Processed meat labels saying "uncured" and "no nitrites added" are misleading

A large body of evidence reviewed by the World Health Organization found that processed meat consumption increases the risk of cancer. Seeking to alleviate consumer concern, food companies label some of their products as "uncured" or "no nitrites added." However, these products may have essentially as much nitrites or nitrates as regular products.

In an August 29 report from Consumer Reports (CR), policy analyst (and Friedman School Ph.D. student) Charlotte Vallaeys explained the issue.

“Thanks to the topsy-turvy world of government food labeling rules, ‘no nitrites’ doesn’t mean no nitrites,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, senior food and nutrition policy analyst at CR. Instead, it means that the nitrates and nitrites used to “cure”—or preserve and flavor—meat come from celery or other natural sources, not synthetic ones, such as sodium nitrate or nitrite.

The issue was picked up in August by NPR in a report by Allison Aubrey.

This issue also is the subject of a new citizen petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Consumer Reports, which in turn led USDA to open a public comment period until Nov. 12.

Meanwhile, I remain concerned that the federal government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) for 2020-2025 may overlook scientific evidence on processed meat and cancer risk. It is important for USDA and DHHS to review this evidence directly, as its own topic, not just tangentially when it arises as part of broader studies of dietary patterns. That scientific issue was covered in a blog post in early August, noting our recent article in Milbank Quarterly.

In related work, my colleague Dr. David Kim and several co-authors and I have a new article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM), published today, with a modeling analysis of the health benefits that could arise if warning labels or a tax on processed meat effectively reduced intake and thereby reduced cancer risk. The abstract concludes:

The model shows that implementing tax or warning labels on processed meats would be a cost-saving strategy with substantial health and economic benefits. The findings should encourage policy makers to consider nutrition-related policies to reduce cancer burden.

Outbreak by Timothy Lytton

The new book Outbreak by legal scholar Timothy Lytton (University of Chicago Press; Amazon) is both well-written and insightful about how private markets and government institutions (including regulation and courts) jointly affect food safety successes and failures. It mixes lively narrative about particular outbreaks (including much detail that is new to me) with legal analysis about incentives and constraints for each stakeholder. I have added it to my syllabus.

Food Safety News writes:

Lytton discusses how inadequate budgets restrict the ability of government to develop and enforce meaningful regulations. Pressure from consumers to keep prices down constrains industry investments in safety. The limits of scientific knowledge leave experts unable to assess policies’ effectiveness and whether measures designed to reduce contamination have actually improved public health.

“Outbreak” offers practical reforms that will strengthen the food safety system’s capacity to learn from its mistakes and identify cost-effective food safety efforts capable of producing measurable public health benefits, according Lytton’s publisher.

The book has earned praise from big business officials, academic researchers, and lawyers who specialize in food safety cases.

Lytton is an associate dean and distinguished university professor at Georgia State University College of Law.

U.S. Food Policy: An Introduction (Second Edition)

The book Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction, whose second edition has just been released in the Earthscan Food and Agriculture Series (Routledge), prepares readers to make their own distinctive contribution to a lively conversation about our food system.

There is no reason why food policy debate should continue to mirror the current dysfunctional state of our national political debate. We can do better.

The first in a series of related videos asks: Who should study U.S. food policy?

Routledge provides a free sample chapter on the author Q&A page.

Baylen Linnekin: "Biting the Hands That Feed Us"

In Biting the Hands that Feed Us (Island Press, 2016), food lawyer Baylen Linnekin offers a libertarian appeal for reduced food regulations.

Like many such books, Linnekin reviews a long littany of well-meaning business people whose enterprises were thwarted by silly rules and regulations that fail to serve a sound public purpose: small "salumi" makers (sort of like salami) who are told to use preservatives in their cured meats; artisinal cheese makers who are told not to use wooden boards for aging cheese; fishermen who must discard "bycatch" to comply with harvest rules; and local farmers who are prevented from selling off-size tomatoes or who suffer under the fixed costs of compliance with the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

A couple features favorably distinguish this book from others in the same vein. Linnekin's appreciation for small and artisinal producers is heartfelt, in contrast with others who might use complaints about regulation implicitly to breeze over shortcomings in the current conventional industrialized food system. Linnekin's main thesis is that rules too often harm sustainable production strategies. As one might hope, Linnekin takes a completely consistent and highly critical libertarian view of "Ag Gag" laws, which risk preventing private individuals from honestly reporting how food really is produced. I could not help being pleased with Linnekin's coverage of checkoff programs, including a citation to some coverage from this blog.

In the end, though, I think Linnekin understates the genuine public interest motivation for many rules and regulations. With any proposed food safety policy, there is risk of both Type I error (prohibiting an economic action that would not in fact have caused an illness) and Type II error (failing to prevent an illness that we should have prevented). I see the struggle to get this balance right as fundamental to U.S. food safety policy. The fact that Linnekin can recount examples of regulations that failed to correctly judge a particular producer falls far short of persuading a reader of his broader point.

In his final chapter, though without using these terms, Linnekin wrestles with precisely this challenge of getting the balance of Type I and Type II correct. As I would paraphrase the argument, he feels one can distinguish the right regulatory policies by: (a) promoting sustainability, (b) enforcing standards for food safety outcomes, not food safety processes, (c) avoiding any favor for large producers over small producers, and (d) ending farm subsidies. I don't think this four-part screen is sufficient to strike the right balance. For example, deciding when to regulate outcomes and when to regulate processes is complicated. In many cases, it is far more straightforward to regulate the temperature at which food must be held than to regulate microbial counts on the product.

Overall, though I liked the book, I doubt Linnekin is right to call so broadly for regulatory retrenchment. We have endured decades now of strong attacks in the U.S. Congress on regulatory agencies, using sharp anti-government rhetoric, including many of the same libertarian themes that Linnekin highlights. Even if Linnekin does devote one chapter to regulations he does support -- which not every such author would do -- this does not suffice to give the book as a whole a full balance.

Nanotechnology will revolutionize the food system (and other familiar sentences)

There appears to be a large literature using the same words to say that "nanotechnology" is an "enabling" technology that will "revolutionize the food system".

A 2008 book by Ajit Kumar Roy and Niranjan Sarangi says:

Nanotechnology, as a new enabling technology, has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems....

The first sentence of Norman Scott's chapter in a 2006 book says:

Nanotechnology, as a new enabling technology, has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems in the United States and the World.

The second sentence of a chapter by B. Singh, S. K. Gautam, M. S. Chauhan, and S. K. Singla in a 2005 book says:

Nanotechnology is an enabling technology that has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems.

In a 2012 book, M.E. Popa and A. Popa write:

As an enabling technology, nanotechnology has vast potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems.

A twist on the typical wording is the idiosyncratic use of the word "enable" instead of "enabling." The first sentence of the abstract for a 2010 article by Q. Huang, H. Yu, and Q. Ru in Journal of Food Science is:

Nanotechnology is an enable technology that has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems.

And that was presumably the source for the first sentence of the abstract for a new 2015 article in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, by Harleen Kour, Anisa Malik, Naseer Ahmad, Towseef Wani, Raj Kaul, and Anju Bhat.

Nanotechnology is an enable technology that has the potential to revolutionize agriculture and food systems.

Before we judge too harshly, I should acknowledge that I make little effort to develop novel language for routine background information. It would not shock me if a sentence akin to the following appeared in more than one publication: "The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's leading anti-hunger program and an important part of the social safety net." But that is a different issue from reusing language for the main point of an article.

The final sentence of the abstract of the 2015 Kour et al. article in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition is:

In fact, nanotechnology introduces new chances for innovation in the food industry at immense speed, but uncertainty and health concerns are also emerging.

This is the same as the abstract for a 2010 article by Sekhon in Nanotechnology Science Applications:

In fact, nanotechnology introduces new chances for innovation in the food industry at immense speed, but uncertainty and health concerns are also emerging.

For the 2015 Kour et al. article in particular, the indebtedness has risen sufficiently high that the good journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition should probably look into the similarities.

More generally, does there seem to be too large a literature parroting the same not-too-skeptical claims about nanotechnology?

Yelp experiments with warning labels for restaurants that have low health inspection scores

A 2014 post in this blog noted that food safety problems are fundamentally about lack of public information.

If consumers had magic sunglasses that displayed the presence of Salmonella on chicken in the grocery store, there would be no need for government regulation. Immediately, faced with market consequences for distributing chicken with Salmonella, the companies would clean up their product.

The Washington Post's Wonkblog this week reports on Yelp's San Francisco restaurant review site, which is conducting an experiment with the online equivalent of these magic sunglasses.

Yelp, the popular Web site that lets consumers review everything from bistros to body shops to yoga studios, quietly began running an experiment in San Francisco over the past week. The pages for a small fraction of the city's restaurants on the site now bear a new consumer alert.

The warnings are shown for the review pages of restaurants that received very low scores from health inspectors. One feels bad for the restaurants, but this idea is intriguing. The National Restaurant Association mentioned concerns. Yet, if the inspections use standards that all restaurants really can satisfy, this ought to help consumers get access to safer and cleaner restaurants without doing the restaurants much lasting harm.

A boring post with quiet opinions about GMOs

Here is a forlorn too-boring-to-notice list of quiet positions on recent Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) controversies.

1. I never say "GMOs are safe."

Not all GMO traits are safe. The most widely-used GMO trait in American agriculture is the "Roundup Ready" or "glyphosate-resistance" trait, which allows farmers to apply the pesticide glyphosate to corn and soybeans. This pesticide is generally thought to be safer than many others. Yet, GMO technology has encouraged such rapid increases in its use that there are strong concerns about environmental consequences (pesticide resistance) and less settled but still relevant concerns about health consequences (cancer risk).

Indeed, any revolution in food and agriculture technology has good and bad consequences. The central Green Revolution technologies for corn, rice, and wheat were developed with conventional non-GMO science. They saved the world from famine. Yet, just like the new GMO "glyphosate-resistance" trait, the non-GMO Green Revolution technologies encouraged increased use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, which have environmental and health consequences. If it were up to me, I would support the Green Revolution again, but let's be honest: no revolution in food and agriculture ever is "safe."

2. I never say "GMOs are dangerous."

The fact that a technology is GMO does not make it dangerous. For example, a second major GMO trait is the "Bt" trait, which allows crops to produce the Bt toxin. Bt is widely thought to be harmless for vertebrates, and so natural that it is permitted in "organic" production. You may choose to worry or not worry about Bt. If you do worry, you should avoid both GMO food and organic food.

Other GMO traits have nothing to do with pesticides at all. If a new technology confers drought resistance or increased content of a precursor to vitamin A, my judgment of safety is pretty much indifferent to whether the technology is GMO or non-GMO.

3. I do not support mandatory GMO labels.

The "Just Label It" campaign and other anti-GMO organizations seldom emphasize the mandatory character of their labeling proposals. A mandatory labeling proposal is not just about meeting the needs of curious consumers. It also is about using the government's own authority to stand behind the value of distinguishing between GMO and non-GMO foods.

In the earlier examples, a mandatory GMO label was useless for helping consumers avoid the environmental and health consequences of pesticide overuse, because some GMO technologies (such as drought resistance) have little to do with pesticides and some non-GMO technologies (such as Green Revolution varieties) very much encourage increased pesticide use. Similarly, the GMO label cannot help consumers identify the products of the industrialized food system, because non-GMO foods are almost as likely as GMO foods to come from modern industrial-scale agricultural production.

Many consumers are confused on this point, believing that the non-GMO label distinctly identifies better safety, environmental, and economic qualities. You may think me undemocratic for saying that government policy should not enforce a mandatory GMO label merely because it is popular with a slight majority of citizens in our divided nation. It would be a more profound practice of representative democracy to directly strengthen food policies that provide safe and environmentally sustainable food. The mandatory GMO label will just undermine this endeavor, provoking an inevitable backlash three years down the road as people catch on to how useless it is for achieving their real goals.

4. I do not support stripping states of labeling authority.

Congress should not pass a law, which critics have called the "DARK" act, to strip states of the authority to pass a mandatory GMO label. The proposed law really is undemocratic, and its sponsors corroborate every wild claim ever made by GMO critics. For example, the DARK act's supporters repeat endlessly the claim that GMOs are safe (see #1 above). The "Just Label It" campaign wishes to frame the debate not as a question of government enforcement of a dubious distinction, but instead as a question of our "right to know what is in our food." There is no better way to justify that framing than to try to take away state rights to inform people about what is in their food.

The current state of argument over GMOs in the United States is like a hurricane, blowing first one way and then the other, yielding nothing but destruction. I recognize that the only way to be heard above the storm would be to shout and scream. Yet, here I sit in the storm shelter, reading a day-old newspaper and quietly muttering to myself, "Really, I do think we should be able to talk more sensibly about GMOs."

Timothy Lytton on the role of litigation in constructive food safety policy

In this recent video interview with Food Safety News, legal scholar Timothy Lytton envisions a more constructive role for litigation in the next stages of development in food safety policy.

Lytton, previously the author of Kosher, describes the three main systems in food safety as (1) regulation, (2) private sector supply chain management, and (3) the liability system (or the tort system). He points out that engagement between regulators and industry supply chain managers has in some ways become more respectful and mutually beneficial. He sees potential in a similar conversation about the role of litigation in food safety policy, including industry managers, the tort system, and insurers at the table.

This topic needed a readable systematic summary. I look forward to Lytton's forthcoming book: Outbreak: the Evolution of the U.S. Food Safety System.

Let's call these ingredients "Sometimes Considered as Mostly Safe" (SCAMS)

New reports by the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Science in the Public Interest suggest that some food ingredients have been falling through the cracks, with nobody in authority confirming that they are safe [slight edit 4/21].

By law, the federal government has long accepted food ingredients that are "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS), without the need for elaborate testing. For example, GRAS rightly allows long-accepted ingredients such as vinegar to be used without unnecessary testing procedures.

The new reports note many examples where ingredients that are classified as GRAS have been allergenic, have been suspected of being carcinogens, or never were submitted for FDA review (becuase such review is sometimes optional). In some cases, ingredients were submitted for FDA review for consideration as GRAS, and then withdrawn because FDA had questions, but these ingredients ended up in the food supply anyway.

The Center for Public Integrity writes:

Critics of the system say the biggest concern, however, is that companies regularly introduce new additives without ever informing the FDA. That means people are consuming foods with added flavors, preservatives and other ingredients that are not at all reviewed by regulators for immediate dangers or long-term health effects.

Overall, most food safety officials with the companies involved quite probably are mostly confident the food ingredients are safe for most people (especially those without allergies), and felt it would be overkill to subject the ingredients to a large volume of testing. In most cases, the companies probably are correct.

In such cases, though, let's stop calling such food ingredients "GRAS." From now on, more truthfully, let's call new ingredients that lack FDA review: Sometimes Considered as Mostly Safe " (SCAMS).

The "Trouble with Antibiotics" in U.S. animal agriculture production

Frontline last night had an excellent report, the Trouble with Antibiotics, on the plausible link between dangerous antibiotic resistant diseases and the overuse of antibiotics in U.S. meat production.

Poultry and hog producers use large amounts of antibiotics even in healthy animals, as a growth promoter and to prevent disease. As bacteria evolve to become resistant to these antibiotics, we lose important tools for treating deadly diseases in humans, including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

For readers who want to inspect the scientific evidence for themselves, here are some links to research mentioned in the Frontline report.

Jessica Rinsky, Lance Price (interviewed in the report), and colleagues found livestock-associated MRSA in workers from industrial livestock operations but not workers from antibiotic-free livestock operations.

Andrew Waters, Lance Price, and colleagues found that MRSA bacteria reaches meat on supermarket shelves.

Joan Casey, Brian Schwartz, and colleagues found in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that antibiotic-resistant bacteria cases in humans were geographically associated with the proximity of nearby meat producers in Pennsylvania. The Frontline interviewer did a great job questioning the scientists and explaining both the strengths and limits of this type of geographic association.

Concerned about the Frontline story, the federal government's National Pork Board has been scrambling to persuade people not to worry about this issue. Reuters reports today that the NPB is funding an online public information campaign to defend antibiotic use. The most damning part of the Reuters report alleges that the NPB is using search engine optimization (SEO) tools so that web users seeking information about antibiotics are directed to industry-friendly web sources.

Both Reuters and the Frontline report describe the pork board as an "industry" association, but the National Pork Board is a semi-public checkoff program. The U.S. Congress created this board, the Secretary of Agriculture appoints its members from a slate of candidates suggested by the industry, and the federal government uses its powers of taxation to collect the "mandatory assessment" -- a tax -- that funds this public information campaign. This is not a voluntary industry association. All pork board messages must be approved by the federal government as its own "government speech," so our government is complicit in this public information campaign to rebut the Frontline report.

The industry representatives interviewed in the Frontline report didn't really dispute any of the facts, but they engaged in a rhetorical game of shifting the burden of proof. They argued that no further regulation is needed, because there is not yet certain proof that some of the research associations represent true cause and effect. Since nothing is ever certain in this type of research, the industry representatives can feel safe that no level of evidence would ever clear their hurdle.

One of the best passages in the Frontline report was an interview with FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. The interviewer asked why FDA does not collect information about the quantity of antibiotics administered by meat producers. Though Hamburg squirmed under the question, she essentially confirmed that FDA wanted this information but could not get it because of industry opposition. In other words, the industry representatives say no action should be taken until we have certain proof, while simultaneously hindering access to the data needed to investigate the question.

The industry is pursuing some voluntary steps to reduce antibiotic use for the purpose of "growth promotion," but it has defined this term narrowly so that most antibiotic use even in healthy animals will still continue.

The Frontline report is strongly recommended. Now is the time for stronger measures to restrain the overuse of antibiotics in U.S. meat production.

Frontline, October 14, 2014.

NRDC shares inspection documents for Foster Farms

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) yesterday shared inspection documents for Foster Farms, the company at the center of a recent Salmonella outbreak that now appears contained.

From a blog post yesterday by Jonathan Kaplan, who is NRDC's director for food and agriculture (and by coincidence a childhood friend who grew up on the same block in Washington, DC, as I did):

Today NRDC posted hundreds of noncompliance reports written by USDA food safety inspectors at Foster Farms plants around the country between September 2013 and March of this year. Most of the violations found were incredibly unsavory and include more than 200 from two California plants linked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to an antibiotic resistant Salmonella outbreak. Although the outbreak now appears to be over, the pattern of violations at Foster Farms plants doesn’t leave us feeling warm and fuzzy about the company’s commitment to protecting public health. And we still have not received any response to our questions about antibiotic use at Foster Farms.

Food safety problems are fundamentally about lack of public information. If consumers had magic sunglasses that displayed the presence of Salmonella on chicken in the grocery store, there would be no need for government regulation. Immediately, faced with market consequences for distributing chicken with Salmonella, the companies would clean up their product.

The Foster Farms case shows how much better off we would be if the public had access to more of the information that appears routinely in inspection reports. Ironically, even companies might benefit from market incentives to reduce problems at the inspection stage rather than waiting for an outbreak (which can cause many more millions of dollars in loss of sales and reputation).

Thanks, NRDC, for helping to make such information available.

Next steps for preventing Salmonella in chicken ... and fresh produce?

After this year's Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak, which has caused more than 300 illnesses and an unusually high rate of hospitalizations, was linked to Foster Farms, observers were surprised that USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) did not ask the chicken processor to recall product that may have been contaminated.

Participants in a recent meeting with FSIS reported that agency officials seemed to take the position that they required proof of culpability before they could request a recall.  That cautious stance makes sense when an agency is bringing a criminal case, but not when an agency is deciding merely whether to recall contaminated chicken. 

In a Salmonella case that may be related, Costco has recalled rotisserie chicken sold at a store in California.  Why didn't FSIS ask for a recall of the Foster Farms chicken?  There may be several reasons.

• The agency may simply be satisfied with Foster Farms proposed remedial actions and may feel incapable of doing much good by chasing after the chicken that has already left the farm gate, so to speak.
• The agency may feel that Salmonella on chicken is a tolerable hazard, because consumers should be able to kill it by cooking at home.  The agency has a tolerance for the presence of Salmonella on whole chickens and tends to take action only if the rate of Salmonella contamination exceeds this percentage.  There is no specific tolerance established for chicken parts, as in the Foster Farms case, but the agency may feel that Foster Farms' rate of contamination is in line with the rest of the industry.

A coalition of consumer groups has asked for stronger action (.pdf), including a list of 7 specific steps the federal government could take.  For example, the government could declare antibiotic resistant Salmonella and Salmonella that has been linked to an outbreak in poultry as "adulterants," a legal term which triggers specific legal power to prohibit sale.  Also on the list, the government could require companies to revise their food safety plans.

The politics of such food safety regulations is complex, however.  Separate from this Salmonella outbreak in processed chicken, I have been following the very tough stance that some sustainable agriculture advocates have been taking against allowing new food safety rules under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) to be applied to foods produced locally and on small farms.  Salmonella contamination is much more common on chicken from processing factories than on small farm produce; still, when contamination occurs on fruits or vegetables, there is not even a "kill step" through consumer cooking at home, so the safety issues are quite serious.  Some small farm advocates say it would be too burdensome to have formal "HACCP" food safety plans and bacterial monitoring of on-farm water sources, in the same manner that poultry plants must do.

When the industry under discussion is chicken processing, it is tempting to say we should bear any cost necessary to protect food safety.  But I've noticed that when public-interest minded people think in a parallel fashion about both chicken and fresh produce, they tend to conclude that our society must find a sensible balance between food safety protection and the costs -- for farmers, manufacturers, and for the consumers who ultimately purchase the product.

Ractopamine and the proposed Chinese purchase of Smithfield Foods

Helena Bottemiller reported at the end of May for NBC News that the proposed purchase of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company may be related to the fact that China has stricter standards than the United States does for a growth promoting drug:

The proposed $4.7 billion sale of Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, to China’s biggest meat processing company comes amid significant trade friction between the two countries over meat and livestock.

China bans ractopamine, a controversial growth-promoting drug that is widely used by U.S. livestock producers. Russia also bans the feed additive and both countries have recently stepped up residue testing in meat, worried about the health effects of the drug. The actions have constrained American meat exports.

Bottemiller's feature was supported by the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

Albany Law School professor Timothy Lytton has a new book, Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food.  A key point is that this topic is more broadly relevant than one might think, because kosher food is just one of many examples of food regulation systems that can be adopted by the private sector.

Lytton was interviewed on the What is Your Food Worth? blog.

As a general matter, private food safety audits and industry-sponsored nutrition labeling schemes have been a great disappointment. Behind most major food-poisoning outbreaks is some private auditing firm that gave the food producer a phony five-star rating. And when nutritional rating schemes give high marks to sugary cereals and full-fat ice cream, you have to wonder.

As a kosher-observant Orthodox Jew, I realized that kosher certification offers a 2000 year old example of private food certification. My initial suspicion was that kosher certification was full of price gouging and unnecessary, super-stringent standards. As I began to get into my research, however, I found that, although fraud and corruption were rampant a century ago in kosher meat production, today’s kosher system is highly reliable. My book tells the story of how, within the span of a century, kosher certification became the one of the most reliable systems of private certification in the food industry, indeed, perhaps in any industry.

National Food Policy Conference, April 15-16, Washington DC

The Consumer Federation of America's National Food Policy Conference is an always-fascinating annual tradition. 

For 36 years, the National Food Policy Conference has been a Washington institution and a unique collaboration between consumer advocates, the food industry and government.  The conference is organized by the Consumer Federation of America and is a key national gathering for those interested in agriculture, food and nutrition policy.

This year’s conference will explore an array of important food policy issues facing consumers and the food industry. The conference will explore how immigration reform might impact our food supply and discuss the future of food shopping. Speakers and panelists will examine timely food policy topics including the debate on sugar sweetened beverages, the impact of changing animal welfare standards, an update on implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the opportunities and challenges of sodium reduction, and priority setting in a time of reduced resources.

Register today using the registration tab.  Reduced registration fees are available for college and graduate students. 

Check back here for the latest conference updates and information.Follow us on Twitter and join the conversation at #FPC2013.

A few years ago, I enjoyed participating in a debate about agricultural subsidies at this event, as part of a panel including former U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm, the Environmental Working Group's Ken Cook, and Bread for the World's David Beckmann, and hosted by NPR's Dan Charles.

Choices Magazine examines lean finely textured beef ('pink slime')

A recent theme issue in Choices Magazine, a publication of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), examined lean finely textured beef (LFTB), an ammonia-treated beef filler product widely known as 'pink slime.' 

To some extent, the authors of the theme overview, J. Ross Pruitt and Joshua D. Detre, share the beef industry's view that the long controversy over this beef product is unfair to the industry.

The use of the moniker “pink slime” is an example of how calling into question the safety and/or quality of a food product/production practice can do irreparable damage to the faith in the U.S. agricultural supply chain. As prices and markets continue to adjust due to the inability of ground beef suppliers to use LFTB, consumers are paying more per pound for ground beef. The LFTB case has impacts beyond the market price of ground beef, especially for the employees of BPI who lost their jobs and the communities who benefitted from the presence of BPI. While it is not yet clear if longer-term adjustments to the beef cattle industry will be tied back to the media scare over LFTB, it is evident that educating consumers about food production is a challenge not to be ignored.

At the same time, the theme issue includes plenty of grounds for thinking the industry could have handled this matter better.  For example, Erika K. Eckley and Roger A. McEowen review the history of the food disparagement laws, which BPI, the company responsible for LFTB, is using to sue ABC News following a feature story last year that criticized the product.  This review makes these food disparagement laws look like awful public policy, and the authors doubt BPI will succeed.

A long time-line of the history of 'pink slime,' on the Food Safety News website, recounts many low moments for this product, including a shipment of contaminated product that was the subject of an unsuccessful recall (apparently the product was sold before it could be recovered) and an occasion when the product generated complaints from food service workers because of strong ammonia smells.  Important early coverage included this article by Michael Moss at the New York Times in 2009.

The Council on Food, Agriculture, and Resource Economics (C-FARE), an AAEA outreach organization (for which I am a board member), is jointly sponsoring a media event and discussion on February 15 with the Federation of Animal Science Societies.

FDA urged to make public information about antibiotic use

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the Government Accountability Project have spent a couple years asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release information about the amount of antibiotic use in farm animals.  Overuse of antibiotics in farm animals may lead to the evolution of more dangerous drug-resistant strains.

FDA releases some summary data each year, but denied the request for more detailed tabulations,citing an exemption in freedom-of-information law that applies to commercial information and trade secrets.  This seems wrong.  Misuse of antibiotics is an important public health issue, and the aggregated data requested were not firm-specific.

In response, the Center for a Livable Future and the Government Accountability Project brought a lawsuit this month.  The Center's director Robert Lawrence explains this week:

Since 2008, when the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA) began requiring drug companies to report basic information about antibiotic sales to FDA, the agency has released limited summaries of these data to the public. Sadly, though, the FDA conceals most of what gets reported by the drug companies. This concealment protects the producers and the drug companies, both of which make tidy profits from injudicious dosing of food animals.

In the meantime, the Center's staff has done some clever sleuthing, exploiting a glitch in FDA's annual release of summary data, which was followed by a correction to the agency's numbers.  The Center tracked down the source of the change in order to conjecture about the amount of antibiotics used in one particular category called arsenicals.

FDA is missing deadlines for implementation of complex food safety rules

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been missing the implementation deadlines that Congress set in 2009 as part of the landmark FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). 

Food safety advocates have sued the agency because of the delays.  In a legal motion to dismiss (.pdf) filed today, FDA argues that the courts should not hold the agency liable for this failure to implement the law:

The sole remedy available for an unreasonable agency delay claim is for the court to compel agency action, such as by issuing an order requiring the agency to act, without directing the substantive content of the decision....  Although FDA has been unable to meet the aggressive statutory timelines for the seven new rules, there is no indication that Congress believed that strict adherence to those timetables is more important than careful consideration and development of these complex regulations to create an effective and modernized food safety system, provide clear guidance to the industry, and minimize later challenges or revisions to hastily adopted regulations. Accordingly, judicial intervention is not warranted at this time.

There is a certain sad logic to this argument! The courts should mind their own business, because the only possible punishment is to order the very same achievements that FDA already is failing to achieve.

I considered disputing FDA's claim about there being "no indication" of Congressional intentions for adherence to timetables.  After all, Congress did write these timetables into law.  On the other hand, Congress has not given FDA sufficient funding to meet all of its food safety objectives in the past year, and of course the next year looks even more bleak.  Although food safety advocates are unimpressed with the agency's excuses, FDA really does seem justified in implying that Congress has sent mixed signals about prioritizing food safety implementation.

I think we'll just have to be patient ... and go easy on the peanut butter.

Pretty much everything you read about cancer from authoritative sources is likely to be worth taking seriously

Here is my paraphrase of the most important results from a study by Schoenfeld and Ioannidis in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

• Meta-analyses do fairly well at correctly stating their conclusions.  Meta-analyses are quantitative literature reviews that combine results from across studies, essentially increasing the sample size and breadth.
• For example, Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 9 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as fruits and vegetables) and reduced risk of cancer. For all 9, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 4 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as processed meats) and increased risk of cancer.  For 3 of the 4, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• While the meta-analyses did well at reporting results, individual studies sometimes report results in their abstracts even when they were not statistically significant.  Some of these reported results may be attributed to random happenstance rather than real cancer effects. This is why it is unwise to change eating habits with every new study.  It is wiser to rely on the balance of scientific evidence connecting particular foods to cancer risks and benefits.

Based on these results, you may be interested in the excellent collections of meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews available from a well-respected source such as the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research. The new paper by Schoenfeld and Ioannadis reflects fairly well on the type of research posted by the WCRF and AICR.

But, journalists will report the conclusions of the new study to say something completely different from the above.  In the endless search for novelty, journalists write each day that everything you previously believed about diet and health is mistaken.

For example, Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post's Wonkblog writes today under the headline: "Pretty much everything you eat is associated with cancer. Don’t worry about it." 

Food industry public relations folks will love this message.

To make things worse, Kliff garbles the statistical material (see the comments to the Wonkblog post):

Don’t panic yet, though: The vast majority of those studies, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis found, showed really weak associations between the ingredient at hand and cancer risk. A full 80 percent of the studies had shown statistical relationships that were “weak or nominally significant,” as measured by the study’s P-values.

This description seems to ignore the meta-analyses and also it seems to describe perfectly fine statistically significant results (p<.05) as if they were "weak or nominally significant."

Perhaps the authors share some of the responsibility.  Kliff quotes the author:

“I was constantly amazed at how often claims about associations of specific foods with cancer were made, so I wanted to examine systematically the phenomenon,” e-mails study author John Ioannidis ”I suspected that much of this literature must be wrong. What we see is that almost everything is claimed to be associated with cancer, and a large portion of these claims seem to be wrong indeed.”

As with climate change skepticism, people twist genuine heterogeneity in scientific results to cast doubt on both marginal claims and widely accepted claims alike.  I wish that neither journalists nor authors would cavalierly say that most of the literature is wrong, when even the new study shows quite trustworthy results for the authoritative meta-analyses that actually merit attention from the public.

Just for example, the balance of scientific evidence from WCRF and AICR suggests that fruits and vegetables reduce risk and that red meats and processed meats increase risks of certain cancers.  Such conclusions based on meta-analyses fare well in the new AJCN study.

New data from USDA about international food safety audits

USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) this week began posting more information than ever before about foreign food safety audits.

Helena Bottemiller at Food Safety News, who had been pressing for greater transparency, reports today that USDA has been conducting fewer of these audits in recent years:

During the Bush administration, in-country audits generally happened annually, but, according to data provided to Food Safety News by FSIS earlier this month (which were posted online Wednesday), the number of in-country audits has dropped dramatically under the Obama administration.

Online documents show that from 2001 to 2008 FSIS inspectors were routinely evaluating, in-person, the foreign plants processing meat for American consumers. The number of countries audited annually, with only one exception (in 2006 there was a large drop in audits), was between 25 and 32, so FSIS was auditing an average of 26.4 countries per year. From 2009 to 2012, however, the number of countries audited annually dropped to between 3 and 20, so FSIS was auditing an average of 9.8 countries per year.

Food Safety News has released an interactive illustration of the data.  Hover over a particular year to see the countries audited that year.

Powered by Tableau