ACCI's Scholar-Activist Connect Program

The American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI) is requesting proposals as part of its second annual Scholar-Activist Connect Program. The focus this year is on U.S. food policy issues.

Here is the announcement from ACCI:

The American Council on Consumer Interests (ACCI) invites Members to submit a letter proposal for the second annual Scholar-Activist Connect Program at Consumers Union (CU). ACCI is co-sponsoring a funded Scholar-Activist Connect program in cooperation with CU as means of strengthening collaborations between members of the consumer policy research community and consumer advocacy organizations.

This year, the Scholar-Activist Connect Program will focus on the important issue of Food and Food Safety. The program will offer an ACCI scholar the opportunity to visit Consumer’s Union for informal meetings with CU technical and advocacy staff as well as writers/editors of Consumer Reports to (1) explore and exchange ideas about research and public policy issues pertaining to food and food safety and (2) to present a brown bag research and policy seminar for CU staffers with varying amounts of background on this issue.

Interested Members are invited to select a seminar topic and to make a proposal dealing with one of the following issues:

1. Third Party Food Certification
In conjunction with the FDA’s Docket on Third Party Food Certification Programs (.pdf), Consumers Union is interested in identifying and learning about research pertaining to the reliability of third party certifiers. (See for example, Jahn et. al. “The Reliability of Certification: Quality Labels as a Consumer Policy Tool” JCP 2005; Albersmeier, “The Reliability of Third Party Certification in the Food Chain”, Food Control 2009).

A Brown Bag Seminar might cover such matters as the elements of reliable third party certification of food safety. What lessons can be learned from other experiences (e.g. medical devices, eco labels)? Have certification systems been sufficiently tested and validated in the field? (e.g. EU certification of organic products)? What are the costs and benefits of third party certification?

2. Food Labeling, Messaging and Obesity
In 2006, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the FDA to promulgate new rules for simplified “front of the package” nutritional labeling (patterned after the system used in the UK and Sweden).

Consumers Union would be interested in a Brown Bag Seminar synthesizing research on the impact of labeling and messaging on obesity and the closely allied question of policies that succeed in encouraging people to adopt healthier diets. What works? What doesn’t?

3. Antibiotics in Livestock Feed
Last summer, the FDA testified in support of a ban on the low dose use of antibiotics in livestock feed. As far back as 1998 the Union of Concerned Scientists and CSPI petitioned the FDA to withdraw its approval for antibiotic uses which threaten human health.

Consumers Union is interested in research on the costs and benefits of a ban on low-dose antibiotics in livestock feed. The issue of costs and benefits continues to stir controversy. Hayes and Jensen estimated the incremental cost of banning antibiotics on disease treatment in pigs based on Danish data. (“Lessons from the Danish Ban on Feed Grade Antibiotics” Iowa State University, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Briefing Paper 03-BP 41). Offsetting that, however, are savings from reduced antibiotic resistance in humans.

The Project
The one day visit will be to the Consumers Union campus in Yonkers, New York. The visit must be completed no later than May 31, 2010. Within that parameter, scheduling is flexible and will be arranged in direct consultation with CU.

Travel and Honorarium Available
ACCI and Consumers Union will offer a travel stipend not to exceed $1,000 for this project. In addition, an honorarium of $1,000 will be offered.

Proposals and Eligibility
Interested members should respond by email to Larry Kirsch, Chair of the ACCI External Relations Committee. Larry@IMRHealth.com. Proposals are due on or before March 1, 2010.
Letter proposals should:
1. Indicate which of the brown bag seminar topic(s) you wish to present.
2. Certify that you are enrolled as a member of ACCI as of the date of submission.
3. Append a list of your relevant publications and related qualifications.
4. Demonstrate your awareness and any special contributions you have made concerning public policy in the food and food safety area.

The Friedman Sprout

I have been enjoying the Friedman School graduate student publication, The Friedman Sprout.

One recent article offers Caroline Carney's advice on eating local in New England in winter.

Historically, New Englanders have always been culinarily challenged in the winter months, forced to be creative with what the cold earth offers up. Cooks must know what local foods are at their peak, or at close. The foods that do survive are those hearty, rugged compatriots who have always been there for us: tubers, brawny leafy greens, sturdy root vegetables, members of the strongly-scented allium family, and those thick-skinned, nearly invincible gourds. Winter is also an opportune time to experiment with local seafood offerings. These same old winter foods can provide inspiration that will make for a happy and healthy winter season.

A companion piece by Kelly Dumke has suggested resources, including winter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares.

Amy Scheuerman reviews the Redbones restaurant in Somerville. Sarah Olliges explains the new WIC package. And Marina Komarovsky and Ashley Colpaart discuss the raw milk controversy from, respectively, a scientific and policy perspective.

Economics of Food Safety and Nutrition

Call for Nominations

The Best Economics Paper: Food Safety and Nutrition

To recognize excellence in research endeavors that advance knowledge of the economics of food safety and human nutrition, the Food Safety and Nutrition Section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is pleased to invite nominations for the 5th Annual Award for the Best Economics Paper in the areas of food safety and human nutrition. Theoretical and applied research papers are equally acceptable. Reviewers will look for innovative original research with a high impact. Authors do not need to be members of AAEA or the Section to be considered.

In order to be eligible, a paper must have been published in an English-language peer-reviewed journal with a publication date of 2009. Nominations, including self nominations, should include a copy of the paper and a brief letter of nomination highlighting the contribution of the piece. Electronic nominations (with a pdf version of the paper) are preferred.

The award and plaque will be presented to the winning author(s) during the Food Safety and Nutrition Section meeting at the 2010 annual meeting of the AAEA in Denver, CO, July 25-27, 2010.

Please submit nominations by March 31st, 2010, to parke.wilde@tufts.edu.

Where is the dairy checkoff Report to Congress?

Where is the Report to Congress from the federal government's fluid milk and dairy checkoff programs?

USDA was supposed to submit the report in July, 2009, but seems unwilling to share it with the public. The annual report is usually full of great detail about the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year to promote cheese, butter, milk, and other dairy products. Each year, I especially scan for the sections about partnerships with Wendy's and Pizza Hut to promote fast food products containing dairy. The last report on the AMS website is for July 2008. The delay makes me wonder, is there something particularly interesting in the report this year?

Every couple months, the nice folks in the public relations office for USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) respond to my polite emails asking for an update. They tell me the report is still under review at USDA. It seems appropriate finally to do a public post asking for an update.

Principles for front of pack scoring systems

Several front-of-pack or supermarket-shelf nutrition labeling programs use scoring systems to rate food products.

Examples include the Hannaford supermarket chain's Guiding Stars system ...
... and the NuVal system used by some other supermarket chains.
The computation of the scores seems fairly arbitrary to me. It might help to start with some basic mathematical principles. Here are three principles that I think a food scoring system should satisfy.

1) The score should not depend on the serving size. A major limitation of all such scoring systems is that our health really depends on how much of each food we eat, and in what combination. Unfortunately, the scores necessarily apply to each food as it sits on the supermarket shelf, not as we consume it. Because the creators of the score have no knowledge of how much we eat, the score should be treated as a description of the density of good and bad nutrients per unit of weight or food energy. The score should not depend on the serving size convention used or the number of servings in a package. I have seen some scoring systems that appear at first glance to be independent of the serving size, but on closer inspection have quirky limits on total daily nutrients per serving that contribute to the score.

2) The score should rate mixed foods in a consistent way. Take the example of a ham and cheese sandwich. Suppose the sandwich is, by weight or by calories, 40% bread, 30% meat, and 30% cheese. The score for a packaged ham sandwich in the supermarket should be the same as a weighted average of the scores for bread, meat, and cheese purchased separately:

SandwichScore = 40%*BreadScore+30%*HamScore+30%*CheeseScore.

Without this principle, the scoring system will be biased in favor of or against manufactured mixed foods in place of separate ingredients. I think a good scoring system would have no such prejudice.

3) The score should rate each good and bad nutrient independently. Suppose adding 20% more salt to a high-fiber food reduces the score by 20%. How much should adding 20% more salt change the score for a low-fiber food? Many of us would say the score should again change by 20%. Unfortunately, existing scoring systems may have strange interactions across the good and bad nutrients, so that the effect of one nutrient on the score depends on the value of other nutrients in a way that the authors probably did not intend.

Currently, the scoring systems seem to me to have an ad hoc quality that makes it difficult to take the quantitative scores very seriously. Broadly speaking, a scoring system may seem to work correctly in giving healthy foods a good score, and unhealthy foods a bad score, but consumers understood those broad outlines of their food options already even without a scoring system. The whole purpose of a scoring system is to add quantitative rigor to the information provided. They may have a long way to go.

In other recent reading on front-of-pack labeling, see the recent series by Timothy Lytton at the Fooducate blog. In general, Lytton suggests that FDA should not get into the business of developing its own front-of-pack system, but instead should just enforce existing rules against making implicit healthy claims for foods that fail to meet FDA's definition of "healthy." One exception to Lytton's hands-off recommendation is that he feels there may be a need for stronger regulation of the complex scoring systems.

Thanks to Aliza and Ashley!

Let me say a word of thanks to long-time co-bloggers Aliza Wasserman and Ashley Colpaart, who have each been moving on to new adventures and posting less frequently in this space. Aliza, an alum of the Friedman School, now works for the Boston Public Health Commission. Ashley is completing her M.S. in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition, while also doing terrific work for the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition practice group of the American Dietetic Association. We may hear from each of them in guest posts in the future, I hope!

Massachusetts politics

Friends and family are emailing me from around the country, asking me to explain how my seemingly liberal commonwealth just elected a Republican Senator in yesterday's special election, thereby jeopardizing the health care legislation that was the life legacy of beloved Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.

You can read others for careful poll numbers. I'm just giving my impression.

Briefly, it is true the Massachusetts is about 80% liberal by national standards, and only about 20% conservative. That makes Massachusetts much more liberal than most states. But the liberals are deeply divided. One half has working class and pro-union roots in manufacturing, construction, and government service industries, which are all suffering painful economic stresses. The other half is connected to the large higher education, financial service, biomedical, and software industries.

The Democratic candidate, Attorney General Martha Coakley, is a highly educated lawyer who failed to reach out well to liberals with working class roots, who are genuinely fearful about economic conditions.

All conservative voters went to the polls yesterday, while some fraction of liberals stayed home.

Republican candidate Scott Brown compiled a coalition of conservatives (perhaps 30% of all voters yesterday) and some portion under half of the liberals with working class roots (gaining Brown 15% of all voters yesterday). His last 6% of all voters liked his good looks and pickup truck.

The lesson I draw is that highly educated liberals in comparatively high-paying industries should steadily attend to the health of their political networks and friendships across all types of people in their communities. Don't just run with your own crowd.