Michael Ableman

Michael Ableman, Center for Ecoliteracy Food and Farming Advisor, "is the founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens and currently directs the historic Foxglove Farm in British Columbia. Ableman and Zenobia Barlow, cofounder and executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, recently joined a delegation from the Nobel prize-winning Grameen Bank in Jamaica to discus the central role of food practices in alleviating poverty. He is also the author of several books, most recently Fields of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey in Search of Real Food and the People who Grow It (Chronicle Books, 2005)."


 * Advisory Board, Edible Schoolyard Project

Chez Sludge
Abelman is on the Advisory Board of the Chez Panisse Foundation. The Food Rights Network released a major investigative report on July 9, 2010 titled: Chez Sludge: How the Sewage Sludge Industry Bedded Alice Waters. It examines collusion between the Chez Panisse Foundation and the SFPUC based on an extensive open records investigation of the SFPUC internal files. (To view the internal documents see: SFPUC Sludge Controversy Timeline.)

Foundation Mired in 'Sewage Sludge on Gardens'
In 2009 and 2010 a major controversy erupted in San Francisco involving Chez Panisse Foundation Executive Director Francesca Vietor when the Center for Food Safety (upon whose Advisory Board sits Alice Waters) and the Organic Consumers Association called on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, of which Vietor is Vice President, to end its give-away of toxic sewage sludge as 'organic compost' for gardeners. In advance of the OCA's March 4 sludge protest at City Hall, the SFPUC temporarily halted the give-away.

The misleading labeled "organic compost," which the PUC has given away free to gardeners since 2007, is composed of toxic sewage sludge from San Francisco and eight other counties. Very little toxicity testing has been done, but what little has been done is alarming. Just the sludge from San Francisco alone has tested positive for 1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane (a.k.a. DBCP), Isopropyltoluene (a.k.a. p-cymene or p-isopropyltoluene), Dioxins and Furans.

The Organic Consumers Association conducted a noon hour picket of Chez Panisse April 1, 2010, after Alice Waters refused a request to oppose growing food in sewage sludge. The industry front group ACSH is now making Alice Waters a poster-child for toxic sewage sludge.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Chez Panisse Foundation