The USDA recently announced a new pilot program for New York State participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  They will now be able to use their Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to buy foods online.

At first glance, this seems like a terrific idea for solving problems of limited access to healthy foods (“food deserts”), and it gives SNAP participants more options and easier access.   Yes!

But participants will have to pay service or delivery charges with their own money.  For this and other rules, see the SNAP Online Purchasing pilot webpage.  Will they end up paying more or less for foods?  We will have to see how the pilot plays out to know.

At the moment, one clear conclusion is the benefit to Big Retail.  Amazon and ShopRite will run the program in New York City.  Walmart will run it upstate.

Amazon, for example, is promoting this pilot project with a video.

Nevin Cohen, writing in Civil Eats, has the best analysis of this program I’ve seen so far.

For those who have worked for decades to make healthful food available in low-income communities, the pilot has the potential to be a game-changer, enabling them to shift attention from physical access to supermarkets to the economic inequality at the root of food insecurity. But if the SNAP pilot will actually make people healthier, six questions demand attention [his article discusses these in detail]:

1. Does Online Shopping Mean Healthier Choices?

2. Will Shopping at Home Make People Less Active and More Lonely?

3. Will Local Food Retailers be Able to Compete?

4. Will it Be Bad for Worker Health?

5. Will it Increase Environmental Health Problems?

6. Will it Create a Digital Food Divide?

SNAP, Cohen points out

is moving online, whether we like it or not, and ignoring the fact that in a few years some 40 million people will change their grocery shopping habits would be a serious mistake. As the physical barriers to food fall away for SNAP participants, it will be up to policymakers and the public health community to ensure that the food retail sector—virtual as well as brick and mortar—supports healthy diets and true access for all.

I’m always interested to see what food safety lawyer Bill Marler has to say about the latest lapses.  He often represents the innocent-but-unlucky victims of food poisonings.  All they were doing was getting something to eat or feed their kids.  They had no idea the food was contaminated with a deadly form of E. coli or Salmonella.

In a recent post, Marler reflected on the enormous progress made by meat producers in reducing pathogens in their products.  Marler explains:

From the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak of 1993 until the 2002 ConAgra E. coli outbreak, at least 95% of Marler Clark revenue was E. coli cases linked to hamburger.  Today, it is nearly zero.  That is success.  To the beef industry – thank you for meeting the challenge…for now, hats off to you.

But, he points out, the meat industry must continue to act with vigilance, as demonstrated by the CDC’s recent safety warning about ground beef contaminated with toxic E. coli O103.

The CDC lists the statistics of this recent outbreak to date.

• Reported Cases: 177
• States: 10
• Hospitalizations: 21
• Deaths: 0

The recalls of ground beef have started.

• Grant Park Packing in Franklin Park, Ill., recalled approximately 53,200 pounds of raw ground beef products on April 24, 2019.
• K2D Foods, doing business as Colorado Premium Foods, in Carrollton, Ga., recalledapproximately 113,424 pounds of raw ground beef products on April 23, 2019.

Others may follow.

Meat producers: eternal vigilance, please.  Lives are at stake.

As for food safety in general: The CDC says foodborne illness cases are increasing.

During 2018, FoodNet identified

• 25,606 infections
• 5,893 hospitalizations
• 120 deaths

Note: these are fully preventable.

And food producers must make sure that they are fully prevented.

Oats do not typically contain gluten, the protein that produces toxic symptoms in people with Celiac Disease.  They do, however, contain a protein that may trouble some people with the disease, but the real problem is that they are often produced in places that also produce products containing wheat, or other grains that do have gluten.

Thus, I was interested to receive the following email from Stephanie Laverone, who describes herself as someone with Celiac Disease.  At my request, she gave permission to reprint what she sent me.

She sent me a link to a published commentary, Oat Consumption by Celiac Disease Patients: Outcomes Range from Harmful to Beneficial, Depending on the Purity of the Oats.  

In the conclusion, the authors explain that oats can benefit or harm people with Celiac Disease, but say that

The outcome appears dependent on the purity of the oats consumed. ..Regardless though, adding oats deemed GF [gluten-free] by these new high standards to CD [Celiac Disease] patient diets, may safely provide the benefit of broader dietary options, leading to improved GFD [gluten-free diet] adherence and quality of life, while bolstering nutritional deficiencies and potentially aiding heart health.

The authors’ Acknowledgment states:

Both authors are salaried employees of PepsiCo Inc. or Quaker Foods and Snacks (QFS), a subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc., which funded this research. QFS has a commercial interest in gluten-free foods. The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of PepsiCo Inc.

Ms. Laverone writes (I’ve done some light editing for emphasis):

Gluten Free Oats are controversial in the Celiac Disease community. There is a question of potential cross-reactivity to proteins found in oats that is further complicated by the high rate of cross-contamination of oats by gluten-containing grains.

There are two categories of gluten-free oats currently sold in the US: purity protocol and mechanically/optically sorted. Purity protocol oats are generally considered to be gluten free from field to store while mechanical/optical sorting involves the removal of gluten-containing grains during the processing stage.

Quaker Oats’ Gluten-Free Oats are mechanically/optically sorted (How does Quaker make Gluten Free Oats?).

It is obviously advantageous for Quaker Oats if:

(1) Safe consumption of GF oats by people with Celiac Disease simply relies on gluten testing, and

(2) Mechanically/optically sorted oats test positive for 20+ ppm of gluten less frequently than purity protocol oats, as implied by the final column of the table on the second page [of the Quaker Oats document].

Quaker Oats’ cereals may well be gluten-free.  Let’s hope so.

Gluten intolerance may be controversial—do people who think they are intolerant to gluten, really have problems with it?—but for people with Celiac Disease there is no controversy whatsoever.  Such people must avoid gluten.  Full stop.

What raises a red flag for me is the website statement, “As is always the case, the…safety of our consumers is our number one priority.”

Why the red flag?  That’s what they all say.

As Stephanie Laverone understood, this is another troubling example of the issues that arise from industry-funded research and, in this case, opinion.

Caveat emptor.

Timothy D.  Lytton.  Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Evolving Food Safety System.  University of Chicago Press, 2019.

I did a blurb for this one:

In Outbreak, Lytton gives us a legal scholar’s superb analysis of how government, lawyers, and civil society are struggling to prevent the tragic and unnecessary illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by microbial food contaminants.   Foodborne illness may seem like an intractable problem, but Lytton’s suggestions for dealing with it are well worth attention, as is everything else in this beautifully written, thoughtful, and readable account.  I couldn’t put it down.

Food safety attorney Bill Marler reviewed it for Food Safety News.

Lytton said his goal was to help readers understand the science, practicality, liability, enforcement and self-monitoring measures necessary to achieve higher levels of food safety. Meeting that goal includes helping readers understand the following:

• Why government spends so much more money justifying food safety regulations than evaluating whether they actually work.
• The need for greater experimentation in food safety regulation.
• Improving private third-party food safety auditing through greater liability exposure for negligent auditing.
• The potential for liability and recall insurance to improve food safety.
• The history of third-party food safety auditing (which goes back much earlier than AIB in the 1920s).
• The litigation dynamics of food safety lawsuits.

I was in Beijing a couple of weeks ago and did a supermarket tour.

Here’s my favorite souvenir:

Nestlé (no relation) markets to children, apparently.

I regret being unable to read the nutrition information, but this looks like a standard sugary breakfast cereal, chocolate-flavored.

I’m told this would be considered a snack food, not a breakfast food.

Translation, anyone?

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear things like this.  According to a report from the Associated Press, the FDA plans to follow the Trump administration’s deregulaory agenda by getting rid of the standard of identity rules for frozen cherry pies.

The rules currently require commercial frozen cherry pies to be filled with “mature, pitted, stemmed cherries that are fresh, frozen, and/or canned,” to contain at least 25% cherries by weight, and to have no more than 15% of the cherries with blemishes.

In October, then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb sent out this tweet.

In a June email, the FDA said it planned to revoke the standard for frozen cherry pies in April. It has kept its word.

My questions:

• Without the standard of identity, are we likely to have more or fewer cherries in frozen cherry pie?  [Want to make a bet?  I’m guessing fewer].
• What lobbying group got the FDA to do this, and why did the FDA agree?
• Did ex-Commissioner Gottlieb really consider this a top priority for FDA? [If so, we are in even worse trouble than even I imagined].

I’m stuck on regulatory priority.  Food safety, anyone?

As for the origins of the cherry pie count, see this excellent piece in the Washington Post by historian Xaq Frohlich.

The New York Times writes about the tragedy of Wisconsin dairy farms.

Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

It explains this as the result of “The rise of corporate farms and more efficient milking processes have led to an oversupply as consumption of milk has waned nationally.”

What’s going on with dairy farming is astonishingly poor policy, especially for small farmers who are now a deeply endangered species.

How to explain?  Bad policy.

In what other industry would you find producers continuing to ramp up production while demand slides, and then stuffing the growing pile of surplus into warehouses, hoping the federal government will buy some of it?

• The current dairy production support system favors Big Dairy.
• Government subsidies encourage dairy farmers to produce more milk.  Large producers get more subsidies than small ones.
• Large producers produce more milk.
• Milk production is up.
• Milk consumption is down (but not because of vegan ideology).
• Milk surpluses get converted to cheese.

The result: The government is now stockpiling 1.4 billion pounds of cheese.

Should dairy farmers go back to a system of restricting production the way they do in Canada?

One thing is for sure.  If we want local dairy farms to survive, we have to find a way to pay dairy farmers as much or more than it costs them to produce.

Serious policy thinking, anyone?

To launch the Portuguese translation of Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, I am going to Brazil.

I’ve posted details under Appearances.  Other details are here.

And here’s the overall schedule.

Press reports:

• O GLOBO (RIO DE JANEIRO)
• ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO  
• FOLHA DE SÃO PAULO