June 2014
FOOD BITES
By Angela S. Hoover, Staff Writer
USDA Bans All Junk
Food from Schools
Per new USDA regulations that take
effect this July, schools can no longer sell
junk food, not even in independently
operated vending machines. Vending
machines will only be allowed to carry
fruit, dairy products, whole-grain products, lean-protein products or vegetables
that are less than 200 calories for snacks
and 350 for entrees. Food items will not
be allowed to be more than 35 percent
fat or sugar and no trans fats will be
allowed. Schools will only be allowed
to sell water, low- and no-fat milk, and
100 percent fruit or vegetable juices.
Beverage sizes can only be eight ounces
for elementary school children and
12 ounces for middle school and high
school students. These new USDA rules
will still allow for fundraisers and bake
sales.
way you want and that they cannot be
legally protected. By opening the packet,
a person is pledging their commitment
to keep those seeds and any future plant
derivatives bred using them in the public domain. This creates a parallel system
where breeders and farmers can share
seeds and derivatives that can be freely
used. At the least OSSI members hope
this will raise awareness of what is going
on with seeds; at the other end of the
spectrum, it is hoped that international
partners will join and a more comprehensive open source license for seeds
can be developed. OSSI has 29 varieties
of 14 different crops so far, and two
small organic seed selling companies
will begin carrying some open source
seeds in their catalogs. “This is the birth
of a movement,” says Jack Kloppenburg,
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of community and environmental
sociology and author of “First the Seed,”
who has provided much of the guiding
vision for the OSSI group. “Open source
means sharing, and shared seed can be
the foundation of a more sustainable
and more just food system.”
Open Source Seeds for
All
Debunking the
The Open Source Seed Initiative
Argument that
(OSSI) was established in 2011 by
Chicken Processed
public plant breeders, farmers, nongovernmental organizations and sustain- in China is Not
able food systems advocates around
Economical
the nation to address the concern
about the decreasing availability of
plant germplasm seeds for public plant
breeders and farmer-breeders to work
with. Many of our nation’s big crop
plants – field corn and soybeans – are
already restricted through patents,
licenses and other forms of intellectual
property protection. This is also happening increasingly with vegetable, fruit
and small grain seeds. Members of the
OSSI worry that this trend could lead to
a time when there’s no longer any valuable plant germplasm available for public use. Inspired by the open source software community, which freely shares
and collaborates to improve their products, OSSI members explored ways to
develop open source licenses for seeds.
They encountered many roadblocks but
this spring they opted for the simplest
solution in order to get things moving
forward: the Open Source Seed Pledge.
Instead of a comprehensive open source
license the OSSI originally intended to
develop, the pledge is as concise as a
haiku and is printed on the seed packets;
stating the seeds are free to use in any
As