In a blog posted at the time, I registered my surprise and disappointment that CDC had failed to include animal settings in its 2012 campaign and urged the agency to expand the focus this year. I’m sorry to report that CDC did not get the message. Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2013 (November 18-24) again focuses almost exclusively on human medical use.

CDC’s Dr. Tom Chiller explained (in a letter to a colleague) that the agency’s educational site aimed at food animals, Know When Antibiotics Work on the Farm, is not currently funded and doesn’t have any dedicated staff.

Given the urgency of the issue, why, for heaven’s sake, not?

Animal producers have many options

Crowded pigs in a confinement facility. Source: AgStock.

How many swine producers know that routine use of antibiotics doesn’t deliver economic benefits in finisher pigs? Dan Charles of National Public Radio did a great piece highlighting this fact, but it needs to be hammered home across farm country. Swine producers, just like human patients, need to be educated about opportunities to reduce the demand for antibiotics.

There are many avenues animal producers could take to avoid unnecessary use of antibiotics, among them encouraging appropriate weaning times, all-in-all-out animal management systems, and clean, uncrowded facilities. Consumers could be urged to do their part by looking for and purchasing meat produced with fewer antibiotics.

Animal use of antibiotics is still a significant contributer to the crisis

Ignoring the problem of animal antibiotic use has not made it go away. FDA 2010 data reveal that 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the US were intended for use in animals. Many of those drugs–for example, penicillins, tetracyclines and erythromycin–are in the same classes as drugs critical for human medicine.

Feeding enormous quantities of antibiotics in feedlots and poultry and swine houses generates huge populations of bacteria in animal guts that are resistant to human drugs. Resistant bacteria have easy routes to humans: on food, through the environment, and via people who work with and around the animals.

Antibiotic-resistant food-borne illness is becoming all too common. Recently, Costco announced an expanded recall of Foster Farm chicken implicated in an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella that has already sickened over 320 people.

Scientists agree that antibiotic use on farms contributes to increasing levels of severe and difficult-to-treat human (and for that matter, animal) disease. Just this month, two former Commissioners of the FDA, Donald Kennedy and David Kessler, wrote to the Executive Office of the President urging “swift action to curb unnecessary use of medically important antibiotics in food animal production.”

In September of this year, CDC itself issued a report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013, calling antibiotic use the single most important factor leading to antibiotic resistance and noting that there is more use of antibiotics in food production than human medicine. The report endorsed phasing out the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, saying the drugs should “only be used to treat infections.”

CDC should target overuse and inappropriate use in animals

Just like the CDC’s human campaign, the CDC campaign on animals should be aimed at unnecessary uses: feed efficiency and growth promotion (purely economic uses) and routine disease prevention, which often compensates for stressful conditions in crowded animal facilities.

The best approach is to legally restrict the sale of antibiotics for routine purposes, a goal that would be accomplished with the passage of the Preventing Antibiotic Resistance Act of 2013 introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2013 introduced by Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY). But even with successful legislation, a broad appreciation of the opportunities to reduce antibiotic use in food production would be important.

I applaud the CDC’s campaign to address the overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics in human medical settings. Such use is an essential driver of antibiotic resistant disease. But the CDC should be campaigning with equal vigor against overuse and inappropriate use in food animal production.

It simply makes no sense to urge the parents of sick children to forgo unneeded antibiotics, while silently standing by as producers of cattle, swine and poultry continue to overuse the same drugs just to avoid the transition to modern management systems.

Expanding CDC’s Get Smart campaign to include animal settings would have been a smart idea last year–and it still will be next year. CDC should find the funds to make it happen.

While the forum could have been more comprehensive in its selection of respondents, it provided an interesting and timely array of views.

Against that background, I was very disappointed that Dr. Ronald replied to my comment with gratuitous attacks on UCS and an unprofessional dismissal of three groundbreaking reports produced by my colleague, Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, as “widely discredited.” This remark, which is wholly untrue, originally appeared without even explanation or citations to back it up.

The unfair characterization of Doug’s reports has now been removed from the online version of the Boston Review Magazine forum. In its place are two paragraphs of specific criticisms of one of the reports, Failure to Yield. Those criticisms are primarily complaints about what was not in the report, for example, studies from the developing world—rather than scientific criticisms of methods or findings.  Strangely, although they were covered in both her original and revised characterizations, Dr. Ronald provides no discussion, much less criticism, of the other two reports.

Doug has ably responded to Dr. Ronald’s specific criticisms elsewhere in comments on the forum.

Here I would like to reiterate why these reports, whose findings have stood the test of time, are so important.

Failure to Yield

Failure to Yield (2009) presented a detailed analysis of the studies, done primarily by land grant university scientists, comparing yields of GE versions of corn and soybean and their closely matched non-GE counterparts. The availability of closely matched, non-GE varieties of crops allowed scientists to tease out the contribution of the GE traits from other contributors to yield performance.

That was important because, before Failure To Yield,  the possibility that anything other than GE could contribute to yield was rarely discussed. It was easy to think that all of the 1 to 2% yearly yield increases observed in corn and soybeans were the result of the introduction of biotechnology crops. The question was whether that was true…and report found it wasn’t.

The analysis presented in Failure to Yield differentiated between intrinsic and operational yield. Intrinsic yield is the yield under the best possible conditions–good soil, good weather and no pests—and is the bedrock of gains in agricultural productivity. Operational yield, also very important, refers to increases in the presence of stress. Pest resistance, for example, can enable a farmer to harvest more when insects threaten, but the yield is bounded at the upper end by the intrinsic characteristics of the crop.

The studies showed that the predominant GE traits found in corn and soybeans—herbicide tolerance and BT toxin—did not contribute to annual increases in intrinsic yield observed in corn, but–and here’s the important part—increases in intrinsic yield were the result of conventional breeding and agronomic practices.

No one has ever challenged this key finding of Failure to Yield. In part, this is because it simply makes sense. The steady 1-2% increases in intrinsic yields in corn were evident long before the advent of GE and so couldn’t be solely attributable to GE. Also, it’s hard to imagine how a trait that enabled farmers to use different herbicide could affect intrinsic yield.

But nevertheless the result caused a stir.

This may be why.  As long as no one highlighted the central role of conventional breeding in increasing intrinsic yield, promoters of biotechnology were able to imply it was their doing.

But even more importantly, here was proof from land grant scientists that conventional breeding and agronomics were outperforming genetic engineering on a fundamental agronomic trait. That doesn’t comport with the image of biotechnology as a transformational technology essential to solving all the world’s problems.

Doug’s analysis of the contribution of biotechnology crops to operational yield found that indeed BT crops had increased yields by fending off pests. He estimated a range of operational yield increases for corn root worm and corn borer traits of about 3-4% over 13 years– a genuine benefit on the GE side of the ledger. This was rigorous and fair analysis.

No Sure Fix and High and Dry 

Doug’s other two reports, No Sure Fix (2009) and High and Dry (2012), are also carefully done and give transgenic crops credit where credit is due. Both reports aim to assess the performance of the biotechnology industry in producing crops with the long promised traits of drought resistance and increased water use efficiency (High and Dry) or increased nitrogen use efficiency (No Sure Fix).

The two reports identify products approved for commercialization or in the pipeline by analyzing USDA databases and the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

No Sure Fix revealed that there are no crops genetically engineered to increase use nitrogen efficiency on the market and relatively few are in the pipeline.

High and Dry found no crop varieties on the market genetically engineered for water use efficiency (despite Monsanto’s early extravagant claims) and only one variety engineered to be drought tolerant near to commercialization. (That crop is now on the market).

In both reports, Doug scoured the scientific literature to assess the prospects for transgenics in the future, and noted that investigators continue to work in these fields. After careful analysis, he concluded that that science might yet produce successful nitrogen use efficient, drought tolerant or water use efficient varieties. But for now, twenty years into the biotechnology era, the performance record outside herbicide-tolerance and BT is slim. This is not because of regulation…transgenic crops that increase intrinsic yield, nitrogen use efficiency or drought tolerance would sail through the US regulatory system. These disappointing results simply signal that transgenic technology is more complicated and difficult than early proponents expected.

But just as with intrinsic yield, Doug documented that conventional breeding has already produced many drought-tolerant and nitrogen-efficient plants. Together, the three reports provide a compelling picture of the power of conventional breeding to solve major agricultural problems.  Many varieties are available right now and many more could be if our agricultural research establishment were to prioritize conventional breeding (including marker-assisted techniques) and agroecology over genetic engineering.

What part of yes don’t we understand?

The truth about GMO’s is that GE is not the transformational technology promised in its early days and that it cannot begin to match the record of conventional breeding for producing fundamentally important traits in crops. By consuming so much attention, biotechnology impedes better solutions, like those laid out by UCS in its Healthy Farm: A Vision of Agriculture. In our world, faced with growing populations and climate change, finding the right solutions matters.

Of course, this is not to say that transgenics will not play important roles in the agriculture of the future. They well may, but for now a little humility is in order. Proponents of GE should step back a bit and let conventional breeding and agroecology take center stage.

Maybe the next Boston Review forum should focus on conventional breeding!

It seems to come up with depressing regularity to justify, among other things, pesticides, industrial-scale monoculture, and biotechnology, all of which we must embrace—all together now—to feed the world. What gets under my skin is that the phrase is so often used by advocates of high-input American corn and soybeans, who otherwise seem not terribly concerned about problems of hungry people or farmers in developing countries.

“Let’s help the world feed itself.” Photo courtesy of AsiaSociety.org.

A recent example is Farmers Feeding the World, an industry-wide campaign that “educates the general public about U.S. agriculture’s role in feeding a hungry world.” The fact that the campaign funnels money into worthy organizations doesn’t obscure its focus on “the unique interests of people and organizations aligned with U.S. agriculture.”

But feeding the world doesn’t have much currency among those dedicated full-time to fighting hunger.

The hunger organization, Bread for the World, talks not of how U.S. agriculture will feed the world, but of agricultural development for small-scale producers and women, improving nutrition for women and young children, and ensuring that efforts are “country-led”—meaning the communities, constituencies, and countries affected by hunger are setting priorities.

The ambitious U.S. initiative called Feed the Future does not use the phrase either but instead talks about “supporting countries in developing their own agricultural sectors to generate opportunities for economic growth that can help reduce poverty and hunger.”

Likewise, the recent Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) report on world agriculture and malnutrition, The State of Food and Agriculture: Food Systems for Better Nutrition, doesn’t use the term. FAO would eradicate malnutrition by integrating agriculture into local and regional food systems, “from inputs and production, through processing, storage, transport, and retailing, to consumption.”

Maybe the phrase is falling from favor. I, for one, would welcome its retirement.

The term has enjoyed a long run. It gets almost 2 billion hits when Googled. Some of those hits relate to Bob Geldof’s 1984 Band-Aid concert, but most are about U.S. crops—more precisely, the export crops soybean and corn. The phrase got a big boost in the 1970s when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz used it to advocate for fence-row-to-fence-row agriculture. He knew that new uses and increased exports would be necessary to absorb all that production without lowering prices. “Feed the world” became a rallying cry for export-oriented agricultural policy. (It still is despite the fact that almost 40% of our corn acreage is devoted to producing ethanol.)

One reason the phrase is so favored is because feeding is an essential and benevolent activity that conjures comfortable memories of preparing, serving, and enjoying meals. To satisfy this basic need for the whole world is a noble endeavor. And, of course, there are grains of truth here. US farmers can feel good that they are helping to meet the food needs of those who can afford to buy their products.

The problem with “feeding the world”

But the phrase conflates the important issues of food production and hunger alleviation. It implies that producing corn and soybeans is the equivalent of putting food into the mouths of hungry people. But there is no direct connection between U.S. corn and soy production and ending hunger elsewhere (or for that matter in the US). In fact, the truth is that high production in the U.S. can depress world grain prices and throw developing country farmers off the land.

It is time to separate the issues of hunger alleviation and crop production.

Despite decades of surplus commodity crop production, world hunger has been, and remains, an acute problem. In its recent report, FAO estimates that 868 million people (12.5% of the world population) are undernourished in terms of energy intake. (That’s only a part of the hunger problem. The full global burden of malnutrition would include 26% of the world children who are stunted, 2 billion people suffering from one or more micronutrient deficiencies and 500 million people who are obese.)

Simply increasing crop production in the U.S. won’t help feed those people because insufficient production—and certainly insufficient production in the developed world—is not the heart of the problem. Many issues beyond production need to be addressed and most of the effort needs to be directed to the developing world. Tackling issues like infrastructure, transport, storage, prices, and the role of women in an integrated way, as both the FAO and the Feed the Future initiatives do, is the only serious approach to the world hunger problem.

Implying that U.S. grain exports can alleviate hunger by feeding the world distracts from that key understanding.

Help the world feed itself

U.S. export policy should be addressed on its own terms, primarily as an economic issue rather than a humanitarian enterprise. Hungry people should not be the poster-children for the interests of the well-fed.

People who care most about developing country agriculture don’t use the phrase “feeding the world.” Those interested in corn and soybean exports should drop it as well.

If we need a catchphrase for world hunger issues, we could consider “helping the world feed itself.” I know, it doesn’t exactly sing, but it will help us focus on genuine solutions to vital global problems.

Using cover crops correctly can reduce the stress of drought on cash crops, such as this Kentucky cornfield shown during the 2012 drought. Photo: CraneStation/Flickr.

But it turns that an increasing number of farmers are doing just that—buying, planting and tending so-called cover crops. No, they can’t sell them, but they do reap benefits from them, including increased yields of their cash crops like corn and soybeans. Use of cover crops can also help farms survive the droughts expected to be more common in the era of climate change.

Cover crops, which can be many species of  grains, grasses and legumes, are usually planted in the interval between the harvest and planting of cash crops. Sending their roots down into bare soil, cover crops can increase soil carbon, provide slow-release nitrogen, and prevent erosion. But a cover crop/cash crop system is complex. If improperly managed, cover crops can deprive cash crops of water or even reduce yields. Although they make sense in theory, many have wondered how cover crops would work in the real world.

A new survey

Now a new survey of commercial farmers has confirmed that that cover crops increase yields in corn and soybeans, our most common crops. Moreover, cover crops were especially effective under drought conditions.

The survey of more than 759 commercial farmers was conducted last year (2012-13) by the North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and the Conservation Technology Information Center. The farmers who responded to the survey reported average increases of 11.1 bushels of corn per acre and 4.9 bushels of soybeans per acre. In percentage terms, the extra bushels represent an average 9.6 percent greater yield in corn planted after cover crops compared to crops not preceded by cover crops. The increase in soybeans was 11.6 percent. That’s pretty impressive.

The growers reported yield information from comparable fields that were similar in conditions and rotation except for the cover crops.

Star performers under drought conditions

The yield increases in cash crops planted after cover crops were even greater in states hit hard by drought.

The states most affected by the severe 2012 drought were Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota. The 141 respondents from those states reported the average corn yield was 11.3 bushels per acre, which represented an 11 percent increase in crops grown after cover crops compared to those grown without them. Respondents from the drought-affected states reported even greater benefits in soybeans: an average increase of 5.7 bushels per acre, or 14.3 percent higher yields after cover crops.

The farmers responding to the survey grew cover crops on an estimated 218,000 acres of cover crops in 36 states, mostly in the Mississippi River basin. Not surprisingly, drought-related impacts varied across the country. But the results were solid: farmers enjoyed better corn yields after cover crops in all but one of the states hardest hit by the drought.

Benefits worth paying for

Farmers expected to pay for the ecosystem services provided by cover crops. They were willing to pay median costs of $25 an acre to purchase seeds and $15 an acre for establishment (aerial distribution of seed and termination (killing)) of the cover crop.

The challenges of growing cover crops

Farmers interested in cover crops need to decide which species to use, how and when to plant them, and whether to plant single or multispecies mixes. If the wrong decisions are made, cover crops might not deliver on their potential benefits or may even be detrimental. The survey respondents reported a long list of challenges including cover crop seed availability, increased insect potential, and that cover crops might use too much soil moisture.

Despite the challenges, these farmers had steadily increased their use of cover crops over the last decade. Last winter they reported planting cover crops on an average of 42 percent of their acreage and planned to increase their cover crop acreage this coming winter.

The complexity of the system may explain the correlation of yield increases with experience using cover crops. Growers with more than three years working with cover crops saw a 9.6 percent increase in corn yields, while growers with one to three years reported a still respectible, but lower, 6.1 percent boost in corn.

Drought-resistant systems and drought-tolerant crops

A complete drought-tolerant package would include appropriate crop choices and specially bred varieties of crops as well as a drought-tolerant system. The crop-centered approach to drought was discussed by my colleague, Doug Gurian-Sherman, in his recent report High and Dry. In addition to highlighting the availability of crops like sorghum and alfalfa that are inherently more drought-tolerant and might be used more often in U.S. agriculture, Doug also discussed the success of conventional corn breeders who have increased drought tolerance at a steady pace of 1 percent a year over decades.

Genetic engineering has yet to play an important role in drought tolerance, only this year introducing its first drought-tolerant variety, Monsanto’s DroughtGard. According to the Monsanto website, the variety has produced a 5 bushel (or about 4 percent)  yield advantage  in field tests against competitor hybrids.

But, however successful crop genetics might be, the right choice of crops and varieties cannot compensate for the deficiencies in systems. The fundamental requirement  for combating drought is to keep moisture in soil.  Cover crops can do that–and so much more.

But food stamps and commodity programs are not all the debate should be about. The farm bill also contains numerous smaller, but vital and innovative programs supporting healthy food, research, and conservation programs.

Right now, those programs are in danger of being forgotten in the farm bill debate, when by rights they ought to be moving to a more central place in farm bill policy. These are the programs that will help us face the fundamental threats of climate pollution, degraded air and water quality, and impaired coastal fisheries and other ecosystems. These are the programs that will help us encourage healthy diets and a prosperous rural economy.

All Americans are interested in clean air, clean water, healthy food and the mitigation of climate change. The growing constituencies for a clean environment and healthy diets could help transcend the narrow versions of urban and rural America that currently dominate the debate. Maybe—just maybe—the current farm bill fracas will allow for the emergence of new, more broadly based coalitions to reorient agriculture policy to achieve these important goals.

This interactive UCS graphic explains key healthy farm practices and their benefits.

UCS vision for the future of agriculture

If so, we will be poised to pursue  a new vision of agriculture that both ensures high productivity and responds to environmental and human health challenges. UCS has recently offered such a vision: The Healthy Farm: A Vision for U.S. Agriculture.

Though profound in its impacts, the vision picks up on the positive features of today’s agriculture and reshapes them in ways that are both practical and feasible. It relies on four practices—crop rotation, cover crops, crop/livestock integration and landscape integration, underpinned by a properly oriented research agenda and policy incentives.

Although all are important and work together, crop rotation is probably the central practice of a genuinely sustainable agriculture.

Growing three or four crops in rotation on the same piece of land controls both weeds and insect pests from the get-go and drastically reduces the need for poisonous chemical inputs. But here’s the best part: once in place, the system keeps pests at bay year after year—no buildup of toxins in soil and water (whether the toxins were initially applied externally or engineered into crops)—and slows the emergence of resistant weeds and bugs. Crop rotation can also reduce the need for fertilizers by including nitrogen-fixing crops in the rotation.

Colorado State University scientists recently confirmed that in the High Plains, rotation of corn with other crops is “the best method” of avoiding the pest responsible for most pesticide use in Colorado, the corn rootworm. If farmers in Colorado had been rotating crops, the rootworms would not have proliferated, and neither genetically engineered crops nor chemical pesticides would have been needed to control them.

Scientists have recently documented that crop rotations also substantially increase yields.

U.S. farmers don’t rotate corn

Despite the demonstrated benefits and  relative ease of  adoption, crop rotation is not often practiced. Scientists at Iowa State estimated that in 2011 only sixty percent of the Iowa corn crop was rotated at all, and then mostly with soybeans. It is not hard to understand why. Farmers have limited land resources and generally speaking choose to grow crops commanding the highest prices. Right now corn is that crop. So, if farmers can grow corn, they will—year after year.

This choice makes short-term economic sense for farmers, and I don’t blame them for making it. I do blame our shortsighted agricultural policy that reinforces this choice by providing direct payments and subsidized crop insurance for corn crops.

We need agricultural policy that reverses direction and makes it possible for farmers to provide public goods like clean air, clean water and flourishing ecosystems. To be blunt, we need to make it economically attractive for farmers to rotate corn with two or three other crops.

Let’s make rotation possible

If we set crop rotation as a goal, there are lots of way to encourage it. We could redeploy subsidies to provide incentives for three- or four-year crop rotations; invest in research for new uses of crops other than corn that will increase their value in the marketplace; balance the corn ethanol incentives with incentives for cellulosic energy crops; or change animal agriculture to raise more on pasture or other grains than corn.

To have a chance of implementing these and other farsighted policies, we need people interested in healthy foods and healthy farms to weigh in and redirect subsidies now going to encourage corn production to new goals like helping farmers rotate corn with other crops and adopt other sustainable practices.

There will be a lot of commotion as the farm bill lurches ahead in this new, uncertain environment, and it may be hard to tell through the din whether we have moved toward sustainability in a meaningful way. But here’s a tip.

Look at what American farmers plant. If they are planting three or four-year crops in rotation, you can be pretty sure we are headed in the right direction. If they are still planting continuous corn or even corn and soybeans, we’re still stuck in the past.

Pollinators, such as the Honey Bee, are under serious threat from long term exposure to low levels of neonics.
Photo Courtesy of ele_Zeta via Flickr

This winter, U.S. commercial beekeepers reported devastating losses of 30 percent to as much as 50 percent of their hives. These losses are on top of annual losses in the 20 percent to 30 percent range since 2007, far exceeding the historical rate, which is approximately 10 to 15 percent. To see bee declines through the eye of a beekeeper, read this story about Steve Ellis in Elbow Lake, Minnesota.

The loss of bees and other pollinators should concern all of us. A third of food crops—among them fruits, vegetables, and nuts— depend on animal pollination. Since 2006, an estimated 10 million bee hives at an approximate value of $200 each have been lost.

Causes of honey bee decline

There are a number of potential causes of bee decline, including loss of flower-rich habitat, infestations with Varroa mites, applications of fungicides and insecticides, use of honey substitutes as bee food, and synergies among pathogens and chemical pesticides.

Much attention has focused on the neonicotinoid, or neonic, neurotoxins now among the world’s most popular insecticides. Startling graphics prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey show how rapidly the neonics imidacloprid and clothianidin have been adopted and how extensively they are now deployed in the United States. In agriculture, neonics are often delivered as seed coatings. The pesticide enters the seed as it germinates and eventually infuses the entire plant, including  pollen and nectar.

Neonics are also toxic to aquatic invertebrates and, as discussed in an earlier post by my colleague Doug Gurian-Sherman, to birds.

Europeans have recently announced a two-year precautionary ban on the use of three neonics, clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam.  Despite the evident distress of  U.S. bee industry, the U.S. government has yet to take any action.

While it is unlikely that the neonics are solely responsible, it is reasonable to suspect that these widely used,  highly toxic insecticides would play a significant role in bee decline and that the government should seriously consider imposing restrictions on their use.

And are these chemicals ever toxic to insects! A study by Christian Krupke and colleagues at Purdue University estimate that the amount of clothianidin coating just one kernel of corn is enough to kill 80,000 honey bees! That same study demonstrated that honey bees can be exposed to neonics by multiple routes, including the clouds of waste talc thrown up by corn seed planters containing very high pesticide concentrations. (The talc is used to keep the treated seeds separate while planting.)

Low levels of neonic exposure

But a central question confronting scientists investigating the causes of bee decline is the impact of the low concentrations of neonics now widespread in the environment that honey bees are likely to encounter.

A new review paper by Henk A. Tennekes and Francisco Sanchez-Bayo in the journal Toxicology  (Volume 309, July 5, 2013, pages 39–51; login required) suggests that very low concentrations of neonics can have devastating effects on bees and—here’s  the most important part—that conventional risk assessment approaches can miss or underestimate those effects.

According to the paper, neonics are in a group of chemicals, called time-dependent chemicals, whose  toxic effects build up during long exposure times. The paper suggests that time-dependent phenomena occur when an insecticide binds very tightly or irreversibly to critical receptors in the target organism. Given a long enough exposure, even very low levels of time-dependent chemicals can kill.

Standard toxicity tests, which focus on the concentration of toxins for relatively short time periods, do not pick up time-dependent effects because they fail to expose target organisms to very low concentrations of a toxin over long enough periods of time.

Tennekes and Sanchez-Bayo use imidacloprid as a test case to demonstrate how standard risk assessment protocols can miss the harmful effects low levels of the chemicals can have on honey bees.

The paper assessed the impact of imidacloprid on honey bees by determining the time it took for 50 percent of the bees to die  (t50) when exposed for varying time intervals to low doses of the chemical. It then related the exposure data to the pesticide concentrations typically found as plant residues under field conditions and calculated that 50 percent of worker bees would die within seven to ten days if they fed on a such a field. By contrast, the authors assert that standard risk assessments suggest field concentrations of imidacloprid pose no risks at all to honey bees.

Tennekes and Sanchez-Bayo propose a new risk assessment protocol based on t50s to evaluate the effects of time-dependent chemicals and recommend that going forward regulatory agencies employ such protocols to assess the harmful effects of neonics.

Regulators should consider these recommendations. Pollinators are too important to agriculture and other ecosystems, and neonics too widely used, for regulators to be ignorant of the threats low levels of these pesticides pose.

The Idaho potato which Simplot proposes to improve through gene silencing. Courtesy of Michelle@TNS via Flickr

The Simplot potatoes were produced through a new kind of GE—gene silencing. Simplot’s version of gene silencing, called Innate technology, adds genetic fragments derived from cultivated and wild potatoes, but no genetic material from unrelated organisms.

The industry is hoping that the potatoes will get a favorable reception in the marketplace because the potatoes’ benefits—reduced levels of acrylamide and reduced bruising—appeal to consumers as well as potato producers. They also hope that consumers might be less wary of a GE technique that does not cross species lines, but employs only potato genes.

In addition to reducing bruising, the Simplot potatoes also help manage so-called reducing sugars, a substantial benefit to potato growers who can have a much as 20 percent of their crop rejected by food buyers for exceeding acceptable levels of such sugars. Although the potatoes are not initially intended for retail sale, reduced discoloration of after slicing potatoes could be a benefit to consumers.

Reducing acrylamide levels in French fries

Consumers might also benefit from reduced acrylamide concentrations. Acrylamide is a neurotoxin produced by cooking foods discovered by Swedish scientists in 2002. Although acrylamide turns out to present in a variety of heated foods like coffee and baked goods, according to Simplot’s petition for deregulation, French fries and potato chips are the highest per serving sources, accounting for 35 percent of the acrylamide in the U.S. diet.

Scientist have still not fully characterized the ill effects of acrylamide in foods. Some studies find associations with cancer; others do not. But acrylamide is a nasty chemical, and reducing its levels in the diet seems like a good idea.

Many consumers, however, are not aware that French fries or other cooked foods contain acrylamide. So I’m not sure how consumers would become aware that Simplot potatoes provide this benefit. I can’t imagine McDonald’s touting a switch to French fries with reduced levels of a neurotoxin that many consumers had never before associated with their product.

My guess is that many health advocates would prefer consuming fewer French fries to GE as a way of reducing exposure to acrylamide. In fact, nutritionists may worry about a technology that appears to justify eating French fries.

Gene silencing—genetically engineered but not necessarily transgenic

Gene silencing is a relatively new form of GE that turns off particular genes typically by interfering with the protein synthetic machinery of cells. Turning off genes can accomplish many tasks, among them, disabling invading viruses, delaying fruit ripening or altering flower colors.

Gene Silencing. Image courtesy of Dr. Alper Uzun from biocomicals.blogspot.com

As noted above, some versions of gene silencing can accomplish desired effects without adding genetic material from unrelated organisms.

But like other forms of genetic engineering, it involves elaborate snipping and rearranging of genetic material to construct cassettes of DNA before being introduced into cells.

Organisms produced by gene silencing are GE, but not necessarily transgenic. Simplot’s Innate potato, which is engineered with gene fragments from wild and cultivated potatoes, is an example.

Consumer acceptance?

Will the fact that the genetic material used in the Simplot potato came only from potatoes make a difference in its reception in the marketplace?

Not an easy question. For those who object to crossing species lines from an ethical or philosophical point of view, the all-potato construction might make a big difference.

For those who view transgenesis not as an ethical issue, but as a surrogate for risk, it might not, depending on the other risks of the potato.

Many scientists are concerned about GE that crosses species lines because the resulting trait combinations are generally not possible in nature and so their potential downsides are difficult to predict. From this standpoint, gene silencing using all-potato gene cassettes will probably raise fewer flags than GE that crosses species boundaries.

On the other hand, gene silencing technology is the product of scientific research that shows the cellular regulation of genes to be an immensely complex process. Science has moved far beyond the days of the so-called central dogma in which stretches of DNA (genes) coded for pieces of RNA (messenger RNA) that travelled into the cytoplasm to direct the production of proteins—essentially a one-way flow of information.

The cast of players in protein production now is much, much larger and includes a new alphabet soup of RNA molecules with a plethora of interactions and roles. One of the new players is microRNA (miRNA) that can reduce the amount of protein in a cell by hooking up with special enzymes and destroying the messenger RNA responsible for that protein. But there are many others.

New risks of GE foods

So while some risk-based concern is allayed by confining gene combinations within a species, residual concern based on the complexity and incompletely understood nature of gene silencing and related processes remains. In addition, it appears that gene silencing may pose a previously unrecognized risk of genetic engineering: the risk of turning off non-target genes.

This potential harm, which has been described in a recent paper by Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury and colleagues (Environment International 55: 43-55; requires login), depends on one of the many newly recognized kinds of RNA participating in in protein synthesis—double stranded RNA (dsRNA).

DsRNA is an important new topic in food biotechnology and we will discuss it in a later post. But suffice it to say that it represents a potential harm of gene silencing and other forms of GE that merits examination.

So it is too early to say whether the Simplot potato will get a more favorable reception than earlier GE foods based on the all-potato origin of its new genetic material and consumer benefits. But it certainly will become an important test  for how well the FDA handles the potential new risk of  genetic engineering—dsRNAs.

Original Nipper, by Francis Barraud (1856–1924) (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The scientific data connecting antibiotic use in agriculture to the evolution of resistant human disease have been compelling for decades. Recent studies only strengthen the case. The FDA knows that ongoing antibiotic use leads to more resistant bacteria and that the crisis deepens every year we fail to address the issue.

The solution to the crisis is straightforward: avoid the unnecessary use of antibiotics in both human and veterinary medicine and animal agriculture. In agriculture, most antibiotic use compensates for crowded, stressful raising conditions that can be avoided with good animal husbandry, so meaningful reductions are possible and economically feasible. (Of course, when animals fall ill or are directly exposed to contagious disease, antibiotics are called for and should be used.)

The FDA has the legal tools to cancel approvals for unnecessary uses of the antibiotic classes that are important in human medicine. Using those legal tools would go a long way to preserve the efficacy of our precious, but ever dwindling, store of drugs.

Regardless, over a 30-year time frame, the FDA has only occasionally addressed this crisis. The agency’s foot-dragging has astounded even a federal court judge.

What gives?

User Fees and Data Reporting Requirements

The way the Senate and FDA have handled the Animal Drug and Animal Generic Drug User Fee Reauthorization Act of 2013 (ADUFA) gives a strong hint. ADUFA is a law that allows the drug industry to pay fees to the FDA to expedite the review of animal drug applications. The fees, which are negotiated for a five-year term between FDA and the industry, supplement the agency’s budget. The ADUFA reauthorization bill introduced in Senate in March (S.622) would provide FDA more than $21 million annually from 2014 through 2018 to support new animal drug reviews, and about $7 million a year over the same period to handle generic drug applications.

That is not chump change. FDA financial reports for fiscal year 2011 attributed 92 full-time positions to the ADUFA fees.

The convergent interests of the FDA and the industry it is supposed to regulate make ADUFA a “must-pass” piece of legislation that offers an opportunity to enact public health measures along with expedited drug reviews. The 2008 ADUFA included the first-ever requirements for collecting and publishing sales data for animal antibiotics.

This year the public interest community is urging very modest improvements to those 2008 requirements: more information on species, purpose, and how the animal drugs are administered. These data would be valuable for scientists to understand and respond to the antibiotic crisis. But the bill reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee was “clean”—not a speck of public health reporting was added.

Modest as they were, the additional reporting requirements were too much for industry and the HELP Committee.

As former FDA Commissioner David Kessler said in a recent New York Times op-ed, both industry and the HELP Committee are being “aided and abetted” by the FDA, which has not uttered a peep in favor of stronger reporting requirements. Why? With $30 million a year and 90 or so positions on the line, the FDA doesn’t want to rock the boat, not even to achieve important public health goals.

Fortunately, two senators not on the HELP committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are continuing to fight to strengthen the Senate version of ADUFA, while the House is  considering more robust, but still very reasonable, reporting requirements that could be added to its its version of the bill. But so far there is no indication that the FDA will throw its weight behind stronger reporting requirements.

User Fees and Agency Priorities

It turns out that the agriculture industry gets even more for its millions than help in quashing important data collection improvements. In exchange for the fees, the FDA has agreed to detailed performance deadlines to ensure the drug review process moves along quickly and the agency rarely misses its deadlines. But when it comes to addressing the threat posed by the overuse of antibiotics, the agency moves at a snail’s pace, if at all. The industry’s milestones are sacrosanct, but the agency’s public health mission—whenever. The user fees set the agency’s priorities.

I also wonder what role industry played in the evolution of the FDA’s timid, voluntary program to remove injudicious antibiotic uses from the market. As I argued in an earlier post, that program envisions lopsided, drug company-friendly negotiations to determine which products go off the market. Could the agency’s dependence on the same companies for its budget have factored into the program’s design?

The public bears a big responsibility here. If taxpayers were willing to step up and fund the FDA, the public, not the regulated community, would be calling the shots.

That said, under the current situation, user fees are giving the animal drug industry too much say in the choices and priorities of the FDA. Like Nipper, the iconic dog sitting at attention next to the RCA Victrola, the FDA appears to be listening to its master’s voice.

Herd-wide use involves administration of antibiotics to all animals within a building or feedlot.
Image courtesy of Farm Sanctuary via Flickr.

From a public health point of view, new preventive uses are likely to be indistinguishable from—and just as troublesome as–the production uses they replace. Both involve large quantities of antibiotics used at low levels over long periods of time, the perfect recipe for encouraging the development of resistant bacteria.

Relabeling rather than reducing the massive uses of antibiotics would be a public health failure.

Draft Guidance #213 responds to the temptation of relabeling  by imposing special criteria for new approvals for prevention claims. While at first blush these criteria appear to be reassuring, they are anything but. In effect, they offer a new path to drug approval that would circumvent and weaken current regulatory standards.

Guidance #152: A Public Health Victory for FDA

Current standards are embodied in Guidance for Industry #152 (Guidance #152), one of the genuinely bright spots in the FDA’s record of combating antibiotic resistance. Put in place in 2003, Guidance #152 established an elegant way of combining qualitative factors, for example how drugs are used in human medicine and the levels of consumption of food animals, to reach an assessment of the potential for an animal drug to cause resistant disease that matters to humans.

The standards are based on the scientifically sound principle that the overall amount of drug use is a major driver of the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Thus, Guidance #152 rates flock-wide or herd-wide uses of drugs a key factor in assessing risk, regardless of whether the uses are for preventive or production purposes.

Typically, cattle, swine and poultry are raised in very large, confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Resistant bacteria fill the guts of all these animals and are also found on their skin and in their manure. Exposure to antibiotics enriches the populations of resistant bacteria in guts and manure lagoons, which then make their way to humans through food, other humans and the environment. Herd- and flock-wide drug use in CAFOs help explain the continued use of massive quantities of drugs sold in the U.S.

An important factor in Guidance #152 is whether the animal drugs are (or are in classes of drugs that are) used in human medicine. If so, resistance has implications for human (and animal) medicine. Such drugs are considered “medically important.”

The good news is that adherence to Guidance #152 has brought to a virtual halt the issuance of new approvals of medically important drugs for herd-wide and flock-wide uses in major food animal species—cattle, swine, or poultry.

Although Guidance #152 needs improvement—for example, to broaden its definition of drugs critically important to humans beyond those involved in foodborne illness—the fact that the FDA has not approved medically important drugs for large-scale, indiscriminate use for the past decade is a major triumph for public health.

Draft Guidance # 213:  A Way Around Guidance #152

Surprisingly, Draft Guidance #213 does not propose to apply Guidance #152 to its decisions for new approvals. Instead it offers a separate approval process “in lieu of Guidance #152” that speaks to the issues of duration and level of use and treatment of apparently healthy animals, but leaves lots of wiggle room.

For example, the new labels for prevention would have to specify a duration of use, but the guidance does not say how long that duration can be. Draft Guidance #213 encourages, but does not require, that doses for the prevention uses be higher than current production doses.

But the big loophole in Draft Guidance #213 is the FDA’s expectation that any new indications should “be available only to those animals that need the drug for the new indication, rather than the entire flock or herd when such use is not necessary.” This leaves open the possibility that routine flock- or herd-wide use can be considered when it is necessary, an option not available in Guidance#152.

In fact, considering necessity as a factor in risk assessment of animal drugs goes beyond the FDA’s statutory authority. Although it is not clear how necessity would play out in the new approval process, the concept is foreign to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which flatly requires that new animal drugs intended for use in food-producing animals be safe with regard to human health (21 C.F.R. 514.1(b)(8)). The statute does not allow for the approval of unsafe drugs because they are necessary for animal health or efficient meat production.

The conditions most likely to necessitate long term preventive uses of antibiotics in flocks or herd are endemic diseases resulting from diet or crowded, stressful conditions in CAFOs.

A Sweet Deal for Industry

We cannot know whether the FDA will walk through the doors it opened in Guidance #213.  It may not. But, as we discussed last post, the voluntary process puts the agency under great pressure to satisfy the demands of the industry with regard to new approvals.

New flock- and herd-wide approvals for prevention would lock in high drug use in CAFOs and gut the victories achieved under Guidance #152. It is possible that the weaker standard in Draft Guidance #213 could eventually displace the high standard of Guidance #152 altogether.

A sweet deal for industry, a travesty for public health.

Under the FDA’s new antibiotics policy, drug approval negotiations will resemble the trading floor of a stock market. (Pictured: Chicago Mercantile Exchange, summer 1982.)
Photo courtesy of MojoBaer via Flickr.

The FDA’s policy

The FDA’s approach to this public health crisis is to eliminate unacceptable (“injudicious”) uses of antibiotics, and subject the rest to veterinary oversight through either prescriptions or veterinary feed directives (VFDs).

The agency has deemed so-called production uses of antibiotics, like feed efficiency and growth promotion, as unacceptable and all health-related uses (therapy, disease control and disease prevention) as acceptable. The approach sounds reasonable but has hidden flaws.

Production uses are unacceptable because efficient production can be achieved by good husbandry without risking the efficacy of valuable antibiotic drugs. In addition production uses typically involve the administration of drugs at low doses for months at a time, the perfect recipe for encouraging the emergence of resistant bacteria in livestock and poultry.

Health-related uses that are considered acceptable, on the other hand, are a mixed bag.

Therapy, the treatment of sick animal to cure illness and prevent suffering is generally acceptable. Animals get sick only sporadically and when the do are usually treated at high doses for a relatively short period of time.

By contrast, most routine antibiotic uses for prevention involve the same long durations of administration at low doses as production use and good husbandry can prevent disease as effectively as drugs. So long term, routine preventive uses of antibiotics are unacceptable.

There are special circumstances where preventive uses are acceptable. That’s where antibiotics are necessary to prevent imminent occurrence of disease. Disease outbreaks occur relatively rarely and involve relatively short term courses of treatment.

But the FDA policy does not separate out the large scale, routine preventive uses of antibiotics from therapy and special preventive uses in cases of  imminent danger. As will be discussed below, lumping all health–related uses together as acceptable sets the stage for large scale waste of agency resources with virtually no public health benefit.

The voluntary path

As noted above, the FDA’s policy is to eliminate all production approvals for feed efficiency and growth promotion. Over 20 companies currently hold such approvals, legally known as label claims. Typically, these claims appear on a drug label and indicate that the drug can be used in a particular way (by injection, by feed), in a particular animal species (swine, turkeys), at a particular dose, and for a specified purpose (to treat, prevent or control a specific disease or improve production).

The Agency can legally withdraw the label claims approvals if it can show that uses under the label circumstances are no longer safe in terms of resistance.

A second way to eliminate production approvals is somehow to persuade all the drug companies to drop claims voluntarily.

The trick, of course, is to get the drug companies to go along. Asking drug companies to no longer sell products on which they are making millions of dollars seems almost ridiculous.

The FDA knows that drug companies will not give up production claims out of altruistic concern for the public health. So it is planning to give them something in exchange: new label claims for drugs for disease prevention or therapy. Sales of drugs under the new claims would bolster sales of antibiotic products and repair any damage to bottom lines from the loss of the production claims.

The negotiations for new approvals

Although the trade-off idea is clear enough in concept, the negotiations to implement it will be complicated and could prove messy. The rules for conducting these negotiations are laid out in Draft Guidance For Industry #213 (hereinafter Guidance # 213).

The idea is that companies will come to the FDA with a list of production claims they are willing to abandon. The list might, but need not, involve all the production claims a company possesses. Of course, the companies won’t actually surrender claims until they see what the FDA has to offer in exchange.

Companies with numerous production claims may end up demanding a fair number of new approvals in exchange for voluntary withdrawals. This is going to be like the pit of old New York Stock Exchange. Do I hear a new therapeutic approval for our penicillin feed additive in swine in exchange for two growth-promoting claims in poultry? What about a preventive use claim for erythromycin in cattle?

Some changes in labels can occur at no cost to companies because they already hold approvals for the same drug at the same dose for both prevention and production purposes. But even in those cases, the companies can insist on an inducement to drop the claim.

If a company does not like what the FDA offers, it can simply refuse to go ahead with its “offer” to give up its production claims. The FDA may eventually decide to cancel the claim legally, but it’s a good bet that it will take the Agency years to act on that decision. Meanwhile the company continues to sell its drugs with no penalty.

These negotiations will take place behind closed doors over a three-year period to begin the day the final version of Guidance #213 is issued. Currently, the Agency is predicting final issuance by the end of March 2013. The companies will have three months from the day Guidance #213 is issued to submit their initial list of claims they are willing give up.

So far drug companies are being understandably cagey. None of them has publicly committed to give up any production claims. And it is unlikely that any will until they have firm commitments from the FDA for new approvals or other inducements.

If the FDA cannot persuade the companies to give up their claims, much time and resources will have been wasted, an outcome the FDA is anxious to avoid. This gives the drug companies strong leverage in the negotiations and means the agency will be willing to go far to induce their cooperation. That’s why designation of routine disease prevention in the acceptable pot is so important. Without it, the Agency would only have low volume claims to bargain with.

The public health payoff?

By the end of the three years, the agency and those drug companies participating in the Guidance #213 process will have presumably come to a set of agreements. If all goes according to the FDA’s plan, some—or perhaps all—of the production claims will have been withdrawn, many new approvals will have been granted, and all uses of antibiotics will be subject to veterinary oversight through prescriptions or VFDs.

The public health test of the policy is whether, when all the trading is over, the Agency has achieved a substantial reduction in overall quantities of antibiotic used in animal agriculture.

Considering the incentives on the part of companies to maintain sales and the FDA’s need to induce industry cooperation, it is hard to imagine that the end result of negotiations will be an overall reduction in antibiotic use. If so, that would be a colossal waste of public health resources.

But believe it or not, horse-trading for approvals may not be the end of what the FDA is willing to do to sweeten the pot for industry. We’ll talk about that in the next post.

I will long savor that experience, but my excursion into the world of high-end cuisine was a rare treat. Of course, I didn’t have to go to Copenhagen for action on the place-based food front. There is a lot going on right here near my home in Washington, D.C.

Local sustainable meat guru, Bev Eggleston, co-founder of EcoFriendly Foods Foundation.

To wit, I recently spent a cool, sunny afternoon celebrating local food on Capitol Hill within sight of the Senate office buildings. The occasion was the launch of the EcoFriendly Foods Foundation, the next step for local sustainable meat guru, Bev Eggleston.

Bev held the event on the veranda of a local restaurant, Johnny’s Halfshell, where he laid out sides of coleslaw, beets, and beans on a long table and offered a selection of drinks that featured beer from Starr Hill Brewery in Charlottesville, Virginia, and hot spiced cider from Toigo Orchards in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He set out bins to collect beer cups for recycling and leftover food and tableware for composting. Over the course of the afternoon, a steady stream of Washingtonians stopped by for good food, friendship and lively conversation.

At the curbside in front of the restaurant was a custom-built mobile pig smoker with a platform on which Bev presided, smiling as he carved up a big pig for the event. Along with his wife Janelle, Bev founded EcoFriendly Foods in 2001 to connect farmers raising animals sustainably to customers who value that kind of food and farming.

Over the past 12 years, Bev and Janelle have worked tirelessly to make sustainable meat production economically viable. They work in the space between farmers and eaters, the part of the food system most seriously in need of attention if we are to transform our food system in the direction of sustainability.

As a result of their hard work, EcoFriendly Foods now supplies sustainable meat to restaurants up and down the East Coast and sells directly to customers at farmers markets and by mail.

Connecting sustainable farmers and customers has not been easy. One of the many barriers Bev and Janelle encountered was the fact that there was no local slaughterhouse to process their products. So they bought one—well, an abandoned one—and renovated it. Now up and running in Moneta, Virginia, the facility is U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-inspected and Certified Humane®.

EcoFriendly Foods is one of the few meat purveyors that can vouch not only for the lives their pigs led on the farm, but also the way their animals were handled right up to—and through—the slaughterhouse door. Ecofriendly Foods veal calves live with their mothers on pasture their entire lives.

EcoFriendly Foods provides an alternative to today’s dominant meat production systems that are centered on huge confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Typical CAFOs crowd thousands of animals into small spaces, a practice that encourages the spread of disease and produces mountains of manure that pollute surrounding air and water. The cramped housing can be cruel, especially for sows, confined for months in crates not much larger than they are.

It is not difficult to understand why livestock operations that raise animals in these stressful facilities routinely feed them antibiotics to stave off disease. Since many of the drugs are the same doctors use to treat humans, the resistant bacteria created in CAFOs can cause human diseases that are difficult, if not impossible to treat.

Avoiding pollution, providing humane raising conditions, and preserving our dwindling antibiotic supplies provide plenty of incentive to seek alternatives to CAFOs, but it turns out that moving animals back outdoors has even more benefits. It allows nutrients to be recycled in ways that protect the environment and create healthy soil. Although Americans should eat less meat, especially beef, than they currently do, making sure that the meat they eat is raised sustainably can protect the environment.

The transformation of our food system along the entire food chain—that means producers, processors, transporters, bankers, marketers and consumers—has a long way to go. No one understands better than Bev, who is focusing his new foundation on connecting entrepreneurial young farmers with land, livestock and capital, and facilitating collaborative food-crafting businesses, like USDA-inspected charcuteries.

The future of U.S. food depends on energetic and optimistic entrepreneurs like Bev, who are proud of the delicious meat they bring to the table and committed to transforming agriculture, in his words, “one farmer at a time.”

Tundra moss, razor clams and flying shrimp

And so began a four-hour feast of twenty dishes at the edge of the culinary frontier. The menu was set by the restaurant with options for those who didn’t want meat or dairy. Some of the dishes were based on items that I don’t ordinarily consider food–ants, grasshoppers, and tundra moss. Others were based on foods rendered into shapes and textures I’d never seen or even imagined, for example, amber ultra-thin slices of scallop served with beechnut, einkorn and watercress.

Toast with turbot roe, herbs and dried vinegar at Noma. Source: cyclonebill via Flickr

No dish tasted like anything I have ever encountered before…but (almost) every one was delicious.

The tundra moss was presented as a small lacey brick that looked like it would be chewy and tasteless, but instead melted in my mouth and burst into delicate, savory explosion of flavor.

Then there were razor clams served with horseradish, the oysters with gooseberry and buttermilk, and on and on. All accompanied by excellent local bread and butter.

The experience was not without humor. In the midst of dinner, the server placed on the table a clear, lidded jar full of ice, and described it with a flourish as ‘fresh shrimp.” I could not resist the temptation, and opened the jar, only to have one of the shrimp jump out in the direction of one of my dining companions, who let out a small shriek of surprise.

Live Shrimp at Noma. Source: cyclonebill via Flickr

The shrimp were intended to be consumed alive, a big challenge after one looked at their long, twitching legs. I declined this particular culinary adventure, but one of my companions bravely downed a wriggling creature whole. My other companions consumed the shrimp after they had been cut in half and rendered motionless. Later on, we heard eruptions of laughter at other tables in the restaurant and knew they had just discovered the shrimp.

Although I had passed on shrimp, I was willing to try the ants and blueberries, a dish containing  tasty, but thankfully unrecognizable, ants.

Embracing place-based eating

The chef at the helm of this fabulous experience is Rene Redzepi, whose career might be summed up as a response to one of the biggest challenge of place-based eating—the place. Easy enough to find local and regional foods in France or Italy, one might say, but Denmark? After the seafood, the pork and the dairy cows, the Nordic larder seems pretty spare. How could one fashion a cuisine based on Nordic foods? The answer is with the creativity, imagination and extraordinary culinary skill. (For a brief introduction to Redzepi and his spectacular food, check out the video on Amazon.)

Creating a Nordic cuisine from scratch is hard work. Noma keeps two chefs working full time testing new ideas, many of which come from the Noma staff. And it’s daring. Ants and moss are not for everyone.

But place-based eating is a challenge that is being embraced by people far from the world of fancy restaurants all over the the world. People from chefs to home cooks are looking anew at the opportunities for food close to home.

Not every one will want to have the Noma experience. Ants do have their limits. But it is inspiring to know that food horizons are not as limited as we think…and that the sustainable agriculture movement has a forward-leaning edge among the some of the world’s most creative chefs.

Refocusing food on place is an exciting idea.  Place-based eating, if not carried too far—yes, Noma serves coffee, tea and wine–offers new economic opportunities for sustainable farmers and food producers, new connections to friends and neighbors, and new kinds of delicious foods.  That’s something we can all embrace.

Those are the words of  Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, Associate Director for Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Healthcare Associated Infection Prevention Programs, as the CDC kicked off Get Smart About Antibiotics Week 2012, this year’s installment in the agency’s campaign to reduce the use of antibiotics in human medicine.

The multi-part CDC initiative is comprehensive and creative. In addition to a policy statement, a stewardship program aimed at hospitals and special informational materials aimed at nursing homes and other health care players, the initiative features a five-week YouTube and TV campaign aimed at convincing parents of young children not to demand antibiotics when they are not needed.

Pigs raised on factory farms are confined in metal and concrete pens. They live here until they reach slaughter weight of 250 pounds at six months old. Source: Farm Sanctuary

A big omission: where are the animals?

As welcome and impressive as it is, the CDC initiative has a major flaw. It focuses almost entirely on human health care settings, ignoring the enormous, ongoing use of antibiotics in food animal production. Yet, FDA data reveal that in 2010 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the US  were intended for use in animals. Many of those drugs–for example, penicillin and tetracyclines–are in the same classes as drugs critical for human medicine.

The enormous use of antibiotics in feedlots, poultry and swine houses generates huge populations of resistant bacteria in the guts and on the skin of food animals. Those resistant bacteria–many of which can cause human disease–have easy routes to humans: on food, through the environment, and via individuals who work with and around the animals. Consumers Union in 2010 found that two-thirds of the chicken samples it tested were contaminated with Salmonella or Campylobacter or both and that more than 60 percent of those organisms were antibiotic-resistant.

Using virtually the same antibiotics as are used in human medicine at low levels over long periods of time is an ideal way to encourage the proliferation of human diseases that resist antibiotics. Scientists now agree that animal antibiotic use on farms contributes to increasing levels of severe and difficult-to-treat disease. Recently, 150 prominent scientists led by Dr. Donald Kennedy, a former Commissioner of the FDA, issued a public statement affirming this link.

The antibiotic resistance crisis is the result of overuse and inappropriate use in BOTH animal and human settings and the CDC should be campaigning with equal vigor against overuse in BOTH settings.

A smarter approach: include animals

CDC should end the silence about animals (lambs included)–and design a complementary program on animals. (The CDC has a small educational program aimed at animal uses, but it is a very thin affair.) An effort comparable to its human health-centered effort–if you will, a Get Smart About Antibiotics IN ANIMALS Week–would feature a robust set of activities aimed at educating and changing the behavior of actors in the food chain. Bring on the Twitter, the YouTube and TV campaigns tailored to veterinarians, swine, poultry and beef producers, and contract growers.

The central target of the animal campaign would be unnecessary and inappropriate  uses of antibiotics: feed efficiency and growth promotion (purely economic uses) and routine disease prevention, which often compensates for stressful conditions in crowded animal facilities. Antibiotics should be used to treat sick animals, but just as in humans only when necessary and  in careful and prudent ways.

The best approach is to legally restrict the sale of antibiotics for routine purposes, a goal that would be accomplished with the passage of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). But in the meantime, we should try every means of communication and education to persuade animal producers and veterinarians to choose of their own accord not to use drugs for these purposes.

It just doesn’t make sense for the CDC to urge parents of sick children not to ask for precious antibiotics when they are not needed, while producers of cattle, swine and poultry continue to use the same drugs just to save a few pennies or avoid the transition to modern management systems.

A Get Smart About Antibiotics Use in Animals Week 2013. Now that’s a really smart idea!

Fields in Kansas. The different patterns and colors come from different irrigation methods and crop rotation. Source: Wyoming_Jackrabbit via Flickr.

Unlike the use of herbicide-tolerant or Bt crops, which inevitably elicit resistant weeds and insects over time, long rotations provide durable benefits: they will continue to dampen pest levels, reduce input costs, and produce high yields far into the future. In short, the systems are sustainable.

In theory, this is great news. But the sad truth is that three or four-year rotations are the exception rather than the rule in American agriculture. Many farmers don’t even employ the two-year corn and soybean rotation. They just plant continuous corn year after year after year.

Why don’t farmers rotate crops?

If farmers who employ long crop rotations can expect to enjoy higher yields and make more money, why aren’t more of them doing so?

Why don’t farmers add oats, alfalfa, or triticale to their traditional mix of corn and soy?

One answer is that many farmers already enjoy record profits and change is hard. But the environmental and health harms of the current system are increasingly unacceptable to non-farm sectors of society, who are beginning to demand change.

The power of a rotation-based agriculture has been appreciated for a long time. Dick and Sharon Thompson, the pioneering farmers acknowledged as an inspiration by Matt Liebman, one of the Marsden study’s principal investigators, were active in the 1970s and 80s, a time of ferment around the notion of sustainable agriculture. What has happened since then?

Over these last three decades at least two forms of innovative agriculture have flowered. One—the modern organic movement—is centered on the relationship between farmers and food consumers and focuses on trustworthy food labels, near absolute prohibitions of synthetic inputs like pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the possibility of premium prices for farmers who meet stringent criteria. The other—sustainable agriculture—focuses more broadly on agriculture and features “as necessary” use of chemical inputs in farm systems and practical solutions appealing to farmers and ranchers. The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and its constituent organizations are premier exponents of the sustainable agriculture vision.

The organic and sustainable movements overlap in many ways, most fundamentally their common commitment to ecosystem services as the basis for successful agriculture. And both have enjoyed substantial success. (See here for recent info on the success of organic food.)

But conventional agriculture has largely resisted transition to sustainability. Why? The Marsden Farm studies provides fresh evidence of strong reasons for conventional farmers to move to sustainable systems—increased profits, high yields, and fertile land to pass on to their children.

I am honestly puzzled. What is standing in the way?

Farmers don’t act alone

I’ll take a stab at an answer here, but I would like to know what you think too.

Recently Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack denied accusations that he had suppressed the Marsden Farm study. I’m sure he’s telling the truth. The USDA supported the study financially and probably wishes the sustainable approach had more traction than it does. But in discussing the issue, the Secretary pointed to the real problem. He said “[W]e [the USDA] support all forms of agriculture production, but ultimately it’s up to the producer,” implying that the current situation is a result of individual farmer choice.

That’s where I think the Secretary missed the mark. Farmers don’t act alone. They make decisions about what crops to plant in a landscape molded by others. The terrain of the landscape makes some decisions easy for farmers and stands in the way of others. That landscape includes financial subsidies, research agendas, crop insurance and farmer education. Currently, the policy terrain directs agriculture towards simple, highly productive systems dependent on expensive chemical inputs.

We need to point agriculture in a different direction, toward systems that protect the environment without sacrificing profitability. Then we need to start fashioning a new set of policy tools—new subsidies, new kinds of crop insurance, new research agendas—all aligned behind that goal. Under this scenario, ecosystem services produced by crop and allied practices would become the organizing principle of agriculture and the bulk of American farmers would find implementation of crop rotation, cover crops, and other new practices feasible, even comfortable.

Your ideas?

A new policy landscape oriented toward crop rotation and sustainability. That’s my idea.

What do you think it would take for conventional U.S. farmers to adopt 3- to 4-year crop rotations?

Let me hear from you.

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring. Official photo as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee. c. 1940.

One would have hoped that in the five decades since Carson raised the alarm about the overuse of pesticides, society would have made substantial progress on her signature issue. But instead, we are facing a dramatic upsurge in pesticide use.

It’s not that we don’t know how to reduce dependence on pesticides (the term includes both herbicides and insecticides). For a start, we should encourage multiyear crop rotations, cover crops, and enhanced soil quality. If agriculture had been moving along this path for the past 50 years, Silent Spring’s anniversary would be cause for celebration instead of an occasion to gird ourselves for the next big pesticide battle.

Unfortunately, agriculture has doubled down on the large monocultures of crops that make heavy pesticide use inevitable. US commodity farmers now grow only 4 major crops—corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat—and in many parts of the country only two of these. It’s difficult to set up multiyear crop rotations with only two crops.  As a result, the acreages of commodity crops are huge (corn was 93 million acres last year) and farmers often grow the same crop in the same field year after year. Weeds and insects that get hospitable receptions tend to return, forcing farmers to use herbicides and pesticides to beat them back. As long as this structure is in place, farmers will be dependent on pesticides.

One reason conventional agriculture has stayed on the same pesticide-dependent path for so long is the advent of GE (genetic engineering) technology.  Introduced in the early 1990’s, GE’s two major innovations –herbicide-tolerant crops and BT crops–promised to reduce herbicide and insecticide use without major changes in the agriculture system. For a decade or so, the technology delivered on that promise. And while pesticide use was going down, more fundamental reform was set aside.

The Party Is Over: a New Study on Herbicide Use.

A new scientific study by Charles Benbrook of Washington State University shows that biotechnology respite from pesticide use is over.

The Benbrook study, based on analyses of publically available USDA data, documents the trajectory of herbicide use following the introduction of both the herbicide-tolerant (HT) and the BT-toxin containing (BT) crops. I’m going to focus today on the HT crops, by far the major application of GE in crop agriculture, and talk about BT crops later.

The early days of HT crops were heady times for farmers. All of sudden, weeds could be controlled with a single, low dose application of glyphosate, a relatively benign herbicide. Benbrook’s analysis confirms that total herbicide use dipped in each of the first six years after the introduction of HT crops. Farmers were able to replace several applications of older herbicides with a single application of glyphosate (sold commercially as Roundup). Despite the higher cost of seeds, farmers couldn’t adopt the technology fast enough.

Resistant Weeds: The Cause of Increased Herbicide Use

Because scientists moved the same herbicide resistance genes into three major commodity crops—corn, cotton, soybeans—the use of glyphosate soared.  According to Benbrook, farmers have planted 1.3 billion acres of HT corn, cotton and soybeans in the US since 1996, mostly in HT soybeans.

Because HT crops were so widely used, those few weeds that could withstand glyphosate had a “field day” in the fields.  Slowly but surely, weeds resistant to glyphosate began to infest fields, and farmers had to apply herbicides more often and in higher doses to control them.

The result is that 16 years after introduction, U.S. herbicide use is on the rise. According to Benbrook, US agriculture has used 527 million pounds more herbicides across the three major HT crops—corn, soybeans and cotton—than it would have used without the HT crops.

More Herbicides and More Weeds: The Crisis Ahead

But, this is just the beginning.  Like herbaceous zombies, as long as farmers keep using herbicides, resistant weeds will just keep on coming.

The biotechnology industry’s solution is to engineer crops to resist yet other herbicides to be used along with glyphosate. That means more herbicides use and more super weeds—Rachel Carson’s worst nightmare.

Rather than yet another turn of the pesticide treadmill, we should start now to consider the fundamental changes in agriculture that would discourage weeds in the first place. To learn more, see my colleague Karen Stillerman’s post yesterday.

My colleague Jeff O’Hara with our CSA share.

The Tuesday afternoon arrival of bags of organic fruits and vegetables has turned out to be a highlight of the summer for Jeff and me. Although not certified, our farmer employs the same practices that make organic produce a healthy choice and delivers them fresh from field right to our downtown DC office.

Of course, like most enthusiastic consumers of organic food, Jeff and I have reasons besides taste and freshness for choosing it. For a start, we both value the best-known features of organic agriculture: it prohibits antibiotics and synthetic pesticides.

News reports on a study from Stanford

So what do I make of a recent, widely reported story on National Public Radio saying that a new study by Stanford University scientists means that there is “hardly any evidence at all that organic food is healthier” and implies that Jeff and I might have been duped?

As a scientist, I am pleased to see a major meta-analysis (a study of studies) on the nutritional and safety aspects of organic food, but I found the interpretation by the authors of the study and news media disconcerting—and surprising.

The Stanford analysis confirmed that in comparison with conventional food, organic food has significantly lower pesticide levels, lower multidrug-resistant bacteria levels, and higher beneficial fat levels. In my book, that’s a pretty good case that organic food is healthier.

The study failed to find higher level of vitamins and other nutrients in organic food, however, and somehow in the minds of reporters and opinion columnists the evidence on vitamins trumped the evidence on antibiotics and pesticides. From a scientific standpoint, that doesn’t make sense. Nutrition isn’t the only health benefit that matters.

I also found the media coverage misleading in that it seemed to treat this study as as a final answer to the questions about organic agriculture rather than what it is: a first approach to those answers.

The Stanford paper demonstrates the challenge of comparing organic and conventional food production systems. It looks at hundreds of studies on different kinds of foods grown in different ways here and in Europe.  The studies involve a bewildering number of factors: What constitutes “organic?” Were the vegetables similarly ripe? Was the milk pasteurized or raw? Was the milk produced in the summer or the winter?

The issue’s complexity means that scientists will have to conduct many more studies, over much longer time periods, and under many different kinds of conditions, to reach broad conclusions about the impacts and value of organic agriculture.

The 237 studies that met the criteria for the Stanford paper are just the beginning of what’s needed to settle the question of the broad impacts of organic agriculture. The fact that the paper identified only five studies that evaluated people who consumed a predominately organic diet, rather than single foods, and found no studies that examined pesticide levels in adults shows how far science has to go.

What should consumers think?

Should Americans who eat organic food feel duped based on this study? Absolutely not.

The simple fact that organic food is produced without antibiotics and pesticides is enough to justify their buying it.

As my share-partner, Jeff, an economist, put it, “’No pesticides and no antibiotics’ is good enough for me. I’ll let the science catch up on other health benefits.” He calls it the precautionary principle on a plate.

This is a great reason to prefer organic but as discussed below there are other reasons, also supported by science. And, of course, scientists will continue to study these systems. UCS welcomes this research but cautions that consumers don’t need to wait for the results of more studies to feel good about their decisions to support and purchase organic.

Shortcomings of the Stanford study

The Stanford study’s interpretation of its findings has some major shortcomings.

The study confirmed that organic foods have low levels of pesticides but disparaged the finding because the pesticide levels in conventional food meet federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. The suggestion that EPA standards represent acceptable levels of pesticides in food is troublesome. EPA standards are at best moving targets that tend to lag behind the advancing edge of new science (for example, the ramifications of pesticides as endocrine disruptors.) Some recent science compiled discussed by Dr. Charles Benbrook not cited by the Stanford study presents strong evidence that pesticides at dietary levels can adversely affect children. We need much more information to fully understand the role of pesticides in our food and environment. In the meantime, minimizing pesticides in food is the cautious and responsible course to take.

The Stanford study also confirmed that organic products have lower levels of multidrug-resistant bacteria than conventional ones. That supports the conclusion that, in addition to reducing one’s personal risk of acquiring drug-resistant infections, organic production helps address the public health threat posed by the erosion of our medical arsenal as a result of antibiotic resistance.

Regardless, the Stanford study dismissed the public health contribution of organic by minimizing the contribution of animal use of antibiotics to the resistance crisis. Contrary to the paper—which relied on an out-of-date 2001 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—the existing science on this issue is conclusive: Massive use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is a significant contributor to the loss of efficacy of human use drugs. Food animal systems that can completely avoid antibiotic use are a major boon to public health.

Other benefits of organic agriculture

Stories on the Stanford study tended to skip over benefits not covered in the paper, although those benefits account for much of the enthusiasm for organic food.

Organic practices provide habitat for such beneficial organisms as pollinators and provide food animals substantially better lives. Organic producers have no need for antibiotics because animals fed the right food (grass in the case of cows), and provided low-stress living conditions, rarely get sick.

Organic systems can also reduce emissions of active nitrogen and reduce coastal ecosystem degradation. Because they rely on a diversity of crops, organic farms are resilient to environmental stress. The high levels of soil organic matter encouraged by organic practices enables soil to hold water and resist drought.

UCS is interested in all these issues and urges more science to expand our understanding of agriculture, health and the environment.

But there is no need to wait for these studies. Jeff and I—and consumers across the county—already have plenty of reasons to prefer organic food.

Now Jeff and I are going to divvy up our bag of beautiful CSA vegetables.

Of course, commercial farmers in in Kansas and nearby Missouri face far more dire consequences from the drought. As they look out over parched fields and cloudless skies, they see their mainstay crops, corn and soybean, drying up—along with this year’s income.

Parched fields are always a sickening sight to farmers, although government-subsidized crop insurance will cushion the financial blow for most commodity growers. Taxpayers will be on the hook for billions, but the farmers’ distress cries out for relief.

Drought: the new normal?

A widespread drought like this one is a jolt to farmers and non-farmers alike because it is so rare. Although severe drought hit parts of Texas last year, the last drought of this magnitude to afflict the American heartland was in 1988. The 25-year run of good weather since then has been a godsend but it would be unreasonable to think it is the norm.

Going forward, we should expect droughts and other weather extremes. Of course, Mother Nature has served up disastrous droughts in the past on her own. The infamous Dust Bowl of the 1930’s lasted seven long years. But we are now in the grip of a changing climate that will exacerbate weather extremes such as droughts, excessive heat, floods, and intense downpours.

From here on out, we should anticipate weather shocks. We can’t avoid them, but we can design agricultural systems to better withstand them.

We need a broader portfolio

The best way to hedge against uncertainty in agriculture—just as in finance—is to diversify the portfolio. Whether the weather brings excessive heat or pounding downpours, some part of the system will be able to make the best of it.

During my road trip through the Midwest next week, I’ll get to see firsthand how far the United States is from a diversified agricultural portfolio. Instead of fields of diverse grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, I’ll be driving through field after field, county after county, and state after state of corn and soybeans—this year 96 million acres of corn and 74 million acres of soybeans. Our agriculture is like a stock portfolio with shares in only two companies, making it extremely vulnerable to adverse circumstances.

What’s stopping us?

Why have we ended up in this position? The Midwest contains some of the richest farmland on earth. It would support any number of crops. Why don’t we grow them?  One reason is that long-term considerations rarely come into play in farm policy discussions. Perhaps 25 years of relatively benign weather has lulled us into complacency.

Whatever the reason, most farm policy has been focused on keeping prices high and the current population of farmers prosperous. Short-term thinking in agriculture creates a peculiar dynamic that blocks the path to diversity. Substantial acreage in corn creates pressure for new uses of the crop—as fuel, feed, sweeteners, and oils, in addition to sweet corn and corn chips. Multiple uses keep prices up and entice farmers to plant more and more.

As larger numbers of farmers commit to corn, they become an ever more powerful political lobby for policies to protect their profits. Unlike shoemakers—or even farmers with fruit and vegetable operations—large commodity crop producers can use the Farm Bill to obtain subsidies that kick in when market prices drop (or even when they don’t). They also can command the resources for heavily subsidized crop insurance and generous emergency payments. The result is a reinforcing spiral: More corn means more power means more corn.

While this dynamic meets the needs of today’s farmers, it stands as a barrier to the emergence of a resilient agricultural system. The well-being of future farmers and consumers commands little attention on the Hill. The farmers of the future don’t show up in the halls of Congress.

More than any other feature of our agriculture, excessive dependence on corn and soy makes us vulnerable to the weather-related stresses that lie ahead.

Unless we confront it head on, this policy blind spot will cost taxpayers billions to bail out corn and soy farmers hit by extreme weather. We need to take the future seriously and design an agricultural system to cope with it and that means fundamental changes in what we grow. We need to start identifying and promoting more crops and to do that we will need to give the future a place at the farm bill policy table.

Herbicide-tolerant crops, the Trojan Horse of agriculture. (Photo Source: Darcy McCarty, via Flickr.)

Leafing through “Bitter Harvest” brings to mind Cassandra, the Trojan princess to whom Apollo gave the gift of prophecy and, then, retaliating because she spurned his love, placed a curse on her, ensuring that no one would believe her predictions. Cassandra warned against the gift of the Trojan horse and predicted the fall of Troy, but no one believed her. Instead of avoiding the calamities she foresaw, the Trojans marched forward to disaster.

“Bitter Harvest” looked into the wondrous gift horse of biotechnology—which in the late 1980s was supposed to deliver an agriculture without any chemicals at all—to document at least 30 crop and forest tree species modified to withstand otherwise lethal doses of herbicides. According to the report, 27 corporations had initiated HTC research. Not surprisingly, chemical pesticide companies like Monsanto and Dupont led the pack.

The early proponents of HTC’s understood that tolerant crops would shackle farmers to ongoing herbicide use, but argued that the products would contain “environmentally benign” chemicals such as glyphosate, glufosinate and bromoxynil. “Bitter Harvest” challenged the notion of benign herbicides, noting that their active and so-called inert ingredients were often toxic. More telling, the biotechnology industry was in no way restricting itself to the so-called benign herbicides. Even in the 1980s, researchers were developing crops resistant to the older, more toxic herbicides, including atrazine, metalachlor and 2,4-D.

The report nailed the resistance issue from the get go:  “Once in widespread use, the exchange of herbicide-tolerance genes between the domesticated crops and weedy relatives could ultimately result in the need for more herbicides to control herbicide-resistant weeds” and that increased chemical use would “likely increase the severity and incidence of ground and surface water contamination.”

The Road Not Taken—Sustainable Weed Management

“Bitter Harvest” also pointed to a sophisticated alternative to the HTC treadmill: sustainable weed management—smart combinations of tillage, crop rotation, cultural methods and, yes, in some cases, chemical herbicides. Sustainable weed management can keep weeds down without the inevitable generation of costly new weeds. But the approach is knowledge-dependent and would require a very different research agenda at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With a seemingly miraculous weed control technology at hand, no one seriously considered such an alternative in the early 1990s.

But where would we be if we had developed a scientifically sound, integrated weed management system built around crop rotations, tillage systems and cover crops, and sparing use of chemicals over the last 22 years?

It’s not an easy question, especially without any predictive gifts from Apollo. But one thing is for sure, we would not be facing an inexorable explosion of super weeds and skyrocketing use of the very herbicides the tolerant crops were supposed to replace. And the National Academy of Sciences wouldn’t be holding a national weed summit to respond to this unprecedented crisis in U.S. agriculture.

We now know that inside the Trojan horse of biotechnology are just more herbicides and stronger weeds. The frustration of seeing the future but being unable to change drove Cassandra mad. I can relate.

* The report was produced by the Biotechnology Working Group, an informal coalition of environmental and agricultural groups. The authors were Rebecca Goldburg at the Environmental Defense Fund, Jane Rissler at the National Wildlife Federation, Hope Shand at Rural Advancement Fund International, and Chuck Hassebrook at the Center for Rural Affairs.

UCS has long advocated for more and better data on antibiotic use in agriculture. Frustrated with the lack of official data, we produced Hogging It more than a decade ago to fill the gap and make the point that the government wasn’t doing its job.

But UCS did not want to be in the drug data business. The major recommendations of the report were pleas for the FDA and the USDA to set up badly-needed systems to collect, compile and publish comprehensive antibiotic use data.

Ten years later we are somewhat better off. The FDA, ordered by Congress, has published two years of drug sales and distribution data, which seem to validate our use estimates. But the government has no program to comprehensively compile and regularly publish data on how those drugs are used. So, we still don’t know for sure which animals are getting which antibiotics for what purpose, or whether uses are going up or down.

The Apley report, like Hogging It  before it, steps into the breach and attempts to do what the government isn’t—calculating quantities of on-farm use. The Apley team uses methodology developed by Hogging It author Chuck Benbrook and plugs in information based on responses to a 2006 survey conducted by the National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS).  It then supplements NAHMS data with survey responses from 27 veterinarians with expertise on swine.

The Apley group came up with an estimate of 2.8 million pounds per year for all uses of medically important antibiotics in swine compared to the Hogging It estimate of 10.3 million pounds for nontherapeutic use of medically important antibiotics.

The Apley report does not compare its estimates to the Hogging It, but others have. The National Pork Producers Council says the study shows “opponents of antibiotic use in livestock wildly overestimate the amount given to food animals” and suggests that Hogging It be renamed Fabricating It.

But scientifically, just because the estimates are different doesn’t mean one or the other is correct.

Both estimates are admittedly imperfect. UCS was very upfront about the limits of the numbers in Hogging It. And so is the Apley paper. The authors of the paper (admirably) check for accuracy by consulting three companies of swine-only feed additives. Two said their sales in 2006 were close to the numbers calculated by the paper, but one said that the study’s estimate represented only 40 percent of its sales–off by more than 100 percent. If the estimates for any heavily used drug are off by that much, it would make a big difference in the total estimate.

The differences in the two estimates could also reflect changes in industry use from the late 1990s to 2006. I have been told privately for years that pork producers have reduced antibiotic use. Maybe it’s true.

On the other hand, very low numbers for use in the swine industry are hard to square with the sales figures compiled by FDA, which report 28 million pounds of animal antimicrobials in 2009. That number, which covers both medically important and non-medically important antimicrobials for all uses, is consistent with the Hogging  It number of 24 million pounds for swine, poultry and beef for non-therapeutic purposes.

In a letter to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, FDA broke out the total data  for 2009  by mode of administration, reporting that 22 million pounds of antimicrobials were being used in feed; the rest was being given by water or injection. If only 13 percent (2.8 of 22 million) of the total in feed drugs sold in the United States is being used in swine, what is happening to the other 87 percent? What are those poultry and beef folks up to?

Moreover, the Apley team reported that growth promotion and disease prevention account for only 57 percent of the in-feed use in swine—much lower than earlier estimates of 90 percent for those uses.

Long term, neither the Union of Concerned Scientists nor Kansas State University ought to be in the data collection business. Neither has the resources or mission to collect data year after year, employing a standard methodology and sophisticated surveying techniques. This is a job for the federal government, specifically the USDA and FDA working together.

We won’t know whether the Apley or the UCS estimates are more representative of actual use until we can compare them to comprehensive, government-generated data. Rather than throwing around epithets, we should all be united behind that goal.

Cooler Smarter urges all Americans to cut back on their global warming emissions by 20 percent this year and offers a menu of practical steps to reach that goal. As the book points out, you can make the biggest difference by first choosing to drive a fuel-efficient car and reduce home energy use. Next on the list, however, is what you eat—and when it comes to food, meat is the biggest climate offender.

Meat and Global Warming Emissions

It turns that the food sector accounts for 14 percent of U.S. global warming emissions and most of that is due to meat. Why is meat such a problem? Let’s start with beef, a trifecta of bad news on the warming front.

Happy cows grazing at the boyhood home of President Thomas Jefferson in Virgina. (Photo by Lance Cheung. Courtesy of USDA)

First, the stomach design that allows cows to digest raw plant materials makes them belch out methane, a gas that has 21 times more heat-trapping potential than carbon dioxide.

Second, although capable of thriving on grass, cows are are often gathered into confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and fed corn to fatten them up quickly. It takes about 7 pounds of grain to produce one pound of grain-fed beef and the emissions generated in corn production are part of the global warming tally for cows.

Finally, cows in CAFOs produce huge amounts of manure stored on site in piles or lagoons. When manure breaks down, even more methane is produced—yes, by a process similar to what goes on in a cow’s stomach.

Add all that up and it’s no surprise that cows have an outsized impact on global warming. In fact, a pound of beef is responsible for some 18 times the climate emissions of a pound of pasta.

Other meats, chicken and pork, are better choices than beef. Poultry and swine consume grain or other plant food but convert it into meat more efficiently than can cows. Also, their digestive systems don’t produce methane, a big climate plus. Poultry and swine, like cows, are often raised in CAFO’s where stored manure can generate methane, but on balance they are probably “cooler” choices than beef.

You Don’t Need to Become a Vegetarian

We Americans eat a lot of meat…on average 270 pounds per year, nearly 4 times the global average. You don’t need to become a vegetarian or a vegan to make a difference to the climate, just cut down on the amount of meat you eat. Think about something like meatless Mondays. They’ll add up.

What About Pasture-Raised Animals?

Since stored manure produces methane, you might wonder about choosing pasture-raised animals as a climate strategy.

While climate benefits fall on the positive side of the ledger, they may not be the most dramatic environmental benefits of pasture-based operations. According to Raising the Steaks, a recent report by my colleague Doug Gurian-Sherman, pasture-raised animals spread their own manure and so avoid the methane emission produced by stored manure. And well-managed pastures have the potential to sequester substantial amounts of carbon in soil, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

But whether on pasture or in a feedlot, cows belch methane. In addition, cows (and pigs and chickens) raised in pasture-based systems often take somewhat longer to get to market, and so may generate more climate gasses per pound of meat.

Pasture-raised animals have other benefits. They are so healthy they rarely need antibiotics, providing compelling benefits to public health, and pasture systems can also substantially reduce air and water pollution. (Raising the Steaks)

So yes, pasture-raised beef, pork and chicken are probably cooler choices than CAFO-raised beef. But, sad to say for carnivores, the best way to take a bite out of climate change is to reduce meat consumption, especially beef.

Soybean field. Photo: echobase_2000/Flickr

Strange as it might seem, the answer is no. Monsanto built a thriving seed and pesticide business without focusing much on yield. Its wildly successful flagship product is a soybean genetically engineered to tolerate being sprayed with one herbicide rather than another. The herbicide at issue is Roundup, a Monsanto product. At the time the new crops were introduced, Roundup was regarded as a relatively benign herbicide compared to those in use. (This view of glyphosate is changing, a topic for another post.) Farmers enthusiastically embraced Roundup, in part as a safer chemical, but also because the weeds in their bean fields had never “met” the herbicide before and as a result could be controlled with low concentrations, often applied only once.

For farmers, this meant dramatically lower weed control costs, new convenience in applying herbicides, and a good feeling about no longer needing to rely on toxic herbicides. Some of the savings were eaten up in higher seed costs, but for many, many farmers, the appeal was irresistible.

The Monsanto Miracle

For Monsanto, extending their market for Roundup to soybeans and other commodity crops meant huge new markets for the company—potentially seed and chemicals for 60 or 70 million acres. And in the case of soybeans, because the seed was patented, Monsanto was able to force farmers who had traditionally saved seed to buy new seeds every year, yet another boost in sales.

Seeds, pesticides, and farmers buying seed every year—a veritable trifecta of profit.

The discovery of a resistance gene for its own popular herbicide, abetted by a newly broadened patent system, must have seemed like something of a miracle to Monsanto, but it sure wasn’t the miracle that biotechnology promised. The public was looking for higher yields with less dependence on chemicals.

Even before resistance develops, simply replacing one herbicide with another is a paltry reduction in the chemical footprint of agriculture. After resistance develops, as it happening now, the benefit is transformed into a disaster as pesticide use skyrockets.

(And yes, I realize that the Bt crops do better on both pesticide reduction and yield, which we will discuss in another post, but herbicide-tolerant beans are by far the premier product of biotechnology.)

Herbicide-tolerant crops and yield

And what about yield? My colleague, Doug Gurian-Sherman, demonstrated in a carefully done report that although yields of the engineered soybeans have increased since the introduction of Roundup-tolerant crops, it was not due to the herbicide-tolerant trait. The yields increased primarily because of classical breeding and other agronomic processes.

Monsanto has had a hard time making this distinction between increased yields and increased yields due to biotechnology. To listen to them tell it, you might think their genetically engineered traits caused the increases in yield and could be counted on for future yield increases. One rarely hears from them about the essential role played by classical breeding, but the word is getting around.

So maybe that’s why Monsanto wants to rebrand itself as a yield company. It realizes that if the world is going to feed 3 billion more people in the next 40 years, we are going to need increases in yield and it wants to look like the indispensible technology for solving that problem. But people are beginning to figure out that from a yield standpoint, genetic engineering isn’t anything near a miracle technology. The indispensible technologies are classical breeding and agroecology.

This is not to say that genetic engineering may not contribute to the solution. It may. But we need to keep our eyes on the prize… the technologies proven to work to increase yield and reduce chemical inputs. Classical breeding and agroecology may not seem glitzy, but for yield, they perform the real miracles.

In the emergency room. Photo: mnicolem

“The problem is not your appendix,” said the doctor, “but a skin infection, and one that has to be dealt with right away.” So I was promptly hooked up to an antibiotic solution dripping from a bag hung on a nearby metal stand.

While watching the antibiotic drip, I asked the doctors whether my infection could be caused by Methicillin-resistant Stapholoccus aureus (MRSA), a notorious bacteria resistant to penicillin and other drugs.  I was aware of MRSA because I work on antibiotic-resistant bacteria here at UCS.

Although MRSA had once been mostly a problem for ill people in hospitals, it is now showing up in healthy people like me.  I also knew that these so-called community-acquired MRSA infections can be wicked. Newspapers over the last decade have been filled with stories of MRSA-skin infections killing healthy young people, including athletes.

Taking No Chances

My doctors weren’t sure my infection was caused by MRSA but nowadays they don’t take chances. “If a skin infection looks like MRSA, we treat it like MRSA.” They have every reason to be cautious. MRSA is estimated to cause 19,000 deaths a year, more than AIDS.

Where did this infection come from? There were no scratches or lesions on my body that offered an easy way under my skin so that was something of a mystery. Its origin was mysterious in another way. Recent studies show that MRSA can originate in food animals and pass from animal handlers into the community. So the bacteria might have come from animals. But the bug could also have come from humans.  Whether the antibiotics were used in medicine or food animals, overuse could have made my bug more resistant and virulent.

Stay Within the Lines

When I was finally released from the emergency room, I was given a prescription for an oral antibiotic and counseled to take every pill…which I, of course, planned to do. But as I walked out of the hospital into the warm summer night, I couldn’t help but worry that the antibiotic wouldn’t work.

“Draw a line around the red patch,” the doctor had said. “If it moves outside the lines, let me know.” If that happened, the doctors would have to turn to other drugs and by that time my red patch could have spread all over my torso and become very difficult to treat.

I was lucky. The hospital drip and the oral antibiotics did the trick. The red patch stayed within the lines, then faded, and I went on with my life.

There was nothing very dramatic about my experience. The antibiotics worked.  We are so accustomed to our miracle drugs that it is hard to feel surprised or properly appreciative when they do what we expect. But my brush with (maybe) MRSA did leave an impression. I’ve gone back to working on antibiotic use in agriculture with a new sense of urgency. We need to curb antibiotic overuse in every setting, including feedlots, poultry houses, and swine barns.

No one knows where this infection came or when it might return. Next time, if there is one, I don’t want to be sitting in an emergency room as the red patch moves beyond the lines and can’t be stopped.

Photo: Dodo Bird

I grew up Iowa in the 1950’s in a city where the expanding housing developments were cheek-by-jowl with fields of corn and a sprinkling of pigsties. Agriculture was all around me, but in truth I never thought much about it. I wanted to study biology, which was in the throes of the revolutionary discoveries about DNA and RNA. So off I went to study molecular biology, and eventually earned a Ph.D.

While I was in graduate school, I became in interested in the environment—I chaired the first Earth Day at my university—and shifted gears and went to law school.  After a stint in an environmental law firm, I ended up in the early 1980s working in an environmental think tank in Washington, D.C.

Although my job centered on pesticides and toxics, the air was full of the new science of genetic engineering. The new “biotechnologies” had been successfully applied in the manufacture of insulin and other new drugs, and were headed outdoors, mostly in applications related to agriculture.

The vision

The vision offered by genetic engineers in those days was stunning and seductive: high crop yields without the application of poisons to kill pests and weeds. The appeal went right to the core of environmental concerns.  In the future, Rachel Carson could rest more easily. Spring would be silent no more, but instead the sounds of birds and insects would again fill the air.

Genetic engineering would also address another fundamental challenge for farmers—dependency on chemical fertilizers. Scientists promised to equip corn plants with new genes so they could themselves convert nitrogen into the reactive forms essential to the construction of plant and animal life. Farmers would no longer have to rely on the chemical fertilizers, which, for the most part, ran right past the crops to pollute wells and coastal ecosystems.

This was a sweeping vision of agriculture unlike any the world had known. It would solve farmers’ age-old challenges—lack of soil fertility and eternally unwelcome pests. It was breathtaking. And it was going to be so easy—just switch to the new miracle seeds (or eventually the new animals) made by molecular biologists.

To be sure, there were concerns about the inadvertent creation of harmful organisms and the prospects of the application of genetic engineering of humans sometime in the future.  But at the beginning, a revolutionary and benign vision of a new agriculture dominated the conversation.

And I confess, I was taken in by the promise. To me, the snipping and rearrangement of pieces of DNA was familiar and exciting, not scary. Molecular techniques had revolutionized biology, why not agriculture?

The reality

As decades have gone by, I have outgrown my initial enthusiasm for the use of genetic engineering in agriculture.  I am not, like some, fundamentally opposed to the technology.  It has undeniably beneficial uses, especially in research laboratories, and even has scored a few successes in agriculture.

But twenty years after its inception, the achievements have been few and modest, the sum of them not even close to the inspiring vision of the early years. The talk now is more mundane than revolutionary, more about improvements around the edges of the same old agriculture system I grew up with. The shimmering early promise of genetic engineering has evaporated like dew on a summer morning. In some ways, I’m perhaps still a bit disappointed that molecular biology didn’t have the solution.

But over the decades, I’ve come to understand that there are other, better ways to achieve the vision. High crop yields are possible without poisonous inputs and soil fertility can be achieved with fewer of the destructive effects of chemical fertilizers.  It won’t be as easy as buying miracle seeds. It will require a sophisticated understanding of soils, the environment, and crops and livestock.  But it can be done—and, indeed, has to be done if we are going to feed the addition billions of hungry people expected on our planet in the next 40 years.  We can’t afford to take agriculture for granted as I once did.

These issues have formed the core of my professional life and interest me deeply. Blogging on them is a good way to sharpen my thinking and engage in productive dialogue. Let the blog begin.