New England Public Radio

Fred Bever

Seaweed On Your Dinner Plate: The Next Kale Could Be Kelp

You’ve heard that you should eat more kale. Now a small but growing industry wants you to eat more kelp.

Seaweed production has long been a big industry in Asia. But recently, American entrepreneurs have launched new enterprises that grow fresh and frozen seaweed right here in the States.

Just off the Maine coast, I caught up with Peter Fischer, Peter Arnold and Seth Barker, whose new venture, Maine Fresh Sea Farms, is yielding its first full harvest. From a small skiff out in the clean waters of Maine’s Damariscotta estuary, they winch up a rope that’s heavy with floppy sheets of glistening kelp.

Back in September, they set tiny starter plants of three varieties of edible seaweed out here: kelp, dulse and alaria. Now they have several wide lines of biomass that extend out for yards, bulging just under the water’s surface.

“These have been growing really fast,” Arnold says, marveling at the seaweed’s speedy growth. “Some of them are well over 10 feet.”

These men are all older than 65, and they’ve worked various marine endeavors for decades. They’ve watched the decline of some of Maine’s traditional fisheries: sardine, cod, and more recently, shrimp.

For this latest venture, they’re getting some financial help from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and from a local nonprofit development agency. Arnold says the hope is that seaweed farming can boost and diversify existing infrastructure and expertise in the state’s seafaring communities.

“No one was really doing fresh, at least here in this market,” Arnold says. “So we thought, ‘That’s an opening.’ ”

Maybe they’ve found one. The greens are selling for up to $15 a pound at retail; restaurants pay a bit less. Another Maine company, Ocean Approved, is selling truckloads of frozen Gulf of Maine seaweed to hospitals and schools — including the universities of Iowa and Texas.

People have foraged wild seaweed off the Eastern Seaboard for centuries. And some small businesses have grown up around harvesting wild seaweed for human and animal consumption. But now a much more active effort to grow seaweed in the U.S. is afoot.

“You know what? Kelp is the new kale,” says Barton Seaver, who directs Harvard’s Healthy and Sustainable Food Program. A former D.C.-area chef, he’s all-in for seaweed and has even published a seaweed cookbook. “Watch out, ’cause it’s coming, and it’ll be everywhere in the next decade,” he says.

The virtues of macro-algae are many, in Seaver’s eyes: They require no fertilizer, no pesticides, no fresh water, no arable land. Their nutritional profile is admirable, he says, providing healthy doses of iodine as well as potassium, calcium and other micro-nutrients, protein, soluble fiber, and Omega-3 fatty acids.

And seaweed’s benefits aren’t just for humans. It’s quick growth means quick carbon dioxide uptake, which can reduce ocean acidification. Seaweed can filter excess nitrogen and phosphorous from the water, too. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded project in Washington State’s Puget Sound is aiming to prove that farmed seaweed can create a “protective halo” around stressed sea habitats.

It’s not just a sustainable crop: Seaver says it’s restorative.

“And that’s a very real difference and a major evolutionary point in the sustainability dialogue,” he notes. “We’re not at a point where we’re just focused on doing no harm. We’re really beginning to investigate and discover food-production methods that allow us to restore and heal environments.”

“And,” Seaver adds, “it’s delicious.”

Really?

“I grew up in Maine, and this is what you used to abuse your younger sister on the beach — whipping her with kelp,” says Neal Harden, the chef at a soon-to-open vegetarian version of New York City’s Michelin-rated ABC Kitchen. He acknowledges that seaweed can seem like a funny choice for haute cuisine.

But Harden says he loves the stuff. “It brings a sort of brininess and this oceanic flavor,” he says, as he tosses together dressing for a fettuccine dish he’s developing for his new restaurant. “This dish just has so much umami, between the giant hen [of-the-woods] mushrooms I just threw in there and the seaweed.”

Harden has been looking for a source of fresh ocean greens for his new menu. He says he’s lucky to have found the Maine product, which he plans to incorporate into several dishes — including the fettuccine and a morel and dulse salad — while it’s in season (seaweed grows best in the colder months).

He’s not the only one getting into kelp. Several chefs in Maine’s vibrant food scene, true to the locavore ethic, are giving Maine sea greens a try.

The collective American palate may still take some time to fully embrace farmed U.S. macro-algae. But if the seaweed revolution hasn’t quite arrived yet, like the kelp in Maine’s Damariscotta River, it’s showing some pretty rapid growth.

Fettucine With Maine Seaweed, Market Mushrooms And Spring Onions

Recipe courtesy of Neal Harden, chef de cuisine at ABCV — the forthcoming vegetarian venture from ABC Kitchen

Ingredients:

½ cup mixed fresh Maine seaweed (sugar kelp, winged kelp, kelp stipes), blanched and shocked in ice water, cut or torn into bite-sized pieces

¼ cup spring onion, white parts, cut into thin rings + 1 tsp. sliced spring onion greens

4 whole shiitake caps, cut in half

½ cup (loosely packed) oyster mushrooms, stems removed, torn or cut into bite-sized pieces

1/8 tsp. salt

1 pinch kelp powder (optional but delicious)

5 grinds of fresh black pepper (plus more to finish)

2-3 tsp. extra virgin olive oil

1 cup fresh fettucine

7 sprigs of fresh dill

Directions:

Bring a small pan to medium-low heat. Sweat the spring onions in the olive oil until they soften and begin to get translucent. Add the mushrooms, salt, pepper and kelp powder. Turn up the heat just slightly. Cook until mushrooms are cooked through and releasing lots of juices. Add the seaweed and cook until it’s heated through and all flavors are melded. Add additional salt to taste.

Add cooked and drained fettuccine to the saute pan. Cook until pasta absorbs the juices, adding a bit of pasta water if sauce begins to dry out. Finish with additional fresh pepper and dill sprigs. Top with fresh, grated Parmesan if desired.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Illicit Version Of Painkiller Fentanyl Makes Heroin Deadlier

Angelo Alonzo, a resident of Portland, Maine, says he nearly died last month after injecting what he believed to be a safe dose of heroin — the same amount he’s taken before. But this time, he says, the drug knocked him to his knees.

“An amount that usually gives me a good mellow high was just way too much,” he says, “and I woke up in the shower and I was cold. And I didn’t put myself there.”

Alonzo was lucky: A friend quickly treated him with Naloxone, an emergency antidote, and he entered a rehab program. While it would take a toxicology workup to discover exactly what was in the “heroin” that floored him, Alonzo says he suspects some form of fentanyl — a drug that’s making a big showing in Maine.

All around North America, U.S. drug officials warn, some drug dealers are lacing heroin with an illicit version of the potent anesthesia drug fentanyl. The dangerous combination is quickly killing unsuspecting users — and worsening the nation’s epidemic of deaths from heroin overdose.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, and 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

Regional drug dealers add the illicit form of fentanyl to the heroin they sell in hopes of restoring the potency of a product that’s been diluted by dealers higher up the distribution chain.

“If you make that right mix, everyone loves your stuff,” Alonzo explains. “But, you know, that right mix might kill some people, too.”

Pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl is useful during surgery as an anesthesia drug and, in carefully titrated amounts. It also can be a blessing for patients in severe pain. But in the past two years, according to federal drug agents, Mexican cartels have ramped up production of a variant called acetyl fentanyl in clandestine labs. They are smuggling this version into the United States.

According to the DEA, acetyl fentanyl may be slightly less potent than fentanyl, but is still quite powerful. It is not yet included in many screens for toxic drugs, the DEA says. And this variant of fentanyl is also not approved for medical use in the United States.

Acetyl fentanyl’s street price is slightly higher than heroin’s, according to the DEA. But drug dealers apparently think the drug’s stunning potency makes it a good deal, nonetheless. The flip side? Two milligrams or less — a dose the size of a few grains of salt — can kill.

“Heroin is bad enough, but when you lace it with fentanyl, it’s like dropping a nuclear bomb on the situation,” says Mary Lou Leary, a deputy director in the White House’s office of National Drug Control Policy. “It’s so, so much more dangerous.”

There were at least 700 fentanyl-related deaths nationwide in a period from late 2013 through 2014, say federal officials. And many states, as well as Canadian provinces, are reporting a sudden wildfire of overdose deaths.

Two years ago, for example, Maine authorities documented just seven deaths related to illicit fentanyl. A year later the number of deaths jumped to 43, and Maine Attorney General Janet Mills says the problem is getting worse.

“In July alone, we suspect that approximately one death a day in Maine was due to a drug overdose of some sort,” she says. “We are confirming this with laboratory testing, but a substantial number of those involved fentanyl.”

Law enforcement officers and policymakers are struggling to react to the problem’s fast-moving spread. Only a handful of states have added acetyl fentanyl to their lists of banned substances. And the DEA added it to the federal list just this year.

Mills says prosecutors should seek the ability to make felony charges in fentanyl cases. That would not only facilitate dealmaking with users to get better information about drug networks, she says, but would also be useful leverage in getting more heroin users into drug treatment.

“We want to have a significant sentence hanging over them, Mills says, “so that we can encourage them — force them, if you will — into treatment.”

Federal and state authorities are trying to boost public awareness about fentanyl and have tried to get out the word locally when they discover a particularly dangerous batch of heroin on the streets.

But there’s a terrible irony in all this: For some heroin users, as Angelo Alonzo says, danger is magnetic.

“Usually when someone hears that people are dropping or dying out there — that’s usually when an addict wants that specific stuff,” Alonzo says. “They think that the high is unbelievable and they want it. You can understand why. But that’s a tough call. You’re playing with your life. ”

It’s unclear what Alonzo’s next call may be in his own difficult road toward recovery. He recently checked out of the local rehab shelter — against medical advice.

Fred Bever is a freelance reporter in Portland, Maine.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Governor Deval Patrick Joins Independence Day Reading of the Declaration of Independence

When the Declaration of Independence was first circulated through the thirteen American colonies, it was read aloud in town squares and other public places. It’s in that spirit that Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, held its annual Independence Day reading of the nation’s founding document. 

 Governor Deval Patrick was among about a thousand people, many wearing festive, patriotic gear, who crowded onto a sloped lawn at Shakespeare & Company this afternoon for its twelfth annual reading of the Declaration of Independence.

 A mood of Americana was conjured with songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and this version of “Oh, Susanna” performed by Company artists.   

 The Declaration was divided into some three dozen parts. A procession of community members, Shakespeare & Company actors and elected officials took turns reading the prose that sprang from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.

 Governor Patrick read some of the famous opening words.

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with their Creator by certain unalienable rights.”

 The crowd was engaged and frequently applauded, especially when the words had a contemporary resonance. Organizers say the Declaration, like Shakespeare, truly comes alive when it’s read out loud.

Artistic director Tony Simotes led the crowd in a call-and-response recitation of the Declaration’s closing words, with attendees pledging to each other their “lives, fortune, and sacred honor.”

 

Berkshire Festival Celebrates African-American History

Berkshire County may not be the first place one would expect a wide-ranging celebration of African-American heritage–its black population is only three percent, a little more than a third of that of the commonwealth as a whole. But a summer-long festival is throwing light on the region’s history. 

In Great Barrington, a musical duo brings a Civil War echo to one of the kickoff events of the Lift Ev’ry Voice festival. 

Magpie is set up under a tent behind the the W.E.B. Du Bois Center,  named for perhaps the most prominent African American leader with ties to the Berkshires.

From now until August, a range of venues will celebrate African American history and culture, from performances by the Dance Theatre of Harlem at Jacob’s Pillow to a poetry workshop for teens in Pittsfield.

While the festival throws light on specific historical figures and events, it is broad-reaching by design, says festival co-chair Shirley Edgerton

“Just focusing on the African American community encourages other communities to come forth and experience the richness of their culture and to share it with others.”

Dubois Center founder Randy Weinstein says he aims to celebrate this year’s one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, while also drawing connections to forms of modern-day oppression.

“Sure, it’s cultural to a degree, sure it’s artsy to a degree, but at its core we’re talking about the history of ending slavery. And I think that’s pretty bold.”

The festival, the second since 2011, is named for the song “Lift Ev’ ry Voice and Sing,” often called the African American national anthem, written by Great Barrington resident James Weldon Johnson in 1899.

Don Quinn Kelly, another festival co-chair, says the Lift Ev’ry Voice festival at its core is about freedom in American for all.

“The people can come and just celebrate each other, and not have to deal with anything other than: we’re here as a community, enjoy each other.”

 

Public Input Sought on Passenger Rail Plan

The possibility of extending passenger rail service remains a hot topic in western Massachusetts. Looking for a clearer sense of just what train service between Berkshire County and New York City might look like, rail planners are seeking public input at two meetings, the first in Lenox on Wednesday. Backers of expanded rail service in the Berkshires are proceeding anyway with plans to prepare for a day when the notion of re-connecting the county with train service to New York City is indeed feasible. 

A study is now underway to come up with potential options for passenger rail stations, funded by two hundred forty thousand dollars in Federal funds. The specifics of any eventual build-up could shift dramatically depending on what the public is looking for, according to Brian Domina of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission.

“How would they use the rail station and what do they expect when they get to a station? What amenities do they expect to have there?  Do they expect public transportation, rental cars, bike rentals, taxicabs? All those things we want to figure out.”

The public is invited to weigh in on this and other details at a public meeting Wednesday evening at Lenox Town Hall.

The Berkshire Regional Planning Commission is conducting the study along with Housatonic Railroad, the Connecticut based company which says it is considering extending passenger service from Pittsfield to Danbury, Connecticut, from which riders could travel to New York on the Metro-North commuter rail. 

Housatonic Railroad will make a short presentation at Wednesday’s meeting, which will begin at six pm. Another public input session will beheld at Great Barrington’s Monument Mountain Regional High School on July 10th. The train station study will include another year of research.