Posts Tagged decentralized food system

Controlling E. coli in hamburger requires “meat ID” not animal ID

Aug 3

Posted by admin in Food, NAIS | 1 Comment

Daryll E. Ray and the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

July 24, 2009

Food safety has been getting a lot of attention lately. In response to the peanut butter, pistachio, and toll house cookie recalls, the House Energy and Safety Committee has approved the Food Safety Enforcement Act of 2009 to strengthen and expand the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role in food safety and inspection. To gauge the response of the agricultural community, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on this legislation.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a White House Food Safety Group was formed by the Obama administration. In July 2009, the Working Group recommended “a new, public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery”

(http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Fact_Sheet.pdf).

In all this, major-crop and livestock farmers are worried that the move toward increased emphasis on food safety will lead to the FDA inspection of farms as part of its role in protecting the integrity of the food ingredients that are produced by farmers. Many involved in beef production are resistant to an animal identification system that would allow traceback to the farm-level.

At the same time, the meat industry, having freed itself from a government-directed inspection through the use of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program (HACCP), wants to prevent a move back to a greater government involvement in the inspection of meat and meat products.

When considering issues of major importance to a sector—which this one definitely is in the case of agriculture—the rhetoric sometimes out-distances the the reality of the arguments made and fears generated.

In the case of E. coli in beef, there is nothing that cattlemen can or cannot do that will materially affect the probability of E. coli showing up in your hamburger. There is some evidence that taking cattle off the feedlot for a period of time and putting them on pasture prior to slaughter reduces the level but does not eliminate the presence of E. coli and therefore its potential for contamination. So there is no reason for the FDA to use valuable resources to visit cattle ranches or feeding operations as part of “beefing-up” prevention of E. coli contamination from beef.

Since what happens on ranches and feedlots has no effect on whether beef ultimately becomes contaminated with E. coli, traceback to production agriculture—that is, an animal identification system—is not needed to protect consumers from E. coli.

That is not to say that an animal ID program is, or is not, appropriate for other reasons. Recent arguments for animal traceback are primarily concerned with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease). While that may be an important issue, it is unrelated to the E. coli discussion.

Traceback is required, of course, but it is MEAT traceback that is needed, not animal traceback.

Meat traceback is needed because E. coli O157:H7 grows in the gut of beef animals, the food safety issue concerns the prevention of the contamination of slaughtered meat from sources like intestines and hides.

When E. coli O157:H7 is found in ground beef or on beef muscle meat surfaces, the problem is one that originates at the packing plant. Since the institution of the HACCP system in meat inspection, the USDA has focused its enforcement at downline facilities that process boxed beef into hamburger and resisted tracing the contamination back to the packing plant that produced the boxed beef.

The USDA has done this despite the knowledge that a processing facility that does no slaughtering lacks a source of E. coli O157:H7. The most likely source of the E. coli is on the surface of meat that came in from the slaughterhouse, thus the need for meat traceback.

The rhetoric of those speaking for meat packers and processors tend to steer attention away from the central issue. James Hodges of the American Meat Institute Foundation makes statements like “No outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 have been linked to whole muscle cuts like steaks and roasts.” Similarly, the North American Meat Processors Association (NAMP) sent out a 2008 NewsFax release saying “NAMP knows of no illness that has resulted from the consumption of intact beef product.”

The issue is not the consumption of steaks, roasts, and intact beef product. Everyone acknowledges that heating the outside of those products to 160 degrees kills E. coli 0157:H7. Rather the problem comes from the fact that the presence of E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals is not considered an adulterant. That presence raises the opportunity for cross contamination with other foods or the incorporation of E. coli present on the surface of intact cuts into ground beef.

Cutting through the rhetoric, it seems clear that the USDA can significantly reduce the number of E. coli illnesses by declaring E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals to be a contaminant that must be eliminated as part of the slaughtering process and by instituting a meat traceback system that will trace contaminated ground beef back to the packing plant that provided it.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

agpolicy.org

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Small Farmer Warns “HR2749 Will Put Me Out of Business”

Jul 29

Posted by admin in Codex Alimentarius, Food | 1 Comment

Artisan Cheese from Pugs Leap Farm May Disappear if Food Safety Bill Passes

Pugs Leap Does

Pugs Leap Does

by Pascal Destandau of Pugs Leap Farm

Eric Smith and I own and operate a small diversified farm in Sonoma County, at Pugs Leap Farm we milk twenty seven goats by hand and make cheeses we sell at local farmers markets in Sonoma, Marin, Alameda and San Francisco. We have a few chickens and sell the eggs at the markets. In the next few years we hope to take to the markets the fruits and nuts from the orchards we planted. We also grow onions, garlics, chards, salad greens, tomatoes, corn, squash, strawberry and culinary herbs. We intend to add a few beehives next year.

HR2749 (The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009) which is currently making its way rapidly through the House of Representative will put us out of business.

HR2749 calls for:

a yearly registration with the FDA with a $500 fee

full HACCP plan for every type of produce sold or processed, for us that mean one plan for the dairy, one one for cheese making, one for transporting and retailing at the market, one for the fruits and vegetables, and another one for the nuts

FDA approved methods by which crops are raised and harvested. The most likely outcome will be along the lines of the leafy green ordinance, scorched earth and exclusion of any wildlife.

I have twenty two years experience in research and development and in technical operations, at a managerial level, in the pharmaceutical and personal care products industry. I therefore know very well the resources

Dry Creek Valley

Dry Creek Valley

needed to create and maintain a full HACCP plan. Creating one plan would take me about 100 hours and maintaining it would take 2 hours per day of production. Based on quotes I obtained in 2006 for laboratory testing, I estimate that I would need to budget $15,000/year just for the microbiological testing of the cheeses. The International Dairy Food Association (IDFA) has published some guidelines for HACCP which were used by the National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) when it developed a voluntary dairy HACCP program in parallel with the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO). To follow those guidelines I will have to start testing every batch of milk for drug residues, I will also have to tests for pesticide residues and mycotoxins. I am still in the process of researching what amount of testing will be needed for compliance and it is still unclear if I will be allowed to do my own testing or if I’ll need to send samples to a certified laboratory. This will be decided when the regulations are written.

Stopping feeding cattle a high grain diet would be much more efficient than an HACCP plan to eliminate E. Coli O157:H7 from our meat supply. The same for silage and Listeria. The practice of feeding antibiotics for faster weight gain has been linked to the presence of antibiotic resistant strains of salmonella in chicken, turkey, beef and pork. Recently MRSA has been found in pork meat.

The enforcement of HACCP plan for all food producers will do nothing to address those problems. Furthermore HACCP plans are very industry friendly and rely on self regulation and self regulation does not work. For example in 2006 from January to June, Cadbury knowingly shipped products tainted with salmonella; Cadbury’s defense is that the levels in the chocolate were too low to cause illness.

On July seven the White House appointed Michael R. Taylor Advisor to FDA Commissioner. The press release mention that it is his third appointment at the FDA and that Taylor will work to:

Assess current food program challenges and opportunities

Identify capacity needs and regulatory priorities

Develop plans for allocating fiscal year 2010 resources

Develop the FDA’s budget request for fiscal year 2011

Plan implementation of new food safety legislation.

The press release failed to mention Mr. Taylor connections with Monsanto.

Mr. Taylor began at the FDA in 1976 as a litigating attorney, he left to join King & Spalding where Monsanto was his personal client regarding food labeling and regulatory issues.. He returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy from 1991 to 1994, overseeing FDA’s policy development and rulemaking, including the implementation of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act and issuance of new seafood safety rules. This was a new position created for him and he instantly became the FDA official with the greatest influence on GM food regulation, overseeing the development of government policy. He was part of the team that issued the very industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto’s genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows. He introduced the the concept of substantial equivalence as an appropriate method for determining safety. This is the basis for the lack of safety testing and the non labeling of GMO containing food. The same concept was used to prevent dairy products to be labeled as rBGH free.

Cutting the Goat Cheese

Cutting the Goat Cheese

Mr. Taylor left the FDA in 1994 for the USDA. In 1996 he went back to King & Spalding and in 1998 he was appointed vice president of Public Policy by Monsanto.

I am very concerned that Mr. Taylor will use his position to issue very tech heavy, industry friendly regulations that will place an unbearable burden on small producers and family farms.

Food safety is compromised by industrial farming practices not by sustainable farming. The cost of cheap food has been food safety. My personal check list for food safety is: no GMO, no trans fat, no high fructose corn syrup, no food colorants, no artificial flavors, no rBGH, no meat, eggs or dairy from CAFO’s. The short version is do not eat anything with a bar code.

Size based regulations are possible. In the new FDA egg safety regulations producers with less than 3,000 laying hen are exempt, producers with more than 3,000 but less than 50,000 have 36 months to comply, producers with more than 50,000 have 12 months to comply.

We do need farmers and consumers to start writing to your House Representative and request that HR 2749 include similar exemptions and provisions.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday’s on Food Renegade blog, see more ideas for food activism here.

This post is also part of Food Roots sustainability blog Carnival on Nourishing Days blog, trace your food roots here!

This post is also part of Real Food Wednesday blog carnival on KellytheKitchenkop.com, check out more foodie stuff here!

Tags: , , , ,

The Amazing Failure of NAIS

Jul 28

Posted by admin in Food, NAIS | No Comments

Written by Harlan Hentges

Thursday, 23 July 2009 14:38

About the Author

Mr. Hentges is a 1992 graduate of the University of Texas with a juris doctorate from the School of Law and a Master of Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. He is a 1987 graduate of Oklahoma State University with a bachelor of science in agricultural economics.

He is admitted to practice law in the States of Oklahoma and Texas and the Federal District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. He is a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association, the Oklahoma County Bar Association and the American Agricultural Law Association.

Mr. Hentges’s legal practice is concentrated in agricultural law, civil litigation, Endangered Species Act, eminent domain and appellate law.

Phone: (405) 340 6554

Harlan Hentges P. L. L. C.

1015G Waterwood Parkway Ste F1

Edmond, OK 73034

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would have gathered and introduced a huge amount of new data into the food supply chain. Data is very valuable in any supply chain and would certainly be valuable to food. USDA had the power and resources of the US government and support of multinational corporations that dominate the U. S. meat market. Under these circumstances, getting data into the food supply chain should have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead it was an amazing failure. Why?

I submit that USDA and their industry partners have a common flaw in structure, leadership and management. The flaw causes them to be blind to social, cultural and economic values of food and farming . After several years and hundreds of millions of dollars, USDA continues to face fierce public opposition to NAIS and members of congress have declared NAIS a failure and have moved to eliminate funding. The failure of NAIS reveals a flaw and its potentially negative consequences for the food supply chain.

For at least four decades the U. S. consumer and producer have expressed a preference for a food and farming system that is consistent with their social and cultural values. In the 1970’s the American Agricultural Movement radically protested the loss of farms. In the 1980’s Farm Aid lamented the loss of farms. The 1990’s saw the growth of organic foods and specialized stores like Whole Foods and Wild Oats. The 2000’shave movements such as local food, real food, raw food, slow food, vegetarian, and vegan. All of these movements and many more are vocal, national, well-publicized and they express the desire for food that is consistent with social and cultural values. Even the Pope writes about the lack of social and cultural values in our food system.

The only way to add social and cultural value to food is to provide consumers with information about their food . Valuable information would include where it was produced, by whom and under what conditions. This would permit consumers to know if the food they purchase is consistent with their values and enable them to act on those values.

When USDA and its multinational corporate partners under took the implementation of NAIS, they ignored virtually all of the value information might have to the food supply chain. They focused on only one objective — to track and, if needed, control the movement of every animal in the U. S. They claimed that in the event a disease was discovered in the U. S. every exposed animal could be identified, located, and quarantined or destroyed. This ability would benefit only one segment of the food supply chain, the large meat packers. By controlling the movement of animals, the slaughter facilities could continued to operate with as little disruption as possible . Theoretically, saving the packers as much downtime would justify the cost of the system.

Despite a ubiquitous desire for food that is consistent with social and cultural values, USDA and the multinationals designed NAIS so that any information about the animal was lost at the slaughter facility . Information about the source of the animal would never be available to a consumer . Information about the customer’s satisfaction could not be available to the farmer.

It is apparent that USDA and the multinationals failed to consider that information would be valuable to the producer or the consumer. This failure is inexcusable. The values of food and farming are thoroughly addressed in books like Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma and films like Food, Inc. and Fresh. It is undeniable that there is a widespread concern, and in some cases outrage, that industrialized agriculture is responsible for the decline of rural economies and communities, economic oppression of farmers, environmental degradation and mistreatment of animals. Yet USDA and the multinationals act as if information about where, by whom and how food is raised is irrelevant to the food supply chain and the value of food.

USDA and the multinationals failure to recognize the value of information about food is really a failure to recognize the value of food. USDA and the multinationals failed, I submit, because they do not know why food is valuable. Food is not valuable because of its nutritional content. Food is valuable because it comes from one of many economically viable farmers who live nearby and can produce a supply of food that is safe and secure for the long term. It is valuable because it is provided through supply chain that functions freely and is not subject to foreign, corporate or governmental control. Food is valuable because it comes from animals and crops that are genetically diverse so that they are not all susceptible to the same disease. Food is valuable because it is produced with farming methods that preserve the productivity of the land and produces offspring and seeds for the following year. Food is valuable because it is consistent with moral, social and economic values that sustain communities indefinitely. The amazing failure of NAIS indicates that the USDA and the multinationals do not understand or do not share these values.

Due to USDA’s power and the multinationals to influence the nation’s and world’s food supply, this lack of understanding of the value of food is a huge obstacle. Nonetheless, the challenge and opportunity in agriculture and food markets is to provide this value despite USDA’s policies and the market power of multinationals. Each food recall, each disease outbreak, each bankrupt farmer, and each contaminated water body is a new and better opportunity and a greater challenge to provide food of greater value.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Organic farmers plead for help from USDA Secretary Vilsap

Jul 25

Posted by admin in Food, NAIS | No Comments

Written by: Bill Suydam, Editor, Health Spectator

This posting from the Cornucopia Institute is a video that portrays an emergency meeting of organic dairy farmers in Wisconsin pleading with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to level the playing field against factory farms so that small farmers can survive.

One of the ironies of this piece occurs at the beginning, when an emcee approaches the refreshment stand at the fair and notes that bottled water is selling for $2.00—and milk for $0.50.

“Can farmers really be expected to sell milk for one quarter the price of water?” he asks the camera.

The farmers are protesting the fact that many large “organic” dairy farms flaunt the regulations, while “conventional” dairy farms—ironically the current term used for farms that inject their dairy cows with hormones to force them to produce twice as much milk as normal—may milk as many as 7200 cows a day.

Meanwhile, small farmers are finding it tough to survive, and more go out of business every day. This is not what we want to see if we are going to keep ourselves and our children healthy with wholesome products from small, local organic farms.

Tags: , , , , , ,

NAIS Is A Threat To Small Sustainable Farms and Ranches

Jul 23

Posted by admin in NAIS | No Comments

From the Underground Food Movement-
Written by: Maria Minno



Sustainable farms, healthy foods, local foods

NAIS Is A Threat To Small Sustainable Farms and Ranches

NAIS is the National Animal Identification, a government system to track animals by injecting them with a computer chip that is read and reported on by the farmer whenever an animal changes places. It will require small farmers to spend a great deal of money on equipment and inserting the chips and reporting any changes, with terrible fines for computer errors, acts of nature, or non-compliance. Large feedlots are virtually exempted from the process, as they need only one chip number for hundreds of animals.

NAIS is a very important issue to me, as well as to small farmers, who produce our healthiest foods in a sustainable manner. It will not help with food safety, however.

The USDA will be in charge of NAIS, and the government is pushing it, because they are being heavily lobbied by the companies who will make millions off of the tags, reading equipment, and data management. It makes it look like they are doing something to promote food safety, yet NAIS is the antithesis of food safety.

The National Animal Identification System is truly frightening to me. Clearly, the modern American food system is not keeping us safe. Yet NAIS is more dangerous than the status quo. It is Orwellian, it threatens small farms, it runs against my beliefs, and is a threat to my basic needs.

It’s not that we do not need vast improvements in food safety to clear up our health crisis and food contamination dangers. We do! But corporate agribusiness pressure is preventing Congress and the USDA from enacting and enforcing true animal health and food safety measures. NAIS is not an animal health or food safety measure.

The USDA has been hearing overwhelming opposition to this measure, from both consumers and farmers. I will add my voice to the choir. I am a nutritional therapy practitioner, and I represent myself, my family, and my clients who rely upon high quality foods from small farms to regain and maintain their health. We all say that NAIS is not the animal health or food safety solution this country needs.

I am suffering from mercury poisoning caused by having a lot of silver fillings, which were removed with no consideration for the toxicity of mercury, and by consuming a lot of catfish that were contaminated with mercury and DDT. In order to survive and get well, I need to eat a lot of the highest quality milk, meat, eggs, and other animal foods. I am very careful about what I purchase, because I feel the quality of my food immediately in my day-to-day well-being. Most of the foods I buy are from small local farmers.

Because of my personal experience, I have changed the way I feed my family. My family members and my grandchildren all eat high quality animal foods from local farms, and I can really see the difference in their health and well being, especially compared to other families we know. My husband recovered from osteopoenia within a year of changing our diet to locally purchased meat and milk, and my son also became much healthier. Local animal foods have saved my life during my difficult struggles with chronic mercury toxicity.

I serve a number of clients who also have serious chronic health problems. Like me, they have found that proper nutrition is much more effective than drugs and medical procedures in improving their health and well-being. These people also rely upon animal foods from small local farms to keep them alive and healthy. If NAIS is implemented, I believe we will have NO MORE local small farms to purchase high quality products from. This is a huge quality of life issue for many people, and may even be a life-and-death issue for me, personally.

Corporate industrial farms may want to use NAIS to improve their overseas sales, and I have no objection to them tagging their own animals. Let them. However, because the tags are known to cause cancer, I wouldn’t want to eat the meat they produce, and I don’t think people from other countries will, either, once they know the tags cause cancer. And NAIS is clearly not the answer to animal health or food safety for food we want to consume in our own country.

I have a friend who did a lot of health care work at the VA hospital in Gainesville. She said that the identification tags the veterans had embedded in their necks, which are very similar to the NAIS tags, caused terrible cancers. Research shows that these tags used on pets are causing cancer, also. I do not want to eat food that has been injected with cancer causing tags. Do you?

The REAL sources of food safety problems are huge confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that concentrate thousands of animals in one location, as well as unsafe practices at the slaughterhouse and in food processing. NAIS traceability ends at the slaughterhouse, so what’s the point?

NAIS requires small farmers and ranchers to track each animal individually, while allowing CAFOs to track all animals under one blanket Group Identification Number. So it will be infinitely easier for the huge and dangerous CAFO’s to comply with NAIS, and impossible for the small farmers and ranchers. Thus, the USDA is promoting factory farms whose practices encourage disease, while putting small farms out of business and destroying the local food movement with their tag requirements and fees. Whose USDA is this, anyway?

What we actually need is small farms scattered all over, especially around urban areas, where the demand is the greatest and the distance the smallest, for energy efficiency and food security. The huge centralized CAFOs clearly are not good for people, for the environment, for animals, or for food safety. They are not even good for the economy, because, like WalMart, they replace the local small businesses (farms) with low-income low-quality slave labor types of jobs.

We need diversified farms, which are more sustainable, healthy, efficient, productive, and safe. If a local farm grows both animals and plants, their ecology supports one another (fertilizer for the plants, food and bugs for the animals). Small, sustainable farms are a pleasure to live near; CAFO’s are a blight.

We need to improve the viability of our own farming sector by making imports more costly, by increasing inspections of imported animals and agricultural products, and barring the entry of animals from countries with known disease problems.

We need to support our small farms, not try to put them out of business with laws and regulations such as NAIS. Read Joel Salatin’s book, “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal” if you want to hear a funny but true story of the difficulties of producing really high quality food in this country.

We particularly need to improve enforcement of existing laws and inspections of large slaughterhouses and food processing facilities, including unannounced spot inspections. I heard an interesting story about the USDA slaughterhouse near Gainesville. Apparently they were stealing and switching meat, so that high quality grassfed meat that my friend was selling would be replaced at the slaughterhouse by conventional, low quality meat. My friend tried to talk with the slaughterhouse management, but the unethical practice continued. When my friend asked the USDA to intervene, they said that wasn’t their job!

It appears that the USDA sees its job as protecting the huge industrial farms from competition from small farms that produce exceptionally high quality food that is now in high demand.

Where NAIS has been tried already, it has been found to be a resounding failure for all of its stated goals. NAIS is government control and ineptitude magnified a million-fold. Furthermore, it is reminiscent of the practices of Nazi Germany. NAIS may make a few large corporations wealthy (like the tag and reader manufacturers and database managers), but for all the rest of us, it has no redeeming value, and an unacceptable cost.

Please stop this travesty now.

To sign a petition against HR 2749
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions/pnum993.php

To sign a petition against NAIS
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm

To submit comments regarding NAIS to the USDA
http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/feedback

For more information on NAIS and HR 2749
http://www.nonais.org/
http://www.ftcldf.org/press/press-08july2009.htm
http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-02june2009-5.htm

Gainesville Sun editorial on HR 2749
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090714/NEWS/907149927/1008/WEATHER?Title=Maria-Minno-This-bill-is-a-threat-to-small-farms

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

NAIS Listening Sessions: Can a Monsanto Administration Really Hear?

Jul 13

Posted by admin in NAIS | 2 Comments

Image at www.batag.com
By Rady Ananda

Scrap NAIS; decentralize the food industry

The hottest topic in agriculture is NAIS – the proposed National Animal Identification System. Using embedded microchips and mountains of paperwork, the federal government plans to create a database that tracks every animal in the nation. Independent producers and privacy advocates adamantly oppose the plan.

From May 14th thru June 30th, the USDA held “listening sessions” in fourteen cities across the nation. USDA asserted it wants “to engage stakeholders and producers to hear not only their concerns about [NAIS], but also potential or feasible solutions to those concerns.”

USDA hoped the listening sessions would provide a forum where stakeholders could help devise a NAIS that producers could live with. Instead, ranchers and farmers want the entire NAIS plan scrapped. Over 1600 people attended these sessions, with 500 testifying. Eighty-five percent of those who spoke condemned NAIS.

Listening Session Quotes

Darol Dickinson, longhorn cattleman from Ohio, believes the USDA plan is being forced on producers, despite objection.

“They’ve conveyed to us that we have no right to oppose them. They’ve told people, ‘This is going to happen.’ That doesn’t sit well with independent thinking people, especially ranchers and farmers.”

Dickinson spoke at the Harrisburg, PA listening session and conveyed on Carl Lanore’s radio show:

“I told them that their ‘option’ reminded me of being an old herd sire – being pushed down an alley with an electric prod, and somebody mentions to the herd sire, ‘How do you want to be castrated – with a dull knife, with a burdizzo or an elastic band?’ And the answer, of course, is none of the above.”

One group opposing NAIS, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, urged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to re-focus the nation’s animal disease and food safety efforts on several alternatives including:

  • Decentralize the livestock industry and encourage local, diversified farms, which would increase animal health, food security, and food safety;
  • Increase inspections of imported animals and agricultural products and bar the entry of animals from countries with known disease problems; and
  • Improve enforcement of existing laws and inspections of large slaughterhouses and food processing facilities, including unannounced spot inspections at those large facilities.

Image at Salon.com
Mike Callicrate, an independent cattle producer, is not at all happy with NAIS. He firmly believes that the best way to protect the food supply is to enforce existing laws and go back to unannounced inspections of factory farms, slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants.

“Today, USDA, in protecting the biggest and dirtiest meat plants, continues to block trace-back of pathogens to the source plant, a very easy and inexpensive measure that could improve food safety tomorrow.”

He blames the 2002 E. coli contamination of 20 million pounds of ConAgra beef on lack of inspections.

“USDA has done nothing to address the problems in the big packing plants where E. coli is systematically put into our meat daily while trusting these big profit-driven companies to self inspect under the HACCP hoax.”

HACCP is the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points plan whereby meatpackers and processing plants inspect themselves. They determine where the most likely places of contamination would occur and design mitigation techniques. The plan is then submitted to the USDA for approval, but enforcing it is left to the companies themselves.

At the Loveland, Colorado listening session, Kimmi Lewis of the Colorado Independent Cattle Growers Association said, “This country is free because we are allowed to own private property.” If it’s tracked by government, it’s not private.

At the Harrisburg, PA listening session, horse breeder Barbara Steever called the USDA “disingenuous” for saying that NAIS will be used to control the spread of disease. To make her point, Steever then asked some hard-hitting questions:

  • “Why, then, are you lowering import restrictions to allow cattle in from Mexico that has bovine TB?
  • Why are you trying to bring in cattle from Argentina that is known to have a reservoir of FMD (foot-and-mouth disease)?
  • [Why are you allowing] cattle over 30 months of age from Canada, that have a higher risk of BSE, and disallowing private businesses from testing for BSE in response to their clients’ needs?
  • Why are you moving a high security disease containment facility into the middle of cattle country?”

madcow (300 x 374)One of the strongest speakers, Rhonda Perry, operates a livestock and grain operation. She spoke on behalf of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, representing 5,600 families. Reiterating above concerns, Perry adds:

“We see industrial livestock operations all over this country that have created incredible environmental, health and food safety concerns.”

Perry points out that none of today’s food safety issues are caused by independent family farmers. She challenges the USDA to increase competition as a strategy to increase food safety. Bust the monopolies and decentralize food production, “instead of looking at this unproven, ineffective, anti-farmer, corporate-driven program of NAIS.”

Others pointed out that NAIS violates our Constitutional rights, including religion. Amish and other religious communities reject implants and biotechnology.

Several dozen videos from the NAIS listening sessions have been posted at YouTube.

Interestingly, the USDA held no listening sessions in Wisconsin, where NAIS has been made mandatory. Farmers there are furious with the bureaucracy and have been warning the rest of the nation. In NAIS Smackdown: The gloves come off, R-Calf lists a better set of food safety proposals instead of NAIS.

Biggest Danger to Food Safety is a Centralized Food System

Safe food spokesperson, Michael Pollan, has long warned us that a centralized food system is uniquely vulnerable to disease and even to a terrorist attack. Also, because concentrated animal feeding operations require the use of antibiotics to keep the herd alive, superbugs with antibiotic resistance are becoming more common.

In the film, Fresh, Missouri natural hog farmer Russ Kremer shares a personal tale of how he almost died from contracting a monster form of strep. The experience convinced him to exterminate his entire herd and start over with a natural herd.

tom-vilsackThe USDA has a long history of using regulations (like HACCP) to protect Big Ag, instead of consumers and small producers. President Obama appointed Tom Vilsack, the “biotechnology governor of the year,” as Secretary of Agriculture. Obama also appointed Monsanto’s Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group.

Astute writers and activists caution that even if NAIS is defeated, animal tracing is being snuck into pending legislation, such as HR 2749.

Independent family farmers will have a tough row to hoe trying to convince a Monsanto Administration to do right by small farmers. As they plead with a corporate-owned federal government intent on globalization, the American people may be their best ally.

Buy fresh, locally grown food. Support free range and organic farmers. Yes, healthy food costs more up front. But you save it on the back end, needing fewer doctor visits or pharmaceutical drugs to deal with the diseases (obesity, diabetes, cancer) caused by factory food. You’ll also contribute to your local economy and a healthy environment.

FILMS

Several recent documentaries discuss the difference between natural and factory food production. In addition to The World According to Monsanto, be sure to see the films below (these are my reviews):

FOOD, Inc. Exposes Horrors of a Centralized Food System
 Fresh: How We’re Supposed to Eat
 Our Daily Bread a Radically Silent View of Factory Farming

~~

Rady Ananda’s articles have appeared in several online and print publications, including three books. She graduated in December 2003 from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture with a BS in Natural Resources.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,