Search results: Complaint

Some parts of government are still functioning the way they are supposed to.

The U.S. Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) says USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has violated the Hatch Act and has to repay the US Treasury.

In letters to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and to Representative Marcia Fudge,  the OSC says

Secretary Sonny Perdue violated the Hatch Act on August 24, 2020, when he spoke in his official capacity at an event in Mills River, North Carolina (the “August 24 event”)…The event generally related to USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program…Because he was on taxpayer-funded travel when he engaged in the political activity at issue, the U.S. Treasury must be reimbursed for the costs associated with his political activity.  Provided that immediate corrective action is taken and the U.S. Treasury is reimbursed for such costs, OSC will decline to pursue disciplinary action and instead consider this file closed with the issuance of the cure letter.

As the letter explains,

The Hatch Act restricts certain political activities of federal executive branch employees, except for the President and the Vice President.  As the Secretary of Agriculture,
Secretary Perdue is covered by the Hatch Act and prohibited from, among other things, using his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.  Under this provision, Secretary Perdue may not use his official title while engaging in political activity or his official position to advance or oppose candidates for partisan political office.

In his speech at the event, Perdue congratulated President Trump for authorizing an additional billion dollars to the Farmers to Families Food Box Program

you just authorized another billion dollars for the hungry people of this country and to keep our farmers there. And we’ve never seen an outpouring of compassion like that for people who matter, because people matter to you. And that’s what’s important to me. And that’s what’s going to continue to happen—four more years—if America gets out and votes for this man, Donald J. Trump.

This is a particularly clear violation of the Hatch Act.  The OSC is right to call Perdue on it and insist that he repay taxpayers.

This is also yet another example of how the Farmers to Families food box program, about which I have written repeatedly, is more about politics than feeding the hungry.

The OSC investigation resulted from a complaint from Representative Fudge and several colleagues in Congress.   It’s also good to see them doing their job.

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.

If you want to understand why meat has become the focus of political fights about the effects of Covid-19, it helps to start with why the meat industry is so powerful.

I’ve always explained it this way: cattle are raised in every state, every state has two senators, every senator attracts hordes of lobbyists.

Food Safety News takes a deeper dive:

The meat industry effectively controls the Senate and House of Representatives by stopping a bill before it even reaches the floor. All legislation related to food and agriculture crosses the desks of the respective Agriculture Committees, so effort is targeted to build relationships, tailor strategic communications, and send influential campaign contributions to stay on the pulse of new developments.  For bills that do reach the floor, swift action is taken.

Over the years, proposals to have meat processors become partially or fully responsible for the cost of USDA inspections, which are currently provided without cost for routine operation, are quickly shot down as “unwise and unnecessary,” without explanation or discussion. Ironically, industry also seeks to reduce the presence of USDA inspectors by seducing the agency into allowing their workers to complete the tasks on their tab– but more on that later.

Yesterday’s Politico: has this headline “As meatpacking plants reopen, workers terrified of coronavirus risk” [this may be behind a paywall]

The latest Agriculture Department figures show that U.S. meat production is returning to nearly last year’s capacity, accomplishing the White House’s goal of keeping the food supply steady during the pandemic…At least 44 meatpacking workers have died from the virus and more than 3,000 have tested positive, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. About 30 plants have closed in the past two months, affecting more than 45,000 workers.

A spokesperson for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency responsible for worker safety, told POLITICO that it has received more than 4,400 Covid-19-related safety complaints, but has issued only a single citation related to the pandemic….An employee at a JBS plant in Greeley, Colo., where eight workers have died from the virus, told POLITICO that although the company has required social distancing in break rooms and other areas, workers remain standing shoulder to shoulder on assembly lines. The employee was granted anonymity out of concern about retribution from the company after speaking out.

Some other items about the meat situation:

• The New York Times has a lot to say about covid-19 cases among packinghouse workers
• Cattle producers reopen closed Fort Pierre processing plant
• Business Insider has a report on the sudden interest in small meat processors.   Reuters does too.  It’s about time—I hope this interest lasts.
• Politico reports on the rise in retail beef prices while prices for cattle are low
• The Food and Environment Reporting Network talks about the decline in meat production
• Is automation of meat slaughter coming?  Wired writes about Denmark’s meat plants
• Jonathan Safran Foer  writes in the Washington Post: “Meat is not essential. Why are we killing for it?

I was astounded to learn that the USDA spends more than $900 million a year on nutrition education since I can hardly recall seeing any of it.

But now we have a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of USDA’s expenditures on nutrition education.

The GAO says that USDA does not:

• Coordinate its nutrition education efforts
• Use the expertise of USDA nutritionists
• Make nutrition education a priority
• Have leadership with responsibility for nutrition education
• Share information across sub-agencies and avoid duplicating efforts
• Assign nutrition education experts to appropriate sub-agencies

No big surprise here—I’ve been hearing such complaints since I worked for the government in the late 1980s—but it’s good to see them documented.

Most of the report is about nutrition education for participants in WIC, SNAP, and other nutrition assistance programs.

Note that there is no line budget for promotion of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a statement of of federal nutrition policy, or for MyPlate, a food guide directed at the general public.  Funds to promote these documents have to be authorized by Congress.

Note also that while $900 million seems like a lot of money, it is considerably below what companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola each spend on advertising every year.

I’ve saved this for Weekend Reading because it will take a weekend to get through it.  The report is a blockbuster: 37 authors, 47 pages, 357 references.

The Lancet commissioned this report from the EAT Forum, which brought together international experts on diet and health (most of whom I do not know) to define unifying dietary principles that best promote will promote the health of people and the planet.

Fortunately, the diet that is best for health is the same diet as is best for the planet.  The report defines it on page 5.

To summarize:

This report has many strengths:

• It is researched in depth and is now the reference source for information about needed dietary changes.
• It firmly links dietary health to environmental sustainability.
• Its findings are consistent with many previous reports on diet and health, including that of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee DGAC).
• Its messages are unambiguous.
• The summary report is a big help
• The timing  is excellent; the 2020 Dietary Guidelines advisory committee, if it ever gets appointed, will have to pay close attention to the science reviewed in this report.
• It focuses on food, not nutrients (these meals meet the standards of recommended diets).

Does this report settle the questions?  Hardly.  Remember the fuss over sustainability (the “S-word?”) in the 2015 report of the DGAC?

• The meat industry does not like advice to eat less meat.
• The dairy industry doesn’t like it either.  Its trade associations emphasize its nutritional value and source of livelihood for a billion people.
• The food industry has lots of complaints.

There is lots to read and think about here.  Enjoy!

• The Lancet home page for the report (includes slides, links)
• The Lancet editorial accompanying the report
• The EAT Forum home page for the report (information about EAT, the launch, the commission members, etc)
• The EAT Forum summary report

I never cease to be amazed by how angry some people get about organic foods.

• They complain about its higher prices (organics cost more to produce).
• They complain about its implicit—no, explicit—critique of conventional farming methods (organics use fewer toxic pesticides, are kinder to soil, and are more sustainable).
• They complain that organics exclude GMOs (this is bad for the GMO business).
• They complain about research showing the benefits of organics.

This last complaint brings me to the study on organic food and cancer just published in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

This is an observational study of nearly 70,000 people who were asked to report their level of consumption of organic foods and were then monitored for cancer for 7 years.

The results: those who reported consuming the highest levels of organic foods had the lowest risk of developing cancer during that period.

For non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the cancer most associated with exposure to herbicides and pesticides used in conventional agriculture and GMO production, the observed reduction in risk was a whopping 86%.

An accompanying editorial lists the limitations of the study; the dietary intake data were self-reported, the questionnaire wasn’t validated, blood levels of pesticides and herbicides were not measured.

So yes, more research—perhaps much more research—is needed to confirm these observations before anything can be said about whether organics are really protective against cancer.

But in the meantime, there’s no harm in eating organic foods and these foods have demonstrable environmental benefits.

Choosing them means voting for food production systems that are better for the environment—and might be better for health as well.

This makes organics a good bet and worth the premium price if you can afford it.

Here’s what the New York Times says about this study.

Johsua Sbicca.  Food Justice Now!  Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle.  University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

This book is about how to turn the “eat-better” food movement into a movement for social justice.  It directly addresses the complaint that the food movement has no real power.

Sbicca, a sociologist at Colorado State, bases his analysis on three case studies of food justice activism focused on creating reasonably paid work for former prisoners and low-wage workers, many of them of color or immigrants.

He tells the stories of three programs, Planting Justice in Oakland, California; the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project; and programs run by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770.

In writing this book, he investigates

the tensions between maintaining an “us” in the food movement and a “them” needed to keep the food system running.  This informs the prospects of a food politics that is capable of overcoming ethnoracial and citizenship boundaries…The ethnoracial and class makeup of food workers pushes labor organizers to challenge the race-to-the-bottom practices of food corporations.

He ends the book by calling for what is needed to create true food justice: land, labor, community development, health, self-determination, and environmental sustainability—exactly what is called for in food system reform.

This is an academic book but well worth reading for anyone who cares about building a movement with power to change food systems.

The FDA is warning dog owners about an observed association of enlarged hearts in animals fed dog foods containing peas, lentils, other legumes, or potatoes as main ingredients (these appear first or second on ingredient lists).  These pet foods are often labeled “grain-free.”

Large breeds are more seriously affected but cases have occurred in medium and small breeds too.

The reason for the association is not known but one possibility is that these diets are low in the amino acid taurine, which is usually present in meat (see note at end).

As Mal Nesheim and I discussed in our book, Feed Your Pet Right, dogs—like humans—do best on a highly varied diet containing many different foods.

The FDA website contains lots of information about pet foods and pet food recalls.

The FDA encourages pet owners and veterinary professionals to report cases of DCM in dogs suspected of having a link to diet by using the electronic Safety Reporting Portal or calling their state’s FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinators. Please see the link below about “How to Report a Pet Food Complaint” for additional instructions.

As for what’s going on here, the New York Times quotes veterinary nutritionist Lisa Freeman:

Contrary to advertising and popular belief, there is no research to demonstrate that grain-fee diets offer any health benefits over diets that contain grains.

The Times also a quotes a veterinarian who feeds his own dog a mainstream commercial pet food:

A lot of people would have qualms because it uses less expensive or nonorganic ingredients…But we’ve seen dogs thrive on these diets.

That is indeed what the research shows.

In our book, Mal and I repeatedly emphasize that pet foods are like infant formulas in that they all have to meet exactly the same nutritional standards.

Whether the sources of ingredients providing those nutrients make any difference to a pet’s health is a mystery.  Why?  Because no pet food company wants to do the obvious, but expensive, experiment: Compare the effects of the cheapest complete-and-balanced pet food to the one made with the highest quality (and most costly) ingredients.

At some point, all complete-and-balanced pet foods were tested to make sure they properly supported growth and reproduction.

Are there critical differences?

In marketing, definitely.  To health?  We just don’t know.

Added note, September 4, 2018

The best discussion of the taurine-in-dogs issue I have seen is this one in Whole Dog Journal by Linda Case.