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The Economist is hosting a debate:  “Biotechnology: this house believes that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory.”

The defender: Pamela Ronald, professor of pathology at UC Davis.

In many regions, the use of biotech seeds allows successful organic production, an important marketing niche, by reducing disease spread, while enabling the remaining 97% of agriculture to become more sustainable by reducing insecticide use.

The opposing view: Dr. Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of The Organic Center and former executive director on the National Academy of Science’s Board on Agriculture.

Alternative systems can often increase yields more than GE seeds can. A recent FAO review of sustainable agriculture systems concluded that yields were increased by an average of 79% across eight systems of agriculture, compared with conventional “best practices”.

I got here too late to vote but there are plenty of comments to argue about.  Enjoy!

I had a good laugh when Dick Jackson, who chairs the Environmental Health Sciences department at UCLA’s School of Public Health, forwarded this article: “McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy.”

I assumed this was another priceless piece from The Onion, whose recent article on the effects of the U.S. Farm Bill on soybean production is equally hilarious.

But no such luck.  The British food writer, Felicity Lawrence, has three investigative reports in the November 12 issue of The Guardian (U.K.).  You want to see food politics in action?  Watch what is happening in Britain since the conservative government of David Cameron took over (I have commented on this previously).

Lawrence writes that the U.K. Department of Health has invited companies such as McDonald’s, KFC, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Mars, and Diageo to form “food networks” to write policies to address public health problems such as obesity, alcohol, and diet-related disease.  I have highlighted some of the critical issues in red.

The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal’s sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.

The leading supermarkets are an equally strong presence, while the responsibility [for the] deal’s physical activity group is chaired by the Fitness Industry Association, which is the lobby group for private gyms and personal trainers.

In early meetings, these commercial partners have been invited to draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed. They have been assured by Lansley [the health secretary] that he wants to explore voluntary not regulatory approaches…Using the pricing of food or alcohol to change consumption has been ruled out. One group was told that the health department did not want to lead, but rather hear from its members what should be done.

As for what this means:

Jeanette Longfield, head of the food campaign group Sustain, said: “This is the equivalent of putting the tobacco industry in charge of smoke-free spaces. We know this ‘let’s all get round the table approach’ doesn’t work, because we’ve all tried it before, including the last Conservative government. This isn’t ‘big society’, it’s big business.”

Lawrence has two additional articles on the background of this move.  “First goal of David Cameron’s ‘nudge unit’ is to encourage healthy living” explains that the focus of these efforts will be on food and alcohol choices:

The idea is that individuals can be persuaded – “nudged” – into making better choices for themselves without force or regulation. The coalition agreement talks about “finding intelligent ways to encourage people to make better choices for themselves.”

Her second background piece, “Who is the government’s health deal with big business really good for?”, explains how this happened.

It must have felt like a new dawn for the food and drinks industries. After more than four years of determined and co-ordinated lobbying, they were about to achieve the corporate PR agency dream: being invited to write the policy themselves. And, if the Conservatives won the election, in Lansley they would have a health secretary who understood them.

He not only subscribed to the libertarian view that public health should be more a matter of personal responsibility than government action; he bought in to the whole pro-business PR view of the world….Lansley had already adopted several of the industry’s favoured approaches to the food, drink and health crises, promising that “government and FSA promotion of traffic light labelling will stop”; that there would be no mandatory extension of advertising restrictions; and that alcohol strategy would focus on the responsible drinking messages and improved labelling the industry preferred to regulation.

Lansley also committed to avoiding a narrow focus on “fear of junk foods” that might demonise individual manufacturers’ products, and to talking instead in terms of diets as a whole, of the balance of energy in and energy out, and of portion size. He had said the government and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) would “highlight the continuing contribution made by business to improving diet by reformulating its products“.

Yeah, right.  Even The Onion could not make this up.

Could this happen here?  Grass-roots democracy, anyone?

A new middle-school curriculum guide released by WorldLink and the Center for Ecoliteracy invites students and teachers to ask, “What’s the story of my food?” Nourish: Food + Community, they say, is part of a national initiative—one that combines PBS programming, curriculum resources, website content, teacher seminars, and youth summits.  Its purpose?  To increase food literacy.

We want students to explore the question: How do the food choices we make—individually and as a society—affect the health of people and the environment?

The Center for Ecoliteracy is a nonprofit dedicated to education for sustainable living.  It also publishes the guide, Rethinking School Lunch, the curriculum guide to the film, Food, Inc. and other useful publications.

I get asked all the time for resources about how to fix school lunches.  Thanks to the Center for making this easier.

The role of agriculture in causing and becoming affected by climate change is, to say the least, of much current interest.  The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) has  a new report out on precisely this issue: “Climate-Smart” Agriculture: Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security, Adaptation, and Mitigation.

The report focuses on agriculture in developing countries.  These must develop “climate-smart” approaches to cope with the challenge of feeding a warmer, more heavily populated world.

Climate change is expected to reduce agriculture productivity, stability and incomes in many areas that already experience high levels of food insecurity — yet world agriculture production will need to increase by 70 percent over the coming four decades in order to meet the food requirements of growing world population.

What needs to change?

• Agriculture: must produce more food, waste less, and make it easier for farmers to get their produce to consumers.
• Farming: must do a better job of managing natural resources like water, land and forests, soil nutrients and genetic resources to be more resilient to natural disasters.
• Insurers: must do a better job of helping farmers cope with climate-related problems.
• Agriculture: must find ways to reduce its environmental impacts — including lowering its own greenhouse gas emissions — without compromising food security and rural development.

This will take money, but from where?

The report gives examples of how farmers are already moving to tackle these issues and adopt new, climate-smart practices.

But how odd: how come FAO isn’t talking about agricultural practices in developed countries ?  Don’t we have some responsibility here?

Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors, devotes its current issue to corporate and professorial conflicts of interest.

I’m interviewed in this issue, in a Q and A with Academe editor Cat Warren: Big Food, Big Agra, and the Research University.

Guest editor Sheldon Krimsky explains that:

In this special issue, a group of internationally respected academics, science journalists, and other experts tackle what have become some of the thorniest issues facing higher education: corporate conflicts of interest, the chilling of scientific speech and academic freedom, and the urgent need to protect the integrity of scientific research.

Here’s what’s in the rest of the issue—nothing more about food, but plenty that is relevant to the ethical and corporate issues I often discuss on this site :

“Kneecapping” Academic Freedom: Corporate attacks on law school clinics are escalating.
Robert R. Kuehn and Peter A. Joy, law professors, Washington University in St. Louis

The Costs of a Climate of Fear: Ideological attacks on scientists undermine sound public policy.
Michael Halpern, program manager, Union of Concerned Scientists

BP, Corporate R&D, and the University: New lessons for research universities, thanks to a catastrophe.
Russ Lea, vice president for research, University of South Alabama

When Research Turns to Sludge: Tying strings to sludge is not as hard as it sounds.
Steve Wing, epidemiologist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A Not-So-Slippery Slope: Rejecting tobacco funding isn’t rocket science. It’s basic ethics.
Allan M. Brandt , historian and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

The Historians of Industry: What happens when historians enter the courtroom? Mostly, industry rules.
Gerald Markowitz, historian, City University of New York, and David Rosner, historian, Columbia University

Hubris in Grantland: Languor and laissez-faire greet conflict of interest at the NIH.
Daniel S. Greenberg, science journalist

The Moral Education of Journal Editors: Disclosure is a necessary first step toward scientific integrity.
Sheldon Krimsky, urban and environmental policy and planning professor, Tufts University

Diagnosing Conflict-of-Interest Disorder: How Big Pharma helps write the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Lisa Cosgrove, clinical psychologist, University of Massachusetts Boston, and residential research fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University

The Canadian Corporate-Academic Complex: The unhealthy collaboration of corporate funders and university administrators.
James Turk, executive director, Canadian Association of University Professors

The World Health Organization (WHO) has a new, tough report out: “Set of recommendations on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children.”

It’s policy aim: to reduce the impact on children of marketing of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt.

Here are some of its recommendations (edited):

• Given that the effectiveness of marketing is a function of exposure and power, the overall policy objective should be to reduce both the exposure of children to, and power of, marketing of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt.
• To achieve the policy aim and objective, Member States should consider different approaches, i.e. stepwise or comprehensive, to  reduce marketing of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt, to children.
• Settings where children gather should be free from all forms of marketing of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt.
• Governments should be the key stakeholders in the development of policy and provide leadership, through a multistakeholder platform, for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. In setting the national policy framework, governments may choose to allocate defined roles to other stakeholders, while protecting the public interest and avoiding conflict of interest.
• Considering resources, benefits and burdens of all stakeholders involved, Member States should consider the most effective approach to reduce marketing to children of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt.
• Member States should cooperate to put in place the means necessary to reduce the impact of crossborder marketing (in-flowing and out-flowing) of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt to children.

The Rudd Center at Yale has just released Fast Food F.A.C.T.S., a thoroughly comprehensive report on the marketing of fast food to children and adolescents.

The report lavishly illustrates and extensively documents the ways in which fast food companies market to kids, the strategies they use, and the effects of these efforts on kids’ diets.

Readers: add it to your library!  FDA and FTC: get busy!

Addition: Advertising Age reports on the fast food industry’s response to the Rudd Center report.  All the industry can come up with, says Advertising Age, is a “canned response.”  Looks like the Rudd Center got it right.