Tom Philpott.  Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It.  Bloomsbury, 2020.  

Here’s my blurb:

In Perilous Bounty, Tom Philpott probes what’s wrong with Big Agriculture—examining how it depletes California’s water, poisons water in the Midwest, and ruins soil resources—and proposes ways to reconfigure the food system to better promote health and sustain the environment. This must-read book is deeply researched, compellingly written, and thoroughly inspiring.

And here’s a quick excerpt:

We have reached the limits of “market-as-movement” to transform the food system.  In an economy marked by severe inequality, wage stagnation, and persistently high levels of poverty, the market approach excludes the population that can’t afford to pay the higher prices of organic, local food or devote time to cooking from scratch.  It threatens to create an ecologically robust niche for the prosperous within a dominant food system that quietly lurches on, wrecking the environment and making people sick.  Well-off consumers should vote with their forks three times a day, but the pace of positive change they create has been no match for Big Food’s massive inertia and the rapid advance of climate change.  But something important has emerged over the same period: the stirrings of a new form of movement politics…  [p. 255]

I am interested in the politics of CBD edibles and supplements, and have been collecting items.  The big issue, of course, is regulation.

The FDA has a web page devoted to this topic:

FDA Regulation of Cannabis and Cannabis-Derived Products, Including Cannabidiol (CBD)

• Consumer Information
• FDA Communications
• Regulatory Resources
• Questions and Answers

Here are some recent articles on what’s happening with CBD.

• FDA chief Hahn says it would be ‘fool’s game’ to try to shut down CBD markets: FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn, MD, in a speech on Wednesday that despite its continued concern about insufficient safety data FDA has no plans to try to shut down the CBD markets. Hahn said that would amount to a “fool’s game.”… Read more
• FDA report on CBD seen as ‘disappointing’ recap of status quo: A report on CBD delivered by FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn, MD, was seen by food and dietary supplement industry stakeholders as offering little hope of a timely regulatory solution for the ingredient…. Read more
• Economic Viability of Industrial Hemp in the United States: A Review of State Pilot Programs: After a hiatus of almost 45 years, the 2014 Farm Bill reintroduced industrial hemp production in the U.S. through State pilot programs. This study documents outcomes and lessons learned from the State pilot programs.
•  GALLERY: Trend watching at the Cannabis Forum… ‘The hippies are being pushed out and the suits are coming in’:The hemp-derived CBD market is growing rapidly, although many CPG brands and retailers are waiting for clarity from the FDA on the regulatory path forward for cannabidiol before piling in, but what will distinguish the winners from the losers in this space? FoodNavigator-USA headed to the BevNET/Nosh Cannabis Forum in Santa Monica to find out. Read more
• CBD industry headed toward big overcapacity, expert asserts: The hemp/CBD industry may have gotten the cart before the horse in terms of extraction capacity and raw material supply, said an investment analyst familiar with the sector…. Read more
• FSAI issues updates to CBD food and supplement recall: The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has updated its recall of CBD-related foods and food supplements that have flagged up safety concerns due to the presence of delta‐9‐tetrahydrocannabinol or THC…. Read more
• Hemp-based meat: New Zealand firm eyes 2021 launch for minimally processed, sustainable new product: New Zealand alternative protein firm Sustainable Foods is planning a 2021 launch for its hemp-based meat analogues, which will be made will locally-grown hemp and processed using the firm’s own hydroelectric power plant…. Read more
• USDA seeks more hemp comments: For the second time, the Agricultural Marketing Service re-opened the public comment period for its industrial hemp regulations, this time asking for comment by Oct. 8 on a dozen topics including disposal and remediation of plants containing too much THC, whether to allow a longer harvest window after samples are gathered for testing and whether to allow more laboratories to conduct THC tests.

Before getting into the statistics, let’s start with the on-the-ground reality: real people, often with small children, are too poor to feed themselves and their families properly.  For the human impact of pandemic poverty, see:

• New York Times Magazine: America at Hunger’s Edge

Prior to the pandemic, poverty and food insecurity were declining in America.

•  Census Bureau report: official poverty rate was 10.5 percent in 2019, down from 11.8 percent in 2018
• USDA Household Food Security report, 2019:  10.5 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time in 2019, down from 11.1 percent in 2018.

But now we have pandemic-induced illness, job losses, school closures, business closures.

• Food Research & Action Center report: more than one in 10 adults with children say they do not have enough to eat. The rates are double for Black and Latino households with children.
• IRI Market Research report: SNAP enrollments include 13% of American households (but this can be good for the retail food business)

The USDA won’t report on food insecurity for another year, so it’s difficult to know what’s happening right now.  USDA data on SNAP are available only through April.

Even then, early signs were alarming.

We badly need effective policies to protect people against hunger.

Additional USDA resources

• Food Security in the U.S.  Food security—access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life—is one requirement for a healthy, well-nourished population. ERS plays a leading role in Federal research on food security in U.S. households and communities.
• Food Security in the United States: This product provides information about publicly available data from national surveys that include the U.S. Food Security Survey Module. Technical information is provided to facilitate appropriate use of the data, and links are provided to access data online or to order the data files on CD-ROM.
• Statistical Supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2019: This supplement to Household Food Security in the United States in 2019 describes food insecurity and how it is assessed.

I’ve written previously (see this one, for example) about the meat industry’s role in keeping plants open despite worker illnesses, but much about the industry’s pressures on government has been based on conjecture.  No more.

In another example of the value of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), two groups have obtained e-mails documenting these pressures.

FROM PRO PUBLICA, September 14, 2020: “Emails Show the Meatpacking Industry Drafted an Executive Order to Keep Plants Open: Hundreds of emails offer a rare look at the meat industry’s influence and access to the highest levels of government. The draft was submitted a week before Trump’s executive order, which bore striking similarities.”

The e-mails indicate that the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), the trade association for the meat industry, essentially wrote President Trump’s executive order invoking the Defense Production Act, which forced plants to stay open and workers to continue working under unsafe and highly virus-transmissable conditions.

For example (and look on the site for #6, which does a longer and even more compelling comparison):

FROM PUBLIC CITIZEN, September 15, 2020: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the meatpacking industry worked together to downplay and disregard risks to worker health during the pandemic, as shown in documents uncovered by Public Citizen and American Oversight through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”

The documents show that:

• The executive order signed by President Donald Trump regarding meatpacking plants, ostensibly invoking the Defense Production Act, was the result of lobbying by the North American Meat Institute, a meat-packing trade association, which prepared what appears to be the first draft of what would become the executive order;
• The North American Meat Institute repeatedly requested that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue discourage workers who were afraid to return to work from staying home;
• Meatpacking plants asked the USDA to intervene on multiple occasions when state and local governments either shut them down over health and safety concerns or sought to impose worker health and safety standards; and
• Smithfield Foods repeatedly requested that the USDA “order” it to reopen its meat processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. – despite no legal basis for such an order.

WHAT’S AT STAKE HERE?

Check out Leah Douglas’s ongoing count of Covid-19 cases among meatpacking workers.  Her figures as of September 18, include at least:

• 804 meatpacking and food processing plants (496 meatpacking and 308 food processing) and 106 farms and production facilities have had confirmed cases of Covid-19.
• 59,430 workers (42,606 meatpacking workers, 9,571 food processing workers, and 7,253 farmworkers) have tested positive for Covid-19.
• 254 workers (203 meatpacking workers, 35 food processing workers, and 16 farmworkers) have died.

To state the obvious: corporate capture of government agencies and the presidency is not good for public health or American democracy.

When I saw the title of this study, I had two questions:

• Why would anyone do a study like this? (OK, in short-term studies, consuming water or soup before meals reduces immediate calorie consumption, but in the long term?)
• Who paid for it?  (Getting the answer to this one took some digging).

The study: Association between soup consumption and obesity: A systematic review with meta-analysis. M.Kuroda and K. Ninomiya. Physiology & Behavior,  Volume 225, 15 October 2020, 113103.

Conclusion: “soup consumption is significantly related to lower odds ratio of obesity…suggesting that soup consumption was inversely correlated with a risk of obesity.”

Jeff Miller.  Avocado: A Global History.  Reaktion Books, 2020.  

I did a blurb for this one:

Avocados is a welcome addition to the Reaktion food series, so filled with splendid facts, figures, and illustrations that I learned something new on every page.   I particularly appreciated Jeff Miller’s discussion of avocados as an international commodity—legally grown and traded but also the target of organized thievery and now too expensive for many of their growers to have for their own use.  This is a fascinating story, beautifully told.

This book comes early in the alphabetical listing of Reaktion Books’ Edible series, which includes dozens of single-food monographs from Apples to Wine.  I didn’t know they had blurbs on the back cover, but I was pleased to do this one, especially because I met Jeff Miller when he took the course I taught with Sidney Mintz in Puerto Rico in 2003 and appreciate his subsequent work as a food studies scholar.

The NCD [Non-Communicable Disease] Alliance has issued a press release for its latest report, Signalling Virtue, Promoting Harm – Unhealthy Commodity Industries and COVID-19

As the press release explains, the

new report details hundreds of examples of unhealthy commodity industries, led by Big Alcohol, Big Food, and Big Soda, leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic for commercial gain. This report raises concerns of corporate capture during the pandemic by the very industries that are fuelling the burden of NCDs worldwide and putting people at greater risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes.

The Alliance released the report in conjunction with the  Global Week for Action on NCDs and the theme of accountability.

The report includes hundreds of case studies submitted from more than 90 countries of business responses to Covid-19, in these categories.

The report illustrates dozens of examples, and it’s hard to choose the most egregious from among so many possibilities.  I particularly appreciated this one.

This report is well worth a close look.  I found it highly instructive.

These USDA announcements about Disaster SNAP were forwarded to me by Kaitlyn Waugaman, MPH, RDN, LDN, who is in the Division of Preventive Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The one from August 27:

The one on September 8, a few weeks closer to the November election:

At issue: whether the more recent announcement violates the Hatch Act, as amended in 2012, which generally prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while on the job.  According to the US Office of Special Counsel, the President and Vice-President are excluded from the Act’s provisions.  But the New York Times has raised questions about Trump’s use of the White House to announce his candidacy.

This is another example of questionable use of the Presidency, just like Trump’s notes in the Farmers to Families food boxes that I wrote about earlier.