Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) will replace Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) as the top Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture budgets.
DeLauro, a longtime advocate for a stronger FDA and federal food safety system, chaired the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, but announced late last week that she will instead serve as Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Farr has strong ties to agriculture, especially the produce industry, which is a major economic force in his district. Farr is also knowledgeable about food safety issues. He has served on the Appropriations Committee since 1999.
“The Central Coast is home to one of the most rich and diverse agriculture regions in the nation,” said Rep. Farr in a recent statement. “This unique opportunity allows me to help steer the course of Agriculture policy in our country, and gives me the right tools to support our local farms and famers.”
Leading produce groups are pleased that Farr will set the Democratic agenda for Ag Appropriations.
“This is great news,” said Grower-Shippper Association of Central California President and General Counsel Jim Bogart. “Sam Farr has been a strong support of agriculture in general, and a champion of Central Coast agriculture in particular. We look forward to continuing our collaborative and effective working relationship with Congressman Farr in 2011 and the years to come. I couldn’t be happier.”
California is the nation’s largest agriculture production state. According to Farr’s office, the Central Coast counties of Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz produce approximately $4.5 billion in agricultural goods each year and Monterey County alone produces more than 85 crops with a value of $3.8 billion.
“As a veteran lawmaker from a California County that is the third largest agricultural producer in the state, Congressman Farr has in-depth knowledge of the diverse needs of agriculture,” said Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner Eric Lauritzen. “Having Congressman Farr in this vitally important position in the U.S. Congress places him at the epicenter of critical deliberations on funding issues that will directly impact the next farm bill, food safety implementation and nutrition programs.”
DeLauro issued a statement saying she was proud of her record leading the Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, but is looking forward to leading the Minority agenda on a committee that deals with the “highest moral obligation” of government.
“I have been proud to serve on the Agriculture and FDA Appropriations Subcommittee, and am very proud of what we were able to accomplish,” said DeLauro. “We provided the necessary resources to better protect our food supply, as well as improve the safety of drugs and devices. We improved access to fundamental nutrition programs that combat hunger. And, we provided critical investments to help facilitate growth in rural America.”
Corporate public images are usually made, and then maintained.
Think about corporations like Apple, Boeing, or Disney and what their corporate clothes say to us. It usually doesn’t change much from year to year.
Now think of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., also known simply as Walmart.
It’s been the:
- Destroyer of Main Street America.
- Big box store every NIMBY loves to hate
- Retailer with two million workers without union cards
- Biggest recipient of corporate welfare
- Most efficient supply chain for goods originating from China
- Green builder of enviro-friendly stores
- Better source of fruits and vegetable than Whole Foods
And now we have Walmart enlisting in the food police, promising First Lady Michelle Obama it will reduce sugar by 10 percent, sodium by 25 percent and eliminate trans fats in its store brands by 2015.
These changing images just keep coming. Each time it changes it clothes, Walmart does keep low prices in place. And the company keeps growing. Last year 8,400 Walmart outlets did $405 billion in retail sales.
Walmart is now offering Mrs. Obama lower-priced fruits and vegetables and the location of specially sized stores for urban food deserts; all as part of the company’s strategy to bust into urban areas.
Until very recently they’ve been kept out of major cities like Chicago, but are making process through a bundle of strategies up to and including signing project labor agreements with construction unions.
With its ability to change, Walmart must be giving its opponents fits these days. It remains a corporation that can do things on such a scale and with such efficiency that government cannot match it. That’s what it’s done with its low-cost pricing of generic drugs.
As its suppliers know too well, Walmart really knows how to squeeze. It’s a tactic it uses not only up and down its supply lines, but also in building stores. It often will not come into a new community unless the city or town shares in the cost, usually by giving up the new sales tax revenue generated by the store for several years.
Walmart is suited up to go after something else it wants, and carrying some water for the First Lady is just part of the company’s strategy. Rare as it is, “the Chicago way” this time might even be good for nutrition.
Photo of First Lady Michelle Obama courtesy Obama Foodorama
In its first full year of operation, the early warning system to track problems in the U.S. food supply logged 2,240 reports of possible health hazards, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
Michael Taylor, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, called the Reportable Food Registry’s first-year record “a measure of our success” in helping regulators and the industry to move quickly to get dangerous foods off grocery shelves and out of the marketplace.
The registry, ordered by Congress, requires electronic reports to be filed within 24 hours if a company realizes it has shipped potentially harmful food. Once alerted, the FDA can work with state and local health and agriculture departments to investigate and, if necessary, assist with a recall.
In the first annual Reportable Food Registry Report, which details entries logged from Sept. 8, 2009 through Sept. 7, 2010, Salmonella contamination led the reported risks, accounting for 37.6 percent of the hazards. Undeclared allergens were close behind at 34.9 percent of the reports, followed by Listeria monocytogenes at 14.4 percent, E. col O157:H7 at 2.6 percent, uneviscerated fish at 2.2 percent and foreign objects at 1.3 percent.
Two particular hazards were apparent in the first year’s registry data: Salmonella in spices, seasoning, fresh produce, animal feed/pet food, nuts and seeds; and allergens/intolerances in bakery goods, dried fruit and vegetables, prepared foods, dairy and candy.
In addition to 229 primary reports of safety concerns there were 1,872 subsequent reports from suppliers or recipients of suspect food or feed and 139 amended reports to correct or add information.
Taylor said that as a result of RFR data, FDA can better decide where to target its testing and inspection resources, and several key food-industry players “are already re-evaluating their hazard and preventive controls.” For instance, because of the large number of Salmonella reports last year involving seasonings, a national trade association is developing guidance to reduce pathogen contamination in spices.
It was Salmonella-contaminated hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), a seasoning ingredient, at a Nevada food processor that caused the biggest spike in RFR reports last year. There were more than 1,000 industry reports for products containing the HVP, which led to the largest recall of a single ingredient in 2010, involving 177 separate products. The rapid response to the initial report is credited for the fact that no one got sick.
The Organic Trade Association (OTA) and NSF International’s Training and Education division are joining forces to offer a two-day HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) course aimed to help the organic sector maintain both certified organic and food safety standards.
The two-day training course will be offered March 9-10, 2011, as a prequel to Natural Products Expo West 2011, in Anaheim, California, and April 4-5, 2011 in Washington, D.C., right before the OTA Spring Policy Conference and Capitol Hill Visit Days.
According to a joint release, “The two-day professional course provides instruction in the seven principles of HACCP and how they relate to organic certification programs, and will teach participants how to write HACCP Plans and implement HACCP in organic food environments. It is designed for individuals responsible for organic and food safety programs in small- to medium-sized processing facilities and those responsible for the communications messaging of the facilities. It is specifically relevant for organic and food safety program professionals, communications professionals, certifiers, and inspectors.”
“With the passage of the recent food safety bill and food safety issues in the news almost daily, it is imperative that organic companies understand the impact of the new legislation and invest time and resources for their employees so they may have a clear understanding of HACCP principles and how they align with organic standards,” said Christine Bushway, OTA’s Executive Director.
Additional information for the training “HACCP for the Organic Professional” courses in 2011 is available on the Organic Trade Association’s website.
Americans waste nearly half a billion pounds of food every day. When we waste food, we throw away money, too–as much as $160 billion annually.
Waste is pervasive and occurs at every level of our ever-protracted food supply chain. It begins at the source with crops left to be retilled into the fields and concludes with yellowing lettuce in our refrigerators. We are all familiar with the latter, even the most diligent of shoppers, but few have any context to understand the former. Volunteering as a field gleaner is perhaps the best way to gain context and insight into our food production system. It promises to revolutionize the way you think about all things food, there is no way it could not.
With some good fortune, I participated in two gleaning efforts in 2010. Both events were coordinated by Jeffrey Wankel of Bread for the City, a D.C. non-profit that provides vulnerable residents with social services, including a food pantry with fresh produce.
Inspiring healthy eating habits
Three years ago the directors committed to improve their food pantry services and focus on nutrition and healthy eating. It no longer sufficed to simply feed their clients, they wanted to nourish them. They set out to inspire healthy new habits and lead by example.
They started by hiring an expert. Nutrition consultant Sharon Gruber was brought on and tasked with applying healthy, yet affordable, purchasing modifications. These changes included: no more boxed mac’n’cheese, no red meat and exclusively low-sodium canned goods. The next step was obvious–fresh produce. After researching wholesale prices and doing the math, Gruber concluded wholesale produce would not fit into the food budget. She had to “get creative,” so she created a new program, Glean for the City, in the spring of 2008.
In its first summer, the Glean for the City team visited northern Virginia farms three times a week. In its second year, gleaning efforts began at local D.C. farmers markets. To date, the program has recovered and distributed over 100,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables.
It is a testament to the successful relationships and network Glean for the City has established in a relatively short period of time, but it is also a reminder of the deplorable amount of waste occurring on our farms.
The reasons for food waste are plentiful, but pivot on two modern realities: inflated consumer standards (exactly when did we decide our apples had to be perfectly round and our potatoes eyeless?), volatile pricing due to the power resting almost exclusively with grocery stores and never farmers.
Coordinator’s role is crucial
Glean for the City opportunistically acts as a middleman, connecting supply and demand–not currently guaranteed by the market. In giving life to a relationship that did not exist prior, Glean for the City’s founders have relied on intuition and trial and error in guiding the program through its infancy.
Much of the program’s initial success can be attributed to securing sponsorship for the Gleaning coordinator’s role. The position is occupied by a full-time Americorps member with the federal government providing the salary. As Gruber stated: “having a consistent gleaning coordinator who is at the farm each time and knows the drill [is] critical to the farmers buying in.” With a full-time volunteer, the remaining costs were minimal and absorbed by the standing food budget. In its second year, Glean for the City secured private grant money to purchase an additional truck and materials such as bins and gloves.
Glean for the City appears to be fairly unique in its overall structure–one Gleaning Coordinator managing a rotating group of volunteers, corporate attorneys and schoolchildren alike, but it is far from unique in its purpose or mission.
Private and publically supported, gleaning programs are sprouting up across the country and include some interesting urban initiatives as well. The practice is experiencing a resurgence from its medieval days and is once again touted as an effective tool in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
The purpose remains unchanged, but the modern version is expectedly more institutionalized with non-profits, municipal bodies and statewide charities gleaning on behalf of the vulnerable individuals.
Legal protections reduce donor risk
Gleaning efforts now takes place in warehouses, grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias and even homes across the country. Wherever waste occurs, food ‘recovery’ or ‘recycling’ is possible. Donors need only to have an excess supply.
Legal protections and financial incentives guaranteed by the federal government ensure a working food recovery program, in part by minimizing the risk to farmers or others in the food chain who would like to donate.
Donors must also act in “good faith” to be shielded from liability, in the event that gleaned food causes a problem. (We could not find an instance of this, but one can imagine the possibility for contamination when recovering food.)
Donors and distributors are guaranteed liberal and far-reaching protections pursuant to The Bill Emersen Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, signed into law in 1996. Liabilities, civil or criminal, may only arise in the face of “gross negligence,” “intentional misconduct” or a deliberate “act of omission.”
“Food” is defined as “any raw, cooked, processed, or prepared edible substance, ice, beverage, or ingredient used or intended for use in whole or in part for human consumption.” The comprehensive definition of “food” assuredly protects cafes and restaurants and thus such entities should face comparable expectations to farmers and grocers.
Prior to 1996, donors and distributors were subject to 50 unique state laws, which made it a difficult-to-navigate system. In 1995, 83 percent of potential food donors cited liability issues as the primary barrier to donate. The 1996 law intended to put parties at ease and incentivize additional food donations.
Donors also benefit from federal tax write-offs, not paying taxes on donated food items. Bread for the City’s Wankel says this is never a principal reason for the farmers’ participation, but every bit helps. The same financial incentives stand for individuals donors as well.
This is critical time in which an increasing number of Americans are relying on hunger relief services for their access to food. Feeding America estimates that 1 in 6 Americans depended on local food pantry services to “get by” in 2010. At the same time, we are wasting food at an alarming rate, by the millions of pounds every day.
Given these dual realities, gleaning programs are only bound to proliferate.
