Jim Goodman: Why you should care how your meat is raised

We need to see more articles like this. Not only are you what you eat, you are what the animal you eat ate!

Source: The Capital Times.

I have farmed for 30 years, land that has been in my family since 1848. Farming has gotten pretty intensive; small farms with kids and dogs and sheep and chickens running around are mostly just a fond memory.

Back in the ’70s, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz urged farmers to plant commodity crops “fence row to fence row” and told us “adapt or die.” It was bad enough when USDA Secretary Ezra Taft Benson told us (in the ’50s) to “get big or get out,” but “adapt or die”?

No matter. American farmers were listening to these two guys because getting big and planting fence row to fence row became gospel. Farms, almost all of them, have become very specialized. Most function as part of the animal production chain, either housing and feeding cattle, pigs and poultry or growing the grain commodities (corn and soy) for all those animals to eat.

Commodity crop farms have gotten large, thousands of acres, and they generally plant corn one year and soy the next, which is pretty hard on the soil. Animals are often raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which characteristically confine large numbers of animals either in specialized buildings or outdoor feedlots. Animals may not have access to pasture, outdoors, fresh air or natural light.

Feed may be grown miles or states away from the CAFO, which makes the operations very fossil-fuel-intensive. Hauling manure long distances is not cost-effective since it is mostly water, so CAFO operators may find it difficult to get rid of the manure, which has become a liability. With manure unavailable locally, grain farmers buy commercial fertilizer, which is petroleum-based. Again, fossil-fuel-intensive. Hardly a sustainable system when compared to integrated small farms growing their own crops and recycling the manure.

Farming has evolved to this, it’s gotten big, it’s gotten very dependent on fossil fuel — and if you live next to a CAFO, it has gotten very smelly. The Centers for Disease Control notes that, if you work on or live near a CAFO, it has gotten potentially hazardous to your health as well.

Specialized manure-holding facilities are required, but due to the large volumes produced, heavy rain, snow, storage leaks or improper handling, CAFOs create a very real potential for big manure spills. Thousands of animals, millions of gallons of manure, and you could be asking for problems. According to the CDC, manure can contain pollutants such as antibiotics, pathogens, nitrates, pesticides, hormones, trace elements and heavy metals — none of them good, especially if they enter the drinking water.

CAFOs are convenient for large-scale production that looks to cut costs by packing maximum numbers of animals into minimal space, lowering labor costs and taking advantage of economies of scale. They are also great customers for the corporations that profit from selling fertilizer, crop chemicals, animal feed, hormones and drugs.

Contrary to what the “get big or get out” crowd would have us believe, CAFOs and industrial agriculture are not necessary to feed the world. Small farms are typically more efficient food producers, especially in developing countries where they farm their land more intensively and can achieve four times greater output per acre, while still farming in a sustainable manner.

CAFOs are said to be an efficient cost-effective farming system (if one ignores the cost to the environment, animals living in unnatural conditions, potential for pollution and possible human health concerns). They are necessary only as long as we demand large amounts of grain-fed meat, dairy and eggs. If cheap food is the only priority, they meet the challenge. Most consumers happily hunt for bargains, never questioning the production practices that made the bargains possible. So really, consumers asked for CAFOs, they wanted cheap food, and they weren’t all that concerned where it came from.

If that idea bothers you, start learning about how food is produced, where and by whom. Farmers will operate CAFOs only as long as consumers choose to buy what the CAFO produces.

Jim Goodman is a farmer in Wonewoc and a policy fellow for the Food and Society Fellows Program.

Bad Cow Disease

“When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.” The free market is never truly free from the heavy hand of government, especially if it looks like Big Business will take a Big Hit. But you and me, we’re “free” to fail without any bailouts.

Source: PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times.

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines — tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes. The declining credibility of U.S. food regulation has even led to a foreign-policy crisis: there have been mass demonstrations in South Korea protesting the pro-American prime minister’s decision to allow imports of U.S. beef, banned after mad cow disease was detected in 2003.

How did America find itself back in The Jungle?

It started with ideology. Hard-core American conservatives have long idealized the Gilded Age, regarding everything that followed — not just the New Deal, but even the Progressive Era — as a great diversion from the true path of capitalism.

Thus, when Grover Norquist, the anti-tax advocate, was asked about his ultimate goal, he replied that he wanted a restoration of the way America was “up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.”

The late Milton Friedman agreed, calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration. It was unnecessary, he argued: private companies would avoid taking risks with public health to safeguard their reputations and to avoid damaging class-action lawsuits. (Friedman, unlike almost every other conservative I can think of, viewed lawyers as the guardians of free-market capitalism.)

Such hard-core opponents of regulation were once part of the political fringe, but with the rise of modern movement conservatism they moved into the corridors of power. They never had enough votes to abolish the F.D.A. or eliminate meat inspections, but they could and did set about making the agencies charged with ensuring food safety ineffective.

They did this in part by simply denying these agencies enough resources to do the job. For example, the work of the F.D.A. has become vastly more complex over time thanks to the combination of scientific advances and globalization. Yet the agency has a substantially smaller work force now than it did in 1994, the year Republicans took over Congress.

Perhaps even more important, however, was the systematic appointment of foxes to guard henhouses.

Thus, when mad cow disease was detected in the U.S. in 2003, the Department of Agriculture was headed by Ann M. Veneman, a former food-industry lobbyist. And the department’s response to the crisis — which amounted to consistently downplaying the threat and rejecting calls for more extensive testing — seemed driven by the industry’s agenda.

One amazing decision came in 2004, when a Kansas producer asked for permission to test its own cows, so that it could resume exports to Japan. You might have expected the Bush administration to applaud this example of self-regulation. But permission was denied, because other beef producers feared consumer demands that they follow suit.

When push comes to shove, it seems, the imperatives of crony capitalism trump professed faith in free markets.

Eventually, the department did expand its testing, and at this point most countries that initially banned U.S. beef have allowed it back into their markets. But the South Koreans still don’t trust us. And while some of that distrust may be irrational — the beef issue has become entangled with questions of Korean national pride, which has been insulted by clumsy American diplomacy — it’s hard to blame them.

The ironic thing is that the Agriculture Department’s deference to the beef industry actually ended up backfiring: because potential foreign buyers didn’t trust our safety measures, beef producers spent years excluded from their most important overseas markets.

But then, the same thing can be said of other cases in which the administration stood in the way of effective regulation. Most notably, the administration’s refusal to countenance any restraints on predatory lending helped prepare the ground for the subprime crisis, which has cost the financial industry far more than it ever made on overpriced loans.

The moral of this story is that failure to regulate effectively isn’t just bad for consumers, it’s bad for business.

And in the case of food, what we need to do now — for the sake of both our health and our export markets — is to go back to the way it was after Teddy Roosevelt, when the Socialists took over. It’s time to get back to the business of ensuring that American food is safe.

Tomato Scare & Food Safety Concerns Driving More & More Consumers to Buying Local & Organic

My local farmer’s market is always packed with people. BigAgra can spin these food safety stories all they want, but people aren’t that dumb. We know that organic food and raw milk are much safer than their industrial counterparts.

By Alicia Coffman and Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek, June 13, 2008

The Tomato Pickle
As the salmonella-tainted tomato outbreak continues to spread, small and local farm advocates say their produce is a safer bet. But experts aren’t so sure.

Note From Organic Consumer’s Association: Despite the claims of industrial agriculture proponents (see below), the facts speak for themselves. Organic foods, especially those locally produced, are qualitatively safer and more nutritious than conventional foods from chemical farms. The Centers for disease control admit that there are 78 million cases of food poisoning every year in the U.S., with almost none of these cases coming from organic foods.
-Ronnie Cummins

**********************

You can’t blame shoppers for being confused about which kinds of tomatoes are safe and where to get them. Nor could you blame them for wondering why health officials have had such a hard time containing the spread of salmonella-tainted tomatoes. The Food and Drug Administration reported on Thursday that the number of people sickened by the tainted tomatoes had risen to 228 in 28 states, and agency officials told a House subcommittee that scientists still hadn’t pinpointed the source of the contamination.

What the FDA has been able to say is that not all tomatoes are suspect. Cherry or grape tomatoes are fine, as are homegrown tomatoes and tomatoes sold with a bit of vine attached. But that information doesn’t do much to instill confidence in the nation’s food supply in consumers, especially with this latest outbreak coming on the heels of last year’s nationwide recall of spinach and peanut butter due to contamination. (You can find the FDA’s summary of states affected by the outbreak here.)

Critics of big industrial farms say that the latest foodborne outbreak has given a boost to the local food movement, which promotes buying produce from nearby farmers (advocates are sometimes called locavores). And it’s not hard to see why consumers might make the leap from thinking that if the FDA says homegrown tomatoes are OK, then tomatoes bought directly from small farmers might be the next best thing. “With each incident, it’s pushing people more and more to buy locally and from family farms,” says Craig Minowa, environmental scientist with the Organic Consumer Association, a group that avidly supports local, family farms. “So much so, in fact, that farmers’ markets across the United States are recording record sales this year.”

And it’s true that the number of people buying from farmer’s markets, food co-ops and small vendors is growing. The bulk of all produce consumed by Americans still comes from large growers and distributors, but the USDA reports that farmers’ market and direct-to-consumer farm sales rose by almost 19 percent between 2004 and 2006. And this recent outbreak may be contributing to the trend. Karine Newborn, of Brooklyn, N.Y., says the tomato scare has definitely changed her shopping choices. “I only buy vegetables at the supermarket if I have to now. I’d rather wait ’til Saturday and go to the farmers’ market, if can…”

But is locally grown food really safer? Agricultural experts aren’t convinced. “As a scientist, I cannot say smaller is better. It’s just not that simple,” says Martha Robert, a microbiologist at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and a safety adviser to the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange and the Center for Produce Safety at the University of California. “The large packers we have are extremely stringent with sanitizing techniques and measures to prevent cross-contamination, but if someone makes a mistake when they’re mixing or dicing large quantities, the problem is going to be larger too,” she explains. “But sometimes a small grower has been doing something for years, and [they] don’t know they’re putting themselves at risk.”

While both large corporate farms and small local farms can be at risk of contamination at any stage of the growing, packing and shipping process, experts say some differences between big corporate farms and smaller farms can be a factor. Industrial producers are more likely to move their packaging plants close to, if not onto, the farmland in order to get the produce on the road as quickly as possible, says Gonul Kaletunc, associate professor in the department of food, agriculture and biological engineering at Ohio State University. In that situation, water contaminated with salmonella from feces, insects or plants might be used to both irrigate and wash the produce, increasing the chances of contamination.

And when produce is packed and shipped over long distances, there’s more time for a bacterium like salmonella to colonize. Once the germs come in contact with a tomato, it takes about 90 minutes for them to attach themselves to the surface. Then, under suitable conditions, the colonies of microorganisms will eventually cover the surface of the tomato, says Kaletunc. If the tomato has any cuts or bruises, the salmonella can also grow inside the fruit, where it can survive even if the tomato is washed thoroughly.

Locavores insist that smaller farms have a safety advantage because they avoid the lengthy multistep packing and shipping process that is used by many corporate farms. “The produce is harvested by migrant workers, shipped to a processing facility, then a packaging facility, then a delivery truck and finally to a grocery store. There are just so many steps that contamination issues can and do occur,” says Gary Cox, the legal council for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Roberts counters that there’s no real evidence that smaller farms are inherently more immune to contamination. “Regrettably, mistakes can happen along the line with any size farm. It’s so difficult to have generalities, to say this is bad food and this is good food. The real key is for everyone to follow good safety practices.”

But exactly what those practices should be and how they should be put in place is in question. On Thursday the General Accounting Office issued a report slamming the FDA for providing little guidance on how to fund or implement the food protection plan it introduced last November. The office also says the FDA has enacted only three of 24 GAO food safety recommendations. Lisa Shames, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment, said in testimony to a House subcommittee on Thursday that her agency had sounded the alarm about the FDA’s problems in enforcing food safety in 1998. “A decade later,” she said, “the story remains the same and has only taken on a greater sense of urgency.”

Apart from the public health concerns, a produce outbreak can be devastating for agriculture-dependent states such as Florida, which produces an annual tomato crop valued at $500 million to $700 million and provides more than 90 percent of the nation’s tomatoes at this time of year. The FDA said on Thursday that Florida was not a source of the outbreak, but the two-week period when some types of tomatoes could not be sold cost the industry millions in lost revenue.

In response to the loss, Florida officials have stepped in to create stricter measures on their own. Roberts says that the state has taken the lead nationwide by introducing the first mandatory produce safety regulations and record-keeping requirements on top of the more general federal guidelines, and that California growers are considering a similar move. The Florida regulations will be backed up by state inspections as of July 1. “With several outbreaks in 2004 and 2005, the industry in Florida said, ‘We don’t want to wait for someone else to craft something and have further outbreaks’,” Roberts says.

Florida’s new record-keeping rules may be key to protecting the industry in the future. Tracing contamination is much more difficult with produce than it is with a packaged product, like cereal, where there are tracking codes stamped on the box, says Roberts. It requires documentation at every stage, from where the tomato seeds were purchased to which labor crews were used to where the produce was sold or repacked. But the benefits are there for farmers, even if the paperwork seems onerous, says Roberts. “If there’s a possibility you could be involved in some sort of outbreak, you want to be able to pull out a record and show that you were doing what you were supposed to be doing.”

In the meantime, some wary consumers may decide to rediscover the pleasures of an old-fashioned backyard garden.

Rep. DeLauro Slaps FDA for Bad Tomatoes

They’re great at protecting industry, judging from the way they treat raw dairy farmers versus BigAgra growers.

Source: Jesse A. Hamilton, On Background.

People all over the country have been getting some pretty rotten tomatoes contaminated with salmonella (making another wholesome food the object of fear and harkening to bad 1978 cinema.) It’s caused dozens of hospital visits and, in one case, may have contributed to a far more serious result.

Contimated food has been a particular area of work (and frustration) for Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who is chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee that controls the budget for the Food and Drug Administration.

Already a congressional bane of the FDA, DeLauro launched a letter today criticizing the vast bureaucracy for failing to keep consumers safe — again. Her letter suggested the FDA has “an emphasis on protecting the industry, and a lesser concern with protecting the consumer who may be at risk.”

Her letter asked a series of questions, including:

“The FDA was able to publish a list of states, territories, and countries where tomatoes are grown and harvested which have NOT been associated with this outbreak. If the agency possesses evidence that would allow it publish such a list, why did the FDA not compel a recall of tomatoes from the other regions that were not listed?”

USDA papers: Burger recall followed riskier procedures

Here’s one of the many reasons why meat sold in places like Wal-mart are cheap: companies cut corners in safety and testing. It’s best to buy meat directly from farmers; barring that, smaller companies that sell organic foods.

Every single time I’ve been too lazy to drive out to a health food store to buy meat, I’ve regretted it. There’s always a funky smell, strange appearance, and a general vibe of something “off.” One of the best food decisions I’ve made is to buy sides of beef from small farms.

Source: JEFFREY GOLD, Philly.com.

NEWARK, N.J. – While the Topps Meat Co. churned out millions of frozen hamburgers a month, beef ground one day was often stored and “reworked” with meat from another production cycle, government documents show.

A conveyor belt that moved raw patties to packaging was marred by “gouges, cracks and tears,” inspectors said. They found residue on surfaces that fresh meat came into contact with.

But the plant kept operating, until an outbreak of E. coli last summer and fall sickened at least 40 people in eight states and led to one of the nation’s largest beef recalls.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press and interviews show that the now-defunct company cut back on testing for the dangerous pathogen and disregarded sanitary issues, but also that federal food inspectors overlooked crucial evidence that Topps used risky processing procedures and operated under a flawed food safety plan.

“Clearly, something was missed at Topps” when the company became “complacent,” Kenneth Petersen, head of the national Office of Field Operations for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, conceded in an interview.

The documents present the most detailed picture yet of what was happening at Topps, which sold its products to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and supermarkets and institutions such as schools, hospitals, restaurants and hotels around the country under the Topps brand as well as several private labels.

Topps had been in business for over six decades and claimed to be the leading U.S. maker of frozen hamburgers before it closed its plant in northern New Jersey and went out of business last year within two weeks of initiating the recalls. The Centers for Disease Control said at least 40 people in eight states were sickened after eating Topps beef.

The recall ultimately comprised nearly 22 million pounds of beef , a year’s worth of production.

Former Topps executives declined or did not respond to requests for comment on the U.S. Department of Agriculture documents, which were obtained by The Associated Press through Freedom of Information requests.

According to the USDA reports, regulators examining the plant in Elizabeth, N.J., last fall found the company failed to test some raw meat for the potentially fatal bacteria, botched daily cleansings and ignored parts of its own operating framework.

Topps did not require that every batch of meat received from slaughterhouses be certified to be free of E. coli, inspection documents show.

Suppliers don’t always test certain cuts, such as steaks and roasts, where any bacteria would usually be on the exterior and could be readily killed by cooking. But when Topps ground such “intact” cuts, any bacteria present was mixed into patties, where interior temperatures of 160 degrees during cooking would be needed to kill it.

“They were doing that trimming and putting it into their ground mixture, but not doing any testing on it themselves to determine if it had E. coli,” said Petersen. “That was another avenue for potential contamination.”

In a separate interview, Petersen said Topps had decreased end-of-line testing for E. coli from monthly to three times a year. “Somewhere, I don’t know if lazy is the right word, but they got complacent,” he said.

Topps recalled 332,000 pounds of hamburger on Sept. 25 after authorities in several states reported people becoming ill. The USDA inspection service suspended production the next day, citing deficiencies in sanitation and an inadequate plan that is supposed to outline where contamination might occur and what will be done to prevent it. The plant was barred from reopening without revising its procedures.

Inspectors also questioned Topps’ practice of “re-work,” in which meat ground on one day could be added to meat during another production cycle. No law prohibits mixing different lots of beef, but food safety experts generally agree it expands the risk of contamination.

“That is a very bad process, and hardly anyone in the industry does that,” Petersen said. “If you want to manage E. coli in your plant, it’s just not a good idea to go back in time.” He said his agency is compiling figures on how many processors nationwide use re-work.

Federal inspectors also criticized sanitary measures at the plant, citing “product residues observed on product contact surfaces” and “recurring deficiencies of unsanitary equipment,” including “gouges, cracks and tears” on a conveyor belt.

The deadly bacteria strain, E. coli O157:H7, does not originate in grinding plants. It is harbored mainly in the intestines of cattle, but can get into meat through improper butchering and processing. Grinding operations such as Topps are the last chance to halt the spread of E. coli before the meat is available to the public.

Confronted with those findings, Topps expanded the recall on Sept. 29 to 21.7 million pounds, the second-largest U.S. beef recall at the time , although much of the meat had already been eaten.

Amid an idled production line and the financial fallout from the recall, Topps closed its 67-year-old business on Oct. 5, putting 87 employees out of work.

In late October, the USDA inspection service identified a now-defunct Canadian slaughterhouse, Rancher’s Beef Ltd. of Balzac, Alberta, as a likely source of the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to Topps.

Topps filed on Nov. 21 to liquidate in bankruptcy court, citing thousands of creditors and liabilities that far outstripped its assets.

At least three families have sued Topps, claiming relatives became ill from its hamburgers. With the company out of business, they are seeking shares of insurance payouts that could total $22 million.

“The problem with Topps is it seems they had really low, low frequency of testing their finished hamburger product,” which saved money, said William D. Marler of Seattle, a lawyer for two of the families. “Their testing protocol really was designed never to find E. coli; never to slow the process down.”

Marler examined the inspection documentation at the request of the AP and said many deficiencies should have been caught.

“This report clearly shows that their safety procedures and testing procedures were definitely below par and led to this outbreak and ultimately to their bankruptcy,” he said. “My point is, these things are so obvious, where was the inspector in July and August 2007?”

While acknowledging that inspections could have been better, the USDA’s Petersen said that after the Topps recalls, “we put in place some changes to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

The agency determined that its inspectors were properly trained, but has augmented training and data analysis as a result of the Topps case, Petersen said. For example, if a meat plant’s safety plan includes accepting only meat that has been tested, the inspectors have now been told to look for certificates for each lot that enters the plant, he said.

Petersen said he could not disclose if any discipline was taken against government inspectors who monitored Topps. Typically, one inspector would be at the plant for 60 to 90 minutes during each eight-hour production cycle, he said.

The scope of the recall also prompted the USDA , which had been criticized for dragging its feet , to move faster in encouraging recalls. The agency cannot issue recalls, although several lawmakers are proposing legislation in Congress that would give it that authority.

Marler said Petersen and others at the inspection service were working hard, but are hampered by an outdated meat safety system.

“It really shows how the inspection is relatively antiquated, because what these inspectors are looking for is a bacteria you can’t see, taste or smell,” Marler said.

The nation needs to do a better job of butchering animals and testing for E. coli at slaughterhouses, agreed Felicia Nestor, senior policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer group in Washington.

Meat producers, meanwhile, maintain that the public interest is best served by a broad array of measures, and that last year’s rise in E. coli incidents was of great concern following a steady decline since 2001.

Topps is now winding down its bankruptcy. Its assets were sold Jan. 8 for more than $1.25 million, with all but $107,500 going to RBS Citizens Bank of Philadelphia, which had a secured claim because it had loaned Topps $14.5 million.

More than 5,000 other creditors, which include supermarkets and individuals who bought burgers, have unsecured claims of about $1 million. They could get a share of the $107,500, and eventually see more money through litigation by the court-appointed trustee for Topps.

Topps’ president, David Cohen, declined to speak about the company.

Its executive vice president, Anthony L. D’Urso, declined to comment when presented with the USDA inspection documents at his New Jersey home. He is a member of the family that ran Topps for about 60 years until Buffalo, N.Y.-based private equity firm Strategic Investments & Holdings bought a controlling interest in 2003.

Gary M. Brost, the president of Strategic Investments, said in an e-mail: “Counsel has advised us not to comment or discuss the Topps Meat Co. LLC meat recall since it has resulted in litigation.”

Meanwhile, the former Topps plant reopened in March as Onegreat Burger Co. after an affiliate of Hawthorne-based Premio Foods, a sausage maker, acquired the remainder of the Topps lease and its flash-freezing equipment for $250,000 during the bankruptcy proceedings.

“We’ve made it an entirely new state-of the art operation, focused on food safety and quality products,” Premio and Onegreat Burger President Marc Cinque said.

While D’Urso is a sales consultant, and a company associated with the D’Urso family is the landlord, Cinque said the plant has been refurbished with new manufacturing equipment and the 30 employees include no members of Topps management or ownership.

,,,

On the Net:

USDA: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/

Ethicurean Mini-Digest: Monsanto wants to “save” the world, Kill Bill Vol. 247, SOLE research in the pipeline

Source: The Ethicurean.

You say crisis, we say …Croesus: Monsanto has launched a massive PR campaign (New York Times) promising to double the yields of corn, soy, and cotton using genetically modified seeds. Never mind that its most successful GM seed to date has produced lower yields while requiring higher inputs and actually increasing, not reducing, the use of herbicides. It claims to be just trying to help address the world food crisis, but we’re not buying it and neither is “Uncertain Peril” author Claire Hope Cummings.

Farm Bill Go-Round: The bill keeps circling back, and now George Bush is threatening to veto it again. (Brownfield Network)

Put your research where our mouths are: UNC scholars will study sustainable farming and its effect on public health. Getting some data behind the assertions would be a very good thing. (UNC News)

Locavores no cheapskates: Ohio State research finds that people are willing to pay more for local foods, too. (We could have told them that!) (OSU News)

Globalization hazards: Food from who-knows-where may not have been raised with the same sanitation standards as in the United States, which could make us sick. (Eureka Alert)

A mild case of the flu: Tyson preemptively destroys 15,000 chickens possessing bird-flu antibodies, just in case. And, really, it’s the weak kind. And it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with industrial-style chicken barns. Meanwhile, the company is getting rid of its antibiotic-free labels in the wake of USDA’s ever-evolving rules. (Brownfield Network)

NAIS Isn’t Official, Is It? To Tami Mascho, It’s Looking Like a Well-Oiled Machine

Source: David Gumpert, The Complete Patient.

Last week, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund sponsored a teleseminar about the National Animal Identification System. One of the speakers was John Carter, a fifth-generation Australian cattleman, who spoke about the Australian experience with its equivalent of NAIS.

It was a frightening talk, about how Australia has assembled an army of bureaucrats to enforce premises and cattle registration. Not only are the costs much higher than originally estimated, but many of the government’s records are inaccurate, leading to long and frustrating efforts to correct things, if they can even be corrected. It sounded like Big Brother run amok, and if I understood correctly, the Australian system just applies to cattle, not to all farm animals, as the current NAIS model is envisioned.

I also thought about the story I had heard just prior to the teleseminar, of Tami Mascho’s experience buying a miniature Nubian goat.

Tami lives in upstate New York on an acre of land and has raised Nubian goats for the last 13 years, mostly as a hobby. She milks a few to supply her family of eight and sells a few kids each spring.

Three months ago, she ordered a Nubian goat from Wisconsin. The seller went through the required process of having the goat examined and vaccinated by a veterinarian, and filed required forms in connection with tuberculosis eradication with Wisconsin and New York agriculture agencies, so the goat could be shipped to Tami.

A few weeks after the goat arrived safely in New York, Tami had a visit from an agent from New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets. “She asked me a few questions about how many goats I have and what I do with them. She was taking some notes. But I never signed anything.”

In late March, Tami received a packet of materials in the mail from NY Ag and Markets—including a letter that “serves as notification that your business has been successfully registered” with NAIS and a “Certificate of Registration” (pictured above).

The problem with all this, from Tami’s viewpoint, is that not only did she not request a premises identification number, but she is against NAIS and wants nothing to do with it.

She wrote the state nearly two months ago to opt out of the system. But, surprise, surprise, that hasn’t gone nearly as smoothly as the registration. No one’s responded to her letter. When she calls to find out where things stand, she gets “the runaround,” she says. “They say they are backed up and haven’t been able to get to it.”

Sounds a little like when you want to cancel your cable TV, or your life insurance, doesn’t it? Signing up goes so quickly and smoothly, and opting out, well, that seems to be so complicated.

Update on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 03:52PM by The Complete Patient

As a couple of people noted in the comments following this posting, Mary Zanoni, a long-time and outspoken NAIS opponent, has filed suit against the USDA over its refusal to fulfill Freedom of Information Act requests. I have posted the suit here.

Are tomatoes the kickoff to food-illness season?

Source: The Ethicurean.

Ugh. Looks like our industrial food system is cranking out the salmonella for broad distribution again. That’s the word from the latest Food and Drug Administration consumer alert. The current culprit: tomatoes. Where? Texas and New Mexico. Oh, and maybe Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and Utah, too.

Thank goodness I know my tomato growers. You can know yours, too. Check out Local Harvest and the Eatwell Guide. It’s also not too late to plant your own.

The Secret Police Campaign Against Raw Dairies May Signal More Government Fear Than We Realize

They are afraid, because more people are waking up and rejecting the Industrial Food Complex. Good!

By David Gumpert, The Complete Patient.

Yesterday I was trying to explain the raw milk situation to Julie, the woman who has been cutting my hair the last 15 years or so. Julie and I usually chat during the time she is cutting and trimming about movies or new restaurants in the area, but the last couple of times I’ve been in to see her, we’ve gotten to talking about health and food, and in particular, raw milk.

Julie isn’t a foodie by any means, and she doesn’t read a lot about food and politics, but her ten-year-old son has attention deficit disorder (ADD) and she is convinced his diet, especially his sugar consumption, impacts his behavior. So when she asked me yesterday what I’ve been up to in the six weeks since I last had my hair cut, I told her, “Well, I’ve been in a few courtrooms and at a legislative hearing and on several dairy farms.”

I tried to explain the raw milk situation to her, how it seems to help some children with ADD and other chronic conditions, and how the government seems intent on preventing us from obtaining raw milk, even resorting to employing undercover agents.

“That’s crazy,” she said. “Why shouldn’t people who want it be able to buy it, and those who are afraid of it just stay away from it?”

Good question, I told her—unfortunately, one I can’t answer.

I find that when I step back from the situation a bit, I realize we’ve moved beyond the skirmish stage of this struggle, to real battle. It’s a battle that’s far from over, even allowing for the courtroom defeat last week over California’s AB 1735.

That became even more starkly apparent to me as I went back and reviewed all the cases involving undercover agents in raw milk cases, for an article I just wrote for The Nation, “Got Milk? Get Investigated”. It started three years ago as a seemingly isolated situation involving an Amish farmer in Ohio, and has in recent months exploded into use in New York, California, and Pennsylvania.

I’ve always associated a government’s use of undercover agents (really, secret police) against ordinary citizens as the mark of a totally repressive regime—the old Soviet Union, present-day Cuba and Burma are the obvious examples. These are regimes that are afraid of their citizens. The U.S. obviously differs significantly from these places in many respects, yet it employs their tactics. All I can conclude is that the people in power must be very afraid.

One of the best ways for ordinary citizens to fight back is to identify the turncoats, embarrass them, and strip the veil of secrecy from their employers. That’s part of what I mean by education. Leave them no place to hide.

Legal Defense Fund Moves to Stop Animal ID Program

I think NAIS is the perfect program for Big Agra, but not for anyone else. Why does the government want to track my chickens? Why hasn’t this Orwellian program been reported in the mainstream news?

Source: Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Falls Church, Virginia, (May 15, 2008) — Attorneys for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund today sent a Notice of Intent to Sue letter to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) over implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a plan to electronically track every livestock animal in the country.

The Notice asks the USDA and MDA to “immediately suspend the funding and implementation of NAIS,” and “fully and fairly examine” whether there is even a need for such a program.

Taaron Meikle, Fund president, said that contrary to USDA’s claim, NAIS will do nothing to protect the health of livestock and poultry. “At a time when food safety and costs are a concern, the USDA has spent over $118 million to promote a program that will burden everyone from pleasure horse owners to ranchers and small farmers to individuals who raise a few chickens or steers on their own land for their own use.”

Once fully implemented, the NAIS program would require every person who owns even one livestock or poultry animal (a single chicken or a pet pony) to register their property with the state and federal government, to tag each animal, and to report “events” to a database within 24 hours. Reportable events would include such things as a private sale, a state fair, or a horse show.

The Notice charges that USDA has never published rules regarding NAIS, in violation of the Federal Administrative Procedures Act; has never performed an Environmental Impact Statement or an Environmental Assessment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act; is in violation of the Regulatory Flexibility Act that requires them to analyze proposed rules for their impact on small entities and local governments; and violates religious freedoms guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“We also think there are constitutional issues at stake here,” Meikle noted. “The requirement to use electronic ear tags or RFID chips violates the religious beliefs of some farmers, such as the Amish, and provisions in a memorandum of understanding between the USDA and the MDA could violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution by requiring the state to stop and inspect vehicles carrying livestock without a warrant or probable cause.”

The MDA has implemented the first two stages of NAIS –property registration and animal identification – for all cattle and farmers across the state as part of its mandatory bovine tuberculosis disease control program, which is mandated by a grant from the USDA.

“While touted as a disease control program, the NAIS will drive many small farmers out of business” Meikle noted, “and burden every person who owns even one horse, chicken, cow, goat, sheep, pig, llama, alpaca, or other livestock animal with expensive and intrusive government regulations.”

Joe Golimbieski, a farmer from Standish, Michigan and Fund member, explains: “The cost of the tags is just the start. We’re at the mercy of whatever price the stockyards charge to do the tagging. And our farm doesn’t have extra employees to deal with paperwork. NAIS is likely to put us out of business.”

Gary Cox, General Counsel for the Fund, states that “USDA and MDA have exceeded their authority and they have completely failed to follow the proper procedures. We are calling on the agencies to immediately halt implementation of the program or face appropriate action.”

About The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund: The Fund’s mission is to defend the freedoms and to broaden the rights of sustainable farmers and their consumers to produce and consume local, nutrient-dense foods. Concerned citizens can support the Fund by joining at www.farmtoconsumer.org or by contacting the Fund at 703-208-FARM. The Fund’s sister organization, the Farm-to-Consumer Foundation (www.farmtoconsumerfoundation.org), works to support farmers engaged in sustainable farm stewardship and promote consumer access to local, nutrient-dense food.

Editor’s Note: The Notice of Intent to Sue the (USDA) and (MDA) is available at www.farmtoconsumer.org