Civil Eats

USDA has until Wednesday, March 3 to receive public comment on its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on approval of GE alfalfa. In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued USDA on behalf of farmers and others regarding its approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, saying that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should have prepared an EIS. CFS won and USDA was required to prepare a full EIS analyzing the impact of approving genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa on the environment, farmers, and the public. While USDA prepared the EIS, Monsanto appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which will hear the case later this year. In the meantime, farmers are in limbo about the legality of planting GE alfalfa this spring.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, today released new poll data showing that two-thirds of organic food consumers are concerned about GE ingredients contaminating organic food. Given the popularity of alfalfa sprouts among health-oriented eaters, Consumers Union urges USDA to consider the overwhelming consumer concern before deciding to allow GE alfalfa on the market. The poll results can be found online [PDF]. Read More

Causing no end of difficulties in our national discourse is the steadfast belief held by both the right and the left that everything is either right or left: bad or good, strong or weak, despotic or patriotic.  You’re either with us or you’re against us.  President Obama addressed this very effectively before both House Republicans and Senate Democrats in recent days.  It is media driven to a large extent because the media need controversy to sell papers, or bytes or views or whatever it is they’re selling these days.

The most common form this takes is the old build’em-up-then-tear’em-down routine.  Perhaps the only thing many Americans enjoy more than the uplifting emotion of a success story is the schadenfreude of watching that success come tumbling down.  So when an idea comes to the fore, the critics ooze from the woodwork and their primary tactic is divide and conquer.  Label it, frame the debate, and the fight is won or lost before the story is even told.

For a long time in the circles I travel in this was not a problem because the ideas embodied in what some have come to call SOLE food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, & Ethical) were not perceived as a threat to the established paradigm.  Recent successes such as Michael Pollan’s work have, however, shined a very bright spotlight on advocates of real food.  As a result, people who have been toiling at these ideas for decades are becoming targets of powerful interests in the Big Food lobby.  Such is the case this week at WeeklyStandard.com, where Missouri Farm Bureau vice president Blake Hurst has found his most recent audience. Read More

Consumer Reports’ latest tests of packaged leafy greens found bacteria that are common indicators of poor sanitation and fecal contamination, in some cases, at rather high levels. The story appears in the March 2010 issue of Consumer Reports and is also available free online. Consumers Union today also issued a report [PDF] urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to set safety standards for greens. FDA food safety legislation pending in the Senate, and passed last summer by the House of Representatives, would require the FDA to create just such safety standards. Read More

Dr. Elisabeth Hagen has been nominated to take the helm of the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) at the USDA, which oversees the safety of all meat, poultry and eggs, and where there has been a gaping hole waiting to be filled by a warm (and hopefully reform-minded, considering the past year’s track record on recalls) body since October 2008. Dr. Hagan is not new around the USDA, she is currently FSIS Chief Medical Officer, and served during the Bush Administration as a FSIS senior executive. If nominated, food borne illness litigator Bill Marler already has a list of needed reforms for Dr. Hagan and her team. Read More

I can’t believe I missed it: the Meat Industry Hall of Fame’s first-ever induction ceremony occurred in Chicago on October 27. And what a night it was: headlined by the illustrious Bill Kurtis—the former CBS anchor who currently narrates criminal justice shows for the A&E Television Network.

Meat industry luminaries including Don Tyson, Jimmy Dean, and the late Frank Perdue were inducted that evening, along with litigious feedlot owner Paul Engler, who you might remember for suing Oprah Winfrey over mad cow disease and getting spanked in court. By all accounts, it was a truly magical evening, what with Kurtis’ gripping keynote address offering up a 30 minute history of the American meat industry.

Despite the glitz, an undercurrent of worry pervaded the event. See, the meat industry was in the midst of its most horrific year on record, being seemingly besieged by all sides. Robert “Bo” Manly, CFO of pork titan Smithfield Foods put it best: “Anything that breathed lost money.” Read More

Beginning in 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) took legal action against the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. The federal courts agreed and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an environmental impacts statement (EIS).

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009. A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, or organic dairy farmers seriously, for example, having dismissed the fact that contamination will threaten export markets and domestic organic markets. You can review the EIS here and supplemental documents here.

This is the first time the USDA has prepared an EIS for any GE crop and therefore will have broad implications for all transgenic crops, and its failure to address the environmental and related economic impacts of GE alfalfa will have far-reaching consequences. CFS is spearheading a campaign to make sure all affected parties know and are involved in the public process and have the opportunity to comment. Read More

The food safety landscape after the first year of the Obama administration remains very similar to the last year of the Bush administration….

During a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, President Obama gave himself a letter grade of B+ for his first year in office. But all the same, an ad hoc consortium of food safety professionals, food safety advocates, and food safety writers say he deserves some coal in his Christmas stocking. Food Safety News, the best online publication for all aspects of the safety of the global food supply, is running a list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice this year in food safety. The list was created after polling those mentioned above, including your intrepid blogger. There was an overwhelming consensus that large chunks of coal should be deposited in the Christmas stockings of both President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for the failure to name someone to lead USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs. Read More

How is it that a country can put a man on the moon, but can’t seem to feed it’s children school lunches that are safer than those eaten at McDonald’s or Jack in the Box?

In the past 10 years more than 23,000 school children have become sick as a result of hundreds of food poisoning outbreaks in our nation’s lunchrooms. A recent investigation by USA Today found that the meat served in U.S. school cafeterias faces less testing and lower safety standards than the mystery meat in Big Macs and Whopper Juniors.

USA Today reporters discovered that meat served at McDonald’s, Burger King and Costco is tested as much as 10 times more often as the ground beef served in America’s school cafeterias. While fast-food chains take samples on their production lines every 15 minutes, the USDA only tests 8 times a day.

In addition to testing more frequently, fast-food chains also set more stringent limits on so-called indicator bacteria. In the case of generic E. coli, the USDA allows 10 times more bacteria than Jack in the Box!

This fact should be a national embarrassment to all members of Congress, USDA officials and meat industry executives who have allowed our nation’s school lunch programs to become the dumping grounds for cheap commodity products that feed the bottom line of corporate agribusiness. Read More

Consumer Reports’ latest test of fresh, whole broilers bought in 22 states reveals that two-thirds of birds tested harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of food-borne disease. The report reveals that organic “air-chilled” broilers were among the cleanest and that Perdue was found to be the cleanest of the brand-name chicken. Tyson and Foster Farms chickens were found to be the most contaminated. The report is available, free online (note, you have to click through the side bars to the left of the story) and in the January 2010 issue of the magazine. Read More

The landscape of health has changed. No longer are our families guaranteed a healthy livelihood, not in the face of the current rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s and allergies. In the words of Elizabeth Warren, Harvard University law professor who is head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, “We need a new model,” and we need a new food system. It’s our health on the line.

8 Steps Obama Could Take to Save Food: Read More

Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain measurable levels of Bisphenol A (BPA). The results are reported in the December 2009 issue and also available online. BPA, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because it has been linked to a wide array of health effects including reproductive abnormalities, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. I’ve reported on BPA here, here, and here. Read More

Ever wonder what this food fiasco is costing us? You and me? Taxpayers? Well, the Economist recently assembled these jaw-dropping food safety stats in a “Farm to Fork” article in their October 9 issue:

1. There are 26,000 food poisoning cases per 100,000 Americans, every year (an eye-popping 26% of the population)

2. Compare that to only 3,400 cases in the UK, and just 1,200 in France. Stunning.

3. 76 million Americans become ill with food poisoning. That’s as if every child in America were to get sick. All 75 million of them. And then some.

4. Insufficient food safety is costing the US $35 Billion a year (as a benchmark, the entire 2009 budget for the FDA was only $2.4 Billion).

According to the article, “the wave of food scares that has swept America over the past few years has caused a crisis in the country’s $1 trillion food industry” and is resulting in a food fight of epic proportions. Read More

On September 29, 2009, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) gave a prepared floor statement addressing his concerns with Bryan Walsh’s August 21st, 2009 Time Magazine article “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food”.

We are encouraged that the Senator has entered the dialog of how we can improve our food system and the public’s health. However, many of the criticisms of Walsh’s article presented in the statement are unfounded and serve to misinform consumers.

The Senator covers a wide variety of topics in his statement, we have selected a handful of issues raised in quotes from the Senator’s statement to address what we believe consumers would benefit from having clarified. Specifically, we will comment on the Senator’s claims regarding the Danish ban on antimicrobial growth promoters, the contribution of industrial animal production to water quality, organic production methods and consumer demands. Read More

Last Sunday, investigative reporter for the New York Times Michael Moss took a hard look at a hamburger contaminated with e. coli, following the elaborate path it took from multiple cows and slaughterhouses and through various processes to one of the victim’s plates, a 22-year old dance instructor, now paralyzed, named Stephanie Smith. The piece was a shocker because it showed just how unaccountable these companies have become in the face of an often powerless and conflicted USDA. The piece is still on the most-emailed list of the NYT website as of this writing, it pushed Tyson into a deal with Costco over testing, and it is even being discussed in Washington, according to a follow-up piece featured today by Moss. Read More

Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed the notorious corporate public relations hit man Rick Berman, best known for heading the Center for Consumer Freedom and for starting numerous websites that pose as fact havens while he is most likely being paid by the corporate interests pushing high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, tanning beds, tuna fish and more. Why don’t we know who is footing the bill? Because Berman orchestrates a cadre of non-profits to represent corporate political aims, and they do not have to reveal their donors. Maddow pointed this out at the top of the interview, and again after Berman was given the chance to correct the record and chose then to defend trans fats — leading Maddow to prod him to reveal to her audience at least the fact that someone was paying him to take sides on the issue. It’s worth watching, take a look here: Read More

In the wake of the devastating New York Times piece on E. coli in ground beef, USDA Chief put out a statement yesterday evening:

“The story we learned about over the weekend is unacceptable and tragic. We all know we can and should do more to protect the safety of the American people and the story in this weekend’s paper will continue to spur our efforts to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7. Over the last eight months since President Obama took office, USDA has been aggressive in its efforts to improve food safety, and has been an active partner in establishing and contributing to President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group.

Bah, humbug. What’s your plan, Tom? Read More

Today’s headlines are enough to make any mother wary. As we battle our toddlers in the grocery store, we hardly have the energy left to decipher the headlines: Organics aren’t healthier, death panels await health care reform, bankers receive record bonuses, swine flu pandemics swirl . What has happened to the world that our children are inheriting? And does anyone care?

Perhaps we should. Because the children of today represent the economy of tomorrow. Today’s parents and grandparents are raising the “think tanks” that are going to be the solutions to tomorrow’s problems . Today’s children will reinvent energy technology, redefine reform and regulations and enhance agricultural productivity in ways that we can not even begin to imagine. But only if we give them the tools with which to do it. Read More

On Saturday it was reported that Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff is stepping down from his position to “pursue opportunities in agriculture in the private sector.” This is not surprising, considering that PA governor Ed Rendell was looking to get rid of Wolff. But now that Wolff is hunting for a job, we thought it valuable here at Civil Eats to revisit why Dennis Wolff is not qualified for the role as head of the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the USDA — a vital position overseeing America’s meat, egg and dairy supply — where he has previously been floated as a candidate. Read More

President Obama commended the House for passing HR 2749 yesterday, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, which amends the Federal food, Safety and Cosmetic Act. HR 2749 was a long time coming; lead sponsor John Dingell (D-MI) repeatedly noted yesterday during the hour-long debate leading to the House vote that “this bill is old enough to vote,” because versions have been floating around Capitol Hill for 21 years. Although Rep. Dingell is the oldest member of the House (he’s 83), he was on fire yesterday, and running circles around his younger colleagues who were voicing opposition. Over the last few months, Rep. Dingell and his co-sponsors worked tirelessly to create a unified front for HR 2749, and it passed with Bipartisan support in the House, as well as with the support (or neutrality) of everyone from major consumers’ groups to all kinds of growers’ groups, producers’ groups, and even grocers’ groups. Though the final Bill went through many dilutions on its way to yesterday’s vote (there were three major mark-ups in about 18 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, when there was a first attempt to bring the Bill to a vote), it’s still the biggest change to the food safety landscape in fifty years. Read More

Americans are more obese than ever, our current agriculture system is dependent on oil and other limited resources, our waterways and air are polluted by factory-like farming operations, and still opponents try to push sustainable agriculture to the margins. But change is possible, as Jill Richardson writes in her new book, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It, which breaks down many of the issues facing the food system and provides approximately 70 pages of solutions. Read More

An alliance of consumer, farmer, environmental, ethical investor, and food safety groups yesterday urged Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to repeal a February 2008 emergency rule he issued for labeling dairy products in his state. The rule stipulates that Ohio’s dairy producers cannot use the widely used and understood term “rbGH-free” on labels and must rather describe products as “from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones.” The rule also requires that a disclaimer must be included stating that there is “no significant difference between milk from rbGH-treated cows and milk from untreated cows.”

The International Dairy Foods Association and the Organic Trade Association have mounted an appeal, and the Ohio courts have postponed enforcement of the rule until its resolution. On July 23 these associations will enter mediation with the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The allied groups are encouraging opponents of the rule to write Governor Strickland and urge him to rescind it before the mediation gets underway. Read More

The key members of the Food Safety Working Group (FSWG) didn’t announce Michael Taylor as the new Special Food Safety Commissioner/Advisor during their press conference today, but they did announce a new, excellent public-health based approach to food safety. This is based on a new, more aggressive approach to the three core principles of prevention, improving enforcement, and improving response to and recovery from foodborne disease outbreaks, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Food Pol expert Marion Nestle of Food Politics, however, is confirming that Michael Taylor has gotten the job.

During today’s announcement, Secretary Sebelius thanked Rep. John Dingell and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, longstanding champions of food safety, before she introduced her FSWG partners, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and Vice President Joe Biden. Read More

Robyn O’Brien is the best-selling author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It and a “reluctant crusader” for cleaning up our food system. A Houston native from a conservative family—not the most likely candidate to be found on the frontline of the battleground for the American food supply—Robyn’s advocacy began when the youngest of her four children had a violent reaction to eggs. In a quest to find answers and solutions to what seemed to be a personal problem, she used her MBA and background in finance to uncover and report on the relationship between Big Food and Big Money and unearth how a flawed federal policy has allowed hidden toxins in our food that she argues could be contributing to the alarming recent increase in allergies, ADHD, cancer, and asthma in our children. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Robyn about her book and her work, specifically focusing on the recent engineering of patented chemical and proteins in our food. Read More

Just when America thought it was safe to go back into the grocery store, another food outbreak wakes us up to the fact that there is something seriously wrong with our food safety system. This time it’s Nestle Toll House cookie dough with E.coli, a treat that nearly every kid in America reaches for a few times a month during the summer. This is yet another reminder why it’s important to get the new food safety legislation, currently winding its way through Congress, right. Read More

I have to hand it to Monsanto. A company representative on Twitter recently engaged me in a dialog about whether labeling products containing GMO food would do any harm, and, if so, to whom.

While the dialog felt like another cut-and-paste debate between me and previously published Monsanto paraphernalia, it offered just enough information about how Monsanto defends against mandatory GMO labeling. Clearly, anyone informed about consumer sentiments regarding GMO food knows that such labeling would devastate Monsanto and other GM seed companies’ bottom line. Which explains the vigorous, even suffocating effort by Monsanto to control the conversation. Read More

On June 12, 1957, Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney stated that “evidence pointed to a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer,” thereby changing the official position of the United States Public Health Service. This small but significant move opened the door to regulation of Big Tobacco, beginning a battle that came to a head last week with the FDA being granted the most power over the industry to date.

Now, more than a half a century after that first declaration, that same date brought the movie Food, Inc. to theaters, a film that reveals the dysfunction of our food system. With obesity rates at the highest point in history, contaminated food regularly sickening thousands, and government estimating we will continue to spend 6.2% more on healthcare annually (this year, an additional $200 billion, more than our annual economic growth of 4.1%), it is clear that we have a problem as big as smoking: an addiction to cheap, unhealthy food perpetuated by an industry intent on maximizing profits at the expense of our health and our land. It is time to regulate Big Food by changing the culture in Washington that allowed it to proliferate. Read More

Today, Food, Inc. debuts, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks, and almost every major media outlet has weighed in: it is certainly not a film to miss, it offers a view into the food system you’ve never seen before, and you will leave the theater changed.

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. Read More

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health yesterday approved the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, sending the bill to the full committee for a vote expected next week.

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. Read More

With the announcement today of a Class 1 (meaning could be deadly if eaten) recall of nearly 40,000 pounds of ground beef for E Coli contamination (Hat tip to Obamafoodorama), in addition to another 300,000 pounds of beef recalled last month, it grows ever more important that we have a person in charge of the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) at the USDA, which monitors meat, poultry and eggs. Why is this administration dithering? Guest blogger Tom Laskawy has some thoughts on the matter:

It really does seem like Tom Vilsack can’t find anyone to run the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard. There must be dozens of scientists and food safety experts who fit the bill. But this, of course, is the USDA we’re talking about — the poster child for regulatory capture, the phenomenon whereby a regulator acts almost entirely in the interests of its target industry rather than in the interests of the public. Read More