Court rules GE alfalfa can result in irreversible harm to crops

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the planting of GE alfalfa can cause potentially irreversible harm to organic and conventional crops. Monsanto’s petition to rehear was denied in full.

From the Center for Food Safety:

“This ruling affirms a major victory for consumers, ranchers, organicfarmers, and most conventional farmers across the country,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “Roundup Ready Alfalfa represents a very real threat to farmers’ livelihoods and the environment; the court rightly dismissed Monsanto’s claims that their bottom line should come before the rights of the public and America’s farmers. This ruling is a turning point in the regulation of biotech crops in this country.”

Today’s decision again upholds District Court Judge Charles Breyer’s earlier ruling of May 2007, in which he found that the USDA failed to address concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate conventional and organic alfalfa. The Ninth Circuit decision affirms that USDA violated national environmental laws by approving GE alfalfa without a full Environmental Impact Statement.

You can read the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals publication here (.pdf).

Cross posted from Epicurean Ideal.

Reviews of Food, Inc.

Responding to Marc Gunther's review, "Food Inc: tasty but unsatisfying":

Enjoyed your review, but took Food, Inc. more favorably on several key points. It’s not surprising that you have trouble distinguishing the real merits behind the save-the-world green marketing of Coke, Pepsi, Cheerios, and Post. The movie did well to raise questions about even the most green brands like Stonyfield. The real contrast it draws is between conventional and local and organic food.

I understand the question about whether the world can produce enough food, but I have a pair of standards for those who raise this concern: (a) Did they acknowledge that advanced non-GMO technologies are immensely productive and that GMOs make only a modest further improvement?, and (b) did they discuss the inefficiency of historically unprecedented per capita grain-fed meat and dairy in the same paragraph as their concern about non-GMO technology? Without these points, the repeated mantra “But how can we feed the world” risks misdirection.

Food, Inc.

Robert Kenner's new documentary, Food, Inc., hits hard by picking its fights carefully.

It could have criticized biotechnology broadly, winning a mix of agreement and disagreement from scientists, activists, and farmers in the audience. Instead, the movie nails its indictment of Monsanto's lawsuits against farmers and local seed processors. It skewers the patent laws that give a chemical company control of 90% of the U.S. soybean crop. "Monsanto did not agree to be interviewed." Whether scientist, activist, or farmer, pretty much everybody in the audience has to be outraged.

It could have promoted a vegetarian or animal rights case against modern meat production, again winning a mix of agreement and disagreement from a diverse audience. Instead, the movie tears into the economic abuse of contract farmers and slaughterhouse workers, while letting the powerful visuals of a high-tech poultry factory, a beef slaughterhouse, and industrial chicken farming operations deliver any additional lessons that the viewer wants to entertain and receive. "Smithfield did not agree to be interviewed." Whether low-wage worker or high-income gourmet, farmer or city person, anybody in the audience is compelled to at least acknowledge the filmmaker's viewpoint.

It could have sounded the alarm about any number of food safety concerns, some of which divide public health officials from the good food movement believers. Instead, it chose microbial contamination in meat, an issue that is entirely mainstream. The story of two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk, who died from eating a hamburger, leaves the audience with little room for computations of nontrivial risk levels that we should just accept without complaint in the name of economic efficiency and low meat prices.

A running theme discussed how different sectors of the food industry try to keep information from consumers. "Tyson refused to be interviewed." The third or fourth such refusal finally generated a chuckle from the audience. A clip of an industry official trying lamely to explain why cloned meat could not be labeled, because consumers cannot be trusted to interpret this information favorably, is infuriating.

In a Twitter conversation yesterday, before I saw the film last night, Kenner suggested the politics of information as a key focus for a viewer.

@usfoodpolicy: Looking forward to #foodinc tonight in MA. What scene will be most surprising to a farmer in the audience? nutrition prof? ag economist?

@RobertKenner: that we are not allowed to know what is in our food, we r denied info to know what we are eating, laws make it hard

That would be my recommendation to you also, as you see the film. Is it true, as some of the ag folks in the Twitter conversation claimed, that consumers are willfully or foolishly ignorant of the facts of food production? Or, are the consumers sovereign, here, while the food industry is trying to keep them in the dark about what is really going on in the kingdom?

The film is highly indebted to participants Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Joel Salatin and a number of people who have written about the biotechnology industry. If you have already read those writers, don't expect new information, but you may enjoy the film anyway.


Update: I enjoyed Nicholas Kristof's review and blog post.

Restaurant industry astroturf

According to this Pollo Loco ad, this is genuine audio of KFC executives trying and failing to prank call a Pollo Loco telephone line.



I saw this on the Daily Bread food business blog.

Obama Foodorama

The fun blog Obama Foodorama covers a mix of celebrity and serious news at the intersection between the Obama White House and food. A post on the political implications of soft drink critic Thomas Frieden's appointment to the Centers for Disease Control is followed by a post about Michelle Obama's photo events in the new White House organic garden or about running into Demi Moore or Padma Lakshmi at a White House event.


Obama Foodorama blogger Eddie Gehman Kohan and I were both quoted this morning in a Politico article by Erika Lovley, who discussed the Obamas' challenge in providing leadership by example without seeming fussy or elitist about food.

Odd food stamp policy story

The income cutoffs and benefit formula for the SNAP (food stamp) program are not as crazy as you sometimes read.

The AP's Matt Apuzzo today tells the sad story of Georgia resident Mark Milota, whose $25 increase in monthly unemployment benefits put him over the income cutoff for the SNAP program (food stamp benefits).

The Georgia Department of Human Resources explained in a letter to him last month that, because of the stimulus, he was ineligible for food stamps. He now makes $1,538 a month — $21 too much for a family of two to qualify.

"We have to pay him that $25 a week," said Brenda Brown, assistant commissioner at the Georgia Department of Labor. "And he doesn't have the option not to accept it."

Milota said he was told that, without the stimulus money, he would have received about $300 a month in food stamps.

The Consumerist picks up the "government shoots itself in foot" story line. The commenters are outraged and have a great suggestion:

The REAL problem here is that government programs like food stamps have "hard cutoffs". Instead, they should have "graduated reduction". The way this can work is that for every $3 over a certain amount, the program benefit is reduced by $1. If this were applied to Mark Milota's case, then for being over the level by $21, his food stamps would be reduced by only $7.

The funny thing is that this is how the SNAP benefit formula already works. The poorest participants get the maximum benefit. People close to the income cutoff generally get a smaller benefit.

The story about Mr. Milota seems odd. I wonder if Mr. Apuzzo got the details wrong or quoted Mr. Milota overstating the situation.

The income cutoff for a family of two is indeed $1517, so if Mr. Milota started with $1513 monthly, it makes sense that his extra $25 monthly would make him ineligible. But, I have trouble seeing how he could have lost $300 monthly in food stamp benefits in this situation.

The eligibility rules give Mr. Milota a maximum monthly benefit ($367 monthly) minus 30% of his net income after deductions. The deductions, subtracted from his income, include a standard deduction ($144), an excess shelter deduction (probably a couple hundred dollars and at most about $400, I think), and some other deductions that are typically smaller. Unless his is a very unusual case, with much higher deductions than that, he had several hundred dollars in net income. I would be surprised if the $25 in new unemployment benefits caused a net loss for Mr. Milota. If he did have a net loss, I'd be still more surprised if it were $300. It seems more likely that somebody looked up and misunderstood the rules, thinking that Mr. Milota would be eligible for the maximum benefit despite having monthly income substantially greater than the federal poverty standard.

I don't think that yet more complex stimulus package legislation, anticipating every obscure boundary case in food stamp eligibility rules, would have been wise policy making. The "government gone bad" story line seems misplaced here.

Thanks to Jack at Fork & Bottle for pointing me toward this story.

Update (6/23/2009): Corroborating the gist of this post, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that only perhaps 1/3 of 1% of unemployment insurance recipients might have been disadvantaged by the stimulus benefits.

New advocacy coalition backs national menu labeling

The National Restaurant Association today announced support for national calorie labeling in chain restaurants.

The proposed legislation (.pdf), the Labeling Education and Nutrition Act of 2008 (LEAN Act), "will provide a national nutrition labeling standard for foodservice establishments with 20 or more locations."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public interest group that has long supported restaurant nutrition labeling, joined with the restaurant trade association in supporting the bill. CSPI director Michael Jacobson has a related blog post at the Huffington Post.

Why would the restaurant industry, which has in the past strongly opposed such policies, now lend its support? There are several reasons. First, the bill is a compromise bill, providing the restaurant chains with some of their key policy priorities, including preserving a good deal of flexibility in deciding how to present the information and protection from what the restaurants describe as "frivolous" lawsuits. Second, the industry is facing the hard facts that menu labeling policies are succeeding at the state and local level around the country. As with other important nutrition labeling policies in the past, such as the current nutrition facts panel on packaged food, an important sector of the food industry chose to support a new government policy in return for more consistent and less burdensome regulation across jurisdictions.