Food Policy Action has released its annual scorecard, evaluating how our federal legislators vote on food issues.  In case you haven’t noticed, they aren’t voting on much these days so there wasn’t much to score.

In the Senate, there was only one vote (on the nomination of Scott Pruitt as USDA Secretary), although ten bills were introduced.

In the House, there were five votes and 11 bills.

Overall scores averaged 49%—dismal.

The site has a handy interactive map; click on it to see how your legislators are voting.

In case you want to see just how badly Congress is doing, I’ve been posting these scorecards since they started:

• 2016
• 2015
• 2014
• 2013

One thought: maybe it’s just as well.

If you search this site for “Sugar Policy,” you will get lots of items over the years.

Now, several members of Congress have introduced a bill, the Sugar Policy Modernization Act, to remove price supports and repeal marketing allotments and quotas.

These keep the price of sugar produced in the U.S. artificially high, but not so high that the public complains.

Industrial users of sugar—candy and soda makers, for example—want to buy sugar at cheaper worldwide market rates.

Good luck with trying to do this. Big Sugar is happy with the current system and lobbies with great effect to make sure it stays that way.

Representatives from the House Sugar Caucus (yes, there is one) sent a letter to fellow members of Congress urging them to vote against this proposal.

The Sugar Program Modernization Act would upend this success and reward the world’s worst subsidizers at the expense of U.S. sugar farmers. While a handful of food manufacturers would benefit under the Sugar Program Modernization Act, farmers, sugar workers, rural communities, and consumers would lose out. That is too steep a price to pay so multinational food conglomerates can pad their profits.

But politics makes strange bedfellows.  The American Enterprise Institute has a new analysis of sugar policies. Its key points?

• The US sugar program is a protectionist scheme destined to transfer income to sugar growers and processors at the cost of sugar users and consumers.
• The losses to consumers and users are large in aggregate for the country, in the order of $2.4–$4 billion.
• The major recommendation is the total removal of the sugar program’s main components, including tariff-rate quotas, allotments, and sugar loan rates.

It’s hard to know how this will play out this year.  History favors a win for Big Sugar.  They run politics in Louisiana and Florida,  But this too will be interesting to watch.

The World Health Organization has issued guidelines on use of medically important antibiotics in food-producing animals.  Its latest report recommends:

• An overall reduction in use
• Complete restriction in use for growth promotion
• Complete restriction of use for infectious disease prevention
• Not using them for disease treatment

For comparison, the FDA bans these antibiotics for growth promotion, but permits when recommended by a veterinarian when necessary for an animal’s health.

Antibiotics used in food animal production amount to 80 percent of antibiotic consumption worldwide.

Studies show that restricting antibiotic use in animals will reduce their prevalence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

As you might expect, opinions about this report are divided.  Consumer groups, who have been advocating for these practices for years, are eager for the guidelines to be implemented immediately.  So are companies like Perdue, which are already doing this.

Opposition comes from the meat industry, of course, but also the chief scientist of USDA who must not have read the guidelines carefully, if at all.

The WHO guidelines are not in alignment with U.S. policy and are not supported by sound science. The recommendations erroneously conflate disease prevention with growth promotion in animals.

The WHO report may help advocates get some long-awaited action on antibiotics, but it’s hard to be optimistic.

I just came across this report from the CDC: 2017 Antibiotic use in the U.S.: Progress and Opportunities.  It is This report is notable for focusing exclusively on antibiotics in human health.  It excludes any discussion of antibiotic use in animals—as if there were no relationship.

It’s time to bring agricultural policies in line with health policies!

I’m going to be using this week’s posts to catch up on reports that have been flooding in.

Let’s start with a publication from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and Friends of the Earth Europe.

Agrifood Atlas: Facts and figures about the Corporations that Control What We Eat

Agrifood corporations are driving industrialization along the entire global value chain, from farm to plate. Their purchasing and sales policies promote a form of agriculture that revolves around productivity. The fight for market share is achieved at the expense of the weakest links in the chain: farmers, and workers…It is high time for a socially and politically oriented regulation of the agrifood industry.

The Atlas provides the facts and figures you need to advocate for healthier food systems.

Here is one example:

Bryant Simon The Hamlet Fire, A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives. The New Press.

This book, which deserves a much better cover, tells a compelling story.  Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University, has written an epic book about industrialized broiler production.  His starting point is the tragic fire that killed 25 people in a poultry processing plant in 1991, in Hamlet, North Carolina.

It’s inconceivable that this plant, which made cheap chicken fingers for fast food outlets, had locked exit doors—nearly a century after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire (which is still commemorated every March 25 in front of the building, now owned by NYU).

To explain the meaning of the fire, Simon takes on globalization’s effect in promoting industrialized chicken production; the loss of well paying jobs in small rural communities led to surplus labor that made it possible to produce cheap chicken and even cheaper chicken products.

Simon links these events to the increasing prevalence of obesity among overworked and underpaid laborers in rural communities.   His stories of workers in chicken processing plants make it clear how they have to deal with the social, racial, and political issues that confront families in rural America.

The costs of cheap food, Simon says eloquently, are borne by the workers and communities that produce it.

And how is the fabulous Nathan doing that?  By releasing Modernist Bread this week.

Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya.  Modernist Bread.  The Cooking Lab, 2017.

If you have a spare $600 or so, this 53-pound set of coffee-table books will make you happy.  If you don’t, plead with your local library to purchase a set.

The books are beyond gorgeous—lavishly illustrated and full of the facts, figures, and results of the Lab’s years of experiments on the history, culture, and deliciousness of bread and bread making.

These books beg to be examined—but also used.  That’s why they come with a 6th volume—a user’s guide.  For that alone….

This is one of FoodNavigator.com’s collections of articles on one topic of interest to the food industry.

Dairy innovation

From kefir to savory yogurt, upmarket cottage cheese, whole milk yogurts and farmer’s cheese bars and cups… What’s hot in dairy? What consumer trends are the most successful firms tapping into? And how is the dairy industry addressing the rapid growth in non-dairy alternatives in the milk, cheese and yogurt aisles?

• Noosa co-founder: ‘We continue to be the darling of grocery stores with such explosive growth’: Honey-infused Aussie-style yogurt Noosa has expanded into the snacking category with its new Mates line, and is on course to generate revenues of $220m this year, says co-founder Koel Thomae… Read
• Yooli Foods breaks novel ground in protein snacking segment with farmer’s cheese bars, cups: They might be a novel concept for most Americans, but farmer’s cheese bars could develop into a potentially exciting new category in the burgeoning protein snacking segment, says the co-founder of Yooli Foods, which is rolling out farmer’s cheese cups this month and aims to start shipping its chocolate-coated bars before the year-end… Read
• Savory yogurt… a step too far for American consumers, or a sleeper hit in the making? Are Americans ready for savory yogurt? Right now, it seems the jury is still out, with some high profile brands quietly dropping some of their more adventurous SKUs and Blue Hill pausing production of its beet- and carrot-fueled yogurts. However, some trend-watchers believe the concept could still work for a US audience… Read
• Icelandic Provisions CEO: Skyr could be as big as Greek: Could skyr – which is higher in protein and lower in sugar – be as big as Greek yogurt, or is the ‘Icelandic’ segment of the dairy aisle likely to remain a quirky niche? Ten years ago, people were asking the same question about Greek yogurt, says the CEO of Icelandic Provisions, “and we all know what happened next.”.. Read
• fairlife ultra-filtered milk sales surged 79% in 2016; Core Power and Yup! to be brought under fairlife brand umbrella: Dollar sales of Coca-Cola-backed high-protein milk fairlife grew 79% in 2016, as consumers continued to trade up in the fluid milk category… Read
• Formulating with dairy: More protein, less sugar, a cleaner label: Less sugar, more protein, a cleaner label, savory flavors, and new formats from farmer’s cheese bars to ambient moon cheese… What’s keeping dairy formulators busy these days? FoodNavigator-USA caught up with Stephen Cobbe, R&D director, dairy, at Kerry to find out….. Read
• Dairy farmers use technology in effort to cut greenhouse gas production by 25% by 2020: Animal agriculture in the US is often criticized for its heavy environmental impact, but data from the National Dairy Council tells a very different story – one of farmers using technology to improve the sustainability of their lands and dairy production… Watch now
• Revelé Gelato uses air to create better-for-you profile without compromising quality ingredients: The entrepreneurs behind the startup Revelé Gelato thought health-conscious consumers seeking to indulge in frozen dessert faced an unfair decision: choose between high quality, recognizable ingredients that typically come with a higher fat and calorie count, or “weird” ingredients like those used by some better-for-you brands that can irritate the stomach… Read
• Animal-based protein tops consumer choice, but plant-based options are rising fast, Nielsen finds: When it comes to meeting consumers’ growing demand for protein, animal-based products continue to reign supreme in the US and Canada for now – but plant-based options are gaining traction and hold significant sales potential, according to the market research firm Nielsen. .. Read
• NMPF spars with Dannon, Dean Foods, over ‘rampant fear-based marketing’ on GMOs: “Rampant fear-based food marketing” – most notably from brands touting their non-GMO credentials – is damaging consumer trust and “jeopardizing the safe, sustainable farming practices that have enhanced farm productivity over the last 20 years” says the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) in a new marketing campaign that’s been sharply criticized by leading dairy brands… Read
• The Chaat Company, Hargol FoodTech, Funny Farm to take center stage at FOOD VISION USA as our 2017 trailblazers: From turmeric paste and green banana flour to sprouted mung bean snacks and cauliflower wraps and pizza bases, the entries to our 2017 trailblazers challenge are at the cutting edge of food & beverage innovation. But we could only pick three winners ….. Read
• No light at the end of the tunnel for Dean Foods as milk price wars escalate, says Bernstein: Milk price wars are “compressing the margin of private label retail prices over the Class I milk input cost to abnormally low levels,” say analysts at Bernstein… Read
• Chobani’s Peter McGuinness explains the new org chart: ‘To me, having a separate sales department is archaic’: Bringing sales, marketing, insights, product innovation and commercial finance under one new ‘demand’ department will help break down silos and make Chobani even more responsive to customers and consumers, the firm’s new chief marketing and commercial officer tells FoodNavigator-USA… Read

Jim Lahey with Maya Joseph.  The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook.  Norton, 2017.

Jim Lahey of My Bread, No-Knead Bread, and Sullivan Street Bakery fame, has produced this marvelous cookbook with his wife, Maya Joseph, featuring all the great foods he serves at Co., his New York restaurant on 9th Ave @25th Street.

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of both, not least because Maya, who holds a doctorate in political science from the New School, was my teaching assistant in several courses at NYU, and we’ve co-authored several papers:

• Joseph M, Nestle M.  The ethics of food.  Lahey Clinic Journal of Medical Ethics 2009;16(1):1-7.
• Joseph M, Nestle M.  Dialogue: the ethics of food [response].  Medical Ethics 200916(2):7-8.
• Joseph M, Nestle M.  Food and Politics in the Modern Age: 1920 – 2012   In: Bentley A, ed.  A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age, Vol. 6.  Berg, 2112:87-110.

Maya is a superb writer and I can hear her voice throughout this book.

The recipes are terrific and easy to follow and the book is beautifully illustrated.  You can taste the recipes at Co. and then have some fun with them at home.  Enjoy!