Fifteen years ago, CMD's book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! first exposed the hidden government and industry PR campaign greenwashing toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids," an invented PR euphemism used to cynically re-brand toxic waste as "fertilizer" given free to farmers. Today, unfortunately, the biosolids scam is bigger than ever. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) reports that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission "has come up with an ingenious plot to trick city residents into taking their toxic sewage sludge back and disposing of it in their own gardens. San Francisco is having Synagro, the corporate giant of the toxic sludge industry, 'compost' some of the toxic sewage sludge. Then they give it away to San Francisco's gardeners telling us it's 'high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic Biosolids Compost.' " OCA has launched a grassroots campaign calling on San Francisco's mayor to stop the practice, noting "municipal sewage sludge routinely contains thousands of dangerous pathogens, toxic heavy metals, flame retardants, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, pharmaceutical drugs and other hazardous chemicals coming from residential drains, storm water runoff, hospitals, and industrial plants."

"The ingenuity of the food manufacturers and marketers never ceases to amaze me," remarked author Michael Pollan. "They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food." Marketers are appropriating language from the "eat local" or "locavore" movement, which encourages support for small farms, sustainable practices and better treatment of animals. Now, "several big companies" and "large-scale farming concerns are embracing a broad," or nearly meaningless, "interpretation of what eating locally means." Frito-Lay, a junk food company owned by PepsiCo, is running ads that "highlight farmers who grow some of the two billion pounds of starchy chipping potatoes the Frito-Lay company uses each year." Frito-Lay "vice president for potato chip marketing" Dave Skena said the company is "celebrating the notion of community." ConAgra "recently began a marketing campaign to highlight its Hunt's canned tomatoes, most of which are grown within 120 miles of its Oakdale, Calif., processing plant. Of course, the tomatoes would be local only to people in the area." Foster Farms, "a $1 billion company that is the largest producer of poultry products on the West Coast, markets its fresh chicken and turkey as 'locally grown' because it contracts with hundreds of local growers in the states where it operates."

For decades, government agencies and polluters have cynically and dangerously used the magic of PR to reclassify toxic sludge as "beneficial fertilizer," and thus haul it to rural farmlands where it is spread on fields out of sight, out of mind. CMD's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote the first major expose of this practice in their 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You. Now the Kansas Star reports on a Missouri lawsuit claiming "that a St. Joseph tannery had allowed sludge containing a carcinogen to be used as fertilizer on fields in four counties, causing brain tumors in at least two patients. Because of a state law, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has not been sampling the contents of the sludge -- the waste from the tanning process. That is because the law allowed officials years ago to declare the sludge a fertilizer. As a result, that left most of the responsibility for regulating the sludge to the University of Missouri -- but only as a fertilizer, not as a hazardous waste."

In our 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, we examined how the Environmental Protection Agency and the sewage industry turned toxic sewage sludge into a "safe" fertilizer through PR, political bullying and weakened government regulations. Fourteen years later, Mother Jones revisits the issue, noting that "more than half the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is biologically scrubbed, 'dewatered,' and processed into products with names like BioEdge, Nitrohumus, and Vital Cycle and spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. ... Sludge could be the ultimate growth industry; as one trade publication observes dryly, 'There will continue to be more wastewater solids to manage with every passing year.' ... [A]s sludge has spread across the country, so have concerns that it may cause as many environmental problems as it solves. In communities where sludge has been used, residents have reported ailments ranging from migraines to pneumonia to mysterious deaths."

A new study found that there is a higher health cost associated with corn-based biofuels than with traditional energy forms. The researchers "found the total environmental and health costs of gasoline are about 71 cents (50p) per gallon, while an equivalent amount of corn-ethanol fuel has associated costs of 72 cents to $1.45, depending on how it is produced." The health concerns include "increased cases of heart disease, respiratory symptoms, asthma, chronic bronchitis or premature death." There is also concern that using a food crop for fuel will continue to drive up the cost of foodstuffs, affecting everyone, but especially the most vulnerable populations. There is evidence that the costs associated with the next generation of biofuels could be much lower. Those products may be produced from organic waste or plants that are grown on non-agricultural land.

The European Union (EU) has drastically changed its course for the future of biofuels. Until this week, the EU planned to be the world leader in using biofuels as an alternative to petroleum-based fuel, aiming for 10% of transportation fuels to be derived from biofuels by 2020. "But the allure has dimmed amid growing evidence that the kind of targets proposed by the EU are contributing to deforestation and helping force up food prices." In the overall energy landscape, the EU currently produces 8.5% of its energy from renewable sources. The goal was to increase that to 20% by 2020, but biofuels were a large part of that equation. '"I think when we will look back we will say this was the beginning of a turning point for Europe on biofuels,' said Juan Delgado, a research fellow specializing in energy and climate change expert at Breugel, a research organization in Brussels. 'It will be very difficult now for Europe to stick by its targets.'" In a related story, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week that a secret World Bank report found that "biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated." The U.S. government has said that biofuels are only responsible for a 3% increase in food costs worldwide.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is on record as a big supporter of ethanol and has many ties with the industry. At the opening of a new ethanol plant, Obama argued that embracing ethanol "ultimately helps our national security, because right now we're sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth." In addition, former senator Tom Daschle serves as one of Obama's national campaign chairs. Daschle also sits on the boards of three ethanol companies. During his early years in the Senate, Obama faced criticism for flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes. Two trips were on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, the nation's largest ethanol producer. Obama is a strong supporter of subsidies for the ethanol industry, even though some of those subsidies are given to the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. Ethanol's energy production is only one fourth as efficient as that of Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, against which there is currently a tariff. Obama says that he would continue that taxation, even though it may be illegal under the World Trade Organization's rules.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that Tyson Foods routinely gave antibiotics to chicken it raised to sell as meat, and labeled it as antibiotic free. Tyson said that the antibiotics were not a type used in humans, and so were not likely to lead to "superbugs" immune to medical treatments. But the USDA found that in addition to the non-human antibiotic, Tyson was also using a drug commonly given to people. The USDA told Tyson that it can no longer consider the company's no-antibiotics label "truthful and accurate." Tyson disagreed but said it would end its misleading labeling ... after a federal court issued an injunction stopping them from making the claim.

Comprehensive information about what chemicals are sprayed on food crops just got much harder to come by. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that they will no longer conduct and publish annual national surveys of "which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow." The report is used extensively by farmers, environmental advocates, chemical companies and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau, said "farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer. Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea." One fear is that information will only be available after there's been a problem. Steve Scholl-Buckwald of the Pesticide Action Network explained, "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports. And that's a lousy way to protect public health."