Food safety versus the locavores

by Ari LeVaux

Every December for the last nine years, the Hunter PR firm conducts a survey of Americans’ picks for the top 10 food news stories of the year. The list says as much about the media that writes the headlines as it does about the people who remember them.

The survey also found that 61 percent of those surveyed changed their food habits based on news coverage. Forty-five percent were influenced to cook more at home. Who can blame them?

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act was signed on Jan. 4, a milestone that took sixth place on the Hunter survey. The bill was in response to contamination events from previous years, but it set the tone for the year to come. The year’s No. 1 story was the cantaloupe-borne listeria that killed 30 people, while Cargill’s 36-million-pound turkey recall took fourth.

Perhaps the most baffling entry on the list was a food-safety issue of a different sort: the USDA lowered the internal temperature requirements for commercially served pork from 160 to 145 degrees. I doubt many members of the general public even own a meat thermometer. Thus, they’ve probably been eating undercooked pork at home all along. But nonetheless, something about those 15 degrees really captivated America.

What does it say about America that medium rare pork is bigger than tens of thousands of Africans starving from drought and war? But then, most Africans probably wouldn’t rank Michelle Obama’s MyPlate nutritional guide as their No. 2 news story of the year, either.

The only place where North African starvation intersects with the Hunter list is in position # 3: record-breaking global food prices. And prices might just go higher. The world’s population is growing, the land base isn’t, speculation on food commodities is virtually unregulated, we’re eating more meat, and severe weather is wreaking havoc.

Half of Hunter’s top 10 involved nutritional issues. This can be encouraging and frustrating. It’s important to get people thinking about nutrition, and mandatory nutritional labeling of chain restaurant menus (#5), for example, may encourage that. But we still have to apply critical thinking. MyPlate, for example, is smudged with corporate fingerprints, like the dairy industry’s recommendation that adults consume cow milk products three times a day. This isn’t nutritional guidance so much as political armbending.

Two of the most envelope-pushing nutrition stories  involved court cases. In #9, General Mills is being sued for marketing sugary fruit leather as health food, when such formulations are in fact recipes for obesity. In another, which took #8, a 200-pound 8-year-old boy was removed from his Cleveland home on the basis of imminent health risk, including diabetes, heart problems and disability. Poor nutrition, it seems, can equal neglect.

And now, here’s a rundown of a few important stories that escaped the Hunter survey’s radar.

Prices fetched by Midwestern agricultural land hit record heights, with choice parts of Iowa breaking $20,000 an acre thanks in part to the market for corn-based ethanol. Today farmers can essentially grow bushels of gasoline. But the writing is on the wall: political support for ethanol is crumbling, and $6 billion in subsidies are in danger of being dropped from next year’s farm bill.

Dramas over biotechnology provided no shortage of headlines. Despite overwhelming opposition from the public, scientists and even a few pesky court rulings, USDA and FDA only increased their efforts to improve the bottom lines of genetically modified (GM) crop companies. Such advocacy included the approval of GM alfalfa and sugar beets, which both have the potential to destroy important sectors of the organic industry.

Agency support for biotech grew even as evidence came to light of the hazards of GM crops. Studies found that GM corn and soybeans causes significant organ disruptions in rats and mice. And there is so much evidence that Monsanto’s rootworm resistant corn plant is breeding GM resistant worms, you’d think former Monsanto lawyers were writing USDA’s regulations. Which they are.

Recent surveys have shown that more than 90 percent of Americans want food labels indicating whether it includes GM ingredients. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 2012 this majority will finally get its wish. A coalition of organizations, lead by the Center for Food Safety, has launched Just Label It, a campaign to mandate labeling.

This year saw the food police, empowered by FDA’s Food Modernization Act, clashing with locavores. The Rawesome food-buying club was raided by federal and Los Angeles County officials for selling raw milk. And Nevada officials in November shut down a “farm to table” dinner for a number of supposed food safety infractions.

Regulations designed to address the profit-chasing corporations don’t leave much room to operate for small farmers and consumers. Producers are being strangled by red tape, while the people looking to buy their food can’t do so without breaking some law. This kind of meddling in our mouths won’t fly. Expect such clashes to continue until food safety laws are modified to allow small-scale, agriculture to thrive in peace, unmolested by bureaucrats.