This growing season there’s a new GMO in town: Monsanto’s GE sweet corn. This Roundup Ready product is the first GE corn for direct human consumption, and it has not been tested by the USDA and will not be labeled. If you’re unhappy about this, you’re not alone. The majority of consumers don’t want to eat genetically modified foods, and 95 percent feel strongly that they should be labeled.  Many retailers, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and General Mills, have already agreed to not use GE Sweet Corn in any of their products—but Walmart, the country’s largest grocer and self-proclaimed sustainability adherent, has yet to make such a promise.

In a campaign reminiscent of the  Starbucks rBGH campaign, (which ultimately culminated not only in a pledge by the java giant not to sell dairy from cows treated with rBGH, but also created a domino effect, causing most large retailers to make the same agreement) , Food and Water Watch has initiated a national campaign to pressure Walmart to do the right thing and to live up to their sustainability claims. Just last week, Walmart launched a brand new website called The Green Room to exhibit their green credentials. Over the past couple of years they’ve run public relations campaigns touting their support of local farming, healthier eating, and providing oases in food deserts.

Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food (taking a whopping 25 percent of grocery sales throughout the US, and much more in some areas) each year, making it the most powerful food retailer in the world. If Walmart agreed to not stock GE sweet corn, it is highly likely that other retailers would follow their lead. It would also relieve farmers of the economic pressure to plant the biotech seeds.

If you’re in the know about GMOs, you know there’s a lot we don’t know—and a lot to be wary of.  We don’t know the long term effects of GMOs on humans and  a new study suggests there is reason to worry. The potential environmental risks are many, including the rise of superweeds and resistant pests, the threat to biodiversity and the inevitability of crop contamination.  There are also the ethical and economic concerns associated with patenting of living organisms and the ownership of our food supply by corporations like Monsanto.

Since last fall, Food and Water Watch and their partners at the Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, CREDO Action, and Food Democracy Now! have been asking consumers to sign a petition saying that they would refuse to buy GE sweet corn and are asking retailers and food processors not to sell it. As of now, that petition has over a quarter million signatures.  Walmart is powerful, but consumers hold the ultimate power: all great social change starts from the bottom. Join the movement today.

Photo: Jamie Leo

Originally published on Ecocentric

The recalled meat came from a single processing facility in Springdale, Arkansas, but ended up in dozens of different ground turkey products sold nationwide under a variety of brand names including Honeysuckle White, Shady Brook Farms, Riverside, Aldi’s Fit and Active Fresh, Spartan, Giant Eagle, Kroger and Safeway. Cargill is recalling products produced between February 20 through Aug 2, 2011 and halting production of ground turkey products at the facility until the source of contamination is identified and corrected. Products subject to recall bear the establishment number “P-963″ inside the USDA mark of inspection.

As consumers take to their fridges and freezers to figure out if their ground turkey has been recalled, local, state and federal public health officials are working to identify and link illnesses to the outbreak. At least 77 illnesses in 26 states, beginning as early as March, have been reported to be the same strain of resistant Salmonella.

Those numbers are likely to grow as more consumers learn of the recall. Normally, a low percentage of foodborne illnesses are ever lab-confirmed and thus reported to public health authorities, let alone definitively linked to outbreaks.

“It is regrettable that people may have become ill from eating one of our ground turkey products and, for anyone who did, we are truly sorry,” said Stevel Willardson, president of Cargill’s turkey processing division, in a statement.

Cargill’s recall follows a July 29 USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service public health alert, issued last Friday, urging consumers to use caution when handling ground turkey and to cook all poultry products to an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

Serious questions remain about why it took food safety officials several months to issue a public health alert or announce a product recall after Salmonella Heidelberg illnesses began to spike in March.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also announced that the agency found four retail ground turkey samples to be positive for the same strain of Salmonella Heidelberg between early March and late June. The samples were taken as part of routine sampling for the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), and had “not been linked to illnesses” so they did not spark a recall. Salmonella is not considered an adulterant in meat products, but consumer groups have petitioned USDA to consider antibiotic-resistant strains adulterated.

As late as Tuesday, FSIS officials said there was not enough evidence to substantiate a recall. Wednesday the agency said that epidemiologic and traceback investigations, as well as in-plant findings, led the agency to determine there is a link between the Cargill ground turkey products and the outbreak.

“FSIS is continuing to work with CDC, affected state public health partners, and the company on the investigation. FSIS will continue to provide information as it becomes available, including information about any further related recall activity,” the agency said in a press update Wednesday.

Salmonella infections can be life-threatening, especially to those with compromised immune systems, including the young and the elderly. The most common manifestations of salmonellosis are diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within six to 72 hours. Additional symptoms may be chills, headache, nausea and vomiting that can last up to seven days. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact a health care provider.

A complete list of recalled products, with pictures of labels, can be found here.

Originally posted on Food Safety News.

When San Francisco’s Underground Market got started, the city’s health department recognized it as a private event where people exchanged (albeit, with money) homemade foods. Interested participants simply had to sign up on the Web site of the event’s host organization, Forage SF, and they became “members.”

Soon the market became one of San Francisco’s most popular phenomena–a place where hip, mostly young food entrepreneurs could get their brands out there and foodies could gather, socialize, and discover bafflingly delicious items such as “bacon brack.” The whole point, said founder Iso Rabins, was to create opportunities for food entrepreneurs who could otherwise not afford to operate out of certified commercial kitchens.

When the event swelled to accommodate the hundreds and soon thousands of people who would line up to attend, the market became an undeniably public. Then, earlier this summer, the San Francisco Health Department put a halt to the whole delicious operation. At present, the market is in limbo and Rabbins, the Health Department, and many others are chewing on the question: What makes an event or club private?

The realm of shareable food is flourishing; there’s community meal sharing, potlucks, gift-economy restaurants, community food growing projects, food swap events, pop-up stores, stone soup gatherings, food-buying cooperatives, goat-sharing, chicken cooperatives, and events like The Big Lunch. A handful of start-up companies are also creating peer-to-peer platforms to help people feed each other. Check out Grubly, Munchery, Gobble, and EatWithMe, all of which connect chefs with foodies and/or catalyze community food events.

Now picture all of this food sharing activity on a spectrum. At the private and personal end, we eat a homemade meal with our family. At the public and commercial end, we get chicken nuggets from the drive-thru window at a chain restaurant. Somewhere in between a line has been drawn to determine when to impose protections and regulations. At the Sustainable Economies Law Center, we are on a constant search for that elusive line.

What is a Private Club?

“Private club” could very well be the magic password to the sharing economy, for legal purposes, anyway. The term might conjure up exclusivity, but, to the extent that private clubs are exempt from burdensome legal regulations normally applied to public activities, this designation also benefits groups of people that come together to share.

The public/private distinction is relevant for the purpose of applying many laws, not just food regulations. With a shortage of case law in the food realm, we can derive guidance from a handful of cases that examine the issue in the context of Civil Rights laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), smoking laws, and employment laws. For anyone wanting to delve deeper, see the original version of this article.

The cases vary, but generally, courts have weighed a handful of factors to decide whether a club is really and truly private. Factors that courts tend to weigh include:

• Whether the club applies meaningful selection criteria to the admission of new members;
• The size of the membership;
• The degree of member control of club operations;
• Whether substantial membership fees are charged;
• Whether the entity is operated on a nonprofit basis;
• Whether members know each other and whether there is personal interaction among members;
• Whether the primary purpose served by the club is social or business;
• The extent to which the facilities are open to the public;
• The extent to which the club advertises to the public and/or publicly solicits new members;
• The degree to which club facilities are available for use by non-members;
• The degree of public funding; and
• Whether the club was created specifically to avoid compliance with the Civil Rights Act or other laws.

Although no single factor is controlling when determining whether a club is private, most courts have considered the selectivity of the membership to be of great importance. Preferably, private clubs will have meaningful criteria on which people are chosen to be accepted as members, rather than allowing anyone to join at any time.

Your Private “Cafe”

Let’s say you and 10 of your close friends agree that you make the world’s best quiche. You jointly hatch a plan for Quiche Café, which is essentially a weekly dinner party at your house. You buy the ingredients and make the quiche. Your 10 friends, the core members of the Café, bring the drinks and entertainment. Most importantly, everyone helps out with the dishes. Each core member of Quiche Café is encouraged to bring a friend or two, so each dinner is attended by an average of 25 people. Everyone chips in around $8, even though you’ve calculated the per-person cost of ingredients to be around $4. Everyone feels that any surplus could be seen as a modest stipend or your thank-you gift for being the hostess with the most-est.

So is Quiche Cafe private enough to avoid health and safety regulation? Based on guidelines we’ve gleaned from the court decisions, we think so.* Participation is restricted to the original 10 friends and their guests. Quiche Café is neither advertised nor open to the public. The members jointly manage the club for their own benefit. Although the chef is making a small stipend, the core purpose of the activity is to provide social and edible sustenance to friends.

(Note that zoning is a separate issue. A neighbor could still complain to the local Planning Department that you are operating a social club or business out of your home in violation of the residential zoning of your neighborhood. Arguing that you are a private dining club might not help here, but you could argue that this is a dinner party, which is generally accepted as a residential use of a home.)

Your Private “Market”

Let’s imagine you want to share your quiche with more people. You hear about a weekly gathering where people exchange homemade foods. Sometimes people gift their foods to each other, sometimes they barter, and sometimes they sell. You have to be recommended for membership by someone who is already a member. You also need to fill out a membership application and explain how most of your ingredients come from socially responsible sources. Once you are admitted as a member, you are given passes to bring up to five guests.

No one can get in the door without a pass, and you are not allowed to sell your five guest passes or give them to people you don’t know. Members are required to pay monthly dues of $50, to attend four meetings per year, to elect a board of directors, and to sometimes take part in special committees. The board of directors may hire a manager for the event, but major decisions about the gathering are made by the member-elected board. The gathering is limited to 100 food artisan members and overall attendance is limited to 600.

Again, we feel that this activity should be treated as private and not subject to health permit requirements.* The activity is collaboratively managed by members, membership is restricted, the event is not publicly advertised, and non-member attendees may come, on a limited basis, as guests of members. Although income from the event may contribute to the livelihoods of the food artisans and the event manager, the entity itself is not operating for a profit, but rather to provide a forum for the appreciation of interesting and hand-crafted foods.

Your Private Goat Club

Sharing goats and cows is a common way that people have overcome barriers to raw milk access. Raw milk is subject to strict food and agricultural regulations, and has become a hot topic with the recent and dramatic shutdown of some raw milk operations and vendors. Most recently, we learned that a goat-sharing arrangement managed by Evergreen Acres Goat Farm was cited by the District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California. It seems that the legal particularities of goat sharing still need to be explored and clarified. Nevertheless, a small and private group of goat sharers, in our opinion, should be exempt from the legal hurdles.

Here’s an example. You and 10 community members come together to buy and share ownership of four goats, which are kept in your yard. Each week, members stop by to pick up bottles of milk. Your group has decided to allow in only four more members, but only if those members demonstrate that health needs prevent them from consuming pasteurized milk. Everyone takes turns helping out with the goats, and the group meets monthly to touch base and meet about goat-related things. Everyone chips in $30 per month for goat food and veterinary costs. Since you are the designated goat keeper, you don’t have to pay the $30.

Once again, we believe that this club is private and should not be subject to food safety regulations.* Like the private “market,” this goat club is collaboratively managed by the club members, membership is restricted to 15 people, and it is not advertised to the public.

But Feeding Total Strangers is Fun and Important!

This is true. Enabling people to feed each other should be a high priority, and it won’t always be practical or desirable to relegate our food sharing activities to the private realm. We’re hungry for a world where tons of small food entrepreneurs can make it in competition with the giant food conglomerates. The shareable food movement localizes economies, feeds communities in challenging economic times, and supports our environment by encouraging localized food production and lower carbon “foodprints.”

Furthering the Shareable Food Movement

There’s much to say on this topic, but here are a few thoughts. First, we can create new platforms for food production and food sharing: Shared commercial kitchens, like La Cocina in San Francisco, are part of the answer, because they reduce the barrier to entry for small entrepreneurs; more community marketplaces create a space for entrepreneurs to get their products out there; and marketing cooperatives can help entrepreneurs aggregate and sell their products. These are all sharing solutions that give entrepreneurs access to spaces and markets that are normally expensive and inaccessible.

Furthermore, we can all work to pass new laws that lower the overall set of legal barriers to small food enterprise. An easy place to start is with cottage food laws which have already been passed in half of the U.S. states. Cottage food laws enable the sale of home-made foods that are “non-potentially hazardous,” such as breads, cakes, jams, and granola. Allowing the sale of back-yard produce is another step, and a handful of cities have recently done this or are currently considering it. (See San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland.) Food sovereignty laws take this even further and endeavor to de-regulate many facets of food production.

* Disclaimer: Please don’t rely on anything in this article as legal advice. In spite of what some courts may hold or what we at SELC may opine, every jurisdiction has a mind of its own.

A version of this article first appeared on Shareable Magazine. The Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Legal Intern Kelly Densmore also contributed to this article.

Photos of the LA Food Swap by TypeFiend.

Last year Iowa’s modern agricultural practices were made famous by legendary food safety violator Jack DeCoster, who is still in business after a 500-million egg recall due to salmonella that sickened more than 1,500 people in 23 states. This year Iowa’s state legislators are about to pass a bill that would make it illegal for anyone to take a photo of his “farms” or any other farm or field in Iowa. Even though some of the worst animal welfare abuses in U.S. history have taken place under the roofs of Jack DeCoster’s hundreds of industrial animal confinements, Iowa lawmakers are willing to offer immunity to offenders like him and penalize those who blow the whistle on those who would abuse animal livestock, i.e., our food.

Incredibly, House File 589, which I call “The Jack DeCoster Animal Abuser Protection Act of 2011,” passed the Iowa House on March 17 by a vote of 66 to 27, despite the fact that 65 percent of Iowans oppose the bill. Unfortunately for consumers across the country, versions of this bill have been popping up in states like Minnesota and Florida, where both bill recently failed to pass.

While most Americans have been caught off guard by agribusiness’s boldness, those of us in Iowa know this is how the game is played. No matter how big the violation or how bad the sin, agribusiness always finds a way to influence elected officials into papering over the most egregious abuses under the guise of economic development, stating the Big Lie that it’s “good for business.”

However, this time they’re wrong. And in a way that could give Iowa farmers and elected officials a black eye that no amount of political makeup can hide for the first in the nation caucus state.

The bill is so fringe and outrageous that famed Republican strategist and former President Bush adviser Mary Matalin recently wrote to Iowa House Republican leadership, stating,  “If House File 589 succeeds, it may well single Iowa out as the state with something to hide.”

While some farmers might not like the idea of photos of their farms or undercover videos being taken, this heavy handed attempt to shelter the worst abusers only exposes the truth of industrial livestock production. Regretfully, for the vast majority of Iowa’s farmers, who have nothing to hide, the passage of this bill could make agricultural products coming out of Iowa seem unsafe, unsanitary and inhumane.

If allowed to pass by Iowa Senate Democrats, HF 589 will make it much easier for groups to mislead America’s consumers about livestock production by convincing them that the terrible abuses that happened on a farm in Texas, where dairy calves had their heads smashed with hammers and pickaxes, are not the exception but the rule. In fact, if these Ag Gag bills pass, those battered calves will become the new face of animal agriculture.

Imaginary Problem, Thuggish Solution

HF 589 is so Orwellian that it invents a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. Sure, there are a number of videos on the Internet that show horrendous abuse at meat slaughtering plants and livestock facilities. But in reality the videos are rather rare events and most people are so shocked by the abuse that they see they tend to go numb and move onto the next Internet distraction.

However, passing poorly conceived bills that limit Americans’ freedoms and place an iron curtain between farmers and consumers is certain to backfire, only drawing more attention to agricultural practices that occur in rural America on otherwise sleepy, poorly traveled roads.

While initially sponsored by a Republican in the Iowa House, Senate Democrat Tom Reilly has taken the charge in trying to get the bill passed by writing amendments in the desperate hope to take some of the totalitarian stink off of this Ag Gag bill.

For some reason, Reilly seems to think that people taking photos of farms or undercover videos will destroy Iowa’s economy and turn people into instant vegans. In a recent interview with the Sioux City Journal, Reilly said, “They want to hurt an important part of our economy… These people don’t want us to have eggs; they don’t want people to eat meat.”

Is this how bad the thinking of our political leaders has gotten? Rather than writing laws that further protect animals from these horrific abuses, state elected officials are now wasting taxpayer money figuring out how they can get between a vegan and a corporations’ bottom line.

And because a number of undercover videos have been taken by the animal rights group Mercy for Animals, which ends its videos with the line: “Boycott animal abuse. Choose Vegan,” Reilly and other gullible lawmakers across the country are falling for the new agribusiness lie that these people are going to “end animal agriculture.”

In truth the only thing that will end family farmer involvement in animal agriculture is our government’s absolute failure to protect family farmers from the economic abuses of the vertically integrated, massively consolidated meat industry that keeps tightening the financial screws on farmers, making it harder, if not impossible for them to stay in business.

Ironically, while legislators in Minnesota, Florida and Iowa have wasted many an hour bickering over the phantom menace of videotaping vegans, the Obama administration has failed to act on important Department of Justice investigations into monopoly abuses in agriculture and to implement vital and fair livestock marketing protections for independent producers known as GIPSA.

These are the greater injustices that legislators could easily accomplish to truly protect America’s farmers. In reality, when the dust finally settles over the fight for rural America and our food supply, these will be the critical failures that future historians will point to for decimating America’s farmers, not vegans with video cameras.

If the few farmers that remain in livestock production in Iowa think it’s a bad thing for an undercover activist to videotape their farm, wait until PETA and the Humane Society and other “radical” groups start a boycott of Iowa agricultural products because the state knowingly promotes the cover up of animal welfare abuses.

As Voltaire, one of the Enlightenment figures who influenced America’s founding fathers, coolly observed more than two centuries ago: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

And regretfully, this is where Iowa’s elected officials stand today: Ready to commit a grave offense against our constitution and democratic rights based on the advice of greedy fools who would aid and abet factory farms where some are bashing the brains out of animals with pickaxes, rather than protecting those animals from harm and abuse. In doing so, they not only endanger the animals, but also Iowa’s famers, their economic livelihoods and the reputation and safety of all food production in the state of Iowa.

A version of this article originally appeared on Huffington Post

The bill, with the Tester-Hagan small farm exemption intact, now goes back to the House. But the action will likely put the food safety law on President Obama’s desk before Christmas.

“Yes, consumers, there is a Santa Claus!,” the Consumer Federation of America effused.

Sunday’s Senate move came as a surprise, especially because no Republican objected to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s request for his colleagues to pass the food safety bill by unanimous consent.

No one objected, not even Republican Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn.

“Tonight we unanimously passed a measure to improve on our current food safety system by giving the FDA the resources it needs to keep up with advances in food production and marketing, without unduly burdening farmers and food producers,” Reid said in a statement.

The majority leader said this marks the first time in almost a century that the food safety system has been updated in such a broad manner. He called it a “common-sense issue with broad bipartisan support.”

Reid’s success Sunday night was not even predicted by his own staff earlier in the day.

The food safety bill has had a tortured life. The House passed its version (H.R 2749) in July of 2009 by a vote of 283 to 142. The Senate did not move on its version (S. 510) until last month after a compromise (the Tester-Hagan Amendment) was reached between Small Ag, Big Ag and consumer groups. The final vote was 73 to 25.

However, Section 107 of S. 510 contained a fee provision that the House Parliamentarian considered a tax in violation of the “Origination Clause” of the Constitution, which states that the House must initiate revenue measures.

The House then appended S. 510 to the “Omnibus Spending Bill,” in essence the 2011 Budget. That bill was narrowly approved by a 212 to 206 vote, but when the Senate refused to take up the spending bill, the food safety legislation was left in limbo–until Sunday evening.

The bill’s goal is to increase the Food and Drug Administration’s powers to keep food safe by increasing inspections of food facilities, placing stricter standards on imported foods and giving the agency broader authority to order a recall.

As word of the bill’s new life got out, advocates expressed their relief. Many were part of a coalition that had sent a letter Sunday to Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, asking them to act quickly to save the bill before the end of the session.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said, “The Senate made good on its promise to pass food safety legislation tonight when it passed a corrected version of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. It is a huge victory for consumers following a weekend cliffhanger as both consumer and industry supporters prepared for bad news. Senator Harkin, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell are to be congratulated on their skill in making sure American families will enjoy greater protection and safer food in 2011 and beyond.”

Jean Halloran, director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union, said, “This is a wonderful day for consumers. This day will be especially important to families whose children have suffered lasting damage to their health, and families who have even lost a child, because of contaminated food. Many of them have worked hard for this bill to prevent others from having to go through a similar ordeal. This bill gives FDA essential tools like mandatory recall authority to insure that the food we eat is safe.”

Originally published on Food Safety News.

Though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said earlier this week he would, if necessary, keep the Senate in town over the weekend to finish the bill, sources on the Hill said it was more likely the legislation would not move forward until after Thanksgiving recess, which begins Monday.

The bill’s most outspoken opponent, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), has created an unrelated political sticking point by trying to force a vote on an amendment to ban all earmark spending through 2013.

A staffer close to the agreement told CIDRAP yesterday, “We’re at an impasse over Coburn’s earmark provision–we’re unable to reach a time agreement on the bill as a result of Coburn’s earmark threat and without a time agreement this whole process has reached a standstill. It’s unclear if or when this will be dealt with, and if or when the bill will proceed toward passage.”

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, a prevention-focused bill that would boost the FDA’s inspection mandate, give it mandatory recall authority, and require food facilities to put food safety plans in place, is the first overhaul of the federal food safety regulatory system in over seven decades. It has maintained wide bipartisan support in the Senate and the House, where a version of the bill approved in July 2009. The measure passed a key procedural hurdle on Wednesday, but also drew the ire of big agriculture groups unhappy over a recent deal to include small farm exemptions.

In a statement yesterday, the United Fresh Produce Association said it was working with its produce-industry allies to build opposition to Montana Senator Jon Tester’s amendment, which it described as “exempting small farms and business operations from basic federal food safety requirements.”

“[W]e have also consistently stated that food safety policy must be based on risk and science, not speculation and ideology,” said Robert Guenther, United Fresh Vice President of Public Policy. “Unfortunately, Senator Tester’s amendment would reject a risk-based approach to food safety, setting up a federal food safety system that adheres to arbitrary exemptions rather than to sound scientific principles.”

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, one of the key groups negotiating for the inclusion of the amendment by Tester (D-MT) and Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) to reduce the regulatory burden on small farmers and producers, was very pleased that a compromise was included in the manager’s package late Wednesday.

“While not perfect, the final version of the amendment is something our farmer members can support,” said Ferd Hoefner, NSAC Policy Director. “We congratulate the bill and amendment sponsors on forging a deal,” said Hoefner. “With the inclusion of this amendment and the earlier inclusion of several other critical family farm amendments, we can now urge the Senate to pass the manager’s amendment and the bill and to do it yet this week.”

“We are encouraging Senators to ignore Big Ag’s bluster and to get on with the important business at hand – passing the amendment and the bill to improve food safety,” said Hoefner.

The so-called “bluster” is now coming from some of the biggest names in produce.

Twenty groups, including the Produce Marketing Association and several regional industry groups, sent a letter to Senate leadership and Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Mike Enzie (R-WY), chairman and ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has been working tirelessly on the bill.

“As organizations representing the vast majority of fresh produce grown and consumed in this country–from small, medium and large-sized farms–the Tester amendment utterly fails to protect consumers by including blanket exemptions from the rest of the bill’s strong safety net, without regard to risk,” reads the letter.

“Comments from Senator Tester and supporters are now making it abundantly clear that their cause is not to argue that small farms pose less risk, but to wage an ideological war against the vast majority of American farmers that seeks to feed 300 million Americans. We are appalled at statements by Senator Tester reported today in the Capital Press that ‘Small producers are not raising a commodity, but are raising food. Industrial agriculture, he said, takes the people out of the equation.’ ”

If the Senate can pass bipartisan food safety legislation, the House will agree to the most recent version of the bill, Sen. Harkin said on the floor yesterday. “If we pass it with bipartisan support, the House will take and pass it and send it right to the president,” he said.

The Senate may resume debate on the bill today, but the timing going forward remains uncertain.

UPDATE: Here is an overview of the procedural hurdles that lie ahead.

Originally published by Food Safety News

When the FDA announced it found the genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon safe just before Labor Day, news headlines and even Alaska Senator Mark Begich called it a “frankenfish.” A closer look at AquAdvantage makes it seem unlikely that Mary Shelley could have ever dreamed up anything as wild as the fast growing GE salmon. Even more worrisome is the science used to justify the salmon’s safety, which Consumers Union senior scientist Michael Hansen calls “sloppy,” “misleading,” and “woefully inadequate.”

If approved, AquAdvantage will be the first genetically engineered animal to directly enter the U.S. food supply — a fact that raises the stakes of the FDA’s approval process, as it sets a precedent for all future GE animals. Because of a regulatory decision in the 1980s that no new laws are needed to regulate genetically engineered foods, the FDA is actually regulating the GE salmon as a drug. The next step in the approval process will be a series of public meetings held September 19-21. Already, a number of groups, including Food & Water Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Organic Consumers Association have written to President Obama, urging him to discontinue the approval process for the GE salmon. (Full disclosure: I serve on the Policy Advisory Board of the Organic Consumers Association, but I was not a part of the decision to sign onto this letter.)

The company that developed the GE salmon, AquaBounty Technologies, claims the fish grows to market weight in 16 to 18 months instead of the usual 30 required for farmed Atlantic salmon. The fish was created by inserting genetic material of both Chinook (the largest variety of Pacific salmon) and ocean pout (an eel-like fish) into the genome of Atlantic salmon. The commercialized fish will all be females, making them unable to breed. AquaBounty’s intellectual property will be further protected because the fish will be sterile, as they will all be triploids (fish with three complete sets of chromosomes instead of the usual two).

How to Make Frankenfish

To create the fish, AquaBounty begins with eggs of GE Atlantic salmon females and fertilizes them with irradiated sperm of another similar fish species, Arctic char. The eggs are then pressure-treated, causing them to produce diploid offspring (i.e. fish with two complete sets of chromosomes), with both sets of chromosomes originating from the GE female salmon. The all-female GE diploid salmon will then be treated with 17-methyltestosterone, a hormone that turns the fish into what AquaBounty calls “neomales” — genetically female fish that produce milt (sperm) instead of eggs. The milt from the GE neomales will fertilize the eggs of non-GE Atlantic salmon, and the resulting fertilized eggs will be treated with pressure to produce the final product, a line of all-female triploid GE Atlantic salmon.

According to AquaBounty’s plans, the GE salmon will begin their lives at a hatchery in Prince Edward Island, Canada and then transfer to a grow-out facility in Panama. Unlike most salmon, which begin their lives in freshwater before transferring to saltwater, the GE salmon will live their entire lives in freshwater. The good news is that currently there are no plans to raise the GE salmon in open net pens in the ocean, a method of salmon farming that has resulted in massive damage to wild salmon populations as well as frequent escapes of farmed salmon into the ocean.

Questionable Science

While farmed salmon have been an environmental catastrophe in countries like Canada and Norway, it seems that environmental concerns over AquAdvantage take a backseat to safety concerns. The science AquaBounty provided the FDA was sloppy in a number of ways, and yet the FDA accepted it and declared the fish safe. Because the approval of AquAdvantage salmon will set a precedent, it is important that the FDA set its bar for solid science high, signaling to any company that wishes to commercialize a genetically engineered animal that it must completely prove its safety if it hopes to put its product on the market. Instead, according to Hansen, “the FDA appears to have set its bar an inch from the ground.”

AquaBounty tested its GE salmon and controls for physical and behavioral problems, differences in blood test results and hormone levels, and allergenicity to humans. Although the commercialized fish will all be female triploids, they often tested both males and females and both diploids and triploids of non-GE and GE salmon to determine whether any problem that showed up was due to the genetic engineering or due to the extra set of chromosomes.

However, in many of the tests, AquaBounty used sample sizes as low as six fish, much less than the minimum of 30 needed for the results to have statistical significance. Hansen said a small sample size might make sense if the animals were elephants, but there is no reason why AquaBounty should not have tested more fish. Moreover, in one of the tests, the six fish in each study group were selected from larger groups of 100 to 200 fish, and the report did not specify that they were chosen randomly. Additionally, AquaBounty admitted to culling deformed fish prior to selecting fish for inclusion in its studies. The company justified this by saying that culling is standard practice in the industry. That may be so, but for the purpose of comparing deformities between GE and non-GE salmon, the culling and sampling practices reduce the reliability of the results.

Another alarming practice — one Hansen felt qualifies as misleading — was AquaBounty’s reliance on 2007 data (the best year for the GE fish and simultaneously the worst year for non-GE fish) and its characterization of 2005 data (the worst year for the GE fish) as an outlier to be ignored. By using 2007 data for many of its studies, AquaBounty was able to compare its best group of both diploid and triploid GE salmon against the group of non-GE salmon with the highest frequency of physical deformities (compared to each of the other years of testing, 2003-2006).

On the other hand, in 2005, the GE fish exhibited an unusually high frequency of physical deformities (only 7.9 percent of triploid GE salmon and 17.2 percent of diploid GE salmon were judged to be free of any malformations), and AquaBounty provided several justifications for ignoring this data, suggesting that perhaps the small sample size (38 fish) of GE triploids was to blame. Hansen says if that were true, we would not also see such poor results in the diploid GE fish, which had a sample size of over 1,500 salmon.

The problem could have been environmental, offered AquaBounty. Maybe the problems were caused by nutrient deficiencies, exposure to antibiotics, contaminants in feed, parasites, or water temperature. Yet, if that were the case, notes Hansen, we would also see a high rate of malformations in non-GE fish in 2005, and we do not. Both the diploid and triploid groups of non-GE fish performed well in 2005, with 98.7 percent and 89.0 percent showing no malformations, respectively. Hansen also dismissed AquaBounty’s assertion that the extra chromosomes in the triploid salmon were responsible for the 2005 data, as both the diploid and triploid GE salmon performed poorly, but the non-GE triploids performed quite well.

Despite the problems noted above, the FDA concludes from the data that, “Analyses of the behavior and gross external abnormalities of market size (1,000-1,500 g) AquAdvantage Salmon show no demonstrable differences from the comparator fish population.” One last flaw Hansen points out is the study’s examination only of adult fish, and not of fish in all life stages, beginning with the egg. The FDA, perhaps worried about this, and certainly worried about AquaBounty’s heavy culling of fish in early life stages (not to mention their lack of data on fish that were culled), called for a Durability Plan that includes “monitoring, data collection, and reporting of abnormalities observed under commercial production and grow-out conditions at the Panama facility where AquAdvantage Salmon will be reared” after the fish are approved and commercialized. Hansen feels this is insufficient, comparing it to allowing the fox to guard the henhouse and report if any chickens are being eaten.

Another area where the science is flawed is in AquaBounty’s examination of hormone levels in the fish. Of 73 fish tested (30 GE and 43 control), every single fish had growth hormone levels that fell below the detection limit. Hansen criticizes AquaBounty’s conclusion that there was no detectable difference in levels of growth hormone between GE and non-GE fish, comparing it to a cop with a radar gun that cannot detect speeds below 120 mph concluding the is no evidence of exceeding the speed limit. Additionally, only six of the 73 fish had detectable levels of T4 (a thyroid hormone), and only 17 had detectable levels of insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF1), a hormone that is potentially harmful to humans. Even with the small amount of data, the GE salmon that had detectable levels if IGF1 tested nearly 40 percent higher on average than the non-GE salmon with detectable levels of IGF1.

One last area to consider is the allergenicity testing of the GE salmon, as fish allergies are one of the eight most common allergies in the United States. For this, AquaBounty used sample sizes of six, testing GE diploids and triploids against non-GE diploids. They began by sending 18 blinded salmon fillet samples to a lab that treated them with liquid nitrogen to produce “frozen salmon-fillet homogenate.” Then they unblinded the samples and tested each individual sample with sera from humans with salmon allergies and measured the magnitude of the allergic reaction to determine the “allergic potency” of the sample. AquaBounty then converted the data into an undefined estimated measure it called “relative potency,” a term the lab was unable to define when asked by the FDA.

The FDA obtained the actual data tables from the test and concluded that, “The allergic potency of triploid [AquAdvantage] salmon is not significantly different from that of [the control group of non-GE] diploid salmon.” Again, Hansen took issue with this conclusion in light of the small sample size in the study, the unblinding of the samples, and the fact that the allergic potency of all but two GE salmon were higher than the highest value of allergic potency for non-GE salmon.

Hansen felt that, while the use of actual human sera to test allergenicity was useful, it was insufficient given modern scientific techniques available to assess allergenicity. Scientists are aware of many proteins that cause salmon allergies and they could easily have analyzed the molecular structure of the fish to determine if those proteins were present. Although there was one attempt to do this for one protein, the testing technique was so crude and flawed (some of the data submitted was upside-down!) even the FDA did not accept it.

Why Consumers Should Be Concerned

Given the flawed science used to justify the safety of AquAdvantage salmon, what happens now? Currently, the FDA is preparing for its public meetings: The first meeting on Sept. 19th will review the science; the second meeting on Sept. 21st will cover labeling issues and offer an opportunity for public comment. FDA will also accept written comments until November 22.

There are a few more issues for consumers to consider should the GE salmon come to market. Under current law, genetically engineered foods are not required to be labeled as such. In fact, the only labeling one can expect on a genetically engineered salmon fillet is country-of-origin labeling, which is required on most (but not all) seafood. Since all of the AquAdvantage will be produced in Panama, an uncommon location for farmed salmon, consumers can be on the lookout for — and avoid if they wish — salmon from Panama. The exceptions will be salmon sold in fish markets and processed salmon, such as smoked salmon, which do not require country-of-origin labeling.

Hansen noted two reasons why consumers may wish to avoid the GE salmon. First, he notes that reports of increased inflammation in the tissues of the GE salmon may result in increased antibiotic use. Second, consumers who care about animal welfare may wish to avoid the salmon because even in the flawed tests that were performed, the GE salmon exhibited higher rates of physical deformities than non-GE salmon.

The bigger picture, of course, is the standard AquAdvantage salmon will set for future genetically engineered animals. Even if the AquAdvantage salmon proves to be safe in the long run, if sloppy and dishonest science is all that’s required to pass a product through the U.S. regulatory system, what other disasters lie in our future?

Originally published on AlterNet

Photo: AP

This isn’t your typical egg farm. In Elkhart, Iowa, about 70 miles south of Wright County Egg–the mega-farm at the center of a 550 million egg recall tied to almost 1,500 Salmonella illnesses–colorful hens are milling around Foxhollow Farm. Lyric-less rock music is playing in the hen house, and it’s for the hens. The head rooster, a five-year-old Black Cochin Bantam named Shadow who appears to run the place, is friendly and strutting for the camera.

In many ways, Foxhollow Farm represents the antithesis of large-scale egg production in Iowa, which produces more than twice as many eggs as any other state.

Foxhollow has about 200 laying hens. Wright County Egg, one of the top 10 egg producers in the country, has millions. Foxhollow allows its chickens to roam, following Animal Welfare Approved guidelines. Wright County Egg uses battery cages, a practice animal welfare activists are trying to ban. A dozen Foxhollow eggs will run you about $4.50. Wright County Eggs, sold under more than a dozen labels in more than 20 states, are closer to $1.

And then there is the issue of transparency. Despite numerous attempts, this reporter and the Iowa Egg Council, were unsuccessful in finding a single large-scale producer willing to give a tour or in-depth interview on egg production and the new Food and Drug Administration egg safety rules. Tai Johnson-Spratt, who runs Foxhollow Farms with her husband Thomas Spratt, offered a tour with less than a day’s notice.

Well under the 50,000 bird cut off, Tai’s farm doesn’t have to follow the new FDA egg regulations, but she’s actively managing chicken health and food safety.

“They don’t get sick unless something tragic happens,” she says. “We don’t usually have a problem with disease. I think the fact that they can go outside and do what they want to–we have dust baths, we have nest boxes, we have enough perch space–is important, they can express they’re natural behaviors. They’re doing what chickens do.”

If a chicken shows signs of illness, it is taken to the Iowa State poultry extension for a diagnosis. Drugs are administered only at the advice of Foxhollow’s poultry veterinarian.

Salmonella is much trickier to control, because birds do not show symptoms. The hatcheries are monitored for Salmonella, explains Tai. “All the hatcheries are supposed to be 100 percent pullorum-free, which should prevent Salmonella from reaching anybody’s plates, but that’s not always the case,” she says, because the bacteria can creep into a poultry house on the farm.

“You can get Salmonella from a bird flying over, from the feed, in the water–it can come from anywhere,” she says. Foxhollow manages pests and keeps its facilities clean. Tai also believes that giving the birds space is the best way to prevent disease from spreading. “In confinement, if one gets sick, they all get it.”

Foxhollow collects eggs three times a day and refrigerates them right away to stop any bacterial growth. The eggs are then sanitized and refrigerated until they reach the consumer. Tai has an Iowa egg handler’s license and she takes her keeping-the-eggs-below-40-degrees duty seriously. “We do things the way we’re supposed to,” she says.

When asked about the big producers upstate, Tai simply says: “There’s a lot better ways to do it. This takes a little more room, a little more time, a little more effort, but what you get out of it–these chickens are happy, they have everything they need, and it’s not much.”

“I think part of it, though, is that consumers aren’t educated about where their eggs come from,” she adds. “People think all brown eggs are farm eggs. That’s not true. People think all eggs are the same. That’s not true. Taste one of mine, taste one of DeCoster’s; you’ll see right there–even if you don’t cook it–just look at it. Look at the yolk. Mine are orangey, theirs are pale yellow.”

Though Foxhollow can hardly keep up with demand for its eggs–and its heritage chickens and turkeys–the farm represents only a tiny, though growing, fraction of Iowa’s poultry industry.

Foxhollow sells somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,600 dozen, a little more than 43,000, eggs per year. Iowa produces 14.25 billion eggs per year, according to the Iowa Egg Council.

Tai admits cost also has a lot to do with it.

“If people are used to getting eggs for 99 cents, why do they want to spend $4.50 for mine? There’s a lot of value in my eggs; they just don’t see unless they’re educated about it.”

Originally published on Food Safety News

In most cases that’s probably the case – but not always. Sometimes the mythology of farmers markets is not matched by the reality. Many California farmers markets, for instance, allow vendors to sell eggs produced by hens crammed into the insufferable cage confinement systems just like those involved in the recent egg recall – the largest in U.S. history

Not only is this intensive confinement inhumane and unsustainable, it also poses a real threat to food safety. Cramming birds into cages exacerbates the risk of Salmonella contamination. In fact, every one of the last ten studies comparing cage to cage-free systems found higher Salmonella rates in cage systems, including a 2010 study that found 20 times greater odds of Salmonella infection in caged flocks.

Confining hens into cages so small they can’t even spread their wings, let alone nest, dust bathe, perch, forage or walk is not a practice worthy of local farmers markets.

Multiple undercover investigations at California egg factory farms revealed rampant animal abuse and food safety concerns, such as live birds forced to live on top of mummified bird carcasses rotting in cages. These conditions were similar to those that the FDA found at Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, the companies at the center of the current egg recall.

California’s farmers markets can and should set a higher standard – especially since their customers likely already think they are.

After all, California, voters overwhelmingly passed 2008’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (Prop 2) making it a criminal offense to confine hens in cages by 2015. California recently extended this requirement to all eggs sold in the state. Hundreds of California restaurants along with dozens of major companies like Burger King, Subway, and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise are already using cage-free eggs. Furthermore, national and local retailers such as Whole Foods Market, Andronico’s, New Leaf Markets, Jimbo’s Naturally, Berkeley Bowl and many others have made a commitment to only sell cage-free eggs.

So, earlier this week, The Humane Society of the United States mailed 258 letters to all of the managers on California’s list of certified farmers markets requesting that they adopt policies to prohibit the sale of eggs from caged hens.

To increase food safety, improve animal welfare, and to meet the expectations of their consumers, we hope California’s farmers markets will stop allowing their well-earned ‘halo effect’ to extend to companies and products that don’t deserve it.

We could use your help. If you live in California, please contact your local market’s managers and ask them to hold their vendors to higher standards by adopting an exclusively cage-free egg policy.