Big Ag realizes that the tide is turning on the corporate control of our food system, and that their message is in jeopardy. This is why most of the corporations and corporately supported groups from Monsanto to the National Chicken Council (now tainted in light of the newly-released CDC report about chicken as contamination’s numero uno) have created special sections of their websites dedicated to the film, in an attempt to mislead the public on the facts Food, Inc. is bringing to light for the first time.

Unfortunately agribusiness has chosen to try and turn the message on its head with falsehoods. Jill Richardson did a good job refuting some of these claims here.

One of the most seething attacks from Big Ag argues that Food, Inc. “demonizes family farmers,” to which Farm Aid, an organization that has been supporting family farmers for 23 years, has replied:

Food, Inc. is an indictment of the industrial system of agriculture and the policy that promotes it, putting many family farmers out of business, compromising rural communities, degrading soil, air and water, and creating a public health epidemic. Troy Roush, an Indiana corn farmer, said in the film, “People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food of us and we’ll deliver, I promise you.” That’s the epitome of the American family farmer: innovative, creative, adaptable. It’s not to say that every farmer is going to start growing vegetables and selling direct to consumers… that doesn’t represent the entirety of our agricultural system. But our food system is more nuanced than the dichotomies like ‘commodities versus local food’ or ‘conventional versus organic.’ The main point is there are better policies that can reward methods that benefit our farmers, our planet and our health. And if there’s a market for that food, family farmers stand ready to meet the demand.

The second claim many of these agribusiness interests are making is that the film somehow reinforces that the sustainable food movement is elitist. It is time to lay this one to rest, Big Ag, for right now it has never been more obvious that the system we have in place is a two-tiered system in which the poor are forced to eat fast food at their peril; where some corporate bottom line is more important than the right of all people to eat healthy food. That is elitist.

So why is Big Ag shuddering in light of Food, Inc.’s reception by the media? Because Big Ag benefits from the status quo. With mass awareness about the current realities of the inner workings of our food system comes public outrage, and with public outrage comes regulation and thus a minimized corporate profits. So what is the government going to do about a public who is aware of the realities of our food system, conditions that are making us sick?

Here is hoping that the eye-opening that ensues from this film will roll into policy decisions.

Already in Washington we have legislation in the works like the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which is the biggest reform of food safety since 1938. It’s a start. There is also the Waxman-Markey Climate Change bill, in which agriculture is largely left out, but agribusiness is trying to use to its favor. We know that agriculture, and especially Big Ag contribute heavily to climate change and should thus play a role in this bill. But according to Tom Philpott’s article, linked above:

If the ag giants get their way, they could seriously compromise the legislation’s ability to mitigate climate change… To move in that direction would require a tremendous shift in practices, [director of the School of the Environment and Natural Resources at Ohio State University, Rattan] Lal told me in an interview: a move to farming that explicitly seeks to build organic matter in soil. That means reduced tillage, extensive cover cropping, and “as much manure and compost as possible.”

Changing the way we view our relationship to the soil, however, requires us to get off our addiction to biotechnology. What Monsanto and other companies are proposing we “feed the world” is more potentially e. coli-ridden meat, cheap calories like high fructose corn syrup, and some feed for our cars: ethanol. That is what they are producing, not the leafy greens and grains we are told are so good for us. Yet we support these claims out of some unyielding dedication to technology as our big fix. Even the recently passed Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act slipped a cool 7.7 billion dollars that could be focused on research in genetically modified crops in to Big Ag coffers. (More here from the Ethicurean’s Elanor Starmer). But we have yet to see the yield increase, nor has it been explained how Monsanto and others propose to increase said yields. So what does all this portend for our future legislation around agriculture?

Yesterday on the Huffington Post, Secretary Hillary Clinton weighed in on government strategies around hunger. One of her head advisers, Nina Federoff, is a well-known proponent of genetically modified food as a means of dealing with the food crisis, so one wonders if by “quality seeds” Secretary Clinton is hinting at GMOs.

It is my hope that the administration consider the following when making international development policy in Africa and elsewhere: it would be irresponsible, when yields have yet to be proven to increase here at home, and when farmers from the first Green Revolution in India are committing suicide over unmanageable debts and a depleted water table, and six countries in Europe have banned GMOs from their fields, to impose a policy built on such shaky ground.

Let’s hope that Secretary Clinton and others in the administration see Food, Inc. (Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack already has, but has yet to comment) and get a broader image of our food system to draw on.

When Michael Pollan was recently asked whether this was a “pivotal time for food” in a Newsweek interview about the film, he responded:

I do. I think we are reaching a tipping point, to use a cliché. This is one of the most interesting social movements afoot right now. The politicians haven’t quite recognized it yet. There are a very small handful who realize that there are votes in these issues. Hopefully this movie will be part of the change. We are realizing that the way we are eating is making us sick. The phrase “health-care crisis” is in large part another term for the catastrophe of the American diet. More than half the money we spend on health care goes to treat preventable diseases linked to diet.

Agribusiness has continuously blocked the labeling of genetically modified meat and other food, because they argue that too much information is a bad thing. After Food, Inc., hopefully consumers will be empowered to fight back for the information they deserve to know about their food.

The legislation is set to increase the authority and funding of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and at yesterday’s markup, Democrats agreed to halve the registration fee all food producers (domestic and foreign) would have to pay from the proposed amount of $1,000 to $500. The $1,000 charge, which had been supported by new FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, would have generated an estimated $378 million—money Democratic lawmakers said would go toward increasing plant inspections and other food safety activities.

Also during markup, industry, which raised objections to fees in the past, will have a say through public hearings on how the FDA should spend the money. Democrats also agreed to ask the FDA to first study how the industry should maintain records, and the costs and benefits associated with it, reported the Wall Street Journal. “Serious, substantive progress has been made,” Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the Energy and Commerce Committee’s ranking Republican, told the Journal. Still, he said, Republicans will work to change some provisions of the legislation.

After years of an underfunded and overstretched agency and countless food safety lapses—including record recalls of contaminated spinach, peppers and peanut butter—the Act goes a long way by requiring high risk facilities to be inspected at least every 6-18 months (currently facilities are inspected once a decade on average); providing FDA with mandatory recall authority, which the agency currently lacks; and requiring electronic traceability systems that are able to track identified contaminated food back to its source.

Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union, said the bill gives FDA the authority it needs to help keep unsafe foods off store shelves and out of consumers’ homes. “We’re pleased that the bill is moving forward,” Gadhia said. “We would have preferred that the current bill contain a higher registration fee to provide more funding for FDA oversight, but we’re hopeful that the full committee will approve the bill soon without watering down the strong protections it provides consumers.”

Consumers Union is also asking lawmakers to consider making the bill stronger by adding a provision to require testing and reporting for contaminants to the FDA, the critical need for which was highlighted by the recent case of Peanut Corporation of America, which, in 12 different instances, found salmonella in its peanut butter and continued to ship deadly peanut products without being required to report known contamination.

With the fee issue now negotiated, hold on for a bumpy week of wrangling. As Tom Laskawy noted over at Grist, Big Meat has expressed their displeasure with the bill, especially with the potential for FDA regulation over meat and poultry, both of which are currently regulated by USDA. The American Meat Institute has also expressed concerned with the inspection schedule and the empowerment of FDA to mandate a recall and impose civil penalties

Most interestingly, the markup and vote on the Act take place just as Food, Inc., reviewed on this site here and here, opens this Friday in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (it opens in other cities 6/19). In addition to exposing the underbelly of corporate agribusiness, the film takes aim at Big Ag for food safety failures, and brings these issues to the silver screen and, hopefully, to the American kitchen table.

This is your Act, so between now and next week, you can do a lot by calling on lawmakers on the Committee to maintain the strong provisions in the bill.

Here are the changes to the bill we would like to ask for:

1. Add a provision to the Food Safety Enhancement Act that requires mandatory testing for pathogens and reporting of results.
2. Please take care to ensure that the bill does not harm or over-burden small farms and businesses.
3. Please add Rep. Markey’s Ban Poisonous Additives Act as an amendment to the bill (which would ban BPA in containers).
4. Please vote for the bill!

More info on the representatives involved in the mark-up:

Probable Votes FOR The Bill – target these guys to get the improvements we want added to the bill TODAY

1. John Dingell, D-MI (sponsor) (202) 225-4071
2. Frank Pallone, D-NJ (co-sponsor) (202) 225-4671
3. Diana DeGette, D-CO (co-sponsor) (202) 225-4431
4. Betty Sutton, D-OH (co-sponsor) (202) 225-3401
5. Henry A. Waxman, D-CA (co-sponsor) (202) 225-3976
6. Lois Capps, D-CA
7. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL
8. Tammy Baldwin, D-WI
9. Anna Eshoo, D-CA
10. Jane Harman, D-CA
11. Christopher S. Murphy, D-CT
12. Kathy Castor, D-FL
13. Bruce L. Braley, D-IA

Probable Votes AGAINST the bill – Don’t bother with these guys

1. Nathan Deal, R-GA
2. Ed Whitfield, R-KY
3. John Shimkus, R-IL
4. Steve Buyer, R-IN
5. Tim Murphy, R-PA
6. Michael C. Burgess, R-TX
7. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN
8. Mike Rogers, R-MI
9. Gene Green, D-TX (worried it will hurt his district’s port)

Unknowns (we need 7 of these people to vote for the bill to pass it out of sub-committee)

1. Bart Gordon, D-TN
2. Eliot L. Engel, D-NY
3. Mike Ross, D-AR
4. Anthony D. Weiner, D-NY
5. Jim Matheson, D-UT
6. Charles A. Gonzalez, D-TX
7. John Barrow, D-GA
8. John P. Sarbanes, D-MD
9. Zachary T. Space, D-OH
10. Ralph M. Hall, R-TX
11. John B. Shadegg, R-AZ
12. Roy Blunt, R-MO – wife is Kraft lobbyist
13. Joseph R. Pitts, R-PA
14. Sue Wilkins Myrick, R-NC
15. Phil Gingrey, R-GA
16. Joe Barton, R-TX

The representatives listed above are on the subcommittee. The following representatives are on the House Energy & Commerce Committee but not on the Subcommittee on Health.

Democrats
Edward J. Markey, MA
Rick Boucher, VA
Bobby L. Rush, IL
Bart Stupak, MI
Mike Doyle, PA
Jay Inslee, WA
Mike Ross, AR
G.K. Butterfield, NC
Charlie Melancon, LA
Baron P. Hill, IN
Doris O. Matsui, CA
Jerry McNerney, CA
Peter Welch, VT

Republicans
Fred Upton, MI
Cliff Stearns, FL
George Radanovich, CA
Mary Bono Mack, CA
Greg Walden, OR
Lee Terry, NE
John Sullivan, OK
Steve Scalise, LA

We need a total of 28 votes on the committee to get this thing passed out of committee.

*Hat tip to Jill Richardson, who has a new book coming out soon that you should buy!