By Javier Blas in London
The Financial Times
Published: August 14 2007 17:42 Last updated: August 14 2007 17:42
The world risks deeper poverty and greater environmental damage unless it fundamentally changes its bioenergy strategy, the United Nations’ top food and agriculture official has warned.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is pushing for a high-level meeting next June to lay down rules for the international bioenergy market.
At present, the bioenergy industry is regulated by domestic policies rather than international agreement.
The FAO is urging the European Union and the US to lower trade barriers against ethanol imports; establish a system for bioenergy environmental standards; and provide more microcredit to farmers in developing countries to develop local biofuels.
Writing in today’s Financial Times, Jacques Diouf, FAO director general, said: “Such measures would allow developing countries – which generally have ecosystems and climates more suited to biomass production than industrialised nations and often have ample reserves of land and labour – to use their comparative advantage.”
Mr Diouf said the objective of the proposed meeting should be to ensure that bioenergy realised its potential to fuel sustainable growth and reduce hunger.
The US, Europe and Brazil last year accounted for almost 95 per cent of the world’s biofuel production. Canada, China and India produced most of the rest, according to the International Energy Agency, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog.
Biofuel production, mostly of corn-derived ethanol in the US and rapeseed-derived biodiesel in Europe, doubled between 2000 and 2005, according to the IEA. In 2005, however, that was still just 1 per cent of global road-transport fuel.
The energy watchdog forecast that would rise to 4 per cent by 2030.
Mr Diouf said the bioenergy sector had a “huge potential to reduce hunger and poverty” if production shifted from rich to poor countries.
At the moment, rich countries’ tariffs make it uneconomic for poor countries to grow biofuel crops.
The problem for developing countries is exacerbated by food prices being pushed up by the biofuel industry’s rising consumption of crops.
Corn prices this year reached an 11-year high of $4.30 a bushel while wheat prices last week rose to $6.96 a bushel, the highest since 1996.
The US biofuel industry last year consumed about 20 per cent of the country’s corn crop, far more than in the past.
“It is clear that the current practice of relying on food crops to produce fuel will be relatively short-lived,” Mr Diouf said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Food That Travels Well
The New York Times, August 6, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor, JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Austin, Tex.
THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking,
shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.
On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.
It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.
“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.
Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?
As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
James E. McWilliams is the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer.
Op-Ed Contributor, JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Austin, Tex.
THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking,
shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.
On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.
It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.
“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.
Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?
As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
James E. McWilliams is the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Ethanol Is Feeding Hot Market for Farmland
New York TImes, August 8, 2007
By MONICA DAVEY
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.”
Still, he said, he believes that to make it a viable, “not quite so lean” full-time career, he needs to work more acres. Just the other day, he called about a farm that was up for rent. He did not get it.
“You keep trying to fight your battles,” Mr. Burrs said, “but it’s frustrating and hard, and sometimes I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”
In central Illinois, prime farmland is selling for about $5,000 an acre on average, up from just over $3,000 an acre five years ago, a study showed. In Nebraska, meanwhile, land values rose 17 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same time last year, the swiftest such gain in more than a quarter century, said Jason R. Henderson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.
A federal-government analysis of farm real estate values released Friday showed record average-per-acre values across the country. The analysis said property prices averaged $2,160 an acre at the start of 2007, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
“For everyone who owns an acre of land, we love this,” said Dale E. Aupperle, a professional farm manager and real estate consultant in Decatur, Ill., who said the rising land values were being driven by rising commodity prices (though corn has dropped some since June) and the prospect of increased demand for ethanol.
“For everyone who doesn’t own an acre of land, these prices mean it gets a little harder to get into,” Mr. Aupperle added. “For an entry-level land owner or a renter, there’s a bit of a thought right now that the train is leaving and I’m not on it.”
In Iowa, which produces more corn and is home to more ethanol plants than any other state, farm rental prices are mimicking purchase prices: they were up about 10 percent this spring over a year ago, according to a study by William Edwards, a professor at Iowa State University who said it was the largest jump since he started tracking farm rents in 1994.
And ethanol is leaving marks everywhere. New grain bins seem to be popping up all around the Midwest, farmers from Indiana to South Dakota say, and some of the highest farmland prices have been seen around the nearly 200 existing or proposed ethanol plants, where the cost of transporting the corn would be the cheapest. Mr. Henderson said he heard that land close to such facilities, most of which are in the Midwest, had jumped by as much as 30 percent over a year ago.
Some of the boom here may be tied to the dip in other urban and suburban markets: As has been true for several years, out-of-town investors (some of whom can put off capital gains taxes by taking money made from selling one piece of real estate and investing it in another) are buying some of this land. But local farmers are doing much of the buying this year, said Lee Vermeer, a vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company, a farm-management firm in Omaha.
“These are established farmers, though, who own other land,” Mr. Vermeer said. “For a young farmer to get in, the amount of capital required is almost prohibitive.”
So the land prices are, in some cases, scooting beyond reach, even as young corn farmers — and hopeful farmers — are enticed by the sudden demand for ethanol as a replacement for the nation’s dependence on oil.
Near Dixon, 40 miles west of DeKalb, Kyle Sheaffer, 28, serves as the local leader of a Farm Bureau committee focused on the worries of young farmers. For them, he said, the high prices have become a regular focus of concern. Meanwhile, well-off buyers and investors, he said, seem to arrive in places like Dixon with “an open checkbook.”
“At this point, it’s just super hard to rent — much less buy — ground,” Mr. Sheaffer said. “On top of the land, the initial investment to farm is so much: the tractor, the startup costs, it’s crazy. If you want to rent land, you either have to find a landlord who is sympathetic to your cause or who knows you.”
Without a family member who already owns a farm or without having a personal connection with a retiring community farmer, there is little chance of a young farmer getting in, most farmers here said. Mr. Sheaffer himself farms 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans, with his father. Without the family tie, he said, he would be out of luck.
Brent Johnson, 29, a farmer in Ashland, Ill., said the established operation run by his father and uncle are the only reason he can even consider farming.
“I don’t know anyone anymore who is doing this who didn’t come from a farm,” Mr. Johnson said. “Starting one up from thin air? I don’t know how you could now.”
Not surprisingly, the farmers are aging. In Iowa, about one-fourth of farmland is owned by people 75 or older, said Michael Duffy, a farm economist at Iowa State University. Another one-fourth is owned by people 65 to 74 years old.
Unknown is what will come of land prices if corn loses its place in the ethanol world and is surpassed by another source like cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass.
“Right now, a lot are still betting that corn-based ethanol will be around a while,” said Mr. Duffy, who is also the director of the Beginning Farmer Center, which assists farmers who are starting out. He noted two other farming booms, in the 1910s and the 1970s, which were each later followed by periods of depression.
“In five years, corn-based ethanol will be around,” Mr. Duffy said. “Fifteen years? I’m not as convinced.”
By MONICA DAVEY
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,” Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Burrs, who farms about 400 acres near Dixon, Ill., and says he regularly bids on new farmland in the hopes of renting it. Mostly, he said, he loses out to higher bidders. “I crunch the numbers and go as high as I can. But then that’s it. There’s nothing more I can do.”
Mr. Burrs, who is 28, had a grandfather and a stepgrandfather who farmed. “So I guess it’s in my blood,” he said, “that feeling that you’ve got to do this, you were meant to do this.”
Still, he said, he believes that to make it a viable, “not quite so lean” full-time career, he needs to work more acres. Just the other day, he called about a farm that was up for rent. He did not get it.
“You keep trying to fight your battles,” Mr. Burrs said, “but it’s frustrating and hard, and sometimes I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”
In central Illinois, prime farmland is selling for about $5,000 an acre on average, up from just over $3,000 an acre five years ago, a study showed. In Nebraska, meanwhile, land values rose 17 percent in the first quarter of this year over the same time last year, the swiftest such gain in more than a quarter century, said Jason R. Henderson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.
A federal-government analysis of farm real estate values released Friday showed record average-per-acre values across the country. The analysis said property prices averaged $2,160 an acre at the start of 2007, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
“For everyone who owns an acre of land, we love this,” said Dale E. Aupperle, a professional farm manager and real estate consultant in Decatur, Ill., who said the rising land values were being driven by rising commodity prices (though corn has dropped some since June) and the prospect of increased demand for ethanol.
“For everyone who doesn’t own an acre of land, these prices mean it gets a little harder to get into,” Mr. Aupperle added. “For an entry-level land owner or a renter, there’s a bit of a thought right now that the train is leaving and I’m not on it.”
In Iowa, which produces more corn and is home to more ethanol plants than any other state, farm rental prices are mimicking purchase prices: they were up about 10 percent this spring over a year ago, according to a study by William Edwards, a professor at Iowa State University who said it was the largest jump since he started tracking farm rents in 1994.
And ethanol is leaving marks everywhere. New grain bins seem to be popping up all around the Midwest, farmers from Indiana to South Dakota say, and some of the highest farmland prices have been seen around the nearly 200 existing or proposed ethanol plants, where the cost of transporting the corn would be the cheapest. Mr. Henderson said he heard that land close to such facilities, most of which are in the Midwest, had jumped by as much as 30 percent over a year ago.
Some of the boom here may be tied to the dip in other urban and suburban markets: As has been true for several years, out-of-town investors (some of whom can put off capital gains taxes by taking money made from selling one piece of real estate and investing it in another) are buying some of this land. But local farmers are doing much of the buying this year, said Lee Vermeer, a vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company, a farm-management firm in Omaha.
“These are established farmers, though, who own other land,” Mr. Vermeer said. “For a young farmer to get in, the amount of capital required is almost prohibitive.”
So the land prices are, in some cases, scooting beyond reach, even as young corn farmers — and hopeful farmers — are enticed by the sudden demand for ethanol as a replacement for the nation’s dependence on oil.
Near Dixon, 40 miles west of DeKalb, Kyle Sheaffer, 28, serves as the local leader of a Farm Bureau committee focused on the worries of young farmers. For them, he said, the high prices have become a regular focus of concern. Meanwhile, well-off buyers and investors, he said, seem to arrive in places like Dixon with “an open checkbook.”
“At this point, it’s just super hard to rent — much less buy — ground,” Mr. Sheaffer said. “On top of the land, the initial investment to farm is so much: the tractor, the startup costs, it’s crazy. If you want to rent land, you either have to find a landlord who is sympathetic to your cause or who knows you.”
Without a family member who already owns a farm or without having a personal connection with a retiring community farmer, there is little chance of a young farmer getting in, most farmers here said. Mr. Sheaffer himself farms 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans, with his father. Without the family tie, he said, he would be out of luck.
Brent Johnson, 29, a farmer in Ashland, Ill., said the established operation run by his father and uncle are the only reason he can even consider farming.
“I don’t know anyone anymore who is doing this who didn’t come from a farm,” Mr. Johnson said. “Starting one up from thin air? I don’t know how you could now.”
Not surprisingly, the farmers are aging. In Iowa, about one-fourth of farmland is owned by people 75 or older, said Michael Duffy, a farm economist at Iowa State University. Another one-fourth is owned by people 65 to 74 years old.
Unknown is what will come of land prices if corn loses its place in the ethanol world and is surpassed by another source like cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass.
“Right now, a lot are still betting that corn-based ethanol will be around a while,” said Mr. Duffy, who is also the director of the Beginning Farmer Center, which assists farmers who are starting out. He noted two other farming booms, in the 1910s and the 1970s, which were each later followed by periods of depression.
“In five years, corn-based ethanol will be around,” Mr. Duffy said. “Fifteen years? I’m not as convinced.”
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Two Very Different Paths From Farm to Table
Bifurcated Safety System Means Some Foods Get Less Scrutiny
By Renae MerleWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, August 4, 2007; D01
Customers dining on surf and turf at a local restaurant may find themselves feasting on steak and a handful of breaded shrimp that took wildly disparate paths through a disjointed American food-safety system.
The steak came from a cow that was examined by a government inspector before and after it was slaughtered. The shrimp most likely were not inspected. The steak probably came from an American producer. The shrimp likely came from overseas, perhaps from one of several Asian countries that have been criticized for sloppy practices in raising seafood.
The disparity is a function of America's 100-year-old food-safety system, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration divvy up the food pyramid. The USDA regulates meat, a practice that dates to 1906, after the Upton Sinclair novel "The Jungle" had alerted Americans to unsanitary conditions in the nation's slaughterhouses. The FDA oversees the safety of most other foods, including seafood, fruits and vegetables.
Neither agency's inspection system is perfect, but the one that covers beef is more likely to catch problems than the one covering seafood, according to consumer groups and people who have worked in food safety.
The split system has resulted in a patchwork process for ensuring that meat, seafood and produce consumed in the United States is safe. In a report this year, the Government Accountability Office called federal oversight of the food safety system "fragmented" and put it on a list of "high-risk" programs.
Reports of unsafe food from China have spurred a reexamination of the system, which some say has not caught up with recent increases in food imports, which have doubled in value in the past decade. "Our overall food-safety system needs comprehensive reform. People are losing confidence," said Rep. Rosa DaLauro (D-Conn.), a frequent critic of the FDA's oversight of seafood and produce.
But FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, in a letter to employees last month after the agency was criticized during a congressional hearing, said, "Although food safety problems still occur in this country, it does not automatically follow that the FDA is asleep at the switch."
Changing the system would require upending huge bureaucracies and long-standing traditions, as well as tackling industry concerns. Congress is considering a piece of legislation that would establish a single food-safety agency and another that would, for the first time, allow the FDA to charge importers a fee.
An import safety panel appointed by President Bush is expected to issue recommendations in September, and the subject has come up in high-level talks between the United States and China.
"There is something in between FDA and USDA that is really the right answer," said Mike Taylor, a former administrator for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and a research professor of public health at George Washington University. "We have to make it a system that enforces private industry's responsibility to manage supply chain."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has advocated a single food agency as a way to create efficiency. "It could be that USDA is not the best model. Let science dictate that decision, not tradition or politics," Durbin said.
The USDA system relies on an army of 7,600 inspectors who do a what the agency calls a "carcass-by-carcass" inspection at slaughterhouses throughout the country. The agency also limits imports of meat -- beef, chicken, lamb and pork -- to 37 countries that have comparable food safety systems and are certified by the agency. Of the imported meat, about 10 percent is subject to further testing when it reaches U.S. shores, according to the USDA.
But some critics see inefficiency in the USDA system. At poultry plants, USDA inspectors watch chickens pass by on the slaughter line every two or three seconds, hardly enough time to give them serious examination, Taylor said. "You can visually examine chickens all day and not see the salmonella," he said.
The carcass-by-carcass inspection system is mandated by law and is an important part of the food safety system, said USDA spokesman Stephen Cohen. The agency also began taking samples for testing to augment the visual inspections in the 1990s, he said. "The agency has not stayed stagnant," Cohen said. "We're much more prevention-oriented."
Some question whether the USDA can serve both as overseer of the meat industry and as its cheerleader. Last year, the USDA's inspector general found that the department had overruled a recommendation by field scientists to test an animal that was suspected of having mad cow disease, a degenerative nerve disorder, because it feared that a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency's testing procedures. At the time, the USDA had said it had taken steps to better enforce its rules.
"The job of [the USDA] is to make the foods we regulate the safest they can be. A safe product markets itself," Cohen said.
But the USDA's system is more extensive than that of the FDA. The FDA has about 700 inspectors and lab technicians, less than one-tenth the workforce of USDA. Its food safety budget, about $450 million, is dwarfed by the USDA's $850 million in spending, according to Consumers Union. And it does not approve countries before they are allowed to export products to the United States. It inspects about 1 percent of the imports that fall under its purview and doesn't limit which of 300 ports and land crossings importers can use.
Part of the problem is that the FDA's responsibilities have grown faster than the agency has, said Bill Hubbard, who retired from the FDA last year after 26 years. While the number of FDA inspectors has fallen, the value of imported food under its control has risen sharply. About 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, according to a report by Public Citizen, a consumers' rights group. When the FDA was established, it oversaw the import of such staples as flour and molasses, in which problems were usually easy to spot, Hubbard said. "The FDA foods were not considered dangerous," he said.
There has been a failed attempt to strengthen the system. In 1999, the FDA faced an explosion in imports of such inexpensive ingredients as wheat gluten and ascorbic acid that kept food prices down but also raised safety concerns within the agency, Hubbard said. The agency proposed requiring firms or countries with repeated safety problems to be suspended from exporting to the United States until they came up with a safety plan, he said.
The proposal, known as "USDA light" in FDA circles, never gained traction.
"At the time, the industry felt it could end up having a negative impact on them," Hubbard said. "I thought we would at least get a hearing on it, but it didn't go so far."
FDA officials acknowledge some weaknesses and have been working on a food safety plan for months. "We would never have enough inspectors to test every product that came into the United States every day," said David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA. "Simply doubling the number of inspectors is not the answer."
And von Eschenbach, the FDA commissioner, rejects one of the most popular alternatives on Capitol Hill: creating a single food agency. The agency learned from last year's E. coli outbreak linked to tainted spinach and this year's problems with tainted pet food, he said. "There is an extraordinary uniqueness about FDA" because of its science-based approach to such issues, von Eschenbach said recently. "We need to maintain that uniqueness."
Industry officials say they favor changes that would bolster consumer confidence, but they are resistant to drastic change. Creating a single agency could be a bureaucratic nightmare that would take time away from inspections, they say.
John Connelly, president of the National Fisheries Institute, said that the FDA needs more inspectors but that there should be a balance so the system is not unnecessarily bogged down. "We think that the U.S. has a very good food-safety system and would argue with premise that the system is broken," he said.
Instead, industry insiders say, the agencies should focus on establishing a "trace-back" system that would make it easier to identify the sources of problematic foods and streamline the recall process. "Our members tend to find out about these from the news media," said Tim Hammonds, president of the Food Marketing Institute. "If they were to give retailers a heads-up, we could be much faster at getting things removed from the shelves."
By Renae MerleWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, August 4, 2007; D01
Customers dining on surf and turf at a local restaurant may find themselves feasting on steak and a handful of breaded shrimp that took wildly disparate paths through a disjointed American food-safety system.
The steak came from a cow that was examined by a government inspector before and after it was slaughtered. The shrimp most likely were not inspected. The steak probably came from an American producer. The shrimp likely came from overseas, perhaps from one of several Asian countries that have been criticized for sloppy practices in raising seafood.
The disparity is a function of America's 100-year-old food-safety system, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration divvy up the food pyramid. The USDA regulates meat, a practice that dates to 1906, after the Upton Sinclair novel "The Jungle" had alerted Americans to unsanitary conditions in the nation's slaughterhouses. The FDA oversees the safety of most other foods, including seafood, fruits and vegetables.
Neither agency's inspection system is perfect, but the one that covers beef is more likely to catch problems than the one covering seafood, according to consumer groups and people who have worked in food safety.
The split system has resulted in a patchwork process for ensuring that meat, seafood and produce consumed in the United States is safe. In a report this year, the Government Accountability Office called federal oversight of the food safety system "fragmented" and put it on a list of "high-risk" programs.
Reports of unsafe food from China have spurred a reexamination of the system, which some say has not caught up with recent increases in food imports, which have doubled in value in the past decade. "Our overall food-safety system needs comprehensive reform. People are losing confidence," said Rep. Rosa DaLauro (D-Conn.), a frequent critic of the FDA's oversight of seafood and produce.
But FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, in a letter to employees last month after the agency was criticized during a congressional hearing, said, "Although food safety problems still occur in this country, it does not automatically follow that the FDA is asleep at the switch."
Changing the system would require upending huge bureaucracies and long-standing traditions, as well as tackling industry concerns. Congress is considering a piece of legislation that would establish a single food-safety agency and another that would, for the first time, allow the FDA to charge importers a fee.
An import safety panel appointed by President Bush is expected to issue recommendations in September, and the subject has come up in high-level talks between the United States and China.
"There is something in between FDA and USDA that is really the right answer," said Mike Taylor, a former administrator for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and a research professor of public health at George Washington University. "We have to make it a system that enforces private industry's responsibility to manage supply chain."
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has advocated a single food agency as a way to create efficiency. "It could be that USDA is not the best model. Let science dictate that decision, not tradition or politics," Durbin said.
The USDA system relies on an army of 7,600 inspectors who do a what the agency calls a "carcass-by-carcass" inspection at slaughterhouses throughout the country. The agency also limits imports of meat -- beef, chicken, lamb and pork -- to 37 countries that have comparable food safety systems and are certified by the agency. Of the imported meat, about 10 percent is subject to further testing when it reaches U.S. shores, according to the USDA.
But some critics see inefficiency in the USDA system. At poultry plants, USDA inspectors watch chickens pass by on the slaughter line every two or three seconds, hardly enough time to give them serious examination, Taylor said. "You can visually examine chickens all day and not see the salmonella," he said.
The carcass-by-carcass inspection system is mandated by law and is an important part of the food safety system, said USDA spokesman Stephen Cohen. The agency also began taking samples for testing to augment the visual inspections in the 1990s, he said. "The agency has not stayed stagnant," Cohen said. "We're much more prevention-oriented."
Some question whether the USDA can serve both as overseer of the meat industry and as its cheerleader. Last year, the USDA's inspector general found that the department had overruled a recommendation by field scientists to test an animal that was suspected of having mad cow disease, a degenerative nerve disorder, because it feared that a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency's testing procedures. At the time, the USDA had said it had taken steps to better enforce its rules.
"The job of [the USDA] is to make the foods we regulate the safest they can be. A safe product markets itself," Cohen said.
But the USDA's system is more extensive than that of the FDA. The FDA has about 700 inspectors and lab technicians, less than one-tenth the workforce of USDA. Its food safety budget, about $450 million, is dwarfed by the USDA's $850 million in spending, according to Consumers Union. And it does not approve countries before they are allowed to export products to the United States. It inspects about 1 percent of the imports that fall under its purview and doesn't limit which of 300 ports and land crossings importers can use.
Part of the problem is that the FDA's responsibilities have grown faster than the agency has, said Bill Hubbard, who retired from the FDA last year after 26 years. While the number of FDA inspectors has fallen, the value of imported food under its control has risen sharply. About 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, according to a report by Public Citizen, a consumers' rights group. When the FDA was established, it oversaw the import of such staples as flour and molasses, in which problems were usually easy to spot, Hubbard said. "The FDA foods were not considered dangerous," he said.
There has been a failed attempt to strengthen the system. In 1999, the FDA faced an explosion in imports of such inexpensive ingredients as wheat gluten and ascorbic acid that kept food prices down but also raised safety concerns within the agency, Hubbard said. The agency proposed requiring firms or countries with repeated safety problems to be suspended from exporting to the United States until they came up with a safety plan, he said.
The proposal, known as "USDA light" in FDA circles, never gained traction.
"At the time, the industry felt it could end up having a negative impact on them," Hubbard said. "I thought we would at least get a hearing on it, but it didn't go so far."
FDA officials acknowledge some weaknesses and have been working on a food safety plan for months. "We would never have enough inspectors to test every product that came into the United States every day," said David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA. "Simply doubling the number of inspectors is not the answer."
And von Eschenbach, the FDA commissioner, rejects one of the most popular alternatives on Capitol Hill: creating a single food agency. The agency learned from last year's E. coli outbreak linked to tainted spinach and this year's problems with tainted pet food, he said. "There is an extraordinary uniqueness about FDA" because of its science-based approach to such issues, von Eschenbach said recently. "We need to maintain that uniqueness."
Industry officials say they favor changes that would bolster consumer confidence, but they are resistant to drastic change. Creating a single agency could be a bureaucratic nightmare that would take time away from inspections, they say.
John Connelly, president of the National Fisheries Institute, said that the FDA needs more inspectors but that there should be a balance so the system is not unnecessarily bogged down. "We think that the U.S. has a very good food-safety system and would argue with premise that the system is broken," he said.
Instead, industry insiders say, the agencies should focus on establishing a "trace-back" system that would make it easier to identify the sources of problematic foods and streamline the recall process. "Our members tend to find out about these from the news media," said Tim Hammonds, president of the Food Marketing Institute. "If they were to give retailers a heads-up, we could be much faster at getting things removed from the shelves."
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
House Passes Massive Farm Bill
Tax Issue Prompts GOP Opposition
By Dan Morgan
Special to the Washington Post, Saturday, July 28, 2007; A01
The House yesterday passed a far-reaching new farm bill that preserves the existing system of subsidies for commercial farmers and adds billions of dollars for conservation, nutrition and new agricultural sectors.
Passage of the 741-page bill by a vote of 231 to 191, after partisan battling unusual for farm legislation, was a major achievement for the new Democratic leadership.
With most Republicans opposing the five-year bill over a tax issue, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hammered out a compromise that held together a shaky majority of Democratic farm-state lawmakers committed to the entrenched farm subsidy system, together with urban liberals and reformers seeking sweeping changes.
"This signals change and a new direction," said Pelosi, in calling for the party to stick together on the contentious vote.
The bill, which has a price tag of almost $286 billion, boosts spending on preservation of grasslands and wildlife habitat, and mandates a major study of the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a first step to restoring the bay by reducing agricultural and other wastes.
The measure updates the food stamp program, indexing benefits to inflation, increasing the minimum benefit and raising the standard deduction. Youth obesity is addressed by a program to introduce healthful snacks in schools, and more money is authorized for famine relief abroad.
In an important victory for consumer organizations, imported meat, including hamburger made from multiple animals, will be labeled by its country of origin starting in October 2008.
Pelosi also cited the bill's emphasis on credits and loan guarantees for new forms of biofuel produced from grasses and biomass. "Future farm bills will never look the same," she said.
Nonetheless, major hurdles remain before the massive legislation becomes law.
The White House, citing insufficient reforms of the subsidy system, has threatened a veto. Only 19 House Republicans supported the bill's passage because of the last-minute addition of a tax provision needed to offset the new Democratic-backed spending on food stamps and nutrition.
Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (Va.), the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, accused Democrats of "poisoning the well" by adding the tax provision to what had been a bipartisan farm bill. Business lobbies, including the National Association of Manufacturers, warned that the action could discourage foreign investment and cost jobs.
Democrats said the provision merely closes a loophole that allows a limited number of U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies to avoid taxes. Aides said it is aimed at companies headquartered in tax havens such as Bermuda, with which the United States has no tax treaty. Subsidiaries avoid a tax bite by funneling earnings through European countries that have reciprocal tax-reduction arrangements with the United States.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the provision levels the playing field for "small American companies that are paying their share of taxes."
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) charged that Republicans had fixed on the tax issue as an excuse for killing the bill. "They don't want to see success," he said.
But Democrats acknowledged that the entanglement of business issues in the farm bill could cause problems down the line.
Last week, a coalition of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, urged Congress to reject a farm bill that did not make major cuts in agricultural subsidies, so as to expedite a global trade deal benefiting manufacturers.
Developing countries are demanding a reduction in U.S. and European agricultural protections before opening their markets to American manufactured items.
Peterson responded hotly yesterday, saying farm-state lawmakers were in no mood to appease big business. Previous trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have been tailored mainly to help manufacturers and have not been good for U.S. agriculture, he said.
In defiance of international trade rules that discourage price supports that lead to overproduction, the bill raises price guarantees for wheat, soybeans and sugar.
Pressures on Congress could increase after a ruling this week by the World Trade Organization in Geneva. A WTO panel held that the U.S. cotton industry has not adequately responded to a 2005 ruling that certain subsidies violate international trade agreements. The panel said Brazil has the right to retaliate.
The centerpiece of the bill is a web of price guarantees and direct payments going mainly to corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybean growers in a few Midwestern and Southern states. The cost to taxpayers will be about $7.5 billion a year.
Farm organizations pulled out all the stops to defend this system, hiring lobbyists, setting up blogs attacking critics and buttonholing farm-state lawmakers. Among the lobbyists was the former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Larry Combest (R-Tex.).
The House bill includes a new concession for cane and beet sugar producers, ensuring that they will not have to cut back on their planting when unrestricted Mexican sugar imports start next year under NAFTA. The Department of Agriculture will be required to buy up volumes of sugar comparable to the imports and sell it to ethanol plants for a reduced price, at a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $1.4 billion.
In the last-minute jostling, a provision to make leaf tobacco farmers eligible for funds to promote their product abroad was stripped to avoid a floor battle with anti-tobacco forces. Rep. Bobby R. Etheridge (D-N.C.) had argued that it was a "matter of patent fairness" to tobacco growers.
Farm-state lawmakers also united yesterday to defeat an amendment by Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) aimed at preventing farmers from reaping unintended windfalls from a key subsidy, the loan deficiency payment. In 2005, the subsidy cost nearly $5 billion.
Late Thursday, an amendment by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) to reform the subsidy system garnered only 117 votes. Kind was backed by consumer, environmental, religious and anti-hunger groups.
The defection of Republicans this week forced Democratic leaders to scramble to strike deals with urban liberals to assure the final majority.
In the maneuvering, the Congressional Black Caucus came away with at least $100 million to help the USDA settle discrimination lawsuits filed by minority farmers. But the dealmaking forced a hasty search for offsetting funds.
To help pay for mandatory new spending on food for children abroad, Democratic leaders imposed a new "conservation fee" on some offshore oil and gas leases. It would recoup billions of dollars in royalties lost because of faulty federal leases with companies operating in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Morgan, a former Post reporter who specialized in agriculture, is a contract writer of the newspaper and a fellow with the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan public policy institution.
By Dan Morgan
Special to the Washington Post, Saturday, July 28, 2007; A01
The House yesterday passed a far-reaching new farm bill that preserves the existing system of subsidies for commercial farmers and adds billions of dollars for conservation, nutrition and new agricultural sectors.
Passage of the 741-page bill by a vote of 231 to 191, after partisan battling unusual for farm legislation, was a major achievement for the new Democratic leadership.
With most Republicans opposing the five-year bill over a tax issue, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hammered out a compromise that held together a shaky majority of Democratic farm-state lawmakers committed to the entrenched farm subsidy system, together with urban liberals and reformers seeking sweeping changes.
"This signals change and a new direction," said Pelosi, in calling for the party to stick together on the contentious vote.
The bill, which has a price tag of almost $286 billion, boosts spending on preservation of grasslands and wildlife habitat, and mandates a major study of the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a first step to restoring the bay by reducing agricultural and other wastes.
The measure updates the food stamp program, indexing benefits to inflation, increasing the minimum benefit and raising the standard deduction. Youth obesity is addressed by a program to introduce healthful snacks in schools, and more money is authorized for famine relief abroad.
In an important victory for consumer organizations, imported meat, including hamburger made from multiple animals, will be labeled by its country of origin starting in October 2008.
Pelosi also cited the bill's emphasis on credits and loan guarantees for new forms of biofuel produced from grasses and biomass. "Future farm bills will never look the same," she said.
Nonetheless, major hurdles remain before the massive legislation becomes law.
The White House, citing insufficient reforms of the subsidy system, has threatened a veto. Only 19 House Republicans supported the bill's passage because of the last-minute addition of a tax provision needed to offset the new Democratic-backed spending on food stamps and nutrition.
Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (Va.), the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, accused Democrats of "poisoning the well" by adding the tax provision to what had been a bipartisan farm bill. Business lobbies, including the National Association of Manufacturers, warned that the action could discourage foreign investment and cost jobs.
Democrats said the provision merely closes a loophole that allows a limited number of U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies to avoid taxes. Aides said it is aimed at companies headquartered in tax havens such as Bermuda, with which the United States has no tax treaty. Subsidiaries avoid a tax bite by funneling earnings through European countries that have reciprocal tax-reduction arrangements with the United States.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the provision levels the playing field for "small American companies that are paying their share of taxes."
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.) charged that Republicans had fixed on the tax issue as an excuse for killing the bill. "They don't want to see success," he said.
But Democrats acknowledged that the entanglement of business issues in the farm bill could cause problems down the line.
Last week, a coalition of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, urged Congress to reject a farm bill that did not make major cuts in agricultural subsidies, so as to expedite a global trade deal benefiting manufacturers.
Developing countries are demanding a reduction in U.S. and European agricultural protections before opening their markets to American manufactured items.
Peterson responded hotly yesterday, saying farm-state lawmakers were in no mood to appease big business. Previous trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have been tailored mainly to help manufacturers and have not been good for U.S. agriculture, he said.
In defiance of international trade rules that discourage price supports that lead to overproduction, the bill raises price guarantees for wheat, soybeans and sugar.
Pressures on Congress could increase after a ruling this week by the World Trade Organization in Geneva. A WTO panel held that the U.S. cotton industry has not adequately responded to a 2005 ruling that certain subsidies violate international trade agreements. The panel said Brazil has the right to retaliate.
The centerpiece of the bill is a web of price guarantees and direct payments going mainly to corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybean growers in a few Midwestern and Southern states. The cost to taxpayers will be about $7.5 billion a year.
Farm organizations pulled out all the stops to defend this system, hiring lobbyists, setting up blogs attacking critics and buttonholing farm-state lawmakers. Among the lobbyists was the former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Larry Combest (R-Tex.).
The House bill includes a new concession for cane and beet sugar producers, ensuring that they will not have to cut back on their planting when unrestricted Mexican sugar imports start next year under NAFTA. The Department of Agriculture will be required to buy up volumes of sugar comparable to the imports and sell it to ethanol plants for a reduced price, at a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $1.4 billion.
In the last-minute jostling, a provision to make leaf tobacco farmers eligible for funds to promote their product abroad was stripped to avoid a floor battle with anti-tobacco forces. Rep. Bobby R. Etheridge (D-N.C.) had argued that it was a "matter of patent fairness" to tobacco growers.
Farm-state lawmakers also united yesterday to defeat an amendment by Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) aimed at preventing farmers from reaping unintended windfalls from a key subsidy, the loan deficiency payment. In 2005, the subsidy cost nearly $5 billion.
Late Thursday, an amendment by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) to reform the subsidy system garnered only 117 votes. Kind was backed by consumer, environmental, religious and anti-hunger groups.
The defection of Republicans this week forced Democratic leaders to scramble to strike deals with urban liberals to assure the final majority.
In the maneuvering, the Congressional Black Caucus came away with at least $100 million to help the USDA settle discrimination lawsuits filed by minority farmers. But the dealmaking forced a hasty search for offsetting funds.
To help pay for mandatory new spending on food for children abroad, Democratic leaders imposed a new "conservation fee" on some offshore oil and gas leases. It would recoup billions of dollars in royalties lost because of faulty federal leases with companies operating in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Morgan, a former Post reporter who specialized in agriculture, is a contract writer of the newspaper and a fellow with the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan public policy institution.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Green thumbs reap savings from their front yards
By ELLEN SIMON, Associated Press, July 29, 2007
NEW YORK — A dedicated group of vegetable gardeners is ripping out their front lawns and planting dinner.
Their front-yard kitchen gardens, with everything from vegetables to herbs and salad greens, are a source of food, a topic of conversation with the neighbors and a political statement.
It's also a way for many to save money on grocery bills.
Nat Zappia, 32, a graduate student, turned the front yard of the home he and his wife rent in Santa Monica, Calif., into a vegetable garden, with his landlord's permission.
He estimates it supplies 35 to 40 percent of the food they eat.
The gardens don't cost much to plant.
Zappia estimates he spent about $100 on the garden and says he and his wife save about $200 to $300 a year on their food costs.
Bob Waldrop of Oklahoma City said his garden's organic fruit allowed him to eat in a way he could never afford if he bought everything at the grocery store.
"It's like money growing in your yard," he said.
He planted his corner lot almost entirely with fruit trees, berry bushes and vegetables.
Leigh Anders, who tore up about half her front lawn four years ago and planted vegetables, said her garden sends a message that anyone can grow at least some of their food.
That task should shift from agribusiness back to individuals and their communities, said Anders, of Viroqua, Wisc.
"This movement can start with simply one tomato plant growing in one's yard," she said.
Front-yard vegetable gardens are a growing outlet for people whose backyards are too shady or too small, as well as those who want to spread their beliefs one tomato at a time.
The topic has gotten more buzz nationally as bloggers chronicle their experiences and environmentalists have scrutinized the effects of chemicals and water used to grow lawns.
A book called Food Not Lawns, published last year, inspired several offshoot groups.
Other gardeners were inspired by books such as Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture and The Year I Ate My Yard.
Fritz Haeg, an artist and architect, has done yards in Kansas, California and New Jersey as part of a project called "Edible Estates." Haeg, who is working on a book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, says he's been overwhelmed by the response.
Some neighbors are less than thrilled. Some municipal codes limit the percentage of a yard that can be planted with anything other than trees and grass.
"Especially in the first three years, I got a lot of code violations," said Waldrop of Oklahoma City.
"Now that the plantings have matured, it's pretty," he said. "It wasn't so pretty the first couple years."
Shannon McBride, 47, of Huntsville, Alabama, kept grass borders around her front-yard vegetable beds. "We promised our neighbor we wouldn't grow corn, because that looks kind of tacky," she said.
The neighbor also thought tomatoes looked "untidy," so McBride and her husband are growing bell peppers, carrots, chives, herbs, two kinds of beans, beets, okra, lettuce and cucumbers.
"I'm always asked, 'What will it look like in the winter?'" said Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer who has been writing about edible landscaping for 25 years. "If you design it well and it has an herb garden, it will look fine. One of the dumbest things I see is dead lawns in the winter. They're brown for six months of the year. How beautiful is that?"
NEW YORK — A dedicated group of vegetable gardeners is ripping out their front lawns and planting dinner.
Their front-yard kitchen gardens, with everything from vegetables to herbs and salad greens, are a source of food, a topic of conversation with the neighbors and a political statement.
It's also a way for many to save money on grocery bills.
Nat Zappia, 32, a graduate student, turned the front yard of the home he and his wife rent in Santa Monica, Calif., into a vegetable garden, with his landlord's permission.
He estimates it supplies 35 to 40 percent of the food they eat.
The gardens don't cost much to plant.
Zappia estimates he spent about $100 on the garden and says he and his wife save about $200 to $300 a year on their food costs.
Bob Waldrop of Oklahoma City said his garden's organic fruit allowed him to eat in a way he could never afford if he bought everything at the grocery store.
"It's like money growing in your yard," he said.
He planted his corner lot almost entirely with fruit trees, berry bushes and vegetables.
Leigh Anders, who tore up about half her front lawn four years ago and planted vegetables, said her garden sends a message that anyone can grow at least some of their food.
That task should shift from agribusiness back to individuals and their communities, said Anders, of Viroqua, Wisc.
"This movement can start with simply one tomato plant growing in one's yard," she said.
Front-yard vegetable gardens are a growing outlet for people whose backyards are too shady or too small, as well as those who want to spread their beliefs one tomato at a time.
The topic has gotten more buzz nationally as bloggers chronicle their experiences and environmentalists have scrutinized the effects of chemicals and water used to grow lawns.
A book called Food Not Lawns, published last year, inspired several offshoot groups.
Other gardeners were inspired by books such as Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture and The Year I Ate My Yard.
Fritz Haeg, an artist and architect, has done yards in Kansas, California and New Jersey as part of a project called "Edible Estates." Haeg, who is working on a book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, says he's been overwhelmed by the response.
Some neighbors are less than thrilled. Some municipal codes limit the percentage of a yard that can be planted with anything other than trees and grass.
"Especially in the first three years, I got a lot of code violations," said Waldrop of Oklahoma City.
"Now that the plantings have matured, it's pretty," he said. "It wasn't so pretty the first couple years."
Shannon McBride, 47, of Huntsville, Alabama, kept grass borders around her front-yard vegetable beds. "We promised our neighbor we wouldn't grow corn, because that looks kind of tacky," she said.
The neighbor also thought tomatoes looked "untidy," so McBride and her husband are growing bell peppers, carrots, chives, herbs, two kinds of beans, beets, okra, lettuce and cucumbers.
"I'm always asked, 'What will it look like in the winter?'" said Rosalind Creasy, a landscape designer who has been writing about edible landscaping for 25 years. "If you design it well and it has an herb garden, it will look fine. One of the dumbest things I see is dead lawns in the winter. They're brown for six months of the year. How beautiful is that?"
Without U.S. Rules, Biotech Food Lacks Investors
New York Times, July 30, 2007
By ANDREW POLLACK
This little piggy’s manure causes less pollution. This little piggy produces extra milk for her babies. And this little piggy makes fatty acids normally found in fish, so that eating its bacon might actually be good for you.
The three pigs, all now living in experimental farmyards, are among the genetically engineered animals whose meat might one day turn up on American dinner plates. Bioengineers have also developed salmon that grow to market weight in about half the typical time, disease-resistant cows and catfish needing fewer antibiotics, and goats whose milk might help ward off infections in children who drink it.
Only now, though, do federal officials seem to be getting serious about drafting rules that would determine whether and how such meat, milk and filets can safely enter the nation’s food supply.
Some scientists and biotechnology executives say that by having the Food and Drug Administration spell out the rules of the game, big investors would finally be willing to put up money to create a market in so-called transgenic livestock.
“Right now, it’s very hard to get any corporate investment,” said James D. Murray, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who developed the goats with the infection-fighting milk. “What studies do you need to do? What are they looking for?” he said, referring to government regulators. “That stuff’s not there.”
But some experts caution that even if the F.D.A. clears the regulatory path in coming months, investors and agribusiness companies might still shy away. Many fear that consumers would shun foods from transgenic animals, sometimes referred to as genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s.
“The companies we have spoken to have gone organic, and they are very concerned, at least up to the present time, of having G.M.O. associated with their name,” said Cecil W. Forsberg, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who helped developed the “Enviropig” with the cleaner manure. Smithfield Foods, for one, the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor, says it is doing no research on genetically engineered animals.
Critics say changing the genes of animals could lead to potentially harmful changes in the composition of milk or meat, like the introduction of a protein that could cause allergic reactions. They say there could also be risks to the environment if, for example, extra-large salmon were to escape into oceans and out-compete wild salmon for food or mates. Some also say that some of the processes used to create transgenic livestock can harm the animals themselves.
The federal guidelines would come after more than 15 years of talks and false starts at the F.D.A., a delay irking not only developers of the transgenic animals but also critics of biotechnology.
“The fact that the agency has sat there for years staring this problem in the face and really hasn’t come up with a clear way to regulate this is abdicating its responsibilities,” said Joseph Mendelson, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group.
Even now, the F.D.A. will not say when the rules will be ready.
“We want to get it out, but we also want to get it right,” said Julie Zawisza, a spokeswoman for the agency, which declined to make any other officials available for comment.
Some industry executives and former and current government officials say one reason for the delay was that some government officials, in part because of a preference for fewer regulations, wanted less stringent rules than the F.D.A. is considering.
Meanwhile, the biotechnology industry is actually pushing for the tougher standards.
“Our overarching goal is to have public confidence in our products,” said Barbara Glenn, the managing director for animal issues at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group. “We won’t have that unless we have a very strong review process.”
The F.D.A. is turning to transgenic animals after having tentatively declared in December that milk and meat from livestock that is cloned — but not otherwise genetically manipulated — was safe for people to eat.
The F.D.A. considers clones to be less biologically radical than genetically engineered animals — which instead of being mere replicas of naturally occurring animals are given foreign DNA, usually from another species.
Larisa Rudenko, a senior biotechnology adviser in the F.D.A.’s veterinary drug division, said in a May presentation at the biotechnology industry’s annual convention that each new type of genetically engineered animal would require approval for use in the food supply. That will be done, she said, under the umbrella of existing rules for drugs used in treating animal diseases.
While the implanted gene is somewhat like a drug, the existing rules would have to be stretched to fit.
But industry executives and some former agency officials said it was unlikely that Congress would enact totally new laws for transgenic animals. And using the drug laws, they say, would provide tighter control than an alternative approach of using the rules governing food additives. Agency officials have said that the veterinary drug rules would be used, and they have already been overseeing some experimental work on that basis. But they continued to debate the issue, and the policy has never been made official.
The regulatory guidelines would indicate how the drug rules would be interpreted for transgenic animals, and what types of data would be needed to prove safety and efficacy. But there are open questions about how the drug rules would actually translate. While a chemical drug must be shown to be consistent and stable, for instance, it is unclear how that standard would apply to a gene passed from generation to generation. Some critics say that while the drug rules do provide fairly strict regulation of food safety, there are drawbacks to adapting that approach. Because applications for approval of drugs are confidential, for instance, there would be no opportunity for public comment before the agency acted.
“In order to create confidence in a new technology, you really don’t want behind-closed-door proceedings,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Another worry is that the F.D.A. might not have enough expertise or authority to conduct a vigorous review of the environmental impact of transgenic animals. The F.D.A. has dismissed this concern, however, saying it has sufficient expertise and can consult with other agencies.
The biotechnology regulatory branch of the Department of Agriculture created an animal division last December to figure out what its role should be.
Genetically engineered animals are often created by injecting the gene of interest into a single-cell embryo. A more recent technique that is more efficient is to put the gene into a skin cell and create an embryo from that cell by cloning.
In both cases, the embryo with the foreign gene is then implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother. After some transgenic animals are born, additional ones can be made by conventional breeding, because the foreign gene generally will be passed on to some of the offspring, as would any other gene.
The fast-growing salmon is the transgenic animal that has been swimming upstream the longest at the F.D.A. Its developer, Aqua Bounty Technologies of Waltham, Mass., has been working to win agency approval for about 10 years. Aqua Bounty’s fish are Atlantic salmon that have been given a growth-hormone gene from the Chinook salmon. They have also been equipped with a genetic on-switch from a fish called the ocean pout, a distant cousin of the salmon.
Normally, salmon produce growth hormone only in warmer months, but the pout gene’s on-switch keeps the hormone flowing year round. That enables the Aqua Bounty fish to grow faster, reaching their market weight in about 18 months instead of 30.
Elliot Entis, Aqua Bounty’s chief executive, said the company had already given the F.D.A. studies showing that the fish were healthy and that the implanted gene remained stable over generations.
He said the company also had tests done to show that its fish contained the same level of fats, proteins and other nutrients as other farmed salmon and would not set off unexpected allergic reactions in people who eat them. The fish also taste the same as other farmed Atlantic salmon,
Mr. Entis said.
“Nobody has ever analyzed salmon as closely as we have had done,” he said. But the F.D.A. is asking for more data on safety and potential environmental effects on wild salmon.
Industry executives say the Enviropigs would be the next candidate for F.D.A. approval. The pigs contain a bacterial gene that allows them to produce an enzyme that helps them more fully digest a vital nutrient, phosphorus, in their feed. That means less phosphorus in the manure, which in turn could mean less phosphorus running off into lakes and oceans, where it can cause algal blooms and fish kills.
MaRS Landing, a technology promoting organization in Ontario, is trying to find a corporate partner for the pig, said John Kelly, the agency’s executive director.
Less far along in the approval pipeline are pigs that contain a gene from the roundworm allowing them to produce omega-3 fatty acids, a nutrient normally found in fish that is good for the heart. That, in theory, could make eating pork or bacon healthier, although that has yet to be tested.
Jing X. Kang, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who helped direct the project, said the researchers were looking for corporate backers while also trying to raise the level of omega-3 in the meat.
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, said regulations might not assuage consumers, many of whom object to the genetic engineering of animals on humane or ethical grounds, more than on safety concerns.
“The fact that the F.D.A. has a powerful regulatory process for reviewing genetically engineered animals, far greater than they apply to genetically engineered crops, may not make any difference at all,” Ms. Foreman said. “Because that’s not what it’s all about.”
By ANDREW POLLACK
This little piggy’s manure causes less pollution. This little piggy produces extra milk for her babies. And this little piggy makes fatty acids normally found in fish, so that eating its bacon might actually be good for you.
The three pigs, all now living in experimental farmyards, are among the genetically engineered animals whose meat might one day turn up on American dinner plates. Bioengineers have also developed salmon that grow to market weight in about half the typical time, disease-resistant cows and catfish needing fewer antibiotics, and goats whose milk might help ward off infections in children who drink it.
Only now, though, do federal officials seem to be getting serious about drafting rules that would determine whether and how such meat, milk and filets can safely enter the nation’s food supply.
Some scientists and biotechnology executives say that by having the Food and Drug Administration spell out the rules of the game, big investors would finally be willing to put up money to create a market in so-called transgenic livestock.
“Right now, it’s very hard to get any corporate investment,” said James D. Murray, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who developed the goats with the infection-fighting milk. “What studies do you need to do? What are they looking for?” he said, referring to government regulators. “That stuff’s not there.”
But some experts caution that even if the F.D.A. clears the regulatory path in coming months, investors and agribusiness companies might still shy away. Many fear that consumers would shun foods from transgenic animals, sometimes referred to as genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s.
“The companies we have spoken to have gone organic, and they are very concerned, at least up to the present time, of having G.M.O. associated with their name,” said Cecil W. Forsberg, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, who helped developed the “Enviropig” with the cleaner manure. Smithfield Foods, for one, the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor, says it is doing no research on genetically engineered animals.
Critics say changing the genes of animals could lead to potentially harmful changes in the composition of milk or meat, like the introduction of a protein that could cause allergic reactions. They say there could also be risks to the environment if, for example, extra-large salmon were to escape into oceans and out-compete wild salmon for food or mates. Some also say that some of the processes used to create transgenic livestock can harm the animals themselves.
The federal guidelines would come after more than 15 years of talks and false starts at the F.D.A., a delay irking not only developers of the transgenic animals but also critics of biotechnology.
“The fact that the agency has sat there for years staring this problem in the face and really hasn’t come up with a clear way to regulate this is abdicating its responsibilities,” said Joseph Mendelson, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group.
Even now, the F.D.A. will not say when the rules will be ready.
“We want to get it out, but we also want to get it right,” said Julie Zawisza, a spokeswoman for the agency, which declined to make any other officials available for comment.
Some industry executives and former and current government officials say one reason for the delay was that some government officials, in part because of a preference for fewer regulations, wanted less stringent rules than the F.D.A. is considering.
Meanwhile, the biotechnology industry is actually pushing for the tougher standards.
“Our overarching goal is to have public confidence in our products,” said Barbara Glenn, the managing director for animal issues at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group. “We won’t have that unless we have a very strong review process.”
The F.D.A. is turning to transgenic animals after having tentatively declared in December that milk and meat from livestock that is cloned — but not otherwise genetically manipulated — was safe for people to eat.
The F.D.A. considers clones to be less biologically radical than genetically engineered animals — which instead of being mere replicas of naturally occurring animals are given foreign DNA, usually from another species.
Larisa Rudenko, a senior biotechnology adviser in the F.D.A.’s veterinary drug division, said in a May presentation at the biotechnology industry’s annual convention that each new type of genetically engineered animal would require approval for use in the food supply. That will be done, she said, under the umbrella of existing rules for drugs used in treating animal diseases.
While the implanted gene is somewhat like a drug, the existing rules would have to be stretched to fit.
But industry executives and some former agency officials said it was unlikely that Congress would enact totally new laws for transgenic animals. And using the drug laws, they say, would provide tighter control than an alternative approach of using the rules governing food additives. Agency officials have said that the veterinary drug rules would be used, and they have already been overseeing some experimental work on that basis. But they continued to debate the issue, and the policy has never been made official.
The regulatory guidelines would indicate how the drug rules would be interpreted for transgenic animals, and what types of data would be needed to prove safety and efficacy. But there are open questions about how the drug rules would actually translate. While a chemical drug must be shown to be consistent and stable, for instance, it is unclear how that standard would apply to a gene passed from generation to generation. Some critics say that while the drug rules do provide fairly strict regulation of food safety, there are drawbacks to adapting that approach. Because applications for approval of drugs are confidential, for instance, there would be no opportunity for public comment before the agency acted.
“In order to create confidence in a new technology, you really don’t want behind-closed-door proceedings,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Another worry is that the F.D.A. might not have enough expertise or authority to conduct a vigorous review of the environmental impact of transgenic animals. The F.D.A. has dismissed this concern, however, saying it has sufficient expertise and can consult with other agencies.
The biotechnology regulatory branch of the Department of Agriculture created an animal division last December to figure out what its role should be.
Genetically engineered animals are often created by injecting the gene of interest into a single-cell embryo. A more recent technique that is more efficient is to put the gene into a skin cell and create an embryo from that cell by cloning.
In both cases, the embryo with the foreign gene is then implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother. After some transgenic animals are born, additional ones can be made by conventional breeding, because the foreign gene generally will be passed on to some of the offspring, as would any other gene.
The fast-growing salmon is the transgenic animal that has been swimming upstream the longest at the F.D.A. Its developer, Aqua Bounty Technologies of Waltham, Mass., has been working to win agency approval for about 10 years. Aqua Bounty’s fish are Atlantic salmon that have been given a growth-hormone gene from the Chinook salmon. They have also been equipped with a genetic on-switch from a fish called the ocean pout, a distant cousin of the salmon.
Normally, salmon produce growth hormone only in warmer months, but the pout gene’s on-switch keeps the hormone flowing year round. That enables the Aqua Bounty fish to grow faster, reaching their market weight in about 18 months instead of 30.
Elliot Entis, Aqua Bounty’s chief executive, said the company had already given the F.D.A. studies showing that the fish were healthy and that the implanted gene remained stable over generations.
He said the company also had tests done to show that its fish contained the same level of fats, proteins and other nutrients as other farmed salmon and would not set off unexpected allergic reactions in people who eat them. The fish also taste the same as other farmed Atlantic salmon,
Mr. Entis said.
“Nobody has ever analyzed salmon as closely as we have had done,” he said. But the F.D.A. is asking for more data on safety and potential environmental effects on wild salmon.
Industry executives say the Enviropigs would be the next candidate for F.D.A. approval. The pigs contain a bacterial gene that allows them to produce an enzyme that helps them more fully digest a vital nutrient, phosphorus, in their feed. That means less phosphorus in the manure, which in turn could mean less phosphorus running off into lakes and oceans, where it can cause algal blooms and fish kills.
MaRS Landing, a technology promoting organization in Ontario, is trying to find a corporate partner for the pig, said John Kelly, the agency’s executive director.
Less far along in the approval pipeline are pigs that contain a gene from the roundworm allowing them to produce omega-3 fatty acids, a nutrient normally found in fish that is good for the heart. That, in theory, could make eating pork or bacon healthier, although that has yet to be tested.
Jing X. Kang, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who helped direct the project, said the researchers were looking for corporate backers while also trying to raise the level of omega-3 in the meat.
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, said regulations might not assuage consumers, many of whom object to the genetic engineering of animals on humane or ethical grounds, more than on safety concerns.
“The fact that the F.D.A. has a powerful regulatory process for reviewing genetically engineered animals, far greater than they apply to genetically engineered crops, may not make any difference at all,” Ms. Foreman said. “Because that’s not what it’s all about.”
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