Currently browsing posts about: Coronavirus

This was in Sunday’s New York Times, on page 17 of the edition I get.

Smithfield is Big Pork.  It complains in this ad of critics who, it says, are “cynics and skeptics” who “don’t understand the notion of responsibility to others” and are “seeking opportunities to advance their activist agenda.”

Smithfield, the ad says, puts its “Smithfield family and country first.  By implementing aggressive measures to protect their health and safety during this pandemic.  By rewarding our team members on the frontline.”

The ad does not mention the number of Covid-19 cases among workers in its plants.

Fortunately, Leah Douglas of the Food and Environment Reporting Network is keeping track.

OK.  Smithfield is not the worst—that honor goes to Tyson.

The ad also doesn’t mention Smithfields lobbying to prevent lawsuits from injured “team” members.

Count me in as cynical, skeptical, and as activist as I can be on behalf of the workers in Smithfield plants who are forced to be there under close and dangerous conditions.

Want to know more?  The Counter explains what the ad is about in 12 tweets.

This Tweet got me started on farm payments.

Good point.  It sent me to John Newton who is an agricultural economist and lobbyist for the Farm Bureau.

The red sector is payments to agricultural producers and processors.  The tiny little sliver goes to food and nutrition.

All of this got me thinking.  What’s the Big Picture here?

Fortunately, Politico has done the work.

• ‘Here’s your check’: Trump’s massive payouts to farmers will be hard to pull back: The president was already spending double his predecessor to spare farmers the cost of his trade war. Now the price is reaching unsustainable levels.

And here are a few other comments on how this is playing out—with taxpayer dollars, recall.

• Million-dollar payments from USDA’s coronavirus fund:  A hog producer, Titan Swine, got the largest single payment during the first month of the USDA’s coronavirus relief program — $1.4 million — and it received two additional checks, totaling $1.1 million, on the same day, reported The Counter.
• A few farmers get huge USDA relief payments while many struggle for pennies.“The fall is going to be an apocalypse for small farms.”  From H. Claire Brown in The Counter.
• Millions of Dollars Heading to Farmers, but Small Farms Won’t See Much of it:  Advocates say young and disadvantaged farmers won’t benefit from the latest stimulus funds, and nor do those selling directly to consumers.

If ever we needed accountability—and rational agricultural policy—the time is now.

Leah Douglas at the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN) is doing a great public service.  She has a website where she reports Covid-19 cases among workers in the food system.

These are not trivial.  As of July 24, she reports Covid-19 cases in:

• 370 meatpacking plants
• 139 food processing plants
• 74 farms and production facilities

As for confirmed cases:

• 37,197 meatpacking workers
• 4,635 food processing workers
• 4,927 farmworkers

She reports 188 deaths among these workers

• 168 among meatpacking workers
• 14 among food processing workers
• 6 among farmworkers

Here’s what this looks like:

Where is all this happening?  She’s got a chart for that too.

These places have a lot to answer for.

This is an American tragedy.

What is one to make of a headline like this?

“CABBAGE DIET HOPE: Eating sauerkraut, coleslaw and raw cabbage ‘could protect against coronavirus.'”

I raced right to the study, fast-tracked in a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper:

Title: Association between consumption of fermented vegetables and COVID-19 mortality at a country level in Europe, by Susana Fonseca, et al.  doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.06.20147025

The study: The investigators compared consumption of fermented vegetables (and also pickled/marinated vegetables, fermented milk, yoghurt and fermented sour milk) in the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Comprehensive European Food Consumption Database to COVID-19 mortality.

Result: For each g/day increase in the average national consumption of fermented vegetables (but not the others), the mortality risk for COVID-19 decreased by 35.4%.

Comment: One food—saurkraut—reduces the Covid-19 mortality rate by 35%?  This would be an astounding result for any single food.  The authors’ hypothesis is that consumption of fermented foods promotes a microbiome that helps resist infection, even, apparently, respiratory infections.

At the moment, I’m judging this study as a delicious example of why correlation does not equal causation.

Eating saurkraut is just fine if you like it.

But for preventing Covid-19?  I’m sticking to masks and social distancing while waiting for further research.

RC Rybnikar sends these photos (thanks!) of examples from USDA’s Farmers to Families program.  The label.

What’s inside:

Looks good to me.

And now the USDA is expanding its list of commodities in the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP).

Additional details:

• Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA).  
• Final Rule Correction
• www.farmers.gov/cfap.

Here’s what’s been added:

alfalfa sprouts, anise, arugula, basil, bean sprouts, beets, blackberries, Brussels sprouts, celeriac (celery root), chives, cilantro, coconuts, collard greens, dandelion greens, greens (others not listed separately), guava, kale greens, lettuce – including Boston, green leaf, Lolla Rossa, oak leaf green, oak leaf red and red leaf – marjoram, mint, mustard, okra, oregano, parsnips, passion fruit, peas (green), pineapple, pistachios, radicchio, rosemary, sage, savory, sorrel, fresh sugarcane, Swiss chard, thyme and turnip top greens.

Here’s what’s been expanded: apples, blueberries, garlic, potatoes, raspberries, tangerines and taro (Why?  Because USDA found these commodities had a 5 percent or greater price decline between mid-January and mid-April as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic).

Let’s hope this helps small- and medium-size producers of these foods, and the foods get to people who need them.

Simón Barquera, who directs the Center for Research on Nutrition and Health at the National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca, sent me a copy of this letter, which he found on Twitter (but it’s no longer there):

It’s from the president of the Mexican Society of Nutrition and Endocrinology thanking Coca-Cola for donating Personal Protective Equipment to deal with Covid-19.

The Mexican Nutrition Society has a cozy relationship with Coca-Cola?

I wonder what that’s all about.

Conflicts of interest anyone?

CAST [Council for Agricultural Science and Technology: Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Food and Agricultural Markets:  This is a collection of 16 articles by various experts on the effects of Covid-19 on food, agriculture, and forestry.  The report is here.

IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy): Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy is Heating Up the Planet and Hollowing Rural Communities: The report is here.

FAIRR (a global network of investors addressing issues in meat production): An Industry Infected: Animal Agriculture in a post-COVID world.  The report is here.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds globally, we are presented with a real-time case study into the vulnerability of animal agriculture systems to external shocks. It has reminded us of the vulnerability of human health to disease risks stemming from both wild and domestic animals, and has served as a warning of the role modern animal production systems can play in increasing zoonotic disease risk.

The British Meat Processors Association is not happy with this one, it seems.

Read these and you will be up to date on anything known about food systems in the age of COVID-19.

FAO and Hopkins Dashboard

This gives data on aspects of food systems—supply chains, food environments,  consumer behavior, diets and nutrition, and the effects of key drivers like climate change and income, 170 indicators in all—on the food systems of 230 countries and territories.  This is one-stop shopping for this kind of information.

• Press release 
• The Dashboard 

“What struck us back in 2017 while working on the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition Report was the lack of accessible, organised, quality-checked information on food systems. Without that data, it’s difficult to identify the best evidence-based actions that could improve food systems,” said Johns Hopkins Global Food Ethics and Policy Program Director Jessica Fanzo. “It was really important to us, given the level of complexity and interconnections inherent to food systems, that the data be presented in a way that is easily usable – and that’s what the Dashboard does. Now decision makers have easy access to both data and to policy advice that is specific to their situations.”

Oxfam: “Exposed: How US supermarkets are failing their workers in a global pandemic”

Oxfam analyzed the formal policies of major US supermarkets during the first months of the pandemic, including Albertsons/Safeway, Costco, Kroger, Walmart, and Whole Foods/Amazon in five key areas: paid sick leave, hazard pay, protective gear, engagement with workers and worker representatives, and gender and dependent care. While all of these supermarkets stepped up some of their policies, none of them are doing nearly enough as they continue to make outsized profits on the backs of their low-wage workers.

Here are the Press release and the report.

CGIAR: Actions to Transform Food Systems Under Climate Change

Nothing short of a systemic transformation of food systems is required if we are to feed the world’s current and future population sustainably under climate change…we aimed to identify the high priority actions that we must collectively take now, for climate change adaptation and mitigation in food systems.  [Note: CGIAR was formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, but now goes just by CGIAR]

Here is the report.

HLPE [High Level Panel of Experts] 15: Fooc Security and Nutrition: Building a Global Narrative Towards 2030.

Following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the HLPE was asked to urgently prepare an issues paper on the potential impact of the pandemic on global food security and nutrition for an extraordinary meeting of the CFS on 19 March 2020. The key findings and recommendations from this issues paper have been updated and included in this report…The current COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in its global scale and the situation is changing rapidly, with many unknowns. It serves as a reminder of the fragility of the global food system and the importance of global coordination.

Here is the report.