Christopher Doering from Reuters sheds a little light onto why food oversight is so out of whack in our country.

“It seems to me today we have competing philosophies” with the USDA focused more on prevention while the Food and Drug Administration targets mitigation due to a heavy workload and limited staffing, said Vilsack.

Fifteen federal agencies handle food safety including FDA, which handles about 80 percent of the food supply, and USDA, which is in charge of red meat, poultry and eggs.

“When you have 15 separate agencies in the federal government responsible for some part (of food safety), you’ve got way too many,” said Vilsack, who supports a single food agency. Who do “you hold accountable when there is a problem?”

15? Are there even 15 cabinet members? I don’t even think they have 15 people confirmed to work at Treasury yet. What the heck? Crazy.

Update: Here are the 8 departments with fingers in the pie. The USDA is comprised of 8 different agencies.

Department of Agriculture (USDA) - Eight agencies within the department are separately responsible for such matters as the safety of domestic and imported meat, poultry and processed egg products; conducting food safety research; establishing quality standards; providing economic analysis; providing statistical data, including agricultural chemical usage data; and protecting the health and value of agricultural resources.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - Responsible for safety of all domestic and imported food products except meat, poultry and processed egg products.

Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau - Enforces laws covering the production, use and distribution of alcoholic beverages.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - Protecting public health, including food-borne illness surveillance.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Regulates the use of pesticides and maximum allowable residue levels in food commodities and animal feed.

Federal Trade Commission - Prohibits false advertisements for food.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) - Conducts voluntary, fee-for-service inspections of seafood safety and quality.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - Responsible for coordinating agencies

Fooducate has the goods:

A recent study conduced by Italian researchers found that two commonly used food additives have the ability to alter human hormones. From The Daily Green:

More than 3,000 preservatives, flavorings, colors and other ingredients are added to food in the United States, and none of them are required to undergo testing for estrogenic activity, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The two suspect additives are:

1. propyl gallate - used to prevent fats and oils from spoiling. Used in baked goods, shortening, dried meats, candy, fresh pork sausage, mayonnaise and dried milk.

2. 4-hexyl resorcinol - prevents shellfish such as shrimp and lobsters from discoloring.

Distorting estrogen levels can lead to all sorts of fun problems like ovarian cysts and man boobs. Fun!

This time its pistachios. California plant recalls one million pounds. Why not? Its not like there’s safety mechanisms to protect us from these events.

There is a few famous people in the US who are big organic proponents, the most famous probably being the recently departed Paul Newman. But England has us seriously beat in the start wattage area. Prince Charles has his own line of organics called Duchy Originals, and today announced a partnership with the lovely Elizabeth Hurley who owns a 400 acre farm near Gloucester. Sounds like the brits are eating well.

Yes, we can.

photo courtesy of flickr user dullhunk

Kristof breaks this earth shattering technological leap in his Sunday column:

I was interested in their work because it addresses two of the developing world

The Environmental Working Group put out a list of the best and worst non-organic fruits and veggies when it comes to pesticide contamination. The winners and losers are:

THE GOOD (very low pesticides)

• broccoli
• eggplant
• cabbage
• bananas
• kiwi
• asparagus
• sweet peas (frozen)
• mango
• pineapple
• sweet corn (frozen)
• avocado
• onions

THE BAD (lots of pesticides)

• peaches
• apples
• sweet bell peppers
• celery
• nectarines
• strawberries
• cherries
• lettuce
• grapes (imported)
• pears
• spinach
• potatoes

Source: Flickr User anomalous4

Over the past couple of weeks the alarm bells started ringing over the state of dairy farmers in the US. The price of milk is down over 50% for dairy farmers since last summer. As always, there’s a number of factors that goes into a price drop like this, however there seems to be one major culprit - Milk Protein Concentrates. Overseas MPCs have been flooding the US market at ridiculously low prices, driving down the price of milk, and forcing dairy farmers to start turning their charges into hamburger.

Well, apparently Mr. Ag Secretary has taken notice of this nascent crisis, and he has a plan.

March 26, 2009 - Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today announced that approximately 200 million pounds of nonfat dry milk will be transferred from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service for use in domestic feeding programs. The goal is to help support both low-income families struggling to put nutritious food on their tables and dairy farmers who have been challenged by high feed costs and low dairy prices.

I’m still learning about the CCC, but I assume this means that the government is going to buy 200 million pounds of nonfat dry milk and hand it over to school lunch programs and the like.

The nonfat dry milk (NDM) was acquired by the CCC under the Dairy Product Price Support Program. Under this program, CCC purchases NDM, butter and cheddar cheese at statutorily mandated prices. These purchases support the prices of NDM, butter, and cheese and the price farmers receive for milk.

(more…)

A little bit long, but watch through til the end when he brings it full circle.

Confession: Primarily, I am a veggie, but I am a sucker for the exotic. Every once in a while I’ll treat myself to some foie gras, ie. I think I’ve had it 3 times in my life. Some day I will make it to Eduard’s farm in Spain, and I will find out how foie gras is supposed to taste.

H/T Sam.

I love Sam, but I really didn’t need to see him shirtless.

About 2 months ago I got really lucky and stumbled across a great little community garden about 4 blocks from my house. The garden got started in July of last year with 6 garden beds.This year there has been a huge surge in interest, requiring some carpentry to meet demand.

Turns out that raised garden beds are kinda a necessity in urban areas (and probably all of New Jersey). Your produce is only as good as your soil, and when your soil can have anything from lead paint to arsenic to asbestos to old heating oil drums you probably don’t want to be eating anything that grew out of it. I’m not just being prissy here. When you think about it, everything a plant is is built out of the air, water, and soil you give it. (more…)

Cause every casserole needs a baby Jesus.

Yesterday I sympathized with the difficulties of compliance with HR 875. That doesn’t mean I believe that food processors shouldn’t have to track their food. In particular, there is no excuse for not doing basic bookkeeping:

A 2002 bioterrorism law requires food makers, processors and distributors to keep records showing from whom they bought products and to whom they sold them - known in the industry as “one step up, one step down.” But 60% of the 118 facilities surveyed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general didn’t keep those records; some said they didn’t know about the requirement and others said the recordkeeping was too difficult. The watchdog agency also tried to trace 40 items such as fresh tomatoes, whole milk, oatmeal and yogurt from retail stores to the farm where they were grown, but could do so for only five items.

“We don’t have the compliance envisioned by Congress,” HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson told members of the House Agriculture Committee’s appropriations panel. The lack of adequate records, he said, “limits the ability to trace food products through each stage of the food supply chain back to the farm or border.”

Really? Are we to believe that these companies don’t keep track of who they buy from and what they buy? Then how do they do their taxes? How do they know what their net profit is? And how do they know what to order, and from whom, next month and next year? This is bull. And its inexcusable. Our inspectors need some teeth, and they need them NOW.

The NYT is food central today. They also have a piece up on the difficulties of trying to trace where our food comes from. This is the most controversial section of HR 875. In Sec. 203(b)(5), the bill it requires that:

(b) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall promulgate regulations that require all food establishments, within time frames determined by the Administrator–

…

(5) to implement recordkeeping and labeling of all food and food ingredients to facilitate their identification and traceability in the event of a recall or market removal;

This has most food producers freaking out, because between harvesting and packaging there are many processing steps where ingredients from many different suppliers are all tossed into the same vat. So you chicken and broccoli Lean Cuisine could conceivably contain produce from dozens if not hundreds of farms and there’s no way to tell which ones.

From Gardiner Harris’s NYT article:

Of course the FDA needs to know which farms and factories the food comes from in the event of say, a massive peanut recall (not that that would ever happen).

As late as Monday, the Food and Drug Administration formally asked Westco Fruit and Nuts Inc., based in Irvington, N.J., to recall all of its products containing peanuts made by the Peanut Corporation. Jacob Moradi, Westco

Our fair Senator from Missouri tweets today:

Claire McCaskill Tweet