Food fight!

At noon today tomorrow, the Organic Consumers Association (an online grassroots effort dealing with "crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade") will protest Alice Waters at Chez Panisse Cafe. Why? Well, according to OCA Director Ronnie Cummins's angry press release, "we are protesting the failure of Alice Waters to oppose growing food on toxic sewage sludge, often deceptively labeled as 'organic compost.'"

The OCA site claims, via "scientific evidence," that city sewage sludge contains "hundreds 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." Also, it contains poop. (Hee!) Anyway, it seems the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is giving away this allegedly toxic sewage sludge compost "to unsuspecting gardeners in the Bay Area including school gardens."

What does Waters have to do with this gastronomic hubbub? The Executive Director of Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation, Francesca Vietor, is also the Vice President of the PUC.Thus, the OCA goes on to claim, "[b]oth Vietor and Waters support growing food on toxic sewage sludge."