If you eat beef, or take milk and sugar in your coffee (and even if you don’t), here is why you should care: The move could put organic foods at risk for contamination and make it more expensive.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has attempted to stave off further litigation and quell the mounting antagonism between farmers growing GM seed and organic farmers by proposing “co-existence” between the two.

Part of Vilsack’s plan for co-existence includes using buffers between organic and GM fields and even placing geographic restrictions on the growth of GM seeds. This is the first time such a discussion had been broached by the USDA. New York University professor and food movement leader Marion Nestle called the move a “breakthrough,” and we also ran an op-ed pushing for co-existence as the lesser of two evils here on Civil Eats.

But Vilsack’s co-existence plan seemed to put President Obama’s pro-business agenda at risk. In fact, David Axelrod put the kibosh on the idea with a bad pun, encouraging “everyone to ‘plow forward’ on a plan for genetically produced alfalfa,” according to Maureen Dowd.

Monsanto, the company behind 95 percent of GM sugarbeet seed and all of the GM alfalfa seed, had fought against the deal behind closed doors.

Worries were expressed about our biotech credibility abroad should we discuss any fallibility at home. But in a nod toward co-existence, Monsanto spokesman Tom Helscher told the AP on Monday, “Since the advent of biotech crops, both biotech and organic production have flourished. We have no reason to think that will not continue to be the case.” What Monsanto execs don’t mention publicly is that co-existence is not possible, and as patent holders to the gene traits in their GM seeds, they have the right to sue farmers whose fields become contaminated by these traits.

“Certainly, on a commercial-scale crop, over time, you are going to get contamination,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The provisions [in the EIS] will certainly reduce contamination, and they may delay it to some extent, but they’re not going to prevent it.”

Aside from the transfer of genetic material through pollen, there are many other ways in which it has proven impossible to contain the risk of contamination. And unfortunately, there are plenty of real examples in which contamination has already happened.

There are well-documented cases with papaya in Hawaii, corn in Mexico, canola most recently in North Dakota, and creeping bentgrass, which pollinated grasses 13 miles away in Oregon. A test plot of a GM rice was even responsible for contaminating long grain varieties in five states in 2006, five years after Bayer CropScience had abandoned trials of its LL601 rice, costing the industry $2 billion.

In 1999, a corn variety called StarLink–which was not approved for human consumption–contaminated half of the Iowa corn harvest. Whether batches of corn meant for animal consumption were mixed with corn for human consumption on accident or through cross-pollination–we will never know exactly what happened. What we do know is that our current regulatory process has significant–in many cases, insurmountable–problems, and the concept of co-existence is merely a smoke screen that will create more of the same.

This is why deregulation has huge implications for organic farmers as well as consumers. The USDA does not test for contamination after deregulating a biotech crop. In the StarLink case, it was a non-profit group that found traces of the corn in taco shells. This means that the impetus will be on organic farmers to test their own crops, further increasing food prices. Worse, organic food could become more limited in availability if contamination becomes a widespread issue.

“Today, there are many committed consumers who want to know their farmer, feed their families wholesome dairy products, and be assured that their food isn’t contaminated by GMOs,” said Albert Straus, an organic dairy farmer from California who has spoken out against GM alfalfa. “If the organic feed supply for dairy cattle is contaminated with GMOs, farmers will no longer be able to offer truly organic milk to consumers, and everything we have worked to build will be compromised.” Straus Family Creamery has been voluntarily testing its feed for GMOs since 2006, and carries the Non-GMO Project Seal on its label.

In addition, organic farmers fear economic loses in export markets–places like the European Union and Japan, where products containing traces of GM foods are consistently rejected. In addition to risks in the field, it is not uncommon for organic crops to be transported in rail cars, on boats and in truck beds where GM or conventional crops have also been transported. This means that a crop that has been tested by the farmer can still be contaminated later. With no protections in place, the organic farmer bears the majority of the risk.

The reason Japanese and EU consumers are driving the purity tests on crops coming from America is simple: When GM foods are sold in places like the EU or Japan, they are labeled as such. And this really is the critical issue. American consumers want to know what they are eating, but the industry doesn’t want to be forthcoming because letting the market decide would mean resistance to GM foods.

“We don’t challenge consumers on whether they want a red car or a blue car,” said Gurian-Sherman. “But when it comes to choosing what they want to eat, the people that are supporting this technology seem to be greatly offended that the market in Europe and other places is doing what markets are suppose to do.”

Letting the market decide would also mean more support for organics, which would force the USDA to protect that market–and thus our food supply–more conscientiously. Therefore, pushing for transparent labeling on food containing GMOs could be the first step in protecting our food supply from genetic contamination.

This will not be the last battle fought to preserve an agricultural product from contamination. In fact, any day now the FDA will be issuing a ruling about the first genetically altered animal–the GM salmon.

Meanwhile, here are a few things you can do to defend organic against the threat of GM food.

On one of the hottest days of 2010, Santa Cruz, California was blessed with the unveiling of The Penny Ice Creamery, one out of a handful of ice cream shops in the country that are licensed pasteurizers.  Just a few short months later, business partners Kendra Baker and Zachary Davis are seeing their dream realized, a difficult balance to achieve in our current economic climate.  However, despite the financial crisis, or perhaps because of it, they are the first people to admit that much of their success was made possible by Obama’s stimulus plan.  On the heels of the Penny’s now famous YouTube video, thanking the administration for the Recovery Act (which prompted a live call from Vice President Biden), I sat down with the pair to hear directly about the ins and outs of their business.

Your shop is unique in that you pasteurize in house, explain what that means.

KB:  In order to make your ice cream from scratch, you have to pasteurize your base, so that’s kind of the step that most people don’t do.  They buy a pre-made base from a large distributor and they are adding flavor to it. When we were developing this business plan we wanted to have complete control over our recipes and what went into our product. Any time you create an ice cream base it has to be pasteurized, that’s the California Department of Food & Agriculture law.  So we had to create a creamer, which is essentially the micro version of what you would find at a large milk production facility. We had to purchase a pasteurizer that fits our production cycle, which is seven to 15 gallons, because we make everything in really small batches. The process for that is you have to bring up the base to a minimum of 155 degrees with an airspace temperature of five degrees above that.  We have to hold it for 30 minutes after which you draw your product and pull it down to below 40 degrees.  Our production cycle is actually a two day process.  There is a cooling and an aging period, because ice cream is actually enhanced when it is allowed to sit for about 24 hours.  The next day you spin it and then it goes through a hardening period where it needs to go into a deep freezer.  After that we can start to temper it, which is a softening of the ice cream, before we actually serve it.  So it’s a lengthy process.

Do you find that the actual flavor is better when you pasteurize yourself?

KB: The flavor is definitely better and also just having the control.  For example, our mint doesn’t use eggs because I want it to have a more full mint flavor.  The fat of the yolk coats your mouth, which doesn’t allow you to taste as much of that real mint flavor.  So every recipe is unique.

ZD: When you buy a mix you are basically buying 95 percent of your product pre-made. The pre-made bases use a lot more sugar than we do. So with our ice cream what you’ll find is this subtlety that emerges and over the course of eating a cone you can actually finish it without saying, “Oh my god, what did I just do?”  It’s a much friendlier experience overall and you really get to experience the flavors of the ingredients in a more natural way.

What kinds of ingredients are in a pre-made base?

ZD: That’s the thing, you don’t really know. We know where our eggs come from, we know that we are using organic evaporated cane sugar that is minimally processed, we know that our dairy is coming from cows we know.

Why is ingredient sourcing important to you?

ZD: We ultimately decided that we really wanted to make everything from scratch. When it comes to our ingredients, we look at who’s making them, first and foremost.  That’s really better than any label or any certification that somebody’s putting on a product.  If you know them, and you know where they live and where they are operating, then they are accountable.  Luckily, because of where we live, we’re able to have so many local ingredients, which is awesome and we are so thankful for that. Beyond that, there are some things that don’t grow around here like vanilla. Vanilla is a very popular flavor, so then it’s organic or fair trade and comes down to just using the certifications that we feel most comfortable with.

The recent press regarding the stimulus money has certainly drawn attention.  Were you surprised?

KB: As we saw it all coming together, it was really incredible to see how many different people it was affecting.  Zach has a little bit of background in media and so we wrote a script and he pulled out his iPhone and the rest is history…anyone can do it.

ZD: It’s true, anyone can do it.  The most rewarding thing, ultimately, would not be a call from the vice president, although that’s great for business, but if it inspires more people to start businesses and do their dream…that’s the part of the whole economic recovery piece, that’s what it’s going to take. I love this country. I’m a firm believer in the American dream and I want everyone to believe that anything is possible.  It’s not to say it’s not a lot of work.  We put in over two years now, putting this together, just the loan part itself was over six months of extremely frequent back and forth to the bank giving them all the information they needed, proving ourselves.  It’s not like we just said, “Oh, we’re going to go get an SBA loan” and walked into the bank and they gave us the money.  There’s work, it’s all real work.

KB: We had no idea what type of response we would get and we never anticipated that we would actually get a call from the White House…that was pretty incredible.

ZD: But it’s great that they recognize it, that their ears are open enough to have heard it, and it shows that even though we’re on the other coast, that the people in DC are not totally disconnected.

What business elements do you think are key to your initial success?

ZD: We wrote a 75-page business plan, and it wasn’t just filler…just like our ice cream, no filler!  We put a tremendous amount of thought and work into it and as much as it was a business plan to show other people, it was a blueprint for us to work from.  We had plans for how we were going to reach out to people, I think we had a really precise concept of what we wanted to execute and that’s really important.

KB: There’s definitely an ice cream revolution happening that’s nationwide…we’re calling it Third Wave Ice Cream, and I think that we are at the forefront of it.  Making it from scratch is not very common, I only know of a couple other places in the state of California doing it.  Ici does it in some capacity, which is in Berkeley, and then Sweet Rose down in Brentwood.  The pasteurization process and all of the labor and everything that goes into it…it’s definitely a different path in terms of ice cream making; we’re getting back to what used to be.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

ZD: Today?  Yesterday was crème fraiche date.  It changes everyday, and sometimes every hour.

KB: I have lots of flavors that are high on my list but I think that my most favorite flavor is the fig leaf.  It takes you to a different level.

Photo: Natalie Feddema

Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs noted that the State Department was ready to take on the naysayers. In addition to confronting the critics, Fernandez stated they would be building alliances (presumably with the biotech industry and foreign governments), anticipating roadblocks to acceptance and highlighting the science.

To this point the only “science” they can highlight is the fact that nearly 100% of the commercially available genetically modified (GM) crops worldwide are engineered to be insecticidal, resistant to herbicide application, or both.

The State Department and its allies promote GM as a way for the developing world to feed itself, but the four predominant GM crops (corn, soy, cotton and canola) are not specifically human food crops, they are used for animal feed, biofuel, fiber and processed food.

They would like us to believe that the “science” will deliver more nutritious food, higher yielding crops, drought resistant crops and an end to world hunger. These claims however, are not based in science, but only on “the promise”, or “the hope” of GM doing what its supporters claim it can do.

The science, or lack thereof, that we should take note of is the glaring lack of regulation of GM crops and the serious questions about their safety. Nina Fedoroff, Science and Technology Adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted “We preach to the world about science-based regulations but really our regulations on crop biotechnology are not yet science-based.”

We should not be surprised that the U.S. State Department is again, on the stump, promoting biotech crops. It would be difficult to say how long the the U.S. government has been aggressively promoting biotechnology, specifically GM crops, but certainly since the commercialization of GM soy in 1996.

In 2004 the State Department launched a website which was part of a State Department initiative to “encourage broader adoption and acceptance of biotechnology in the developing world,” according to Deborah Malac, then chief of the Biotechnology and Textile Trade Policy Division of the State Department.

USDA is also actively promoting biotechnology with a website that supports bringing biotechnology to the “worldwide marketplace.”

Even the U.S. Senate is getting into the act, promoting, even mandating GM technology to the developing world. Senate Bill 384, The Global Food Security Act, would amend the Foreign Assistance act of 1961 to read “Agricultural research carried out under this act shall include research on biotechnological advances appropriate to local ecological conditions, including GM technology.”

While USDA assures us that the products of biotechnology and the chemicals they depend on are safe, scientists within USDA, the State Department and the Administration question that view.

So why does the U.S. government promote the interests of the biotechnology industry over the best interests of peoples health, the environment and the food security of the developing world?

The easy answer is that the biotechnology industry has a high profit margin and they know how to influence government policy.

The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected President echoing the Populism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the promise of John F. Kennedy.  It stopped there, the delivery of the promise fell short.

We have gotten a New Deal, albeit one that is more protective of those who caused the economic and agricultural crises than of those who suffer from them.  We have also gotten a new version of  “The Best and the Brightest” in the Obama Administration and their faulty counsel extends beyond war into food and trade policy.

The campaign promises were not worth the notepads they are written on. The promises were broken and business at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will carry on much as it did during the Bush Administration.

Instead of going outside the agribusiness and agrochemical industries, Obama has kept the revolving door spinning and appointed the very lobbyists and special interests he said would find no home in his administration.

Monsanto stalwarts Michael Taylor, special assistant to the FDA Commissioner for food safety and Roger Beachy, head of National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Rajiv Shah, head of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) where his pro-biotech leanings will continue to be pushed on the developing world. Perhaps it is a good fit, as  President Obama noted “The mission of USAID is to advance America’s interests by strengthening our relationships abroad.”  However, advancing America’s interests and giving real aid to those in need are not the same thing. Advancing interests implies control and empire building.

Islam Siddiqui, Chief Agriculture Negotiator, office of U.S. Trade Representative, is a particularly troubling nomination. He is no friend of consumers, considering his most recent employment at CropLife America (CLA), the pesticide industries main trade association. As a registered lobbyist and vice president of regulatory affairs, Siddiqui was responsible for setting and selling  CLA’s international and domestic agenda which, simply put, was to weaken regulations on pesticides and agricultural chemicals worldwide.

He is no friend of farmers either, and not just organic farmers, even though he has a  long history of distaste for organic agriculture. He promotes agribusiness, chemical companies, processors and grain marketers who make their profits by buying low, processing and selling high. In his world, a farmers job is to maintain corporate profits.

As an unabashed ‘free trader” he is a strong supporter of the World Trade Organization and its ability to strong-arm countries into accepting unwanted U.S. imports. He openly derided the European Union’s rejection of hormone-treated beef, Japan’s desire to mandate labeling of Genetically Modified (GM) food and he pushed to permit pesticide testing on children. In his world consumers should be forced to accept whatever food products are thrown at them.

Forced trade, telling countries they must accept our products whether they want them or not is not trade, it is nothing short of blackmail.

His “public service”  career has been dedicated to selling more pesticides and GM seed to farmers world-wide and easing restrictions on their use. The beneficiaries of these policies were not farmers or consumers but the agribusiness corporations that Siddiqui worked for. That is not public service, that is promoting private interest.

Siddiqui has not worked in the best interests of farmers or consumers, rather he has consistently promoted the interests of multi-national corporations, grain companies, meat processors and chemical companies over those of the farmer or consumer. If appointed, why should we believe that that the leopard will suddenly be changing its spots ?

President Obama noted as a candidate “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s [USDA] not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the peoples interests ahead of the special interests.” Just another empty promise.

Nearly two years ago, candidate Obama said the following in a speech at the Iowa Farmer’s Union:

We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. It’s the Department of Agriculture. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.

Then, less than two weeks before the election, Obama told Joe Klein at TIME:

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.

Sure these comments didn’t go silently into the good night; Big Ag pitched a fit. But wow! Our president once used the word monoculture in a sentence. And he made the connection between health care and food. And threatened to take back the USDA. I belabor this point only because I would argue that Mr. Pollan’s piece has become required reading, even a blueprint, for the movement – and has set the bar ever higher for what food system thinkers have come to expect from President Obama. But whether or not these ideas are still in the president’s mind, with an economic crisis, the health care debate and two wars to distract him, we can’t be sure. At one point, though, we know he got it.

Perhaps as a result of the public conversation about food taking hold, Michelle Obama planted a garden on the White House lawn and used it as a jumping off point for a conversation about food choices with children. And because the movement showed up and made itself heard through the Secretary of Agriculture selection process, in which Tom Vilsack was nominated, when it came time to choose a Deputy Secretary of Agriculture this administration listened and selected Kathleen Merrigan, a Tufts University professor who’d previously helped develop the organic standards. Vilsack and Merrigan have together launched Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, an initiative designed to connect consumers to producers, a “start of a national conversation about the importance of understanding where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate.” In addition, the Justice Department is currently reviewing the consolidation of agribusiness for potential monopolies, which could result in a re-structuring of control over meat, seeds, processing, and grocery sales. This could mean the opening up of suffocated markets to competition, and more choices for consumers and farmers.

However, with an ever-increasing amount of meat recalls and hundreds of thousands of Americans sickened by food-borne illnesses every year, we still don’t have anyone running the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspections Service (FSIS) – the body that is responsible for the safety of our eggs, meat and dairy products. Back in March, the President launched the Food Safety Working Group, but the group has not had an affect on how food — and especially meat — is processed and regulated. Meanwhile, last month President Obama declared the swine flu a national emergency, and while bailouts totaling $150 million have been doled out to hog operations for their losses this year, those operations are still not required to test their pigs for the H1N1 virus. No one seems to be willing to discuss the obvious: that these pigs, living mostly in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are standing in their own potentially bacteria and virus-laden shit, and are being given eight times the antibiotics of the average human, scientifically proven to lead to resistance. This means more virulent sicknesses could be getting passed on to farm-workers, their families, and the public.

Some have argued that there is an empty seat at FSIS because the Obama administration had trouble finding a non-lobbyist for the position who simultaneously wouldn’t upset the meat lobby. Surprisingly, though, Obama recently nominated a pesticide lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, from CropLife America (the organization that wrote a letter chastising Michelle Obama for not using pesticides on the White House garden) to handle our agricultural trade interests abroad. He also nominated Roger Beachy, former director of Monsanto-funded research facility, the Danforth Plant Science Center, to head the newly branded research arm of the USDA, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy promised to give ever more money to public-private sector research collaborations (read: technology-focused), despite a broken funding system that already favors agribusiness while we actually need more research on how the current food system affects our health and the environment.

Indeed, our Blackberry-toting president is fond of technology, and he seems to believe that all of it is moving us in the right direction when it comes to food. In July, President Obama secured $25 billion in agricultural aid at the G8 in Italy, and has stated his interest in a second green revolution for Africa in an interview (the first one brought genetically modified seeds to India, and created chemical dependence and debt in its wake). If his team, led by Secretary of State Clinton, and including pro-biotechnology Nina Federoff and Rajiv Shah, is any indication, instead of focusing on localized education, markets and infrastructure in countries in need of food security, this money could be invested in shiny new technologies that are years from implementation, have yet to fulfill the promise of high yields, and that are overly dependent on irrigation (water) and chemical fertilizers (oil). He will most likely be speaking in Rome this month at the FAO Summit on Food Security, so there is still time to retool the focus.

Maybe candidate Obama spoke out on food issues with the greatest of intentions, but didn’t realize the scale of the task at hand. But there are issues ripe for the taking, that Big Ag just can’t credibly pitch a fit about. Like research – Without facilitating necessary research that looks at the results of years of chemical agriculture on the land, how can we expect our president to see just how our current food system is making us sick, and then acknowledge sustainable agriculture for what it is – human-scale operations, which build soil and focus on diversification? And school food – who could argue with increasing the rate spent per child by $1 in the upcoming Child Nutrition Act and building relationships between farms and schools without looking like a bully?

And though there may be backlash, we need a strong regulator at FSIS. The Fairbank Farm recall has already killed two people, so no matter what the industry wants, we need to protect eaters first.

Despite my harsh critique of Obama’s first year in food system reform, one takeaway is that no matter the business on the President’s preverbial plate, he can be engaged about the actual food on our collective plates. It might take a team of skilled community organizers to keep showing him the movement. But once convinced, President Obama and his team have proven they will act.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery, but perhaps it has something to do with all the money and work as a fundraiser that Siddiqui put into Obama’s campaign. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods—mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a landmark comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer—not “freer”—trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative. However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.

We must also question how prepared the president is to break with past administrations’ track record of coddling special interests.

Why does it matter if the Vice President from the trade association representing pesticides and other agricultural chemicals takes over the Office of Agricultural Affairs at the USTR? Well, because that office, according to the USTR website “has overall responsibility for negotiations and policy coordination regarding agriculture.” That means he would oversee the office dedicated to:

Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) Development Agenda (Doha) negotiations on agriculture, operation of the WTO Committees on Agriculture and on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, agricultural regulatory issues (e.g., biotechnology, cloning, BSE, nanotechnology, other bilateral SPS issues, and customs issues affecting agriculture), monitoring and enforcement of existing WTO and FTA commitments for agriculture (including SPS issues), and WTO accession negotiations on agriculture market access, domestic supports and export competition, and SPS matters.

The Chief Agricultural Negotiator is essentially a ‘spokesperson’ for American agriculture (perhaps the ‘bad cop’ to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s ‘good cop’) who is in charge of selling our agricultural products abroad — products of a synthetic agriculture that is dependent on too many oil inputs, too much water and a stable climate to persist as the norm into the future. Here is an official job description for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator from the website Progressive Government:

The Chief Agriculture Negotiator for the United States conducts critical trade negotiations and enforces trade agreements that relate to U.S. agricultural products and services. Also works to expand the access for America’s farmers and agricultural producers to overseas markets and is responsible for directing all U.S. agriculture trade negotiations anywhere in the world. This includes multilaterally in the World Trade Organization (WTO), regionally in the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and bilaterally with various countries and groups of countries such as Australia, Central America, Chile, Morocco, and the South African Customs Union. The ambassador also resolves agricultural trade disputes and enforces trade agreements, including issues related to new technologies, subsidies, and tariff and non-tariff barriers and meets regularly with domestic agricultural industry groups to assure their interests are represented in trade. He or she also coordinates closely with U.S. government regulatory agencies to assure that rules and policies in international trade are based on sound science.

What might a former employee of CropLife think is sound science? And what might his agenda be for expanding our markets abroad? I’m sure Siddiqui is already a regular at agricultural industry meetings, and will be ready and willing to say just what they’d like to hear. (Before CropLife, Siddiqui also served in the Clinton administration under former Ag Secretary Dan Glickman, the Ag Secretary best known for taking part in the sign-off of GM seeds as ‘substantially equivalent’ to other seeds, thus an argument for why they should not be labeled.)

Here is a little bit more about CropLife from Sourcewatch:

The image [the pesticide industry] presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to “promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation.”
…
In March 2004, CropLife poured funding into a campaign to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative – known as Measure H – that would make the country [sic] the first to ban genetically engineered crops. In the lead up the the vote CropLife contributed over $500,000 – more than seven times that of the initiative supporters – to defeat the proposal. Despite the massive campaign against the initiative, the bio-tech industry suffered a humiliating defeat. The measure passed by a margin of 56% to 43%.

In other words, the Obama administration has chosen someone from an organization dedicated at all costs to chemical-based agriculture to represent our trade interests abroad. All in the name of selling more Round-Up and GM seed, as well as siphoning off our excess commodities to China for their growing CAFO industry, all for our own short term economic interests.

The industry has been pushing the American media and our politicians to refer to the virus instead as “novel H1N1,” which is indeed a scientific way to reference the flu. But “swine flu” has stuck because this is a virus that has passed between humans and pigs. It is uncertain still how the virus evolved and from where exactly, but as we are producing a glut of pork in the US it is not far off to consider that keeping thousands of pigs in close confinement in order to create cheap meat could be exacerbating the potential for disease.

When the news broke about the flu, many in the media focused on the personal aspect of avoiding getting ill, followed the illness as it took victims, or otherwise detailed the ways flus have played out historically. A few bloggers on sustainable food issues, like Tom Philpott at Grist, questioned the proximity of the virus outbreak in Perote, Mexico, 5 miles from a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) producing meat for pork giant Smithfield in the state of Vera Cruz.

But now, as the World Health Organization expects a second wave of the flu to hit the northern hemisphere in the fall, it is worth considering some of the looming questions on how CAFOs could be contributing to the occurrence of disease.

Environmental Health Perspectives’ (EHP) cover story this month by Charles W. Schmidt focuses on the issue in detail, reigniting questions surrounding our country’s current standard animal industry practices:

…one potential source of the original outbreak—swine farming in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—has received comparatively little attention by public health officials. CAFOs house animals by the thousands in crowded indoor facilities. But the same economy-of-scale efficiencies that allow CAFOs to produce affordable meat for so many consumers also facilitate the mutation of viral pathogens into novel strains that can be passed on to farm workers and veterinarians, according to Gregory Gray, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

“When respiratory viruses get into these confinement facilities, they have continual opportunity to replicate, mutate, reassort, and recombine into novel strains,” Gray explains. “The best surrogates we can find in the human population are prisons, military bases, ships, or schools. But respiratory viruses can run quickly through these [human] populations and then burn out, whereas in CAFOs—which often have continual introductions of [unexposed] animals—there’s a much greater potential for the viruses to spread and become endemic.”

So how would we in the US know if there were sick pigs at a 2,000 sow facility? The EHP article also follows up on the $1.5 million dollar USDA surveillance program assigned to look for novel flu strains in pigs, which is relying on voluntary samples. From that article:

[distinguished professor at Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Jürgen A. Richt] asserts that without more industry cooperation, the USDA’s surveillance program is “dead in the water.” In other words, he explains, producers won’t submit their animals for analysis without a guarantee of indemnification, meaning economic protection to recover losses should the virus be discovered.

In addition, Schmidt writes,

CAFOs fall through regulatory cracks when it comes to sampling for novel viruses that could make people sick. [Associate director for epidemiologic science in the Influenza Division of the CDC Carolyn Bridges] explains that producers have little incentive to test for swine influenzas, in part because they aren’t included on a list of 150 “reportable illnesses” that, when detected, must be documented with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

CAFO operators like to claim that their facilities are biosecure — sealed off from the world and therefore unaffected by it — where workers shower before and after entering, wear protective coverings over hair and clothing, and visitors are highly restricted. But this biosecurity could also be seen as an incubator for the creation of super viruses. As the article points out, animals in these facilities are given eight times the antibiotics that the average American human consumes, therefore increasing the risk for confined livestock with antibiotic resistant immune systems to pass novel viruses unchecked among herds.

So far, four swine herds have been identified as having H1N1, one in Alberta, Canada (which was destroyed without compensation to the owner when discovered) one in Québec, Canada, and two herds in Argentina’s Buenos Aires Province. But American pork farmers are terrified of the possibility of herd loss and trade sanctions on the already hurting industry, and as such, actively have sought to keep inspectors out.

The CAFO workers — according to EHP, there are an estimated 54,000 working in swine and poultry CAFOs in the US — could be a crucial link in the spread of disease. If a worker acquires swine flu, it would probably go undetected, as the systems in place currently do not vaccinate or observe them for the flu. It is not a stretch to suggest, then, that new super viruses emerging in these environments could be passed to unaware, impoverished and even sometimes illegal CAFO employees, unlikely to complain to the Occupational Safety Hazards Agency (OSHA) for fear of losing their job. The disease then has the potential to spread to their communities and beyond. Again, from EHP:

OSHA typically exempts facilities with fewer than 11 employees from routine inspection unless otherwise requested by employees or other agencies. Yet, like many other modern production facilities, CAFOs are largely automated, so a typical factory farm housing 2,000 sows requires a crew of just 7 people, according to Don Butler, director of government relations and public affairs for Murphy-Brown, the livestock production subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. And [Steven Wing, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] adds that CAFOs in some regions are often staffed by black and Hispanic workers who might fear racial harassment for reporting safety infractions to OSHA, as well as low-income workers of all races who worry about keeping their jobs in the industry and access to health care, housing, and other services provided by their employers.

When asked how OSHA regulates zoonotic disease risk at CAFOs, a spokesman at the agency said its purview applies exclusively to bloodborne pathogens via the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030), which excludes respiratory infections such as swine flu.

So where does this leave the public? Information has been lacking on these and other issues relating to the consequences of our industrial food system for far to long. It is possible that the USDA and the rest of the Obama administration has dropped the ball on investigating this issue — and that there will come a harsher version of the flu with no understood origin this fall. But the public deserves the facts about the consequences of industrial agriculture. And those facts, in the light of day, could force this administration to stop dragging its feet when it comes to building a sustainable food system.

The position has been vacant for months, perhaps because of the difficulties finding a candidate without lobbying ties that industry lobbyists won’t kick up too much dust about. But food safety is one of the most pressing domestic issues our country faces, and meat specifically has seen massive recalls as of late. The head of FSIS will by necessity need to take a more regulatory position at the USDA — a government office ridden with conflict of interest between promoting agriculture and regulating it — if we have hope of eating safer food. Therefore having someone in charge of this essential agency with experience and without industry ties is critical.

Unfortunately Wolff is disqualified on both counts. Not only does he have no previous food safety experience, but Wolff also is best known for siding with Monsanto to push for a ban on labeling rBGH, a growth hormone, in milk (we’ve written more about the politics and health effects of rBGH here, here, and here).

Tom Philpott wrote on the controversy:

In October 2007, [Wolff] moved to prevent his state’s dairy farmers from labeling their milk free of an artificial, genetically modified growth hormone called rBGH, then marketed by Monsanto. The ban of rBGH-free labels came down after some dairy processors began to demand milk grown without the synthetic hormone.

The act was widely read as a blatant attempt to protect his state’s large-scale dairy farms that relied on rBGH, as well as the interests of the company that marketed it, Monsanto. The GMO giant had been lobbying for years for a nationwide ban on rBGH labeling; in Wolff, they finally had a taker, in an important dairy state. Wolff’s official rationale: rBGH-free labels “confuse the pubic.” In an article at the time, New York Times reporter Andy Martin took a long, hard look at Wolff’s official reasoning. His conclusion: “It’s hard … to find much merit in Mr. Wolff’s arguments for the labeling ban.”

The ban generated so much outrage (much of it from dairy farmers who rejected rBGH use) that within months, Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell intervened to reverse it.

The trend of resisting the ban on labeling of rBGH milk products has continued into other states, like Kansas and Ohio, part of a growing movement of consumers who prefer to know what is in their food rather than being left in the dark. Should Wolff be circulating as a candidate again at the USDA, the administration should take into consideration that posting him could unleash consumer outrage, and would fail to make our food system safer.