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With House food-safety bill a done deal, questions remain [UPDATED] 19

saladHealthy appetizer—or public-health menace[[The House Food Safety Bill passed overwhelmingly Thursday afternoon. See more at bottom of post.]

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The House will vote today on a momentous, controversial plan to overhaul a large swath of the nation’s food-safety system.

The vote comes amid yet another round of recalls. On Tuesday, the FDA announced the voluntary recall of “one lot” of salmonella-tainted cilantro, distributed by a company called Frontera Produce.

The agency did not define how much cilantro makes up a lot, but it must be, well, a lot, because “the lot in question, 118122, was distributed to two retail store chains in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Louisiana, and New Mexico,” the press release states.

Yet again, the sieve-like nature of our food-safety system comes into relief. According to the FDA:

This product originated in Mexico and was procured by Frontera Produce, who [sic] subsequently routinely tested for contaminants as part of their internal food safety program.

So if the cilantro underwent “routine testing” and showed up with salmonella, why did it go out to two (unnamed) grocery chains with operations in five states? Evidently, the tests got done after the stuff went out to potentially thousands of consumers. Nice one! Just a week before, another Texas company issued a voluntary recall on another (pardon the expression) shitload of salmonella-infected cilantro; and California produce giant Tanimura & Antle recalled 22,000 cases of salmonella-tainted lettuce that had already gone out to 29 states.

It is against this backdrop that the House is debating a major overhaul of the U.S. food-safety landscape, or at least the part of it that doesn’t include meat. The bill, H.R. 2749, or The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, would transform the role of the FDA, which oversees food safety of all foods except for meat and eggs, which fall under the (rather timid) purview of the USDA.

On Wednesday, the bill narrowly failed in an attempt by its sponsors to pass it in a special vote that would have required a two-thirds majority in exchange for not having to consider amendments. The tally was 280-150—six votes shy of the necessary margin. Small-farm and sustainable-ag advocates generally opposed the bill, arguing it would place disproportionately heavy burdens on community-scale players within the food system.

But in the late afternoon, the House Rules Committee announced that another vote would be called Thursday—this one requiring only a simple majority. Again, however, no amendments will be considered. Given Wednesday’s vote, its passage seems imminent.

The legislation contains some important provisions for tightening up an absurdly porous food safety system: the FDA would no longer have to rely on “voluntary” recalls but instead will itself have the power to recall tainted food. Moreover, inspections of food-production facilities will be stepped up.

But it also has aspects that would weigh heavily on small-scale farmers and food processors—ones that pose a fraction of the threat that big players pose, and are responsible for a fraction of the recalls, too. One is a $500 per-facility annual fee for processors to help offset the cost of inspections. Few dispute the FDA needs a larger budget; but $500 falls a lot heavier on someone who turns locally grown cabbage onto kraut for a farmers market than on a company that, say, makes “peanut paste” for of the nation’s large-scale food corporations.

A week ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that lobby groups representing large-scale grain and livestock interests zealously opposed the bill, with the reliably pro-agribusiness House Ag committee chair Collin Peterson pushing their agenda. The fear seemed to be that the bill would give the FDA authority to regulate livestock feed rations—which as I’ve reported before likely contribute significantly to food safety issues. Outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA) and salmonella seem related to routine doses of antibiotics on livestock farms; and the practice of feeding animals an ethanol byproduct called distillers grains has been linked to both E. coli 0157 outbreaks and antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains.

Moreover, cattle producers still routinely feed their cows “chicken litter”—chicken shit mixed up with excess feed and other wastes—even though it can contain cow blood meal (which large-scale poultry farmers often feed to chickens). Appetizing, huh?

That a federal agency might seriously regulate such practices must have made the industry skittish—even more so after a top FDA official recently testified that routine antibiotic applications on livestock farms must end. “Live animals are not ‘food’ until the point of processing, which is why this bill needs to clarify that the FDA does not have regulatory authority on our farms, ranches and feedlots,” a functionary for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association told the Journal.

But by Wednesday’s vote, such concerns had evidently been fixed. Phillip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reported Wednesday afternoon:

Farm-state lawmakers won several last-minute changes, including a provision exempting grain growers from new farming standards. Recordkeeping requirements for livestock farms were restricted. The pork industry kept out of the bill some proposed restrictions on antibiotic use.

The small-producer lobby was less successful; the $500 per-facility fee remained in the version voted on Wednsday. In a Wednesday press release, Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the widely respected National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said that some small-producer concerns had been taken care of in the version voted on Wednesday. In particular, farms that sell directly to consumers would have access to “limited exemptions from traceability and registration requirements” that would be onerous.

But the legislation would stiill place double bookkeeping and traceability requirements on organic growers, who already follow similar procedures from the USDA’s National Organic Program. And even as it gives factory-scale livestock farms a free pass, the bill comes down hard on the wildlife that might—gasp!—trespass on farms. “The bill contains language that experience shows can do serious harm to wildlife and biodiversity, while failing to specify the positive role that conservation practices can play to address food safety concerns,” Hoefner says.

All in all, Hoefner finds the bill wanting. “This bill ultimately had great potential to economically harm family farms as a result of overreaching provisions that do nothing to advance the important cause of food safety,” Hoefner declared.

He added, though, that “simple, common-sense amendments” could fix the bill’s flaws and make into a decent new framework for food safety.” The Kaptur-Farr amendment [PDF], for example, has generated wide support in the sustainable-ag community.

And therein lies the problem with the Wednesday afternoon machinations of the House Rules Committee. Again, as in Wednesday’s vote, the possibility for amendments has been taken off the table. And this time, a simple majority can seal the deal.

I’m told that Wednesday night, as I write this, representatives are haggling over the final version of the bill due to be voted on Thursday. (Over on the Center for Rural Affairs blog, Steph Larsen has a cogent post on the lamentable haste the House leadership is using to ram through this bill.) I hope House members account for the concerns of small producers. We clearly need a new food-safety regime—and in some respects, this bill makes baby steps in the right direction. Underfunded watchdog agencies and laissez-faire enforcement have allowed the corporations that dominate our food system to routinely put millions at risk. But fixing that problem can’t mean stepping on the necks of the producers hard at work building alternative food systems.

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Update: Food safety bill passes

As expected, HR 2749 passed overwhelmingly Thursday afternoon—283-142. Democrats supported it by a margin of 229-20; Republicans clocked in at 54-122.

The version voted on was not substantially different from the one that narrowly missed passage Wednesday. To me, the bill still seems too easy on the food giants that pose the most risk, and a little too hard on the small producers who are creating community-based alternatives to Big Food. During the debate, I watched bitterly as House Ag Committee chair Collin Peterson (D.-Minn.), a pit bull in service of ag interests, declared his satisfaction with the bill. He ticked off the names of the groups that supported or were neutral on it: National Pork Producers, National Corn Growers, etc.

However, as with the climate-bill debate, effecting real change in our food-safety regime—the move to create a system that holds corporate food giants to account for the health threats they create—is going to be a long slog, rife with compromise. A split has opened in the progressive food community about how small-scale producers would fare under the regime laid out by the bill. A coalition of groups, including some I deeply respect like Food and Water Watch and Consumers Union, supported the bill. They wrote in a Thursday letter:

The complaints of certain sustainable and organics groups are unfounded.  Great pains have been taken by members on both sides of the aisle, and on several House Committees, to address concerns that have been raised about this legislation. 

Above-mentioned National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition maintained its opposition to the end, sticking by the analysis laid out above. The argument seems to be about how the FDA would interpret the bill if it became law—FWW and CU urge us to believe that the agency would go gentle on small-scale producers, and the NSAC emphasizes that the agency could use its new authority to crack down on them.

This debate will continue when the Senate takes up the issue in the fall.

 

 

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. mtvyfan's avatar

    mtvyfan Posted 2:17 pm
    30 Jul 2009

    Thanks Tom for all your continually informative articles. This just shows how dirty conventional agriculture really is. You don't see issues like this coming from organic agriculture, only conventional. This just solidifies my commitment to organics. I have written my two senators, one is excellent and an organic farmer, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) one not so great Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) (Hey Max! Single payer system NOW!) and expect that Tester is following this very closely. I am surprised they have not consulted with him as far as I can see, because he is one of the few full-time farmers in Washington (is there anyone else farming on the Senate?) and his perspective would be valuable.

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  2. walt k Posted 2:42 pm
    30 Jul 2009

    While industrial ag needs all the scrutiny we can give it, I am certain that these new regulations, like those before them, will primarily be enforced against small farmers.Regulate industrial ag all you want, but PLEASE exempt direct marketing- sales from farmer to consumer. The food is inherently safe. What risk there is is small, and there is no risk at all of widespread contagion.We need millions of new small farmers and have no plan as to how to get them. Letting them start small, without braindead state and federal bureaucrats (who in reality work for corporate ag) throwing roadblocks in their way would be a beginning.   It would also give more consumers an option to the toxic, food-like substances which predominate in every supermarket in the country. Besides improving their health, it will improve local economies, as most of the value of corporate food (toxic or not) is sucked out to corporate headquarters and distributed to shareholders and CEOs who are already in the richest 0.1% of Americans.

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  3. Naturally Posted 2:47 pm
    30 Jul 2009

    The House voted it down! The bill was opposed by OCA and Wild Farm Alliance, and the defeat is a victory for small organic farmers. However, the bill was defeated mostly by Republicans who were only doing the bidding of Big Ag, and couldn't care less about organic farmers and consumers. Just 23 Democrats voted against it.

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    1. walt k Posted 3:14 pm
      30 Jul 2009

      I believe you're still referring to Wednesday's vote, in which only 23 Dems opposed and a 2/3 majority was required. The Dems were not a solid list of progressives, most of whom voted yes. I honestly didn't recognize many of the 23, but suspect that like Walt Minnick of Idaho, they will prove to be Blue Dogs and DINOs. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll657.xmlHaven't seen any reports of a Thursday vote, which would require only a simple majority, but still apparently allow no amendments.

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  4. Naturally Posted 5:25 pm
    30 Jul 2009

    wtf? I saw the vote live on C-Span today, Thursday, and it failed to win the needed 2/3 margin to pass. It received just 280 votes. Not enough. So it failed.

    Checking again just now, the vote tally has changed to 283 votes. Meaning it passed! Just barely.


    What happened? I don't know. Themiddleclass.org now reports "At first the House of Representatives balked, but the body ultimately passed legislation modernizing the country's outdated and ineffective food safety system."

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  5. Naturally Posted 5:35 pm
    30 Jul 2009

    The following quotes are from the debate preceeding the vote, reported in the "UPDATE -- July 30, 2009, 6 PM" at:

    http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=13799941

    Rep. Dingell responded, "I thank my colleague(s) for their comments. The bill before us includes important language that would exempt from registration and from fees on-farm processors who sell more than half of their product by value directly to consumers or who process grain for sale to other farms. I believe these two provisions go a long way to satisfying the kinds of concerns being expressed. However, I realize there are other small farms or small local processors who will not fit under these exemptions who may face a hardship and I promise to work with my colleagues to address these concerns as the bill moves into conference.

    "With respect to the National Organic Program, it is my expectation that FDA will work very closely with the NOP as it implements this bill to ensure there are no such conflicts. There is direction within the bill for the FDA to consider small farms, organic practices and conservation methods, and I trust that this will be followed. The intention of this bill is not to harm farming practices that have existed for centuries with minimal documented health risk."

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    1. walt k Posted 5:33 pm
      31 Jul 2009

      Definitely two separate votes- Roll calls # 657 and #680. Looks like a small number of Dems switched in both directions, with the net change of +3.I am certainly glad for the exemption you point out for farmers with direct sales over 50%. I tend to agree with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition that interpretation and enforcement will be pro-big ag, and biased against small farmers. And meat and poultry, key, high-value products that small farmers need to be profitable are still not on the table. The feds don't allow direct sales without USDA inspection which makes it prohibitively expensive, and impossible in large areas of the country where there are no local USDA plants. (There is still the very limited whole carcass market- buy more freezers you urban foodies!). As for poultry, the 20,000 bird exemption for direct sale still exists, but the states have been rolling back the use of it ever since 9/11, when fear became such an effective tool. Not to promote food safety, but to maintain food monopoly.

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  6. rev.tinkerbelle Posted 9:38 am
    31 Jul 2009

    how exactly does lettuce and cilantro come to be tainted with salmonella anyway? I for one would be very surprised it I had a problem with this in my garden. What are they doing and why?

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    1. walt k Posted 5:03 pm
      31 Jul 2009

      The industrial sized facilities can easily cross contaminate with rinse baths. That's certainly how industrial chicken maintains its consistent filth.But of course that still would require some of the cilantro to be contaminated in the first place. Supposedly it's is the use of raw manure, as opposed to compost, that causes this. Raw manure is not allowed under organic rules. As Pollan discussed in Omnivore's Dilemma, the virulent strains of pathogens tend to come from feedlots, not typical barnyard manure on small mixed farm.The answer is to buy local. I would agree that you have nothing to worry about from your production.

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    2. rev.tinkerbelle Posted 8:37 pm
      31 Jul 2009

      I actually knew that. It was a little bit of rhetoric in a way. I think the main point is that it's obviously not a great idea to use poop on your food, and why do they do it anyway? I think I was fishing for a smart-ass response. Thanks though.

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  7. Naturally Posted 10:16 am
    01 Aug 2009

    Thanks for the explanation of the votes Walt. Didn't know that direct sales of meat is now allowed. I buy natural beef at the farmers market. Is that farmer an outlaw?

    (I don't know how to attach this to the proper thread.)

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    1. walt k Posted 4:32 pm
      02 Aug 2009

      To legally sell cuts of meat, whether a rib-eye steak or the entire top round, the animal must be both killed and cut and wrapped at a USDA inspected facility. I live in NE Washington , north of Spokane. Local options are few and far away, with the exception of a mobile slaughter trailer put together by WSU Extension a few years back. It operates in conjunction with a local meat cutter who upgraded to USDA-inspection. This document has a good general description of the problem: http://agr.wa.gov/FoF/docs/MeatProcessing.pdf The trailer operates at about half of its capacity and slaughter times are limited because of the difficulty scheduling in the inspectors. If your are producing organic meat, you must use an organic certified slaughter and processing facility. This can limit the options still further as not every facility will go through yet another inspection process to obtain this certification.The meat you're buying at the market must be USDA inspected. The only exemptions are for whole carcass sales, which fall under state rules that differ depending on where you live. The price you pay is probably much higher because of the process, depends on how far away the plant is. A friend who produced lamb locally here, prior to the trailer, had to transport his animals to Sandpoint, Idaho and the meat back. He could sell at the farmer's market, but had to charge $6.95 a pound (8 years ago) to break even. His hope was that customers would try some chops, and then arrange to purchase a whole or half carcass which could be processed under state rules closer to home. He's no longer in the lamb business, which is pretty much situation normal for how well the current system works for small producers.The various rules have been changing all the time. An addition after the BSE (Mad Cow) problem was that cattle older than 30 months cost more to process. (They take extra precautions with the brain and spinal cord). I have heard of producers who brought cattle to slaughter at younger than that age, but they didn't have documentation to prove it. Based on the plant's visual inspection of the animals teeth, they were deemed to be older, thus doubling the charge for processing. This caused the sale to be at a loss, because the animal cannot be pulled back once delivered to the plant. All for an animal with zero risk of BSE, because it was fed naturally. (There are those who have doubts about whether eating meat from BSE-tainted animal would be safe even if it was under thirty months old at time of slaughter. The human version, CJD, has a very long incubation period, so it's hard to link it to a particular causation.)

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  8. Tyler Durden Posted 12:41 am
    02 Aug 2009

    "[T]he bill comes down hard on the wildlife that might ... trespass on farms."How about some explicit description here?  This is the most important aspect of this bill for the vast majority of us (most beings are not humans, after all).  This alone should be cause to strongly oppose this bill even if it doesn't harm small organic farmers.

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  9. Naturally Posted 10:16 am
    03 Aug 2009

    Walt, thanks for the info. I'll have to ask who cuts his meat.

    I'm with you completely on the BSE issues, and that's why I only eat naturally raised, or organic meat. I've also read, and I don't think this gets enough circulation, that the potentially BSE-tainted brain and spinal cord is used in ground meat, sausage, lunch meats and bullion cubes. I don't think most people are aware of that. I guess it follows that conventional steaks and chops poss less BSE risk . . . but I don't know. Any thoughts on that?

    (I still can't figure out how to attach this to the right thread!)

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    1. walt k Posted 6:46 pm
      03 Aug 2009

      Simply click the reply button at the end of the comment you want it indented under as opposed to the button at the start or end of the entire thread.I got very into the BSE issue when it erupted, writing numerous comments to the USDA and attending hearings (Mabton was after all in Washington). As I just raise my own beef (my business at the time was pastured poultry) I must confess I have not kept up on the latest goings on. In his book "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal," Joel Salatin brought up all sorts of stuff about BSE that I hadn't heard of, and can't vouch for one way or the other. Even so far as challenging the "cannibal" aspect of its origins. (And while I admire his spirit, and agree with his comments about the food industry and inspection, there is much in his book that I don't agree with.)In this regard I am a conservative, preferring to eat food that was raised by time-honored methods. Cattle should eat grass. Regardless of whatever we find about the cause of BSE, I remain convinced that the USDA's main concern was not public safety, but continued viability of the beef industry, and that they were more than wiling to lie to achieve their goal.I always wondered why , if BSE is in the nerve tissues, why only the brain and spinal cord are singled out. There is nerve tissue in all the meat, and if all you need consume is a single rogue prion. . .

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      1. Tyler Durden Posted 8:47 pm
        03 Aug 2009

        The problem goes way beyond how cattle are fed.  Animal husbandry is both cruel to animals and very environmentally destructive.  Allowing cattle to graze does great harm unless they're restricted to the portion of the U.S. where the grasses evolved with heavy ungulates, namely the Midwest.  In the western U.S., the cattle industry has done more harm than any other.  What used to be the western grasslands are now deserts, native grasses are gone, creeks and streams are now so polluted that you cannot drink from them, etc.  And none of this even addresses the harms caused by fencing the cattle and killing predators and ungulates that compete for food.  And these are literally just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more harms I've forgotten!The healthiest and least environmentally harmful meat to eat is wild.  Of course, in our grossly overpopulated world, not everyone could do that or we'd exterminate wild animals (proving that if we don't greatly lower our population, nothing else we do will matter in the end).  But we can lower our meat consumption by a lot and eat things like fish and seafood that have not been caught by environmentally harmful methods.  Doing these things would be much better than obsessing on how cattle are fed, which is nothing but a game of who will be harmed more, the cattle, the people who eat them, and/or the natural environment.

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      2. singlelens Posted 5:53 pm
        04 Aug 2009

        I used to work in a lab that studied prions/BSE, so I may be able to clear up a few things.BSE in cattle, CJD in humans, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer are diseases caused by the misfolding and accumulation of a particular protein that causes cell death in brain tissue - similar in pathology to Alzheimer's and Huntington's. For most mammals, there is about a one in a million chance of spontaneously developing a prion disease - and what makes prions unique is that this disease can be infectious (while Alzheimer's and Huntington's cannot).So for all cattle, no matter how they are raised, a one in a million chance exists that any given cow will develop BSE. But just as Alzheimer's is extremely rare in people under 50, spontaneous BSE is extremely rare in cows under 30 months. So older cattle must be handled with more caution before entering the food supply. The progression of the disease is pretty well understood - infectious proteins accumulate in the brain and spinal cord. but detectable levels of prion protein can be found in many other tissues in the late stages of disease. Presumably, a cow would have to reach a point in which disease symptoms were obvious for prions to be present in muscle tissue.I'm not sure what Joel Salatin suggests triggered the large-scale BSE outbreak, but I believe the prevailing theory is still that infectious tissue from one of those "one in a million" cows (or sheep, possibly) ended up in the feed supply and set off a chain reaction. And this was linked to the ~125 cases of a variant form of CJD in humans. Since cannibalistic animal feed was outlawed, there haven't been any additional cases of variant CJD, but BSE and CJD still occur at a certain level in bovine and human populations.
        I edited to remove my nerve/neuron comment, I was wrong - the terms are interchangeable. the point I should've made is that prion disease starts in a particular type of neuron cell present only in the brain.

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  10. walt k Posted 5:15 pm
    05 Aug 2009

    Thanks Singlelens. The info about neurons unique to the brain was new to me. I asked that question at the time of the Mabton discovery and USDA could not answer it. Most of what you said is as I understood it, so I mispoke when I said zero chance, I should have said one-in-a-million chance. I am concerned though that as the original article points out, USDA rules do not preclude cattle getting parts of other cattle to eat, particularly the practice of feeding chicken litter. I suspect Salatin is off base, as I've found absolutely no confirmation on the alternate origin theories he sugested. As I said, that book is very uneven in quality, hurting the good points it does make.

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  11. miahaehi Posted 8:34 am
    09 Aug 2009

    "The healthiest and least environmentally harmful meat to eat is
    wild.  Of course, in our grossly overpopulated world, not everyone
    could do that or we'd exterminate wild animals (proving that if we
    don't greatly lower our population, nothing else we do will matter in
    the end).  But we can lower our meat consumption by a lot and eat
    things like fish and seafood that have not been caught by
    environmentally harmful methods. Doing these things would be much
    better than obsessing on how cattle are fed, which is nothing but a
    game of who will be harmed more, the cattle, the people who eat them,
    and/or the natural environment." Flyer land I totally agree with you.

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