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New USDA Grassfed Standards Conflict with Consumer Demands

PORKER

Well-known member
American Grassfed Association Rejects New USDA Grassfed Label
Partners with Food Alliance for More Rigorous Standard and Certification Program

Denver, CO - The American Grassfed Association (AGA), representing more than 300 grassfed livestock producers, today rejected standards for grassfed claims announced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), protesting rules that allow confinement of animals and the use of hormones and antibiotics.

“The USDA rules for grassfed claims don’t serve consumers or farmers well,” said AGA director Carrie Balkcom. “Consumers of grassfed products want animals raised on pasture without growth hormones or antibiotics. Farmers need a standard that will preserve consumer trust in grassfed claims and protect the value of this important niche market. By focusing exclusively on feed, the USDA standard leaves the door open for an industrial model of agriculture that absolutely goes against public expectations for grassfed products.”

Added Balkom: “The USDA standard simply doesn’t go far enough to make a meaningful and marketable grassfed label. This will confuse consumers and it will hurt the farmers and ranchers who pioneered grassfed.”

Among other concerns, AGA noted that the USDA standard only required that animals have access to pasture during the growing season meaning animals could be kept in confinement for long periods, and that it allowed incidental supplementation of the forage diet to ensure the animal’s welfare meaning animals could be fed grain and still marketed as grassfed.

New USDA Standards Conflict with Consumer Demands

This rejection by AGA comes on the heels of a grassroots campaign in 2006 that generated over 19,000 comments on an initial draft of the USDA grassfed standard. Those comments – primarily from consumers who support more rigorous standards for grassfed claims, including requirements that animals be raised on pasture and prohibitions on hormone and antibiotic treatments – were ignored by the USDA.

AGA Turns to Food Alliance for Certification

AGA also announced today that it is partnering with Food Alliance, a national nonprofit certification organization, to promote a separate standard and certification program for grassfed livestock. The new program will blend criteria from Food Alliance’s existing sustainable agriculture certification, which addresses labor conditions, humane animal care, and environmental stewardship, with grassfed criteria developed by AGA.

“AGA has worked with producers, forage specialists and other researchers to develop our own grassfed criteria,” said Balkcom. “With 10 years of certification experience, Food Alliance has a well respected program and brings the broader issue coverage necessary to meet consumer expectations for social and environmental responsibility.”

“This is going to be an important tool for grassfed meat producers, helping them differentiate and add value to their products,” said Food Alliance director Scott Exo. “Grassfed evokes an image of well-treated animals grazing on green pastures. Certification provides transparency about practices so that consumers can trust there is more to that image than marketing hype.”

Food Alliance will start accepting applications for grassfed certification later this year. Standards will be posted to www.FoodAlliance.org. Grassfed meat producers who pass the audit will be able to apply the names and seals of both the American Grassfed Association and Food Alliance.

About the American Grassfed Association

The American Grassfed Association was founded in 2003 in response to a proposed United States Department of Agriculture standard which would have allowed meats to be labeled grassfed with animals receiving only 80% of their diet from grass and other forage plants. AGA has grown since to represent over 300 grassfed producers, with members also representing the research and food retail communities. Today the American Grassfed Association protects and promotes true grassfed producers & grassfed products through national communication, education, research and marketing efforts.

About Food Alliance

Food Alliance is a nonprofit organization that certifies farms, ranches, and food handlers (including processors and distributors) for sustainable agricultural and production practices. Businesses that meet Food Alliance’s standards, as determined by a third-party site inspection, use certification to make credible claims for social and environmental responsibility, differentiating their products and strengthening their brands. The certification standards are available at www.foodalliance.org

Food Alliance launched its certification program in 1998 in Portland, Ore., with a single apple grower selling in three area grocery stores. Today, there are more than 270 Food Alliance certified farms and ranches in 17 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico. These producers manage more than 5.1 million acres of range and farm land, raising beef, lamb, pork, dairy products, mushrooms, wheat, legumes, and a wide variety of fresh market fruits and vegetables. Food Alliance has also certified 3 distribution facilities and 12 processors offering cheeses, dried beans and lentils, and frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Food Alliance has offices in Oregon, Minnesota and California.
 

Tex

Well-known member
Whoever in the USDA wrote the rules should be exposed. The USDA needs to be held accountable for their actions. As it is, no one is held accountable. It is just one big regulatory agency with no names willing to sell out its role in agriculture.

If you can't put a name to set of bad rules, you are bound to get them again and again.

It seems to me they did the same thing to the organic people.

Can't we just start over?
 

PPRM

Well-known member
This is why I don'tPursue labeling my Beef as Organic or Natural.....I have found such labels are no better than the integrity of the person behind them and really tend to not mean what the consumer assumes they mean..So, I simply state what I do and don't do...

This is the same as the USDA definition of Organic being played all over again. Don't hold your breath that the final definition will in any way resemble what most consumers and producers would believe it should....

Can someone please tell me how to gt our government back?????

PPRM
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Hey Ben, can I tell Tex who wrote these standards!!!! THE PACKERS DID!!!!!!!!!!

I told Carrie back during Teddy Gentry's first Graze Fest in Alabama what to expect from the government...she's a smart lady and that is why AGA has been simultaneously working on our own standards for TRUE GRASSFED products. Government standards...organic and grassfed...are there so corporate food industry can sell in these niches IN NAME ONLY! Our job, as it has always been, is to educate the consumers.
 

Tex

Well-known member
I would expect that you are correct, RM.

What we need to know is exactly the chain of command of the decision with NAMES. We need to know which people in the USDA are calling the shots and look out for them as producers. We need to hold those names accountable!!!
 

Tex

Well-known member
I would expect that you are correct, RM.

What we need to know is exactly the chain of command of the decision with NAMES. We need to know which people in the USDA are calling the shots and look out for them as producers. We need to hold those names accountable!!!

If it is NCBArs in the USDA or industry revolving door people, we need to identify those individuals and watch out for them, and be able to call our representatives in Congress and the Senate who the "bad guys" are.

Packers don't get their way without these people. They need to be identified so we know who we are dealing with and work at undoing the anonymous acts by the USDA.

Good for you, RM on parallel tracking the policy you want. It was good foresight. It is the only way anyone can combat the piggy bank politicians have made out of the USDA.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Only this Administration/USDA could write up "grassfed" rules so that the folks that don't have any grass could still qualify :roll: :wink: :( :(

I can hear GW and Johanns now conceiving this one with their buddy Tyson (probably a "nodding head" NCBA puppet around too) "Hell boys- if they can see or smell grass somewhere thats close enough...Them thar dum peon folks won't know the diference"...
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Since USDA staff and USDA lawyers right the rules, who is check their creditionials as We need to hold those names accountable!!!

I sent Congressman Stupak a email about doing a investagation ,Sounds like a China ,Chile importer deal again.
You write the rules so that I have a way around them.
 

Tex

Well-known member
PORKER said:
Since USDA staff and USDA lawyers right the rules, who is check their creditionials as We need to hold those names accountable!!!

I sent Congressman Stupak a email about doing a investagation ,Sounds like a China ,Chile importer deal again.
You right the rules so that I have a way around them.

Give us all the address, porker. We all need to write that letter. We need to hold our government (and specific people) accountable or we deserve what we get.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Our job, as it has always been, is to educate the consumers. RobertMac, With the SSI-EID code on the label of every piece ,the customer knows.

Selling Sausage Across State Lines
Ashlea Ebeling 10.22.07

Source of Article: http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/10/19/agriculture-beef-usda-biz-wash-cx_ae_1022beltway.html

RJ's Meats & Groceries in Hudson, Wis., makes specialty bratwursts, beef jerky and smoked pork chops. But when August Schell Brewery in New Ulm, Minn., recently wanted to market RJ's traditional veal and pork Weisswurst along with a seasonal Weiss beer, RJ's owner Rick Reams had to decline. That's because it would be a violation of federal law for Reams to ship his sausage across state lines.epics

This week, however, the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to take up a piece of the farm bill that could mean more such specialty meat products, like those Reams produces, would be able to reach your table no matter where you live. The provision would lift the ban, in place since 1967, on the shipment across state lines of meat products that haven’t been processed in one of the 5,603 U.S. plants inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Currently, more than 2,000 smaller operators process meats in plants that are inspected by one of 27 states with their own inspection programs, including Ohio, Texas and Virginia. If the ban is lifted, a processor who passes a state inspection could ship nationwide.

Consumer advocates worry the change could prompt plants that are currently USDA-inspected to switch to state inspection. That could put meat-eaters at risk from unsafe meat, they claim. And big unions say it could cost their members jobs. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has been asking supporters to send letters to the Agriculture Committee, with this warning: "States that want to promote and expand their meat industries could be overly sympathetic regulators of the meat industry."

But the meat processors and the state inspection agencies say that's hogwash.

"The food safety claim continues to be a red herring to throw people off," says Colin Woodall, executive director of legislative affairs at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in Washington, D.C. "It's not a food safety issue. It's an economic issue."

State-inspected processors say their meat is just as safe as that inspected by the feds. The same 1967 law that introduced the interstate shipment ban required state inspection programs to be "at least equal to" the federal inspection regime. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service annually certifies that each state program meets these standards. In fact, one-third of the states with inspection programs, including North Carolina and Georgia, have a cooperative agreement which lets their state inspectors inspect USDA certified plants on behalf of the feds. In all, 300 plants with the federal stamp of approval are actually inspected by state-run programs.

Moreover, some of the state programs have more stringent safety regulations than the USDA, says Charles Ingram, director, legislative & regulatory affairs for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, which is backing the law change. Most state inspection programs are run through state agriculture departments.

Notably, some states can order mandatory recalls, a power Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is pushing to grant the USDA, in wake of the recent frozen hamburger recall which led to the closure of Topps Meat (nasdaq: TOPP - news - people ), a USDA-inspected processor. Currently, the USDA can only request that manufacturers voluntarily recall suspect products. How states would handle recalls across borders is still an open question.

Consumer groups point out that the USDA has found problems with state-approved plants, including dirty cutting boards and meat cooked at incorrect temperatures, potentially exposing consumers to bacteria. "I spend most of my time complaining about the weaknesses of the federal inspection program, but I can tell you it is generally far superior to state inspection programs," says Carol Tucker-Foreman, a food policy expert at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C., and former assistant secretary for food and consumer services at the USDA with the Carter Administration. Says Sen. Barbara Boxer, D- Cailf., who is fighting to keep the change out of the farm bill: "It is a matter of life and death."

What particularly galls state inspected meat processors is that meat and poultry from 34 countries, including Australia, Croatia and Mexico, can be freely shipped and sold anywhere in the U.S. on the grounds that those countries have adequate regulation. The USDA re-inspects some of these meat shipments at their U.S. ports of entry, but the share of imports it looks at has been falling, and in 2005, it inspected less than 10% of the imported poundage.

Moreover, no other agricultural commodity--not fruits, vegetables or milk--faces similar restrictions to shipment across state lines. Adding to the incongruence, the shipment ban applies to beef, chicken, lamb, pork and goat, but not to some other meats, including alligator, quail, venison, bison, elk and rabbit--so the elk bratwurst Rick Reams has sold at the Milwaukee Brewers stadium could be shipped across state lines.

Small processors have been griping to Congress about the ban since the 1970s. One long-time supporter of lifting the ban is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who introduced a stand-alone bill in 1999. That proposed legislation never even made it out of committee.

In January, Hatch tried again, introducing the New Markets for State-Inspected Meat and Poultry Act of 2007 (S. 1150), along with Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. Language from a companion House bill, introduced by Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., made it into the House version of the farm bill passed in July. Now meat processors are pinning their hopes on the Senate mark-up of the farm bill. "We're hopeful and optimistic," says Ingram.
 

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