The USDA has finally posted its rules for health claims on meats in the January 16 Federal Register. After dealing with the 44,000 or so comments it received on the issue, the USDA defines what “naturally raised” means for meat and livestock. In sum: no growth promoters, antibiotics, animal by-products, or fish by-products. This is a voluntary standard, but should help.
The USDA says it will be taking samples of meat and poultry products that contain ingredients derived from milk to find out whether they contain melamine and, if so, how much. It will be sampling five kinds of products: baby foods, cooked sausages, breaded chicken, meatballs, and meat and poultry wrapped in dough (including calzones). Great. I’m hoping they will be using the same kinds of methods used by FDA and coordinating closely with that agency. If ever we needed a reason to have just ONE food safety agency instead of the multiple ones we have now (USDA, FDA, EPA, etc), melamine is as good as any.
The Trump Administration has issued its proposed budget.
It begins with the rhetoric characteristic of this administration.
The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.
If anything, these proposals are totally contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans, so much so that it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with some selections from the USDA summary on page 31.
On this last one: Oh no. Not that again. The boxes are a logistic nightmare , absurdly expensive, and do not help any except the largest farmers.
Note that there is nothing here about SNAP, which comes out of USDA’s budget. SNAP is an entitlement; only Congress can cut its budget, and would have to do so through the Farm Bill.
Fortunately, these are proposals, which means there is at least a chance that Congress won’t agree to them.
The USDA announced last week that it is withdrawing its proposed framework for reducing Salmonella in raw poultry. Oh great.
Why?
FSIS received 7,089 comments on the proposed framework…from a variety of stakeholders that included poultry and meat industry trade associations, small poultry producer and processor trade associations, large and small poultry processing establishments, consumer advocacy organizations…The issues that generated the most comments…[were] the proposed Salmonella levels and serotypes for the final product standards…the scientific and technical information used to support the proposed framework, the potential economic impacts of the proposed framework, and the potential impact of the proposed framework on small poultry growers and processors. Several comments also suggested alternative approaches other than the proposed framework for addressing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products.
While FSIS continues to support the goal of reducing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products, the Agency believes that the comments have raised several important issues that warrant further consideration.
Consumer Reports, which has for years been pushing the USDA to do something about Salmonella contamination in poultry, is not happy with this move, not least because its investigators found large numbers of poultry plants to be heavily contaminated with Salmonella. contamination.
The proposed rule was intended to help reduce the number of salmonella infections in the U.S. Of the estimated 1.35 million illnesses that occur each year from food tainted with the bacteria, nearly 200,000 of them are due to chicken, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And instead of declining, salmonella infections are increasing and expected to continue to grow…This move, along with the steep budget and staffing cuts at the USDA and FDA, appears to be part of an overall effort to weaken food safety oversight,” says director of food policy at Consumer Reports.
Comment
This is an extremely disappointing decision. The poultry industry argues that Salmonella contamination is normal. They don’t need to do anything to prevent chickens getting contaminated. It is your responsibility to store and cook your chicken properly.
Safety advocates (like me) argue that Salmonella is not normal, contamination is preventable, and the industry ought to be doing that. The USDA’s 2021 proposal to declare Salmonella an adulterant was a major step in making food safer.
This decision is a major setback.
Resources
What the USDA says about Salmonella
What the USDA says today about reducing Salmonella in poultry. The web page displays USDA’s 2021 announcement that it would be “mobilizing a stronger and more comprehensive effort to reduce Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products.”
Washington Post: As egg prices soared at the supermarket, so did producer profits: A USDA program doled out hundreds of millions in relief payments to big egg companies, even as the largest earned record profits.
On Tuesday, the nation’s largest egg producer, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine, announced quarterly profits of $509 million, more than three times what it made in the same period a year ago. It caps three years of extraordinary earnings, which have surged since the avian flu outbreak began in 2022.
By wiping out millions of laying hens, the avian flu has slowed egg production for many companies. But the outbreak also has driven up prices enough for some companies to recoup losses and, for Cal-Maine, to record exceptional profits….At the same time, Cal-Maine and other large egg companies have received tens of millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been doling out relief payments to help egg companies restock after the virus strikes.
Unfork the Food System: Meat Industry’s PR Campaign Exposed: Undermining Climate-Friendly Diets: How EAT-Lancet Came Under Fire: The Meat Lobby’s Coordinated Smear Campaign.
In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission released a groundbreaking report advocating for a global shift towards a “planetary health diet”—a balanced, predominantly plant-based diet aimed at promoting human health and environmental sustainability…In our disinformation report from 2024, authored by Nicholas Carter, the Freedom Food Alliance unpacked the #YesToMeat campaign—a slick PR effort that masked corporate interests behind the guise of consumer choice and cultural pride. Our report revealed how front groups and influencer partnerships were used to normalize the overconsumption of meat while undermining credible science on sustainable diets…Fast-forward to today. A recent investigation by DeSmog and The Guardian has uncovered that the intense backlash against the EAT-Lancet report was not as organic as many had thought. Instead, it was significantly fueled by a coordinated public relations campaign orchestrated by the meat and dairy industry.
DeSmog: Revealed: Meat Industry Behind Attacks on Flagship Climate-Friendly Diet Report: A new document shows that vested interests were behind a “mud slinging” PR campaign to discredit the 2019 EAT-Lancet study.
A document seen by DeSmog appears to show the results of a campaign by the consultancy Red Flag, which catalogues the scale of the backlash to the [EAT-Lancet] report. The document indicates that Red Flag briefed journalists, think tanks, and social media influencers to frame the peer-reviewed research as “radical”, “out of touch” and “hypocritical”…Based on DeSmog’s review of the document, Red Flag’s attack campaign appears to have been conducted on behalf of the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), a meat and dairy industry coalition that was set up to protect the sector against “emerging threats”. The AAA counts representatives from Cargill and Smithfield Foods – two of the world’s five largest meat companies – on its board.
Comment: Let me restate the obvious: food companies are not public health or social service agencies; they are businesses with stockholders to please. They will take advantage of any profitable opportunity, and oppose anything that threatens profits. The EAT-Lancet initiative is a threat to meat industry profits. We would not know how the meat industry fights back were it not for the work of investigative reporters. They deserve our thanks.
To me personally, the big news last week (besides my profile in the New York Times) is the announcement that the USDA plans to move its headquarters out of Washington, DC to three locations yet to be determined.
USDA is expected to offload one of its two Washington headquarters buildings, according to two employees familiar with the matter.
The relocations will accompany widespread layoffs at the department, according to four officials made aware of the plans, though the exact number is not yet clear. Those cuts are expected in late April or early May.
Some employees have been told to expect the department to cut back to fiscal 2019 staffing levels—which would lead to USDA slashing around 9,000 of its 98,000 employees—while others have been told there is a an overall federal workforce reduction number the administration has developed and the department will do its part proportionally to meet that target.
My translation: I haven’t been able to confirm this story, but what better way to get USDA employees to quit en masse. This worked during Trump I to dismantle the Economic Research Service, a national treasure in my view. I complained early and often about its transfer to Kansas City, MO.
As this article explains,
In 2019, the department relocated the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Mo., over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.
I would say (and the Government Accountability Office agrees) the ERS has never recovered. It still produces technical reports, but no longer publishes the kind of analytical pieces that I found so valuable to my work.
It’s fine to move government offices to the middle of the country. Anything to help repopulate middle America is a good thing.
But this move has only one real purpose: to reduce staff.
This means reducing meat inspectors, and people who help participants use food assistance programs. It means getting rid of agricultural and other USDA-supported researchers. Basically, it means getting rid of anyone good enough to get another job without having to relocate.
Even without this, USDA staff are quitting in droves: USDA employees head for the doors as potential RIFs [reduction in forces] loom
I considered the transfer of the ERS to Kansas to be a national tragedy. This is another one.
Cell-Based or Cultured Meat continues to generate predictions, positive (new products, new approvals, growth) and negative (doom, bans).
Current status: The FDA and USDA have approved sales of cell-cultured chicken but the only place selling it is Bar Crenn in San Francisco (where I have not been).
While waiting for it to get scaled up (if this ever will be possible), here are a few items I’ve collected recently.
THE POSITIVES
THE NEGATIVES
THE QUESTIONS
Well here’s a big surprise. The USDA is taking a look at concentration in agribusiness.
TODAY: Webinar at 1:00 p.m. ET. Register here.
Here’s what this is about:
This report details issues surrounding market concentration in agribusiness, particularly in three agribusiness sectors where concentration has increased over time: seeds, meatpacking, and food retail. Market concentration and its impact on competition have attracted growing public scrutiny. Critics argue that many industries have grown too concentrated, with fewer firms competing with one another and a consequent weakening of competition. The report covers the consolidation in each of these industries, explains the driving forces behind increased concentration, and examines public policies aimed at encouraging competition, focusing on the implementation of merger policy.
This report has lots of interesting tidbits about those three industries.
But what is shocking to me about this report is what it does not say.
It does not refer to or even cite Phil Howard’s book: Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat?
I wrote about Howard’s book when it came out in a new edition.
How could the USDA’s economists fail to mention Howard’s analysis of the global seed industry (since updated).
It’s great the USDA is taking this on. But if you really want to know what’s going on in industry concentration, read Phil Howard’s book first.
I’m speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, June 25-28. I don’t have details yet, but will post when I do.
