Cheap Food Policy?

[Econ101]

Editor's Plate: The Wal-Mart effect on food safety



By Dave Fusaro, Editor in Chief

FoodProcessing.com



'We're rolling back prices … on food safety.'



Two serious food contamination incidents have bowed the food industry over the past couple of months. The ConAgra and Menu Foods incidents are as far apart as peanut butter and pet food — which in many ways are not that far apart. While distinct in many ways, together they show how you can never let your guard down on food safety.



Yet, that's exactly what the food industry has done, and not just in these two incidents. If you believe bad things happen in threes, I'm waiting for the third shoe to drop.



Between the thinning margins at food companies and the escalating costs of safety technologies, between the flood of products and ingredients from low-cost suppliers around the globe and the budget cuts at the FDA, food safety is getting short shrift. Corners are being cut, the low-price supplier wins, regardless of reliability or reputation, and consumers have been happily going along with this as long as they get the lowest price. But maybe we're at a turning point.



What's the common thread here? Always low prices! Isn't that the Wal-Mart motto? And the motto for too many of us, as well.



A leaky roof in a ConAgra plant. Cheap wheat gluten (and now, I hear, rice protein) from China. How can these things be allowed to happen in the world's strongest economy, a land where personal safety is placed above everything else? How? Because we think we can save a couple of pennies on our food. I know more than a few people who don't bother looking at the price of the newest 50-inch, 1080i high-definition TV screen — it's a must-have. But these Great Value green beans are a few cents less than the famous-brand ones at the grocery store. Let's stock up.



The world's largest retailer is behind much of this low-price mentality. It's notorious for forcing manufacturers to find ways to lower their prices. It's notorious for keeping wages and other costs down in its own stores. And it has an incredible pipeline of cheap Chinese products that grows every day. But Wal-Mart shouldn't take the rap alone. Every food processor who caves into that way of thinking and every consumer who buys based on the retailer's ability to "roll back prices" is guilty, too.



"I suspect Wal-Mart has something to do with this. I'm very concerned about Wal-Mart's own commitment to food safety and how they drive other companies to lower prices in order to improve Wal-Mart's bottom line," says Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. "In the process, food safety is suffering across the industry."



Just as we went to press, Dr. Doyle was asked by ConAgra to chair and create a Food Safety Advisory Committee to set things right at that beleaguered company. (See our news story.)



"Wal-Mart's top executive for food safety is leaving the company," Doyle notes. Joan Menke-Schaenzer, vice president of food safety and security, is taking a new food safety role at ConAgra. "Losing a talent like that tells me something about their commitment to food safety," says Doyle.



He guardedly says he has more than suspicions, but he refrains from sharing details. And Doyle worries about the growing role China is playing as a food and ingredient supplier. But mostly, he points a finger at "a lot of companies in the food industry not putting the emphasis on food safety that they have in the past. It's time the food industry steps back and re-evaluates its commitment to food safety," he sums.



ConAgra received its wake-up call. Menu Foods also got religion. I sincerely hope you don't have to learn the hard way.



foodprocessing.com

 

[PORKER]

Cheap Food, no records, counterfieters ,the low-price supplier wins, regardless of reliability or reputation or who or what dies. NOT ANYMORE

 

[rider]

Editor's Plate: The Wal-Mart effect on food safety



By Dave Fusaro, Editor in Chief

FoodProcessing.com



'We're rolling back prices … on food safety.'



Two serious food contamination incidents have bowed the food industry over the past couple of months. The ConAgra and Menu Foods incidents are as far apart as peanut butter and pet food — which in many ways are not that far apart. While distinct in many ways, together they show how you can never let your guard down on food safety.



Yet, that's exactly what the food industry has done, and not just in these two incidents. If you believe bad things happen in threes, I'm waiting for the third shoe to drop.



Between the thinning margins at food companies and the escalating costs of safety technologies, between the flood of products and ingredients from low-cost suppliers around the globe and the budget cuts at the FDA, food safety is getting short shrift. Corners are being cut, the low-price supplier wins, regardless of reliability or reputation, and consumers have been happily going along with this as long as they get the lowest price. But maybe we're at a turning point.



What's the common thread here? Always low prices! Isn't that the Wal-Mart motto? And the motto for too many of us, as well.



A leaky roof in a ConAgra plant. Cheap wheat gluten (and now, I hear, rice protein) from China. How can these things be allowed to happen in the world's strongest economy, a land where personal safety is placed above everything else? How? Because we think we can save a couple of pennies on our food. I know more than a few people who don't bother looking at the price of the newest 50-inch, 1080i high-definition TV screen — it's a must-have. But these Great Value green beans are a few cents less than the famous-brand ones at the grocery store. Let's stock up.



The world's largest retailer is behind much of this low-price mentality. It's notorious for forcing manufacturers to find ways to lower their prices. It's notorious for keeping wages and other costs down in its own stores. And it has an incredible pipeline of cheap Chinese products that grows every day. But Wal-Mart shouldn't take the rap alone. Every food processor who caves into that way of thinking and every consumer who buys based on the retailer's ability to "roll back prices" is guilty, too.



"I suspect Wal-Mart has something to do with this. I'm very concerned about Wal-Mart's own commitment to food safety and how they drive other companies to lower prices in order to improve Wal-Mart's bottom line," says Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. "In the process, food safety is suffering across the industry."



Just as we went to press, Dr. Doyle was asked by ConAgra to chair and create a Food Safety Advisory Committee to set things right at that beleaguered company. (See our news story.)



"Wal-Mart's top executive for food safety is leaving the company," Doyle notes. Joan Menke-Schaenzer, vice president of food safety and security, is taking a new food safety role at ConAgra. "Losing a talent like that tells me something about their commitment to food safety," says Doyle.



He guardedly says he has more than suspicions, but he refrains from sharing details. And Doyle worries about the growing role China is playing as a food and ingredient supplier. But mostly, he points a finger at "a lot of companies in the food industry not putting the emphasis on food safety that they have in the past. It's time the food industry steps back and re-evaluates its commitment to food safety," he sums.



ConAgra received its wake-up call. Menu Foods also got religion. I sincerely hope you don't have to learn the hard way.



foodprocessing.com

Again, so innocent, yet so innocuous. Bad food is probably better for you than bad habits. Listen to your children...

 

[PORKER]

5/25/2007 6:00:00 AM Email this article • Print this article
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Organic soymeal from China
A case of agriculture's shifting dynamics

Cookson Beecher
Capital Press Staff Writer

Like farmers across the country, southwest Washington dairyman Bill Goeres had been dismayed to learn about the tainted pet food and livestock feed ingredients that had come into this country from China.

So he was understandably shocked when a Cargill Animal Nutrition salesman recently told him that he could line him up with an independent broker who was offering organic soymeal from China. Last fall, the price had been about $200 per ton less than domestic soymeal, although the price has gone up since then.

The salesman, John Orange, said he's been to dairies in Oregon where he's seen organic soymeal from China, and one dairy farmer in Eastern Washington told him he had included Chinese soymeal in his feed ration.

"It sounds kind of scary," said Goeres, who is a conventional dairy farmer. "We're so stringent with our organic requirements in our own borders, but are we just as stringent for products coming in from outside our borders? How do consumers know?"

He put a call into the state's Agriculture Department to voice his concern.

"This deserves a look," he said.

Miles McEvoy, who heads the department's Organic Program, said that any organic product coming into this country must be certified by a USDA-approved certifier to ensure that the product meets all of the standards required under the USDA's National Organic Program.

However, he had no specific information to offer about certifiers connected with the Chinese soymeal.

Joan Shaffer, spokesperson for USDA, said that under federal law, information about which certifier is certifying specific products must be available to the consumer.

 

[PORKER]

I would test every food or feed PRODUCT from CHINA for every illeagal substance known that we can't use here in the States and every import via China thru Canada or Mexico.

 

[Econ101]

I would test every food or feed PRODUCT from CHINA for every illeagal substance known that we can't use here in the States and every import via China thru Canada or Mexico.

Not only should we do this, but we should charge import fees on the items to cover the costs. Why should U.S. citizens foot the bill for making sure China is competent for food or product safety that comes from that country. They already have a bad track record.

As far as the melamine being used in U.S. feed supply by big boys like Tyson, what is up?

If they can't distinguish feed that is actually harmful from feed that is beneficial, why should they be able to stay in the feed animal business? They are so big and have so much fat that it has been no problem for them. Just another day.

 

[PORKER]

Econ ,they(FEED MILLS) have been caught putting in ingredients that are illegal.

 

[Econ101]

Econ ,they(FEED MILLS) have been caught putting in ingredients that are illegal.

You are right about that Porker. My point was that Tyson owned and operated feed mills were duped in the melamine scandal. They used it in their feed rations thinking it would be of benefit. They couldn't even tell whether it had a benefit or not. They are supposed to be good at what they do, not amateurs.

 

[PORKER]

In the past year, USDA teams have seized hundreds of thousands of pounds of prohibited poultry products from China and other Asian countries, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced in March. Some were shipped in crates labeled "dried lily flower," "prune slices" and "vegetables," according to news reports. It is unclear how much of the illegal meat slipped in undetected.

Despite those violations, the Chinese government is on track to get permission to legally export its chickens to the United States - a prospect that has raised concern not only because of fears of bacteria such as salmonella but also because Chinese chickens, if not properly processed, could be a source of avian flu, which public-health authorities fear may be poised to trigger a human pandemic.(So are the operated feed mills in China like Tyson as they are or were duped in the melamine scandal TOO !)

Last year, under high-level pressure from China, the USDA passed a rule allowing China to export to the United States chickens that were grown and slaughtered in North America and then processed in China - a rule that quickly passed through multiple levels of review and was approved the day before Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Washington last April.

Now the rule that China really wants, allowing it to export its own birds to the United States, is in the works, said Richard Raymond, USDA's undersecretary for food safety. Reports in China have repeatedly hinted that only if China gets its way on chicken exports to the United States will Beijing lift its four-year-old ban on importing U.S. beef. Raymond denies any link.

"It's not being facilitated or accelerated through the system at all," Raymond said of the chicken rule, adding that permission for China to sell poultry to the United States is moving ahead because recent USDA audits found China's poultry slaughterhouses to be equivalent to those here.

Tony Corbo, a lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, a Washington advocacy group, said that finding - which is not subject to outside review - is unbelievable, given repeated findings of unsanitary conditions at China's chicken slaughterhouses. Corbo said he has seen some of those audits. "Everyone who has seen them was grossed out," he said.

 

[PORKER]

U.S. Food System Deeply At Risk
Jim Harkness
May 31, 2007


Jim Harkness is the president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy , a Minneapolis-based policy research center committed to creating environmentally and economically sustainable rural communities and regions through sound agriculture and trade policy. This article was distributed by www.MinutemanMedia.org.

The recent discovery of an industrial chemical in animal feed and pet food imported from China has added to the mounting criticism of U.S. food safety agencies. But this case represents much more than simply governmental incompetence. It exposes the inherent weaknesses of an industrial global food system designed to benefit multinational agribusiness companies at the expense of public health.

Last year, the United States imported about $10 billion more in food, feed and beverages than it exported. Imports came from 175 different countries and represented a 60 percent jump over the last decade. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors were simply overwhelmed. They were only able to examine physically 1.3 percent of food imports last year, about three-quarters of the already minute portion examined in 2003.

Our food system's increasing dependence on imports is no accident. Import dependency is a defining characteristic of an industrial food model driven by U.S. farm and trade policies over the last half century on behalf of agribusiness. U.S. farm policy has encouraged the mass production of only a few cheap crops largely used as food ingredients, animal feed and exports. U.S. trade policy has aggressively pushed for the removal of trade barriers paving the way for the global food trade.

Missing from this industrial model is a national priority to produce healthy food to feed Americans. For example, most rural Midwest supermarkets, surrounded by farms, import nearly all their food from elsewhere in the country and around the world. Taken to an extreme, some chicken grown in the United States could actually be sent to China to be processed and then re-exported back the United States!

We have built a system of production and trade that treats food the same as computer parts. Cracks in this system manifest themselves in different ways, including the loss of family farms in the United States and worldwide, declining soil and water quality, and a rise in food-related health problems including obesity. But food safety dangers get most of the headlines, because these can be quickly fatal.
The tainted animal feed case is a stark example of these vulnerabilities. Feed contamination in China found its way to the United States food supply through hogs in at least six states and at least 2.5 million chickens.

Within the United States, food contamination incidents on one farm or processing plant have hit large parts of the country. E. coli-tainted spinach from a California farm affected people coast to coast, killing three and sickening nearly 200. Salmonella-contaminated peanut butter from a Georgia ConAgra plant sickened at least 329 people in 41 states.

These breakdowns were accidental, but what about intentional contamination of food? As Tommy Thompson, former director of the Department of Health and Human Services, said in 2004, "I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do."

In the near term, we must boost the number of food safety inspectors, employ cutting-edge inspection technology, and strengthen oversight to rely less on industry self-regulation. But systemic changes are just as badly needed. A more decentralized food system that supports local production and consumption would greatly limit the impact of broad-scale contamination. Quite simply, we should set policy priorities to produce more of our own food, both nationally and regionally.

Consumers already endorse this approach. Locally grown products can be found on more and more store shelves. The number of farmers' markets around the country has skyrocketed. And many mainstream supermarkets are taking steps on their own to give consumers more information about where their food comes from.

Congress is writing a new Farm Bill. It's an opportunity to accelerate the transition toward a more locally based food system by funding greater crop diversification, incentives for local purchasing in schools and other government institutions, and full implementation of country of origin labeling in 2008. It's time to put the public's interest ahead of agribusiness in setting our nation's food policy.

How About COOL?

 

[Sandhusker]

I would test every food or feed PRODUCT from CHINA for every illeagal substance known that we can't use here in the States and every import via China thru Canada or Mexico.

The problem is that, in singling out China, that is an anti-trade behavior and a trade barrier. Just another example of how rediculous this "trade is trump" policy is that we are following.

 

[PORKER]

Testing For Food or feed safety is not anti-trade .

 

[PORKER]

Globalization in Every Loaf
Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: June 16, 2007
DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. — In a glassed-off area in the headquarters of Sara Lee, a handful of specialists study computer screens and flat-screen televisions beaming the latest weather reports and commodity prices. They are sourcing ingredients from all over the world to make Sara Lee's assortment of breads, deli meats and microwaveable desserts.


"It is our responsibility to make sure what we are feeding people is safe," said David L. Brown, Sara Lee's vice president for procurement.
The lowering of trade barriers more than a decade ago has pushed food companies to scour the globe for more exotic — or the cheapest — ingredients to compete in a more global marketplace, not unlike automakers shipping in parts from all over. But with America's relatively permissible food-import rules and weak inspection regime, is the trend to assemble food from so many far-flung locations heightening the risks of contamination?

"Once ingredients are incorporated into processed foods, it is hard to check whether they come from overseas or to verify if there are any unsafe contaminants in the products," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington lobby group. "This is increasing the chances that people will get unsafe food." Don't USE the CHI COM TOOTHPASTE either!!!!!!!!!!!

The concerns of Mr. Jacobson and some in Congress are being stoked by the recent scandal involving pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical called melamine and imported from China, which has resulted in thousands of pets being sickened or killed.

Food industry executives say they understand the risks of foreign sourcing and are taking pains to mitigate them.

"Ingredients from overseas are not the issue," said Robert Earl, senior director of nutrition policy at the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group that represents many of the largest food processors. "The problem comes from incorrect practices from manufacturers that happen to be in another country."

David L. Brown, Sara Lee's vice president for procurement, said consumers should not be concerned. "We are going to do our homework," he said, including vetting foreign factories and in some cases investing money to improve food-safety standards. "It is our responsibility to make sure what we are feeding people is safe. But the more variables you enter into, the more risk you have naturally. It is all about how you address those unknowns."

The controls in place to ensure that foreign-sourced ingredients are safe "are evolving as the world changes," Mr. Brown said.

Some people say they still have a long way to go. In the weeks since the pet food controversy broke, federal investigators have also discovered toxic toothpaste exported from China and melamine-laced ingredients for fish feed manufactured in Toledo, Ohio. The discoveries have prompted new calls by Congress to overhaul responsibility for America's food-safety system, which is currently shared by the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and a grab bag of other agencies.

Critics say the F.D.A., which bears the bulk of the food-safety load, is woefully underfinanced and understaffed, and they note that fewer than 1 percent of imported food shipments undergo laboratory analysis. The number of food inspectors has decreased in the last five years.

The F.D.A. is exploring ways to use risk analysis to try to pinpoint food shipments that might pose hazards, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Under the approach, countries and private companies might be required to provide the F.D.A. with more information about imported food.

The rise in imported ingredients has been accompanied by an explosion in imported food generally: food imports more than doubled in the last decade, to $79.9 billion, according to the United States International Trade Commission. Consumers can only guess from reading most labels that individual food products today contain ingredients from a handful of continents.

Despite having the world's most expansive and efficient agricultural sector, America is hardly the only place where large food processors like Sara Lee, Kraft and General Mills have looked to acquire the dozens of ingredients that make up their microwaveable meals, processed cheeses, baked snack foods and breakfast cereals.

What trade commission figures show is that ingredients are streaming in from more than 100 countries, including China, India, the Philippines and countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some cases, consumer demand for more ethnic foods in the United States is pushing companies to import harder-to-find foods from exotic locales, but in other cases the phenomenon is simply a function of the way modern processed foods are assembled. The imported ingredients include caseins and caseinates (enzymes found in milk that are used as milk protein substitutes for pizza cheeses) and gums and resins that are used as binders to, for example, give chicken nuggets a certain consistency.

The scope of the global food marketplace is evident on the Web site of the Institute of Food Technologists. There, for the last six years, the Food Technology Buyer's Guide has offered places to buy ingredients from around the world.
Looking for stabilizers or thickeners? The buyer's guide offers more than 100 companies that sell those products, including a dozen manufacturers in China. There are 27 companies that offer "release agents," a food additive, based everywhere from India to Illinois, and the same number of manufacturers peddling "foaming agents," available in Canada, China and the Netherlands, to name a few.
The food industry bristles at the notion that a greater diversity of foreign ingredient suppliers could increase risks for consumers. Executives at food companies say that they willingly bear the burden of ensuring the safety of their suppliers' plants and products.

"It's on us," said Mr. Brown of Sara Lee. "We can't sit around and wait for government to iron these things out. We have a responsibility to our consumers. We are the ones that have to step up and make the assurances."

Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said that the discovery of melamine in pet food illustrated how standards are not being uniformly enforced in foreign plants. With the F.D.A.'s resources overtaxed and with the agency lacking much authority to regulate overseas practices, the responsibility does fall mostly to the food companies, she said. She has been pushing to establish a more powerful food safety agency separate from the F.D.A.

"We need to modernize our food safety system," Representative DeLauro said in an interview. "The risks are only going to get greater with increased globalization."

The demand for more imported ingredients has also been propelled by the quest of chain stores and food manufacturers to offer replicable taste. "If you are Pizza Hut, you want consumers in China to be able to taste the same exact pizza in Chicago," said Catherine Donnelley, a microbiologist at the University of Vermont's nutrition and food science department. "That kind of uniformity requires that you modify food. You can't make a natural cheese and expect it to melt and brown consistently."

Sara Lee's push some five years ago to establish a national brand of bread helped spur the company to centralize its global ingredient purchasing. Different enzymes and protein sources, for example, are used to make the company's popular "soft & smooth" breads, which are intended to deliver whole grain nutrition but have the taste and texture of traditional white bread.

In Sara Lee's purchasing pit, called the "nerve center," Mr. Brown encourages the team of 20 or so procurement specialists to engage in high-level discussions about energy prices, weather and agricultural commodity trends (like the ethanol boom) in charting purchasing strategies.

Two years ago, separate procurement operations in several cities were centralized here in Downers Grove. Today, up to a third of the hundreds of suppliers Sara Lee uses are based overseas or have foreign operations. Mr. Brown's group focuses on about 30 countries. Cocoa comes from Africa, wheat gluten from Europe and, increasingly, China. Many of the food chemicals come from Asia, as does most of the honey.

"We could make a case for having something on every continent other than Antarctica," he said.

Andrew Martin contributed reporting.

 

[PORKER]

Originally published June 21, 2007
Food imports pose risk to Americans
By John E. Peck Jr.

Back in early March, it was first revealed that pet food across the United States contained Chinese wheat and rice gluten laced with melamine. Many expected the Bush White House to take swift action, recalling the deadly products and tracking down the source of the contamination for prosecution. Instead, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deferred to industry and its dubious self-policing capacity. The upshot was the death nationwide of thousands of dogs and cats, and the dumping of recalled pet food into livestock rations destined for human mouths.

By late April, federal officials were doing a second round of damage control, contacting pork and poultry producers in nine states about melamine-tainted feedstocks and culling suspected animals. Unfortunately, some livestock could not be recalled, since they were already on their way to market and people's plates. Not to worry, says the FDA, there is no scientific evidence that eating melamine is bad for humans, so no grocery recall is necessary. Consumers have now unwittingly joined their pets as subjects in a massive food safety experiment.

Melamine is a plastic coal derivative used in fertilizer manufacture that has never been tested or approved for animal or human consumption.

Yet - as reported in The New York Times on April 30th - there is a large underground market in China selling melamine scrap for livestock feed. It's as a cheap "filler" replacement for urea, boosting nitrogen levels and creating the appearance of higher protein content.

Of course, this is hardly the first case of an illegal byproduct getting dumped into the U.S. food system with the tacit approval of the FDA. Milk protein concentrate (MPC) enters the United States as an industrial-grade ingredient to make adhesives. It has never been subject to consumer safety testing or given Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) status by the FDA. Now it's found in hundreds of adulterated cheese products, candies, chips, nutritional drinks, and other processed junk foods. For powerful corporations like Kraft, it is much more lucrative to import MPC from the Ukraine, New Zealand, or India than to pay family dairy farmers a fair price for real, wholesome, domestic milk.

Responsibility for this latest food scandal lies squarely on the race to the bottom that comes with runaway globalization, as well as the corrupting influence of corporate agribusiness on government oversight. The United States has been a food deficit nation for years now, and as trade barriers came down and imports skyrocketed, corporations raked in unprecedented profits, leaving consumers in fear of the old Latin adage: Caveat emptor - buyer beware. The FDA, with barely 1,700 inspectors, checks only about two percent of all U.S. food imports, and China is now ranked No. 3 (after Canada and Mexico) when it comes to provisioning an increasingly hungry Ð- and vulnerable - U.S. population.

In the wake of last year's E. coli spinach contamination and this year's melamine pet food scandal, citizens should be demanding greater transparency and public accountability from such agencies as the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as a precondition for further taxpayer funding. Country of Origin Labeling (COOL), which was mandated in the last farm bill but has only been applied to seafood, should be fully implemented for ALL imported food immediately. People may not eat T-shirts, yet one can read right on the tag where it came from. Without COOL, consumers and farmers don't even have the choice to avoid products from those countries that have proven to be dangerous "free trade" partners. Something as essential as food deserves at least as much truth in labeling as clothing, and certainly more serious government regulation - not less.

John E. Peck is executive director of Family Farm Defenders, a grassroots organization based in Madison, Wisc. www.familyfarmdefenders.org