June 2005 | Choice News
Reasons Beyond Price to Say No to Beluga Caviar
Beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea is considered the crème de la crème of caviar. But most connoisseurs who indulge in this delicacy aren’t thinking about endangered species or don’t realize they are feeding a controversy about the survival of a prehistoric creature.
The delicate, glistening grey and black roe is harvested from the beluga sturgeon, a large primitive-looking fish with the tail of a shark and a long flat snout. Bony plates covering the sides of the fish resemble aquatic armor and serve as natural defense against predators in the wild. But the beluga’s armor is no match for the heavy nets and fleets of fishing boats in the Caspian Sea that have harvested the fish to the brink of extinction, according to the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC).
The NRDC, along with the Wildlife Conservation Society and SeaWeb, a Washington, D.C.-based conservation group, recently condemned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to deny protection to the beluga sturgeon by leaving it off the growing list of endangered species.
Beluga sturgeon and the coveted beluga caviar would have been banned as an import into the United States if the fish had made it onto the list, said Dr. Ellen Pikitch, professor and director of the University of Miami’s Pew Institute for Ocean Studies.
Instead, the agency is classifying it as “threatened,” and is requiring exporting countries to have a detailed plan to protect the fish population, according to a U.S. government website. The agency declined to comment for this story.
Since the United States imports 80 percent of the world’s beluga caviar, a ban in the U.S. would go far in helping to keep the fish alive.
“We are very disappointed that the beluga caviar trade was not banned,” said Pikitch. “It doesn’t make sense to fish the most valuable fish in the world into extinction.”
A kilogram of premium beluga caviar sells for around $3,200 and the annual legal trade is estimated at more than $100 million each year.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision comes after a four-year struggle by conservationists to protect the beluga sturgeon.
The battle included a nine-month international freeze on the caviar trade in 2004 to allow the species to recover. But research indicates that the beluga sturgeon needs additional protection, Pikitch said. The population in the Caspian Sea has plummeted by 90 percent in the last two decades as a result of the growing demand and market value of beluga caviar.
The United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a Switzerland-based organization that regulates trade in fish, wildlife and plants, reported that beluga trade in the Caspian region was three to five times over the legal limit in 2004, and recent surveys found that 85 percent of the remaining female population was not yet mature enough to reproduce. Consequently, the 2004 ban didn’t have much effect because of the long life cycle of the fish.
Beluga, which can live to be 100 years old, start laying eggs at approximately 22 years of age.
SeaWeb encourages private citizens to stop buying beluga caviar and other threatened and endangered aquatic species.
“It is in the hands of consumers to help save this species,” said Dawn Martin, executive director of SeaWeb.
For more information, visit www.seafoodchoices.com.
— Erin Meyer
Quigley Pushes Green Agenda
ENVIRONMENTALISTS frustrated with the Bush Administration should focus their energy to effect change in Cook County and Illinois, where their efforts might pay off bigger anyway, according to Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley (D-11).
“The current administration continues to put more policy choices from the environmental issues to health care in the hands of state and local lawmakers,” Quigley said.
However, the major obstacle preventing Cook County from becoming the greenest county in the nation is not cost, but inertia, according to a recent report by Quigley.
Entitled “Greening Cook County,” the report is meant to be an “olive branch,” Quigley said. “We have made a lot of progress but we still have a long way to go.”
The report challenges voters and elected officials to change the culture of local and state government. It also makes recommendations on where we should start.
“The status quo is comfortable but it is also wasteful, inefficient and harmful to the environment,” Quigley said. “And the most compelling thing is that being green saves green.”
He pointed out that among the most important recommendations are cutting electricity use, reducing vehicle fuel consumption and implementing effective recycling programs.
“Just the three recommendations would save Cook County $12.2 million over five years,” Quigley said. “This savings is more than enough to pay for the remaining proposals in the report.”
Quigley also favors increasing taxes for gas-guzzling vehicles, electronic systems in county office buildings to minimize paper waste and increasing reliance on renewable energy sources. To learn more about “Greening Cook County” visit www.commissionerquigley.com.
— Erin Meyer
No More Mystery Meat in the Cafeteria!
IT WASN’T THAT LONG ago that the Reagan Administration proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable. The effort failed. Still, today the federal government has labeled French fries, Tater Tots and other deep-fried potato products as “fresh vegetables.” It’s no wonder, then, that American school children are notoriously unhealthy — roughly 30 percent are considered overweight, according to the American Obesity Association.
The Healthy Schools Campaign, based in Chicago, is trying to lower that number in Illinois. It will hold its third annual benefit, “Cooking Up Change,” on Thursday, June 9, at Kendall College’s new Riverworks Campus, 900 N. Branch St. The benefit will feature Chicago celebrity chef Rick Bayless, who owns the award-winning Mexican restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo and hosts the PBS cooking show “Mexico — One Plate at a Time.”
He is scheduled to give cooking demonstrations with his teenage daughter, Lanie.
The two have co-authored a hot new international cookbook, Rick & Lanie’s Excellent Kitchen Adventures. The cookbook includes dishes from Mexico, Peru, Thailand, Morocco, France and even Oklahoma, where Bayless grew up eating at his grandparents’ Bar-B-Q restaurant.
While the book isn’t strictly a health-food cookbook, the Bayless family has always been conscious of healthy eating habits. Getting kids to eat healthy is the goal of the Healthy Schools Campaign. Bayless said that if the meals appeal to parents too, all the better. “The kids will only eat as healthy as their parents,” said Bayless. “Parents have to lead by example.”
For more information, call or email Claire Marcy, 312-419-1810.
— Geoffrey Wallin
Summer Recycling
AS YOU head outdoors in the warmer months to enjoy picnics, festivals, and beaches remember to walk lightly on the earth. Here’s some tips from the City of Chicago:
• At barbeques have separate clearly labeled disposable bins to make recycling convenient.
• When camping or at the beach, plan ahead — think about all the recyclable containers you might use: suntan lotion bottles, soda cans, juice bottles, plastic food containers and be sure to bring a blue bag or container for your recyclables.
• Use canvas shopping bags for trips to the grocery store or for day and weekend trips.
• Buy products that are made with recycled materials and purchase in larger sizes, such as soda bottles, suntan lotion, water and juice bottles.
• Place yard waste into a blue container or in a home composting bin.
• Leave your car at home! Walk, jog, or bike to the local park or beach.
• When going to summer festivals, look for the City of Chicago’s marked blue containers so you can recycle your cardboard food containers, cans and bottles.
For more information call 311 or go to www.cityofchicago.org.
— Erin Meyer
Depleted Uranium Weapons Sicken Vets
DURING THE PAST 20 years, depleted uranium (DU), created from stockpiles of nuclear waste has been developed into a weapon, but it’s just as dangerous to the troops using it, as well as the doctors and researchers treating them, activists charge.
DU weapons are created from uranium-238, the main by-product of refining uranium ore for nuclear fuel. It ignites at high temperatures and burns into a fine, toxic dust that’s easily inhaled or ingested, and hard to detect or remove, according to scientists.
In the most recent Iraq war, the Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that the U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,000 tons of DU during attacks just in March and April, 2003, according to Inter Press Service News Agency.
DU is contaminated with very low levels of some of the most dangerous radioactive substances that can cause enormous damage and birth defects, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Not only are soldiers at risk, but doctors and researchers treating them also face problems from exposure, critics charge. Retired Army Major Doug Rokke presently lives in downstate Illinois. A retired physics professor from the University of Illinois in Champaign, he said he was one of the Pentagon’s most senior DU experts during the first Gulf War and served as former director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project. He became convinced DU had contaminated the battlefield and could be a factor in Gulf War Syndrome, citing that tens of thousands of veterans from Gulf I are on permanent disability.
His said his research left him contaminated, 30 of his crew have died, and now he is suffering for a variety of ailments including respiratory problems and chronic rashes.
“They didn’t tell anybody what they were doing.” he said of the military. “Why would they? DU munitions are the ultimate weapon. Each round fired by an Abrams tank … represents … 10 pounds of solid uranium-238. The purpose of war is to kill and destroy.”
Rokke said when he was tested by the U.S. Dept. of Energy he “was excreting uranium at 5,000 times permissible level.”
“The Department of Energy withheld this information for two and a half years,” he said, adding it only notified a fraction of the affected personnel “out of thousands who should have been.”
“Military regulations usually require medical care,” he said. “But I never received help or advice from the government. Nor has anyone else. It’s a nightmare. ”
In 2004, The American Free Press, an independent Washington, D.C. weekly newspaper, reported that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies and 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.
The military has denied that DU is the cause of those cancers or is used in missile systems.
Several attempts to reach information about DU through defense department phone numbers referred to a hotline that’s manned by Lyle Suprise, who identified himself as a former Lt. Col. in the Army Corp of Engineers now working for defense contractor, Northrop Grumman.
“There is no connection between DU exposure and medical problems — no direct causal relationship,” Suprise said in a phone interview. He added that when a soldier’s urine is tested, “it all depends upon the part of the U.S. he lives in — since some places have more natural uranium than others.” This is because he said, “DU has lower radiation activity than natural uranium.”
— Liane C. Casten
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