Archives

For no particular reason other than curiosity, I’ve been hanging on to these items.  This feels like a good time to share them.

• Thorny issue: Malaysian durian industry hit by demand slump and manpower shortage due to COVID-19:  The durian industry in Malaysia has been hit hard by a drastic drop in demand and lack of manpower due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a sharp downturn for one of the country’s most popular exports.  Read more
• Wake up and smell the … peanuts? Virginia Gold Peanut Coffee offers novel twist on classic drink:  With the invention of peanut coffee, fifth generation peanut farmer James Harrell found a way to combine in one product the rich history and future of his hometown of Suffolk, Va., which as the headquarters for Planters Peanuts was once known as the ‘peanut capital of the world’ before an influx of prominent coffee companies inspired the new moniker ‘caffeine capital.’… Read more
• The recipe for ‘healthier’ milk chocolate? Just add peanut waste:  Scientists claim to have found a ‘new way’ to boost the antioxidant properties of milk chocolate: by combining it with waste peanut skins…. Read more
• Apricot kernels recalled in New Zealand due to poisoning risk:   Raw apricot kernels are being recalled in New Zealand after three people needed hospital treatment. They were sold by Christchurch business Ethnic Market in Linwood. Sale of raw apricot kernels is prohibited under New Zealand food law. Those admitted to the hospital as a precaution have since been discharged after eating the raw kernels. Ethnic General… Continue Reading  
  What’s for dinner? Grasshoppers, says Hargol FoodTech as it raises $3m to build edible insect operationIsraeli firm Hargol FoodTech – which is blazing a distinct trail in the embryonic edible insect sector by focusing on grasshoppers, rather than crickets – has completed a $3m financing round from existing shareholders, Singapore-based Sirius Venture Capital and Netherlands-based SLJ Investment Partners…. Read more
• Insect fat the new butter replacement? Researchers see potential in bakery products: Researchers have examined the potential for black soldier fly larvae fat to partially substitute butter in cakes, cookies and waffles…. Read more 
  Farmed sea cucumbers: The new ‘superfood’ functional ingredient?  Researchers in Norway are investigating commercial farming practices for sea cucumbers, which they say should be exploited as a raw ingredient for health products…. Read more
• White paper: The fiber opportunity in dairy: Want to learn more about how to replace sugar with dietary fiber in dairy products without losing their sweetness? …Download our free paper to learn all you need to know about our biological solution Saphera® Fiber.  [this is an ad]

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has formed an alliance with the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) to

provide NAMI’s members, workplace safety and health professionals, the meatpacking and processing workforce, and the public with information, guidance, and access to training resources that will help them protect workers by reducing and preventing exposure to Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), and understand the rights of workers and the responsibilities of employers under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

NAMI’s motto is “One unified voice for meat and poultry companies, large and small.”  Its members are listed here.

OSHA’s stated mission

With the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, Congress created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance.

• Do we see a potential conflict of interest here?  Indeed, we do.

Basically, the Alliance aims to

• Share information…regarding potential exposure to COVID-19 and the challenges for exposure control in meat packing and processing facilities.
• Develop information on the recognition of COVID-19 transmission risks and best practices.
• Conduct outreach through joint forums, roundtable discussions, stakeholder meetings, webinars, or other formats on OSHA guidance and NAMI’s good practices.
• Speak, exhibit, or appear at OSHA and NAMI conferences…regarding good practices.
• Encourage NAMI members…to utilize OSHA’s On-Site Consultation Program to improve health and safety and prevent COVID-19 transmission.

This looks like meat industry propaganda to me.

As quoted by Food Dive, Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, called the deal “an outrage.” His statement:

Throughout the pandemic, employers have continued to keep workers and the general public in the dark about illness in the plants while trying to shield themselves from any liability for the role they played in the loss of life. It is shocking that the Department of Labor is now giving the meat industry even more power to police itself on worker safety.

He’s not kidding.  The Food and Environment Reporting Network is tracking cases.  As of August 17, its figures show confirmed cases of Covid-19 in

• 474 meatpacking plants among 40,708 meatpacking work (189 deaths)
• 269 food processing plants among 8658 food processing workers (34 deaths)

No surprisae, workers have filed thousands of complaints with OSHA.

What has OSHA done for them?  It co-issued (with CDC) guidance on what companies ought to be doing about distancing and masking. 

Are companies following this guidelines?  Not with much conviction.

That is why workers have had to resort to filing lawsuits against Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods—and OSHA—as summarized by ProPublica.

According to Politico (behind a paywall, unfortunately), the lawsuits reveal that OSHA admits that it is unable to police its own safety guidelines.

Although an inspector from OSHA’s Wilkes-Barre Area Office witnessed employees working “2 to 3 feet” apart without physical barriers — which goes against the Centers for Disease Control and OSHA’s safety recommendations — the agency concluded there was no “imminent danger” at the plant, the inspector testified during a July 31 hearing.

As always, it’s hard to make up stuff like this.

The Wall Street Journal reports “More Americans Go Hungry Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, Census Shows.”

As of late last month, about 12.1% of adults lived in households that didn’t have enough to eat at some point in the previous week, up from 9.8% in early May, Census figures show. And almost 20% of Americans with kids at home couldn’t afford to give their children enough food, up from almost 17% in early June.

The most shocking revelation?  Try this.

What’s going on here?

• Delays in getting unemployment benefits
• An end to the $600 unemployment supplement
• No increase in SNAP benefits
• Closed schools and child care centers no longer feeding kids.
• Food prices are up
• Food banks are overwhelmed

If ever there was a need for policy, this is it.

According to ABC News:

With so many people feeling cooped up due to restrictions in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, potato chip maker Lay’s has developed four new internationally-inspired flavors to satisfy both food and travel cravings alike.

But here’s the real gimmick:

The new flavors won’t be sold in stores.  Anyone wishing to taste one of the new flavors will have to reply to one of the company’s social media posts and tell them which country you’d like to visit.  A bag from the country they choose will be shipped to the lucky winners.

Lays tried this in 2016.  But you could buy those in stores, although not for long evidently.  The Greek Tzatziki flavor is the only one of that lot to make it into this one.

Frito-Lay, of course, is owned by PepsiCo.  So this is Big Food in marketing action.

Arleen Tuchman.  Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease.  Yale University Press, 2020.I did a blurb for this book:

This is a superb, deeply researched history of the role of racism and class bias in perceptions of type 2 diabetes.  Its root causes?  Poverty and discrimination—a new vision for a prevention agenda.

Tuchman does for type 2 diabetes what historians of other diseases have done: explore the central role of race and racism.  Racism, she explains, can

Generate ill health by producing pathological responses to the stress of living in a society in which skin color is endowed with privileges denied to others.  Racism, in other words, can make people sick.  In this way, racism—not race—becomes a fundamental cause of differential disease rates, making it impossible to draw a sharp line between what is biological and what is social.

As she documents, health professionals first viewed diabetes as a disease of the Jews—perhaps because they went to doctors more often.   It took decades for scientists to distinguish type 1 from type 2 diabetes, and more decades to recognize that its higher prevalence among non-white minority groups might be due to the obesity-promoting diets and lifestyles of poverty.

For documentation of the social determinants of health, this book is an instant classic.

Since writing about Christopher Gardner’s study on Monday this week, I have plant-based meats on my mind.  Here are some other recent items about the booming interest in these products.

• Plant-Based ‘Meats’ Catch On in the Pandemic: As the meat industry struggles to respond to the outbreak, makers of vegan substitutes are ramping up production to meet new interest from shoppers…To meet the demand, Impossible Foods has been hiring more workers, increasing pay and adding more shifts. Beyond Meat reported record sales in the first quarter of this year.

• Bringing home the plant-based bacon: Sunfed aims to provide a more healthy ‘guilty pleasure’:  New Zealand-based plant-based meat firm Sunfed Meats’ recent launch of its Boar-Free Bacon in supermarkets nationwide has seen strong success due to its taste, texture and a rising demand for healthy and clean foods by consumers, according to the firm’s CEO…. Read more
• Beyond Meat lags conventional companies in sustainability disclosures, report says:  The plant-based meat company said it has quantified the environmental benefits of its product versus conventional beef and is currently conducting a carbon-footprint assessment.
• Coronavirus Meat Shortages Have Plant-Based Food Makers’ Mouths Watering: Beef producers racing to meet consumer demand say any shortfalls are temporary, as sellers of meat alternatives look to seize opportunity
• Opinion: Software to Swallow — Impossible Foods Should Be Called Impossible Patents: Intellectual Property Model of Food Maintains Harmful Reliance on GMO Grains, Detracts from Regenerative Agriculture, Hastens Soil Loss.
• Impossible Foods launches direct-to-consumer site and rolls out to hundreds more retail stores this month:  Impossible Foods has launched an e-commerce site to make its plant-based burgers available to all US consumers in the lower 48 states, offering free, two-day shipping of larger, family-sized quantities of the Impossible Burger…. Read more 
• The next challenge for plant-based meat: Winning the price war against animal meat: To save the world, plant-based meat needs to be cheaper.
• Impossible Foods raises another $200m; products under development include milk and steaks:  Impossible Foods has raised $200m in a Series G funding round led by new investor Coatue, with participation from existing investors including Mirae Asset Global Investments and Temasek as well as new investor XN. The move brings its total funding since 2011 to about $1.5bn…. Read more

I learned about this latest development in the ongoing sage of USDA’s food boxes from Maine Representative Chellie Pingree on Twitter.

Trump’s letter is here.

The letter from members of Congress to USDA is here.

It has a list of ten questions, among them my two favorites:

5. Identify the total amount of funding expended or obligated to plan, coordinate, draft, review, provide stakeholder or public notification, and disseminate the President’s letter. Include the specific regulatory or statutory authorities associated with such funding.

7. Explain the rationale for why the letter is signed by the President on White House letterhead rather than by the Secretary of Agriculture and/or the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Politico Morning Agriculture asks (“A new front in the food box fracas,” August 17):

So what’s the upshot? Besides heightened scrutiny of the ongoing effort, the new controversy could further motivate key lawmakers who are pushing to tighten restrictions on how the department spends any future farm relief funds — assuming Congress and the White House ever agree on a new stimulus package…

Boris Johnson, the UK’s admittedly overweight prime minister, has suddenly become a champion of anti-obesity policy, following his bout with Covid-19.

As the Washington Post puts it, “Boris Johnson says ‘I was too fat’ as he launches anti-obesity campaign.”

The campaign is based on two reports, one detailing the high and growing prevalence of obesity in Great Britain and its links to Covid-19 susceptibility.

The second is a government policy report, which says it is

• introducing a new campaign – a call to action for everyone who is overweight to take steps to move towards a healthier weight, with evidence-based tools and apps with advice on how to lose weight and keep it off
• working to expand weight management services available through the NHS [National Health Service], so more people get the support they need to lose weight
• publishing a 4-nation public consultation to gather views and evidence on our current ‘traffic light’ label to help people make healthy food choices
• introducing legislation to require large out-of-home food businesses, including restaurants, cafes and takeaways with more than 250 employees, to add calorie labels to the food they sell
• consulting on our intention to make companies provide calorie labelling on alcohol
• legislating to end the promotion of foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) by restricting volume promotions such as buy one get one free, and the placement of these foods in prominent locations intended to encourage purchasing, both online and in physical stores in England
• banning the advertising of HFSS products being shown on TV and online before 9pm and holding a short consultation as soon as possible on how we introduce a total HFSS advertising restriction online

The UK food industry does not like this.  It insists that this campaign is “a terrible missed opportunity.”

I was interested to see Hank Cardello’s comment on this (Cardello is with the conservative Hudson Institute in the US): “How A Libertarian Is Tackling Obesity And Why Big Food Should Worry.”  Cardello thinks that Johnson’s efforts are the wave of the future.  The food industry should stop fighting public health measures, he says.  Instead, it should:

• Get ahead of imposed regulations instead of resisting change. Instead of fighting public health initiatives, they can lead the way with research that defines workable steps to reverse the obesity crisis.
• Educate with public service ads. It’s time that food and restaurant corporations air public service announcements (PSAs) about healthy eating and the impact of high sugar, salt and fat on health and obesity.
• Commit to a BHAG (”Big Hairy Audacious Goal”). They can decide, for instance, that at least 50% of the products they sell will be healthier versions or in smaller portions.

Wouldn’t that be terrific, and it’s great that he’s saying so (I keep telling him that he sounds more like me every day).

But can food companies follow his advice?  Not as long as they put profits to shareholders, first, alas.

That’s what really needs to change.