Currently browsing posts about: USDA

I don’t often respond to comments but this one about the political division caused by obesity is worth further discussion.

I truly resent your statement that Republicans don’t want to have an education, access to health care or access to nutritious food. Such statements not only undermine your credibility but contribute nothing to the discussion.

For the record, Republicans as just as committed to these things as the Democrats. The difference is that the Republicans don’t believe that it is the taxpayers responsibility to provide them.

If not taxpayers, who?  The writer does not say.

I thought of this question when I read the new report released by the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity. The center was established in 2006 by Mayor Bloomberg to seek evidence-based ways to reduce poverty in the city.

As the New York Times explains:

Without a flood of food stamps and tax benefits for low-income families, about 250,000 more New Yorkers would have slipped into poverty at the height of the recession…The center concluded that the poverty rate would have been three percentage points higher without federal tax programs passed in 2009 for low-income families and an aggressive city program to enroll New Yorkers who were not receiving public assistance but were eligible for food stamps, coupled with higher food stamp benefits.

Beyond personal damage, poverty is demonstrably bad for the health of cities.  Poor people do not buy much.  They cause social unrest.  They drain public resources.  Getting people out of poverty is sensible public policy and has been throughout history.

History also tells us that private charity is never adequate to meet the needs of the poor.

That’s why U.S. taxpayers support food stamp and other food assistance programs to the tune of close to $100 billion a year, as can be seen in the USDA’s budget figures.

The “aggressive city program” paid off.  At a time of economic crisis, poverty levels throughout America increased.  New York City’s did not.

Isn’t dealing with poverty a core function of government?  Isn’t some reasonable level of income equity a core feature of democratic society?

I think so, but await your opinions.

On March 02, USDA announced that it was revoking its accreditation of two certifying agencies, Certified Organic, Inc. (COI) and Guaranteed Organic Certification Agency (GOCA).

USDA says COI failed to

• Communicate with hired inspectors about proper procedures or ensure they were adequately trained
• Adhere to internal procedures according to their operational manual
• Keep confidentiality agreements on file for all employees with knowledge about certification applicants or operations
• Indicate on certificates the effective dates for organic certification,
• Ensure adequate training for employees about the regulations
• Provide clients with cost estimates including inspection fees
• Clearly identify the company’s responsibility to pay for any required pre- or postharvest testing
• Verify organic system plans against the actual practices of their certified operations

GOCA’s problems had to do with “persistent noncompliance,” including such things as “failure to require clients to use defined boundaries and border zones as required by the organic standards.”  This mayall  sound absurdly bureaucratic but it means the certifiers could be overlooking producers’ violations of organic standards.

You can track down the records of such things on the USDA’s website, and see the handful of other such enforcement actions at the National Organic Program’s site.

I’d say this is progress.  Organic producers are supposed to follow the rules of the National Organic Program, and to be inspected to make sure they do.  If the inspectors aren’t doing their job diligently, you won’t be able to tell whether the organic foods you buy are worth the premium prices.

This is a key point of a recent FoodNavigator story on the market for organics.  The U.S. industry is expected to go from $21.1 billion in 2010 to $36.8 billion in 2015.   How come?  Because of “the government’s monetary and regulatory support and increasing acceptance of organic food in the country.”

People will pay more for organics if they think the producer is credible.  Organics are about credibility.  That is why the USDA needs to fiercely enforce organic certification.   Doing so protects the industry.  The more of this sort of thing, the better.

Thanks to FoodSafetyNews for the heads up on the latest Government Accountability Office(GAO) attempt to get Congress to consolidate federal food safety functions on one agency.

The GAO’s latest 345-page report on how the federal government can save money lists its proposals in alphabetical order by area.  Agriculture comes first and, therefore, so does food safety.  You have to love the way GAO titles its sections: “Fragmented food safety system has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources.”

GAO has been saying this for 20 years.  In 1990, for example, it published reports on who does what in the federal government about food safety and the inconsistencies in oversight.

As I wrote in Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (2010),

Today, an inventory of federal food safety activities reveals a system breathtaking in its irrationality: 35 separate laws administered by 12 agencies housed in six cabinet-level departments….

At best, a structure as fragmented as this one would require extraordinary efforts to achieve communication let alone coordination, and more than 50 interagency agreements govern such efforts.

Among the six agencies with the broadest mandates, all conduct inspections and collect and analyze samples, and at least three–though not necessarily the same ones–have something to do with regulating dairy products, eggs and egg products, fruits and vegetables, grains, and meat and poultry.

Until recently, the system had no mission statement (for whatever such statements are worth) and it still does not have consistent rules, clear lines of authority, a rational allocation of resources, or standards against which to measure success.

With such a system, some issues–such as use of animal manure to fertilize food crops—inevitably fall between the cracks and are governed by no rules whatsoever.

Not much has changed in the subsequent 20 years, as this new report attests.  As is inevitably the case, some of the areas of overlap are simply absurd:

The 2008 Farm Bill assigned USDA responsibility for catfish, thus splitting seafood oversight between USDA and FDA. In September 2009, GAO also identified gaps in food safety agencies’ enforcement and collaboration on imported food.

Specifically, the import screening system used by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not notify FDA’s or FSIS’s systems when imported food shipments arrive at U.S. ports.

But the worst is the situation with shell eggs, seemingly unfixable, given the 2010 recall of 500 million eggs:

FDA is generally responsible for ensuring that shell eggs, including eggs at farms such as those where the outbreak occurred, are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled and FSIS [USDA] is responsible for the safety of eggs processed into egg products.

In addition, while USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service sets quality and grade standards for the eggs, such as Grade A, it does not test the eggs for microbes such as Salmonella.

Further, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service helps ensure the health of the young chicks that are supplied to egg farms, but FDA oversees the safety of the feed they eat.

I repeat.  This is not a new issue.  The hope was that the food safety act passed in January would pave the way to establish a single food safety agency.  The GAO report, while urging its creation, doubts that it will cut costs.

But it might save lives.

USDA has changed the way it reports the country’s annual expenditures on the food system.  It has just released the Economic Research Service’s new food dollar report. As the report explains, it is designed to answer the question “For what do our food dollars pay?”

The USDA has a nifty way of presenting this information.  The first illustration identifies the distribution of the U.S. food dollar between farm and marketing shares.  The farm share is what goes to the farmer.  The marketing share is everything else that happens to a food between harvest and consumption.

What surprised me about this was the 15.8% farm share.  For those of you who keep track of such things, it was 19% in 2006.

But the USDA changed the methods for computing this figure.  Using the new methods, 15.8% is a 4% increase since 2006.  However this is calculated, less than 20 cents of a dollar spent on food is for the food itself.

The second illustration explains the distribution of the food dollar among ten industry groups involved in the supply chain.

Looking at the actual data series this way, farm and agribusiness accounts for only 11.6% of the dollar.  The big sectors are food processing (18.6%) and food service (33.7%).

From a health and sustainability standpoint, isn’t there something wrong with this picture?

I’m still trying to understand how it happened that USDA’s plan for peaceful coexistence among growers of alfalfa—genetically modified (GM), industrial (but not GM), and organic (definitely not GM))—failed so miserably.  It was the first time that USDA seemed to be recognizing the legitimacy of complaints that GM crops are contaminating organic crops.  I thought this was a food step forward.

But the USDA ended up approving GM alfalfa with no restrictions—just promises to study the matter.

I’ve now seen some explanations that not only make sense, but also shed considerable light on how agricultural politics works in Washington these days.

Sam Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc, writes on his blog that after USDA’s decision:

The only appeasement the USDA offered were panels on studying ways to prevent contamination from occurring in the future. But this seems akin to studying ways to protect a forest after loggers have been allowed to cut down the trees.

The decision was a stunning reversal of a more measured approach that Vilsack appeared to be taking in December, when the USDA talked about considering the impact of the GM crop on other sectors of agriculture. But that was before he faced an uproar by the GM industry and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal for playing nice with organic farmers.

Gary Hirshberg, in response to heavy criticism that he sold out to Monsanto, writes on the Huffington Post:

Stonyfield is absolutely and utterly opposed to the deregulation of GE crops. We believe that these crops are resulting in significantly higher uses of toxic herbicides and water, creating a new generation of costly “super” weeds, pose severe and irreversible threats to biodiversity and seed stocks, do not live up to the superior yield claims of their patent holders and are unaffordable for small family farmers in the US and around the world.

We believe that organic farming methods are proving through objective, scientific validation to offer far better solutions. We also believe that unrestricted deregulation of GE crops unfairly limits farmer and consumer choice.

…From the outset of these stakeholder discussions, it was clear that GE alfalfa had overwhelming political, legal, financial and regulatory support, and thus the odds were severely stacked against any possibility of preventing some level of approval, just as has been the case with GE cotton, soy, canola and corn.

Keep in mind that, according to Food and Water Watch, biotech has spent more than half a billion dollars ($547 million) lobbying Congress since 1999. Their lobby expenditures more than doubled during that time. In 2009 alone they spent $71 million. Last year they had more than 100 lobbying firms working for them, as well as their own in-house lobbyists.

In an interview with Food Chemical News (Feb 3), Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety,  one of the groups leading the opposition to GM alfalfa:

describes USDA’s promises as a “stale gesture” toward organic and other industry groups that had worked with the department on its proposed option for partial deregulation of RR alfalfa. He speculates that USDA was prepared to go down the partial deregulation route but was “shot down at the White House level….

“It’s not about organic and GMOs,” Kimbrell continues. “The real losses are not with organic crops but with conventional crops,” such as rice commingled with Bayer’s authorized LibertyLink 601 variety and corn commingled with the StarLink variety. “The growers can’t sell their crops to Europe or Asia. The issue is how do we keep GMOs from contaminating conventional crops such as rice, corn and now alfalfa?”

Food and Water Watch, another leading group on this issue and the source of the lobbying data in Hirshberg’s comments,  points out that the USDA’s decision to allow unrestricted planting of GM alfalfa is not likely to be an isolated case.  The FDA is currently considering approval of GM salmon, and its decision is expected soon.

Both organizations are organizing protests on their websites, but this is how agricultural politics works these days.

In an action long expected, the USDA approved commercial production of genetically modified alfalfa.

The announcement makes it clear that USDA did not do this lightly.  The agency was well aware of the concerns of organic farmers that GM alfalfa could—and will—contaminate their fields.

Secretary Vilsack said:

After conducting a thorough and transparent examination of alfalfa through a multi-alternative environmental impact statement (EIS) and several public comment opportunities, APHIS has determined that Roundup Ready alfalfa is as safe as traditionally bred alfalfa…All of the alfalfa production stakeholders involved in this issue have stressed their willingness to work together to find solutions.

…USDA brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss feasible strategies for coexistence between genetically engineered (GE), organic, and other non-GE stakeholders.

…In response to the request for support from its stakeholders, USDA is taking a number of steps, including:

• Reestablishing two important USDA advisory committees – Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture, and the National Genetic Resources Advisory Committee.
• Conducting research into areas such as ensuring the genetic integrity, production and preservation of alfalfa seeds entrusted to the germplasm system;
• Refining and extending current models of gene flow in alfalfa;
• Requesting proposals through the Small Business Innovation Research program to improve handling of forage seeds and detection of transgenes in alfalfa seeds and hay; and,
• Providing voluntary, third-party audits and verification of industry-led stewardship initiatives.

USDA seems to think it has brokered “peaceful coexistence” (see previous post).  Skeptics, take note.

The USDA is providing more information about this decision online .  It also has issued a Q and A.  Here’s the Federal Register notice.

Here’s what I’m going to be doing on Monday morning:

INVITATION TO KEY STAKEHOLDERS TO JOIN IN THE NATIONAL RELEASE OF THE 2010 DIETARY GUIDELINES FOR AMERICANS

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services Will Release the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans at a Joint Press Conference Monday, January 31, 2011

On Monday, January 31, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will hold a joint press a conference at The George Washington University Jack Morton Auditorium to release the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will discuss the Guidelines and provide key insights into the new recommendations. Joining the Secretaries will be Dr. Robert Post, Deputy Director of USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and Rear Admiral Penelope Slade-Sawyer, HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Immediately following the presentations, the speakers will entertain questions from the press, stakeholders, students and others in attendance.

 Monday, January 31, 2011, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. EST

The George Washington University

Jack Morton Auditorium

Media and Public Affairs Building

805 21st Street, NW

Washington, DC 20052

Stakeholders are invited to attend this event in person. Seating is limited and RSVP is required by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, January 26, by registering here.

Stakeholders may also view the event via webcast at www.usda.gov/live

Copies of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans will be available at www.DietaryGuidelines.gov immediately following the press conference.

Can’t wait!

The USDA announced today that it is starting the interminable rulemaking process for new nutrition standards for school breakfasts and lunches.

The new standards are designed to add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat milk to school meals.

These are food-based standards.  The lengthy Federal Register notice specifies the number and size of servings of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and grains (table 3, page 2516).  This is a huge step forward and USDA deserves lots of support for doing this.

I am somewhat less enthusiastic about some of the other provisions, but perhaps they are the price to pay for progress:

Nutrient-based standards? The standards also are designed to limit levels of saturated fat, sodium, calories, and trans fats.  They specify a range of calories as well as maximum values for saturated fat and sodium (trans fats have to be zero).

Alas, the devil is in the details.

Nutrient-based standards force some questionable choices on menu planners.  This is evident from the menus comparing the old and new standards.  The old menus included “kids food”—food-like objects such as pizza sticks and breaded beef patties.

Happily, the new menus drop those and call for real foods.  Some of them—jicama, kiwi, and grape tomatoes, for example—are likely to seem exotic to kids accustomed to chicken fingers.  So far, so good.

But the foods are accompanied by strangely tasting miracles of food technology such as reduced-fat mayonnaise, low-fat salad dressings, and soft margarines.  Why?  To meet nutrient standards.

What about sugars? The standards don’t mention sugars except to say that if the others are followed, there isn’t much room allowed for sugary foods.  Canned fruits are to be low in sugar.  Use of highly fortified sugary foods is discouraged.

Chocolate and other flavored milk? The new standards allow skim “flavored” milk (translation: sugar-sweetened).  Otherwise, says USDA, kids might not drink milk and will not get enough calcium.  Sigh.  Milk, as I keep saying, is not an essential nutrient.  Chocolate or strawberry milk is a dessert.  Chalk this one up to dairy lobbying.

The USDA based the new standards on the report released in October 2009 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM): School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children. It looks to me as though the USDA actually followed the IOM recommendations, a miracle in itself.

If you want to comment on the new standards, you can do so until April 13 at  http://www.regulations.gov. Enjoy!