Blog Posts: Agricultural policy

By Tim Schwab

This post originally ran on Civil Eats

Unfortunately, today these public institutions are increasingly serving private interests, not the public good. Hundreds of millions of dollars are now flowing from corporate agribusiness into the land-grant university to sponsor buildings, endow professorships and pay for research. One land-grant university, South Dakota State, is headed by a man who sits on Monsanto’s board of directors.  

The influence this money purchases is enormous. Corporate money shifts the public research agenda toward the ambitions of the private sector, whose profit motivations are often at odds with the public good. It strips our public research institutions of the time, resources and independence needed to pursue public-interest research that challenges the status quo of corporate control over our food system or that offers farmers alternative agricultural systems to monocultures and factory farms.

Industry-funded research routinely produces results that are—surprise, surprise—favorable to industry. This “funder effect” produces a well-documented bias on research while weak conflict-of-interest policies throughout academia (including at many scientific journals, which don’t require full disclosure of funding source) mean agribusiness’s pervasive influence over public research is basically unchecked.

It also means that our nation’s regulators and policy makers—always clamoring for science-based rules and regulations—are making decisions about things like the safety of genetically engineered crops based on a body of research and science that is incomplete and, to some degree, biased.

So how do we weed out the agribusiness influence?  A good place to start would be increasing federal support for agriculture research—and directing this money to projects that serve the public interest.  This would go a long ways toward reducing land-grant university’s dependence on corporate funding and allow researchers more independence.

For more information about corporate influence on land-grant universities and recommendations for restoring more independent, objective academic research, read Food & Water Watch’s report Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over University Agricultural Research.

By Wenonah Hauter 

Image By: Maryland Office of the Governor, Maryland State Archives (flickr.com/MDGOVPICS)

*Updated May 9

During the 2012 Maryland legislative session, the burning of pollutant-laden chicken poop was embraced as a Tier I renewable energy resource, while readily available, clean wind power was dead. In Maryland, chicken is truly king. Or, as a series of emails obtained from Martin O’Malley’s office to a Perdue official indicate, it’s at least Governor. 

Food & Water Watch obtained the emails through a Public Information Act request for all correspondence between the Governor’s office and the giant Eastern Shore poultry company. 

In one back-and-forth between O’Malley and the Perdue representative from March 2011, the Governor acknowledges that wind energy may cost the poultry industry “18 cents to $2 additional per month at the outset,” but suggests that the cost is well worth it because “kids keep dying in the middle east.”

Eighteen cents a month to keep kids from dying in the Middle East was, apparently, a price too high to pay for the industry; Perdue responded by complaining of the additional costs to the integrators and stating that wind “is not high on [its] list of concerns.” Perdue, however, did buy into the chicken manure-to-energy scheme as a way to offload some of its mountains of waste in the state. And thanks to companies like Perdue, today in Maryland chicken crap is renewable, and wind is not. 

The 70 pages of emails we obtained were almost exclusively between O’Malley and Perdue’s General Counsel, Herb Frerichs. Mr. Frerichs is also a partner at the law firm that represents Perdue in the Clean Water Act suit bought by environmentalists for pollution coming from one of the company’s contract growers’ facilities. The emails depict a very close and personal relationship between the Governor and Frerichs, who were classmates at the Maryland School of Law in the mid-to-late 1980s. Read the full article…

By Wenonah Hauter

The Wall Street Journal reports that China is importing 100,000 heifers — 25 ships’ worth — to boost domestic dairy production in the wake of melamine and other milk-powder scandals that have decimated China’s relatively small dairy industry since 2008.

Where to begin? There are so many problems with this scenario, but here are just five reasons why this is a terribly bad idea:

1) The cows are destined for factory farms. China may be importing the cattle from Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand, but they are importing the model for factory farming from the U.S. The animals’ long nightmare starts on a harrowing journey overseas in ships, where they are confined tightly and face multiple health issues that may result in death. Those buried at sea might be the luckiest cattle, because once the animals get through the 45-day quarantine, they will continue their confinement in “football-field-size sheds” that resemble electronics factories more than farms and are milked three times a day on “bovine merry-go-rounds,” according to Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Frangos. Read the full article…

Patty Lovera, Assistant Director and Food Policy Director, Food & Water Watch

By Patty Lovera

Yesterday, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed its version of the 2012 farm bill. The next step in the process is for the bill to go to the Senate floor. We do not know when that will happen, although the Chair of the committee, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan), says it will be in “a few weeks.” 

Overall, this is not the fair farm bill we have been fighting for, although there are a few bright spots (mostly on existing programs that were threatened but survived.) The Senate bill cuts support for nutrition programs that feed the neediest families, fails to provide an adequate safety net for farmers when prices are low and costs are high, and does nothing to address the power of big agribusiness over farmers and consumers. While it increased funding for some local food systems and organic farm programs, the funding for these programs remains about one out of every thousand dollars spent by this bill.

The Senate Agriculture committee kept the bill secret for months and only released it to the public less than a week before it was passed out of committee. Over a hundred amendments were listed when the committee met to consider the bill, however many of them were never introduced for a vote. Some of the potential amendments would have been dramatic improvements to the bill, such as Senator Grassley’s packer ban amendment and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-New York) amendment to fund research into non-GE seeds and animal breeds, but these were not put up for a vote. Read the full article…

By Tony Corbo

Late Friday afternoon, I heard a knock on my office door. As I opened the door, a courier handed me a lengthy letter from Mike Brown, the President of the National Chicken Council, denying my request to be a company chicken sorter in a plant operating under the privatized inspection model that USDA has been running since 1998.

Mr. Brown explained that not anyone can walk off the street to be a company chicken sorter. He claimed that company employees receive extensive training before they can be assigned to the slaughter line. The letter stated:

“Company sorters must learn not only the technical requirements of the job, but must also be trained to comply with all relevant USDA and other government agency regulations. Most company sorters will have spent considerable time in training to recognize defects and deficiencies on chicken carcasses, and companies will have made substantial investments to ensure each employee performs competently…In other words, what you are requesting – a quick assignment on the evisceration line of a chicken processing plant of your choosing – is simply unrealistic.”

Mr. Brown never offered to show me the training materials that company employees are given to make them proficient to work on the slaughter line or how the training compares with that required of USDA inspectors before they are assigned on the slaughter line.

This morning, I received an email from a USDA inspector who works in a poultry slaughter plant.  She made the following observation:

“By their own admissions, many (company employees) have stated that they don’t have a clue what they would be looking for if they had our job. They also have indicated that they do not believe they would receive the proper training to perform the duties of an inspector and, if the lines were sped up, there would be no way of keeping up. I have also heard (company employees) make comments to the extent that they don’t feel it would be right for them to do the job of an inspector without getting the same pay so ‘why should I care what goes down the line?’” Read the full article…

By Tony Corbo

In my job as senior lobbyist for Food & Water Watch, I’ve analyzed thousands of pages of food safety program reports and talked to hundreds of inspectors on the front lines of our meat and poultry industry but I have not visited a slaughter facility participating in the HACCP-based Inspection Model Project. Sure, there are brief sporadic tours of HIMP plants given to a select few, but you can’t really get a true sense of how they operate on a tour. Which is why I asked the USDA for a job as a company sorter.

Yesterday I wrote a letter to Elisabeth Hagen, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the US Department of Agriculture, and Alfred Almanza, Administrator for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, asking them for the opportunity to work as a company sorter on a slaughter line in one of the chicken plants participating in the HIMP pilot. Since 1998, two-dozen slaughter facilities have been participating in the HIMP pilot. Now the USDA is considering expanding the program to all poultry facilities despite a recent Food & Water Watch analysis found an appalling amount of defective and unsanitary poultry contaminated with feces, bile and feathers got through and inspectors have raised serious concerns about “humanly impossible” line speeds.

Still, the USDA contends that the HIMP inspection model is superior and will save the agency millions. I’m skeptical but if the industry and USDA are so confident about their privatized inspection model, they should have nothing to hide by letting me experience what it takes to inspect poultry at 175-birds-per-minute with little or no training and be subject to employer intimidation to let unsafe and unwholesome food into commerce.

Here is my letter to Dr. Hagen and Mr. Almanza. I’ll let you know if I get the job.

Food & Water Watch’s Patty Lovera Discusses the Issue on ABC News

By Anna Ghosh

High levels of arsenic in apple juice imported from China and other countries with lax food safety standards was one of the biggest, and scariest, stories of 2011. Now, just a couple weeks into 2012, we’re faced with another imported juice scare.

This week, the FDA sent a letter to the juice industry about the fact that the fungicide carbendazim was found in several samples of orange juice concentrate coming from Brazil. In 2007, 32 percent of orange juice consumed in U.S. was imported, up from 23 percent in 1993. Top importers are Brazil and Mexico.It’s heartening, in this instance, that the FDA is doing its job and testing imported orange juice for toxic pesticide chemicals. But it’s impossible for the under-funded, under-staffed agency to police the tidal wave of food and beverage imports that flood our ports every day.

Exactly how much imported food comes into the U.S. every year? According to the 2008 Food & Water Watch report The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy, each American consumed, on average, 31 pounds of imported fresh vegetables, 20 pounds of imported fresh fruit, and three gallons of imported juice in 2007 alone. And currently less than 2 percent of food and beverage imports get inspected by the FDA.

What’s scarier is that at the end of last year, the World Trade Organization ruled that the United States’ country-of-origin labeling (COOL) program is a violation of international trade law. If the U.S. does not appeal this ruling, Americans will be even more in the dark about where their food is coming from and less able to make informed food choices.

After more than a decade of hard work, the COOL rule was included in the 2008 Farm Bill and has had overwhelming support from both consumers and U.S. producers, despite repeated attempts by the food industry to kill the program and delay its implementation.

COOL doesn’t cover juice concentrate, but it does apply to seafood, meat, and fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables and several kinds of nuts. If COOL goes away, the entire contents of our grocery cart could fall under the category of mystery origins, potentially toxic.

Then there’s the nearly impossible job that U.S. farmers have of contending with foreign meat and produce that’s grown without the same environmental and health requirements we have here. These inferior products are often “dumped” on U.S. consumers, which means domestic farmers can’t compete on price and many are forced out of business, while we, the consumers, are duped into buying inferior quality imported foods and beverages when many of us would prefer to support American farmers.

About a year ago, President Obama took one step forward by signing the Food Safety Modernization Act. But if he doesn’t defend COOL from the WTO, food safety and consumers’ right to information about the origin of their food, will take two steps back. Tell President Obama to keep our food supply safer by appealing the WTO ruling.

For more information:

Action alert: Ask President Obama to appeal WTO ruling on COOL

Global Grocer: Fill your virtual grocery cart with produce from around the world and learn about its hidden dangers

Report: A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports from China

Report: The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy

By Rich Bindell

There’s never a shortage of interesting and incendiary stories about food issues to choose from at the end of the year. This year is no exception. As we continue to build our campaign to improve the Farm Bill in 2012, we can see examples of why this work is so important just by taking a look at some of the most outrageous food stories of 2011…

1. Attack on Food Safety Budgets

2011 started out with a bang; our food safety programs got banged up by threatened budget cuts. In addition, we witnessed a number of food recalls due to contamination that threatened public health with serious illness and, in some cases, even death. It’s not a surprise that a large and complex food system such as ours requires an aggressive approach to food safety. Unfortunately, federal and state governments’ ability to use that strategy was weakened when food safety budgets were slashed. While the meat and poultry inspection program at USDA escaped relatively unscathed, the Food and Drug Administration didn’t fare as well. FDA’s budget only allotted about half of what it needed to put the newly passed Food Safety Modernization Act into action. In 2012, Congress needs to get their food safety priorities in order. Read the full article…

The Obama Administration is caving to meatpacker interests and many Democratic members of Congress aren't standing up for independent livestock producers.

By Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch

[Originally posted at Huffington Post]

While the big news among good food activists has been the unsettling possibility that a secret farm bill could be snuck into the Super Committee’s recommendations and passed with no public input, Republicans have furtively dealt a crippling blow to family farmers and consumers. This week, House Republicans included language in a budget bill that gutted the fair livestock rules that have languished for more than 80 years. Once again BIG MEAT has derailed the commonsense protections that allow small livestock producers to compete and check the abusive practices of the poultry industry.

The 2008 Farm Bill included reforms to protect small and medium-sized farmers who raise cattle, hogs, and chickens from unfair treatment at the hands of meatpackers and poultry companies. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration proposed rules (known as the GIPSA Rule, after the agency) to protect poultry and hog farmers from unfair contract terms – like retaliating against poultry and hog growers who speak out about abuses – and ensured that cattle and hog producers could get a fair price from meatpackers for their livestock.

Nearly three years later, the fair livestock rules have been shredded and there is plenty of blame and shame to go around. The Obama administration failed to show leadership on this issue and reneged on President Obama’s campaign pledge to “fight to ensure family and independent farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.”

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack caved to meatpacker money and power by issuing significantly watered down rules – after nearly 18 months of foot dragging to issue the final rules at all. USDA’s final proposal indefinitely postponed any efforts to protect independent cattle and hog farmers and issued a much weaker set of protections for contract chicken and hog farmers. Many Democratic Senators on the Agriculture Committee – including Chairman Debbie Stabenow from Michigan – stood on the sidelines and refused to stand up for livestock producers in their states. Read the full article…

By Rich Bindell

You know Jillian Michaels as the now-famous inspirational trainer (and former overweight consumer) from The Biggest Loser. Did you know that the main reason she has been able to maintain her healthy body is from eating organic foods and staying FAR AWAY from processed food products? It sounds like Jillian is well aware of the problems that burden our corporate-controlled food system, run by giants like Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson and Nestlé. If only the show could focus on that part of a better health strategy, it could really teach people about the critical importance of the Farm Bill in improving our food and our health as a nation.

Wait a minute… that gives us an idea!

America has already opened its collective consciousness to the lessons of The Biggest Loser. The show’s contestants are close to our hearts for good reason: they’ve allowed us to examine ourselves and how we view our own health. But, now it’s time to welcome a new group into the fold and follow them as they head down a path toward self-improvement and healing. Only this time, the contestants aren’t playing for themselves, but for everyone who depends upon a healthy food system.

Welcome to the Biggest FARM BILL Loser. Read the full article…