by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: USDA

Aug 10 2022

The FDA’s new pro GMO propaganda

You would think the beleaguered FDA would have better things to do.

It sent out a press release announcing new “Feed Your Mind” materials to increase public and professional understanding of GMOs, in partnershipwith USDA and EPA.

My first question: Who paid for this?

The answer:

Funding for the “Feed Your Mind” initiative was provided by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 to conduct “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology and biotechnology derived food products and animal feed, including through publication and distribution of science-based educational information on the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts of such biotechnology, food products, and feed.”  More funds were provided through 2018 and 2019 Appropriations bills.

How’s that for effective lobbying by the food biotechnology industry!

Why do I think this is pro-GMO propaganda?

I started with the Discussion Guide for Health Educators.  It has just a few questions and answers.  For example:

Q.  Are GMO’s safe to eat?

A.  Yes…they are just as safe to eat as non-GMO foods.

Q.  Is here a link between GMOs and cancer?

A.  No.  GMO crops are not changed in ways that would increase the risk of cancer for humans or animals.

I don’t think these answers are necessarily wrong.  They just don’t tell the whole story.

These materials have nothing to say about:

  • Consolidation in the biotechnology industry
  • Corporate control of commodity agriculture
  • Glyphosate, the herbicide used with GMOs and considered carcinogenic by international health agencies and US courts
  • How GMO crops have taken over, driving out everyone else
  • How pesticides used on GMO crops contaminate organic production
  • The ways GMO companies harrass independent farmers by enforcing intellectual property rights
  • How the Farm Bill subsidizes GMO corn and soybeans, causing them to be overproduced and corn to be used for ethanol
  • Congress’s absurd Bioengineered labeling, widely ignored.
  • The consequent lack of transparency in the supermarket

No wonder so many people look for Non-GMO labels on food products.

Take a look at these materials and judge for yourself (I particularly recommend the video for consumers).  It and the rest are quite short.

For More Information

Aug 4 2022

USDA on the job: feeding kids

I’ve been trying to keep up with USDA press releases, especially those related to food assistance for children.   Here are a few from the last couple of weeks.

Effective July 1, 2022, the reimbursement schools receive for each meal served will increase by approximately $0.68 per free/reduced-price lunch and $0.32 per free/reduced price breakfast. Other reimbursement rates, including rates for paid school meals and child care meals, are available online.

With this comes:

II.  USDA Awards over $70 Million in Grants, Increases Access to Local, Healthy Foods for Kids, Jul 25, 2022  

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it is awarding more than $10 million in Farm to School grants to 123 projects across the country…[these] will serve more than 3 million children at more than 5,000 schools in 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Grants by state are here.    Grant awardees with project descriptions are here.

III.  USDA Extends Flexibility that’s Helping Manufacturers, States get Formula to WIC Families Jul 28, 2022

Under this flexibility – which is now extended through the end of September – USDA is covering the added cost of non-contract formula to make it financially feasible for states to allow WIC participants to purchase alternate sizes, forms, or brands of infant formula.

This has to do with the infant formula shortage.  About half the infant formula in America is purchased by the WIC program, which usually contracts with one formula company to serve participants.  The USDA has relaxed restrictions on brands and imports to help deal with the shortages.  For example, it:

  • Provides a toolkit and guidance to WIC state agencies to assist with distributing imported formula.
  • Calls on states to take advantage of all available WIC flexibilities…Now, nearly all state agencies have applicable waivers in place.
  • Provides guidance to Child and Adult Care Food Program operators to help them navigate the shortage.
  • Provides an Infant Formula Shortage Response webpage

Cheers to USDA for taking action.  Action is what our kids deserve.

Jun 7 2022

USDA issues new Framework for fixing the food system


Last week, the USDA announced its new Framework for Shoring Up the Food Supply Chain and Transforming the Food System to Be Fairer, More Competitive, More Resilient.

The Framework document is long and hard to read.  Here’s a summary:

Framework goals:

  • Building a more resilient food supply chain that provides more and better market options for consumers and producers while reducing carbon pollution
  • Creating a fairer food system that combats market dominance and helps producers and consumers gain more power in the marketplace by creating new, more and better local market options
  • Making nutritious food more accessible and affordable for consumers
  • Emphasizing equity

Framework actions: where the money goes:

Food production

  • $300 million for an Organic Transition Initiative
  • $75 million for urban agriculture

Food processing

Food distribution and aggregation

  • $400 million for regional food business centers
  • $60 million to leverage commodity purchases through Farm-to-School
  • $90 million to prevent and reduce food loss and waste

Food markets & Consumers

Civil Eats has an interview with Secretary Vilsack about all this.  Its point:

While it’s billed as a “transformation,” the framework does not change the foundational structures or practices of the American food system. It does, however, emphasize regionalism, support for organic and urban farming, and nutrition in new ways. That’s a significant shift for the agency, which has historically prioritized efficiency over all else.

The White House was also at work last week.  It released an Action Plan on Global Water Security.

Summary: FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris Announces Action Plan on Global Water Security and Highlights the Administration’s Work to Build Drought Resilience.

Strategies (Pillars):

  • Pillar 1: Advancing U.S. leadership in the global effort to achieve universal and equitable access to sustainable, climate-resilient, safe, and effectively managed WASH services without increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Pillar 2: Promoting sustainable management and protection of water resources and associated ecosystems to support economic growth, build resilience, mitigate the risk of instability or conflict, and increase cooperation.
  • Pillar 3: Ensuring that multilateral action mobilizes cooperation and promotes water security.

Will any of this do real good?  Specific initiatives will benefit from the increased funding.

Transforming the food system?  Not quite yet.

 

 

May 25 2022

The US is soon to become a net food importer, says USDA

I was interested to see this graph in a recent report, USDA Agricultural Projections to 2031.

What this says is that agricultural imports are soon expected to be greater than agricultural exports.

Within the next year or so, the United States will be a net importer of agricultural products.

As the report puts it:

Agricultural exports are expected to grow at an annual rate averaging 0.8 percent per year from 2021 through 2031. The value of U.S. agricultural imports is projected to increase by an average annual rate of 6 percent over that same period as domestic consumer spending is expected to remain strong over the next decade combined with domestic preferences for an array of agricultural goods that continue
to exceed domestic production.

I think we need to ask what this means for long-term food security in this country.

The next Farm Bill is under discussion.  It ought to deal with the question of how US agriculture can produce more food for people rather than feed for animals and fuel to cars.

I keep remembering a meeting I went to in Washington DC years ago, where a USDA official said that he did not think Americans should waste land for growing food when it could be done so much more cheaply elsewhere.   I hope USDA thinks differently now.

May 4 2022

GAO says moving USDA’s ERS to Kansas was not such a great idea

The Government Accountability Office has just issued this report:  Evidence-Based Policy Making: USDA’s Decision to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City Was Not Fully Consistent with an Evidence-Based Approach

You may recall that in October 2019, USDA relocated most Economic Research Service staff positions from Washington DC to Kansas City, MO.  At the time, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said the move would save taxpayers more than $300 million over ten years.

This defied credulity.  The real reason had to be that politically appointed USDA officials wanted to destroy the ERS.  Its economists produce reports that tell truths inconvenient for political expediency.

An easy way to destroy an agency is to move it half way across the country.  That way three-quarters of the professional staff would quit or retire.

I considered this move a national tragedy, and said so repeatedly.

The GAO is more polite than I am.  Here is a summary excerpt from the report’s Highlights.

USDA’s stated objectives for relocation were to improve its ability to attract and retain highly-qualified staff; place its resources closer to stakeholders and consumers; and reduce costs to taxpayers.

However, GAO found that the economic analysis did not fully align with those objectives. ..USDA omitted critical costs and economic effects from its analysis of taxpayer savings, such as costs related to potential attrition or disruption of activities for a period of time, which may have contributed to an unreliable estimate of savings from relocation.

Overall, GAO found that USDA’s development and usage of evidence had significant limitations… As a result of the weaknesses GAO found, USDA leadership may have made a relocation decision that was not the best choice to accomplish its stated objectives.

But it did achieve its unstated objective: to weaken, if not destroy, ERS.   This agency is still publishing reports, but most of them are uncontroversial estimates of food production and use.  Occasionally I see glimmers of the kinds of reports the agency used to produce.  Let’s hope more of them are on their way.

Apr 26 2022

USDA’s take on the effects of the pandemic

The USDA has produced three reports on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant changes in U.S. consumers’ food-spending patterns in early 2020, with a return to pre-pandemic spending patterns that continued through 2021.

While closures of restaurants and nonessential businesses contributed to record unemployment increases during March and April 2020, unemployment fell to below pre-pandemic levels by December 2021.

Although income and employment have improved, some U.S. households continue to face difficulties obtaining adequate food, particularly in the face of increasing food prices.

It has produced data and charts in three areas.

Here’s one of the charts, this one on prices.

This is the kind of thing the USDA’s Economic Research Service is supposed to be doing.  I’m glad they are back on the job.

Apr 13 2022

USDA subsidies for animal agriculture

If you want to understand why it’s so difficult to change meat consumption patterns, try the Environmental Working Group’s latest analysis: USDA has spent nearly $50 billion on livestock subsidies since 1995.

From 1995 to 2021, USDA spent

  • $11 billion on livestock disaster assistance
  • $14.2 billion on livestock commodity purchases
  • ~$5 billion in dairy subsidies
  • $15 billion in payments to offset the effects of the pandemic

In addition, USDA paid $160 billion during those years to producers of the corn and soybeans used to feed those animals.

In contrast, USDA spent less than $30 million to promote plant-based proteins since 2018.

The numbers say it all.

Policy change, anyone?

Mar 16 2022

Devastating news: Congress fails to extend school food waiver

For those of us who have long argued that it would be good for kids and for society if they were fed meals in school, no questions asked.

Nothing makes more sense to me than universal school meals.

  • All kids get fed
  • No stigmatizing of poor kids
  • No school hassles over which kids qualify
  • No lunch shaming
  • No administative costs for policing school meal eligibility

I the pandemic did any good at all, it was to make school meals universal well into the second year.

It worked.  Kids got fed.  Schools didn’t have to police.

Yes it would cost money: an estimated $11 billion.

Let’s put that in context; it’s barely a rounding error.   If I’ve done the math right, $11 billion = 0.007% of $1.5 trillion.

Our national priorities are clear from this chart.  Defense is 48%, and all agriculture and food programs together are less than 0.02%.** 

Or, to show what this looked like visually in 2019:

Politico explains the background

Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in mid-March 2020, the Agriculture Department was first given authority to issue waivers for a slew of regulations….The authority now expires in June. School nutrition program operators have been optimistically assuming that the waivers would get extended one more school year to help them transition

back to normal, as supply chains continue to short schools of basic staples like chicken and whole grain bread, and food costs remain high and staffing is so low it’s approaching crisis levels.

You can read about the politics in the Politico article as well.

This congressional decision is nothing short of disgraceful.  Congress should be ashamed.

What to do?  Scream and shout to your congressional representatives to get this reversed.

** Added note: Several readers wrote me to say that the Vox figures above refer to discretionary spending but leave out entitlements such as Social Security and SNAP.  Others said the figures underestimate military spending because they do not include veterans benefits and other such items.  Adding in all this would make the percentage for school meals even smaller.