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September 13, 2011
· Food supply safety in doubt $3.4B later
· Farm states push competing labor bills
· Fresh Express loses $12M court award
· Vegetable farm tracks nuke radioactivity
· Chef runs the farm that supplies his eatery
Food supply safety in doubt $3.4B later
(CBS/AP)
Hoping to ease people's anxieties about what they were eating, President George W. Bush vowed to draw a protective shield around the food supply and defend it from farm to fork.
An Associated Press analysis of the programs found that the government has spent at least $3.4 billion on food counter-terrorism in the last decade, but key programs have been bogged down in a huge, multi-headed bureaucracy. And with no single agency in charge, officials acknowledge it's impossible to measure whether orchards or feedlots are actually any safer.
On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine a congressional watchdog's new report revealing federal setbacks in protecting cattle and crops since Sept. 11. Just days after the 10th anniversary of the attacks, lawmakers are demanding answers about potential food-related threats and reports that the government could have wasted money on languishing agriculture anti-terror programs.
The truth is, nobody's in charge," said John Hoffman, a former senior adviser for bio-surveillance and food defense at the Department of Homeland Security, who will testify at the hearing. "Our surveillance doesn't work yet, our intelligence doesn't work yet and we're not doing so well at targeting what comes across the border."
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Seeking to chart the government's advances, the AP interviewed dozens of current and former state and federal officials and analyzed spending and program records for major food defense initiatives, and found:
· The fragmented system leaves no single agency accountable, at times slowing progress and blurring the lines of responsibility. Federal auditors found one Agriculture Department surveillance program to test for chemical, biological, and radiological agents was not working properly five years after its inception in part because agencies couldn't agree on who was in control.
·
Efforts to move an aging animal disease lab from
an island near
· Congress is questioning whether $31 million the Department of Homeland Security spent to create a state-of-the-art database to monitor the food supply has accomplished anything because agencies are not using it to share information.
· Despite the billions spent on food defense, many of the changes the government put into place are recommendations that the private sector isn't required to carry out. As a result, it's difficult to track successes and failures, and the system's accomplishments are largely hidden from public view.
"Everything that has been done to date on food defense in the private sector has all been voluntary," said LeeAnne Jackson, the Food and Drug Administration's health science policy advisor. "We can't go out and ask them what they have done, because they're not obliged to tell us, so we don't have a good metric to measure what's been done."
The food defense effort shifted into high gear in 2004 when Mr. Bush directed the government to create new systems to guard against terrorist attacks. Agencies got money to assess risks, contain foreign disease outbreaks and help farms and food processing plants develop protection programs.
The newly established Department of Homeland Security, which was charged with sharing information about federal food defense plans, also distributed grants among agencies, contractors and universities. During the past nine years, it spent $467 million on food-related research alone.
A $6 million counter-terrorism network headquartered in
The department also spent $550 million to run its Office of Health Affairs, which coordinates bio-surveillance across federal agencies. In fiscal year 2008, that office set out to build a new database where food, agriculture, disease and environmental agencies could view each other's surveillance information in real time.
But Jeff Runge, DHS's former chief medical officer, said the other agencies did not want to hand over their data, and turf battles delayed the government's progress in pinpointing a culprit as hundreds of people fell ill during a nationwide salmonella outbreak tied to peppers that summer.
"FDA was going on its own track, DHS was on its track, and no one was talking to each other," said David Acheson, who was then FDA's assistant commissioner and is now a food industry consultant.
In June, Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of
"It just didn't work," said Runge, who oversaw the database. "Now al Qaeda is headed by a physician who has expressed interest in biological attacks, and I don't think we are putting enough brain cycles on this issue."
The department is working to integrate data across federal agencies, and is trying to enhance the database's effectiveness by reviewing the "challenges and opportunities of integrated bio-surveillance," a DHS official said.
FDA and USDA have handled much of the on-the-ground work with farmers, ranchers and manufacturing plants.
FDA has spent $1.3 billion on food defense programs since 2005, the most recent year available, said spokeswoman Patricia El-Hinnawy. The USDA said it has spent $1.64 billion on food defense since 2003.
One top priority was setting up an animal identification system to track infected livestock. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently proposed a new system that would work whether animals were infected by accident or by terrorists.
A separate project to integrate the nation's food testing laboratories has foundered, however, auditors found in February.
Five years after its creation, the Food Emergency Response Network has not set up a targeted surveillance program to test for chemical, biological, and radiological agents, and USDA and FDA still can't agree on who runs it, USDA's Office of Inspector General found.
Protecting the food supply remains a top priority, and USDA continues working to advance its efforts, said Sheryl Maddux, deputy director of its Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Coordination.
Some small farmers claim some of USDA's rules have become so unwieldy in the last decade they threaten business.
Under agency guidance issued since Sept. 11, USDA inspectors have strongly encouraged slaughterhouses and other facilities they regulate to write Food Defense Plans, and now nearly three-quarters have them.
Uli Bennewitz,
who owns a small farm-brewery-butchery near the Outer Banks in
"When it comes to treating a Tyson chicken plant the same as a one-man brewery butchery, that's when these laws get completely out of control," Bennewitz said. "What is a small farm doing writing a Food Defense Plan? That is not going to save the nation from some terrible disease."
That's where upgrading the nation's
primary animal disease laboratory comes in, federal officials say. The
facility, which does crucial research on foot-and-mouth disease, is currently
housed on a tiny island 100 miles east of
DHS spent $233 million running the lab in the past few years
and plans to move the operations to
But a National Research Council report issued last year cited safety concerns with the Kansas location, including a 70 percent chance that dangerous pathogens could be released close to urban populations and cattle yards over the project's 50-year life.
Many ranchers oppose the move because of the proximity to the beef belt, but DHS officials have said the lab will be safe, and say the report failed to consider safety measures that will be added during construction.
One food defense program has had particularly tangible
results in the nation's No. 1 dairy state.
"We're so remote out here, security isn't much of an
issue, but we were happy to do an upgrade on the farm," said John Taylor,
who got about $800 for a lock at his organic dairy in
Farm states push competing labor bills
(McClatchy
News Service)
Entering a political minefield, the conservative chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has written a bill that gives growers some of what they want in a farmworker visa program. Housing and transportation requirements are eased. Farmworker lawsuits are limited. Dairies, for the first time, become eligible.
“If we are really going to help American growers in the long term, we need to provide them a workable guest-worker program that will help them hire a legal workforce,” declared Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.
Smith leads the 38-member House Judiciary Committee, giving
him a lot of say in the perennial immigration debate. On Thursday, Smith
convened a hearing where witnesses from
“If bills creating a workable guest-worker program like this one ... are not passed, then the agricultural industry as we know it today will not exist,” testified Chalmers Carr III, president of Titan Farms in Ridge Spring, S.C.
Smith’s bill would move the H-2A program from the Labor Department to the farmer-friendly Agriculture Department. It would streamline the applications that growers file for H-2A workers and would ease some requirements; for instance, growers could provide workers a housing voucher in lieu of housing.
But in
“Because the bill slashes wages and worker protections, it actually creates the incentive for employers to replace their current American workers with much cheaper (foreign) workers,” warned Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
Lofgren is the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s
immigration panel. One of the committee’s senior Republicans, Rep. Dan Lungren of
More broadly, any immigration-related bill faces rough sledding in the 112th Congress. Since a so-called comprehensive immigration package that included an agricultural guest-worker plan failed in 2007, lawmakers have largely ducked the topic.
Still, enforcement-oriented lawmakers are contemplating
legislation that would require all
Smith’s bill would modify the existing H-2A agricultural
visa program, which farmers have long criticized as inadequate and inefficient.
In 2009, the Labor Department certified about 99,000 H-2A foreign workers.
The AgJobs package would
potentially put the farmworkers and family members on a pathway to permanent
residence and
Fresh Express loses $12M court award
(montereyherald.com)
– A state appeals court overturned a $12million judgment won by produce giant
Fresh Express for losses the
Fresh Express, which markets bagged spinach and other fresh greens, filed a breach of contract suit in 2008 against its insurers, QBE Insurance Ltd. and a Lloyd's of London unit, for allegedly failing to cover company losses after the outbreak, which triggered a nationwide federal advisory against bagged fresh spinach.
The company, which said it suffered $18.8million in losses between September and December 2006 because of the E. coli outbreak, had prevailed in a five-week, 2009 court trial before Monterey County Superior Court Judge Susan Dauphine. Fresh Express was awarded the $12million limit under its "recall-and-brand-protection" insurance policy.
But the state 6th District Court of Appeal, in a decision released Thursday, overturned the award and said Fresh Express' losses weren't covered by the policy because they did not result from an "insured event."
Fresh Express is a Chiquita Brands subsidiary with $1billion in annual sales.
A Chiquita Brands spokesman in
"This result is very unfortunate for our industry, as many companies pay large amounts for policies with the good faith belief that there will be coverage under those policies in the event of a recall," said Ed Loyd, Chiquita's communications director.
The 26-page decision by the three-judge appellate panel provides a detailed look at one produce giant's experiences during the September 2006 E. coli outbreak that shook the produce industry, caused about 270 people to get sick and led to three deaths.
On Sept. 14, 2006, with contamination cases mounting, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued a national advisory against eating bagged fresh spinach. Within a day the product disappeared from grocery stores. Sales of other fresh produce sagged, and the industry began a long effort to recover consumer confidence by installing new food-safety procedures.
The outbreak was later traced to contaminated spinach
processed by Natural Selection Foods and grown at one
No bagged spinach from any other producers, including Fresh Express, was ever implicated.
Fresh Express said the company's losses included $6million on spinach sales, $4.25 on non-spinach products, $2.1million for contract payments and $1.3million in "rebranding" costs, the court decision said.
The company put in a claim under a policy covering malicious contamination, accidental contamination or product extortion for which it paid about $300,000 for 12-month period. The insurer denied the claim, and Fresh Express filed suit.
The trial court ruled the E. coli outbreak itself was an "insured event" and was covered by the policy.
That ruling hinged on the fact that Fresh Express had purchased spinach in August 2006 from two ranches that hadn't met the company's own food-safety rules for fresh bagged spinach. The trial court concluded that constituted a serious error under the policy's "accidental contamination" coverage.
The insurance company contended the policy didn't cover losses attributable to the E. coli outbreak, as a whole. Fresh Express argued that the purchasing errors were a sufficiently serious link to the E. coli outbreak and that its losses should be covered.
The appellate court said the policy language "unambiguously rebuts" Fresh Express's view, and the only covered losses would be those that directly resulted from errors by Fresh Express.
But the timing of events goes against Fresh Express's effort to link its losses to the discovery of the "spot purchases" it made from noncertified company suppliers, the court said.
"After all, spinach had disappeared from grocery store shelves throughout the country, and ... the public had lost confidence in not only spinach but all leafy greens," the appellate court said. "All of these events occurred before Fresh Express obtained information about the sources of its spinach."
The court ordered the case back to the trial court for dismissal. It also said the insurance company should recover its appellate costs.
Vegetable farm tracks nuke radioactivity
(The Japan Times) BIKINI ATOLL, Marshall Islands — The tiny and remote Pacific island of Bikini, part of Bikini Atoll, is home to an abandoned nuclear test observation post and a vegetable farm that is used to research residual radioactivity.
The 2.4-sq.-km island is officially uninhabited, but small groups of researchers and municipal officials are rotated for temporary visits to carry out research.
A rare media tour of the island was held last week,
explaining the research the
Participants on the tour saw tomatoes, radishes and watermelons, among other vegetables and fruit, struggling to grow on the vegetable farm.
A Bikini Atoll municipal official, who guided the tour, said
people are not allowed to eat anything harvested on the island. Some of the
crops had been sent to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
The official said coconuts are also regularly shipped about
600 km to Majuro, the capital of the
Bikini locals, who were ordered in 1946 to leave the island
because of the nuclear tests, returned home in 1968, after the
But they were forced to evacuate again after many complained
of health problems — including thyroid cancer.
Six temporary visitors are currently staying on the island, the official said.
Workers for the department and the Bikini Atoll municipality take turns staying there for several months to carry out research and equipment maintenance.
Jendrik Leviticus, a 77-year-old former islander who took part in the tour, said he returned to the island in the 1970s but had to leave again after many locals, including some of his relatives, started suffering health problems.
Standing on the empty lot where his house once stood,
Leviticus said he felt "sad" when he heard about the disaster at the
Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami,
which forced about 100,000 people in northeast
"People in
Chef runs the farm that supplies his eatery
(northjersey.com) – Two of the most demanding jobs around: Running a restaurant. Running a farm.
Now try running a restaurant on a farm.
That was a longtime dream of chef
David Felton, who grew up in Demarest and once tried to turn his tiny
The dream came true a few years ago, when Felton was named
executive chef of the
Before its December 2009 opening, Felton spoke excitedly about his newborn farm's eventually providing 80 percent of the menu ingredients in summertime.
Then the hard work began.
The farm's two cows, which had been sharing pasture space with sheep, began breaking out at night. "The reality is, yes, you can co-mingle cows and sheep, but what we wanted to do was make happy animals," Felton said. "And a cow won't break out … unless it's not happy."
Rookie mistakes were made, like planting five rows of yellow squash all at once — which then, of course, came up all at once. Organic farming has been a struggle — earworms ravaged much of the corn crop this year.
And this was all before Hurricane Irene blew in last month, knocking down popcorn and sunflowers, damaging pepper plants, squash and zinnias. (A lamb was also born in the storm and was promptly named Irene.)
Remembering my early farm-to-table conversations with
Felton, I stopped by Ninety Acres for dinner one July evening and was surprised
to find that the only proteins supplied by the restaurant's farm were pork
belly and eggs. Instead, there was
When I asked for a dish that came off the farm, the waiter looked puzzled and slowly ran his finger around the menu before finally landing on the Natirar beet salad (which was fantastic). Only a few of the desserts included fruit.
The restaurant was packed, and therein lay a key farm-to-table challenge: not being able to meet demand. So great was the interest in Ninety Acres that the restaurant started adding tables after its opening. In all, business has been three times what was projected.
Of course, "it's a great problem to have," Felton said. But it's also meant that the 15-acre Natirar farm can't provide the volume of ingredients needed to feed more than 1,500 customers each week.
In the growing season, the farm (which is not open to the
public) has been supplying about half of the produce — most of the herbs,
lettuces, onions, peppers, squash, zucchini, beans and melons, for example.
Ninety Acres also buys produce from other local farms, and Felton says about 80
percent of its vegetables were grown in
As for animals, Ninety Acres decided it didn't have enough room
to raise its own cows, and now brings in two a month from
About 45 sheep graze in a pasture and provide lamb meat. Nine pigs serve as garbage disposals (on the day I visited, they were about to chow on some scalded tomato sauce); starting in the fall, they're slaughtered once they reach about 150 pounds, and show up on the menu mostly in the form of charcuterie and pâtés.
If you're looking for the fullest farm-to-table experience, you should book a table for the $75 "Bring Me Food" — or "BMF" — tasting experience. Those 30 seats get first crack at what's coming off the Ninety Acres farm, particularly its meat.
Growing just for a restaurant provides the luxury of growing strictly for taste, as opposed to cultivating bigger vegetables that will fetch higher per-pound prices at markets. The shape of each growing season takes place in winter, when the farmers sit with Felton and his sous-chefs, Martin Kester and Charles Bauer, and map out what they want to serve and when.
"It's, up front, a lot more planning than you would have if you were just growing for the sake of a farmers' market," said Kim Wojtowicz, a master gardener who is married to Natirar's co-owner, Bob Wojtowicz, and has worked on the farm since 2009.
In the past, she was joined by a farmer from
End Transmission