by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Food-industry

Mar 28 2023

The Lancet series on commercial determinants of health (and, therefore, nutrition)

Executive Summary

Commercial actors can contribute positively to health and society, and many do, providing essential products and services. However, a substantial group of commercial actors are escalating avoidable levels of ill health, planetary damage, and inequity—the commercial determinants of health. While policy solutions are available, they are not currently being implemented, and the costs of harm caused by some products and practices are coming at a great cost to individuals and society.

A new Lancet Series on the commercial determinants of health provides recommendations and frameworks to foster a better understanding of the diversity of the commercial world, potential pathways to health harms or benefits, and the need for regulatory action and investment in enterprises that advance health, wellbeing, equity, and society.

  • Defining and conceptualising the commercial determinants of health: Anna B Gilmore, Alice Fabbri, Fran Baum, Adam Bertscher, Krista Bondy, Ha-Joon Chang, Sandro Demaio, Agnes Erzse, Nicholas Freudenberg, Sharon Friel, Karen J Hofman, Paula Johns, Safura Abdool Karim, Jennifer Lacy-Nichols, Camila Maranha Paes de Carvalho, Robert Marten, Martin McKee, Mark Petticrew, Lindsay Robertson, Viroj Tangcharoensathien, Anne Marie Thow

Although commercial entities can contribute positively to health and society there is growing evidence that the products and practices of some commercial actors—notably the largest transnational corporations—are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity; these problems are increasingly referred to as the commercial determinants of health. The climate emergency, the non-communicable disease epidemic, and that just four industry sectors (ie, tobacco, ultra-processed food, fossil fuel, and alcohol) already account for at least a third of global deaths illustrate the scale and huge economic cost of the problem. This paper, the first in a Series on the commercial determinants of health, explains how the shift towards market fundamentalism and increasingly powerful transnational corporations has created a pathological system in which commercial actors are increasingly enabled to cause harm and externalise the costs of doing so….

Most public health research on the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) to date has focused on a narrow segment of commercial actors. These actors are generally the transnational corporations producing so-called unhealthy commodities such as tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods….Moving forward, it is necessary to develop a nuanced understanding of commercial entities that goes beyond this narrow focus, enabling the consideration of a fuller range of commercial entities and the features that characterise and distinguish them…Improved differentiation among commercial actors strengthens the capacity of practitioners, advocates, academics, regulators, and policy makers to make decisions about, to better understand, and to respond to the CDOH through research, engagement, disengagement, regulation, and strategic opposition.

This paper is about the future role of the commercial sector in global health and health equity. The discussion is not about the overthrow of capitalism nor a full-throated embrace of corporate partnerships. No single solution can eradicate the harms from the commercial determinants of health—the business models, practices, and products of market actors that damage health equity and human and planetary health and wellbeing. But evidence shows that progressive economic models, international frameworks, government regulation, compliance mechanisms for commercial entities, regenerative business types and models that incorporate health, social, and environmental goals, and strategic civil society mobilisation together offer possibilities of systemic, transformative change, reduce those harms arising from commercial forces, and foster human and planetary wellbeing. In our view, the most basic public health question is not whether the world has the resources or will to take such actions, but whether humanity can survive if society fails to make this effort.

Comment
Perspectives
Viewpoint

Infographics

*******

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

Mar 23 2023

Milk Marketing Orders: an attempt to understand the system

According to USDA,

Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMOs) establish certain provisions under which dairy processors purchase fresh milk from dairy farmers supplying a marketing area. ..A marketing area is generally defined as a geographic area where handlers compete for packaged fluid milk sales…Federal orders serve to maintain stable marketing relationships for all handlers and producers supplying marketing areas, thus facilitating the complex process of marketing fresh milk.

USDA has a brochure on how the program works.

FMMOs establish monthly uniform prices paid to farmers by first classifying milk by its end use. The FMMO then pools the value of that milk and shares that value among the farmers participating on that marketing order. Pooling allows farmers to receive the uniform price of all milk in the pool regardless of what end product their milk was used for. In this way, pooling makes a farmer’s payment independent of how the milk was used.

Got that?

Here are the current milk marketing regions:

I have to confess that Milk Marketing Orders are beyond me, but I am trying .  I understand the basics.  They are supposed to do three things: (1) establish minimum prices paid to dairy farmers, (2) ensure payments are accurate and timely, and (3) provide market information.

To try to understand how this works, I subscribe to AgriPulse News (“Providing balanced coverage of the food, fuel, feed, and fiber industries”).

From AgriPulse, I learned:

After more than two years of discussion and more than 130 meetings, the National Milk Producers Federation Board of Directors unanimously endorsed a comprehensive plan to correct shortcomings exacerbated during the pandemic regarding pricing regulations for milk.

Among the proposed changes, NMPF called for a return to the “higher of” Class 1 mover that was changed in the last farm bill.
NMPF also recommended that USDA update make allowances and review them every two years. Make allowances are based on estimates of what it costs to convert a hundredweight of raw milk into commodity dairy products such as cheese, butter, whey and nonfat dry milk.

NMPF plans to submit its proposal to USDA for a hearing and a potential producer referendum on the order’s modernization yet this year. The International Dairy Foods Association previously said it would request a hearing only on the make allowances request.

I looked at the comprehensive plan.  Here are NMPF’s requested changes to the Federal Milk Marketing Order System:

  • Returning to the “higher of” Class I mover;
  • Discontinuing the use of barrel cheese in the protein component price formula;
  • Extending the current 30-day reporting limit to 45 days on forward priced sales on nonfat dry milk and dry whey to capture more exports sales in the USDA product price reporting;
  • Updating milk component factors for protein, other solids and nonfat solids in the Class III and Class IV skim milk price formulas;
  • Developing a process to ensure make-allowances are reviewed more frequently through legislation directing USDA to conduct mandatory plant-cost studies every two years;
  • Updating dairy product manufacturing allowances contained in the USDA milk price formulas; and
  • Updating the Class I differential price system to reflect changes in the cost of delivering bulk milk to fluid processing plants.

For starters, what is a “Class I mover?”  For this, I need help.

The USDA classifies milk into four categories:

CLASS I – Milk used for beverages including eggnog and ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk.

CLASS II – Milk used for soft products. This includes cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, pot cheese, Creole cheese, milk shake and ice milk mixes, frozen desserts, aerated cream, frozen cream, sour cream, half-n-half, yogurt, custards, puddings, pancake mixes, batter, buttermilk biscuit mixes, infant or dietary formulas packaged in hermetically sealed containers, candy, soup and bakery products for general distribution to the public including sweetened condensed milk used for manufacture of aforesaid products, and fluid cream or any product containing artificial fat or fat substitutes that resemble fluid cream.

CLASS III – Milk used in the manufacture of cream cheese and other spreadable cheeses, and hard cheese of types that may be shredded, grated, or crumbled. It also includes plastic cream, anhydrous milkfat, and butteroil.

CLASS IV – Milk used to produce butter, any milk product in dry form and evaporated or sweetened condensed milk in a consumer-type package.

But a Class I mover?  I cannot find a definition, although I can easily find examples of how it’s used.

The Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) advanced Class I base price hit another eight-year high in March, but the change in the Class I mover formula implemented in 2019 reduced what might have been an even higher price paid to producers.

Announced by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service on Feb. 16, the March I base price is $22.88 per hundredweight (cwt), up $1.24 from February 2022 and $7.68 more than March 2021. It’s also the highest since November 2014.

At $3.12 per cwt, the difference between the advanced Class III skim milk pricing factor ($10.59 per cwt) and the advanced Class IV skim milk pricing factor ($13.71 per cwt) grew substantially. That means producers will see a negative impact using the “average-of plus 74 cents” Class I mover compared to the old “higher-of” formula.

Based on Progressive Dairy calculations, the Class I mover calculated under the higher-of formula would have resulted in a Class I base price of $23.67 per cwt, 79 cents more than the price determined using the average-of plus 74 cents formula. That difference is up from 51 cents per cwt in February.

I give up.  If anyone can explain this to me, please do.

This is what you are up against if you want to understand why milk prices are rising at grocery stores.

*******

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

Dec 2 2022

Weekend reading: Raw Deal

Chloe Sorvino.  Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat.  Atria Books, 2022.  

This is the first analysis I’ve seen of the meat industry from a business perspective.  Corvino is a business reporter from Forbes and did an amazing research job to do this book, including visiting CAFOs, slaughterhouses (she doesn’t say how she talked her way into it), chicken houses, and alternative meat places.  She also talked to a vast number of experts on all sides of the meat issue.  Full disclosure: she interviewed me and quoted me in the book in a couple of places.

I was happy to do a blurb for it.

Raw Deal is Chloe Sorvino’s deeply reported, first-hand account of how business imperatives drive the meat industry to mistreat workers, pollute the environment, fix prices, bribe, and manipulate the political process, all in the name of shareholder profits.  She argues convincingly for holding this industry accountable and requiring it and other corporations to engage in social as well as fiduciary responsibility.   Raw Deal is a must read for anyone who cares about where our food comes from.

On meat substitutes

I have yet to meet anyone in this industry who says they do not care about climate change.  In fact, many say they are personally driven by their product’s sustainability and environmental potential.  But it’s still all to a certain point.  There’s a reason Impossible Foods is preparing for a potentially $10 billion public listing, and that neither Impossible nor Beyond Meat is registered as public benefit corporations a move that would legally inhibit the companies from putting profit over their environmental mission.  Half of Impossible’s investors come from venture capital firms and the roster even includes a hedge fund, Viking Global Investors. Backers are no doubt ready for an exit, and they want to get Impossible the best deal.  A sustainability halo helps the cause (pp. 169-170).

On support for small local meat producers

Local infrastructure for livestock producers to cook and package products is a key missing link in making local food systems profitable and viable.  Creating lasting impacts wouldn’t cost much.  “We have the information and we have the evidence.  FaWhat we don’t have are the facilities and shared space where multiple people can leverage that at their business’s scale,” Mickie told me.  “It’s just crazy to me to be in a space where we’re trying to meet so many intersecting issues of inequity, and have to prove it one hundred percent, and then in another realm, people are playing with stem cells and getting two hundred million dollars.  We literally feed people and want to do it better )p. 257).

Chloe Sorvino has also published:

  • An adapted essay in the Los Angeles Times on universal food access
  • An excerpt in Fast Company about whether good meat exists

***********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

Nov 18 2022

Weekend reading: Commercial Determinants of Health

From Oxford University Press:

I was happy to be asked to contribute to this book: 

My thanks to Eric Crosbie, who did the heavy lifting on the chapter and also co-authored two other chapters (on trade and investment and on teaching commercial determinants of health.

This book brings together multiple authors and perspectives on how corporations selling unhealthful commodities—tobacco, alcohol, and junk food, for example—act to protect sales and marketing, regardless of effects on individual and collective health.

Chapters cover the policies and politics, the ways commercial interessts have taken over culture, how companies influence science, research, and marketing, examples of such influence, analyses of the legal issues, and recommendations for countering corporate actions.

The chapters are so informative and so well referenced that it’s hard to select specific examples.  But here’s one from George Annas’ chapter on “Corporations as Irresponsible Artificial People.”

The public health goal is to make the social responsibility of corporations a reality rather than just a feel-good marketing slogan.  This will require transforming the corporation from an instrument designed and run to make money while indifferent to polluting the planet and destroying the health of humans to an entity whose money-making must be consistent with preserving the health of the planet and its inhabitants.  Central to this objecti8ve is to replace the currfent post-2008 system in which profits are kept by the owners of capital, and losses are socialized by being paid for by governments, most notably for corporations that are “too big to fail.”  Any sustainable system requires that both gains and losses are shared by corporations and governments.  Sharing gains and lossers will require a restructuring of corporate tax, including a minimum tax for all corporations, but domestic and multinational.

Amen.  Everyone needs to understand that food corporations are not social service or public health agencies.  They are businesses stuck with responding to the shareholder value movement, which forces them to make profits their first and only priority.

This system needs to change.  This book provides the evidence.

Note: I discussed many of these same issues in Unsavorty Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.  

***********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nov 10 2022

The British food industry needs to do better on sustainability

The Food Foundation in Great Britain has produced a report on the status of the British food industry.

The full report is here.

 

Here’s what the writers of the report would like the food industry to do:

Like American food companies, British food companies put profits to shareholders as their top priority.  Knowing this, the report calls on government to set mandatory standards.

We need to do this too.

Oct 21 2022

Weekend thinking: holding food corporations accountable (or trying to)

The Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) has released its latest Index report on the progress of the 11 largest U.S. food and beverage companies on their commitments to make, market and sell healthy food and drinks.

The report’s dismal conclusion:

While all companies have placed a greater focus on nutrition in their corporate strategies since the first index was released in 2018, their actual products have not become healthier, and they are not making sufficient efforts to safeguard children from the marketing of unhealthy products.

Collectively, these copanies have sales of about $170 billion annually and account for nearly 30% of all U.S. food and beverage sales.

The report’s overall findings (the Index is a composite on a scale of 10):

Specific findings:

  • Only 30% of their products meet criteria for “healthy,” 70% do not. This is only marginally better than in 2018 (see link to my post on this below).
  • Companies say they have a greater focus on nutrition and health, but are not doing much about it.
  • Only four companies are trying to improve the affordability of their healthier products.
  • Companies say they are trying to protect children from the harmful effects of marketing unhealthy products, but they are not doing much about it.

ATNI recommends that companies fix these problems and that the government “support such changes by introducing more effective and enforceable standards and legislation that prevent the marketing of unhealthy products and push companies to apply reformulation strategies on their products.

I like this recommendation, despite its being couched as “encourage,” rather than as a demand:

Companies are encouraged to actively support (and commit to not lobby against) public policy measures in the US to benefit public health and address obesity as enshrined in the National Strategy on food, hunger, nutrition, and health

Comment: Results liket these come as no surprise.  To repeat: food companies are not social service or public health agencies; they are businesses with stockholders who demand returns on investment as the first priority.

Expecting companies to change products to make them less attractive or to stop marketing to children means asking them to go against their business interests.

Until companies are rewarded for focusing on social values, public health, and environmental sustainability, ATNI’s evaluations are unlikely to have much of an impact on corporate behavior.

Documents

***********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

 

Aug 24 2022

Task force on Hunger, Nutrition, Health report: a missed opportunity?

The Task Force on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health released its comprehensive report yesterday.

The report’s purpose is to inform the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.  If so, it’s going to leave the White House in a quandary.

The report has lots of useful information, beautifully presented, and does all it should on adddressing hunger.

But as I read it, the report, titled Ambitious, Actionable Recommendations to End Hunger, Advance Nutrition, and Improve Health in the United States,” is not nearly ambitious enough when it comes to nutrition and health.

It makes far too many recommendations—30.  That’s always a bad sign (too many to do).  .

Really, only 2 recommendations are needed.  These should establish or expand federal agriculture, food, and nutrition policies to ensure:

  1.  Adequate, affordable food and nutrition for everyone.
  2.  Healthy diets for everyone, meaning those that follow Dietary Guidelines and are largely plant-based, balanced in calories, and low in undesirable fats, sugars, and salt (i.e., ultra-processed foods).

The hunger recommendations do the job: they call for ensuring benefits sufficient to meet households’ basic needs.

But the second?  A mess.

Here is the most obvious example [my comments follow] .

Recommendation #9: “Reduce the marketing of foods that do not align with the latest DGA and increase the marketing of foods that align with the latest DGA to children and populations with disproportionate rates of diet-related chronic conditions” [Good! But not through the recommended voluntary methods by industry.  That won’t work; it requires legislation]

But here’s Recommendation #25: “Increase the ability of food companies to communicate with consumers about the evidence for healthfulness of certain food products and nutrients.”  [Uh oh]

This comes with three action items:

  1. FDA should expeditiously update its definition of the word “healthy” [good] and incentivize food companies to use the terminology and/or associated symbol in their food packaging and marketing [Yikes!] and increase the proportion of products on the market that meet the “healthy” definition [OK, as long as they are not gaming the system].
  2. Congress and/or FDA should improve and streamline the process for application, review, approval, and use of health claims and qualified health claims on food packages. [No!  If it’s one thing we don’t need, it’s more misleading health claims]. 
  3. Congress and/or FDA should create a new process for communicating about foods, nutrients, and other bioactive ingredients that may prevent or treat disease through label claims. [No!  We do not need more claims for the benefits of ultra-processed food products].

What’s missing from this report?

  • Anything about ultra-processed foods and their effects on calorie intake and overall health.  The term is mentioned once, but only in the context of ‘more research needed’ (Recommendation #19).
  • A clear statement of the benefits of soda taxes in reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.  Why isn’t there one?  A box explains: “Task Force members voiced diverse perspectives on this topic.”
  • A clear statement about making SNAP align with Dietary Guidelines.  This is mentioned, but only in the context of pilot research (recommendation #2), and therefore contradicts recommendations #3 and #5.  #3:  Increase nutrition security by promoting dietary patterns that align with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) through federal nutrition programs.  #5:  Leverage the federal nutrition programs’ power in economic stimulus to support food systems that promote foods that align with the latest DGA.”
  • Firm calls on Congress to pass legislation to do what is needed.

What happened?  One member of the committee explained to me that its membership included everyone from anti-hunger advocates to food industry representatives, and too many vested interests were at stake.  Members could not agree on anything that would make a real difference to policy.  Anything substantive met strong resistance.

When it comes to public health policy, which this most definitely is, the food industry has no business being at the table.

This was a recommendation of the 2019 Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change.  Read that report.  It explains why including the food industry in policy recommendations that might reduce sales is not a good idea.

If I had been a member of this Task Force, I would have called for a minority report on policies for reducing consumption of sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods.  But that, of course, is why I’m no longer appointed to such committees.

Aug 23 2022

USDA takes a baby step to making the chicken tournament system a bit more fair

USDA has finally proposed new rules to try to make the current poultry farming system a bit more fair to the people who actually raise the chickens.

Under the current system, the big poultry producers get the benefits while the chicken farmers take all the risks.  The companies supply the chicks; the farmers pay for the houses, equipment, and management—and take on immense debt to do so.

They are paid according to a tournament system.  Farmers who produce the most amount of chicken using the least amount of feed are paid the most; others get less.  But the farmers do not control the quality of the chicks they receive.  They also sell to only one buyer, a system with its own name, monopsony.

John Oliver did a synopsis of the tournaent system in 2015.

Hence the new rule: Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments.  This does not get rid of the tournament system, unfortunately, but it does require poultry companies to disclose key information to growers about realistic outcomes before making important contracting decisions such as capital investments, and about key inputs.

The point is to enable growers to understand the terms of their contracts so as to have a better chance to compete.

Also see:

According to Politico, advocates for a fairer system are complaining that the largest poultry companies are pressuring farmers to oppose the USDA’s proposed rule and providing them with form letters to send in.

The USDA acknowledged these complaints when it announced an extension of the public comment period.

USDA is taking these steps to help ensure the integrity of the Federal rulemaking process and to ensure all parties have the opportunity to fully comment.

“There is fear throughout the meat and poultry industry as we saw earlier this year at two separate Congressional hearings where witnesses did not testify due to concerns of retaliation,” Vilsack said. “But it is still critical that we hear the full story, so we are highlighting the option for comments to be provided anonymously.”

Politico says that as of Aug. 18, the USDA had received at least 350 public comments.  According to its analysis, at least 200 of public comments support the rule, though some supporters have significant reservations and are imploring USDA to go further.