Reading the Fine Print: Decoding Food Labels
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EmailFebruary 24, 2025
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Join Cheyenne Sloan and Mariel Borgman from MSU Extension as we explore food marketing claims and bust some common myths to help you become a more informed grower or eater. We will have a special emphasis on food grown in Michigan and provide resources to help you continue your learning beyond the webinar.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
As we trickle in and get started, I just want to welcome everyone to the MI Ag Ideas to Grow With virtual conference. I know a few of you have already been in sessions this morning. We're kicking off today for two weeks of free online learning. Just want to give a big thank you to our sponsor, AgriStrategies, LLC. And do a few quick plugs for our Farm Stress series that you can access with this QR code or link. We'll share that in the chat. I thought I turned off the advancing slides. Apologies for giving you a headache there. So as a things come up and farming becomes stressful, we have resources to support you, and we will share that with you. Without further ado, we'll get our presentation started for this afternoon and I'm going to kick it over to Cheyenne to get us started. Again, thank you all so much for joining us. My name is Cheyenne Sloan. I work for Michigan State Extension as a Blueberry and small fruit educator. I'm going to be talking about decoding some labels with you guys in conjunction with my awesome colleague, Mariel Borgman. So thank you all so much for joining us today. Really glad that you're able to come. MI Ag Ideas to Grow With is for fun. So first, we'll talk about what food citizenship is. So a food citizen is someone who is actively aware of food system issues, employs socially and environmentally conscious decision making, supports democratic processes involving people and food system dynamics, and chooses food based on origin, how it's produced, who produces it, and it influences many aspects of the food system, including socioeconomic justice and environmental sustainability. So the important thing about being a food citizen instead of just a food consumer is really using your dollar and understanding how using your dollar affects what happens with what you are consuming. So being like, you can choose where you shop, you choose what brands you buy, you choose, like what you believe in and what you think that your food should represent. And that's all part about being a food citizen as opposed to just a food consumer. Consumer just blindly consumes. A citizen makes choices based on how they think things should be done, how people should be treated, how food should be treated, and that kind of thing. So within food citizenship, it's important to understand what all the different labels mean. I'm sure you guys have gone into the grocery store before and been like, what does this mean? I didn't even know that this existed or wow, I didn't know that this needed to be sustainably. I didn't know this could be sustainably produced or things like that. Depending on the type of label or depending on what type of what you are purchasing can influence different types of sustainability labels. They can tell you about growing practices. Maybe you can tell you about what is used in the growing practice or the different conservation efforts. No till is really um, within field crops and things like that. People will talk a lot about being no-till, and that's a conservation effort and a growing practice. Animal welfare. Animal welfare is what I think most consumers and food citizens are probably most familiar with, there's a lot of different labels out there for how the meat is raised, how the meat is fed, how the meat is slaughtered. Those are all fit within animal welfare. Then they're safe and fair labor practices. This means that people are getting paid fair wages and have fair working conditions, if not great working conditions for the job that they are doing. All of these are a bunch of labels, but who is making sure that they're doing what they're saying that they're doing? There's three different entities that can regulate labels. They are government. Think of USDA organic would be a good example of a government. Private entities like the GMO butterfly is a private entity, and then non regulated are things that people can just put on just say locally grown is not necessarily regulated because what do you mean by local local can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So some examples of government regulated certifications include the USDA organic. So the United States Department of Agriculture or USDA sets reviews and enforces standards and issue certificates. So if you see something with USDA organic on it, that means that it was certified by the USDA. So programs include organic or grass fed for small or very small producers. So in order to say grass fed on your meat, you have to be there's, in this case, it's run by the government, and you have to be a smaller producer in order to say that through the USDA. Um, USDA also regulates all meat and most poultry. Farms must submit certain statements or claims to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, and then staff within this department review documentation from the farm to support this claim and then issue approval. If it has this symbol right here, I'm going to make sure that I have my laser pointer. If it has this one right here, that means it was the claim made was audited. Otherwise, it's just on paper. This means that they went and they looked and they were like, yep, you're doing X, Y, and Z, so it's all good to go. Then there's privately regulated labels, like I mentioned, the non GMO project earlier. It's regulated by a non government entity. It generally involves fees and inspections or audits. Examples could be certified naturally grown, certified humane, American grass fed certified, non GMO project verified. There's a bunch of different ones. Usually these are voluntary and people are like, Hey, I think that this is valuable for me and the types of consumers that I want to attract to put on here that I am certified naturally grown or non GMO. And so usually they'll have auditors or people come and visit your farm or you have to send in paperwork so that you're able to put these stamps and stickers on your products. So let's dig more into some of these labels. In addition, we're not going to cover all labels. There are so many labels. While I was working on this, I found Eco label Index is a website, and this is a company that goes and finds all of the different eco labels that are out there, and you're able to just look up a label and it tells you what it means, gives you a link to the website and talks about what it means it goes a little bit more into depth. About what it means to have this label. If you ever find a label and you're not really sure what it means and you're like, is it greenwashing? Does it mean anything? Highly recommend checking out Ecolabel Index. It was a really great resource, and you can just scan this little QR code and it'll take you right there. Otherwise, just Google Eco label Index. So, um, egg cartons. I don't know about you guys, but whenever I look at an egg carton, there's just so many words on the egg carton and stickers and claims, and egg cartons can claim a lot of things. Usually they're talking about the hens diet, the living conditions, the egg quality or the color, where the farm is, some of their certifications, what the packaging is made of, and it can cover anything from like, Oh, our hens are happy. Um, And so all of these can mean a lot of different things and really depends on what you think is most important when you are purchasing and what you as a food citizen, want to support. So I know eggs have been talked a lot have been talked a lot. In the news, especially here in Michigan, because in case you didn't know, there was a new chicken law, the cage free law was put into effect this year. So the Public Act 132 of 2019, so this happened five, six years ago now, is just now going into effect. So, you know, government is very fast. It now requires shelled eggs. So eggs that are still on the shell, not the shaky eggs that you can get in the dairy aisle, have to be from cage free housing systems starting December 31, 2024. So I know I remember at the beginning of the year, I saw a lot of empty egg oops. Oops. I saw a lot of empty egg shelves at the store. Not only is that partially that could also be attributed to the Avian influenza outbreak, but here in Michigan, at least, a lot of that is attributed to the change in the law. So they just grocery stores just had to find new producers or new supplies for their eggs, which probably wasn't too hard because 40.2% of all eggs in the US are already produced cage free. This is an example of what a cage free, um, chicken farm might look like. I know that when I first learned about what cage free meant, I didn't think it meant this. I was picturing a bunch of chickens just wandering around in a beautiful field. They're still happy, healthy, and taken care of, but they're inside and they're just not in cages and they're able to free roam inside. Um, so now we'll talk a little bit about GMOs. GMOs are what really GMOs and GMO labels are what got me into agriculture and what got me really interested in agriculture. So judging by all of these, so there's Himalayan salt, marshmallows, coconut water, and salmon, and all of these have non GMO label, but not all of them need a non GMO label. Any guesses which one might not need a GMO label? Salmon is a good guess. Salt? Yes. Salt. The salt definitely will not need a GMO label because there are no genes to MO to modify. There are no genes to modify within salt. Salt is just salt is salt. Salt is a rock. There's no genetics to modify in that. Salmon could also use the salmon could also use it because there are genes in a salmon that we could modify. But there aren't any GMO salmon at this point. I don't I believe, Mariel. There is one. Oh, okay. So there's one GMO salmon. I'm not a salmon lady. So this would be a label that you would want that would make sense. Pure coconut water could also make sense because there are you could genetically modify a, um, So just because it has a GMO label doesn't mean that it needs it. Sometimes it's just there to make people feel better. I like to think of fat free salsa is, of course, fat free. What is going to be fat is going to be in a salsa? So when it has a non GMO label on it, just remember, does it have genetics? Is there a genetic thing? Is there an organism in here that you could potentially genetically modify? Oh. Is this a GMO? GMO stands for genetically modified organism. Usually when people think of GMOs, they think of crops and things like that. But really genetically modified organism is anything whose genetics have been modified. So Dogs. Dogs came from wolves. We bred these dogs to look like this. We selected dogs based on what they look like, how they acted to go from here, wolves to cute little guys like this. I don't know if anyone knows what this is if recognizes this up here, but this is teosinte , which is what became corn and corn here looks way different from here and that's because humans have intervened in the plant reproductive process to create large kernels like this. Um, or even chickens. Chickens how many different chickens are there? There's so many different types of chickens, and now we have chickens that are able to, like, go from egg to slaughter in weeks because they have been genetically modified and bred to produce meat very, very quickly. So those are all examples of genetic modification but aren't what people talk about and referring to when they talk about what is a GMO. GMO is living beings that have had their genetic code tweaked in some way. You might have heard CRISPR. Usually people think of CRISPR and they see a scientist, like a mad scientist injecting a syringe of something into an apple or whatever. That isn't really how it happens. So genetic modification is when a gene is inserted into the gene of a single cell and then the cell divides and it gets into all of the cells. It's not just used for crops, but that's what it's mostly been used for. But it's also created medicines like insulin and other vaccines. Here's an example of one of the most popular types of genetic modifications within crops is BT, or bacillus thuringiensis. The gene for Bt, pretty much bacillus thuringiensis is just a little bacteria and what it does is when it's consumed by certain types of insects, it creates crystals within their gut and kills them. Um, so we don't have the same protein receptor. We don't have the same we're not a bug. I'm not a bug. I won't speak for the rest of you guys, but I'm not a bug, and so I don't have the same proteins and parts that a bug does. So Bt doesn't affect me in the same way. So a lot of crops, especially corn, it's very helpful for European corn borer, will be genetically modified to have the Bt proteins so that when a European corn borer or other insect within that family eats the crop, it then dies because it creates all those crystals in its gut. Um, so Really, really helpful. Instead of having to spray Bt or spray for the European corn borere, the plant is already producing its own defenses. A current list of bioengineered or genetically engineered food are alfalfa, apple, arctic varieties. I think that these are the ones that McDonald's are using because they have them in the nice little packets and people don't like brown apples, even though they taste fine, they look gross. Um, canola, corn, eggplant, you'll see a lot of Bt varieties. They have eggplants that have the Bt in them. Some growers will spray Bt to help manage for plants too. Papaya. Thank goodness we have genetic engineering, truly, we would not have papayas anymore because they've created a genetically engineered so that they could be resistant to ringspot, which is a devastating disease. Pineapple, potato, salmon, soybean, squash, sugar cane. This is the current list of bioengineered and genetically engineered food on the market. So the USDA does have bioengineered disclosure since 2022. Since then, all retail foods that are bioengineered or contain bioengineering ingredients must say so on the label. Must say bioengineering, genetically modified organism, GMO or genetic engineering. Food produced by small food manufacturers and have food served in restaurants don't have to have the disclosure. Have any of you guys seen this disclosure on food recently? I remember when I started seeing it. I thought it was really cool and interesting because usually we see non GMO, no GMO and Sorry about that. Seeing this was, I thought very interesting. Um, USDA Derived from BE disclosure, derived from bioengineering or ingredients derived from a engineered source is a voluntary disclosure, so people can put this on there if they want. They don't have to though. A company may choose to disclose that they are using highly refined ingredients that do not contain detectable modified genetic material in the finished product. So if you want to learn more about GMOs and how they're really important tool in our modern agricultural landscape, highly recommend checking out www canr.msu.edu/gmos and it'll tell you more about GMOs, what it means, and, yeah, it's a really great resource. So regenerative agriculture. I don't know about you guys, but I hear the word regenerative agriculture at least once a day now in my job. It was not nearly as big of a buzzword before and it's really been coming up in recent years. What is regenerative agriculture? Regenerative agriculture are practices that focus on going beyond the reduction of negative impacts to ensure that agriculture has a positive environmental effect. You're not just trying to keep your plants happy and healthy, but you're also trying to keep the environment and the soil and your entire farm as a system happy and healthy. So this view of agriculture is not new. It's been around since we've been doing agriculture truly. The roots of which can truly can be traced to indigenous knowledge and history of land management throughout the globe. So it seems that this term is everywhere, like I mentioned earlier, and it has rallied many from businesses and producers to consumers. But there isn't really a regenerative there isn't a really a regenerative definition for the marketplace. People can just say regeneratively grown and be like, Yeah, it's grown regeneratively, but what does that mean? So current regenerative certification and premium pricing options, there are a lot of different certifications that you can that exist that can say that can that mean that you are certified to be regenerative. But there's a lot. There's ten right here and this isn't even all of them. This was a list that one of our coworkers shared with us and she was like, I just picked the ten biggest ones. There are so many different certifications. There's so many different ones because there are different things that count to all of these different certifiers have different things that they find important and think are the most important part about being regenerative. Um, and then also, it can be for different types of crops. So, what would be regenerative for a cow farm might not make a lot of sense on a blueberry farm or might make sense on a cotton farm, but might not make sense with a chicken farm, so important to keep that in mind as well. So it takes into account how farms are being assessed, whether it's whole farm, field by field, outcomes based, practice based, and then tells you what outcomes or practices are being prioritized. So I think hopefully I didn't talk for too long, but I think it's you now. Yeah, no, you're good. We have plenty of time. Thanks, Cheyenne. All we have another little quiz for you if you want to respond in the chat. Which of these farms do you think is organic? All or none. Great answer, Heather. Yeah, so all of these potentially could be organic. And when I say organic, in this case, I'm talking about certified organic. So as Cheyenne said earlier, organic certification is a program of USDA, and any one of these farms could potentially be certified under the USDA organic standards. I think a lot of people maybe assume that it looks something like the one on the far left side there. But we also have a lot of really large scale organic farms that grow a lot of the same type of crop in the middle. And there's also the ability for hydroponic farms or farms that are grown in water with a nutrient solution instead of in the soil to be certified under USDA organic as well. That's okay. You can go ahead, Cheyenne. Another, I think, really big misconception with organic is that if you're buying organic, that food has never been sprayed with any pesticide or herbicide or fungicide and that there's been no chemicals used on that product. That's not necessarily the case. Some farms do not use these products, but a lot of farms do that are certified organic. In fact, there's over 9,000 products that are approved for use on organic farms. You may see sometimes when you go to the garden center a little label that says OMRI or and that is a directory of products that are allowable for use under the USDA organic regulations. Again, we're just trying to do some myth busting here and help you be a more informed consumer. There's no good or bad here. We're not saying that no spray is good or spraying is bad or anything like that. These are just choices that people have for their farm businesses and that I want to make sure that you know what all these different labels mean. So, the other thing to know about USDA organic is that while it is a program of the federal government, there's a lot of certifiers out there. So there's a lot of companies that farmers or food producers work with to verify that they're meeting the practices that the government has set for organic practices. So if you go to that QR code or that link, You can see all of the different certifiers that people can choose from, and the costs associated varies widely. There is a cost to participate in this program, can range from a couple hundred dollars to potentially over $1,000, depending on the certifier that you choose and the amount of time it takes and things like that. There's a lot of different factors to consider. Next slide, please. So when it comes to organic, one of the things that they're looking for in the regulations are the inputs that you're using on the farm. You can click again. So what are inputs? Inputs are things like compost and potting soil, fertilizer and soil amendments, pesticides, herbicides, and again, fungicides, all of these things that are organic approved products. It could be the things that you're planting, whether you're using seeds, the seeds, the plants, the roots, perennials. These all need to meet the organic standards that are set aside by the government. Um, even things like mulch, wood chips, straw, plastics, biofilms. Some people will use what's called plastic mulch. So they'll lay plastic down and plant within that to prevent weeds from growing. All these things need to meet the organic standards. And then chemicals that would be used after the product is harvested, maybe to wash the product, and the surfaces that are being used, like a table would need to have the chemicals applied to that like to sanitize, it also have to meet the organic standards. So there's a lot of things to be considered on a farm. In order to meet those standards. And when they go out and do the inspection, they're verifying that the farm is adhering to all of these different standards. Next slide, please. And then there's some different things. Oop, the animation got weird. Could you click again on that, Cheyenne? One more. For livestock, there's some additional considerations. Again, we have the livestock inputs, similar to the things it takes to grow a plant. There's things it takes to grow an animal, and those are called inputs. One specific thing about livestock is that no antibiotics can be used under organic certification. So that is one thing that's totally out. If you have to treat a sick animal, which is required under the regulations, you have to take that animal out of your organic system and you can't sell that meat or egg, as an organic product. But vaccines are allowable. That's a distinction there. We definitely want to prevent illnesses and treat illnesses, but if it's been treated with antibiotics, it cannot be sold as organic. Um, Also, there's requirements for the living conditions of the animals, and because there are regulations around pasture intake in order to get organic certified, oftentimes, all of the certified organic livestock farms also have crop certification because they're growing the feed or the pasture based feed if it's grass fed animal, for example, um, they're growing that and they have to meet the organic standards for that feed as well. They're often getting both of those certifications. Then on top of that, you have to work with a certified organic processor to process the meat as well. So livestock certification goes through a lot of additional steps as opposed to just the crop certification. Next slide, please. The next thing we're going to talk about is natural. This is one of those claims that I feel like you see a lot, but it's often not backed up by much. Let's talk a little bit about natural. There are ways to verify the claim natural. For meat, poultry, and eggs, this can be regulated through USDA, and in this case, it doesn't relate when you see the natural label on meat or poultry products, It doesn't relate necessarily to how the animal was raised, but rather how that meat or egg was processed. All shell eggs, again, those eggs that are just like the full egg that you buy, not the liquid egg, they all meet that claim because they haven't really gone through any processing. The hen lays the egg, it probably gets washed and sanitized, but it hasn't actually gotten processed. But any other processed meat or animal product, if it has minimal processing and contains no artificial ingredients or added colors, they can claim that it is natural. Next, please. You also might see this label or here something as being certified naturally grown. This is another third party certification that's out there. Um, this one is really close to the organic standard, but the way that the farms get certified is slightly different. So it's more of a grassroots type certification where farmers are going through a peer review process, so they actually get reviewed to their practices by other farmers, and instead of those fees like with certified organic, they actually pay dues into this organization. So it's like a membership based model, and they do offer financial assistance for some growers. Next would be just anyone using this claim, which is not independently verified, which I see a lot. There's a lot of natural out there, so I just wanted to flag that for you all. Just really briefly a little bit about farm animal and meat claims. We often see these fitting into three different categories. They tend to go around living and raising conditions for the animals, the diet of the animal, and then the sourcing or traceability made in the USA or something like that. Next, So for the welfare claims, USDA has not really defined these in the regulations or policy. So if you see things like humanely raised or sustainably farmed, they don't really regulate that, but they will approve someone to use that claim if they provide an explanation on the label of how that is defined by their farm. You may see humanely raised, and then it would also have to have a little statement that says, our farm defines humanely raised as doing this, this and this. Next. There are though, a number of independent, so not government regulated, but third party regulated programs that farmers can participate in around animal welfare. These are some of them. There are even more than this, and you can see they vary in the types of animals that they cover and one of them even covers working dogs that work with livestock. I thought that was interesting. Next, please. So for living or raising conditions for meat and poultry, if you're using things like cage free or crate free or free range or non confined or pasteurized, those do require that additional statement by the producer. This is an example of a label. This is, I believe, from an egg carton that said pasture raised, and then it defines how the farm defines that. At Joe's farm, we move our hens to fresh grass regularly to ensure a high quality product. That's really the farm making a verification of how they interpret that pasture raised statement. There's a couple of specific claims that require continuous free access to the outdoors for a minimum of 120 days a year. So these are really specific to, like, how the animal is going outside. So things like free roaming, pasture fed, pasture grown, or meadow raised. It's interesting though because that's really similar to that first list. So there are regulations that seem like they should apply to all these different labels and they only apply to a few. I think that there's just a lot of claims and labels being out there. Eventually, the regulation will probably catch up to it, but for right now, this is the situation of that. Next, please. Diet claims, if you're making a diet claim on your meat or poultry product, the USDA requires that that animal is eating your claim diet for the entire lifetime unless they're a mammal, they can have milk first, and then after weaning, they have to have that diet. So if you say grass fed, you have to have that entire diet in order to make that grass fed claim. Sometimes you'll see grass fed and grass finished. You'll see it in different ways like that, and that's because sometimes an animal will be grass fed up until a point and then fed grain. So you may see it written that way too, but in order for you as a producer to make that grass fed claim under USDA regulation, they do have to have that diet for their entire life. And same way with the hens. I always giggle a little bit at vegetarian fed because hens will naturally eat a lot of small animals and insects and things like that. There's no way to really guarantee that they're not catching some bugs. Even in a barn type system, an indoor raising system, they might get a few flies, but essentially this means that the feed that they're buying from their source, their grain elevator, their feed store is vegetarian feed. Next slide, please. With the grass fed in addition to that USDA verification of just the label or the words that may go on the package, you can also get independent certifications to use these logos. There's a couple of different options out there for getting certified grass fed. Next page. Another quiz, which animals can legally receive hormones from this list. We have swine, turkeys, chickens, or cows. Any guesses? All right. None. That's a good guess. There's one. I'll give you a hint. There's one. It's not swine actually. It's actually the cow. So under our federal regulations, oops, sorry. No. No poultry or swine can receive hormones, but the cows can. Interestingly enough, a lot of these packages do say no hormones or no added hormones. But if you read the fine print, where we got the little tagline for this presentation, there's usually an asterisk on there if it's from poultry or pork and it will say that, thank you Cheyenne. Right there, there's a little asterisk where it says no added hormones because hormones are not allowed to be used on swine or poultry. Just a little fun fact. All right. We're going to get a little bit into seafood. There's some certifications out there for sustainable seafood. This is from the Marine Stewardship Council, and they certify fisheries, supply chain, and then also seaweed harvesting, not just the fish bowl. So there's been a lot of increase in sea vegetables and in people's food interests lately. They also have a certification for that. Next slide, please. Oop, back a little bit. Thank you. And then there's also kind of a similar one that certifies fish farms as well. So those look kind of similar, but they're two separate ones. One is really more about the wild catfish and supply chains, things that are harvested. The other one is really for fish farms. Next slide, please. There's a cool app and website through the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. So if you are a seafood eater and you want to be looking for more sustainable seafood options. That's a really good one to use. You can download the guides from their website or through an app, and they try to make it really easily, really easy for you to make the choices by color coding them. Best choice is green. Good alternative is yellow, and then red is avoid. They also have some partner restaurants and partner businesses that can partner with Monterey Bay Aquarium to not serve or not buy things that are on that avoid list. You can also look up the list of their different partner restaurants and businesses on their website too. Next slide. In Michigan, we have some great lakes and we have lots of local seafood. We'll talk about local food in a little bit too, but I wanted to slide this in the seafood section because our Michigan Sea Grant, which is part of MSU Extension, it's also a partnership with the University of Michigan. They have some great information about the seafood industry in Michigan and how you can support sustainable fish eating. And then also the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has eat safe fish guides for each area of Michigan to make sure that you're choosing fish that don't have levels of chemicals that are harmful to humans. I just want to plug those two awesome resources as well. Next slide, please. Okay. So speaking of local, as Cheyenne kind of mentioned earlier, there's really no standard definition of what local means. That's kind of one of those self verified claims, but it could mean a number of different things. It could mean multiple things. But generally, we think about the geographic aspects, right? So maybe it's from your state of Michigan or the region, the Midwest. Maybe it is within 100 miles of your house. It could be all of these things. A lot of times we also think about the economic piece, and this ties into social as well. So keeping those dollars local, supporting family owned businesses in your community, um, environmental aspects sometimes also get looped in with local. A lot of times I think people choose to eat local sometimes for environmental reasons of that food not having to travel farther or supporting farms that they can verify their farming practices and also food quality. A lot of times people think of local food as being fresher because it was just harvested more recently and maybe didn't get on a truck and travel across the country. All of these different things can fit into that definition of local. Next slide. Michigan is an awesome place to get local food if you didn't know. We produce so many awesome agricultural products and a lot of those are food products. It's a little hard to see because our states pretty big and the pictures are a little small. But this is a really awesome graphic that shows the top commodities that are produced in each county of Michigan. This is from Michigan agriculture in the classroom. They put together this graphic to really help drive home the variety of things that are produced in Michigan and some of those top products for each county. But we grow so many things. You can pretty much get everything here that you'd want to eat except for, let's see, coffee, that one's hard, bananas, tropical fruit, things like that. We that we're the most diverse state with a consistent water supply. Absolutely. California does beat us out for variety, but they don't have the Great Lakes. We have a consistent water supply and we grow so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables and meats and dairy products and all kinds of things. Yeah, next slide, please. One of the things you can do as a food citizen and informed food consumer and if you're interested in supporting more local farms is learn about the seasonality of how our food is produced. Obviously, it's February in Michigan. There's not a whole lot growing outside in our farm fields at the moment when it comes to fruits and vegetables and things like that. So some crops can really only be grown outside, but others can be grown in structures like this one, which is it's called a high tunnel or a hoop house. It's an unheated greenhouse. And actually, farmers in Michigan are growing certain varieties of greens all year round in Michigan and things like carrots, things like carrots and potatoes and winter squash up until a point, but they can be stored for long periods of time. So even if they get harvested in the late fall, you might still be able to eat them well into winter with a good storage system. Apples too, we pretty much can get local apples year round in Michigan because we have great storage technology that controls the atmosphere around the apples, and so they stay fresh until they run out, basically. Then we have a lot of livestock products that are available year round too. So There's really only some crops that we can grow in the winter, but there's some available. But if you want to think about eating more seasonally, you can look at some of these charts. Next slide, please, like this one that talk about what's in season each month in Michigan. Right now, we've got maple syrup, maybe still from last year, but maybe there might be some coming in late this month or early next month being harvested from our maple trees. But you can see we really don't get into our main produce production until May, and in May, we really just start to see asparagus and herbs. But then as we get into the summer, we start to see a lot more variety. The other cool thing is that a lot of these products can be preserved in various ways. Freezing is a really easy option. Canning is coming back in popularity. So there's ways to make these seasonal foods last longer, but this is really when they're fresh or during these months of the year. And this isn't a food thing, but I just wanted to plug that. We grow a lot of Christs trees too, so you can even get a local Christmas tree in Michigan. So we're at the end of our time, but I wanted to just plug our free online course. If you want to learn more about agriculture in Michigan and where food comes from and talking about stories around food and understanding food systems. We have this great new online course, so feel free to sign up for that and learn more. Next slide, please. So here's our contact information if you want to reach out for more questions, but we do have some time for questions, and I want to get that link also in the chat to the food source course. Mariel, I don't know if you know, but someone asked, Can hormones be used in organic cow products? Any other questions while Mariel is getting some links and information? So, Heather asked, it feels like there's a difference between dairy production and meat production related to the hormone question. Is that true? I'm not a livestock expert. I'll put that out there. So this is something I'd have to look up. Thank you. I think the difference? Go ahead. I think it was just a follow up to that question about whether hormones can be used in organic cow products because I know I've heard people claim that there's no hormones used in their milk products, and it felt like that was a regulation, not just a but I'm not positive either because I'm not a livestock person. So you will see on a lot of milk this milk was produced without rBST I think that's the acronym. Is that what you might be thinking of? That could be it. Yeah. Okay. And I think rBST is a, makes you make more milk. Exactly. Yeah. Yep, recombinant bovine somatropin is a synthetic hormone that increases milk production in cows. It's also known as recombinant bovine growth hormone. I remember seeing made with milk from non rBST treated cows on my milk cartons in high school. I'm not sure. Maybe we should invite an animal livestock person. Yeah. Any? That's the fine print that we didn't get into is the So under the organic livestock standard, it's added growth hormones are prohibited. That's the answer for any. So that would relate to dairy or beef under the organic standard. Hopefully that helps to answer the question. This is a question I have. So if a chicken gets sick and has a biotic infection or whatever like some kind of like bacteria and they treat them with antibiotics, so is there a different is there like in between like organic and like regular? No, it's no. At that point, they're no longer able to have that chicken for organic production. So they could sell it to a farm that doesn't have organic certification. They could they could keep it on their farm, but they have to keep it totally separate. So a big part of organic certification is the record keeping and kind of, like, being able to trace everything that's on your farm. So the inspector would come and they would want to see, you know, if you did treat that animal, what happened to that animal, and how did you keep that system of if you kept the animal on your farm, how did you keep that all separate from the rest of your organic system? One of the things that I like to do when talking about this in person, it's a little hard to do on Zoom, but you may want to go explore your fridge at some point after this presentation and just take a look and see how many different labels and claims that you can find on the products in your fridge or in your pantry. It's amazing how much information we're being bombarded with on our food packaging sometimes. But it's also interesting. When I've done this again in person, we'll just have a big pile of egg cartons and we'll look at all the different claims and then categorize them and talk about what all those different things mean. Yeah, if you want to bring that activity into your own home. I'm sure you have a lot of different food packages around with lots of information on them to look at. All right. Well, if we don't have any more questions, we can wrap up for the day.
