I love Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports.  Some member of Congress requests them and GAO resaearchers then get to work.

I particularly like the way GAO understates what its reports are about.

Try this, for example: Oversight of Future Supplemental Assistance to Farmers Could Be Improved

This program gave $23 billion to farmers during the pandemic.

Of this, 95% went to “nonspecialty crops” (translation: feed for animals and fuel for cars, aka Big Ag).

And hardly any of the money went to minority, new, or military farmers.

Leah Douglas, now working for Reuters, did the math.

• Collectively, socially disadvantaged, military, and beginning farmers got a combined $818 million across the two years,—3.6%
• Socially disadvantaged farmers  got $435.7 million—1.9% (they comprise 6.7% of farmers)
• Beginning farmers got $152.1 million—0.7% (they comprise 27% of farmers).
• Military veterans got $240.5 million—1% (they comprise 11% of farmers).

Comment: The USDA has a long history of discrimination against these groups.   It needs to make up for that.

Four items about the Big Four meat companies that collectively control 85% of the beef market.

I.  Reuters reports that JBS, the Brazilian meat giant, has settled claims that it engaged in price fixing for—gasp—$52.5 million.

JBS, its U.S. affiliates, and the other three of the Big Meat companies—Cargill Inc, National Beef Packing Co and Tyson Foods—have been accused of conspiring to limit supply iin order to raise prices and boost profits.

In a statement, JBS said it did not admit liability but that settling was in its best interest. It also said it will defend against beef price-fixing claims by other plaintiffs.

The settlement still requires approval from the courts.

JBS settled one month after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan here for new rules to bolster competition and stop “exploitation” in the meat sector.

Comment: I’ve written about the President’s executive order on the meat industry here, his challenge to consolidation here, and his concern about lack of competition here.  $52.5 million sure looks like guilty as charged, no matter what JBS says.

II.  The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association issued a statement on the settlement.

The announcement that JBS USA has decided on a $52.5 million settlement over allegations of beef price fixing is deeply disturbing to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). NCBA was the first national organization to request a government investigation of beef markets in 2019. Now there are settlements occurring without Department of Justice (DOJ) having released findings or even providing cattle producers with an update on progress.

Comment: The NCBS is disturbed?  I’ll bet.

III.  The American Enterprise Institute has released three articles on food price inflation, meat prices and pork prices.

• AEI – Food price spikes temporary, inflation likely to fall in 2022
• Where’s the pork in the surge in recent pork prices?  Maybe nowhere, and not in the meatpacking industry 
• Subsidized beef packing expansion unlikely sustainable

IV.  Tyson Foods, one of the other defendents in the price-fixing case, is #1 on Fortune’s World’s most admired companies list for food producction, and for the sixth straight year, no less.

Comment: You can’t make this stuff up.

Remember the fight over setting standards for reimbursible meals and a la carte products offered to kids in schools?

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign set healthier standards for school foods.   Although you might think that serving healthy food to kids in schools would get lots of bipartisan support (who could possibly be against it), the standards got lots of pushback (too hard to implement, kids won’t like the food, too much food waste, too much nanny state).

Some aspects of the standards—less salt and more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains—survived, but “relaxed” during the Trump administration.  Recall USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue’s “Make School Meals Great Again”

That was then and this is now with pandemic-induced obesity rates rising among children, and supply chains making it hard for schools to feed kids in any way.

That has not stopped the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the American Heart Association, and the American Public Health Association from petitioning the USDA to put a limit on added sugars in school meals, to bring them into compliance with the Dietary Guidelines.  By law, the USDA must have school meals follow the guidelines, but this means rulemaking, and rulemaking takes time—lots of it.

USDA has now taken Step #1: transitional standards for milk, whole grains, and salt.

• Milk: Schools and child care providers serving participants ages six and older may offer flavored low-fat (1%) milk in addition to nonfat flavored milk and nonfat or low-fat unflavored milk;
• Whole Grains: At least 80% of the grains served in school lunch and breakfast each week must be whole grain-rich; and
• Sodium: The weekly sodium limit for school lunch and breakfast will remain at the current level in SY 2022-2023. For school lunch only, there will be a 10% decrease in the limit in SY 2023-2024. This aligns with the U.S Food and Drug Administration’s recently released guidance that establishes voluntary sodium reduction targets for processed, packaged, and prepared foods in the U.S.

The next steps:

• Stakeholder briefing today: 11:45am-12:30 pm ET.  Register to attend here. 
• USDA will start working on standards that bring the meals into full compliance with the Dietary Guidelines.

Call for Comments:  The USDA invites comments on these transitional standards and on the next steps.

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.
• Mail: Send comments to Tina Namian, Chief, School Programs Branch, Policy and Program Development Division—4th Floor, Food and Nutrition Service, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314; telephone: 703-305-2590.

Resources

• Press release
• USDA’s website on school meals 
• Federal Register: Child Nutrition Programs: Transitional Standards for Milk, Whole Grains, and Sodium
• Webpage: Building Back Better with School Meals
• Fact Sheet: Child Nutrition Programs: Transitional Standards for Milk, Whole Grains, and Sodium
• Infographic: The Road Ahead: Building Back Better with School Meals 
• Infographic: Ten Reasons to Build Back Even Better with School Meals!

Larissa Zimberoff, the author of Technically Food (which I blurbed and reviewed), forwarded  this press release from the University of California Berkeley:  Global elimination of meat production could save the planet.  

A new study of the climate impacts of raising animals for food concludes that phasing out all animal agriculture has the potential to substantially alter the trajectory of global warming.  The work is a collaboration between Michael Eisen, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick Brown, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Stanford University and the CEO of Impossible Foods Inc., a company that sells plant-based meat substitutes.

The study: Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO₂ emissions this century.  Michael B. Eisen, Patrick O. Brown.   PLoS Climate. 2022;1(2).  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000010 

Method: The authors modeled the combined, long-term effects of emission reductions and biomass recovery that would be unlocked by a phaseout of animal agriculture.

Findings:  A phaseout of livestock production would provide half of the net emission reductions necessary to limit warming to 2°C

Conclusion: The magnitude and rapidity of these potential effects should place the reduction or elimination of animal agriculture at the forefront of strategies for averting disastrous climate change.

Funding:  There was no formal funding of this work. Michael Eisen is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute which funds all work in his lab. Patrick Brown is CEO of Impossible Foods, Inc.

Paco Underhill.  How We Eat: The Brave New World of Food and Drink.  Simon & Schuster, 2022.

What to say about this book.

For one thing, Underhill is a supermarket consultant, whose job it is to tell supermarkets how to sell more food.

For another (full disclosure), chapter nine is titled “Shopping with Marion,” and that would be me.

I met Underhill and his collaborator, Bill Tonelli, at the amazing Sunrise Asian supermarket upstairs from the corner of 9^th Street and 3^rd Avenue in Manhattan.  We wandered around the store for a bit, collected another shopper, and went out for coffee.  The result is presented largely in the form of a conversation.  Here’s a sample from page 157 that starts with Underhill explaining why he loves visiting Hollywood (he lives in New York):

“…And going to L.A. is so refreshing.  Partially because I got sick of eating here—I live by eating according to the season, and it’s so easy to do in L.A., but back here I’m like, cabbage and apples and potatoes, again?”

“Carrots,” Marion says.

“Carrots.  ‘Oh look, we have rutabaga.  Yay!’  So yeah, I’m a jerk.  I’m one of those people who want to be completely seasonal and local but can’t hack it everywhere.”

“Ithaca has a rutabaga roll every year just before Christmas,” Marion says.  “It’s a bowling contest at the farmers market.  You bowl with rutabagas.”

This is a chatty book with lots of Underhill’s insights into how supermarkets work, starting with parking lots, and what he thinks stores ought to do to face the retail future.

He also went to farmers’ markets, this time with Nina (Planck) Kaufelt.  That chapter is titled “The citified get countrified (and vice versa.”

It’s a chattier and unreferenced version of my 2006 book, What to Eat—the one I am currently updating—but I did take some notes.

I enjoyed reading it, but I’m not exactly an unbiased critic.

As if we don’t have enough trouble with alcohol in this country, it’s now being added to sodas.  In states that allow such things, expect to see them taking up more and more room in supermarket aisles.

The business press is interested in this trend; there is much money to be made on drinks of any kind.

See, for example, Bud Light to Launch Hard Soda.

Bud Light Seltzer Hard Soda will have no sugar or caffeine. Anheuser-Busch describes it as ‘light like a seltzer and bold like soda pop.’ Each can will contain 100 calories and 5% alcohol.

This comes in cola, cherry cola, orange and lemon-lime flavors.

Consumer demand has soared over the past few years for nonalcoholic seltzers such as LaCroix and alcoholic ones such as White Claw that are low on calories and offer just a hint of flavor. Now some consumers are migrating toward stronger flavors, industry experts say, and brewers are trying out new fizzy drinks.

This, then, is about market share.

Lots of other companies are getting into this act.

• From Beer to Hard Seltzer: A Cultural Pivot Finds a New Market:  Boston Beer Co., owner of popular brands like Sam Adams and Dogfish Head, launched its hard seltzer Truly in 2016. CEO Dave Burwick explains the company’s cultural pivot that made it No. 2 in the rapidly growing category.
• No- and low-alcohol category value in key global markets nears $10bn.  Monster enters alcohol category with CANarchy Craft Brewery Collective acquisition:  Monster Beverage Corporation will acquire CANarchy Craft Brewery Collective LLC, a craft beer and hard seltzer company for $330m, providing a springboard for the energy drink giant into the alcoholic beverage category…. Read more
• Coca-Cola, Molson Coors to partner on Simply Spiked Lemonade.  The RTD alcoholic beverage, which is set to hit shelves this summer, is the second drink to be developed by the two companies, following the launch of Topo Chico Hard Seltzer in 2021.
• Dry January movement grows presenting opportunity for non-alcoholic beverage brands:  Many consumers are reporting to take part in Dry January by either abstaining completely or significantly cutting down (‘Damp January’) on their alcohol consumption for the month, presenting year-long opportunities for the non-alcoholic beverage brands, says Morning Consult…. Read more

Given all that, what are we to make of this piece of news?

• Alcohol and COVID-19: Good news for red wine drinkers, but blow for beer boozers?  People who consume red wine between one to more than five glasses a week had a 10 to 17% lower risk in contracting COVID-19, but beer drinkers had a heightened risk, according to a recent study…. Read more
• Here’s the study: COVID-19 Risk Appears to Vary Across Different Alcoholic Beverages.
• Here’s the caveat: Association does not equal causation.  Drinkers of red wine have different lifestyles than beer drinkers, perhaps?
• And here are the study’s sensible conclusions:  The COVID-19 risk appears to vary across different alcoholic beverage subtypes, frequency, and amount…Consumption of beer and cider and spirits and heavy drinking are not recommended during the epidemics. Public health guidance should focus on reducing the risk of COVID-19 by advocating healthy lifestyle habits and preferential policies among consumers of beer and cider and spirits.

Amen.

Every time I write anything about the effects of ruminants on greenhouse gas emissions, I am flooded with comments about cherry-picked data.  I’m not going to even try to sort that out, but I do find the studies interesting.

Here’s a report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP): Emissions Impossible Europe: How Europe’s Big Meat and Dairy are heating up the planet. 

Watch the video about it here.

Among the report’s findings:

• Just 20 European meat and dairy companies combined produce the equivalent of more than half of the United Kingdom, France and Italy’s emissions, and exceed that of the Netherlands.
• The same 20 companies’ total emissions rival those of fossil fuel giants…over half of Chevron’s (55%), 42% of ExxonMobil’s, 44% of Shell’s and of BP’s.
• Their combined emissions are also equivalent to 48% of the coal consumed in the entire EU (2018)1 or more than 53 million passenger cars driven for one year.
• Only four (Arla, Danone, FrieslandCampina and Nestlé) out of the 20 companies assessed report their total supply chain emissions…Only three (Nestlé, FrieslandCampina and ABP) have announced plans to reduce their total.

Plenty of groups object to these findings.  You can read about that here.

Addition:

If you haven’t seen it, take a look at this 15-minute video on Big Ag lobbying from the New York Times.

Last week was a busy time for high-level thinking about nutrition.

I’ll start with this from Chef José Andrés.

A message from @WCKitchen's @chefjoseandres on child #nutrition: Child nutrition programs play an essential role in ensuring food and nutrition security for the nation's youth. pic.twitter.com/kZ4i7JGYVK

— Bipartisan Policy Center (@BPC_Bipartisan) January 27, 2022

For the rest, I am indebted to Politico Morning Ag for gathering all this in one place.

Nutrition research: Last week, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) appeared at an event focused on “sustainable nutrition science” hosted by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.  The are sponsors of the Food and Nutrition Education in Schools Act.  I watched Booker’s remarkably inspiring talk and wish I could find a video or transcript of it.

Booker held hearings on nutrition last year.  I have a transcript of his opening remarks.  Here is an excerpt:

Now let’s be clear about something: the majority of our food system is controlled by a handful of big multinational companies. These big food companies carefully formulate and market nutrient-poor, addictive, ultra-processed foods — ultra-processed foods which now comprise 2/3 of the calories in children and teen diets in the U.S — and then these companies want us to believe that diet related diseases such as obesity and diabetes are somehow a moral failing, that they represent a lack of willpower or a failure to exercise enough.
That is a lie.
It is not a moral failing, it is a policy failure.

Food is Medicine: Food and Society at the Aspen Institute and Harvard’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation released a Food is Medicine Research Action Plan, a lengthy report detailing recommendations for how to bolster nutrition interventions in health care.

Food is the leading cause of poor health in the United States. Over half of American adults suffering from at least one chronic, diet-related disease. This health crisis has devastating effects for individuals and their and families and places an immense burden on our health system and economy. Though food is the culprit, it can also be the cure. Food and nutrition interventions can aid in prevention and management, and even reverse chronic disease. Introduced at large scale, proven interventions could save millions of lives and billions in healthcare costs each year.

Universal free school meals: The Bipartisan Policy Center released recommendations from its Food and Nutrition Security Task Force.   The report has recommendations for strengthening nutrition education and security in and out of school.  For example:

• Ensure all children, regardless of household income, have access to nutritious foods to allow them to learn and grow by providing school breakfast, school lunch, afterschool meals, and summer meals to all students at no cost.
• Make Summer EBT a permanent program and allow students to access EBT benefits during school breaks, holidays, closures, and other emergencies.
• Maintain and, if possible, strengthen nutrition standards for all programs to better align them with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Pandemic EBT program: The Government Accountability Office recommended that USDA do a better job on nutrition assistance during emergencies and of implement the Pandemic-EBT program, which was supposed to give eligible school children charge cards for buying foods, but never worked well.