GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) have issued a devastating report on the effects of meat and dairy production on climate change.

 

The report’s principal finding:

At issue are demands for growth in the meat and dairy industries.

The report explains:

Current industrial levels of production cannot be sustained, nor can growth models for meat and dairy remain unchanged. The paradox of the corporate business model based on high rates of annual growth versus the urgent climate imperative to scale back meat and dairy production and consumption in affluent countries and populations is untenable.

Its inevitable conclusion:

cheap meat and dairy comes at a high cost due to social, environmental and animal welfare problems that continue to be under-regulated. In addition, this production is only made possible because the corporations receive an indirect subsidy from taxpayers in the form of government-funded price supports that keep grain cheap.  

It is past time to regulate the industry and redirect the massive subsidies and other public expenditures that currently support the big meat and dairy conglomerates towards local food and farming systems capable of looking after people and the planet.

That’s the challenge.  The need to address it is urgent.  Let’s get to work.

Also see:

Meat consumption, health, and the environment.  Science July 20, 2018.  Authors: H. Charles J. Godfray, Paul Aveyard, Tara Garnett, Jim W. Hall, Timothy J. Key, Jamie Lorimer, Ray T. Pierrehumbert, Peter Scarborough, Marco Springmann, Susan A. Jebb.

This lengthy, extensively illustrated and referenced article covers much of the same territory but with greater emphasis on the health impact of meat consumption, and the amounts of water used in meat production, primarily from feed.

My email inbox was flooded last week with The Obesity Society’s call for more research on the value of taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Although taxing SSBs might generate revenue that can be used to promote other healthy food items, the net outcome may not necessarily decrease overweight and obesity rates in the United States or worldwide,” said Steven B. Heymsfield, MD, FTOS, President-Elect of The Obesity Society (TOS) and professor and director of the Body Composition-Metabolism Laboratory at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Why would a professional society that represents people who ostensibly care about obesity science, treatment, and prevention issue a statement aimed at casting doubt on a demonstrably effective public health measure?  (Soda companies know the taxes are effective; that’s why they fight them so hard).

The Obesity Society (TOS), alas, often appears far more favorable to the interests of food and beverage companies than those of public health.  Could funding of the society and its members have anything to do with this?

Here is the TOS position on corporate funding:

TOS recognizes the value in providing any donor that wishes to support our mission to find solutions to the obesity epidemic the opportunity to provide financial support.

The current TOS policy expressly eliminates all forms of evaluation or judgment of the funding source (other than the stipulation that funding is reasonably assumed not to be derived from activities deemed ‘illegal’).

TOS chooses instead to focus its ethical mission on transparency in disclosing the sources of funding, clear stipulations outlining our commitment to the ethical use of funds, and a commitment to non-influence of the funding sources over the scientific aspects of funded projects and TOS as a whole.

Translation: We will take money from any company, regardless of the effects of its products on public health.

The TOS rationale is that disclosure takes care of the problem and that funding won’t influence the science.  Unfortunately for this view, research demonstrates that disclosure does not eliminate the influence of funding, and the influence of funding is considerable—though often unrecognized, as is apparent in this case.

TOS has a disclosure policy, and discloses its officers’ conflicts of interest.  These are considerable.

• The TOS president’s university, Louisiana State, has received more funding from Coca-Cola than any other in recent years.  Researchers there have been funded generously by Coca-Cola.
• An elected president of TOS had to resign over charges that he had been paid by the restaurant industry to file an affidavit opposing New York City’s calorie-labeling proposal.

In 2013, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff resigned his TOS membership over the society’s sponsorship policies.  In his comment on the current TOS statement, Freedhoff points out that “sugar-sweetened beverage taxes decrease sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and increase healthier beverage consumption while providing the greatest potential health benefits to low income consumers.”

TOS members who care about creating a healthier food environment should consider joining Dr. Freedhoff.  lf not, they should insist that TOS leadership take vigorous pro-public health stances on matters affecting their patients’ health.

Additional comments, October 31, 2018

Yesterday I received a message from Liz Szabo, a reporter for Kaiser Health News, who is writing a piece on TOS’s relationships with food companies.  She questioned Steve Heymsfield, the group’s current president, who responded at length with a message that included this paragraph:

Marion Nestle, on the other hand, is professor “emeritus” and our understanding is that she no longer reports directly to a dean at New York University. That created a hurdle for us when trying to manage Dr. Nestle’se false and misleading blog related to this matter on her website. Even after learning her comments were misleading from Dr. Popkin, and unlike Popkin who has a high ethical standard, she failed to take down that post.

This surprised me, because nobody from TOS or anywhere else had written me to correct the post, Dr. Popkin’s corrections were to something he—not I—had written, and my ongoing relationship with NYU is readily evident from the information posted under About on this site.

I pointed this out to Dr. Heymsfield, who replied with annotations to my post.  Most of these deal with opinion and interpretation rather than fact.  The one thing I got “completely false” is my interpretation that TOS lacks standards for deciding which donors are acceptable.  Dr. Heymsfield says it does.  I am happy to hear that and stand corrected on that point.

Scott Gottlieb, Commissioner of the FDA, says his agency will take up the vexing question of what to call “milks” made from soy, almonds, and other legumes and nuts.

If you look at our standards of identity, there is a reference … to a lactating animal,” Gottlieb said during an interview at the POLITICO Pro Summit. “An almond doesn’t lactate, I will confess. So the question becomes, ‘Have we been enforcing the standard of identity?’ And the answer is probably not.”

The dairy industry does not want these products called “milk” (see discussion of the “war over soy milk,” in the New Republic).  It argues that they do not meet the standard of identity for milk, but also that they are less nutritious.

The Good Food Institute, which promotes plant-based meat, dairy and egg substitutes, petitioned FDA to set some rules for this.  Its view is that manufacturers of dairy alternatives have a First Amendment right to describe their products as they like (also see the Institute’s letter to the FDA).

Gottlieb says the FDA will soon open the question up for public comment.

If these products cannot be called milk, what can they be called?  On this, I defer to The Onion.

As for whether almond milk is milk, here is the ingredient list for the Almond Breeze product:

ALMONDMILK (FILTERED WATER, ALMONDS), CALCIUM CARBONATE, SEA SALT, POTASSIUM CITRATE, SUNFLOWER LECITHIN, GELLAN GUM, NATURAL FLAVORS, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, VITAMIN D2, D-ALPHA-TOCOPHEROL (NATURAL VITAMIN E).

Paul Greenberg.  The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet.  Penguin Press, 2018.

This is the third installment of Paul Greenberg’s fish trilogy (the previous two are Four Fish and American Catch, both also well worth the read).

This one sounds like a book about nutrition—a nutrient—but it’s not.  It may have started out that way, as a book about omega-3 fatty acids whose principal dietary source is fish, but Greenberg soon figured out that claims for the miraculous health benefits of omega-3s don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Instead, he uses omega-3s as an organizing framework for discussing how we use and misuse fish for industrial purposes.  To do this, he travels.  He goes to the Mediterranean to examine what happens to anchovies, Peru to see what happens to anchoveta, to the Antarctic to see what happens to krill.

His point?  If we destroy the bottom of the seafood chain to make fishmeal or fertilizer, we destroy the ecology of fish higher up on the food chain.

Greenberg is a lively, entertaining writer who tells great fish tales in pursuit of a serious message: if we want food in our future, we need to eat lower on the food chain.

And the book comes with recipes.  My favorite: Roulades of Antarctic penguin breast.  It begins: “Never make this recipe, please.”

Here’s another one of FoodNavigator-USA’s collection of articles on single topics, this one on “healthy” snacks.  I’m putting “healthy” in quotes because these are all processed food products.  If you are trying to track snacking trends, here they are.

Special Edition: Healthy Snacks

Hartman Group says roughly half of the eating occasions in the US are now snacks, but if snacking is still about treating yourself, are we treating ourselves a little too much? How can manufacturers meet demand for fresher, healthier snacks that are also portable and convenient? In this FoodNavigator-USA special, we explore how manufacturers are adapting to changing eating patterns.

• Crunch time: Mushroom chip brand Mudlrk targets online retail next month: Mushroom chip brand Mudlrk (pronounced ‘mudlark’ – a term meaning a person who scavenges for objects of value) is aiming to begin online retail of its four SKUs at the end of July and hit brick & mortar stores later this year… Read

• What is a snack, and how are snacking habits evolving? Hartman Group, SnackNation, weigh in…  If roughly half of the eating occasions in the US are now snacks, are snacks still ‘treats’ or have they become something else?.. Read

• Messy Monkeys balances nutrition with affordability for US launch: Finding nutrient-dense snacks becomes more of a challenge for moms once they exit the baby aisle and right around the time ‘picky-eater syndrome’ sets in. To fill this gap, Messy Monkeys is positioning itself as an affordable and healthy snack for kids rolling out to stores this month… Read

• Ready to pig out (minus the bacon)? Outstanding Foods gears up for launch: Vegan jerky is picking up steam, but hasn’t set the world on fire, yet. And while bacon-flavored potato and corn chips are a staple in the salty snacks aisle, they don’t pretend to replicate the taste and texture of a strip of bacon. But what if you could create a plant-based snack so bacon-like that even meat lovers struggle to distinguish it from the real thing?.. Read

• Soup-to-Nuts Podcast: What is behind the overnight explosion of puffs?  Once considered simply a children’s snack that parents would sneak when no one was looking, puffs suddenly are everywhere – and for everyone – thanks to their better-for-you profile, new sophisticated flavors, increasingly diverse bases and playful shapes that encourage sharing… Listen now

• From snacks to mini meals: How consumers are satisfying their cravings: While consumers still respond to the convenience of popping open a bag of chips, their mindset around snacking has expanded to products that promise a sense culinary adventure, conscious-sourcing, unexpected ingredients, and satiating benefits… Read

• Salty snacks are evolving in the face of the better-for-you movement, Packaged Facts reports: Sales of salty snacks in the US continue to rise as consumers embrace smaller, more frequent eating occasions over three-square meals a day, but at the same time, rising health and wellness awareness is creating a significant competitive threat from better-for-you options, according to new research from Packaged Facts… Read

• Peatos exec: ‘Our mission is to make 90% of people eat 10% better, not 10% of people eat 90% better’: From roasted chickpeas and flash fried mung beans to extruded pea, chickpea, and edamame puffs, pulse-based snacks are gaining traction, says Snack it Forward CEO Nick Desai. But none of them have delivered the sheer sensory pleasure you experience from a bag of Cheetos… until now, he claims… Read

• Fresh Bar rebrands to ‘nomi’ seeking to direct families and kids to the ‘fridge instead of the pantry’: Refrigerated snack bar brand nomi, previously known as ‘Fresh Bar’, believes its new brand name will give it a strong foothold in the rapidly growing refrigerated bar space… Read

• NEW PRODUCTS GALLERY: From thinkKIDS protein bars to Teavana sparkling tea: Check out FoodNavigator-USA’s latest gallery of new products hitting US shelves, spanning new protein bars for kids and protein-packed snacks from upcycled chicken breast trim to the latest wave of reduced sugar beverages… Display

The Los Angeles Times reports that calls to California poison control centers about kids ingesting marijuana “edibles” are increasing.  There have already been about 400 calls this year.

California legalized marijuana in 2016.  Edibles are a big part of the cannabis market.  They are often packaged to look like regular candy, cookies, brownies, and other treats.

• Nearly half of last year’s calls involved children 5 and younger
• 64 were about toddlers who were a year old
• 38 calls were about children under 12 months old

Kids who eat them are brought to emergency rooms, and these visits too are increasing.

I’ve written about kids eating edibles before, in connection with legalization in Colorado.

Of this, Elise McDonough, former editor of High Times, and author of the High Times Cannabis Cookbook, says:

And keep edibles away from pets too.

While we are on this topic, here’s what pediatricians are saying about marijuana use during pregnancy, lactation, and early childhood. While waiting for further research,

Advice from medical professionals should be consistent: pregnant and lactating women should be advised to avoid cannabis use, and women (and men) caring for developing children also should be advised to maintain abstinence.

The FDA held a public meeting last week on lab-grown “meat,” meaning, in FDA-speak, “foods produced using animal cell culture technology.”  The meeting agenda is here.

At issue are:

• Basic questions about transparency, marketing, environmental sustainability (see report by Friends of the Earth).
• The safety of these products (Consumer Reports has questions about the safety of these products).
• Can these products be called meat?  (The Atlantic calls this issue “farcical”).
• Which agency, FDA or USDA, should regulate them and decide such questions?

The FDA’s announcement of the meeting, and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s statement staked FDA’s territory over these products.  Gottlieb said:

The FDA has a long history of ensuring food safety and applying our statutory framework while supporting rapidly evolving areas of technological innovation in food. The agency currently evaluates microbial, algal and fungal cells generated by large-scale culture and used as direct food ingredients. The agency administers safety assessment programs for a broad array of food ingredients, including foods derived from genetically engineered plants, and also manages safety issues associated with cell culture technology in therapeutic settings.

But if these foods are meat, then USDA is responsible for their regulation.  In a statement to Politico (behind paywall), a USDA spokesperson said:

According to federal law, meat and poultry inspections are the sole purview of USDA, so we expect any product marketed as ‘meat’ to be USDA’s responsibility. We look forward to working with FDA as we engage the public on this issue.”

Politico points out what’s at stake in the jurisdictional dispute.

There are at least 10 lab-grown meat companies across the globe that are furiously working to figure out how to get their products to market. Some of the startups are driven by a desire to reduce animal agriculture’s environmental footprint as developing countries increasingly drive demand for meat and dairy products. Major investors who’ve moved to get into the action include innovators like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Tyson Ventures, an investment arm of meat giant Tyson Foods.

The meat industry, as you might expect, does not want these foods to be called “meat.”  But the industry has not reached agreement on strategies (some meat companies have invested in lab-grown meat startups).

The US Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) in February asked federal government regulators to adopt a definition for meat that would exclude cell-cultured products (often called “clean meat“).  This week though, the more-powerful National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) asked the same regulatory agency to rule the opposite.

The NCBA wrote  a letter to USDA stating its position:

NCBA is alarmed by the growing number of flagrantly deceptive food product labels proliferating the marketplace. Consumers have the right to expect that the information on food labels is truthful and not misleading, just as all food products should expect to compete on a fair, level playing field…NCBA firmly believes that the term beef should only be applicable to products derived from actual livestock raised by farmers and ranchers.

Global Meat News has a good summary of the industry’s concerns.

Four members of Congress chided the FDA for jumping into this:

Cell-based food technologies and products are an emerging science, and both agencies should be working collaboratively on a scientific approach towards a framework to regulate these products.

Good luck with that.  The Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) has a report on the FDA meeting.  I’m quoted:

Between the two agencies, I favor FDA…USDA’s primary role is to support and defend industrial agricultural production. The agency tolerates, but is unenthusiastic about organics. It will do the same for lab-based meat.

The FDA has opened questions about lab-grown meat for public comment.  File comments here.  The deadline is September 25.

Added comment

At a Politico Summit meeting today,

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said…that the agency is working closely with USDA on early efforts to establish a regulatory framework for lab-grown meat, or “cell-cultured foods,” the FDA’s preferred name for it.

We shall see.

By this time, you have no doubt heard about the Trump Administration’s attempts to stop the World Health Organization from promoting breastfeeding.  Incredible but true.

Here is a brief timeline of how this story got out.

May 25   Lucy Sullivan, executive director o 1000 Days (the first 1000 days of life are critical to an infant’s survival) sent out a tweet warning of a battle brewing over breastfeeding at WHO’s World Health Assembly, where countries are negotiating a resolution on infant and young child feeding.

June 7   Amruta Byatnal writes about “A Moment of Reckoning for Nutrition Advocates at the WHA” [World Health Assembly: “Nutrition advocates have accused the U.S. of siding with private sector interests, sparking a controversy over what they assumed would be a routine effort to provide advice on breastfeeding and the use of breast milk substitutes.”

July 8  The New York Times takes the story national: “Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials.”  The Guardian also publishes an account.   These make it clear that the Trump Administration threatened Ecuador to drop its support of breastfeeding.  As the Times put it,

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced….The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

Ironically, Russia stepped in and introduced the measure, which passed despite US attempts to block it.

July 9  President Trump sends out a tweet:

July 9  Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, also sends out a tweet, supporting the President: “America has a long history of supporting mothers and breastfeeding around the world and is the largest bilateral donor of such foreign assistance programs. Those unable to breastfeed shouldn’t be stigmatized; they should be equally supported with info and access to alternatives.”

July 9  The New York Times publishes an editorial: “Why Breast-Feeding Scares Donald Trump.”  Its answer: “It comes down to public health abroad could hurt American companies’ profits.”

What this is about

Infant formula works for babies, but breastfeeding is demonstrably better.  This is especially true for women who cannot afford formula, do not have clean water to dilute the powder properly, or lack refrigeration to store formula properly.

But breastfeeding has a serious political problem: it does not make money for formula companies.  As I explained in Waht to Eat:

Infant formulas cause controversy and are endlessly contentious for three important reasons.  Formulas are (1) largely unnecessary (most mothers can breast feed their infants), (2) not as perfect as breast milk for feeding babies, and (3) more expensive than breast feeding.  Breast milk is nutritionally superior to formula, but from a marketing standpoint it has one serious disadvantage: it is free.   Beyond one-time purchases of breast pumps, storage bottles, or special clothing, nobody makes money from it.

Formula companies are happy to pay lip service to “breast is best,” as long as policies do not promote breastfeeding over formula.

This is not the first time the US has taken this position.  In 1981, when the United Nations developed the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes, all of its member countries agreed to abide by the Code except for the United States and South Africa.  Eventually, South Africa signed on.  The U.S. was the last hold out and did not agree to abide by the Code until 1994.  Why not?  Because the Code could set a precedent that might adversely affect U.S. corporations.

The Washington Post (“US efforts”) and The Atlantic (“epic battle”) review this history.

The formula industry’s problem

As I also explained in What to Eat, only about 4 million babies are born in the US each year, meaning that the formula market is limited and static.  That is why formula companies work so hard to convince mothers that breastfeeding is too difficult, unsanitary, inefficient, and ineffective to continue, and that they would be better off switching to formulas and staying on formulas long past the time when babies should be eating solid foods.

The reactions

My favorites are from

• Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (in an interview with Food Chemical News).

• From the American Public Health Association
• From medical experts interviewed in the New York Times
• From Vox

Add this to the growing list of ways the Trump Administration favors corporate interests over public health. Alas.

Additions

Maplight reports:

Three of the largest infant formula companies — U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories, Swiss-based Nestle, and U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser — have spent $60.7 million lobbying U.S. lawmakers and officials during the last decade….While the New York Times reported that the formula manufacturers didn’t play a visible role in the debate over the WHO resolution, lobbying records show they have a significant Capitol Hill presence that often extends beyond infant nutrition.

Stephen Colbert’s take