Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story.

In a recent opinion piece in the Wisconsin State Journal, former Secretary of Agriculture, John Block, touted the virtues of GM crops and credited them with producing higher yields, lower pesticide use and solving the ever growing problem of world hunger. Current Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, plugged GM at last week’s USDA Outlook Conference. Problem is, the promises are just good stories. The believers are missing the truth.

Weeds have become resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup and insects became resistant to the toxins produced by their GM corn. As GM was planted on more acres, overall pesticide use went up, not down. A University of Kansas study found that GM crops actually had lower yields than their conventional counterparts. Even as the problems of GM crops become more apparent, the cost of GM seed continues to rise. Many farmers are backing away from GM, but finding non-GM seed is difficult, considering Monsanto controls roughly 90% of the corn and soy genetics in the U.S.

With corn and soy well under their control, Monsanto now hopes to gain USDA approval for Roundup resistant alfalfa. A perennial crop, alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and again, Monsanto sees profit. The contamination of non-GM and organic alfalfa, the potential for further reduction of bee populations, among other problems, seem of little consequence.

Feeding the world? GM will not do it, even former Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro admitted, “The commercial industrial technologies that are used in agriculture today to feed the world… are not inherently sustainable.”

Still, Monsanto bills itself as a leader in global sustainability, ignoring the fact that true sustainability cannot be achieved when your driving goal is the next quarterly profit report. The world stands a better chance of feeding itself by using and improving upon farming methods [PDF] that have been relied upon for centuries. In Africa, if indigenous crops, long adapted to their environment, were put forward as the solution to hunger, studies show that the population could have adequate food supplies and at times, cash income from sales of surplus crops.

So, why do so many continue have faith in the story, when the evidence is against them? GM crops do not yield as promised. A USDA report [PDF] shows that farmers actually loose income by planting GM crops.

Seed costs are unreasonably high, as are the fertilizers and chemicals that are absolutely required to grow GM. Researchers continue to reject GM foods citing concerns of their serious health risks.

GM will not feed the world [PDF] The GM story as told by the Biotech giants paints the future as a happy and prosperous place: Farmers are profitable, everyone is well fed and the environment is protected.

The real GM story is not so happy. It is a story of market control, environmental degradation and deceived farmers and consumers.

Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and Rosanna Bauman from Kansas — got to tell the USDA what they needed to survive.

But were policymakers listening? Many of the invited speakers with a political row to hoe seemed to be concerned about one segment of farmers in particular. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack kicked off the conference with the message that to preserve and grow rural America, which is the heart and soul of this country, we need to stop thinking about big versus small and start thinking more inclusively. He shared the usual dismal statistics — the increased unemployment in these areas, the lower per-capita income, and how more than 57% of rural counties have shrunk. All to say, what we’ve been doing to conserve and grow rural America isn’t working.

Among the alternative strategies the administration has launched recently is the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, intended to shore up the shrinking numbers of farmers. There are tremendous opportunities to build on local and regional supply chains through connecting local products to local consumption, Vilsack noted, but then quickly followed with “it’s not the only answer, though.”

Bill Even, South Dakota’s Secretary of Agriculture, picked up that thread. He began by asking the Republicans in the room to raise their hand: a paltry 5 out of 200 shot up. After praising the USDA’s Know Your Farmer initiative for helping to reconnect society to the soil, he got to the message that he repeated throughout his 10-minute speech: “Don’t disparage one type of agriculture” — by which he meant conventional, large-scale industrial “production” agriculture. Quoting his mother, he said that “blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours burn brighter,” and echoing Vilsack, he ended with how “this is a big tent for all types of agriculture.”

I presented at the Drake Forum on behalf of beginning farmers (along with Zoe Bradbury, a young farmer and Grist contributor) and to share how Farm to School programs offer a new, stable market for farmers and an opportunity to teach agriculture literacy to youth. After Dan Durheim from the American Farm Bureau Federation made comments along the same lines as Even and Vilsack, I felt it necessary to make a pointed comment to the closing plenary:

There seems to be a common thread throughout this panel, that started off with the Secretary’s welcoming remarks that there’s plenty of room at the USDA and in food and farm country for all types of agriculture, and to not be down on certain practices. But if we had done that in the 1860s, we never would have abolished slavery because slavery “worked” for plantation owners. When atrazine is creating infertile rural populations, it’s not about “blowing out a candle” — it’s about putting out a fire.

I found the chutzpah to make that comment because I had Even’s children in mind; he had mentioned his 16-year-old son in his remarks. Being a Midwesterner, however, I felt the need to tell him later that I wasn’t attacking him personally, just the logic he used to come to what I thought was a short-sighted conclusion, to which he responded, “yeah, you kind of threw me under the bus.”

Even had started his presentation with, “To understand where someone stands, you need to know where they stood,” so I outlined my own rural conservative roots and told him I come from a farming family. I wanted him to see that I am not just some liberal academic pointing fingers at farmers, but that we share in many ways a common background from which I have diverged. While yes, there “is room for” all types of agriculture, I believe we must acknowledge that some types of agriculture are broken — making us and our land sick, and draining our rural communities of youth.

Even said he agreed with me. That if agriculture doesn’t make sense “economically, scientifically, or socially, then it has to change.”

He said he was meeting Tuesday in South Dakota with a group called “Ag Unity,” which he implied is to bring opposing groups working in their proverbial rural silos together. But the only description I can find of Ag Unity is for “an umbrella group of some 20 agriculture-related groups” that sounds a lot like they’re all hailing from the same side of the commodity-focused production fence.

Phrases like “big tent” and “ag unity” make for good speeches but bad policy when it comes to the next generation of farmers. Real unity is about finding common ground for “mother nature and the workers, the reapers and the threshers, the seedlings and the raindrops, the bakers and the truckers, the ranchers and the farmers, the butchers and inspectors, the cows and special cheffers,” as the fifth graders from Elysian Charter School sang in “Who Put That Burger on Your Plate?” (the winning video in last year’s “Real Food Is” winning Farm to School contest). And that’s going to take leadership that’s not afraid to level the growing field through targeted procurement and research funding.

Originally Published on Grist

Photo: cwwycoff1 via Flickr

In his State of the Union address last Wednesday, President Obama covered a lot of ground. His primary goal was to focus on job creation, but he left out one important occupation–in a nation where the average farmer is 57 years old, we need farmers. He mentioned the obesity crisis, noting that the First Lady would be dedicating her efforts there, and then made this comment about doubling our trade in goods and commodity crops in the next five years:

To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security. We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are.  If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.

He has thus far stuck to his word. According to the USDA, $234.5 million is being given to 70 U.S. trade organizations to help promote American food and agricultural products abroad (you can see who this money is going to, from the Cotton Council International, which received a whopping $20 million, to trade reps for perishables like the California Prune Board, which received nearly $3 million). The Farm Bureau is thrilled that this administration is poised to aggressively pursue trade agreement negotiations with other countries as it clearly benefits big producers. So is Republican senator and erstwhile Bush Jr. Secretary of Agriculture nominee Mike Johanns from Nebraska, who had this to say:

With unemployment at 10 percent, we should be pursuing every possible avenue to promote good opportunities for job growth and business investment. Our businesses, farmers, and ranchers produce the highest quality products in the world and deserve an opportunity to compete on a level playing field.

The problem is that places like South Korea have expressed that they don’t want our goods if they contain hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Worse, though, is that our products are not traded on a “level playing field,” but instead are sold at an unfairly low prices in developing countries, made falsely cheap by our subsidy system. Developed world subsidies have been the prime barrier to negotiations at the Doha Development Round trade talks, which began in 2001 and continue to this day with no agreement–which many consider a victory for developing nations. And while Obama seeks to cut subsidies in his budget, it will be an uphill battle, especially without a stricter definition for who is a farmer.

Ben Lilliston, Communications Director for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy had this to say about the administration’s plan for increasing trade:

The goal of doubling commodity trade is not feasible or wise. This emphasis on export markets is odd given that it runs directly counter to a lot of the Administration’s work to support local food systems. And expanding exports would definitely come at the expense of local food systems. The reality is that we’ve tried to expand agriculture exports for the last 50 years. That goal represents a lot of what is wrong in U.S. farm policy: a push to lower commodity prices–to make us more competitive internationally; an emphasis on just a few commodity crops; and support for large-scale operations over smaller, more diversified farms. An emphasis on exports has benefited multinational agribusiness firms, but not farmers either in the U.S., or in other countries. U.S. agribusiness companies have a several decade record of exporting commodity crops like corn, soybeans, rice and wheat at prices below the cost of production–a practice known as dumping. The result has been devastating to poor countries trying to develop their own food production. The loss of food production in many poor countries is a major contributor to growing hunger around the world. What makes the proposal so strange is that the Administration has to know this is not possible. Even agribusiness companies–who I’m sure love the proposal–know it’s not possible to reach.

Here is what trade agreements looks like in action: as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. corn sold cheaper than it could be produced, putting millions of Mexican farmers out of business–simultaneously quashing the diversity of the corn varieties and genetically contaminating locally grown corn with GMOs. As a result, these jobless farmers have made their way across the border to pick fruits and vegetables in America (often in slave-like conditions), or work mind-numbing jobs in slaughterhouses. But NAFTA’s destructive legacy runs deeper still. Last October, Mexico was ordered to pay the corn-processing giant Cargill a $77 million dollar fine for imposing a tax on high fructose corn syrup in an attempt to protect their domestic sugar farmers.

Vilsack’s op-ed focused on rebuilding rural America. However, when dollars leave the farm community headed to corporate multinationals for seed, chemicals and equipment, and the products produced on the farm are not food but commodities that then leave the community too, how can broadband and increased trade be anything more than band-aids for rural America? In the face of facts like climate change, to which agriculture contributes at least 30% of carbon emissions, decreased water availability and uncertain oil resources, trade veils the real problems facing the food system. What we need is balance: balanced opportunities in rural areas, a balanced ecosystem with diversified crops that feed local populations, and a balanced number of farmers to knit that community together. More farmers means more jobs, more stewardship of the land, and better quality food–and as a result, a thriving rural economy.

Up next, watch for the administration to start pressuring Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) to release his hold on Islam Siddiqui, Obama’s nominee for Chief Agricultural Negotiator, who’s pesticide lobbying past is not behind the pause. Indeed, who else but a Big Ag lobbyist could they get to take on such a mission seemingly bound for disaster?

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

Sure, the President and Sec. Vilsack inherited huge problems…but after almost a year in office–and multiple Class I (you could die) recalls for contaminated beef–where’s the FSIS Under Secretary? Perhaps Santa himself will be delivering a sprightly, smarty-pants elf from Toyland, to monitor the nation’s food supply in 2010? Because elves might be the only individuals who can pass the conflict-of-interest test…which is the “official” reason no one has been appointed as Under Secretary for Food Safety. The President also gets some coal for attempting to let free trade trump food safety issues, and for his lunch visit to the aptly named Ray’s Hell Burger, which had been cited for food safety violations for under cooking its burgers. The FDA is also awarded coal on the naughty list, because it’s been engaging in the dubious activities cited below, and the entire Senate warrants mention, too.

The “Nice List” will be published tomorrow–and the President and Sec. Vilsack are on that list, too–but here’s the Naughty List:

NAUGHTY: President Obama for NOT appointing a new permanent U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Food Safety. ALSO NAUGHTY: USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack for making excuses about it. (See “FSIS Remains Leaderless,” Oct. 16, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The Senate for being too slow on health care reform to pass meaningful–and decades overdue–food safety legislation before the Holidays. (Ed. note: The House passed food safety legislation in July)

NAUGHTY: Secretary Vilsack and White House for trying, in the name of free trade, to roll over Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s (D-Conn) efforts to assure that the US does not permit poultry processors from shipping raw poultry meat from the US to China for processing and shipping back to the US for sale until USDA has determined that China’s inspection program is equivalent to ours. (See “Deal Reached on Poultry Imports,” Sep 27, 2009)

NAUGHTY: The FDA staff that keeps appealing to consumer advocates, “don’t set us up to fail,” when consumer advocates push for more inspection. They never say, “help us get the law and resources we need to protect people.”


NAUGHTY: J. Patrick Boyle of the American Meat Institute for trying to dynamite the Senate food safety bill even though it doesn’t have anything to do with the meat industry.

NAUGHTY: State public health department officials attending the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference in October who put industry profits ahead of public health.

NAUGHTY: Weston A. Price Foundation for more denial of outbreaks and giving consumers false information about raw milk safety.

NAUGHTY: FDA for its failure to control ridiculous health claims like Kellogg’s claiming that Cocoa Krispies are a “Smart Choice” because it “helps support your child’s immunity.”

NAUGHTY: Some raw milk, small and sustainable agriculture advocates who confused the entire food safety debate by making and circulating false claims about the food safety bills. It really is about food safety, and is not a gigantic conspiracy by Monsanto to wipe out organic and backyard farms!

NAUGHTY: Washington State University for removing Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” from the Common Reading Program. (The book was restored after monetary interventions by Bill Marler.)

NAUGHTY: The FDA for caving to political pressure and backing down on oyster regulations. (See “Under Pressure, FDA Puts Oyster Policy On Hold,” Nov 14, 2009)

NAUGHTY: President Obama and Vice-President Biden for ordering undercooked hamburgers for the Press Corps at a DC restaurant with less than stellar inspection reports.

NAUGHTY: Stewart Parnell, President of Peanut Corporation of America, for asking for nearly $1 million from his bankrupt business for his own criminal defense fund after shipping peanuts his own tests showed were contaminated with Salmonella that sickened over 700 and killed at least nine. (See “PCA Executives To Divide $875,000,” Dec 11, 2009)

NAUGHTY: FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and the U.S. District Attorney in Georgia for moving so slowly with the criminal investigations of the Peanut Corporation of America and its executives, including Stewart Parnell. (See “One Year Later, Still no Charges for PCA,” Nov 07, 2009)

Originally posted on Obama Foodorama.

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

Bah, humbug. What’s your plan, Tom?

• Launched an initiative to cut down E. Coli contamination (including in particular contamination from E. Coli O157:H7) and as part of that initiative, stepped-up meat facility inspections involving greater use of sampling to monitor the products going into ground beef.
• Appointed a chief medical officer within USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service to reaffirm its role as a public health agency.
• Issued draft guidelines for industry to further reduce the risk of O157 contamination.
• Started testing additional components of ground beef, including bench trim, and issuing new instructions to our employees asking that they verify that plants follow sanitary practices in processing beef carcasses.
• Designed the Public Health Information System (PHIS) in response to lessons learned in past outbreaks.

“USDA is also looking at ways to enhance traceback methods and will initiate a rulemaking in the near future to require all grinders, including establishments and retail stores, to keep accurate records of the sources of each lot of ground beef.”

Double “Bah, humbug.” As I said on Twitter just now, this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic sort of stuff. As long as the industry is able to set the terms of its own regulations and do things like maintain bizarro “trade secrets” protections on key elements of our food safety system (not to mention base their business on corn rather than grass), real reform is impossible. Back to the drawing board, Tom.

h/t Bill Marler. Originally published on Beyond Green

On a recent Sunday evening, nearly a hundred and fifty people decided to drive out to Brentwood, Ca to have dinner and enjoy the harvest hospitality at the Brookside Farm.  Farmer Welling Tom was busy running about – harvesting fruit for the small vegetable stand set up on the edge of the orchard where his mom Anne would sell some pears before being called over to help serve the grilled fish and meats that accompanied their local bounty.

Far from being a polished corporate event, we sat on hay bales in the orchard as we talked and feasted.  Chefs from around the Bay Area provided dishes to share, mingling with customers Welling and Anne had met at the various farmers markets they attend.  The true feeling of local community was evident in every bite, every conversation.

When people try to talk about the value of local food – the value that doesn’t necessarily relate to dollars or sense – this is it.  There can be no monetary value placed on evenings like these; they can’t be created by marketing budgets or new research and development programs or new strains of genetically modified wheat.  Evenings like this 0ccur when a community comes together to celebrate a family choosing to work the soil they’ve lived on for 35 years by hand.

And yet, this is also part of the problem.  Surrounding Brookside Farm’s 10 acres is an ever-encroaching suburban sprawl, as century-old fruit and nut orchards are ripped out in favor of mini-mansions and big box stores.  As the Bay Area housing market heated up in years past, development roared ahead at a feverish level as farmers were offered larger and larger sums to sell their land for new houses and malls.  Sadly, the market fell even faster when the bubble burst last winter, and now many of those new houses stand empty.  But the deeper tragedy is not the lost property value.  It is that the orchards and open farmland that preceded these empty houses can not easily be replaced.

This very issue – farmland preservation – was the topic of a recent letter sent by the American Farmland Trust (AFT) to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  “Protecting farmland for future agricultural use is of utmost importance to every citizen of the United States” the letter reads.  The letter brought attention to the federal Interim Final Rule regarding the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP).

A statement released by the AFT reads:

“The states who signed the letter represent over 70 percent of all the acreage protected under state farmland protection programs,” says Bob Wagner, Senior Director of Farmland Protection Programs for AFT. “The states recognize that the federal government has been a key partner in helping protect farmland since 1995, and they are offering improvements to the FRPP program so that it can be most effective and efficient.”

This issue could not be more important, and the time for increased preservation needs to be now.  As the economy has slowed, the cost of keeping land protected for agricultural use is a fraction of what it was last year – and this price will only increase as the economy recovers.

The demand for development never ends, and at each turn the message is, “We just need a little more housing, but you can save the rest.”  But then the next year, it’s “Just a little more for a small mall we need to build,”  and then “Well, we need to build….”  and so on.  Meanwhile, all forms of open space disapears and we are left with the proverbial “asphalt jungle.”

Reflecting on these issues, Chef / Owner Peter Chastain of Prima Restaurant in Walnut Creek recently recalled a day, perhaps 30 years ago, when you could look east from the Berkeley hills and see only orchards and ranches and rolling green fields.  Today, all that has been replaced by suburban development.

Thoughtfully, Chef Peter said “Now, our job as cooks is to rediscover the connections to the land through our work, and in the process try to awaken people’s awareness of those connections through the food we serve.”

Connecting to the land through our food – it’s the most natural thing in the world.  But the land needs to be there to connect with, and that’s something worth protecting.

For example, did you know that in 2006, 83.5% of beef-packing was controlled by 4 companies, same goes for 66% of pork packing, 58.5% of the chicken processing and 55% of turkey processing. Similar numbers exist for the seed companies, the grain processors bringing animal feed to feedlots and HFCS to most of the packaged foods in the supermarket, and the supermarket retailers themselves. Numbers this high indicate a lack of competition.

For more information on trusts in the agricultural sector, please take a look at a recent post I wrote on the subject.

And also, the Justice Department invites interested parties to submit comments on what should be discussed and considered at these meetings by December 31st, 2009 to: agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov Agendas and schedules for the early 2010 meetings will be forthcoming on the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division website: www.usdoj.gov/atr

h/t Tom Laskawy of Beyond Green and Grist

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

In the audience for today’s announcement were family members of foodborne illness victims, and VP Biden said changes in food safety laws were “long overdue,” and had been unchanged since 1906…”since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.” He noted that part of his work with the Middle Class Task Force was ensuring food safety, and made a long statement about imported foods, processed foods, and how we’re all put at risk by these.

“In the past, we’ve focused on food safety problems when they occur, now we’re putting our focus on prevention,” said VP Biden. “The tragedy of someone getting sick from food is made worse by someone else getting ill after we know what’s making people ill.”

“The President has made food safety an important national priority,” VP Biden said.

He closed by thanking Brian Sylberman, president of the Produce Marketing Association, someone who has been critical in promoting food safety for the produce industry.

Jointly, VP Biden and Secs. Sebelius and Vilsack announced the following imperatives for the new food safety approach:

(1) Prioritizing prevention
(2) Strengthening surveillance and enforcement
(3) Improving response to and recovery from outbreaks

In an effort at better management and coordination, the FSWG is seeking to coordinate the activities of agencies that oversee food issues, and has created two new positions:

1. Deputy Commissioner for Foods, to oversee and coordinate its efforts on food, including food safety. This position, reporting to the FDA Commissioner, will be empowered to restructure and revitalize FDA’s activities and work with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, and other agencies, in developing a new food safety system. —The ostensible Taylor position…
2. Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS: Within the next three months, USDA will create a new position, Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS. This position will report to the Under Secretary for Food Safety, and will enhance USDA’s commitment to preventing foodborne illness.

Also announced: Some Big New Rules, many of which have a three-month time frame; some have a longer time frame…

• Reducing Salmonella in Eggs: The Food and Drug Administration is issuing a final rule to control Salmonella contaminationof eggs during production. This rule is estimated to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses associated with consumption of raw or undercooked contaminated shell eggs by approximately 60%, or 79,000 illnesses every year, and will generate annual savings of over $ 1 billion.

• Cutting Salmonella Risk in Poultry Products: By the end of the year, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will develop new standards to reduce the prevalence of Salmonella in turkeys and poultry. The agency will also establish a Salmonella verification program with the goal of having 90 percent of poultry establishments meeting the new standards by the end of 2010.

• Reducing the Threat of E. coli O157:H7: The bacterial strain called E. coli O157:H7 causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fever in approximately 70,000 Americans each year. In an estimated one in 15 patients, complications arise potentially resulting in intense pain, high blood pressure, kidney failure, and even death. In recent years, this bacterium has caused outbreaks associated with meat and spinach.

• Stepped Up Enforcement in Beef Facilities: FSIS is issuing improved instructions to its workforce on how to verify that establishments handling beef are acting to reduce the presence of E. coli. Also, FSIS is increasing its sampling to find this pathogen, focusing largely on the components that go into making ground beef.

• Preventing Contamination of Leafy Greens, Melons, and Tomatoes: By the end of the month, FDA will issue commodity-specific draft guidance on preventive controls that industry can implement to reduce the risk of microbial contamination in the production and distribution of tomatoes, melons, and leafy greens. These proposals will help the Federal government establish a minimum standard for production across the country. Over the next two years, FDA will seek public comment and work to require adoption of these approaches through regulation.

• Building a National Traceback and Response System: A system that permits rapid traceback to the source of foodborne illness will protect consumers and help industry recover faster. Yet despite the dedicated efforts of food safety officials across the country, our current capacity to traceback the sources of illness suffers from serious limitations.

• Developing Industry Product Tracing Systems: Within three months, FDA will issue draft guidance on steps the food industry can take to establish product tracing systems improving our national capacity for detecting the origins of foodborne illness.

• Creating a Unified Incident Command System: Within three months, Federal agencies will implement a new incident command system to address outbreaks of foodborne illness. This approach will link all relevant agencies, as well as state and local governments, more effectively to facilitate communication and decision-making in an emergency.

• Strengthening the Public Health Epidemiology Program: Within six to twelve months, FSIS will improve collaboration with states by increasing the capacity of its successful public health epidemiology liaison program to State Public Health Departments through additional hires and expanded outreach.

• Updating Emergency Operations Procedures: Within the next month, Federal food safety agencies will ask State and local agencies to update their emergency operations procedures to be consistent with the new “Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response” soon to be issued by the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response. Implementation of these guidelines will lead to quicker response, better communication, and better coordination by all Federal, State, and local agencies.

• Improving State Capacity: The CDC will work with collaborating States to evaluate and optimize best practices for aggressive and rapid outbreak investigation, and will launch a new system to facilitate information-sharing and adoption of best practices within 12 months.

• Using New Technologies to Communicate Critical Food Safety Information by Creating an Improved Individual Alert System: The federal government will enhance www.foodsafety.gov to better communicate information to the public and include an improved individual alert system allowing consumers to receive food safety information, such as notification of recalls. Agencies will also use social media to expand public communications. The first stage of this process will be completed in 90 days.

• Improving Organization of Federal Food Safety Responsibilities: Building a more effective safety system requires federal agencies to improve management of their food safety responsibilities and coordinate more effectively with each other.

• Strengthening Federal Coordination to Address Cross-Cutting Problems: The Food Safety Working Group will serve as a mechanism to break down stovepipes, address cross-cutting issues and increase coordination of food safety activities across the U.S. government. HHS and USDA will continue to serve as the Working Group’s leadership, bringing information and experience from the front lines of food safety to their sister agencies across the government. The Group will monitor the implementation of its recommendations, regularly assess performance metrics, ensure that food safety policies are adequately coordinated with efforts to safeguard the food supply from deliberate tampering, and respond to new challenges.

This post originally appeared on Obamafoodorama.

Author’s note: Lately a number of people have asked me what I think of how the Obama administration is approaching agriculture. Do all the gardens and talk of healthy food represent significant change, or are they a leafy green veneer on what amounts to nothing more than business as usual? Here’s my response, which was mailed by post today.

*
June 23, 2009

Dear President Obama and Secretary Vilsack,

I’d like to applaud your bold work this spring in beginning the shift toward a more sustainable agriculture. Change is evident in your symbolic work regarding gardens and food, and, more importantly, in the USDA’s practical actions of appointing Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy Secretary and granting $50 million to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Family farmers and other proponents of a healthy food system have long worked to advocate ideas like these, and it’s invigorating to see them finally taking root in the highest levels of government.

However, when I pan out from these changes, I see a deep contradiction. In your approach to agricultural policy as a whole, you continue to promote practices on the other end of the spectrum—practices that in fact negate those changes toward sustainability. Specifically, what troubles me is your hybrid vision for the future, in which those organic gardens grow alongside inherently opposing constructs, most notably patented biotechnology and the National Animal Identification System. Mr. Secretary, this spring you told the Des Moines Register, “To me it isn’t about either-or… It’s about how do you figure out ways for folks to co-exist and how do you figure how to take the best of all of it…” The problem is, that co-existence is impossible. Here’s why:

Sustainable agriculture is founded on the principle of farmer leadership. The first step to creating a sustainable food system is restoring stewardship, that elemental relationship in which a farmer balances food production with ecological health and social well-being. That is possible only when farmers are empowered: trusted to lead, respected financially, and encouraged—indeed, allowed—to be independent and free.

But these practices you propose as integral to our future in fact disempower farmers: biotech by denying them the right to save seed, and NAIS by indirectly punishing livestock producers who work on a smaller scale. Worse, they set in place systems by which the rights that farmers do have are overruled. What might seem like coexistence early on proves to be, instead, the slow death of the weaker half.

There’s an illustration of how this has already happened in the story of genetically engineered corn: After less than two decades since biotech seed came on the market, American agriculture has accepted that more or less every corn stock in this country has been contaminated with their patented genes. Because of that, the companies that own those genes have the power to shut down the farmers and plant breeders who are trying to come up with non-biotech solutions for our future—the very alternative agriculture that you claim to endorse. This approach is not “bi-partisan,” it is undemocratic.

Mr. President, on the campaign trail you insisted that “if Washington continues policies that work against America’s family farmers, our rural communities will fall further behind—and so will America.” Both of you have recognized the anti-farmer nature of corporate livestock production contracts, and worked to restore fairness to that sector of the industry. Why have you not applied the same judgment and vision to the rest of your agricultural policy?

I urge you to reconsider the future of our food system. I firmly believe that to feed ourselves in years to come, we’ll need to have our farmers right there with us—and not just as service people, but as leaders, stronger and more numerous than they are today. As a realist, I recognize that many existing practices within agriculture, even the most faulty, must stay in place at least long enough to keep Americans fed today. But if we base our survival on systems that ultimately disenfranchise farmers, we will certainly go hungry in the long run.

Sincerely,

Lisa M. Hamilton

Editor’s Note: Lisa M. Hamilton does write for the Prairie Writers Circle, but this letter was composed independently.

Newly minted US Senator and member of the Senate Agriculture Committee Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and New York State Senator (and retired dairy farmer) Darrel Aubertine wrote Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a letter on February 26th asking that the USDA re-evaluate what is considered “processed” for the food in the national school Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program (FFVP).  No, these two senators are not lobbying for the Corn Refiners Association — they are pushing for local food.

FFVP was created by the USDA in 2002 to allocate more fruits and vegetables, served as “snacks” outside the school lunch and breakfast programs, to students at lower-income schools all over the country.  Thus the kids most at risk for obesity and diabetes get access to fruits and veggies.

One complication: much of the fruits and vegetables served to students outside of the lunchroom will need minimal handling before getting into student hands, lest apples become baseballs.  But cafeterias are not prepared time-wise, skill-wise or workman’s comp-wise for this endeavor, not to mention that cafeteria kitchens are at best giant reheating stations.  So for the time being, to get the freshest food it is best to outsource the cutting and bagging to a local value-add facility or local producer, until we build better infrastructure and train our cafeteria ladies to cook.

The FFVP was continued by the 2008 Farm Bill, which allows a “geographic preference for the procurement of unprocessed, locally grown and raised agricultural products,” for school lunch, breakfast and snack programs, as long as a competitive price is maintained.  But the Farm Bill also states that “de minimis handling and preparation might be necessary to present an agricultural product to a school food authority in a useable form.”

But as a part of Bush’s midnight regulations in January (when he and his cronies essentially trashed things further before heading out the door), his USDA Food and Nutrition Service re-defined what is considered “processed,” including that which is chopped, sliced or diced — effectively blocking fruits and vegetables from local sourcing, and from the hands of those who need real food the most.

Clearly Bush officials were taking liberties with the wording. From the Farm Bill:

The Managers do not intend that the Food and Nutrition Service interpret the term “unprocessed” literally, but rather intend that it be logically implemented. In specifying the term “unprocessed,” the Managers’ use of the term intends to preclude the use of geographic preference for agricultural products that have significant value added components.

Of course, we’re not talking about local Wonderbread or cheesedoodles here.  Chopped apples, carrots, broccoli and their ilk, prepared nearby, will now lose this market share to the big ag processors simply because of wording.

From Gillibrand and Aubertine’s letter:

The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program requires these snacks be served outside of standard school meal programs. Therefore, it is illogical to prohibit local produce as “processed” simply because it is in a form that can be served to students outside of the lunchroom.

Unlike most midnight regulations, this effort shouldn’t require a change of policy, but just a re-wording.  So if it’s so simple, why hasn’t Vilsack responded?  Maybe he would argue he has a lot on his plate.  Time will tell if Vilsack can impress the Real Food Lobby (that’s you, eaters with a conscience everywhere) with decisions that improve our food system, or whether he’ll continue to bolster big business in food and entertainment.