Blog Posts: Food

Food & Water Watch Assistant Director Patty Lovera

By Patty Lovera

Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives are expected to take up the farm bill. Although we won’t know which amendments will be voted on, the House leadership has suggested that several dozen could be considered. Based on the House Agriculture Committee debate and the House Republicans’ response to the farm bill passed by the U.S. Senate last week, we can make some educated guesses as to what topics will be covered.

The amendments will likely include: attacks on federal nutrition programs, amendments to protect the crop insurance industry from being required to comply with conservation programs, efforts to eliminate the new dairy supply management program (which is a first step in the right direction to ensure dairy farmers receive more for their milk than it costs to produce), and attempts to use the farm bill as a vehicle for broad-based deregulation of environmental rules and safeguards. We’re keeping our eyes on a handful of topics likely to come up during the House debate and will be telling members of Congress to:

• OPPOSE any amendment to repeal or weaken country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for meat, poultry, fruits and vegetables: Representative Austin Scott (R-Georgia) is seeking to eliminate the labels that tell consumers where their food comes from. Consumers overwhelmingly support these commonsense labels and the USDA recently finalized rules that ensure consumers have access to clear and complete information on food labels.

• OPPOSE any amendment that weakens environmental laws, pesticide oversight and promotes broad-based deregulation: Some Republicans are eager to use the farm bill to promote an aggressive deregulation agenda to roll back environmental, food safety and consumer protection safeguards. There may be amendments to weaken clean water laws, pesticide oversight and prevent food safety and agriculture regulators from addressing new and emerging public health threats.

• OPPOSE amendments to weaken nutrition programs: Oppose all efforts to weaken the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) by reducing the number of lower-income people eligible for SNAP, reducing the funding for the vital safety net program or shifting SNAP from a federal to a state program, where states could rapidly unravel the program.

• SUPPORT any amendment to strip out the King commerce-clause provision: The House Agriculture Committee included an amendment from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that could prohibit states from adopting their own labeling, food or farming standards. State governments often lead the way in addressing controversial issues including animal welfare and other food issues and these efforts should not be discouraged.

• SUPPORT any amendments to address the issue of contamination by genetically engineered crops. The recent discovery of unapproved GE wheat by a farmer in Oregon exposes the threat that field trials of GE crops pose to the food supply. The House should address this issue in the farm bill.

• SUPPORT any amendments to restore to organic farming programs: When the 2008 Farm Bill expired in 2012, several programs that supported organic farming lost their dedicated funding. These programs have helped to foster organic agriculture through research, helping to offset the cost of farms and food processors getting organic certification, and collecting data on the organic sector. These programs should be restored in the House Farm Bill.

We will have more updates next week when amendments become available. Stay tuned…

By Tyler Shannon

Only Walmart can make headlines with a new policy not to sell consumers rotten produce. Just last week, Walmart announced a new “fresh produce guarantee” allowing consumers to get their money back if they’re unhappy with purchased produce that’s, presumably, old or expired. Walmart is not even asking customers to return the produce to get their money back, indicating that it already knows it may have a problem.

This initiative is clearly in response to recent discoveries that the company has been selling customers expired produce, which, according to analysts, is likely due to a severe reduction in the number of employees responsible for stocking shelves and checking on produce.

Once the news of the problem got out, instead of addressing the actual issue of not enough employees assigned to the task, Walmart set the PR machine into motion, trying to improve its image with consumers through yet another initiative, following other pledges to improve their environmental sustainability and food procurement.

However, what Walmart’s spin doctors aren’t broadcasting is that this new policy includes an insidious change in how the company deals with fruit and vegetable producers. Walmart, well known for putting intense pressure on its suppliers to cut costs, has eliminated the middle person in many cases and will now apply pressure directly to the farmers with which it does business. Walmart does not like to deal with multiple, small or even mid-sided suppliers, instead choosing to deal with a few huge suppliers for each product in order to maximize efficiency. The same will likely be true here, with Walmart turning to only the largest operations run by the biggest businesses in the fruit and vegetable industry.

In addition to its produce quality woes, a recent report released by the congressional House Committee on Education and Workforce showed problems outside the produce section. Analyzing state Medicaid and benefit records in Wisconsin, the congressional committee found that each Walmart superstore in the state was costing Wisconsin taxpayers a minimum of about $905,000 per year as a result of its low wages and minimal employee benefits, including, among other things, Medicaid, section 8 housing assistance, reduced price lunches, and food stamps. The analysis only counted actual enrollees in state services.

So much for the Walmart motto “Save Money. Live better.” It looks like Walmart is just talking about its corporate executives and top shareholders, not its employees or its customers.  

By Genna Reed

The J.R. Simplot Company, giant potato supplier for McDonald’s, has spent years working on the perfect potato. Its new genetically engineered trait (which will be offered in five different varieties of potatoes) up for USDA approval has lower levels of a carbohydrate called acrylamide, which may cause cancer, and also has reduced black spot bruising. These potatoes will be used as frozen fries, potato chips and shoestrings, which make up approximately 50 percent of the potato market in the United States, according to Simplot.

Both of the desired traits are achieved through the reduced expression of enzymes, affecting the amino acid asparagine for the low acrylamide trait and the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (PPO) for reduced bruising (the same way GE apples have been engineered not to brown). The problem is that an alteration in just one enzyme can unintentionally affect other plant characteristics as well as the plant’s health.

These GE potatoes will likely be fried using Monsanto’s new-and-improved omega-3 soybean oil, which will probably be marketed to lead consumers to believe that the bio-engineered combination is “healthy” fried food. A low-acrylamide potato may reduce levels of just one of the harmful chemicals brought out by frying foods but there are other dangerous compounds that are produced when food is heated to very high temperatures, including advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), which can lead to to “chronic inflammation and oxidative stress,” (also linked to cancer). And of course this new fried “goodness” doesn’t address the high-calorie and low-nutrient content that make fried potatoes unhealthy in the first place.

Historically, GE potatoes have not fared so well in the marketplace. Monsanto’s NewLeaf GE potatoes were approved in 1995, but the company pulled its potatoes from the market in 2001. If approved, these potatoes may face the same fate and never make it into happy meals across America. But these potatoes could also be exported, since Simplot has submitted its petition for approval to Canada, Mexico, Japan and South Korea.

The USDA will be seeking comments until July 2nd and we intend to tell them to further review the potential health effects of these GE potatoes. Sign the petition to tell the USDA to stop the approval of the GE potato here.

Food & Water Watch Assistant Director Patty Lovera

By Patty Lovera

Last night, the Senate passed their version of the farm bill… again. Just like they did a little less than a year ago. But last year, the House didn’t vote on the bill. So this summer, they’re trying again.

A quick recap on how we got to this point: the last farm bill to use a “normal” process was passed in 2008. Several attempts to pass a new farm bill in 2012 were unsuccessful and the farm bill that is currently in effect is a short-term extension that expires in September 2013. The extension bill kept major programs (like payments for commodity crops) alive, but abandoned important programs for organic and sustainable agriculture, conservation and beginning farmers.

The bill passed last night by the Senate is disappointing. In our statement to the press, we described it as doing “little to address the stranglehold that food processing firms have over America’s unsustainable and unfair food system.” Because of disputes over whose amendments would be considered, more than 200 proposed amendments were not considered at all. Some of the amendments that did not get a vote would have dramatically improved the bill, such as those by Senators Grassley, Tester, Enzi and Rockefeller that would have injected some sensible measures to address the rising consolidation in the food industry, an amendment by Senator Tester to prioritize research funding for non-genetically engineered seeds and breeds, and Senator Boxer’s amendment to require labeling of genetically engineered foods.

On the slightly brighter side, the failure to consider lots of amendments meant that some bad changes were averted, including a measure to remove catfish inspection from the USDA, measures to delay implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, and even deeper cuts to food assistance programs (the bill that passed the Senate does cut $4 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over 10 years, but some amendments offered would have cut even more). One of the few amendments that did get added to the bill – by unanimous consent – would retroactively disqualify anyone who had ever been convicted of some felonies—or their children—from receiving food stamps.

You can read more about what is in the Senate bill here: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/farm-bill-2013-the-bill-goes-to-the-senate-floor-again/

The next step for the farm bill is the House floor. Predicted by some observers to be a “bloody free for all,” the House spectacle will feature big debates over cuts to SNAP (the current draft would cut $20 billion in comparison to the $4 billion cut in the Senate bill). The House bill also has less dramatic changes to government commodity programs, with lower target prices paid to farmers for commodity crops and less reliance on crop insurance than the Senate bill. There is also going to be a big fight about dairy programs in the House. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Boehner, is on a well-known crusade to end any government programs for dairy supply management, putting him on a collision course with the Agriculture Committee’s Ranking Member, Rep. Collin Peterson, who is championing a complex modification to current policy that would pay dairy farmers when the gap between the price of their milk and the cost of animal feed hits a specified mark. Sadly, for all the debate that is likely to occur over the role of government in dairy pricing, the discussion will probably not address the real source of the problem for dairy farmers – too few buyers and milk pricing formulas that don’t include what the milk costs to produce.

The House may take up the farm bill next week. Stay tuned for news on what amendments are introduced and ways to get involved.

By Scott Edwards

Scott Edwards, Co-Director, Food & Water Justice

In yet another move to ensure the continuing degradation of waterways by our nation’s factory farms, the Environmental Protection Agency struck a deal with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Wednesday to significantly soften an earlier lawsuit settlement agreement that would have required the Agency to better regulate pollution from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, across the country. The original settlement, entered into in 2010 after CBF filed a lawsuit for the Agency’s failure to implement the Clean Water Act (CWA) in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, called for EPA to strengthen its CAFO regulations.

While these industrialized agricultural facilities continue to be the highest source of pollution in many of our waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay, the new pact between EPA and CBF replaced the prospect of more protective regulations nationwide with weak provisions that generally require EPA to do the things that the Agency is already obligated to do (reviews of state permitting programs), along with inspections of a small handful of these polluting facilities in the Bay region. The new deal also focuses solely on the Bay watershed, thereby allowing EPA to continue to ignore every other waterway in the country.

EPA’s latest move follows on the heels of several other recent irresponsible CAFO pollution control approaches enacted by the Agency. In the summer of 2012 EPA abandoned a very basic information-gathering plan designed to better document the discharges that come from these factory farms. This Clean Water Act “308 rule,” which was implemented as part of a settlement agreement with environmental organizations who challenged the Agency’s 2008 CAFO regulations, was jettisoned after industry lobbyists browbeat the Agency into backing down.

Today, the largest polluters of waterways in the country remain largely unregulated and free to continue to discharge with impunity. Allowing EPA to avoid any kind of meaningful CAFO regulation is not going to result in cleaner waterways anywhere, and certainly not in the Bay. With the federal government refusing to do its job when it comes to CAFOs and water pollution, its critical that citizens continue to push EPA to do a better job on CAFO regulations and to demand that real steps finally be taken to address this persistent threat to our nation’s waterways.

By Seth Gladstone

After a recent flurry of activity throughout the Northeast around efforts to require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods, one thing is certain – the grassroots movement to ensure consumers’ right to know what they’re buying is picking up steam. Despite last minute meddling from industry lobbyists in New York, strong legislative progress on GE labeling in Connecticut suggests the Northeast may be setting the bar for the advancement of labeling nationwide.

The biggest news this week came from Connecticut, where the state legislature passed a law – which Governor Malloy intends to sign – that will require the labeling of almost all food products containing GE ingredients. Good news indeed, as this marks a significant victory. Yet implementation of the law is dependent upon a number of unmet conditions, including other states in the region passing their own labeling laws as well.

Advocates in Connecticut are rightly pleased with this week’s developments, but there is still much work to be done throughout the region. One specific “trigger” for enacting the legislation – that labeling laws in other states cover at least 20 million people – has turned attention to high-population states like New York, where momentum on GE labeling (also known as GMO labeling) is growing despite an initial biotech industry-induced setback in the legislature.

By now, the biotech industry’s big-money, quick-response ability to stifle public will and popular opinion should come as no surprise. Last November, giant chemical makers like Monsanto and DuPont joined with processed food companies to spend almost $50 million dollars to defeat California’s Proposition 37, a simple GE food labeling measure. The multinational corporations bombarded airwaves with inaccurate and misleading ads that confused voters into choosing against improved consumer protection and transparency.

Flash-forward to this week in New York, where after months of rising grassroots pressure and dedicated organizing by a diverse coalition of consumer, health, farming and food advocates, a GE labeling bill was finally posted for a vote in the State Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee. This was to be the first in a series of legislative tests the bill would ultimately have to face before becoming law.

Though the they knew the outcome would be close, advocates were buoyed on the morning of the vote when Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak, a swing voter, indicated his strong support for the legislation by signing on to the bill as a cosponsor. Suddenly realizing they were beaten, lobbyists for the Council for Biotechnology Information leapt into action, berating committee members in Capitol offices and hallways. By the time of the vote that afternoon, Gabryszak had flipped under the industry pressure. The vote failed.

Gabryszak’s inexplicable flip-flop aside, the bill’s lead sponsor, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, has vowed to make sure the story has a positive outcome. “The fact that this bill made it to [a vote…] illustrates the tremendous impact that the advocates nationwide have had on this debate,” Rosenthal said. “Clearly, there is still work to be done, but I am confident that this bill will pass.”

While it remains to be seen whether the Northeast will indeed set the pace for GE labeling in America, there is no doubt that consumers throughout the region are increasingly driving progress in state legislatures. Stay tuned.

Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director

By Wenonah Hauter

Last week, some people questioned our opposition to China’s largest meat company purchasing Smithfield, suggesting that it could be construed as xenophobia. But prejudice against a particular country has nothing to do with our concern. The globalized food system poses real food safety risks and free trade deals with global partners encourage a race-to-the bottom in food safety standards, leaving U.S. consumers at the mercy of inadequate foreign food safety systems like China’s.

We should all be leery of deals like this that further consolidate our food system; especially when they involve companies with a history of food safety problems and countries with abysmal track records for food and worker safety. The horrendous Chinese poultry plant fire currently making headlines provides another powerful example of how the factory farm model endangers lives.  

As I explain in this 2011 blog when we released our report, A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports from China, putting profits above people is a cross-cultural problem. Besides, many of the companies and investors profiting from Chinese exports are U.S. companies or investors (Goldman Sachs own part of Shuanghui International).

Anyone who’s paying attention knows that risky food from China has become all too common. Last month, Food & Water Watch Assistant Director Patty Lovera testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats to discuss China as the leading producer of many foods Americans eat: apples, tomatoes, peaches, potatoes, garlic, seafood, processed food and food ingredients like xylitol and vitamin C.

As I explain on New York Times’ Room For Debate last night, the purchase of Smithfield isn’t just about exporting pork – it’s indicative of the American government’s fervor for exporting our consolidated, industrialized food system:

Shuanghui International became China’s monolithic meat company by adopting the U.S. factory farm model pioneered by companies like Smithfield. The merger is likely to increase the size, intensity and pollution of hog production in China. Furthermore, Smithfield’s anticipated increased exports to China would effectively convert U.S. factory farms into export platforms; Smithfield would ship out the pork, and we’d keep the hog manure.

In addition to the environmental consequences of the deal, it’s bad for consumers. Transnational deals in the food industry usually add to American imports, and a rising flood of imported food swamps U.S. import inspectors. In the long term, Shuanghui may offshore hog operations to China, and the U.S. could be importing pork. In 2011, Shuanghui recalled thousands of tons of meat after reports that it was laced with the banned veterinary drug clenbuterol, which is linked to serious human health risks.

Deals like this serve no one but the executives and bankers who stand to profit; everyone else is left with the manure.

(Read my full comment and the other experts’ perspectives here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/06/02/smithfield-china-and-the-calculus-of-transnational-deals/food-industry-deals-hurt-consumers-and-the-environment)

Another debater, Thea Lee is the deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, brought up another excellent point:

If Chinese consumers want to consume American pork, they can presumably purchase it on the open market. Our farmers have been trying to get their pork into the Chinese market on a sustained basis for many years. The decision instead to purchase a major producer indicates that there are other motives. As we evaluate this and other similar investments, we had better have a good sense of how those other motives will impact good jobs, food safety and regulatory balance in this country. Unfortunately, under current law, even if we determine that this or similar investments would have a negative impact on the U.S. economy – or any subset of workers – there is very little we can do to stop it.

 We’re not criticizing the deal simply because Shuanghui is a foreign company. Food & Water Watch has criticized Australia’s and Canada’s food safety issues plenty. And if other country exporting food to the U.S. had the same food safety problems that China has, we would be equally concerned. The bottom line is further consolidation of our food system is bad for consumers and farmers. When a handful of companies—whether it’s Shuanghui or Tyson—control the food we eat, Wall Street and high-paid food industry executives win. Consumers, farmers and the environment all lose.

By Genna Reed

Last week, the USDA announced that an Oregon farmer was unknowingly growing glyphosate-resistant wheat in his non-GE wheat field. This was quite shocking considering Monsanto ended its GE wheat research program in 2004 and its field trials in 16 states in 2005. If this happened in one farm in Oregon, who’s to say that there are aren’t similar incidents in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington or Wyoming? Not only could there be incidents from years ago, but according to USDA data, Monsanto is currently field testing new varieties of GE wheat in North Dakota and Hawaii. These experimental GE crops could be contaminating neighboring wheat fields this very moment.

Monsanto claims that its process for ending its Roundup Ready wheat program was “rigorous, well-documented and audited” and the USDA claims that all field trials are inspected once a year. Yet, at a December 2011 USDA stakeholder meeting I attended, a USDA representative from the Biotechnology Regulatory Services branch announced that only 800 inspections were performed that year even though there were 2,500 new permits in addition to older permits that still needed to be inspected. That means that not even a third of permitted GE field trials are inspected by the USDA every year.

The jig is up—USDA and biotech companies were unable to reign in the GE technology a decade ago, and they still can’t control it today. This isn’t the first time an unapproved GE trait has made it past the field trial stage into the food system, with serious economic ramifications.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified six known unauthorized releases of GE crops between 2000 and 2008. In 2000, Japan discovered GE StarLink corn, which was not approved for human food, in 70 percent of tested samples, even though StarLink represented under 1 percent of total U.S. corn cultivation. After the StarLink discovery, Europe banned all U.S. corn imports, costing U.S. farmers $300 million. In August 2006, unapproved GE Liberty Link rice was found to have contaminated conventional rice stocks. Japan halted all U.S. rice imports and Europe imposed heavy restrictions, costing the U.S. rice industry $1.2 billion. In 2007, Ireland impounded imported U.S. livestock feed that tested positive for GE, unapproved in the country.

Half of U.S. wheat is exported to countries with strict labeling restrictions, and since 90 percent of Oregon’s wheat is exported, it is likely that some of the unapproved GE wheat made it overseas. This could mean millions of dollars of costs for farmers and the U.S. government if that is indeed the case. To avoid any more of these GE contamination fiascos, tell Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to place a moratorium on field trials of GE crops.

This Saturday, May 25, tens of thousands of activists across six continents, 41 countries and more than 330 cities are expected to “March Against Monsanto.”  Instigated and driven completely by grassroots activists, this global day of action hopes to demonstrate that, when many people ban together for justice and transparency, they can fight back against the powerful few. Watch this InfoWars news alert about Monsanto’s CEO feeling threatened by grassroots efforts, particularly social media.

Food & Water Watch supports the solutions that March Against Monsanto advocates for – the need for mandatory GE food labeling and further scientific research on the health and environmental impacts of GE food and repealing the Monsanto Rider that slipped into the recent budget bill (also known as the Monsanto Protection Act).

We too call for more transparency about the undue influence that Monsanto and other biotechnology seed corporations hold over our government and recently released a stunning report about how the U.S. State Department works to promote Monsanto and the biotech seed industry on the taxpayer’s dime. Link to that report as well as a corporate profile on Monsanto and a primer on GE food, below.

Food & Water Watch is proud to be supporting March Against Monsanto activities in various cities across the country – New York City; New Brunswick, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Portland, Maine; Mystic, Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan (check out these great pictures from a sign and costume making party earlier this week); Chicago and Springfield, Illinois; Des Moines and the Quad Cities, Iowa; Cincinnati, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle and Ramond, Washington.

Whether or not you’re planning to March Against Monsanto this weekend, arm yourself with the facts. Food & Water Watch reports, fact sheets, blogs, press releases and sharable images can all be found here: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/genetically-engineered-foods/monsanto/, and more information on GE foods here: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/genetically-engineered-foods/.

By Patty Lovera

Confused about the Farm Bill? Click here to read our report, Farm Bill 101.

This week, both the House and Senate Agriculture committees adopted their versions of the 2013 Farm Bill. This is the latest move in the long-running attempt to pass a “normal” 5-year farm bill to replace one that was last passed in 2008. Several attempts to pass a farm bill in 2012 were unsuccessful and the farm bill that is currently in effect is a short-term extension that expires in September 2013.

There are some significant differences between the House and the Senate, in both what their bills actually contain and in the process used to get them through the committee. Both sides had an abbreviated process, skipping the normal step of conducting a series of hearings to explore various issues before writing the bill. But the Senate Agriculture Committee took the streamlining even further, managing to discuss, amend and pass its version of the bill in a little under three hours on Tuesday. The House Agriculture Committee finished theirs in a marathon session that took most of the day, wrapping up just before midnight Wednesday night.

Now each bill (HR 1947 and S 954) has to go to the floor for the whole body to vote on. The Senate is going first, with leadership claiming they will do the Farm Bill as early as next week. The full House may see their bill in June.

Read the full article…