Weekend reading: Former President Biden’s food-and-farming legacy
OOPS: A reader alerted me that all links have been taken down by the new administration.
In his last weeks in office, former President Biden issued a Fact Sheet on the food system investments achieved by his administration.
The Fact Sheet divides the achievements into several categories.
- Building new markets and income for farmers and ranchers
- Modernizing the middle of the agriculture and food supply chain: food processing, aggregation, and distribution
- Creating more fair and competitive markets
- Improving food access, nutrition security and health
- Enchancing food safety
- Supporting breakthrough agricultural rewearch and innovation
To highlight just one—food safety:
- USDA issued a rule to classify raw poultry products contaminated with specific Salmonella levels and serotypes as adulterated.
- USDA also finalized a rule declaring Salmonella an adulterant in raw breaded stuffed chicken products exceeding 1 colony-forming unit per gram.
- FDA launched the “Closer to Zero” initiative (C2Z), which sets forth a science-based approach to continually reducing exposure to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury to the lowest levels possible in foods eaten by babies and young children.
- FDA has issued numerous action levels for toxic elements: draft levels for lead in juices; final levels for lead in foods intended for babies and young children; and a final level for arsenic in apple juice.
- FDA revoked authorizations for the uses of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food because of the potential for adverse health effects in humans.
- FDA also revised its regulations and revoked prior-sanctioned uses of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) because studies consistently link consumption of PHOs (industrially produced trans fat) with heart disease.
- Before the end of the term, FDA also plans to revoke the authorization of Red No. 3, a red dye used in certain medications and various foods and beverages, including candies, cakes, frostings, and frozen desserts, due to studies showing that the dye caused cancer [it did this].
Perhaps coincidentally, Lisa Held at Civil Eats published How Four Years of Biden Reshaped Food and Farming: From day one, the administration prioritized climate, “nutrition security,” infrastructure investments, and reducing food system consolidation. Here’s what the president and his team actually did.
Her categories are somewhat different:
- Taking on Consolidation and Corporate Power, and Supporting Farmer Livelihood
- Tackling the Climate Crisis
- Regulating Pesticides and Other Chemicals
- Focusing on Food Safety
- Linking Hunger, Nutrition, and Health
- Supporting Food and Farm Workers
- Advancing Equity
Here’s my excerpted summary of her analysis of Taking on Corporate Power.
- Biden issued an executive order that included 72 actions to tackle corporate consolidation across all sectors [including Agriculture]
- USDA restarted progress on the 100-year-delayed Packers & Stockyards Act rules meant to protect farmers from meatpacker abuses…This time, the USDA made real strides and finalized three major rules…just yesterday, making substantive changes to the poultry industry’s notorious “tournament system.”…A fifth rule related to creating fairer cattle markets is still in its early stages.
- Biden’s Department of Justice also obtained consent decrees…against poultry companies Koch Foods and Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms (with the help of USDA)…Vilsack’s USDA was actively investigating abuses reported by contract growers for Tyson as well, although nothing had come of that investigation by election time.
- Meat labeled “Product of USA” must now come from animals born and raised in the U.S….He did not reinstate Country of Origin Labeling, the next step on that continuum that many groups are still fighting for.
- USDA worked to distribute $500 million in grants to small and mid-size meatpacking plants to give them a leg up against the highly consolidated big players. The USDA also invested in…Regional Food Business Centers, and making it easier for schools to purchase local foods for kids’ meals.
- While Biden’s USDA took a lot of action on corporate consolidation, some experts question whether the steps will add up to anything more than feel-good spending.
- Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Lina Khan…issued new merger guidelines and was successful in blocking Kroger’s takeover of Albertson’s, which would have increased consolidation in the grocery industry.
- Biden’s USDA distributed $2.5 billion in loan forgiveness to 47,800 farmers labeled “distressed borrowers” and $2 billion in payments to 43,000 farmers who experienced any past discrimination in USDA loan programs, based on race, gender, or other factors.
The lists go on and on. Held’s only overall conclusion: “The impacts of many of those efforts will take years to reveal themselves, while other actions may be more quickly sustained or reversed in the second Trump administration.”
Comment
I did not know about many of the items listed here and I’m guessing you didn’t either. My impression is that the Biden Administration tried hard to improve the food system in multiple ways, some publicized, some not. But Held is right: we won’t know for a long time how much good all this did, but we are likely to find out soon whether the gains will be overturned by the new administration. She will continue to write about such topics. I will too.
