Food Safety
Senate Cuts Animal ID Funding By Half
Published August 05, 2009 @ 02:05PM PT
Woohoo! I get to say nice things about the Senate!
I'm pleased to report that my usual causticity can be suspended for the duration of this post to applaud the Senate's unanimous consent vote to cut funding for the National Animal ID System. Go, Senate!
Jill Richardson at LaVidaLocavore has reposted the press release by R-CALF USA, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, and I think that the most salient point in the entire debate is encapsulated in this paragraph of their statement, here:
3) No food safety benefits. NAIS will not prevent food borne illnesses from e. coli or salmonella, because the contamination occurs at the slaughterhouse, while NAIS tracking ends at the time of slaughter. Thus, NAIS will neither prevent the contamination nor increase the government's ability to track contaminated meat back to its source. In addition, NAIS will hurt efforts to develop safer, decentralized local food systems. ...
If the program fails in its main, stated goal, if it is in fact structured such that failure is inevitable, what are we spending all this money for? As a liberal, progressive, believer in the possibility of government to do good, I have a deep and abiding interest in money given to the government not being wasted. When it's wasted, it creates an instant opportunity cost against something good and useful being done with that money.
Of the money that remains in the program, the Senate directives limit its use to rule-making activities, and on that front, I have a suggestion: lay the groundwork to institute premise ID, instead of animal ID.
I was talking a couple months ago with Margaret Krome, my former internship supervisor and policy program director at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, about how NAIS implementation has gone in Wisconsin. She said that at this point, they've just done premise registration, which sidesteps many of the concerns raised directly by Amish communities and does actually provide a public health benefit.
Krome explained that when there were animal disease outbreaks, the premise registry let public health officials target their notification efforts to the right people. This registration simply lets officials know that there are livestock on the property and what type. That's actually useful to know should there be an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease, scabies, or what have you. It also isn't burdensome to farmers, needing to be neither expensive nor time-consuming. See? Useful.
Anyway, cheers again to the Senate for showing such good sense. It seems in short supply these days.(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
Organic Complications
Published August 03, 2009 @ 12:03PM PT
So, there was a very narrowly focused literature review put out by Britain's pro-GMO Food Standards Agency that was widely reported to claim that there weren't any health benefits from organic food.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the FSA's theory of pesticide is "don't worry, be happy", as Geoffrey Lean of the Telegraph notes, and indeed the report completely ignores the potential health benefits of lower pesticide exposure. As Lean says in closing;
... It reminds me of a minister who used to complain that there was a "myth" that pesticides were "toxic". What, I asked him, would be the use of one that wasn't? Answer came there none.
Worse, the review seems to have excluded studies indicating a greater nutrient density in organic foods. Other nutrient differences reported are probably a result of the fact that conventional agriculture destroys and degrades soil, in a number of ways, and food managed solely for high yields in dying soil doesn't appear to be as good for you as food grown in healthier soil.
Has it, however, been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are nutritional differences between conventional and organic foods over and above the products of our chemical warfare industry? Some evidence suggests that's the case, but as many have pointed out, the body of research to date is minimal. So if the claim that organics are more nutritious (as opposed to less contaminated) needs more support, the claim that they aren't is on even thinner ice.
The House Food Safety Bill in Brief
Published August 01, 2009 @ 02:19PM PT
First, the food safety bill wasn't going to pass. Then it did.
The Agriculture Committee, including the ranking minority member, has had a great deal of input apparently, and they are well satisfied.
Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obamafoodorama, writing at Civil Eats, notes again the importance of putting the force of law behind food recalls. Now, even recalls involving deadly bacterial contamination, such as recent E. coli scares, are entirely voluntary and do not require retailers to stop selling products that may be affected.
The Consumers Union is pleased and Rep. Henry Waxman has given his assurances that the bill isn't intended to interfere with standard organic practices or the maintenance of on-farm biodiversity.
Nonetheless, as LaVidaLocavore's Jill Richardson points out, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has ongoing concerns about the flat facility fees that won't fund the program but will mostly end up collecting fees from the greater number of small processing facilities that exist. Further, that organic farmers won't be exempted from following new standards that contradict with established organic practices, potential barriers to farm-to-institution provisioning, traceability exemptions for products that are identified by origin all the way to the consumer and the likelihood that product-specific exemptions have been handed out unfairly.
The Washington Post has an overview of the main provisions, which include an increase in the frequency of FDA inspections at high risk processing facilities.
Hopefully, they'll rub the burrs off in the Senate, but there's some important things in this bill.(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
Food Safety Liveblog
Published July 30, 2009 @ 12:19PM PT
Happening now at LaVidaLocavore.
You can watch at C-SPAN.
Update 3:20 ET: Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) was just complaining that the bill doesn't indemnify food producers from their economic losses in cases of facility quarantine. Was there ever a complaint that made more explicit the corporatists' slavish devotion to the sanctity of profits over public health?
A Big Food Safety Problem
Published July 30, 2009 @ 11:29AM PT
Sick cows are one of our biggest food safety problems:
... Acidosis is often associated with a shift from a foragebased diet to a high concentrate-based diet or excessive consumption of fermentable carbohydrates. Acidosis may occur in cattle on high-grain diets common with youth livestock projects, bull development programs, and cattle finishing programs. It can also occur in stocker calves when self-feeders and highstarch feeds such as corn are used.
Acidosis is the result of low rumen pH. The typical pH of the rumen on a forage-based diet is 6 to 7. As the amount of forage or roughage in the diet decreases and the amount of concentrate increases, the pH of the rumen falls between 5 and 6, depending on the forage to concentrate ratio of the diet. Low pH supports growth of lactic acid-producing bacteria. Lactic acid is very strong and reduces rumen pH even more. Acute (severe) acidosis occurs when ruminal pH drops below 5.2, while subacute (less severe) acidosis occurs at a ruminal pH of less than 5.6. Laminitis, liver abscesses, and polioencephalomalacia often accompany acidosis. ...
Cows with acidosis, who've been fed grain instead of forage, produce deadly E. coli that can survive our stomachs. Healthy cows with a nearly neutral rumen pH still have E. coli in their guts, but these varieties of the bacterium are easily handled by our bodies.
The food safety bill that may be resurrected this week, H.R. 2749, does not address this topic, even though it laudably expands federal food recall powers beyond the toothless "voluntary recall." It does impose regressive fees on the sort of small producers not generally responsible for large-scale food contamination.
Congressional leadership may also put it up for a vote under a closed rule, which means no amendments can be offered. Again, I point you to the Center for Rural Affairs analysis of the vote situation. I'd hope that the pressure Congress feels to do something doesn't lead, as it so often does, to doing something stupid.
Today is Food Safety Day!
Published July 29, 2009 @ 10:25AM PT
Ali Savino runs the food site www.GastroNomalies.com.
From Congressional Quarterly, the House is scheduled to vote today on this (no link, subscription required):
Food Safety — HR 2749, Food Safety Enhancement Act, is scheduled for House consideration today under suspension of the rules. The bill overhauls food safety regulations for farms and food processing facilities, requiring more frequent inspections at food facilities and giving the FDA authority to impose criminal and civil penalties. The measure generally exempts farms from registration requirements and fees, although the bill does establish new regulations for the farming practices for fresh produce. The FDA would have authority to impose mandatory quarantines on geographic areas which are concluded to be the source of contaminated food posing a serious threat to humans or animals. The House will take up a version of the bill that has been modified as a result of talks between leaders of the Energy and Commerce and Agriculture committees to address concerns of agricultural interests about the role of the FDA in regulating farm activities. The compromise bill was released this morning.
Food Safety Bill in the House
Published July 19, 2009 @ 10:08PM PT
There's a food safety bill moving through the House, HR 2749 (a.k.a. The Food Safety Enhancement Act). Here's a timeline of what has happened:
- The House Energy & Commerce committee introduced the bill, which included $1000 "user fees" for "food facilities" (excluding farms and restaurants) and an increased schedule for FDA inspections from on average once a decade to as every 6-18 mos for high risk facilities, every 18 mos to 3 years for low risk facilities, and every 3-4 years for warehouses. The bill also gave the FDA the ability to quarantine foods. You can see more details on it here.
- The House Energy & Commerce committee held a hearing about the bill. For details you can see Part 1 and Part 2.
- The subcommittee within the committee marked up the bill and then passed it. During the markup, the changed the $1000 fees to $500 fees.
- The committee marked up the bill and then passed it. They removed the FDA's ability to quarantine livestock (thanks to some heavy lobbying by the meat industry) and increased the inspections for high risk facilities from every 6-18 mos to every 6-12 mos. They also added a requirement for high risk facilities to submit any positive test results for pathogens to the FDA.
- A backlash started against the bill. The meat industry was opposed to the bill from the start and the packaged food industry was actually for it. However, this backlash came from the grassroots from groups that actually care about sustainable food. On the other hand, Consumers Union strongly supports the bill. You can see their arguments for and against the bill here.
- The bill went to the House Agriculture Committee, where the committee chairman Collin Peterson threatened to prevent the bill from moving forward if it is not changed to meet his demands. Among other things, he does not want the FDA on farms.
And that's where we stand now. The groups who oppose the bill still oppose it. The groups who support it still support it. Both are trying to reach the ears of Congress. And the one with all of the power over whether the bill will move forward is Collin Peterson, whose major motivation is allowing Big Ag to continue business as usual without being bothered by pesky food safety bills. The bill is going to change before it moves out of the Ag committee, and the only questions are how it will change, and whether those changes will be good for us. I'd like to see the bill changed so that it won't affect small farmers and small businesses as much as it does now, but of course I don't want to see any of the regulations on big business watered down. I don't know what Collin Peterson's plans are, but I'll keep an eye out for interviews with him and update you if I hear anything.
