Science group's "green cuisine" showcases creative, fall dishes from leading chefs. Bowdoin College's David Crooker and Daran Poulin spotlighted

Green Cuisine

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today unveiled the second installment of Green Cuisine, a recurring Web feature that highlights chefs and farmers around the country who are teaming up to produce food that is good for people and the planet. David Crooker and Daran Poulin, head chefs at Bowdoin College in Maine, speak with UCS about why they support local farmers, including buying meat raised without unnecessary antibiotics from local producer Arnold Luce.

To check out UCS's Green Cuisine, go to: www.ucsusa.org/greencuisine.  

As the Senate debates the 2007 food and farm bill this week, the farmers and chefs featured in Green Cuisine are reminders of the local, sustainable food system that receives short shrift in federal policy. The Senate bill continues to direct most food production subsidies to growers of commodity crops, such as rice, corn, soybeans and cotton, and does little to encourage sustainable farming operations such as Arnold Luce's.

While lawmakers consider the farm bill, consumers themselves already are changing the food landscape with their growing demand for local, sustainable food. Since the early 1990s, for example, the number of local farmers markets across the country has more than doubled, while community-supported agriculture-in which consumers buy "shares" of the yearly harvest from local farms-has grown by more than 2,000 percent. But consumer action alone is not enough.

Ultimately, the food and farm bill should reflect Americans' growing desire to shift from highly concentrated, over-subsidized, commodity-focused industrial agriculture and replace it with a food system that is better for our environment, our health, and local communities.

Green Cuisine's goal is to connect like-minded consumers, chefs and farmers and demonstrate that eating healthy, organic food is practical, affordable and convenient. Within a 100-mile radius of Portland, Maine, for instance, there are 184 farms, restaurants and farmers markets producing and selling locally grown and raised foods. (To see a full list, go to: www.eatwellguide.org/.)

UCS Senior Analyst Karen Perry Stillerman, an expert on food policy and alternatives to industrial agriculture, is available for interviews on sustainable food choices and the merits of eating locally.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has offices in Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C. For more information, go to www.ucsusa.org. The UCS Food and Environment Program supports sustainable agriculture practices that protect the environment and produce high-quality, safe and affordable food; and opposes harmful industrial agriculture methods, such as pesticide overuse and factory farming. For more information, go to: www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/.