific experts and public interest organizations in calling on FDA to tighten oversight and curtail misuse and overuse of antibiotics on industrial farms
WASHINGTON – Today a broad coalition of organizations hand-delivered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more than 180,000 letters responding to the agency’s request for comments on rules governing the use of antibiotics on industrial farms. By the tens of thousands, American citizens have sent the FDA a clear message: antibiotics are a vital foundation of public health in the United States; overuse and misuse has created a threatening crisis of antibiotic resistance; and it is time for the federal government to ensure strict veterinary oversight and force the food animal industry to curtail the routine use of antibiotics.
The letters were collected by a coalition of organizations committed to saving antibiotics as pillars of public health in the United States. The groups include: Center for Food Safety; Center for Science in the Public Interest; CREDO Action; FamilyFarmed.org; Farm Aid; Food & Water Watch; Food Democracy Now!; The Humane Society of the United States; Organic Consumers Association; and Union of Concerned Scientists.
The correspondence from citizens responded to requests by FDA for comments on two recent actions related to oversight and control of antibiotic use in food animal production. In March, the FDA announced its intention to alter its Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) guidelines, which govern the role and procedures veterinarians must follow with regard to prescribing antibiotic use in animal agriculture. In June, the agency issued draft guidance calling on the food animal industry to voluntarily curtail the non-judicious use of antibiotics on industrial farms, which threatens human health.
Reflecting the view of leading scientific and health experts, the citizen comments express concern that the planned revisions to VFD guidelines could weaken veterinary oversight and controls on antibiotic use on industrial farms and that the FDA guidance on non-judicious use does not sufficiently curtail the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animals that are not sick.
Here are examples of comments sent to FDA:
“My healthy and gorgeous dream boy of a son, Simon, died within 16 hours of his first symptoms. The cause: antibiotic resistance. Simon contracted an antibiotic resistant bacterium, MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). His infection could have been prevented years ago when bacteria actually succumbed to antibiotics.”
“Take this opportunity to protect our food supply, our population, and the future of medicine with a meaningful regulation that helps to solve a dangerous current situation.”
“Antibiotics in agriculture should be used under direct supervision of a veterinarian on individual animals.”
“I am an infectious disease specialist, and well aware of the progressively increasing problem of resistant bacteria, now not only a problem in hospitalized patients, but in many individuals acquiring hard to treat infections in the community. Scientific research has established that the widespread non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in the raising of food animals, has contributed greatly to this problem. I strongly support new regulations to ban the use of antibiotics in feed, and restriction of antibiotics to treatment for infection, carried out by licensed veterinarians.”
Together, the coalition of organizations is calling on FDA to heed the overwhelming scientific evidence and outpouring of citizen concern by (1) strengthening the agency’s VFD guidelines and (2) making mandatory, rather than voluntary, its June guidance to ensure that antibiotics only be used under veterinary supervision to treat sick animals, thus protecting human health.
NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS
Center for Food Safety: Paige Tomaselli, staff attorney, 619.339.3180, ptomaselli@icta.org
Center for Science in the Public Interest: Jeff Cronin, director of communications, 202.777.8370, jcronin@cspi.org
CREDO Action: Adam Klaus, campaign manager, 415.369.2047, aklaus@credomobile.com
FamilyFarmed.org: Jim Slama, founder and president, 708.763.9920, jimslama@familyfarmed.org
Farm Aid: Hilde Steffey, program director, 617.354.2922, hilde@farmaid.org
Food & Water Watch: Darcey Rakestraw, communications director, 202.683.2467, drakestraw@fwwatch.org
Food Democracy Now! Dave Murphy, founder and director, 917.968.7369, dave@fooddemocracynow.org
The Humane Society of United States: Jordan Crump, public information officer, 240.654.2964, jcrump@humanesociety.org
Organic Consumers Association: Ronnie Cummins, national director, 218.349.3836 ronnie@organicconsumers.org
Union of Concerned Scientists: Brise Tencer, Washington representative, Food and Environment Program, 202.378.0606, btencer@ucsusa.org
Were you born on the wrong continent?
Tom’s new book is doing great. We can’t take credit for all the coverage (Publicist Anne Sullivan at the New Press is masterful at this) but we’re helping out where ever we can, particularly when it comes to the website.
The book is out in stores now, so be sure to pick it up. If there ever was a thing as “public policy beach reading,” this is it.
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life
BY THOMAS GEOGHEGAN
THE NEW PRESS / AUGUST 10, 2010
“A passionate case for the high-tax, regulation-heavy model of life on the Continent….the narrative unspools in a chatty, anecdotal style; it’s jumpy, appealingly digressive, and winning.”
—Publishers Weekly
There’s been a lot of throwing around of the term “socialism” by critics of President Barack Obama, who has been maligned as a European socialist by conservatives even though his administration’s agenda isn’t close to that of a European social democracy. But if you really think about it, perhaps we would be happier in cozy Germany or France, where there is a socialist-type government to catch us, than in the wide-open, free-fall United States.
This was exactly what was on Chicago labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan’s mind as he began to sneak out of his workaholic American life to see what life is like in Europe. Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? is his report to his fellow captives here in the U.S. It’s not just that European social democracy is “nicer.” It’s not just that, under European-type socialism, many of us would perhaps be happier. It may be that only with some form of it can our own country, with its ballooning trade deficit, globally compete—or even just keep going without repeated financial crashes and crack-ups. High-wage Germany, which offers the most bottom-up worker control of any European country, nearly ties with China as the leading exporter in the world, well ahead of the United States. But in China and America we work until we drop while in Germany, they take six weeks off a year (with a shocking number of four-day weekends along the way). It’s not just that the Germans can outcompete us, but they seem to be doing it with one hand tied behind their backs.
Geoghegan focuses much of the book on Germany, a country that explodes the myth that European socialism invariably leads to anemic economies and persistently high unemployment. Using Germany as a model, he argues the middle class is the real beneficiary of European social democracy—its members reap free education, free child care, free nursing home care, guaranteed vacation time, and generous unemployment payments—while their white-collar American counterparts struggle to pay for the same. What drives our economy in the U.S. and inflates our GDP actually makes our lives less comfortable.
A wry, timely book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? helps us understand why the European model, contrary to popular neoliberal wisdom, may thrive well into the twenty-first century without compromising its citizens’ ease of living—and may just be the best example for the United States to follow. Think of it as a patriotic act to pick up Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? and learn from these other countries—perhaps some measure of personal happiness will be an inadvertent result.
Antibiotics Action!
Industrial farms routinely feed antibiotics to chickens, pigs, and beef cattle to make them grow faster and compensate for overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions.
The only problem is, this creates antibiotic-resistant superbugs that can wreak havoc on human populations (aka people like you and me). Some folks even think we’ll reach a point where antibiotics are useless in combating disease. That is, unless we change the way we use/misuse them.
FDA is currently reconsidering the rules in place for administering drugs to livestock. In response, a thoughtful group of nonprofits has gotten together to create AntibioticsAction.com. From this site, you can write a letter to the FDA and the White House and tell them to “protect human and animal health by establishing concrete regulations and effective oversight that will protect our antibiotics.” In short, that means stop juicing our food with unnecessary drugs.
Give it a look, and consider sending a letter yourself.
GCRC salutes inaugural class of Green Restaurants
Last fall, the Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op announced the Guaranteed Green program, which helps Chicago-area diners identify and support local restaurants what have taken significant, verifiable steps toward protecting the environment.
Today, GCRC announced the first wave of restaurants that successfully earned Guaranteed Green status. All in all, a very successful event, with good turnout from media and participating chefs including Helen Cameron from Uncommon Ground, Chris Koetke from Kendall College, Rick Bayless from, well, from everywhere; GCRC founder Dan Rosenthal and a bunch of others.
Here’s edited version of press conference, with full press release to follow….
(June 22, 2010 – Chicago) The Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op (www.buygreenchicago.org) today announced the first wave of success for Guaranteed Green, a new program that helps Chicago-area diners identify and support local restaurants that have taken significant, verifiable steps toward protecting the environment.
Julie Hamos becomes new DHFS director
Lots of news about Julie Hamos last week. DHFS is a perfect fit for Rep. Hamos, as her experience in the legislature and knowledge of health care issues mean she can hit the ground running.
WPB in the news
We’ve done a little bit of work for WPB in the past, specifically with their Bus Tracker kiosks. Ted Villaire did a nice piece on them last month for the Active Transportation Alliance’s newsletter. Ted’s a great writer with a bunch of Midwest hiking/biking books coming out soon.
ATA, as you probably know, is the new name for the Chicago Bicycle Federation. A great organization that hosts a bunch of cool events, including Bike the Drive, which is coming up next month. Fun!