U.S. Food Policy

Three views of ractopamine in pigs

2012-01-27T08:53:00.004-05:00

Helena Bottemiller this week writes a thorough summary of the international trade controversies over U.S. exports of pork from pigs that have been treated with the growth promoter ractopamine hydrochloride. This animal drug is allowed under U.S. rules, but banned in many other countries, so U.S. trade negotiators have been pressing hard to get other countries to relent and allow small residues of the drug in imported pork.

Bottemiller describes the history of testing by the drug's manufacturer, Elanco, in terms that could leave a reader quite concerned:

The FDA ruled that ractopamine was safe and approved it for pigs in 1999, for cattle in 2003 and turkeys in 2008. As with many drugs, the approval process relied on safety studies conducted by the drug-maker — studies that lie at the heart of the current trade dispute.

Elanco mainly tested animals — mice, rats, monkeys and dogs — to judge how much ractopamine could be safely consumed. Only one human study was used in the safety assessment by Elanco, and among the six healthy young men who participated, one was removed because his heart began racing and pounding abnormally, according to a detailed evaluation of the study by European food safety officials.

When Elanco studied the drug in pigs for its effectiveness, it reported that “no adverse effects were observed for any treatments.” But within a few years of Paylean’s approval, the company received hundreds of reports of sickened pigs from farmers and veterinarians, according to records from the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.

USDA meat inspectors also reported an increase in the number of “downer pigs” — lame animals unable to walk — in slaughter plants. As a result of the high number of adverse reactions, the FDA requested Elanco add a warning label to the drug, and it did so in 2002.

The company also received a warning letter from the FDA that year for failing to disclose all data about the safety and effectiveness of the drug.

Some of the research literature is available on the USDA website, including this 2003 article by Marchant and colleagues, which indicates why there might be concern.

We found that there were differences in 24h behavioral time budgets, with the ractopamine-fed pigs being more active and alert and taking longer to lie down after being disturbed. However, these differences were only apparent during the first 2 weeks. In contrast, ractopamine pigs remained more difficult to handle over the entire 4-week period. At the end of the 4-week period, they also had higher heart rates than control-fed pigs and higher levels of circulating stress hormones.

We conclude therefore, that feeding ractopamine to pigs does affect behavior and physiology. Pigs that are more difficult to move are more likely to be subjected to rough handling and increased stress during transportation, implying reduced welfare, increased workload for the handlers and, potentially, poorer meat quality. However, for this conclusion to be applicable to the finishing pig population in general, other genetic lines should be tested.

I have been spending some time recently thinking about what makes many Wikipedia articles excellent, and also about the limitations of the free encyclopedia approach. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on ractopamine is highly technical, as if written by an animal science expert, and generally downplays the safety concern. Although the Wikipedia article includes the Bottemiller article as one recent reference, its summary of the animal safety issue seems to contrast both with her article and with the Marchant article cited above. Here is the section in full:

Target animal safety

Ractopamine is safe for finishing pigs heavier than 240 pounds when administered in the diet at concentrations up to 10 ppm and fed for up to 35 days. However, there was an increase in the number of ractopamine hydrochloride-treated animals exhibiting signs of injury during the final drive to slaughter. (FDA)

I suppose the second sentence captures the animal health issues sufficiently? Of course, the great thing about Wikipedia is that articles are constantly changing and commonly improving.

South Side Chicago

2012-01-24T14:08:00.001-05:00

While in Chicago this month for an AAEA-sponsored session of the main annual meeting of economists, I took a long walk through the South Side neighborhoods from 35th Street/Bronzeville to 51st Street, learning especially about food retail access, housing, and other topics. Here are some photographs.

For advance preparation, I read Mari Gallagher's reports on food deserts in Chicago.

My past walks on the same theme include Skid Row, Anacostia, Harlem, Roxbury, and the Hill District.

Is reducing childhood obesity a reasonable goal?

2012-01-24T09:41:00.002-05:00

Under the headline "Obama's Government vs. Your Family," John Hinderaker of the conservative blog Powerline this week links to our coverage of the interagency working group that proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children. Hinderaker is upset that Michelle Obama considers reducing childhood obesity to be a public policy objective.

So the future weight of your minor children is a “goal” of the federal government. Of course, that is just one example out of many. For example, do you think it is a “private family matter” whether you feed your children Cheerios and corn flakes for breakfast? Think again.

I am tempted to speculate that Hinderaker read some parts of my post more closely than others. He probably best liked the part where I investigated some of the arcane details showing that Cheerios would not meet the long-run guidelines, which suggests that the details of the guidelines might deserve further tweaking. Perhaps he focused less on some of the other good links in my post, which supported the interagency working group proposal and emphasized that this approach really is moderate, reasonable, and market-oriented.

Food stamp politics

2012-01-22T14:16:00.001-05:00

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week responded to GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich's description of President Obama as the "food stamp President."Alan Bjerga and Jennifer Oldham at Bloomberg report:

Those who get the federal assistance “are playing by the rules,” Vilsack, whose department administers food stamps, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg News. “There are misconceptions about this program and confusion” about recipients caused by negative portrayals by some Obama opponents, he said.

Food-stamp use has increased 46 percent since December 2008, a month before Obama took office and when the economy was shedding jobs. Total spending has more than doubled in four years to an all-time high of $75.3 billion, a level called unsustainable by Republicans including Gingrich, who has labeled Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history.”

Gingrich’s characterization of Obama’s food stamp policies has drawn criticism from groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People which issued a statement Jan. 6 calling his comments “inaccurate” and “divisive.”

Gingrich has dismissed the complaints as a smear from “modern liberals” who are “off the deep end.”

In the article, David Greenberg at Rutgers University expresses doubt that Gingrich's talking point reflects bigotry, but notes, "he is no fool and this is going to be seen through a racial prism." Later in the Bloomberg article, I comment about the history of bi-partisan agreement over the basic design of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called food stamps. On the same theme, Rogers Smith of the University of Pennsylvania agrees that Gingrich's label is reminiscent of Reagan-era GOP rhetoric about "welfare queens," but unusual for food stamp policy discussions.

U.S. Food Policy earlier covered the unusually shrill anti-food stamp memes that have been circulating on the internet, including videos packed with racial stereotypes. In response to that earlier post, we received an anonymous comment, stating that the military contractor KROQUE, which was mentioned in the coverage, disavows connection to or responsibility for the videos.

This issue will see renewed attention and discussion after former House Speaker Gingrich yesterday won the South Carolina GOP primary in a dramatic upset over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Spinning dairy weight loss claims

2011-11-21T10:56:00.001-05:00

The USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) provides the Nutrition Evidence Library, a clear and transparent source of systematic evidence reviews about all sorts of nutrition and health issues.

For example, here is the evidence review summary for claims about dairy consumption and weight loss:

Conclusion

Strong evidence demonstrates that intake of milk and milk products provide no unique role in weight control.

That seems clear enough: no unique role in weight control.

Meanwhile, the federal government's semi-public dairy checkoff program offers its own distinct review of the evidence. Although many people do not realize it, the National Dairy Council is an arm of this checkoff program. Its review says:

A growing body of research illustrates that enjoying three servings of milk, cheese or yogurt each day as part of a nutrient-rich, balanced diet may help maintain a healthy weight.

The first study mentioned is by Michael Zemel, the researcher who won a patent on dairy weight loss claims, which allows dairy industry organizations to collect royalties from food companies that use such claims.

Buried deep in the subsequent studies, one finds contradictory evidence. For example, a study by Wagner and colleagues in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition finds, "there were no significant differences in weight loss between groups. The milk group showed significantly less reduction of body fat than the placebo group." But you would not know that from the Dairy Council's summary statement.

The National Dairy Council -- whose messages have official status as "government speech" -- seems to be contradicting the more impartial review of USDA's scientists. Why should the federal government be willing to play the role of "enforcer" for the National Dairy Council, collecting the millions of dollars in mandatory assessments that support the Council's industry-friendly spin on the evidence?

USDA posts the 2010 dairy checkoff report

2011-11-17T17:14:00.000-05:00

The federal government's dairy checkoff program just today released the July 2010 Report to Congress, which was the subject of my earlier Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The report, 16 months overdue, says that $108 million were collected in 2009 for fluid milk promotions, and another $283 million were collected for other dairy products (principally cheese). The checkoff programs use the federal government's power of taxation to collect mandatory assessments, essentially taxes, from producers. All the advertising and promotion messages count as "government speech." The expenditures vastly outweigh anything the federal government does to promote healthy eating.

The introduction emphasizes the controversial Domino's campaign:

The Dairy Board continued to develop and implement programs to expand the human consumption of dairy products by focusing on partnerships and innovation, product positioning with consumers, and new places for dairy product consumption. One such endeavor was accomplished through a partnership with Domino’s Pizza and the creation of the American Legends pizza line.

The report later explains in greater detail:

The pizza industry plays an important role in the dairy industry. Twenty–five percent of all cheese manufactured in the U.S. is used on pizza, and Mozzarella comprises 49 percent of all cheese volume in the foodservice industry. Research showed that negative pizza cheese volume trends were having an impact on the dairy industry. As a result, dairy producers partnered with Domino’s to reinvigorate the pizza category and launch American Legends, a line of six specialty pizzas that use up to 40 percent more cheese than a regular Domino’s pizza.

The report shows that a large fraction of affiliated advertising expenditure goes toward cheese.

Professor Harry Kaiser at Cornell University wrote the accompanying economic analysis, showing the great effectiveness of the checkoff program in expanding dairy consumption on both a nonfat and fat basis (increasing intake of milkfat). Professor Kaiser (a good colleague for whom I was a teaching assistant at Cornell) has previously written U.S. food policy to explain his view of the nutritional impact of the checkoff programs:

[W]e continue to believe that the nutritional state of consumers in the United States would be worse without generic food advertising programs.

I am not convinced. The checkoff programs should rein in the fast food collaborations and bring the promotions in line with the dietary guidelines, or they should let free markets work on their own and let producers contribute voluntarily to the checkoff programs. The status quo, with the federal government promoting Domino's Pizza, is terrible.

The July 2011 report has not yet been released. It is not clear whether USDA simply didn't submit the report to Congress as required, or instead whether USDA submitted that report but is not yet willing to share it with the public.

Making sure schools can serve our children badly

2011-11-16T12:42:00.003-05:00

Although appropriations bills are supposed to be about spending -- not policy-making -- Congress took extra special care this week to make sure child nutrition programs do not have to follow the very reasonable and temperate guidelines recommended by the Institute of Medicine.

The conference committee report for next year's agricultural appropriations overturns key elements of USDA's proposed guidelines for child nutrition programs. The proposed guidelines had included strong support for whole grains, a recommended limit on salt, and a stipulation that not too much of the vegetables served would be white potatoes. Currently, school lunch programs contain far more salt than recommended limits, and many school systems use french fries and other forms of white potatoes as by far the dominant vegetable.

In a step that reminds us all of the Reagan administration's heroically foolish effort to define ketchup as a vegetable, the appropriations committees also intervened to make sure that the tomato puree in pizza counts toward vegetable requirements.

USDA officials were sharply critical, and I imagine that the hard-working staff throughout the department are upset. The Associated Press coverage says:

USDA spokeswoman Courtney Rowe said Tuesday that the department will continue its efforts to make lunches healthier.

"While it's unfortunate that some members of Congress continue to put special interests ahead of the health of America's children, USDA remains committed to practical, science-based standards for school meals," she said in a statement.

It is fun to read the fine print of the conference committee report (.pdf). See sections 743 and 746 on page H7443. Although they have no expertise in meals programs or nutrition, the appropriations committee members were quite willing to do the food industry's bidding on these arcane provisions:

SEC. 743. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement an interim final or final rule regarding nutrition programs under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq.) and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.) that—
(1) requires crediting of tomato paste and puree based on volume;
(2) implements a sodium reduction target beyond Target I, the 2-year target, specified in Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, ‘‘Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs’’ (FNS–2007–0038, RIN 0584– AD59) until the Secretary certifies that the Department has reviewed and evaluated relevant scientific studies and data relevant to the relationship of sodium reductions to human health; and
(3) establishes any whole grain requirement without defining ‘‘whole grain.’’

A graduate student and I are taking a look at the diversity of comments that were submitted in response to USDA's proposed guidelines. I will do a follow-up post in a couple weeks, noting which organizations suggested the policy reversals that Congress made this week.

In my children's schools, I see the need for well-written and reasonable guidelines. The status quo is not good enough. I believe the IOM and USDA did the best possible job in balancing nutrition and economic considerations. Readers know very well that I will speak up against government overreach. But these guidelines did not look to me like government overreach. They looked judicious.

As a policy researcher, I think the public interest would have been better served by deferring to IOM and USDA. As a parent, I am angry about Congress' intervention. It seems clear that Congress is doing the food industry's bidding at the expense of our children.

National League of Cities passes a farm bill resolution

2011-11-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

Modeled on an earlier proposal from the Seattle City Council, the National League of Cities yesterday passed a resolution (.pdf) encouraging the federal government to adopt a variety of public interest principles for the farm bill.

The resolution includes planks for:

a health-centered food system,
sustainable agricultural practices,
community and regional prosperity and resilience,
equitable access to healthy food,
social justice and equity, and
a systems approach to policy-making.

New political constituencies are taking interest in the farm bill. Paradoxically, this year, it seems farm bill decision-making power may be concentrated in fewer hands than ever.

Tyler Cowen on agriculture policy and corporate bailouts

2011-11-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

Here is the latest NYT column from Tyler Cowen, who I generally think of as a market-oriented libertarian economist. Cowen generally prefers to let the deserving rich be rich, and yet he can see why the demonstrators at Zuccotti Park have "so much resonance."

The first problem is that higher status for the wealthy can easily lead to crony capitalism. In public discourse social status judgments are often crude. Critical differences are lost, like the distinction between earning money through production for consumers, as Apple has done, and earning money through the manipulation of government, which heavily subsidized agribusinesses have done. The relevant question, in my view, is not about how much you have earned but about how you have earned it. To further confuse matters, many right-wing Republican politicians supported corporate bailouts and corporate welfare far beyond what was necessary to stabilize the economy, in doing so further muddying the difference between productive and predatory capitalism.

Plenitude

2011-11-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

In connection with Juliet Schor's book last year, Plenitude, I appreciated this video, posted four months ago.

In our neighborhood (east Arlington, MA), my family and I have been exploring similar themes through a free dinner series (which we call "Living Richly" dinners) at our local church (Calvary Church, United Methodist), a community supported agriculture (CSA) pick-up site (from Enterprise Farm), a bike-to-school train to our neighborhood elementary school (organized by the East Arlington Livable Streets coalition), and in other ways. I'll try to share more about this experimentation in future posts in the coming year.

New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy from Center for a New American Dream on Vimeo.

New Rudd Center report on marketing beverages to children

2011-11-03T19:40:00.000-04:00

Would you say Coca-Cola, the parent company for FANTA, is marketing to children here?

Would you say Coca-Cola is marketing to children in these lesson plans for elementary school students?

If you say "yes" to either question, then do you think Coca-Cola is breaking its pledge not to advertise to children?

Coca-Cola's pledge says:

We have a global Responsible Marketing Policy that covers all our beverages, and we do not market any products directly to children under 12. This means we will not buy advertising directly targeted at audiences that are more than 35% children under 12. Our policy applies to television, radio, and print, and, where data is available, to the Internet and mobile phones.

I can think of some ways that Coca-Cola could say these marketing efforts are consistent with the pledge. Perhaps one could find research showing that the FANTA cartoon characters are designed to appeal to 13-year-olds but not 11-year-olds. Perhaps the websites where these characters appear have a children's audience share under 35%. Perhaps the lesson plans don't qualify as "marketing." Perhaps the use of the word "directly" is supposed to give the marketers some wiggle room.

Still, under any of these explanations, the detailed defense only serves to show how empty the pledge is.

This post was provoked by reading the Rudd Center's new report on marketing sugar-sweetened beverages to children (.pdf).

The SNAP (food stamp) explosion

2011-10-29T16:46:00.002-04:00

Every couple years, we update this dynamic interactive graphic showing how Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation changes in response to economic conditions and federal and state policies. (Thanks to graduate student Dan Hatfield for data processing in this new 2010 edition, and to Hanqi Luo and Joseph Llobrera for data processing in earlier versions).

With this Google Gadget, you can track a particular state of interest, or watch all states move together. Of course, the real drama is in the final two years.

Farm policy and the Super Committee

2011-10-27T10:57:00.004-04:00

It is possible -- but not certain -- that the major "Farm Bill 2012" decisions will be made sooner than expected, in November, 2011. Critics of the process are calling it the "secret Farm Bill" with "no accountability."

Everybody involved in farm policy had been expecting the next Farm Bill to pass in 2012 or 2013. However, the strange new Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction -- the "Super Committee" -- may make the important decisions very soon.

The Super Committee process is confusing. Here is my summary of the key points.

If the Super Committee succeeds, Congress promises to swallow a laxative.

As part of the recent fight over raising the debt ceiling, Congress delegated a peculiar and almost unprecedented decision option to the bi-partisan Super Committee. This committee's power comes from its option to make a recommendation before Thanksgiving on $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years. If the committee succeeds in making a recommendation, Congress has agreed to give the proposal an up-or-down majority vote, with no filibusters.

If the Super Committee fails, Congress promises to swallow a poison pill.

If the Super Committee fails to make a recommendation, there will be ferocious mandatory across-the-board deficit reductions. Congress has already passed these reductions, with a conditional trigger stating that they kick in when the Super Committee fails to make a proposal.

The Super Committee process may or may not leave the Agriculture Committees out of the loop.

Out of the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years, the Super Committee is expected to take perhaps $23 billion in savings from farm subsidies and nutrition programs that are normally included in the Farm Bill. Leaders on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are tempted to move quickly in the next two weeks on their own Farm Bill proposals, so that at least the composition of the cuts will be decided by traditional farm policy leaders rather than by the non-farm-policy people on the Super Committee. Philip Brasher reports this week that deficit hawks suspect that the traditional farm policy leaders can find a way to sneak weaker and more easily reversible cuts into the supposed $23 billion savings.

If the Farm Bill is essentially decided this month, what will it look like? It would in that case probably include cuts or elimination of direct subsidy payments (which don't depend on commodity prices). It might or might not include some traditional deficiency payments (which pay farmers only if market prices are lower than a target price), but these subsidies don't matter much right now one way or the other, because commodity prices are currently high and quite likely to stay that way for a while. The most interesting open question is whether a rushed Farm Bill will include some type of strange insurance mechanism, perhaps even more convoluted than the complex ACRE program.

What to monitor:

So here are the three decisions to watch in the next month, one of the most exceptionally intense periods of food policy decision-making I have ever witnessed.

1. Will traditional farm policy legislators in the House and Senate Agriculture Committees this month submit their own proposed Farm Bill, with about $23 billion in cuts over ten years, in time for the Super Committee to consider it?

2. Will the Super Committee exercise its option to make a highly influential deficit reduction proposal of $1.5 trillion over ten years before Thanksgiving?

3. If the Super Committee does succeed in making a proposal without Agriculture Committee input, will traditional farm policy legislators fight it, or will it represent a sort of coup-d'etat in U.S. farm policy, demoting the traditional deal-makers to bystanders?

And here is one more decision to watch in the longer run.

4. If the Super Committee does not succeed in making a proposal, how will the slower Farm Bill process in 2012 be affected by the across-the-board mandatory cuts?

Federal policy and the McRib

2011-10-26T12:45:00.001-04:00

The McDonald's McRib is back in the news again. A mocking Twitter feed is under way. Now is a good time to revisit the federal government's role in this industrial concoction, a perfect symbol of a food system gone mad.

The McRib was originally developed with support from the federal government's pork checkoff program. Of all the things this federal program has accomplished over the decades, the McRib deserves mention right up front. The National Pork Board's 2006 annual report (.pdf) boasted in its first paragraph:

The Pork Checkoff celebrated 20 years of progress in 2006. Taking a look back and reflecting on where we are today, I am reminded of the impact that the Pork Checkoff has had on the industry, such as moving from being a net importer of pork to one of the largest exporters of pork in the world; creating new products like the very successful McRib; developing education programs such as Pork Quality Assurance™ to help producers ensure consumers of a safe, wholesome product; and repositioning pork from a second thought to top-of-mind awareness.

The pork checkoff program sometimes is mistaken for a private sector trade association. It is not. Like all the federal checkoffs, it uses the federal government's power of taxation to collect a mandatory assessment or tax from all pork producers, whether they voluntarily want to pay or not. The checkoff is managed by the National Pork Board, whose members are appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture. Program oversight is provided by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. Every marketing message is approved by the federal government, with official status as "government speech."

The McRib stands for the proposition that the federal government should help the pork industry promote any product, no matter how contrary to the government's own dietary guidance efforts in the midst of an epidemic of overweight and chronic disease.

Here is the nutrition facts panel, with 450 Calories, 40% of a day's saturated fat, 37% of a day's sodium, and an overall grade of "D" from Caloriecount.

I can understand why McDonald's wants to market this kind of stuff. I am sure it is profitable. But, why can't the federal government exercise more discretion in its own choice of products for the federal checkoff programs? Isn't there anybody in the whole chain of oversight for the pork checkoff who is embarrassed to be associated with the McRib?

Agricultural economists say excise taxes for soda appear to be good policy

2011-10-20T10:34:00.000-04:00

The new issue of Choices Magazine, the outreach publication from the agricultural economics profession, has a special policy theme on excise taxes for soda. Although there are some interesting differences across the several articles, the final article by Carlisle Ford Runge, Justin Johnson, and Carlisle Piehl Runge, sums up:

Excise Taxes Appear to Be Good Policy
Taxing soda will reduce its consumption and raise revenue; by one recent estimate a 1 cent/oz. national U.S. excise tax would cut soda calorie consumption 8-10% and raise $15 billion per year (Brownell, et al., 2009). Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, the cross-subsidization from non-consumers of soft drinks to consumers resulting from such a tax is not large, and both classes of consumers can be shown to be better off (O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006). Even if the caloric reduction in soft drinks is offset by whole milk consumption, the nutritional and metabolic advantages of milk versus soda are clear. If such consumption is of plain, reduced-fat milk, these advantages are amplified. Finally, a 1-for-1 substitution of milk for soda on a per volume basis is unlikely, due to milk’s digestibility relative to soda. For these reasons, wide adoption of such excise taxes appears to be good policy. Even if they fail to reduce caloric intake in young people, the quality of those calories will improve.

Where is the dairy checkoff report to Congress? (Update)

2011-10-18T16:40:00.000-04:00

Despite a requirement in federal law to submit an annual report to Congress, the dairy checkoff program has not yet produced the report for July 2010 or July 2011, both of which are now long overdue.

Because earlier requests for a copy of the July 2010 report had been turned down by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in September for the two most recent missing reports. However, AMS turned down the request today, saying that the material was classified as "pre-decisional" and "deliberative." The AMS response said that the reports were still in USDA clearance, and that the 2010 report will be released shortly.

The Dairy Production and Stabilization Act of 1983 (.pdf) says:

Not later than July 1, 1985, and July 1 of each year after the date of enactment of this title, an annual report describing activities conducted under the dairy products promotion and research order issued under this subchapter, and accounting for the receipt and disbursement of all funds received by the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board under such order including an independent analysis of the effectiveness of the program.

Likewise, USDA's Dairy Promotion and Research Order (.pdf) requires the agency:

To prepare and make public, at least annually, a report of its activities carried out and an accounting for funds received and expended.

The dairy checkoff program uses the federal government's power of taxation to collect a mandatory assessment of more than $390 million per year from farmers, in order to support research, promotion, and advertising activities, such as the "Got Milk" campaign. The checkoff program promotes increased high-fat cheese consumption through support for fast food pizza marketing campaigns. The program's management corporation, Dairy Management Inc., boasts of the fast food collaborations. Notwithstanding the tension between these advertisements and healthy dietary guidance, every checkoff program message is endorsed by the federal government (in legal terminology, the advertisements must be approved as "government speech").

I think dairy farmers and the public deserve more timely transparency in this federal program, which is vastly better funded than anything the federal government does to promote healthy eating.

May 2012 workshop on the "food environment"

2011-10-18T12:06:00.000-04:00

Colleagues in the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and its European sister organization are organizing an upcoming workshop on food retail, food access, and the food environment. I am assisting with the local organizing for the workshop, here at Tufts.

Here is the open request for abstracts.

Abstracts submissions are due November 1, 2011 for the Food Environment: The Effects of Context on Food Choice conference jointly organized by AAEA and EAAE. The conference will take place May 30-31, 2012 at Tufts University in Boston.

The conference is aimed at providing insights into the influence of the food environment on the quality, price, and availability of food, associated health or environmental impacts, and to uncover the impact of policies aimed at influencing the food production and choice. For more information, including abstract submission instructions, please visit the conference website.

Cereal boxes from pop artist Ron English

2011-10-12T10:18:00.000-04:00

A student points out these cereal boxes from pop artist Ron English, reportedly on a shelf in a Ralph's store. The Popaganda blog says: "Find a box, send it to Ron and he'll sign it."

Prevention Institute: "We're not buying it."

2011-10-10T17:42:00.002-04:00

A video and petition from the Prevention Institute, about food marketing directed at children.

NYC shares restaurant inspection information online

2011-10-10T11:42:00.001-04:00

New York City last year introduced an online data utility that provides great detail about health inspections of restaurants. The application cleverly combines Google Maps with data from health inspector reports.

It has always been the case that health inspectors could shut down restaurants that failed to meet a certain threshold for adequate hygiene. The most distinctive thing about this "report card" approach is that it provides consumers with greater information about inspections that found some problems, but not enough problems to shut down the restaurant. In economic terms, this approach remedies an "information asymmetry," in which the consumer lacks some key information about food production practices.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to do on this site is to visit "advanced search" and then browse the worst-scoring restaurants that were not shut down. For example, the restaurant "La Trattoria" in the screen shot below was not closed. Here are the recorded violations:

Violations recorded in the following area (s) and a Notice of Violation issued at the reinspection conducted on 09/02/2011.

Tip! "Critical" violations are displayed in red.

Violation points: 79

Sanitary Violations
1) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F.
2) Appropriately scaled metal stem-type thermometer or thermocouple not provided or used to evaluate temperatures of potentially hazardous foods during cooking, cooling, reheating and holding.
3) Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility's food and/or non-food areas.
4) Hand washing facility not provided in or near food preparation area and toilet room. Hot and cold running water at adequate pressure to enable cleanliness of employees not provided at facility. Soap and an acceptable hand-drying device not provided.
5) Toilet facility not provided for employees or for patrons when required.
6) Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.
7) Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred.
8) Facility not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.
9) Accurate thermometer not provided in refrigerated or hot holding equipment.

New York's effort is the latest in a series of similar innovations around the country. In the past, we described similar but lower-tech health inspection report cards in Los Angeles.

Sprout's October issue

2011-10-06T13:33:00.000-04:00

The October issue of Sprout, the Friedman School's graduate student publication, has just been posted.

Sarah Gold draws on material from an International Food Information Council (IFIC) presentation at a dietetics conference to point out many merits of processed foods. Although sodium and sugar content of processed foods are mentioned in passing, a major theme of the presentation seemed to be that Americans would be malnourished without processed foods.

“This is a very confusing aspect of the debate,” says Victor Fulgoni III, PhD of Nutrition impact and speaker at the FNCE session. “Some of the discontent is fueled by some that want only local and fresh foods to be consumed. While this is a very laudable goal it is just not possible for most of Americans for either time or economic constraints,” adds Fulgoni.

Sadly, only about 300 calories per day come from minimally processed foods in the American diet, according to the data presented by Fulgoni at FNCE. Not surprisingly ready-to-eat (RTE) foods make up the largest portion of calories consumed (about 600 calories) and the top RTE foods consumed include soda, candy, potato chips, and juice drinks. This did not include food eaten at restaurants.

Processed foods contribute more dietary saturated fat, sugar, and sodium than minimally processed foods. However, they also provide the largest source of fiber, B vitamins, folate, iron, and potassium for many Americans. According to the study, most American’s would not meet the daily recommendations for essential vitamins and minerals without processed foods.

In another article, Rachel Perez discusses the new Harvard food plate with my colleagues Jeanne Goldberg, Tim Griffin, and me.

Certainly no single icon—whether pyramid, or plate—can effectively portray every nutrition message, let alone change behavior.

To the casual observer, the USDA vs. Harvard plate controversy may amount to mere academic banter or wholesome collegiate competition. But for nutrition professionals, the plates offer a sobering challenge. Dishing out nutrition messages requires both appropriate policy to back food recommendations, along with clear nutrition communications.

A skeptical question about financial speculation and food prices

2011-09-27T16:45:00.000-04:00

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones blames food price increases since 2007 on financial speculators. He is quite harsh on the fools like me, who thought rising food prices reflected resource scarcity.

Here is my question in his comments section:

I don't understand how speculation could raise food prices for more than a few months.

The financial speculators are placing bets on the futures market. If they expect prices to go up in January, they will buy a contract today that guarantees them a certain amount of commodity in January. When January comes around, they sell their paper commodities on the ordinary spot market. If they are correct that prices rose, they make a profit, because their January sale is more than the price they originally paid.

An essential feature of this game is that the speculators do not want to take possession of a ton of corn or soybeans. For speculators, the game is not "buying and more buying," it is "buying and then selling." The buying drives up prices, and the selling drives down prices. Commodity futures are different from "dot com" stocks, which can be held for a long time.

Basically, I find it much more plausible -- as an economist and as an environmentalist -- to see rising food prices as a symptom of real resource scarcity.

But I'll keep an open mind. Can somebody explain more clearly: beyond the first few months of a speculative boom, how can financial speculators keep driving the price higher and higher?

Mark Bittman asks if junk food is really cheaper

2011-09-27T09:14:00.000-04:00

Mark Bittman's column this week in the New York Times argues that junk food is not really cheaper. For a reader who is skeptical, Bittman's rhetorical method is to provide an array of examples, each of which has different advantages.

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)

The column concludes with both a cultural agenda and policy prescription. Do you like one, or the other, or neither, or both?

Harvard's new Healthy Eating Plate

2011-09-26T13:34:00.002-04:00

The new Harvard Healthy Eating Plate ...

... clearly is a modified version of USDA's MyPlate,...

... just as the earlier Harvard "Healthy Eating Pyramid" ...

... clearly was based on USDA's first pyramid graphic. Harvard's experts in nutritional epidemiology agree with USDA's graphic designers on many key points.

Still, the Harvard researchers do make some distinctions.

One difference is that Harvard's new plate graphic requires 2 times as many words to communicate its message [Update, same day: edited the number of words to count USDA's accompanying text]. This may be helpful in dietary guidance targeting audiences with strong reading skills.

A second difference is that Harvard's new graphic substitutes water in place of dairy as the beverage placed outside of the plate. The Harvard plate is more austere than the earlier Harvard pyramid, which was accompanied by a wine glass, and which also emphasized dairy. The wine and the dairy are now gone from the new Harvard graphic.

A third difference is that the new Harvard graphic includes what looks like a very large amount of salad dressing oil, while recommending limits on red meat.

I see nutrition merit in the Harvard graphic, but wonder if it is more successful at emphasizing distinctions with USDA than at communicating dietary guidance to a general audience.

The bigger story behind the food-stamp-hating videos from Mr. EBT and Chapter

2011-09-22T11:52:00.017-04:00

Obama Foodorama this week links to two rap videos showing Black people abusing their EBT cards from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The videos exploit every possible racist stereotype for a laugh. Some journalists are accepting them as straightforward satire, by artists who are themselves African American, but self-directed satire is not the whole story.

The conservative media is giving lots of attention. The Drudge Report on Monday linked to the first video, by Mr. EBT, showing the singer buying junk food with an EBT card belonging to somebody else. Fox News covers the same story.

The second video is far worse. In it, the singer Latoya "Chapter" Hicks adopts the fanciful character of Keywanda, a foul-mouthed, sexaholic, beer-swigging, chain-smoking Black mother of 10 children. She sings that "all you gotta do is f---" and 9 months later you get lots of government benefits.

Chapter's website, which hosts the video, and "Creative Indie Artists," which produced her song and video, are both projects of Christopher A. Jackson, a White man from California whose other job is as an executive for KROQUE, a military apparel contractor. The Fact Evangelist found the link to the apparel contractor raised questions about the origin of this music project.

Digging a little further, I found an old MySpace page for Christopher Jackson.

On the same MySpace page, there is a 2-year-old comment from Chapter, the singer in the video, introducing herself:

HELLO NEW FRIEND,

PLEASE CHECK OUT MY NEW SONGS I WROTE- PAY ME MY MONEY, LEFT OUT , CUTIE GOT BOOTIE

I AM A POP AND R&B SONGWRITER
CHAPTER

I wrote Jackson, seeking further information about the collaboration with Chapter. He responded today:

Chapter and I wrote the lyrics and Chapter produced and arranged the song. She is releasing another video this Saturday 9/24 and will continue to release a new video each month.

When I asked if this was hard-hitting anti-welfare social commentary, Jackson described the video as "a hard-hitting anti welfare-abuse-program pro social lesson."

An Ohio blog discusses whether the Chapter video is racist. This whole episode reminds me of the tiff in May, when Newt Gingrich called Obama the "food stamp president" and then successfully parried accusations that he was tooting a racist dog whistle. The episode also brought to mind something very strange that I had noticed in the readership logs for this blog. One of the highest-traffic posts in my archives is an old post about race and food stamps. It turns out that hundreds of people on the internet are Googling the topic "race and food stamps." Try it yourself and you can find truly depraved and racist discussion lists.

I hope Obama Foodorama and others who link to these videos will explore them a little further than they have so far. Because these videos purport to be satire, I know I run the risk of seeming humorless. But I'm not laughing yet.

[Update, same day: deleted one intemperate sentence.]