Posts Tagged Monsanto

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

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HR 2749: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply

Jul 15

Posted by admin in Codex Alimentarius, NAIS | No Comments

monsanto-no-foodA new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.  The bill needs to be stopped.


HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency.  The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.

Take Action HERE.

HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply.  The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

To read a detailed account of the bill, go to: http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm


(Read the section on tracing.  That is NAIS, isn’t it? –  highly disguised yet triggered by the word “trace.”  )

Alarming Provisions:

Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:


* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. [isn’t this every home in the US, every garden?] Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. [What is the definition?] And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times. [Yes.  There are laws against this corporate-size-destroys-the-little-guy policy, aren’t there?  Are home bread or cheese or lacto-fermented vegetable makers who make for their own families included in this?]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested.  It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This astounding control opens the door to CODEX.  WTO “good farming practices” will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.  They will be slaves on the land, doing the work they are ordered to do – against their own best wisdom – and paying out to industry against their will.

There will be no way to be frugal, to grow one’s own grain to feed the animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work with nature at all.  Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be finished.  So, it’s obvious where control will take us.  And weren’t these the “rumors on the internet” that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]

* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.”  [This – “that has been used to transport or hold such food” – would mean all cars that have ever brought groceries home so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION can be shut down under this.  This is using food as a cover for martial law.] Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination.  The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area. [This is also a means of total control over the population under the cover of food, and at any time.]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. [If these bills cover all who “hold food” then this allows for taking of records of anyone at any time on no basis at all.] Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers.

[NAIS for animals and all other foods?]

* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food.  Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food” [Is this not every home in the US?]  would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.”  The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods.  With all these ambiguities, [with all these ambiguities, it is dangerous, period, separate from the money] it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. [It is massive and absurd and burdensome beyond the capacity of people to comply – is this not fascism? – so it is a set up for being used to impose penalties endlessly and/or to eliminate anyone at will.]

* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals. [Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of “crimes”?  Or is it entirely ambiguous and left to the whim and sole power of “the Administrator”?  Who is that person set to be?  Is it Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and executive, as Food Democracy has said?  That is, do these bills set up an agency by which the entire US food supply will be turned over to the control of a multinational corporation under WTO regulations (and not to US farmers and not to US laws under the Constitution), with boundless freedom to do what it wants, and one infamous for harm to farmers and lack of safety of food?]

If it was not clear before how frightening these bills were, this small section of provisions, should make their actual fascism clear now. It goes way beyond “food safety” to absolute control over farms, animals, food, and us, including our movements and access to food at all.

Action to Take:

Contact your Representative now!  Ask to speak with the staffer who handles food issues.  Tell them you are opposed to the bill.  Some points to make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:


1.  The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real food safety problems lie.

2.  Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food safety.

3.  The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions.

HR 2749 needs to be defeated!! Please take action NOW.

Take Action HERE.

Or, contact your Representative by using the finder tool at www.Congress.org or send a message through the petition system (the petition will be on our website this evening) at http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm.  Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

To check the status of HR 2749, go to www.Thomas.gov and type “HR 2749″ in the bill search field.

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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

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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.

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