Budget talks fail: What's happening with the farm bill?

By Marion Nestle

As of this morning, it looks like the Supercommittee process has failed. This committee was supposed to recommend specific budget cuts by tonight. If it fails, automatic budget cuts, half to the military, go into effect in January 2013—after the 2012 election.

What does this mean for the farm bill?

The chairs and vice-chairs of the House and Senate agriculture committees have been meeting in secret—from the rest of the agriculture committee members as well as from the public—to recommend how to cut $23 billion from agriculture appropriations.

On Friday, the Environmental Working Group obtained a leaked copy of the secret recommendations.

These recommendations, rumored to be not quite final, were to go to the Supercommittee today. Now what?

I’m guessing the farm bill is up for grabs and will now have to go through the usual legislative processes. This could be good or bad, depending on the politics.

In the meantime, I counted 97 recommendations in the secret committee’s report. A few of the most interesting:

Commodities

•Eliminate direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, average crop revenue election, and supplemental revenue assistance payments to create $15 billion in savings.
•Expand crop insurance for “underserved” crops, including fruits and vegetables.
•Create a special program to protect cotton producers.
•Protect commodity producers against both price and yield losses.
•Restrict benefits to farmers who make less than $950,000 per year (adjusted gross), or twice that for couples.
•Set payment limits of $105,000 per producer, or twice that for couples.
•Do something complicated with dairy by replacing two programs with two others.

Conservation

•Cut the budget by an unspecified amount (continuing a long tradition of cutting conservation).
•Reduce reserve acres from 32 million to 25 million over 10 years.

Nutrition

•Cut SNAP (food stamp) benefits by about $4 billion a year, by eliminating automatic enrollment for anyone who gets energy benefits.
•Require retailers to stock more fruits and vegetables.
•Give USDA the authority to require documented need for states to allow SNAP benefits to be used in restaurants by the disabled and homeless.
•Give USDA $5 million per year to prevent trafficking of benefits.
•Require USDA to set rules to prevent lottery winners from getting SNAP benefits (what is this about?).
•Grant $10 million to encourage whole grains in school meals.
•Grant $20 million a year for incentives for SNAP recipients to buy fruits and vegetables.

“Specialty” crops (translation: fruits and vegetables)

•Fund promotion program for farmers’ markets at $20 million a year
•Give USDA $5 million to collect data on organics
•Provide $61 million a year for programs to prevent agricultural pests
•Give $70 million a year for grants to states to promote specialty crops
•Allot $15 million a year to run the National Organic Program
•Provide $40 million a year for specialty crop research.
•Provide up to 75% of the cost of organic certification (maximum $750).

As in the past, SNAP takes up about 80% of the total farm bill budget, with the remainder going mainly to commodity support and insurance programs.

As always, large agricultural producers get most of the support money—$ billions—but this plan throws a handful of small benefits ($ millions) to help fruit-and-vegetable growers.

How any of this might work in practice is unclear, as is what happens next. A whole new opportunity for lobbying, perhaps. Stay tuned.

Author Credit Line: Marion Nestle is the author of a popular blog at www.foodpolitics.com, and two books, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002, paperback 2003) and Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (2003, paperback 2004), both from University of California Press.

"An Apple a Day:new healthy eating guidelines from the USDA...and Harvard's response"

By: Allie Gallant, New Media Editor

The idea behind the food guide is simple; to provide a guideline to inform national policy and budgetary considerations related to nutrition, and help consumers make healthy choices.

It is not simple, however, to boil complex science down to a simple graphical representation, one that will be widely understood and easy to apply in the marketplace. The original USDA food pyramid had its share of controversies, and with the release of the newly re-vamped USDA MyPlate, a response from Harvard Medical School in the form of their own ‘Healthy Eating Plate’ proves that differences of opinion still exist.

The original USDA food pyramid was developed in the early 1990s, when predominant opinion held that low-fat diets were the way to go. The work of Ancel Keys and others implied a link between heart disease and high saturated fat intake, and this discovery was largely extended to include all types of fat, and reflected in the pyramid with fats at the top and instructions to “use sparingly”.

Industry adapted rapidly, providing consumers with a plethora of low-fat products that were in-line with nutrition policy at the time. As saturated fat was public enemy number one, processors began using partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil as a substitute for animal fat (unfortunately trans fat – which has a big impact on blood cholesterol levels – was a dangerous side effect of this change).

While low-fat is still a mainstay of grocery store shelves, awareness of healthy fats and problems related to high sodium intake and preservatives are leading to the development and marketing of ‘real’ products. Often this translates to minimally-processed, low-sodium products and increased fat content coming from healthy sources like fish and nuts. The new USDA My Plate graphic no longer targets fat as a key nutrient to avoid, but Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate goes even further to include fat as its own group and specify the difference between healthy and unhealthy fats.

Predominant vegetable portions and less carbohydrates are a feature of both the MyPlate and Healthy Eating Plate graphics, however the latter highlights the fact that not all types of protein are created equal (e.g. limiting red meat) and dairy products should be limited to 1-2 servings a day (as opposed to the MyPlate graphic which marks dairy as its own group).

The MyPlate and Healthy Eating Plate are aligned in many regards, the main difference being the level of detail. Harvard Health Publications states that, "a hamburger or hot dog on a white bread bun with French fries and a milk shake could be part of a MyPlate meal - even though high red and processed meat intakes increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and colon cancer, and high intakes of refined grains and potatoes make it hard to control weight." While the new USDA MyPlate is a big improvement, designating high- and low- quality sources of nutrients on Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate provides consumers with further detail to help guide their food choices.

What are your Health Inspections like?

By: Wyman Philbrook - Philbrook F & B Consulting and Training

It is 11:30 am and you are preparing to open for lunch in your hotel. Then you realized…the Health Inspector is here!! The Health Inspector is here!! The whispers pass through the staff in low panicky exclamations. Individuals start to scurry like mice in a maze, darting from left to right but not really going anywhere, grabbing sheet pans of prepped raw chicken off the top of make-shift worktables – the uncovered garbage can… 

Someone with a roll of labels and a marker runs to the walk-in to feverishly date every inanimate object on a shelf with today’s date and the time -10:30am. Another staff member feverishly scribbles numbers on the temperature log so that the last week now reflects that the refrigerator has been maintaining a constant 40 degrees. A cook runs off to fill sanitizer buckets from the dispenser. The chef moves the 4 frozen turkeys that have been defrosting on the counter since 7am to the walk-in. The Sous-chef glares at the cook who is mixing the ground beef for tonight’s meatloaf – with his bare hands (and through unique telepathic powers wills him to stop, wash his hands and put on gloves).

None of the above actions may occur in your operation, but if you have spent any amount of time in the retail food business some of them must give you reason to pause, shake your head, roll your eyes and smile as an image from your past suddenly reappears.

When you meet the inspector at the front and start to escort him into your operation, do you do it with quiet confidence or a sense of dread every time you walk around a corner or open a refrigerator?

Are you ready for that inspector at anytime no matter what has happened – employee call-outs, equipment going down etc.? Food safety is a proactive action, but too many operations are reactive, and then often complain about the inspector’s findings and the need to prepare for re-inspection.

Being proactive involves training employees to do the right things starting from their first day on the job, and just as important re-enforcing the standards every day. It is always amazing to see employees suddenly demonstrate their food safety knowledge when an inspector enters the facility, but not apply it in the everyday operation.

You are your operations’ main health inspector, and no matter what your business volumes are, do not walk by a health issue – stop and correct it. Use it as a training opportunity. Do not give unspoken approval to actions that you know are wrong. Your employees will respect you more if you demonstrate your food safety knowledge and are consistent in enforcing health standards every day, not just when an inspector arrives. The walk-through should not be spent sweating and worrying every time the inspector inserts a thermometer into a food item or writes something on their clipboard. Use the time with your inspector productively, to ask questions, get clarifications, and give them insight into procedures you are thinking of implementing and be proud of the proactive steps you are taking. Your inspections can be a rewarding educational experience between professionals or as painful as a root canal. Treat your inspector as your partner addressing the same goal - the health of your customers & your staff.

Philbrook F & B Consulting and Training started as an idea in 2009 and was founded in 2010 by Wyman Philbrook, who after a lengthy and interesting career in retail food & beverage, saw the need for specific risk-based food safety training in that business sector. Specializing in Active Managerial Control and developing a Training Curriculum accredited by the International HACCP Alliance, the company stands ready to assist all facets of retail food & beverage operations, smaller food manufacturing / processing companies and small scale farmers with their needs. www.philbrookconsulting.com

Incenting Safety

A blog for GFSR by Steve Simske (HP Fellow & Director/CT Security Printing & Imaging, HP Labs


The critical need for greater transparency and expediency in food safety was evidenced for me last week on out and back flights between Denver and Frankfurt. Lufthansa handed each passenger a two-page warning and questionnaire about the E. coli outbreak in Germany which has already killed at least 37 people and cost at least $300 million US (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15154072,00.html). As I traveled, rumors were swirling, tempers were flaring (rightly so, considering the casualty rate) and overall there was a feeling of frustration at how long it was taking to unravel the mystery of the murderous meals. How can a society with email, social websites, ubiquitous mobile phones, and always-on infrastructure be so slow in responding to food safety meltdowns?

Is there a reader out there who isn’t worried about the safety and integrity of the global food supply chain? OK, probably not on this website. Regardless, the E. coli outbreak in Germany—arguably the most universally advanced of the major economic powers—underlines the fact that global food safety is one of the most important problems in the world of the 2010s. A world where supply chains are often more convoluted than the brains of those who have to manage them. A world where food processing practices often seem designed to purposely obfuscate the producers and distributors in the food supply chain. A world, in short, of increasing complexity and decreasing transparency.

It is, of course, easier to identify a problem than to fix it. However, this doesn’t mean that the solution to a problem has to be onerous. This blog focuses on incarnating the idealism of a philanthropic approach to food safety by creating a system that is profitable for all involved. I believe that a system for food safety can be profitable for all parties involved while significantly decreasing the severity of food safety crises such as the one occurring this month in Germany.

While it is possible to mandate food safety—driving it into the marketplace with standards, regulations, audits and penalties—using this “big stick” approach as the means to grow adoption for food safety practices is not likely to be as successful as a blue ocean (http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/) approach that rewards all parties involved. These parties include at minimum the producers, distributors, retailers and customers. Let us consider each of these in turn.

This should be the scariest thing you see in Germany.

Producers are responsible for growing the crops, raising the animals, harvesting the fruit, and tending the lands and facilities needed to sustain the productivity of the producer’s facilities over time. Producers can be incented to improve global food safety in one or more of several ways. The first is the direct incentive.

In adopting best practices, such as providing item or shipment level unique identification of their product, the producer can be given a premium on payment which is a fraction of the logistics savings that the distributors and retailers will benefit from. Among several indirect methods, the producers can benefit from the now-possible aggregate analytics that can be provided by the distribution network because of the increased transparency they enjoy from the adoption of the unique identifiers by the producers. These analytics can include helpful information on the effects of different factors—planting time, breeding time, weather, etc.—on the overall yield efficiency of the producers in the network.

Distributors, of course, benefit significantly from the increased transparency of the supply chain. This is precisely the purpose of sophisticated—yet easily adopted—standards such as GS1’s GTIN (http://www.gtin.info/) and SGTIN (http://www.bisg.org/docs/EPC_SGTIN_96.pdf). With an appropriate inference model—linking packages to pallets to crates to shipping units—such standards can provide instant linking between items. This aids in stock management, shipping efficiency and of course other logistics such as change in destination and recall. In the general sense, we can include brand owners—particularly the big, multi-national consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands—in this category.

Retailers also benefit from these same improvements in logistics and stock management. In addition, the adoption of unique identifiers—now at the individual item for sale level—means that each item sold can be non-arbitrarily disambiguated from all other items. This provides a plethora of opportunities for the retailer to connect the customer to the product—and in many cases back to the brands as well. The unique identifiers can be incorporated into customer loyalty, couponing, and even gaming/lottery services that are the on-ramp for copious and quite valuable analytics that the retailer can use to gage customer behavior, receptivity to different retail programs, and more.

Customers have benefitted from what I call “the Revenge of the Physical.” QR codes, Data Matrix codes, and a wide variety of other variable data printed structures have revitalized the role of printing in the electronic world. Suddenly, the same barcodes used for supply chain logistics, track and trace and even point-of-sale can be used for customer/product interaction. Consumers benefit not just from the loyalty, coupon and gaming programs introduced above: in addition, these variable-data printed marks can connect the customer directly to on-line information. The consumer can capture comparative pricing, product ingredient, product manufacturing and other salient information even before purchasing the product. The customer gains, even if she pays for this information (e.g. when texting the information, the customer may pay a nominal fee—a few tenths of a cent, typically—to communicate the number). Smartphone cameras are ubiquitous, and so there are many other services connecting the customer’s product packaging or label to on-line content.

The overview of the Blue Ocean for incenting food safety provided above is certainly a shallow one; nevertheless, it does show how all parties can gain from increased transparency of the supply chain. It is worth pointing out that both security and privacy can be built into the overall network of producers, distributors, brand owners, retailers and customers described. I would be remiss to point out some of the other benefits of increased transparency offered by the combination of item-level tagging and inference. One is product recall, which is precisely focused on speeding up the response time to crises such as the E. coli scare. The other is product anti-counterfeiting. As Raymond Baker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_W._Baker, private conversation) has mentioned to me, the single most effective method to fight fraudulent behavior is to have full transparency.

There is always a delicate balance of philanthropy and profit.

In the network described above, every legitimate actor wins. The Producer benefits from improved efficiency and pricing. The Distributors and Retailers benefit from improved logistics and responsiveness. The Retailer also benefits from analytics driven by customer/product interaction. Finally, the Customer benefits from improved product information and from Retailer and Brand implemented services such as loyalty and coupons programs. The Customer also benefits indirectly from the improved speed of recall, which helps minimize the impact of food safety scares such as are reported weekly by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm), among others.

It really is a Blue Ocean. Give it a swim.

—Steve

Food Safety Lessons from Europe: This Could Happen in the U.S.

By David Acheson, Leavitt Partners

The on-going devastation in Europe linked to E. coli O104 serves as a strong reminder to those of us in the United States that we are always one step away from a major food safety crisis. The most recent numbers would indicate over 1,500 individuals have been diagnosed with infection and over 470 have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and 18 have died. HUS is one of the most devastating complications of foodborne illness that I know of. HUS is a combination of kidney failure, anemia and loss of ability to form blood clots due to low platelets and results in a dire situation with, as we have seen so far in this on-going outbreak, a significant mortality rate. In the almost 25 years that I have been dealing with Shiga toxin producing E. coli like the O104 strain and the infamous O157:H7 strain, I have never seen HUS rates even close to this outbreak.

As we look on from the outside at the outbreak in the European Union (EU), it is natural to wonder if this could happen in the United States. I have very little doubt that it could, and so we should not lose this opportunity to learn more lessons about food safety. Unfortunately, we can never offer a 100% guarantee of prevention even with the most stringent regulatory requirements. That said, the most important lesson is to focus on building systems that prevent such a situation occurring here in the U.S. Yes, it would be appropriate for Federal regulators to recognize that many serotypes of E. coli other than O157:H7 are capable of causing disease – but I doubt that declaring another half dozen E. coli as adulterants would have any impact on the likelihood of an O104 outbreak in the U.S. The solution does not lie in narrowly focused approaches, but rather should be aimed at broad mitigation strategies that are focused on reducing the risks in general for all pathogenic E. coli and not just a few serotypes. This concept needs to be applied in all areas where devastating pathogens like this E. coli O104 can enter our food supply. Such entry points are likely to be on farms where the pathogens may get on to fresh produce (as appears to have happened in the EU), or be a constituent of the intestinal flora of animals that are destined to become part of our food supply. However, no amount of on farm control or HACCP systems will offer a guarantee, and one has to look for a multifaceted approach that includes controls throughout the supply chain from farms, during processing (of meat, fresh produce or other higher risk items like raw milk) and during handling of food at home.

The second striking feature of the current EU outbreak is the apparent inability to determine the vehicle. Cucumbers from Spain have been implicated and then exonerated; lettuce is suspect as are tomatoes. Currently advice to consumers is very broad and I can readily imagine the uproar in the US if FDA made the recommendation not to eat lettuce, tomatoes or cucumber. An important lesson on the response side of the equation for those of us in the US is to be sure that our local and state public health infrastructure retains the capacity and funding to be able to investigate foodborne outbreaks quickly and efficiently, thus allowing contaminated food to be identified rapidly and consumer messages to be targeted.

In the current climate of reduced federal funding, it should be made very clear to Congress that our food safety system in the US cannot afford to be undermined through lack of resources. A request to Congress is not to cut funding, but rather to ensure efficient use of current and future much needed funding.

A final thought on prevention – successful prevention is dependent on having a series of controls that individually reduce risk and together hopefully reduce risk to the point where there is none. However, the reality is that current preventive controls often fall short of total risk reduction. Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves why interventions, such as high pressure treatment or irradiation are not being evaluated and used more? Clearly consumers need to have a choice, and products have to be labeled appropriately, but as US consumers look at over 470 people in the EU with a life-threatening foodborne illness that is unquestionably a life-altering event they may wish to have the option of irradiated or high pressure treated food more readily available in the local supermarket than it is today. Offering such options in grocery stores would provide the consumer with the ability to make choices and have a role in determining the safety of the food they serve their family.

Dr. David William Kennedy Acheson is the Managing Director, Food and Import Safety Practice, at Levitt Partners founded by former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary and EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt, the partnership advises clients in the health care and food safety sectors. As Managing Director of the Food and Import Safety Practice, Acheson helps clients enter new markets, enhance the value of their products, navigate dynamic regulatory and reimbursement systems and improve health conditions around the globe.