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The Food Industry Lobby Groups Behind the New School Nutrition Standards

by BrandieSisk Posted on July 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s plenty to be glad about in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and some of the law’s standards for school lunches went into effect this month. But as my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, something is wrong when when those standards still allow empty-calorie snacks and fast food pizza to make the cut. The lax regime is hardly surprising when you look at the industry groups that supported the measure and deployed lobbyists to shape the legislation. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 111 different organizations registered to lobby on the bill, which was described as a “path to end childhood hunger.” Below are some standouts among the trade groups and companies that had a say on this one:

The American Beverage Association: The trade group that represents Coca Cola, PepsiCo, and other soda manufacturers lauded Congress for passing the bill. “The beverage industry has a longstanding commitment to the health and wellness of our nation’s children,” it said in a statement. In the past, the association has lobbied aggressively against anti-soda measures, such as a proposed 2012 soda tax in Richmond, California.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association: In a statement on the bill, the GMA said that it supported authorizing the US Department of Agriculture to set “science-based standards” for school lunches and that “the school cafeteria line can be on the front lines of feeding children while ending childhood obesity within a generation.” In 2010, GMA board members included the CEOs of PepsiCo, Kraft, and Cadbury.

International Dairy Food Association: The dairy industry’s top lobbying group has a sweet tooth, having lobbied alongside the sugar industry and advocated for chocolate milk in schools. In a recent statement on school lunch policy, it said, “We urge USDA and school wellness policies not to discount the nutritional benefits of flavored milk.”

The National Confectioners Association: The umbrella group for candy producers—which has been “making life sweeter since 1884″—praised the USDA’s decision to exempt sugar-free gum from some of the standards. “Having students chew sugar-free gum after eating can serve as a good and convenient adjunct to an existing oral health routine,” the group said in comments sent to the USDA. (Candy makers Mars, Inc. and Hershey’s also lobbied on the bill.)

The National Pork Producers Council: The pork lobby’s biggest advocate backed passage of the new standards, “but raised concerns” with the USDA “about efforts to restrict meat in the breakfast and lunch programs.”

PepsiCo: The maker of Pepsi, Lays, and Doritos lobbied on the bill and sponsored the School Nutrition Association’s annual conference earlier this week, where it distributed fliers assuring visitors that Cheetos complied with the USDA’s “smart snack” standards.

The Snack Food Association: According to its website, members of this umbrella group include “manufacturers of potato chips, tortilla chips, cereal snacks, pretzels, popcorn, cheese snacks, snack crackers, meat snacks, pork rinds, snack nuts, party mix, corn snacks, pellet snacks, fruit snacks, snack bars, granola, snack cakes, cookies and various other snacks.”

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The Food Industry Lobby Groups Behind the New School Nutrition Standards

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Giant Slaughterhouse Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef After Processing "Diseased and Unsound Animals"

by dpfu2f Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last month, Rancho Feeding Corp., a slaughterhouse in Petaluma, California, issued a small recall notice, for beef it had processed on a particular day in 2013. That much was routine—meat processing facilities have to pull back product with some regularity when contamination is discovered. But the Rancho recall was different: Earlier this month, the company announced that it needed to recall all the beef it processed in 2013—8.7 million pounds in all, found in more than a thousand grocery stores in 30 states. The most famous of the recalled items are Nestle Hot Pockets, but the plant produced a lot of other beef products for wholesale, including cheeks, lips, liver, oxtail, and other parts. So have you eaten any of that beef? Here’s some background:

What is Rancho Feeding Corp.?

Before it ceased operations last week, Rancho Feeding Corp. was the only USDA-approved slaughterhouse within about a three-hour radius of Petaluma. According to Stephanie Larson, the livestock and range advisor at the University of California’s Cooperative Extension system, about 25 percent of Rancho’s customers were “niche-market” operations—many of which raised grass-fed and organic beef. The other 75 percent of the company’s business was meat destined for burgers, tacos, chili, and other processed foods for supermarkets and restaurants. Many of Rancho’s clients were dairies seeking to slaughter cows that were no longer giving milk.

Just how much meat is 8.7 million pounds?

A few years back, my colleague Tom Philpott calculated that Cargill’s 36 million pounds of recalled ground turkey was enough to make burgers for the residents of the world’s six most populous cities. By the same logic, the 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York, London, and Tokyo. As Gwynn Guilford at Quartz points out, letting that much potentially dodgy meat slip through the cracks is what happens when the government skimps on inspectors.

Why did they recall it?

According to the USDA’ s Food Safety and Inspection Service, Rancho issued the recall after FSIS inspectors determined that it had “processed diseased and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection.” It was a Class I recall, which means the FSIS considered it “a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.” Beyond the recall notice, though, FSIS has offered few details. So far, there are no reports of people getting sick after eating tainted beef processed by Rancho.

How does the recall affect ranchers?

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Marin Sun Farms, an artisanal meat producer in Point Reyes Station, California, has bought Rancho Feeding Corp. If the company reopens the facility as a USDA-approved slaughterhouse, Rancho’s former clients will likely be relieved, since Rancho was the only game in town. (Consolidation of slaughterhouses is a problem for ranchers across the nation.)

Bill Niman, the founder of sustainable meat company Niman Ranch who now runs a grass-fed operation called BN Ranch, told the Village Voice that Rancho’s closing would be “a great loss to the Northern California food community.”

Sally Gale and her husband own Chileno Valley Ranch, a 600-acre, hundred-head beef operation in Marin County that sells grass-fed beef directly to consumers. The Gales, who have owned their ranch for 15 years, used to hire a slaughterer to dispatch their steers on their property. (A few years ago, Bonne Azab Powell profiled a traveling slaughterer in Mother Jones.) But about five years ago, they received a notice saying that the practice was illegal and that they must take their animals to a USDA-certified slaughterhouse. The only one in the area was Rancho.

Because of the recall, the Gales have had to dispose of three adult steers—worth about $1,600 each—that Rancho had slaughtered. If Rancho closes, Sally Gale worries that the long drive to the next closest slaughterhouse, more than 150 miles away, will stress the animals and add an extra expense to what Gale describes as an “already marginal business.” California’s drought has hit ranches like hers hard, she says, and she expects that many will have to charge their customers more to make up for the losses.

Typically, Chileno Valley Ranch sends about 6 cows to slaughter every week. Now, the Gales will be waiting until they have 30 ready to make the long trip worthwhile. “The government told us that we couldn’t slaughter our own meat,” says Gale. “And now they’re telling us that we can’t bring them to Rancho either.”

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Giant Slaughterhouse Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef After Processing "Diseased and Unsound Animals"

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The Standard American Diet in 3 Simple Charts

by BrendaMcKinnon Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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US obesity and diabetes rates are among the globe’s very highest. Why? On her blog, the NYU nutritionist and food-politics expert Marion Nestle recently pointed (hat-tip, RealFood.org) to this telling chart on how we spend our grocery money, from the USDA’s Amber Waves publication:

So, we do a pretty good job eating enough potatoes. But the healthier, more brightly colored vegetables like kale and carrots, no so much. We spend four times the amount on refined grains the USDA thinks is proper, and about a fifth of the target expenditure in whole grains. We spend nearly 14 percent of our at-home food budgets on sugar and candies, and another 8 percent on premade frozen and fridge entrees. Whole fruit barley accounts for less than 5 percent of our grocery bill. And so on—a pretty dismal picture.

That chart deals with at-home expenditures. What about our food choices out in the world? The USDA article has more. This chart shows that we’re getting more and more of our sustenance outside of our own kitchens:

And while the article doesn’t offer comparable data to the above at-home chart about expenditures outside the home, it does deliver evidence that our eating out habits are pretty dire as well:

Why do we eat such crap food? The USDA throws up its hands: “Despite the benefits to overall diet quality,” the report states, “it can be difficult to convince consumers to change food preferences.”

But it never pauses top consider the food industry’s vast marketing budget. According to Yale’s Rudd Center, the US fast-food chains like McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Burger King spent $4.6 billion on advertising in 2012. “For context,” Rudd reports, “the biggest advertiser, McDonald’s, spent 2.7 times as much to advertise its products ($972 million) as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined ($367 million).” I can’t find numbers for the marketing budgets for the gigantic food companies that stock the middle shelves of supermarkets; but according to Advertising Age, Kraft alone spent $683 million on US advertising in 2012.

By contrast, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the USDA’s sub-agency that “works to improve the health and well-being of Americans by developing and promoting dietary guidance that links scientific research to the nutrition needs of consumers,” had a proposed budget of $8.7 million in 2013.

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The Standard American Diet in 3 Simple Charts

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3 Graphs That End The ‘Food vs. Fuel’ Debate

by Posted on October 22, 2013

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3 Graphs That End The ‘Food vs. Fuel’ Debate

Posted 22 October 2013 in

National

Critics of renewable fuel (chiefly the oil industry) love to claim that growing our own fuel means higher food prices for American consumers. They’re dead wrong, and there’s still a lot of misinformation out there regarding the relationship between corn and the price of food in the grocery store. Let’s take a look:

  1. The price of corn is the lowest it’s been in three years, yet food prices have not come down. This year USDA is forecasting a record breaking corn crop in the US – just this week they updated their inventory estimate by an increase of 25%! Accordingly we have reached a three year low drop in corn prices- corn traded this month at$4.41 a bushel compared to the 2012 peak of $8.49.

Source: NASDAQ.com

 

  1. Only 16% of grocery costs can be traced back to farm inputs, like corn or wheat. The rest goes to costs like energy, transportation, packaging, marketing and labor.

Source: USDA.com, foodpolitics.com

 

  1. Oil, not corn, has been driving up global food prices. While the price of corn is one of many, complicated factors that go into grocery costs, researchers at the World Bank identified crude oil as the number one determinant of global food prices. The cost of energy from oil is integral to so much of the 84% we discussed in #2 (above) that when the price of oil goes up, food prices follow closely behind.

The facts could not be more clear: the agricultural inputs that become renewable fuel simply do not have enough influence on food prices to make a meaningful difference. The only way to spare consumers pain at the grocery store is to end our oil dependence and protect policies that promote alternatives, like the Renewable Fuel Standard.

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3 Graphs That End The ‘Food vs. Fuel’ Debate

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Replacing poultry inspectors with factory workers might not be greatest idea, says GAO

by marekso65 Posted on September 6, 2013

Replacing poultry inspectors with factory workers might not be greatest idea, says GAO

By

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Let’s hope this chicken was inspected by a government worker.

Who would you rather have check factory chickens for signs of illness and smears of crap — a USDA inspector or a factory employee?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long stationed its own inspectors along factory lines at poultry plants. But now it’s preparing to reassign those workers to other tasks and allow the agricultural companies to inspect their own birds along processing lines, which would help speed up business operations.

Food-safety groups are raising alarms about the proposed shift, and a new government report indicates that they might well have reason to be concerned.

The USDA’s draft poultry-inspection rules are based on the results of pilot projects in which private-industry inspections were shown to be safe, the department says. But the new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the USDA lacks the data needed to make such claims. The GAO report points out that the department “has not thoroughly evaluated the performance of each of the pilot projects over time even though the agency stated it would do so when it announced the pilot projects,” and at least in one case it used “snapshots of data” from limited periods of time instead of data from the whole period of the pilot project.

USDA poultry inspectors are also opposed to the changes, The New York Times reports:

In affidavits given to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal assistance group for whistle-blowers, several inspectors who work at plants where the pilot program is in place said the main problem was that they were removed from positions on the assembly line and put at the end of the line, which made it impossible for them to spot diseased birds.

The inspectors, whose names were redacted, said they had observed numerous instances of poultry plant employees allowing birds contaminated with fecal matter or other substances to pass. And even when the employees try to remove diseased birds, they face reprimands, the inspectors said.

Any chance this will all be sorted out before Thanksgiving?

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food

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Meat industry doesn’t want to tell you where your meat comes from

by 0xo4cdr4 Posted on July 10, 2013

Meat industry doesn’t want to tell you where your meat comes from

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Where did it come from?

Multinational meat medley, anybody?

Industry groups are suing the U.S. government because they don’t want to have to tell you the origins of your meat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented new rules in May that require packages of meat to be sold with labels that identify the country in which the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered. The rules also outlaw the mixing of cuts of meat from different countries in the same package. That pleased food-safety advocates, environmentalists, and some farmers.

But it angered large meat importers and producers and grocery chains. On Tuesday, some of those groups announced they were suing to have the rules overturned. From the AP:

The American Meat Institute, a trade group for packers, processors, and suppliers, and seven other groups said segregating the meat is not part of the law Congress passed and the USDA is overstepping its authority. They also claim the rule will be costly to implement and that it offers no food safety or public health benefit.

“Segregating and tracking animals according to the countries where production steps occurred and detailing that information on a label may be a bureaucrat’s paperwork fantasy, but the labels that result will serve only to confuse consumers, raise the prices they pay, and put some producers and meat and poultry companies out of business in the process,” Mark Dopp, an AMI executive, said in a statement.

The USDA says the country of original labeling, known as COOL, will help consumers make informed decisions about the food they buy. …

Other advocates of the new rule say segregating meat will help if a food safety issue develops.

So enjoy knowing where your grocery-story beef comes from, while you can. It might soon return to being mystery meat.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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American meat labeling laws bolstered; Canadians indignant

by AmberPkk Posted on May 24, 2013

American meat labeling laws bolstered; Canadians indignant

By John Upton

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Would you eat the bacon from this pig if you knew it was Canadian?

Wee life stories documenting the globetrotting lives of pigs, cows, and chickens raised for slaughter will soon be posted on packages of meat sold in the U.S.

But the new miniature memoirs — such as “Born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States” — have outraged Canadian agricultural officials. They’re mulling a trade war, because the labels will help American grocery shoppers “discriminate” against Canadian-born poultry, swine, and cattle.

Large retailers are also oinking in angry disapproval, saying the labeling rule will be an expensive hassle for them.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture directed retailers to put country of origin labels on many types of food, including meat, fruit, and vegetables. That additional information triggered a decline in meat imports from Canada and Mexico, as shoppers opted to buy more American-reared protein. Canada and Mexico complained about the rule to the World Trade Organization, saying the labels were discriminatory, and the WTO ruled in their favor, giving the U.S. until Thursday to update its labeling regulations.

On Thursday, the USDA issued its new rules. To the dismay of the Canadians, the new rules require more detailed labels to be put on meat. They also put an end to the sale of packages containing meat from animals that were born or raised in different countries. The rules take effect immediately, but the USDA is offering retailers a six-month grace period before enforcement begins.

From Reuters:

Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said the changes are disappointing, and don’t comply with WTO rules.

Ritz said one of Canada’s options under consideration is asking the WTO to approve retaliation against U.S. products, but he would not say which products Canada would most likely target. In the past, he has said Canada would likely aim at more goods than just U.S. meat.

“We have no intention of backing off or backing down, if the Americans think this is a game of chicken,” Ritz said. “We will do everything within our power to make sure they understand that both Canadian industry as well as American industry (are) totally rejecting what they came forward with today.”

COOL [country of origin labeling rules] was backed by U.S. consumer groups and some U.S. farm groups. It was opposed by trade groups representing U.S. cattle and hog producers and foodmakers.

“People have the right to know where the food they feed their families comes from,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch.

Yo, Canadian officials and WTO peeps: “Discrimination” is a lousy word and you know it. It’s not that Americans are hating on your swine. It’s just that the international livestock trade and the long-distance hauling of meat are both unnecessary and bad for the climate.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

by w0ujpysd Posted on March 7, 2013

Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

By Susie Cagle

Cobalt123

I would probably be bitter, too, if I were Beef Products, Inc. Those are the folks behind uber-gross “lean finely textured beef,” aka “pink slime,” the ammonia-soaked cow trimmings added as filler to ground beef. During pink slime’s heyday, it ended up in more than two-thirds of American hamburgers, at a ratio of up to 15 percent slime to 85 percent burger. That slime was cheap, and so chemical-packed that it sterilized the rest of the meat. Mmm, food!

Fast-forward to today: The origins and grossness of “pink slime” are well-known, fast food restaurants have given up the stuff, and BPI is as pissed as a parent whose kid was unknowingly served pink slime in her USDA-approved school lunches.

According to Time, only about 5 percent of ground beef contains the “lean finely textured” stuff now. Following an 11-part ABC News series that ran last March and April, BPI says its revenues have dropped from more than $650 million a year to $130 million. The company filed a lawsuit last September against ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer, and other named defendants seeking $1.2 billion in damages. ABC didn’t coin “pink slime” — a USDA scientist named Gerald Zirnstein did, in 2002 — but ABC and its parent company Disney sure do have deep pockets.

BPI has hired “a high-powered Chicago trial lawyer,” according to Reuters, which reports the case “is shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes defamation court battles in U.S. history.” The company’s founders say they plan to fight ’til the bitter, slimy end, regardless of the cost. “We have to do this,” one told Reuters. “We have no other choice.”

The case hinges on state “product-disparagement” statutes that protect farmers and their products in 13 states, including South Dakota, where BPI is based. From Reuters:

Under the South Dakota version of the law, plaintiffs must show that defendants publicly spread information they knew to be false and stated or implied “that an agricultural food product is not safe for consumption by the public.” …

For BPI to prove the defamation piece of its case, it would need to show that the network negligently reported a false statement of fact that injured its reputation. If BPI is deemed by the court to be a public rather than a private figure in the legal sense, it would have a higher bar to cross: The company would need to prove ABC knew the facts it was reporting were false or it recklessly disregarded the truth.

While the case is in the early stages, the network appears to have a legal leg-up on both counts: ABC never said BPI’s product is dangerous, and courts have repeatedly offered broad protections for journalists in the course of their work.

But by calling a food product “slime” 137 times over the span of nearly four weeks on its newscasts, its website and on Twitter, according to BPI’s tally, did ABC make the public think [lean finely textured beef] was unsafe? If, as BPI alleges, ABC shrugged off information that refuted parts of its reporting, did it act recklessly and could it therefore be held liable for defamation?

From Time:

The case will be one of the first challenging First Amendment protections for news outlets in the social media era. One notable piece of evidence cited in BPI’s lawsuit is a single Tweet by reporter Jim Avila, who wrote: “It’s just not what it purports to be. Meat.” One of BPI’s arguments is that ABC News intentionally portrayed its product as something other than beef. (The USDA considers [lean finely textured beef] to be beef.)

If BPI wins, the precedent would be chilling for reporting on industrial food. If ABC wins, we probably still won’t see a lot of investigative reporting on industrial food, honestly. And either way, we’ll still have the slime: After a steep dropoff last year, manufacturers are slowly reintroducing the stuff.

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

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How the USDA plans to plant around climate change

by 7GrittonMaine146 Posted on March 1, 2013

How the USDA plans to plant around climate change

By Susie Cagle

A few weeks ago, the Department of Agriculture released a pretty devastating report on just how bad climate change is going to suck for things we plant in the ground in America. Short version: T minus 25ish years until we hit Armageddon-like scenarios for agriculture and forests.

That might sound hopeless, but Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is not discouraged. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog reports on a followup speech Vilsack gave this week, saying the USDA will help farmers adapt to climate change and become part of the climate solution.

“We’re going to be very aggressive in this effort because we understand and appreciate, after the floods of 2011 and the drought of 2012, that folks need this assistance now,” said Vilsack. “And by doing this, by taking these actions, we can help to mitigate and help to manage risks.”

From the Switchboard blog:

Amongst other things, the agency plans to ramp up its efforts to encourage sustainable farming practices, both to help farmers be more resilient to climate impacts and to mitigate climate change by reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. …

Specifically, USDA points to best management practices such as conservation tillage, cover cropping and greater crop diversification, as well as more efficient irrigation as a key strategy to adapt to the intense rainfall and severe drought episodes that are expected to accompany climate change. In his speech, Secretary Vilsack said his agency will take steps to encourage multi-cropping, such as planting two types of crops in an area, planting cover crops between growing seasons and integrating livestock into cropping systems.

That’s encouraging news, since farming systems that are more ecologically integrated can help farmers better conserve their lands and protect water resources in times of drought.

What’s not encouraging? Well, let’s start with crop losses, billions of dollars of them, detailed here by the USDA:

Click to embiggen.

Also not encouraging: The USDA will face $2 billion in sequestration cuts basically any minute now. The cuts will hit meat inspectors hard, potentially leading to meat shortages. Farm Service Agency employees and food assistance for the poor will also be cut back.

Let’s hope Vilsack’s climate action plan can survive on a slimmer budget.

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USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

by oks23po Posted on February 22, 2013

USDA says crops will do better but food prices will do worse

By Susie Cagle

It’s more cold comfort for drought-stricken farmers this week, and I don’t mean the snow.

USDA chief economist Joe Glauber was all sunshine this Thursday in announcing that normal spring weather is expected to improve corn and soybean yields by huge percentages over last year’s tiny drought-stricken crops. Bigger yields mean tinier prices — Glauber said corn would be down about a third from last year, soy would drop more than a quarter, and wheat would be down about 11 percent.

From the South Dakota Argus Leader:

The recovery should send prices for most oilseeds and grains sharply lower, providing a much-needed reprieve for livestock, dairy and poultry producers struggling with high feed costs, and relief down the road for consumers who have paid more for food at their local grocery store. …

“The critical factor that people will be following is weather,” Glauber said at the department’s annual outlook forum. “While the outlook for 2013 remains bright, there are many uncertainties.”

Way to bury the lede, Glauber. No matter how many times Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says “American agriculture is quite resilient,” there still remains the fact that American agriculture is also in crisis, and forecasters are expecting more hot and dry weather this year.

And even though industrial prices are dropping, the savings won’t trickle down to consumers for at least quite some time — the USDA anticipates food prices will rise this year between 3 and 4 percent.

Richard Volpe, an economist with USDA’s Economic Research Service, said the evidence of last year’s drought is just now starting to really have an effect on consumer prices at the retail level, resulting in higher costs for everything from meat to corn syrup.

Dammit, if it were only meat and corn syrup and not also everything in between…

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