Blog Posts: Food

By Patty Lovera

Last week, you may have been puzzled by headlines about a new decision to end the use of the antibiotic tetracycline in organic apple and pear production. Since when are organic foods produced with antibiotics? Unbeknownst to most consumers, since the beginning of the USDA’s national organic program in 2002, apple and pear growers have been allowed to use the antibiotics tetracycline and streptomycin to treat a disease called fire blight on organic apple and pear trees.

Food & Water Watch worked with other consumer and environmental groups, and thousands of you who wrote comments to the National Organic Standards Board, to make sure they took a strong stand for public health and the integrity of the organic standards by rejecting an industry petition to allow the use of tetracycline until 2016.  We urged the Board to end the use of tetracycline as soon as possible in order to meet consumer expectations for organic and to respond to mounting evidence that antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a serious threat to public health. Antibiotics are not allowed in any other types of organic food, including production of organic livestock.

At their meeting last week, the Board did reject the petition, which means that the use of tetracycline will not be allowed after October 21, 2014. But they also passed a resolution to encourage the USDA to investigate a transitional option for the emergency use of tetracycline until 2017. So we will be keeping an eye on that process, to make sure that if the USDA sets up an emergency use provision, that it is extremely limited, ends as soon as possible and, most importantly, that apples and pears from treated trees can not be sold as organic.

Even until 2014, when tetracycline will be phased out, organic apples are still a better choice than conventional. Organic growers can’t use synthetic pesticides or herbicides, genetically engineered crops (there is a GE apple variety in the approval pipeline), or sewage sludge on their fields; all practices which conventional orchards can use. And here are a couple of ideas for ways to find organic apples and pears produced without antibiotics:

• Look for apple and pear varieties that are less susceptible to fire blight, and less likely to need treatment. Beyond Pesticides has a list (and a great history of this issue.)   
• Look for apples and pears that are certified with both the USDA Organic and the EU organic seals. The organic standards in the European Union do not allow any use of antibiotics on fruit trees, so U.S. growers who export to the EU are not using the drugs on their orchards.

Stay tuned. We’ll be calling on you to help us make sure we keep the organic standards strong.

Wenonah signing books at a recent event in Red Bank, N.J. Photo Credit: Jim Rapp

By Wenonah Hauter

Since January, I have been traveling the country promoting my book Foodopoly. While the travel is exhausting, the people I meet on the road keep me going. They tell me how much they appreciate Foodopoly’s honest account of the imbalance of power at the root of our dysfunctional food system and often share with me their personal experiences. Farmers impart stories of having to sell their land and find other work because they can’t compete in an unfair marketplace. Former neighborhood market owners explain how they’ve been pushed out of business by large national chains. And everyday consumers lament their frustration with the consolidation of every type of food – especially organic – that has diminished most real choice on grocery shelves. These are the people I wrote Foodopoly for.

Today, I am in Willits, a little town in Northern California, where I will be speaking at the Little Lake Grange. Willits is called the Gateway to the Redwoods – majestic tree groves and farmland form a beautiful patchwork in this tiny town in the heart of Mendocino County – and it is a welcome detour from my typical tour route of big cities.

Sadly, however, this beautiful patchwork is endangered by an unnecessary freeway bypass project. And peaceful protests by residents against the project have been trounced by a massive occupation by the California Highway Patrol. Since March 21, Willits has had the highest CHP-to-citizen ratio in the state.

The Willits Bypass would require clear-cutting an old growth forest, cause severe damage to the watershed, seasonal wetland and wells. The bypass construction and mitigation would take more than 2,060 acres of farmland out of production. If the bypass is constructed, the valley would essentially be owned by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), with no mind to the farmers and residents who will be forced to live in the bypass’s shadow.

And, the saddest part of this obsolete monstrosity is that there is no need for it. Sara Grusky, who runs Save Little Lake Valley and coincidentally used to work for Food & Water Watch, tells me that the traffic volumes through Willits do not call for a project of this size and her group has proposed several time- and environment-saving alternatives to the bypass.

“The bypass is an obscene waste,” Sara told me. “It is all part of the same obsolete model as the Keystone XL pipeline, fossil fuel intensive energy solutions that we just cannot let go forward.”

Which is why Sara, the brave tree sitters, and other residents of Willits are risking arrest and injury to protect their town and precious ecosystem. I am awed by the fortitude shown by the people of Willits and hope their courage will inspire others to stand up for what they believe in. Whether it’s stopping a destructive, wasteful freeway project from tearing your town apart, fighting to get genetically engineered food labeled in your grocery store, or holding the Department of Justice accountable for blocking food monopolies that harm farmers and consumers, we must all do our part to take back our political system.

By Anna Ghosh

Whether you’re a full-time farmer or an indoor herb gardener, the spring planting season is in full swing. But where do the seeds that get planted come from? When we think about consolidation in the food system, retailers like Walmart or mega junk food manufacturers like PepsiCo come to mind. But the corporate consolidation and control of our food supply literally begins at its inception with seeds.

This hasn’t always been the case. As recently as 20 years ago, local, independent seed companies thrived. There used to be 300 seed companies but now there are only 150 that are independently owned and Monsanto and DuPont control most of the supply.

Farmers are dependent on a smaller number of firms for seeds, and the prices have risen sharply as the market has become more concentrated. A few major chemical and pharmaceutical giants that patent specific traits in seeds and charge fees to farmers who use their patented seeds now dominate the seed industry, which once relied on universities for most research and development.

Between 1996 and 2007, Monsanto, the largest supplier of GE seed traits, acquired more than a dozen smaller companies, and it now controls 60 percent of corn and 62.5 percent of soybean seeds and seed trait licenses in the United States.

Monsanto’s vegetable seed subsidiary, Seminis, is one of the largest seed distributors and has been acquiring seed companies since the mid-1990s. Monsanto acquired Seminis in 2005.

In addition to the many seed companies that are partially or fully owned by Monsanto and Seminis, some seed companies distribute Seminis products, along with other companies’ products. This does not mean that Seminis or Monsanto owns these companies, nor do they necessarily supply GE vegetables — Seminis has many products that are conventionally bred hybrid varieties. But they do bring Seminis products to the market.

Want to know if Monsanto owns the company you buy your seeds from? Check out our fact sheet here: http://foodandwaterwatch.org/factsheet/monsantos-seed-company-subsidiaries/

Listen to Margaret Roach give tips for sourcing ethical seeds: http://blogs.kcrw.com/goodfood/2013/04/tips-for-sourcing-ethical-seeds-for-your-edible-garden/

And get the nitty gritty details about the rise of the biotech industry and how it gets away with patenting life for profit and dominates our seed supply in Wenonah Hauter’s book, Foodopoly, here: http://www.foodopoly.org/about/

By Patty Lovera

If there is one thing you can count on with this Congress, it’s drama over money. The month of March has seen plenty of funding fights, with sequestration in the beginning of the month and an ugly process to prevent a federal government shutdown at the end.  

One of the many problems with operating this way is how many opportunities for mischief are available when Congress is dealing with a huge package of “must pass” legislation. That’s exactly what happened last week when Congress passed a “continuing resolution” to fund the federal government for the rest of the year (the President signed it into law this week). This continuing resolution was necessary because Congress did not complete the normal process for setting budgets for federal agencies and the government has been running on an extension of the previous year’s budget that was about to run out. Read the full article…

By Eve Mitchell, Food & Water Europe

Click to see a larger image.

Watching UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) President Peter Kendall testify to the UK Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ inquiry into horse meat contamination of the EU beef supply on March 5, I was struck again by the inconsistencies in the NFU approach when it comes to GM animal feed.

I have three questions for the NFU:

1) In his testimony, Mr. Kendall repeated the position that short supply chains are the answer to predictable control of our meat supply and regaining consumer confidence. How does this tally with the repeated insistence that UK livestock farmers need industrial GM feed from the Americas traded through complex international commodity markets?

Much is made about the allegedly dwindling availability of non-GM soy (known in the UK as soya), but the non-GM soya industry itself paints a rather different picture. On February 26, Augusto Freire, Managing Director of Cert-ID (a company certifying non-GM soya supplies), said, “20-25% of Brazilian soybean production is free from genetic modification for the 2012/13 crop. China’s and India’s soy production is 100% Non-GMO….Estimates for 2013 are strongly up compared to earlier years due to adoption of the CERT ID and ProTerra [non-GM certification] programs by new operators in Brazil, as well as increased demand in Europe.”

In the current climate, before supply and demand reduce the cost of non-GM feed, it may well be a bit more expensive per tonne, but according to our calculations if non-GM feed costs an extra £14/tonne (about $21.00), this works out to be a mere 3p/dozen eggs (about 5 cents). Mr. Kendall asks, “Are we going to produce chickens in this country that are non-GM, but buy them in from Asia because they are 20% cheaper and they are fed on GM [feed]?” Is he perhaps confusing feed costs with the poor animal husbandry that keeps meat from many non-European factory farms cheap?

We also need to be careful in working out how much animal feed is actually GM – any amount of GM feed comingled with an otherwise non-GM shipment means the entire quantity, and all subsequent feed bags, are labelled GM. This does not mean that feed is anything like 100% GM, and in fact the bulk of any animal feed is probably non-GM.

2) If, as Mr. Kendall says, UK farmers need “confidence” in the market to invest and improve UK beef production levels, why does this logic not apply to the farmers in Brazil already growing non-GM soya but unable to risk the costs of certification without confirmed advance orders from the EU to ensure they gets a return?

Augusto Freire notes, “An additional volume of Brazilian soy meal representing 1.5 million metric tonnes of soybeans could have been certified [as non-GM] if EU buyers had expressed their demand early in the year.” The non-GM soya is there, and more can be grown, we just need to say we want it. It’s not hard.

Consumer demand should boost confidence enough to take this step. A 2010 GfK/NOP poll showed fewer than 40% of supermarket shoppers were aware that imported GM animal feed fuels British factory farming, and 89% wanted these products to be clearly labelled. In January of this year the UK Food Standards Agency published research showing again that two-thirds of respondents want all use of GM feed to be labelled. Even among those undecided about GM food and crops respondents felt “some form of labelling should be in place to help them determine GM content and avoid choosing foods containing GM if they so wish”. Overall there is a clear indication this need to identify GM use applies to animal products in particular. People don’t want GM feed in the food chain, and they want clear labels to help them see where it is – or isn’t.

3) I completely agree that there is, as Mr. Kendall told the Committee, “too much focus on price” in the food industry. If this is the case, why are industrial crops feeding industrial megafarm production to produce cheap meat worthy of such vocal support?

True, there are vested interests on both sides of the discussion, and there are rumours that Indian soya is less desirable than Brazilian. Overall we’d be far better off moving away from the industrial meat model. Yet this does not explain why supermarkets can’t do their part in delivering what the market demands now by placing clear orders for non-GM soya (or non-GM fed products) to give Brazilian farmers the confidence they need to grow and certify non-GM crops. The NFU position invokes the market, but goes directly against the basics of supply and demand. The more non-GM feed is demanded, the more will be supplied, and the costs will come down—unless vested interests interfere with the market. Large supermarkets and dairies in other parts of Europe seem to be able to manage it, so it is very difficult to see why the UK is different.

Mr. Kendall told the NFU 2013 conference, “Today I want to talk about a pact with the great British consumer to get things changed…We now need supermarkets to stop scouring the world for the cheapest products they can find and start sourcing high quality, traceable, product from farmers here at home…That may mean more dedicated supply groups. It will certainly mean longer-term thinking and a shorter supply chain.” We agree, and we’re here to help.

Mr. Kendall, if you truly “Do not want food safety and standards to be politicised,” as you told the Committee, why do you say GM skepticism is “directly comparable to Nazi book-burning in the 1930’s”? Why do you not support your members in providing what the market clearly wants?

The situation with regard to GM animal feed looks increasingly like lucrative supply lines controlled by shippers and importers, not farmers, attempting to force an end to non-GM supplies on an unwilling market. The NFU position, which wedges farmers uncomfortably between their market and these vested interests, remains very difficult to understand. The sooner the NFU applies the logic it uses in the meat chain to the feed chain, the sooner consumers will begin to regain confidence in our food.

Mr. Kendall also told your 2013 conference consumers should demand answers from the people they buy from. We agree European consumers can and should get what they want.

This action is a good first step.

By Adam Scow

Despite the narrow loss of Proposition 37 last November, the movement to label genetically engineered foods in California is stronger than ever. A new statewide coalition has emerged to continue and grow the movement to win labeling in California. Coalition participants include a wide range of organizations at the forefront of food issues including the Center for Food Safety, Pesticide Action Network, Consumers Union, California State Grange and dozens of other organizations. The coalition is considering advancing state legislation and revisiting the possibility of another ballot initiative in the near future. Stay up-to-date on the lastest by following us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/FoodWaterWatchCalifornia

The looming threat of the approval of GE salmon by the Food & Drug Administration has also galvanized local activists across California to petition the agency to not allow the potentially dangerous salmon to reach our plates. If approved, GE salmon would be the first “transgenic” animal allowed into our food supply. It’s also unlikely that it would have to be labeled, so you might not even know you’re eating it. Recognizing these threats, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to approve a resolution to oppose FDA approval of the salmon and we were pleased to testify and support its passage, introduced by Councilmember Paul Koretz.

Video courtesy of Citizens for Health

By Wenonah Hauter

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

Global pork titan Smithfield has ranked second among food production companies on Fortune magazine’s 2013 list of “Most Admired Companies”. Before we untangle how terribly strange and ironic this is, just what does “Most Admired” mean, and how was this list generated?

According to Fortune’s web site, the most admired companies list is the “definitive report card of corporate reputations”. The magazine asked executives at the world’s biggest companies to rank their peers in nine areas—everything from “investment value to social responsibility”. So the list is derived only from the opinions of an exclusive slice of the corporate world—not the public.

So let’s take this list with a grain of salt, and let’s take a look at what’s to “admire”. It makes piles of money, as the largest of the four companies that process 66% of all the hogs in the U.S. It owns more hogs than the next eight largest pork producers combined. It slaughters 26 million hogs a year. It’s the largest pork processor in the world, and economically and politically powerful. They are one of a small handful of companies pulling the strings when it comes to food policy in the U.S. and globally.

How did Smithfield become so big? Because the Department of Justice rarely finds the courage to say no to a merger. In the 70s, the company embarked on an aggressive strategy to buy out its competition. After buying up competition locally in Virginia, it honed in on the Midwest. The real turning point came in 1987, when it embarked on a partnership with Carroll’s Foods. For the first time, Smithfield was vertically integrated: they not only slaughtered the hogs; they raised them. In 1999, Smithfield bought the company outright.

As Smithfield continued to gobble up the competition, family farmers fought their quest for monopolization and the unfair contracts that accompanied their market dominance, and labor unions exposed their abhorrent labor practices from fast processing lines causing injury to intimidation (to prevent them from reporting injuries) and firings. Workers at Smithfield plants face a dangerous life on the job, even for the meatpacking industry. In the mid-2000s, Smithfield increased production of hogs at its flagship Tar Heel, North Carolina plant by 30,000 hogs a day, corresponding to a doubling of workplace injuries as line speeds increased.

And its environmental record? Atrocious. In 1997 the company received one of the largest Clean Water Act fines in U.S. history for failing to install decent pollution equipment and treat its waste. Pollutants from its operations flowed into the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries for more than five years. The company was fined $12.6 million, which amounted to 0.035 percent of its annual sales—a mere drop in the bucket.

Smithfield has a legacy of family farm destruction, labor abuses and environmental devastation. What’s to admire about that? Either the world’s top executives are completely out of touch or this list is a shameless exercise in worshipping the bottom line, at all costs.

Maybe, it’s both.

Pennsylvania Senator Daylin Leach speaks, with dozens of supporters of his GE food labeling bill, on the main steps of the Capitol rotunda.

By Liam Hart

On March 12, we took an important step in the fight for GE food labeling here in Pennsylvania. Food & Water Watch joined State Senator Daylin Leach in Harrisburg to publicly introduce legislation that would require the labeling of GE foods in PA. Over a dozen supporters of the bill stood behind Senator Leach on the main steps of the Capitol rotunda as he addressed members of the media, as well as other supporters.

Senator Leach was not the only one to speak on behalf of the bill. Brian Snyder, executive director of PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture), and Roman Stoltzfoos of Springwood Farm pointed out that the GE issue is not only important to food consumers, but also to food producers. Sam Bernhardt, FWW’s Pennsylvania organizer, emphasized the broad base of support that the bill has across Pennsylvania. In fact, our coalition includes over 70 organizations that come from every corner of the state. The support comes from food coops, organics retailers, farmers, student groups, advocacy groups and others. Fortunately, this support is also reflected in the co-sponsorship of the bill. We currently have a dozen co-sponsors, representing both Republicans and Democrats from all over the state.

Following the press conference, some of the bill’s advocates answered questions for the media while we had meetings with staffers from several other senators’ offices to discuss their positions on the legislation. These meetings resulted in the addition of at least one co-sponsor for the bill, and we are optimistic that we will gain more support in the coming days.

Read earlier field notes from the Pennsylvania campaign to label GE food.

Please join us in telling Pennsylvania legislators to make labels for GE food the law!

Liam is an intern at FWW’s Philadelphia office.

By Michele Merkel & Scott Edwards

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913

This Saturday, March 16th, marks the end of Sunshine Week across the nation. This weeklong celebration of open government was established in 2005 to help counter the increasing level of secrecy under which our federal and state government seem to be operating. Sunshine Week was created with the recognition that transparency in government is vital for any nation to claim to be a true democracy, ruled by an informed citizenry making informed decisions. The ideal of open government forms the basis for one of our most important protections against tyranny: the Freedom of Information Act. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with agribusiness and its pollution in Maryland, sunlight is a disinfectant that our policymakers want nothing to do with.

Take the latest agribusiness bill to be introduced in the state legislature this year. Next Tuesday there will be a Senate hearing on Senate Bill 1029, entitled “Agricultural Certainty,” or Ag Certainty for short, a bill that was introduced by Senator Thomas Middleton, who has been a member of the state Joint Committee on Transparency and Open Government since 2011. Ag Certainty purports to create yet another incentive for the state’s more than 5000 agricultural operations to enact some pollution abatement measures that most of them are required to adhere to anyway. Getting these facilities to stop their polluting ways is critical given the fact that agriculture remains the largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution in the Bay watershed. In exchange for agreeing to try to stop polluting our waterways, the bill grants agricultural operations 10 years of immunity from future pollution abatement measures.

Although some recent press articles have indicated a “split” among environmental organizations in the region on the bill, the fact is there is no “split.” Twenty-one organizations including Food & Water Watch, Environment Maryland, Maryland Sierra Club, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters and many others stand united in opposition to this bill. To date, only one environmental organization, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, has expressed support. Read the full article…

Volunteers in the field reach out to their fellow community members.

By Lynna Kaucheck

Floridians from Tallahassee to Miami have rallied in support of labeling genetically engineered (GE) food. Since Food & Water Watch hit the ground in Florida at the end of August, our allies and activists have helped generate over 8,000 petition signatures, over 2,000 emails and nearly 500 calls to key lawmakers. In addition, over 220 businesses and organizations from around the state have joined us in signing a letter to lawmakers, asking them to support labeling GE food in Florida, including Global Organics, Sierra Club Florida Chapter, Florida Farmworkers Association, Florida Right to Know, and Sunshine State Interfaith Power and Light.

Our “Let Me Decide” team is working hard to label GE food in Florida and we’re growing every day. We have solid local groups working in four communities and we’re focused on developing two more. The local groups are run by strategic and passionate volunteers that are out in the community educating people about the issue. They organize educational forums, community dinners and activist trainings, and are instrumental in growing the movement to support labeling.

And all the hard work is paying off! On March 1, GE labeling bills were introduced in both the Florida House and Senate. Representative Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda introduced HB 1233 and Senator Maria Lorts Sachs introduced S 1728.  The whole “Let Me Decide” team in Florida applauds these lawmakers for their leadership on this important issue.

Floridians, like concerned citizens everywhere, want to know what’s in the food their feeding their families and how that food was produced. And labeling food is nothing new to folks in Florida, as they were one of the first states to pass country of origin labeling back in 1979.

When we sit down at the dinner table at night, we want to know that the food we’re eating wasn’t grown in a way that put a family farmer out of business, that it didn’t poison the land that it grew from or the farmworker that helped get it to our table. We want to know that the food that sustains us isn’t also harming us. Above all, we deserve to be able to make informed decisions about the food we buy.

This year’s legislative session runs March 5 – May 3, so we have just 10 short weeks to make something happen. But we’ve built army of activists and allies and we’re ready to fight to make GE labeling the law in Florida. Join us!

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/FWWFlorida