In April, I wrote about the deadly outbreak of Listeria-contaminated processed meat (“polony”) in South Africa.  Back then, the country’s Health Department explained what it was doing to try to stop the outbreak.  It’s now pretty much over, and the Health Department has issued an updated report on it.

• Cases reported: 1060
• Deaths: 216

Listeria is deadly.  For this outbreak, the death rate is 27% (216 of 806 cases in which the outcome is known).

As is typical of foodborne disease outbreaks, most cases occurred long before the products were recalled.

Of those cases interviewed after the recall

38/65 (58%) of ill people or their proxy reported consuming polony prior to their illness onset; brands manufactured by Enterprise Foods were most commonly reported to have been consumed where brand of polony was known.

The health department is doing a lot to try to understand what happened here.  But it faces challenges:

There are challenges regarding the turn-around time of testing of environmental swabs from facility inspections. Challenges are arising on account of the volume of specimens received during the last three weeks, machine failure and in some cases, challenges regarding test result interpretation. Each challenge is being addressed through appropriate interventions.

Food safety lawyer Bill Marler offers advice to the CEO of Tiger Brands, and to any other CEO of a company selling a product that makes people ill, beginning with an explanation of “why it’s always a bad idea to poison your customers.”

His advice:

1. Know your regulators.
2. Stop making the implicated product and recall the ones at risk.
3. Launch your own investigation.
4. Be transparent.
5. Admit fault.
6. Do not blame your customers.
7. Reach out to customers who have been harmed.
8. Teach what you have learned.

Marler has put money behind this advice.  Let’s hope the CEO takes him up on it.

I was interested to read FoodNavigator-Asia’s account of food industry comments on what to do about obesity is Australia.

By all reports, two-thirds of Australian adults meet definitions of overweight or obesity, along with a quarter of all children.  A Senate committee is collecting ideas about what to do about this, including those from the food industry.

Food-Navigator-Asia has taken a look at some of the submitted comments, particularly in light of comments from medical groups encouraging social, environmental, regulatory and medical interventions, and arguing that food companies should be kept out of formulating policies due to their inherent conflicts of interest.

The article quotes three companies.

Coca-Cola Amatil says taxes would be counterproductive because it is already reducing the sugar in its products.

Fonterra (a dairy company) says obesity is not the problem; instead, underconsumption of dairy products is the problem.

Nestlé [no relation] blames consumers; it is trying to reduce salt and sugar in its products but the public isn’t buying them.  It also blames government, which it says should do a better job of educating the public about diet and health.

Obesity poses a formidable problem for food companies making junk foods.  They have stockholders to please.  They cannot be expected to voluntarily act in the interest of public health if doing so affects profits.

That is why food companies should have no role whatsoever in developing policies to prevent or treat obesity.

The USDA has issued a Call for Nominations for the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

The independent advisory committee will review the scientific evidence to help inform the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The deadline to submit nominations for the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is October 6, 2018, at 11:59 pm, Eastern Time.

Good luck with this. I don’t envy anyone serving on this committee.

The issues:

• The late start. By law, the guidelines are supposed to be submitted in 2020. The committee will be under pressure to move quickly.
• USDA’s dominance. The guidelines are supposed to be jointly produced by two agencies; the other is HHS. The absence of HHS from this announcement seems curious. USDA must be the lead this year and can be expected to allow politics to trump (pardon the expression) science.
• Science politics. Questions—qualitative and quantitative—about fat v. carbohydrates are hotly debated and not easy to resolve.
• Food industry influence. This is always a problem but this influence—on research and policy—is now under sharp scrutiny (my forthcoming book adds to the scrutiny, I hope).
• Government interference. The committee writes an advisory report. Then USDA and HHS take over and do what they please with what the committee produces.  And we know, because USDA said so, that this administration intends to take a more active role in setting the agenda and in committee discussions.
• Spotlight. Everything this committee does will be public and publicized on the front pages of newspapers and in social media.
• Courage. It will take plenty.

Here’s what USDA says about factors to be considered in reviewing nominations:

• Educational background – advanced degree in nutrition- or health-related field, including registered dietitians, nutrition scientists, physicians, and those with public health degrees
• Professional experience – at least 10 years of experience as an academic, researcher, practitioner, or other health professional in a field related to one or more of the topics to be examined; consideration of leadership experience and participation on previous committees or panels
• Demonstrated scientific expertise – expertise related to one or more of the topics to be examined by the committee as demonstrated by number and quality of peer-reviewed publications and presentations
• Obligations under the Federal Advisory Committee Act – ensuring the Committee is balanced fairly in points of view and types of expertise
• Requirements regarding a balanced membership – including, to the extent possible, individuals who are minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and representatives from different geographic areas and institutions

More information is available on DietaryGuidelines.gov:

• See What to Include in a Nomination Package
• See the Topics and Scientific Questions to be Examined by the Committee
• Learn How USDA-HHS Will Establish the Committee
• Additional Resources

John Lever and Johan Fischer. Religion, Regulation, Consumption: Globalising Kosher and Halal Markets.  Manchester University Press, 2018.

This book is a comparative study of how two countries—Denmark and Great Britain—regulate foods labeled Kosher or Halal.  I did a blurb for it:

Anyone curious about how kosher and halal work in today’s globalized, secularized market economies will want to read this comparative study of food practices in the UK and Denmark.

The big issues dealt with here is whether these dietary laws permit animals to be stunned before they are slaughtered, and how the religious requirements relate to the demands of the secular communities in an increasingly globalized marketplace.

It is clear that kosher and halal markets have globalised and been subjected to new forms of regulation within the last two decades or so.  However, no matter how regulated these markets have become they are still fundamentally expressions of religion as taboos dating back thousands of years…kosher and halal fuel a whole range of debates among rabbis/imams and between religious organisations more broadly over what religion is or ought to be in the modern world…Comparing the UK and Denmark, we can say that Judaism/kosher and Islam/halal are less state regulated in the UK and that this allows for slaughter without stunning, for example  This situation has made the UK one of the largest markets for kosher/halal food in the world….As these processes expand and questions over what kosher is or ought to be intensify in a globalising context so greater numbers of Jews are becoming more Orthodox and strict in terms of their kashrut and shechita requirements [pp. 169-170].

Campbell’s has just announced that it will divest its portfolio of healthier foods: Bolthouse Farms carrots, organics, salsa, hummus and dips, fresh soups.
Why? Activist shareholder pressure to make more money, faster.
These healthier-for-you products only generated $2.1 billion in sales last year, not nearly enough apparently.
While waiting for someone to buy them, or the entire company, the company’s new CEO plans to concentrate on “operational discipline,” which I assume is a euphemism for firing lots of people.
The CEO plans to focus on the money-making “core” products: Campbell Soups, Prego, V8, SpaghettiOs, Kettle Chips, Mlano, Goldfish and other such things.

As I keep saying, food corporations cannot be expected to be agents of public health as long as Wall Street investors call the shots.

Remember when Jeffrey Dunn’s Bolthouse aimed to make carrots “cool?”  And kids would eat them if they were marketed like junk food?

I guess this strategy didn’t work, alas.

The basic agreement does not say much about agriculture, but the Trade Representative has produced a separate fact sheet for agriculture.

The White House says:

The agreement specifically addresses agricultural biotechnology to keep up with 21st Century innovations. And we mutually pledge to work together with Mexico to reduce trade-distorting policies, increase transparency, and ensure non-discriminatory treatment in grading of agricultural products.  This is nothing short of a great victory for farmers and ranchers because…Mexico has historically been a great customer and partner.

And then comes the kicker:

We now hope that Canada will see the need to settle all of the outstanding issues between our two nations as well, and restore us to a true North American Free Trade Agreement.

According to Politico,

Trump warned that efforts to revamp the 24-year-old pact could result in two different agreements, and threatened Canada with tariffs on automobiles if Ottawa didn’t agree to negotiate “fairly.”

Mexico’s president must be worried about Canada.  In a phone call with Trump, he said:

It is our wish, Mr. President, that now Canada will also be able to be incorporated in all this.  And I assume that they going to carry out negotiations of the sensitive bilateral issues between Mexico — rather, between Canada and the United States.

According to the New York Times, Canada is scrambling to get in on the deal.  Why?  Three-quarters of its exports go to the U.S., and automobile supply chains are at issue.

Also according to the New York Times, Congress calmed things down a bit and the White House is giving Canada more time to figure out how to handle all this.

According to Vox, here’s how that happened.

Trump argues that NAFTA has been bad for the United States.  That is unlikely.  It’s been much worse for Mexico (see, for example, Alyshia Gálvez’s Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico, out next month).

Thanks to The Hagstrom Report for providing these documents:

• Office of the US Trade Representative: United States-Mexico Fact SheetModernizing NAFTA to be a 21st Century Trade Agreement
• Office of the US Trade Representative: United States-Mexico Fact Sheet: Strengthening NAFTA for Agriculture
• White House — Remarks by President Trump in Phone Call with President Peña Nieto of Mexico on the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement
• White House — What They Are Saying: Support for President Donald J. Trump’s Trade Announcement with Mexico
• The Washington Post — Trump announces separate U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, says Canada may join later
• Informa Agribusiness Intelligence— Economic Impact of Retaliatory Tariffs from Mexico and China on the US Dairy Sector

The Environmental Working Group recently released a report on the amounts of glyphosate (Roundup) in children’s breakfast cereals, particularly those made with oats and wheat.

Roundup, you may recall, has been judged a probable carcinogen by the International Agency on Research on Cancer (IARC) and California courts.  It is used to kill weeds in fields growing crops genetically modified to resist Roundup.

But oats and wheat grown in the U.S. are not genetically modified.  The FDA’s list of genetically modified foods says nothing about oats and wheat, and the agency does not permit GMO versions to be marketed.

How could Cheerios and Quaker Oats be contaminated with glyphosate at amounts that exceed standards?

The explanation:

Increasingly, glyphosate is also sprayed just before harvest on wheat, barley, oats and beans that are not genetically engineered. Glyphosate kills the crop, drying it out so that it can be harvested sooner than if the plant were allowed to die naturally.

Really?  They spray glyphosate on oats just before harvest?  Yes, they do.

What this means is that more glyphosate gets into your food from the non-GMO wheat and oats sprayed just before harvest, then from GMO corn and soybeans sprayed earlier in their growth.

Whether eating glyphosate is bad for you or your kids is a matter of fierce debate.  As the New York Times explains, the safety of glyphosate is very much at issue:

In fact, it is central to a raging international debate about the chemical that has spawned thousands of lawsuits, allegations of faulty research supporting and opposing the chemical and a vigorous defense of the herbicide from Monsanto, the company that helped develop it 40 years ago and helped turn it into the most popular weedkiller in the world.

Scott Partridge, a vice president at Monsanto, said in an interview on Wednesday that hundreds of studies had validated the safety of glyphosate and that it doesn’t cause cancer. He called the Environmental Working Group an activist group.

“They have an agenda,” he said. “They are fear mongering. They distort science.”

The EWG states its advocacy position on its website:

The Environmental Working Group’s mission is to empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. With breakthrough research and education, we drive consumer choice and civic action. We are a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment.

I do not view this report as distorting science.  If anything, it provides data that the industry is not collecting or does not want released.  This information is useful for making decisions about what to eat.

You don’t want your kids eating glyphosate while scientists are still in disagreement about the extent of its harm to human health?

• Vote with your fork: Buy organic cereals; they have far less or no detectable glyphosate.
• Vote with your vote: Call for policies to get these practices stopped.

Or you can consider a third option now in play: file a lawsuit.

Global Meat News is one of those industry newsletters I subscribe to.  This is a collection of its articles on halal meats—those from animals slaughtered and prepared according to Muslim dietary laws.

The market for halal meats is increasing worldwide.

Global Meat News’ Special Edition: Halal

Halal produce is continuing to grow in demand across the international meat market, with China, Russia and Mexico showing a recent surge of interest in certifications and exploring opportunities for export. Is it time for halal meat to win over its previous critics by embracing the 21^st​ century?

• Demand for halal meats to raise Mexican export market: Mexico is set to open up export opportunities for halal certification into the Muslim market… Read
• Russian meat giants drive up halal exports: Russia exported 50,000 tonnes (t) of halal meat in 2017, up almost twofold compared to 2016, as major agricultural holdings Cherkizovo, Miratorg and GAP Resource have shown increasing interest in this segment, according to the International Center for Halal Standardisation and Certification… Read
• Japan’s halal wagyu industry grows as Asian Muslim tourism increases: Japan’s halal wagyu industry is poised for rapid growth, thanks to demand from an increasing number of Muslim tourists and the opening of new export markets… Read
• Saudi regulatory board concerned over Brazilian chicken slaughter: Saudi Arabia’s regulatory board has expressed concerns about chicken products from Brazilian slaughterhouses and the need for investment from the Brazilian slaughterers to make improvements… Read
• Chinese company steps up halal beef production: A leading Chinese beef firm with overseas halal sales is opening a new plant this month that will double its capacity… Read
• Russia looks to export opportunity for halal venison: A recently opened slaughterhouse in northern Siberia has been certified to sell venison in accordance with Islamic standards (halal) and is currently in negotiations to export commercial batches of premium cuts to Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)… Read
• Lisaili abattoir trials Al Mawashi smart app delivery service during Ramadan: The Dubai Municipality has trialled the Al Mawashi smart application at its Lisaili abattoir, for meat to be delivered to customers during Ramadan… Read
• Russia to promote halal poultry internationally: Around 75-80% of poultry that Russia plans to export in 2020 will be labelled as halal, according to Aidar Gazizov, director general for the International Center for Halal Standardization and Certification, speaking at the international summit Agroinvest Russia-2017 in Moscow… Read