A bee inspector checks on a frame of bees to assess the colony strength near Turlock, Calif., this past February. Over 30 percent of America’s bee colonies died off over the winter. Photo: Gosia Wozniacka/AP

By Dan Charles
According to a new survey of America’s beekeepers, almost a third of the country’s honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter.

That’s been the case, in fact, almost every year since the US Department of Agriculture began this annual survey, six years ago.

Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honeybee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter. The worst year was five years ago. Last year was the best: Just 22 percent of the colonies died.

“Last year gave us some hope,” says Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

But this year, the death rate was up again: 31 percent.

A bee collects nectar from a fruit tree in West Bath, Maine. The number of honeybees has now dwindled to the point where there may not be enough to pollinate some major U.S. crops.
Photo: Pat Wellenbach/AP

Six years ago, beekeepers were talking a lot about “colony collapse disorder” — colonies that seemed pretty healthy, but suddenly collapsed. The bees appeared to have flown away, abandoning their hives.

Beekeepers aren’t seeing that so much anymore, Pettis says. They’re mostly seeing colonies that just dwindle. As the crowd of bees gets smaller, it gets weaker.

“They can’t generate heat very well in the spring to rear brood. They can’t generate heat to fly,” he says.

Farmers who grow crops like almonds, blueberries, and apples rely on commercial beekeepers to make sure their crops get pollinated.

But the number of honeybees has now dwindled to the point where there may not be enough to pollinate some major crops, including almonds, blueberries, and apples.

Pettis says that this year, farmers came closer than ever before to a true pollination crisis. The only thing that saved part of the almond crop in California was some lovely weather at pollination time.

“We got incredibly good flight weather,” Pettis says. “So even those small colonies that can’t fly very well in cool weather, they were able to fly because of good weather.”

Pettis says beekeepers can only afford to lose about 15 percent of their colonies each year. More than that, and the business won’t be viable for long. Some commercial beekeepers are still in business, he says, just because they love it.

“It’s just something that gets in your blood, so you don’t want to give up. [You say] ‘OK, it’s 30 percent this year; I’ll do better next year.’ We’re very much optimists,” he says.

Beekeepers have a whole list of reasons for why so many colonies are dying. There’s a nasty parasite called the Varroa Mite, which they can’t get rid of. Also bee-killing pesticides. And they say there are just fewer places in the country where a bee can find plenty of flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen.

That was especially true this past year. The same drought that left Midwestern corn fields parched and wilting also dried up wildflowers and starved the bees.

That was a natural disaster. But May Berenbaum, who chairs the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that most of the changes in the landscape are the result of people’s decisions about what to do with their land.

“I just wish there were more incentives for people — not just farmers — to plant a more diversified landscape that provides nutritional resources for all kinds of pollinators,” she says. “Plant more flowers! And be a little more tolerant of the weeds in the garden.”

More controversial is the role of pesticides. Some beekeepers and environmentalists are calling for tighter restrictions on the use of one particular class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Europe is about to ban some uses of these pesticides. But U.S. farmers and pesticide companies are opposed to any such move here, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it’s not yet convinced that this would help bees very much.

Chef Edward Lee moved to Louisville, Ky., 10 years ago to take over a restaurant called 610 Magnolia. There, he mixes the sweet of Southern food with the salt and umami of Asian cuisine. Photo: courtesy of Dan Dry/Artisan Books

by LYDIA ZURAW

Korean and Southern food may not seem like a natural pair. But now it’s one more example of traditions emulsifying in the great American melting pot. Korean-American chef Edward Lee makes that case with his new cookbook Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories From a New Southern Kitchen.

Fusion cooking comes naturally to Lee: He grew up in an immigrant neighborhood of Brooklyn surrounded by Jamaicans, Indians, Iranians and Jews.

“When they immigrated to America, my parents deliberately decided they weren’t going to live in the big Korean enclaves,” Lee tells Morning Edition host David Greene. “They wanted to spread out and be amongst other people. That education in cuisine, ranging from so many different immigrant groups probably left more of a lasting impression on me in cuisine than anything else.

“Their whole thing was ‘You’re an American. Be an American,’ ” Lee says.

But Korean food was a way Lee connected with his grandmother. She rarely spoke of Korea because she didn’t have very happy memories, he says, but “food was the one thing that was kind of sacred and pure and hadn’t been torn apart.”

Edward Lee’s first cookbook, Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories From a New Southern Kitchen, features Korean-southern comfort food. Photo: courtesy of Artisan Books

Edward Lee’s first cookbook, Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories From a New Southern Kitchen, features Korean-southern comfort food.

Courtesy of Artisan Books

As a kid, Lee says he would hang out with her in the kitchen, and at first, she ignored him. “I would, little by little, start helping her with things,” he says. “She got very annoyed by that at first. She’s like, ‘You’re a man. You’re not supposed to be here learning how to make kimchi — that’s women’s work.’ “

Over the years, he says, they developed a strong bond that relied on few words.

Korean food was also how Lee established himself as a chef. In 1998 he opened a restaurant in Manhattan called Clay, which attracted a clientele that included plenty of celebrities. But the excitement wore off quickly.

“Everything seemed right on paper: Korean kid opens Korean restaurant,” he says. “But it just didn’t feel right to me, and I wasn’t incredibly proud of the food. I felt like it was just an extension of what I thought people wanted me to cook.”

He started to re-evaluate things and decided to travel around the country. The farthest his family had traveled in his childhood was New Jersey. “That was huge for us,” he says. “Although I grew up in America and I was influenced by all of the things that other Americans are, I had no idea what America was. It was this vast unknown beyond New Jersey.”

So in 2001 Lee went to places like Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., for the first time. And it was in Louisville at the Kentucky Derby that he fell in love with the South.

Within a year he had moved there to take over a restaurant called 610 Magnolia and the fusion instinct kicked in. He started mixing Korean spice with Southern comfort food.

“Southern food tends to be a little bit on the sweeter side. Asian food tends to be a little bit on the saltier, kind of umami side,” Lee says. “When they work and you put them together, they are actually are a wonderful marriage.”

Grits, for example, reminded Lee of congee, a rice porridge Koreans usually eat with soy sauce and seafood. So Lee came up with a recipe for lamb braised in soy sauce and served over grits, transforming the sweet taste of the corn into something new.

Or take fried chicken. Koreans actually have a long tradition of frying chicken, Lee says. They just have a slightly different method of preparing the chicken for frying. “The results are almost similar, but it’s just different pathways to the same place,” he says. “And I find that a lot in Asian cuisine and Southern cuisine.”

Brewing coffee is an art and a science – even using equipment that could be found in a chemistry lab. Barista Truman Severson’s still extracts volatile coffee constituents. Photo: Melissae Fellet

Truman Severson works at Portola Coffee Lab in Costa Mesa, California. As one of the six finalists in the Barista Competition, he has fifteen minutes to make an espresso, a cappuccino and a specialty drink for each of four judges.

Part of the competition is the presentation too. “Charles Babinski, one of the other competitors and finalists, says you don’t compete unless you have something to say,” Severson says.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Ingredients

Severson’s message is the synergy in coffee, when two things work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. He says there’s synergy in how water and ground beans combine to create a cup of coffee. And as he serves the cappuccinos, Severson tells the judges that milk also helps bring out the flavors in the beans.

He says the slightly higher milk fat in the cream from Straus Creamery combines with the cedar characteristic in the coffee to provide a fun toasty buttery note, while the fruity acidity and sweetness remain articulate. He compares the flavor to a blueberry pie.

From left, under the team name “Tru-Baca” Verve Coffee baristas Chris Baca and Jared Trubi serve espresso to fellow barista Truman Severson. Photo: Melissae Fellet

Then, Severson starts his final drink of the competition by turning to a contraption that could belong in a chemistry lab. Coffee boils in a round flask held over a burner. The volatile flavors in the coffee evaporate into steam. That steam travels into a long tube where it condenses into liquid. Clear drops of distilled coffee fall into a glass pitcher at the other end of the tube. He serves this distillate to the judges to prepare their taste buds for his signature drink.

The distillate carries the tasting notes of a coffee without that base coffee flavor, he says, so serving the distillate is a good way of teaching people what those tasting notes are.

Each Bean Has a Sweet Spot

The flavors in the coffee come from how it was grown, roasted and brewed. Baristas can influence the flavor through roasting and brewing.

“When you brew coffee, you’re looking for a really, really small bullseye on a really big target,” Severson says. “Coffee can brewed fairly easily, but brewing coffee well is very difficult.”

That’s because there are many ways to either pull too much flavor out of the beans, or too little flavor. Those ways include changing the water temperature, contact time, the amount of agitation, the ratio of coffee to water and “a plethora of other things.”

“It’s lots of little variables that when the stars align, it’s great,” Severson says. “It’s our job as baristas is to pay attention to the details and make sure those stars align every time we make a cup of coffee.”

Seeking New Ways to Make Great Coffee

Across the room, another part of the competition, the Brewer’s Cup, challenges baristas brew perfect cups of coffee for the judges. Dustin Demers works at Orivor in San Francisco and is the last finalist to compete.

He says that he constantly wishes there were ways to make coffee better that aren’t part of those traditional variables. For the coffee that he brewed, Demers decided to improve the flavors in the cup starting with green coffee beans. First, he sorted the beans by size and color. Then Demers tried 33 different ways of roasting the beans to find the temperature changes that gave the best flavors. Then he brewed several cups of coffee using different water. Filtered tap water from San Francisco enhanced the sweetness of the coffee, while water from an aquifer in Colorado produced a cup with a little more acidity. Demers blended the two waters to brew the coffee that he served to the judges. He said he chose the coffee for its sweetness and so that’s what he tried to highlight in the final cup.

The winning baristas at this competition advanced to nationals. Eden-Marie Abramowicz of Intelligentsia Coffee in Los Angeles won the Barista competition and Charles Babinski from G&B Coffee, also in Los Angeles, was given the award for brewing the best cup of coffee.

This report was funded by donations to 88.9 KUSP’s Quality of Life Reporting Fund

Tuscany’s sweet spinach pie is a dish that’s often associated with Easter and spring. Photo: courtesy of Pinella Orgiana

For more visit NPR

Easter brings with it many predictable foods: chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, ham, and hard-boiled eggs. But some Italians use the season to feature a surprisingly sweet vegetable dish on their tables.

It’s called torta co’bischeri agli spinaci. Francine Segan calls it “Tuscany’s sweet spinach pie.” Segan is a food historian and author of Dolci: Italy’s Sweets. She shared a recipe for the pie forAll Things Considered‘s Found Recipe series.

Segan says she stumbled across the dessert while visiting Tuscany. One day while exploring, she came across a side street where people were lined up outside of a bakery.

“When I got to the window [and] looked in, I noticed something bright green,” she says. “It was so surprising because the Italians don’t generally use food coloring.”

The green was from spinach, which is boiled and chopped, then mixed with finely ground almonds, sugar and eggs. Unlike a quiche, the dish is sweet. Segan says during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Italians didn’t divide courses the way we do now. It wasn’t unusual to have something sweet at the beginning of the meal.

“They thought balance with every course [would] keep the appetite interested throughout the feast,” she says.

The spinach pie is baked in a distinctive pie crust, where the dough isn’t pinched at the edge, but shaped into chubby round points that mimic bischeri — the tuning pegs of a violin or guitar.

“It’s so simple to make and it’s so rewarding because the flavors are so unique and surprising — and it’s even healthy,” Segan says. “You get some of your vegetable servings in dessert.”

Recipe: Torta Co’ Bischeri Agli Spinaci (Tuscany’s Sweet Spinach Pie)

Dolci Italy’s Sweets by Francine Segan and Ellen Silverman

Serves 8 to 10

The ground almond-spinach filling is light and satisfyingly spongy — almost soufflé-like. As with zucchini bread and carrot cake, the spinach contributes an earthy undertone, moistness and an unusually brilliant color.

For the crust

18 ounces (about 3 cups) “OO” or all-purpose flour
9 ounces butter (2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
7/8 cup granulated sugar
4 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons baking powder
Zest of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the filling

10-12 ounces frozen spinach or 1 pound fresh baby spinach
8 ounces blanched almonds
4 large eggs, separated
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 ounces minced candied citron or lemon peel
1/4 cup Marschino or other aromatic liqueur
2 tablespoons pine nuts
Confectioners’ sugar

For the crust: In a large bowl, in a food processor or on a clean work surface, mix the flour, butter and sugar until the mixture resembles coarse sand.

Add the egg yolks, baking powder, zest and salt, and mix until dough forms.

Roll the dough into a disc, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling out.

Lightly butter a 10-inch deep-dish pie pan.

Roll out 2/3 of the dough, making it large enough to hang well over the sides. If you like, make a series of “peg” shapes along the outer edge of the dough. To do that, fold the edges of dough over and cut into the edges, and gently press “fret” shapes by pinching the dough between thumb and forefinger at a distance of about 1/2 inch apart.

Using a fork, poke holes throughout the entire bottom and sides of the crust.

Roll out the remaining dough to form lattices over the top of the filling. Refrigerate all the dough, covered in plastic wrap, until ready to use.

For the filling: Cook the spinach in a few ounces of salted water until tender. Allow to cool. Squeeze out all the cooking liquids and finely chop in a mini food processor. Reserve.

In a food processor, grind the almonds until they resemble coarse sand. Reserve.

In a bowl, beat the yolks with 1/3 cup of the sugar until creamy and light yellow. Add the almonds and beat until well combined. Add the spinach, candied peel and liqueur, and mix until well combined.

In a separate bowl, beat the whites until soft peaks form, then add in the remaining 1/3 cup of sugar and beat until it forms a glossy meringue.

Slowly fold the meringue into the yolk mixture. Pour into the prepared pie crust. Sprinkle with the pine nuts and top with the remaining dough in a lattice pattern.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour, until golden.

Allow to cool to room temperature, then serve sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.

Recipe reprinted from Dolci: Italy’s Sweets by Francine Segan, copyright 2011. Reprinted with permission of Stewart, Tabori & Chang.

Photo: courtesy of Whitney Pipkin for NPR

by WHITNEY PIPKIN

It’s 9 a.m. on a Sunday, and my bathrobe and hair already reek of garam masala — burnt garam masala, to be exact. Who’d have known that the key to this Indian-Pakistani recipe for lamb biryani would be the French cooking mantra of mise-en-place? Or that the minute it takes for the pile of spices to get “aromatic” in hot oil is not nearly long enough to both measure and photograph them before they turn to ashes?

More important, why am I taking my first stab at this recipe on a Sunday morning, with my coffee growing cold while I scurry around my spice-infused kitchen?

Blame it on the lamb.

One of the members of our weekly “home group,” about a dozen people from our church gathering for a meal and Bible study, announced that his Pennsylvania parents raise lamb. Our food-minded group couldn’t resist. His parents have the lamb butchered once a year and freeze the meat for sale year-round, nearly giving it away at about $5 a pound.

We put in an order and, a couple of weeks later, my freezer was teeming with the goods. Chops, legs, ribs and the ground variety — it was more than enough inspiration for a month’s worth of Sunday meals.

Our group divvies up the cooking labor and is full of adventurous gastronomes. (When one of our members snagged a deer with his new crossbow — we are in Virginia — we gladly worked venison chili onto the menu.)

I hoped the lamb would incorporate each family’s culinary background, especially the Kumars’. But despite her husband’s Indian descent and her experience with Indian cuisine, Marsha Kumar wanted to make the pastitsio (a Greek noodle casserole layered with bechamel sauce and ground lamb). This left me with the biryani, a complex rice- and spice-based dish that reminded me yet again not to cut hot peppers before I put in my contact lenses.

Christi, who grinds grain to make her own bread each week, raised her hand for the first meal: spice-crusted lamb chops with a tangy yogurt sauce, accompanied by the roast vegetables the rest of us would bring. And I planned to make a simple roast leg of lamb and ribs as the piece de resistance and final meal.

About the Author

Whitney Pipkin is a freelance writer and editor covering food, farms and the environment from Alexandria, Va. Her work has appeared in publications including The Washington Post,Grist.org and Foodshed Magazine. She blogs about recipes, food and farms at thinkabouteat.com. See her recent work at whitneypipkin.com.

After discovering my love of lamb via Greek and Indian restaurants, I was surprised to find out later that some people don’t have a taste for it, although everyone in our group does.

The protein that is ubiquitous in Middle Eastern dishes is less common in American cuisine. That is, until Easter, when lamb and ham battle it out for which will be the centerpiece of the holiday meal. There is a seasonal price dip about this time of year, so it’s a good time to experiment.

Some people confuse lamb with its less-tender relative, mutton (older sheep), which is even more of an acquired taste. Others don’t like the somewhat gamey aroma lamb gives off under fire.

But layer in the right mix of flavors — and a bechamel sauce never hurts — and lamb has a way of absorbing, altering and making a meal out of the spices that go into a dish.

To me, it’s the epitome of comfort food as the weather begins to thaw into spring.

Perhaps the best part about our group’s lamb-centric meals, besides having a connection to the people who raised the meat, was the way they fostered community as only a true sit-down sort of feast can (even if it’s followed by a communal food coma). We collaborated on recipes, complimented one another’s handiwork and ate — a lot.

It was a splendid precursor to the spring season, when lamb will get the recognition it deserves on more than a few Easter Sunday tables.

Recipe: Pistachio, Mint And Spice Crusted Lamb Chops

Photo: courtesy of Whitney Pipkin for NPR

We adapted this recipe from The Sophisticated Gourmet blog and replaced some traditional Middle Eastern spices, like sumac, with easy-to-find ingredients. We used the small lamb chops we were provided and suggest adjusting cooking times to the size of your chops. Assemble and measure all the ingredients, and the rest is simple.

Makes 6 servings

6 lamb chops (about 3/4-inch thick)

Fine grain sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Spice Rub

2 teaspoons lemon zest

Seeds from 3 green cardamom pods, pulverized into a fine powder

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Juice of 1/2 lime (1 tablespoon)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Pistachio And Mint Topping

2/3 cup unshelled pistachios

2/3 cup mint

1/3 cup cilantro

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Yogurt-Mint Sauce

Juice of 1 lemon

1 cup Greek yogurt

1/3 cup mint, finely chopped

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

Generously season each lamb chop (both sides) with salt and pepper.

In a bowl, mix all of the ingredients for the spice rub. Set aside.

In a food processor, chop all of the ingredients for the pistachio and mint topping. Process the mixture until it is coarsely ground, not pureed. Set the mixture aside.

Put all of the yogurt-mint sauce ingredients into a bowl and stir. Keep refrigerated.

Place the chops in a glass baking dish or on a baking sheet (with a lip), and gently massage the lamb chops with the spice rub.

Generously douse with olive oil. Allow the lamb chops to sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes, while you preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet or large saute pan on medium-high heat.

Once the pan has heated, carefully plop the lamb chops into the hot pan and cook for about 2 minutes on each side to brown. Once the chops are the color of roasted chestnuts, remove the pan from the heat and put back on the baking sheet. Layer each lamb chop with the pistachio and mint topping.

Put the pan of lamb chops in the oven for about 5 minutes, until medium-rare or your preferred doneness. If the lamb is medium-rare, it will give when you press the meat with your finger. If it doesn’t give, it’s well-done. Or you can use an instant-read meat thermometer to check for doneness. If the lamb is medium-rare, it will register 140-150 degrees. If the lamb is medium, it will register 160 degrees. And if it is well-done, the lamb should register 165 degrees and up.

When cooked to your likeness, place the lamb chops in aluminum foil, and allow the meat to rest for 5 to 6 minutes before serving. Serve with yogurt-mint sauce.

Recipe: Pakistani Lamb Biryani

Photo: courtesy of Whitney Pipkin for NPR

This recipe is adapted from one in a 2010 Saveur magazine. I chose it because I was eager to use my newly acquired green cardamom pods. The key is having the ingredients measured and ready beforehand. If you can get lamb meat already cut off the bone, that also saves time. We served this with a healthful version of Indian halwa, the dessertlike mixture of coconut milk-boiled carrots, raisins, spices and honey.

Makes 6 servings

1 cup canola oil

3 large yellow onions, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons garam masala

1 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

18 black peppercorns

9 pods green cardamom

3 pods black cardamom

2 2-inch cinnamon sticks

6 cloves garlic, minced

6 tomatoes, cored and minced

5 serrano chilies, stemmed and minced

1 piece of ginger, 1 1/2 inches long, peeled and minced

2 pounds trimmed lamb shoulder, cut into 2- to 3-inch pieces

Kosher salt, to taste

1/2 cup plain yogurt

3/4 cup roughly chopped mint leaves

1/4 cup roughly chopped cilantro

40 threads saffron, crushed (heaping 1/2 teaspoon)

2 1/2 cups white basmati rice, soaked in cold water for 30 minutes, drained

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

4 whole cloves

2 dried bay leaves

Rose water or kewra essence (optional)

Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 5-quart skillet or pot over high heat. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until dark brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Heat remaining oil in a 5-quart pot over high heat. Add garam masala, chili flakes, turmeric, 10 peppercorns, 5 green cardamom pods, 2 black cardamom pods and 1 cinnamon stick. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add garlic, tomatoes, chilies and ginger, and cook, stirring, 2 to 3 minutes. Add lamb, season with salt, and cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Cover, reduce heat to medium and cook until lamb is tender, about 1 hour.

Add fried onions, yogurt, 1/2 cup mint and 2 tablespoons cilantro. Cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes more. Set aside.

Put saffron into a bowl, cover with 1/2 cup hot water and set aside.

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil in a 5-quart saucepan. Add remaining peppercorns, green and black cardamom and cinnamon stick, along with the rice, cumin, cloves and bay leaves. Season with salt. Cook rice until al dente, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain rice and set aside.

Transfer half the lamb curry to a 5-quart pot. Top lamb with half the rice. Pour half the saffron mixture onto rice along with a few drops of rose water, and mix into rice with your fingers. Top with remaining lamb curry and remaining rice, drizzle with remaining saffron and mix. Cook, covered, on low heat until rice is tender, about 10 minutes. Garnish with remaining mint and cilantro.

Recipe: Pastitsio

Photo: courtesy of Whitney Pipkin for NPR

The recipe for this Greek noodle casserole is adapted from a 2009 episode of Ina Garten’sBarefoot Contessa cooking show. We substituted a good ground turkey for the ground beef, since the lamb lends more than enough fatty flavor to the dish.

Makes 8 servings

Tomato Sauce

3 tablespoons good olive oil

1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onion (1 large)

1 pound lean ground beef

1 pound lean ground lamb

1/2 cup dry red wine

1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 large cloves)

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes in puree

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Bechamel

1 1/2 cups whole milk (or lower fat)

1 cup heavy cream

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly grated black pepper

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmesan or Kasseri cheese

2 extra-large eggs, beaten

2/3 cup Greek-style yogurt

3/4 pound small pasta shells

For the sauce, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes. Add the beef and lamb and saute over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until no longer pink, crumbling the meat with the back of a wooden spoon.

Drain off any excess liquid, add the wine and cook for 2 more minutes. Add the garlic, cinnamon, oregano, thyme and cayenne, and continue cooking over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 40 to 45 minutes. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

For the bechamel, heat the milk and cream together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until simmering.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly for 2 minutes. Pour the warm milk and cream mixture into the butter and flour mixture, whisking constantly. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, over medium heat for 5 to 7 minutes, until smooth and thick. Add the nutmeg, salt and pepper. Stir in 3/4 cup of cheese and 1/2 cup of the tomato and meat sauce, and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Stir in the eggs and yogurt and set aside.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling water until al dente. Don’t overcook because the pasta will later be baked. Drain and set aside.

Add the pasta to the meat and tomato sauce, and pour the mixture into a baking dish. Spread the bechamel evenly to cover the pasta and sprinkle with the remaining 3/4 cup cheese. Bake for 1 hour, until golden brown and bubbly. Set aside for 10 minutes and serve hot.

Recipe: Roasted Leg Of Lamb

Photo: courtesy of Whitney Pipkin for NPR

We adapted our recipe for our piece de resistance from Max and Eli Sussman’s This Is a Cookbook: Recipes for Real Life (Olive Press, 2012). Eli Sussman cooks at NYC’s Mile End Deli, and his brother Max is chef de cuisine at Roberta’s. This recipe was simple and easily executed, though probably not ideal to be cooked at one home and transported to another. Our freezer had only a 2-pound leg of lamb, so I also marinated the lamb ribs (both overnight) with the same mixture and roasted them for a snack.

Makes 6 to 8 servings

1 bone-in leg of lamb, about 5 pounds

Marinade

4 large garlic cloves, crushed but left whole

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

Zest of 2 lemons

Zest of 1 orange

Red pepper flakes

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Place the lamb in a large roasting pan. Combine all of the marinade ingredients in a bowl and stir to mix well. Rub the marinade evenly all over the lamb. Cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Remove the lamb from the refrigerator and let come to room temperature while the oven is heating. Discard the garlic.

Roast until the surface of the meat is beginning to caramelize, about 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees and continue roasting until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the lamb, but away from the bone, registers 135 degrees for medium-rare (30 to 45 minutes longer).

Transfer the lamb to a cutting board, cover with foil and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Set aside the pan with the drippings (I suggest dipping bread in the drippings).

Carve the lamb, first slicing it from the bone in large pieces, as few as possible. Cut the meat on the diagonal against the grain into slices about 1/2-inch thick. Place a few slices on each plate, drizzle the pan juices over the top. Serve immediately.

For article & comments visit NPR.org

Experts say positive encouragements work better than dinnertime rules like “no second helpings” to get kids to eat some foods. Photo: courtesy of Sean Locke/iStockphoto.com

By PATTI NEIGHMOND

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard remarks like this during dinner: “I don’t like milk! My toast is burnt! I hate vegetables! I took a bite already! What’s for dessert?” It can be daunting trying to ensure a healthy diet for our children. So it’s no wonder parents often resort to dinner time rules.

In our new poll, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 25 percent of families tell their children to eat everything on their plate, and 45 percent report setting restrictions on the types of foods eaten. Increasingly common are rules like “clean your plate,” as well as newer strictures such as “no second helpings of potatoes,” “no dessert until you eat your vegetables” and “sodas and chips only on special occasions.”

This is all well-meant advice. But does it work? Kelly Brownell, who directs the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, says, “No.”

“By demanding that children eat things like vegetables before they have a dessert, it makes it seem like there’s something wrong with eating vegetables, and that you have to swallow medicine before you get to the good part,” Brownell says.

Not only that, but rules like this can backfire, according to Kristi King, a registered dietitian at Texas Children’s Hospital and a spokesperson with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Some of the studies have shown us that when they were put in a situation where somebody is saying ‘finish this’ or ‘finish that,’ the kids actually had more negative responses and actually consumed less of the food than the kids who didn’t have that reinforcement of ‘you need to finish.’ “

The better option, King says, is creative negotiation. Take, for example, what she calls “Try It Tuesdays.” On a “Try It Tuesday,” parents, along with their children, pick out a new food to sample. It helps to involve the kids in preparing the dish as well, she says. This investment in the new food increases the likelihood that the child will try it and even enjoy it.

If they still say no, King suggests “no-thank-you bites” — something her friends made up for their 3-year-old daughter. It goes like this: The child just has to take a bite, and if she doesn’t like it, she can say “no thank you,” and that’s that. But typically in this family, the “no thank you” turns into a “thank you,” as the 3-year-old watches her parents eating and enjoying the food.

“You see her little hand reach across to the fork, and it kind of goes over into the vegetable,” King says. “The next thing you know, you turn around and she’s eaten the entire vegetable.”

And, it turns out — as with most other behaviors — your kids are watching you, King says. “I had a parent who came into clinic not too long ago, and I said, ‘OK, what’s our goal for being here today?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Make him eat vegetables!’ And, my question back was, ‘Well, do you eat vegetables?’ And his answer was, ‘No, I don’t like them.’ “

Dad mentioned he loved grilling, so King suggested he try that with vegetables. By their next visit, he’d become an avid veggie griller.

“Zucchini and squash and carrots and eggplants and onions and tomatoes — you name it, he was grilling it,” says King. “[It's] a dietitian’s dream — getting an entire family involved in eating more healthy foods.”

As for dessert, Yale University’s Brownell says there’s nothing wrong with an occasional treat. “That doesn’t mean that the only options are things high in sugar or fat or salt. There can be wonderful combinations of things like sorbet, sherbet, fruits — things like that can make outstanding desserts and be really good for people.”

Some parents worry that having only healthy foods at home will lead kids to overdo it with junk food when they head off to college. But Brownell says there’s no evidence to support this worry. And, in fact, the reverse is probably true.

Even if the young adults indulge in unhealthy foods at first, they’re far more likely to return to the healthy foods they grew up with. “Having only good foods around the house makes all the sense in the world, and research supports this,” he says.

So, Brownell says, fill your kitchen with healthy food, don’t buy junk food, and watch what you eat. Your kids will follow your lead.

This story is part of the series On the Run: How Families Struggle to Eat Well and Exercise. The series is based on a poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. If you want to dive deeper, here’s a summary of the poll findings, plus the topline data and charts.

For article & comments visit NPR.org.

Don’t hold back on the olive oil, a Spanish study concludes. Photo: Courtesy of hiphoto40/iStockphoto.com

By Scott Hensley

Pour on the olive oil in good conscience, and add some nuts while you’re at it.

A careful test of the so-called Mediterranean diet involving more than 7,000 people at a high risk of having heart attacks and strokes found the diet reduced them when compared with a low-fat diet. A regular diet of Mediterranean cuisine also reduced the risk of dying.

The findings, published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, come from a study conducted right in the heart of Mediterranean country: Spain.

A group of men and women, ages 55 to 80 at the start of the study, were randomly assigned to a low-fat diet or one of two variations of the Mediterranean diet: one featuring a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (more than a quarter cup a day) and the other including lots of nuts (more than an ounce a day of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts).

The Mediterranean diet is rich in fish, grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables. The diet is low in dairy products, red meat and processed foods.

In this study, funded mainly by the Spanish government, the researchers made sure people got regular training sessions in the particulars of each diet. They also checked people’s actual consumption of olive oil and nuts with lab tests.

One thing the researchers didn’t do was set any limits on calories or targets for exercise.

While lots of research has found benefits from the Mediterranean diet, many of the studies have observed what people have eaten and looked for associations. One of this study’s strengths is that it randomly assigned people at high risk of developing cardiovascular disease to diets that stood to help then.

The study was stopped early (after a median follow-up of 4.8 years) because the benefits from the Mediterranean diet were already becoming apparent. Overall, the people consuming the diets rich in olive oil or nuts had about a 30 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying from a cardiovascular cause.

In absolute terms, there were about 8 of those problems for every 1,000 person-years in the Mediterranean diet groups compared with 11 per 1,000 person-years in the low-fat diet group.

How does the Mediterranean diet work? The prevailing theory is that it lowers bad cholesterol and triglycerides while increasing protective good cholesterol. It may also also help the body’s ability to process sugar.

For article & comments visit NPR

Escolar, right, is often substituted for more expensive Albacore tuna (left), a report on mislabeled seafood found. Photo: Courtesy of Yoon S. Byun/Boston Globe via Getty Images

By ELIZA BARCLAY

There are so many fish in the sea. But from a diner’s viewpoint, peering down at a sliver of white fish atop a bed of sushi rice, a lot of them look the same.

Now a report from the ocean conservation group Oceana confirms that there’s a pretty decent chance that fish on the plate or on ice in the seafood case is not what it’s labeled to be. That means that seafood wallet cards designed by conservation groups to help steer consumers towards sustainable choices may not be doing much good.

Between 2010 and 2012, Oceana took 1,215 seafood samples from 674 retail outlets in 21 states. When they tested the DNA, they found that 33 percent were mislabeled. Sushi vendors and grocery stores were the most likely outlets to sell mislabeled food, though Oceana says the fraud can happen before it reaches them.

Earlier investigations by Oceana and the Boston Globe revealed that seafood mislabeling is common in cities like New York and Boston, where people eat a lot of fish. But the report out Thursday shows it’s happening across the country, and is as bad or worse in places like Texas and Colorado. Some 49 percent of the retail outlets sampled in Austin and Houston sold mislabeled seafood, while 36 percent in Colorado did so.

So what’s the big deal with fish sold under a pseudonym? Well, for one, it’s often just a form of swindling – a cheap fish like tilapia sold as red snapper. But Oceana says the practice also can put consumers at health risk when species like king mackerel, which is high in mercury, or escolar, which contains a naturally occurring toxin than can cause gastrointestinal problems, are marketed as grouper and white tuna, respectively.

Oceana’s also concerned that substituting cheaper, easier-to-find fish for rarer, more valuable ones gives consumers a distorted sense of the market. Of the fish types most heavily sampled by Oceana, those sold as snapper and tuna had the highest mislabeling rates — 87 and 59 percent. Only seven of the 120 samples of red snapper purchased nationwide were actually red snapper, the report found.

“The majority of fraud is various fish standing in for snapper – it’s used as catch-all name for all kinds of white fleshed fish,” says Oceana senior scientist Kimberly Warner. “But there are real conservation concerns when you slip in things in place of the real thing. People think snapper must be doing great because it’s everywhere, but it’s overfished.”

Consumers using wallet cards from groups like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and NRDC could end up buying exactly the species they’re trying to avoid, Warner says, because mislabeling is so prevalent.

One reason mislabeling has gotten so rampant is that the U.S. now imports 90 percent of its seafood and less than 2 percent is inspected for fraud. That means would-be fraudsters have a lot new options for substitutions.The Food and Drug Administration regularly updates its listof seafood approved for sale – in 2012 alone, 19 new species were added to the list, including cornetfish, sampa and claresse.

So what’s the government or a consumer to do about all this? Oceana would like to see an international traceability system where retailers would be required to tell consumers where and when a fish was caught and what gear was used. Requirements like these would help the industry — one of the least transparent in the food system — more accountable.

The National Fisheries Institute argues that the problem is one of enforcement — the FDA needs to do a better job of enforcing laws that are already on the books to discourage fraud. And they encourage consumers to seek out retailers through the Better Seafood Board.

Part one of a three-part series.

Rebecca Weel pushes a baby stroller with her 18-month-old up to the seafood case at Whole Foods, near ground zero in New York. As she peers at shiny fillets of salmon, halibut and Chilean sea bass labeled “certified sustainable,” Weel believes that if she purchases this seafood, she will help protect the world’s oceans from overfishing.

But some leading environmentalists have a different take: Consumers like Weel are being misled by a global program that amounts to “greenwashing” — a strategy that makes consumers think they are protecting the planet, when actually they are not.

At Whole Foods, the seafood counter displays blue labels from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international, nonprofit organization. The MSC is a prime example of an economic trend: Private groups, not the government, are telling consumers what is good or bad for the environment. The MSC says its label guarantees that the wild seafood was caught using methods that do not deplete the natural supply. It also guarantees that fishing companies do not cause serious harm to other life in the sea, from coral to dolphins.

The idea is spreading fast throughout the food industry. Megachains like Target, Costco and Kroger are selling seafood with the MSC label. McDonald’s says you are munching on “certified sustainable” wild Alaskan pollock every time you eat a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. The fast-food company has used MSC-certified fish since 2007 in the U.S., and as of February, they are putting the MSC logo on their fish sandwich boxes.

 

Source: Truven Health Analytics-NPR Health Poll; margin of error +/- 1.8 percentage points Credit: Matt Stiles

Consumers like Weel say the labels help them feel better about the products they buy. “I want to feel that I’m doing the right thing,” says Weel, a pediatrician, as her 4 ½-year-old daughter bolts into the vegetable aisle in neon-colored boots. When Weel shops for seafood, she says, she wants to make choices “that will help preserve the wild fish populations in the oceans.”

Executives at Whole Foods say they are helping consumers do exactly that, by pledging in recent years to sell as many MSC-certified products as possible. Seafood is the last major food that people catch in the wild, and “we can’t just go out and find more fish to catch,” says Carrie Brownstein, global seafood quality standards coordinator for Whole Foods.

Brownstein cites a 2012 United Nations report that warned that almost 30 percent of the world’s wild fisheries are “overexploited,” and more than 57 percent of wild fisheries are “at or very close” to the limit.

Other groups have devised ranking systems for seafood. The Monterey Bay Aquarium labels products like a traffic light — green, yellow or red — to urge shoppers to buy or avoid a particular fish. The Blue Ocean Institute has a similar system. The MSC reports it has labeled roughly 8 percent of the global seafood catch, worth more than $3 billion. That makes it the most widespread and best-known rating scheme around the world.

A recent survey of 3,000 Americans, conducted on behalf of NPR, suggests that a majority of consumers want to feel good about the seafood they buy. The poll by Truven Health Analytics found that almost 80 percent of the people who eat seafood regularly said it is “important” or “very important” that their seafood is sustainably caught.

If they buy MSC-labeled seafood, they may be paying a premium. Brownstein says Whole Foods charges more for some of its seafood labeled “certified sustainable,” although she wouldn’t give numbers. Some fishing industry executives told NPR that they are getting roughly 10 percent more for their MSC-labeled products than for seafood that’s not certified sustainable.

That’s one reason why many environmentalists who supported the MSC in the past say you might be troubled to know what the MSC and supermarkets like Whole Foods are not telling you:

“We would prefer they didn’t use the word sustainable,” says Gerry Leape, an oceans specialist at the Pew Environment Group, one of the major foundations working on oceans policies. Leape has supported the MSC for more than a decade as a member of its advisory Stakeholder Council.

But he and other critics say that the MSC system has been certifying some fisheries despite evidence that the target fish are in trouble, or that the fishing industry is harming the environment. And critics say the MSC system has certified other fisheries as sustainable even though there is not enough evidence to know how they are affecting the environment.

When a customer sees the MSC’s sustainable label at the supermarket, “the consumer looks at the fish and says, ‘Oh, it has the label on it, it must be sustainable,’ ” Leape says. “And in some fisheries that the MSC has certified, that’s not necessarily the case.”

Biologist Susanna Fuller, co-director of marine programs at Canada’s Ecology Action Centre, agrees. “We know … that blue stamp doesn’t mean that you’re sustainable,” she says. When asked if consumers should choose MSC-labeled seafood, Fuller pauses. “It’s a gamble,” she says.

Still, even the MSC’s sharpest critics say they support the broad ideas behind the organization and its stated goals.

“Originally I thought it was a good idea,” says Jim Barnes, director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a network of dozens of environmental groups around the world. “The world needed something like this to help steer consumer decisions, and so I wasn’t against it at all at the beginning. And I’m not totally against it now.” But Barnes worries that the MSC is straying from its mission and needs a dramatic overhaul. “It can be a force for good. If it continues on the path that it’s on, however, and doesn’t solve a lot of these issues that have been raised,” he says, “I don’t think it will be.”

Protecting The Oceans And The Bottom Line

The MSC was born because of a crisis.

Michael Sutton, one of its founders, says that he and his colleagues dreamed up the idea after the cod industry collapsed off the Nova Scotia coast in 1992. Cod fishing had been the foundation of the region’s economy and culture, worth an estimated $700 million each year. But when the cod population plunged to a fraction of previous levels, the Canadian government banned cod fishing — putting thousands of people out of work.

Rupert Howes is CEO of the Marine Stewardship Council. "We want to see the global oceans transformed onto a sustainable basis," he tells NPR. Photo : Tim Lofthouse/Courtesy of the Marine Stewardship Council

“It was so bad in some of these coastal communities, the government had to send in suicide-prevention teams,” recalls Sutton, who was then vice president of the World Wildlife Fund. “We were not only trashing our marine environment, but we were ruining the character of coastal communities that had existed on fisheries for centuries,” Sutton says.

Sutton and other environmental advocates, and many scientists, warned that the cod collapse taught the world a sobering lesson: Government agencies that were supposed to monitor and regulate fishing were often doing a lousy job. Cod weren’t the only fish in trouble. Studies showed that populations of major species like swordfish, marlin and tuna were plunging too. “So we needed to do something drastic,” Sutton says.

He and colleagues decided to convince industry executives that protecting the oceans would also protect their bottom line. Sutton made a pilgrimage to the Unilever conglomerate, then one of the largest producers of frozen seafood — including fish sticks.

“My pitch to Unilever was, ‘The future of their frozen fish business is at stake,’ ” Sutton remembers. “Overfishing is not only bad for the environment, but it’s really bad for business, because it means that they’re not going to have fish in the future the way they have them today.”

Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund joined hands in 1997, and set up the MSC. Unilever eventually sold its seafood subsidiary and left the program, but the founding partner left its mark: From the day the MSC opened its doors in London, it has been a balancing act between industry and the environment.

Today, the MSC has more than 100 employees worldwide, including about 60 at its headquarters in a renovated building down the street from St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“MSC has a global vision,” says Rupert Howes, the organization’s chief executive officer. “We want to see the global oceans transformed onto a sustainable basis.”

MSC’s System Of Certification

Swordfish from Canada are marked with a label from the Marine Stewardship Council at a Whole Foods in Washington, D.C. The MSC says its label means the fish were caught by a sustainable fishery, but critics says it's not always so clear. Photo : Margot Williams/NPR

Here’s the MSC’s basic idea: Executives of a growing number of food companies want to be “green.” Some genuinely want to protect the environment; others may be mainly seeking a marketing edge. But when it comes to seafood, those executives don’t have the time or knowledge to figure out which fishing companies are plundering the ocean and which ones are doing a good job. So the MSC does the work for them.

The MSC does not certify fisheries itself. Instead, a fishery that wants the label hires one of roughly a dozen commercial auditing companies to decide whether its practices comply with the MSC’s definition of “sustainable.” The MSC’s standard for sustainability includes dozens of items, but they’re designed to assess whether the population of a fishery’s target species is healthy; if the fishing practices don’t cause serious harm to other life in the sea — including by accidentally catching other animals, which is called bycatch; and if the fishery has good management. If the commercial auditors give the fishery a passing score, then the fishery gets the right to use the blue “Certified Sustainable Seafood” label. It can be a long and expensive process. Some certifications have taken years, and the fisheries have paid the auditing firms up to $150,000 or more.

Howes says that when a store sells MSC-certified seafood, the label announces to consumers, “We care where our fish comes from.” He adds that as a growing number of food companies sell MSC-labeled seafood, executives of fisheries that don’t have it are motivated to join the program. That catalyzes “real and lasting change in the way the oceans are fished,” Howe says.

During the MSC’s first decade, there wasn’t much demand for sustainable seafood by the U.S. food industry, and the MSC “almost went bankrupt,” Sutton says. And that put the spotlight on the MSC’s financial model.

The way that executives structured it, MSC’s budget comes partly from foundation grants. But some revenue comes from the licensing fees that MSC charges businesses for the right to sell seafood with the MSC label. So as long as many supermarket chains were not promoting it, the MSC wasn’t getting much money.

Then, in 2006, everything changed. The MSC and its supporters had sent a series of delegations to Bentonville, Ark., world headquarters of Wal-Mart. The delegations helped convince Wal-Mart executives to promise that all the seafood they sell in the U.S. would be MSC-certified by 2012.

“We had to get Wal-Mart,” Sutton says. “The significance of their commitment, of course, is that once Wal-Mart made a commitment to the Marine Stewardship Council, every other major retailer had to follow suit, because none of them wanted to be less progressive than Wal-Mart.” Sure enough, other discount chains promised to go sustainable, too. “Overnight, the demand far outstripped the supply,” says Sutton, “and so the suppliers had to catch up.”

Since Wal-Mart made its pledge in 2006, the MSC system has certified seven times as many fisheries as it did during the same period before, according to NPR’s analysis. Still, the MSC system has not been able to certify enough seafood for Wal-Mart to meet its 2012 deadline, according to Wal-Mart senior buyer Bob Fields.

The explosion in sales of MSC-labeled products at leading chain stores has transformed the organization’s finances. The year that Wal-Mart pledged to promote MSC-labeled seafood, the MSC received most of its income from foundation grants — 75 percent, according to the MSC annual report. Meanwhile, it received only 7 percent of its income from label licensing fees.

Today, those licensing fees generate more than half of the MSC’s revenue.

And since Wal-Mart executives embraced sustainable seafood, the MSC has also received millions of dollars in grant money from the Walton Family Foundation, which was created by Wal-Mart’s founder and is governed by his descendants. The Walton Family Foundation has become one of the MSC’s largest donors, according to financial reports. The director of the foundation’s environment programs, Scott Burns, served on the MSC’s board of directors before he went to Walton.

Source: Marine Stewardship Council documents, NPR research Credit: Matt Stiles, Margot Williams

Critics say that the day Wal-Mart embraced sustainable seafood, it was a blessing for the MSC system — and a curse. The critics charge that the MSC system has compromised its standards to keep up with the booming demand from Wal-Mart and other chains that followed suit. Fuller, of the Ecology Action Centre, says she has watched the MSC system “struggling with meeting the demands of the system that they helped create … They have ended up having to lower the bar.”

When ocean specialist Daniel Pauly, a fisheries professor at the University of British Columbia, talks about the MSC today, he sounds dispirited. Pauly took part in early meetings in London that helped create the MSC and now says he has lost faith in the system. “The MSC is doing the business of the business community,” Pauly says, not the environment.

Capt. Art Gaeten holds a blue shark caught off the coast of Nova Scotia during a research outing. Studies show that 35 percent of sharks caught by swordfish boats die either on the hook or within days of release. Photo : Dean Casavechia for NPR

Balancing ‘Sustainable’ Swordfish With At-Risk Sharks

Some environmentalists and scientists say if you want to understand why they’re losing faith in the MSC, look at the battle over certifying Canadian swordfish. Next time you buy swordfish at a store like Whole Foods, it might come from a controversial fishery off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Fishermen have known for ages that when they go swordfishing in some parts of the Atlantic, they will accidentally catch sharks — lots of sharks, says Steve Campana, who runs the Canadian government’s Shark Research Laboratory, near Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Steve Campana runs the Canadian Shark Research Laboratory. He works to tag sharks with satellite transmitters to find out how long they survive after being caught and released. Photo : Dean Casavechia for NPR

When NPR caught up with Campana one morning, he and his research crew were heading into the Atlantic on a 34-foot trawler, the Dig It. They were planning to attach sophisticated satellite transmitters to blue sharks.

“On average, from what we’ve seen over the years, the swordfishermen catch about five blue sharks for every one swordfish,” Campana said, holding onto a metal strut as the Dig It bounced through the waves. Add it up, studies suggest, and Canada’s long-line swordfish boats — so named because they typically let out 30 or 40 miles of fishing line, dangling more than 1,000 hooks — accidentally catch tens of thousands of sharks every year.

This touches on one of MSC’s three fundamental rules, even though studies show swordfish are plentiful. The second rule says that a fishery is not sustainable if it does not maintain “the integrity of ecosystems” — which means, in part, that it’s not sustainable if there is too much bycatch.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, which is funded and appointed by the Canadian government, has warned that the main kinds of sharks that swordfishermen accidentally catch are “threatened” or “endangered” or “of special concern.”

Swordfishermen generally release the sharks. But there had been few studies on what happens to those sharks after fishermen let them off the hooks — until Campana and his colleagues came along. About six years ago, they started tagging sharks with satellite transmitters before fishermen set them free.

Shark charter operator Art Gaeten (right) and recreational shark fisherman Shawn Knowles struggle to hold a blue shark in position while shark biologist Anna Dorey attaches a satellite tag to its back. Researchers say about five blue sharks are caught for every one swordfish. Scientists are trying to determine what happens to the sharks after they are released. Photo : Dean Casavechia for NPR

During one outing, the crew showed how they do it: They snagged a 5-foot blue shark on a hook baited with mackerel, reeled it in, and then pinned the thrashing shark against the boat’s broad, flat railing. They jabbed a satellite transmitter, which looks like a turkey baster with a barb on one end, into the shark’s leathery skin.

And then they let the shark go, the transmitter protruding like an unsightly growth. The device is equipped with a computer chip that records data every 10 seconds, including where the shark goes, how deep it goes, and how long it stays there. After about 10 months, the tube pops off the shark and floats to the surface, beaming all the information via satellite to Campana. When the transmitter shows that a shark went to the deepest part of the sea and just stayed there, Campana knows when and where the shark died.

Campana and his colleagues published some of their first findings based on these studies in July 2009, in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. Their studies showed that up to 35 percent of the sharks caught by swordfish boats die, either right on the hook or within days after the fishermen set them free. The findings suggested that Canadian swordfish boats accidentally kill almost two sharks for every swordfish they catch.

Campana says that when you put these findings in context, it is troubling. Other studies suggest that the populations of major kinds of sharks in the North Atlantic have plunged as much as 40 to 60 percent in just the past few decades. “Any time you see consistent declines like that, and the fact that all of these large sharks seem to have declined all over the world,” Campana says, “it’s just a worrisome pattern.”

The president of Canada’s swordfish industry, the Nova Scotia Swordsfishermen’s Association, dismisses Campana’s conclusions. Campana’s report on shark deaths could not have come at a worse time for Canada’s swordfish industry. Only months before the report was published, the association, which catches most of Canada’s commercial swordfish, had applied to the MSC for certification. The industry sells much of its swordfish to Whole Foods and other stores in the U.S.

Those conclusions “were not close to what the industry felt was reality,” Troy Atkinson, president of the association, says while sitting in his store, crammed with giant spools of plastic fishing line and boxes of heavy metal hooks. He runs the main business that supplies equipment to Canada’s swordfishing fleet.

“We’re sometimes portrayed as a bunch of cowboys out to harvest the last buffalo,” he says. “We’re portrayed as some of the worst in the world. And it’s just not correct.”

Atkinson cites reports by other researchers that conclude that the population of blue sharks off the coast of Canada is healthy – especially reports by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which represents dozens of governments whose nations fish the Atlantic. So, Atkinson says, Canada’s swordfishermen could catch and kill even more sharks without hurting the environment.

Other studies suggest the evidence is contradictory, and that scientists don’t know for sure what is happening to sharks across the Atlantic. For example, the optimistic ICCAT researchers whom Atkinson cites acknowledge that their conclusions are “highly uncertain” because they’re based on unproven assumptions and incomplete data. However, studies showing that blue sharks have sharply declined focus on a limited region.

So scientists and environmentalists were dumbfounded in early 2012 when the MSC system decided that Canada’s swordfish industry can use the label “Certified Sustainable Seafood.”

“That is absolutely the kind of fishery that should not be certified,” says Leape of Pew Environment Group. “That fishery is outrageous.”

Certifying Canadian swordfish “is the worst thing they can do, says Fuller, of the Ecology Action Centre. “That is not at all the way it should go.”

A Program Based On ‘Science And Evidence’

The Ecology Action Centre and dozens of other environmental groups denounced the MSC. The groups said in a letter to the MSC system that roughly 10 percent of Canada’s swordfish are caught with harpoons — a method environmentalists support because there is hardly any bycatch. But the long-line boats that supply most of the swordfish catch a “staggering” number of sharks, as the environmentalists put it. “Certifying [Canada's long-line swordfish boats] compromises the credibility of the MSC,” the groups warned, “and the sustainable seafood movement as a whole.”

Web Resources

Additional studies and information on sustainable fishing and labeling.
The Marine Stewardship Council
Evaluation And Legal Assessment Of Certified Seafood
Reliable Information on Fish Stock Health to Seafood Consumers
Beyond Duplicity And Ignorance In Global Fisheries
The Emergence and Effectiveness of the Marine Stewardship Council

Howes, from the MSC, disagrees. He says the controversy over Canadian swordfish “illustrates a key feature of the MSC program, which is the fact that the program is premised on science and evidence. That fishery has met the MSC standard.”

The analysts who evaluated the fishery for the MSC system agreed that the swordfish boats do kill large numbers of sharks. They acknowledged that the optimistic studies on sharks that the swordfish industry cites are uncertain, but they concluded that the weight of evidence suggests it is “highly likely” there are plenty of blue sharks left in the sea. The analysts also stressed that, by all accounts, other countries kill far more sharks than Canada’s swordfishermen do. So, they said, Canada causes only a small part of the bycatch problem.

“We are not saying that shark bycatch doesn’t matter,” says Howes. “What we’re saying implicit within the labeling of that fishery is, the shark bycatch of that unique individual certified fishery is safe. It’s within ecological limits.”

Barnes, of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, says the controversy over Canadian swordfish illustrates why the booming demand for sustainable seafood actually threatens to hurt the movement more than help it. “The bottom line is that there are not enough truly sustainable fisheries on the earth to sustain the demand,” Barnes says. “The retailers and wholesalers all want access to this kind of label because they’re trying to … make money with their consumers. There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s how the world works.”

But Barnes charges that the MSC is labeling some fisheries as sustainable — even when they are not — partly to fill the seafood counters at Wal-Mart and other large chains. “I’m not down on Wal-Mart at all, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “But to get on line with big chains as your goal leads you down a path that I don’t think the originators of the MSC intended.”

Howes could hardly disagree more. “If you really want to contribute to the transformation of our economic systems more generally, you’ve got to engage with the big guys. And therefore, I absolutely welcome Wal-Mart’s commitment,” he says. “That will drive change.”

Howes continues: “Will that overload the MSC system? No.”

He argues that there’s no way the MSC could label problem fisheries sustainable just to satisfy demand, because, he says, the certifiers evaluate each fishery based only on scientific evidence. But he adds, “We want to see oceans fished sustainably forever. We’re not going to achieve that by becoming a small niche organization that engages with a handful of perfect fisheries.”

Researcher Barbara Van Woerkom contributed to this story.

Farmworkers like these in California picking produce may soon be required by the FDA to take more precautions against spreading foodborne illness. Photo: Heather Craig/iStockphoto.com

by DAN CHARLES AND APRIL FULTON

Looking for a little weekend reading? The Food and Drug Administration has just the thing. On Friday, the agency released two proposed rulesdesigned to boost the safety of the nation’s food supply, encompassing hundreds of pages.

One rule covers operations at fruit and vegetable farms, focusing on those foods that we eat raw and have been the subject of several recent recalls, like leafy greens, tomatoes, melons, herbs, green onions and berries. They would require worker safety training, handwashing, clean water and monitoring the presence of animals in the fieldthat could spread illness.

Produce accounted for about 42 percent of all foodborne illness in 2010, according to the FDA.

The other proposed rule would require food processors to develop and follow detailed plans for preventing contamination of their products.

“The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen,” said Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, at a noon press conference.

The move comes after a series of high-profile recalls, including cantaloupes in 2011 that killed 33 people. A recall involving salmonella in peanut products this past September eventually led to the shutdown of a Sunland Inc. facility for nearly a month. The company makes peanut butter and other related items for several major national brands, including Trader Joe’s. And there have been a string of E. coli-related recalls this year involving Canadian beef.

The rules were issued two years after president Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law, giving the Food and Drug Administration broader power to require food facilities to develop food safety plans and new authority to recall tainted food.

The United Fresh Produce Association welcomed the rules. David Gombas, the group’s food safety expert, says that many big vegetable growers already are required by food retailers to follow similar safety procedures — but a single national standard would be a big improvement.

Safety advocates, for their part, are applauding the rules in general. Eric Olson, director of Food Programs for the Pew Charitable Trust, called them “the first major overhaul of our food safety controls since the Great Depression.” Some, though, are concerned that the FDA is not asking vegetable producers to carry out extensive — and expensive — testing of their products to detect harmful bacteria.

Congress exempted the smallest farms — those that sell less than $500,000 of produce each year and deliver most of it to local consumers — from these regulations. But many small farmers are still worried that they will, in fact, have to follow the new rules, raising their costs.

Back when the bill was signed, consumer groups, many food manufacturers and public health advocates werehopeful that the Obama administration would move swiftly to put new rules in place to prevent foodborne illnesses.

But the regulations reportedly sat at the government’s regulatory review office for months. This prompted two nonprofits, the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Environmental Health, to file a lawsuit against the agency, alleging “unreasonably delayed regulations.” FDA recently asked a federal court to dismiss the suit.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 48 million Americans are sickened by tainted food, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year.