Eating in the dark

Posted 8/21/12

On January 12, a federal agency decided to make a move that will make it harder rather that easier for Americans to know what’s in their food or how the food was raised. The issue is the “grass …

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Eating in the dark

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On January 12, a federal agency decided to make a move that will make it harder rather that easier for Americans to know what’s in their food or how the food was raised. The issue is the “grass fed” label that had been defined since 2006 by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which is an organ of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The standard was developed over several years with support from farm and consumer groups, and essentially allowed consumers to know which beef was grass-fed, and which beef was fed with corn. The two types of beef have distinctly different flavors, but apparently two agencies within the USDA could not figure out a way to get along regarding the label.

The reason for the AMS decision to rescind the definition of the grass-fed labels in the federal register said the label “does not facilitate the marketing of agricultural products in a manner that is useful to stakeholders or consumers,” because the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) must approve the labels and “there is no guarantee that an USDA-verified production/marketing claim will be approved by FSIS.”

This move by AMS, which will turn upside-down a system that has been working well, is upsetting to some people, not the least of whom is Ferd Hoefner, policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“The rationale that a strong USDA label standard for grass-fed beef is not useful because it might not be recognized by a partner agency is outrageous,” said Hoefner. “It is both sad and true that these two USDA agencies often do not coordinate and, worse yet, that in some cases FSIS has looked the other way, allowing particularly unscrupulous meat companies to abuse the USDA standard,” Hoefner said. “But the commonsense solution is not to revoke the standard, but instead to tackle siloing and lack of interagency communication head-on.”

This is, however, yet one more relatively minor development recently in which American consumers are blocked from easily knowing as much information as they might want about their food. In late December 2015, Congress repealed country-of-origin label (COOL) laws, which told consumers where their beef and pork products come from. Americans though that law was a great idea. A poll in 2013 showed 87% of consumers supported COOL.

But our trading partners Mexico and Canada said the labeling put their pork and beef products at a disadvantage because it was too expensive to separate beef and pork parts from other countries, rather than mixing them all together. The World Trade Organization ruled that if the U.S. did not end the COOL program, then it could suffer extensive fines.

Another thing that consumers are not allowed to know is whether the food we’re eating contains genetically modified organisms (GMO), that is, whether we are eating foods such as corn whose genes have been manipulated to withstand the impacts of certain pesticides, such as glyphosate, the main ingredient in Round-Up®. For years, groups and states have been advocating for mandatory labeling of GMO foods and, so far, when the question has come to a public vote, companies like Monsanto have out-spent the opposition many times over. So U.S. consumers remain in the dark about whether they are eating GMO products.

But at least in this area, there seems to be recent movement in favor of food transparency. The processed food giant Campbell’s Soup announced on January 15 that it will label all of its products that contain GMOs. Even though the company believes GMO products are safe, it recognizes that there are a great many people in the market for soup that would like to know whether the products contain GMO ingredients. The company also has decided it will not oppose GMO labeling laws, as it has done in the past.

Also on the GMO labeling front, California determined that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and intends to label it as such before long.

In the case of each of the products listed above, the bottom line of the large corporate food producers has been given priority over the desires of the consumers, which is one way to build a backlash against a nonresponsive industry. But the example of Campbell’s suggests that if consumers are vocal enough about their preferences, that backlash can, at least in some cases, generate change.

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