About IATP

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.

Founded in 1986, IATP is rooted in the family farm movement. With offices in Minneapolis and Geneva, IATP works on making domestic and global agricultural policy more sustainable for everyone.

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Think Forward is a blog written by staff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy covering sustainability as it intersects with food, rural development, international trade, the environment and public health.

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Healthy Food

May 01, 2008

Parkinson's and Pesticides

A growing body of research links Parkinson's Disease to exposure to pesticides. Last week, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported on research efforts to understand how pesticides used in potato fields cause the kind of brain damage seen in people with Parkinson's.

IATP and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment have published a new fact sheet on the connections between Parkinson's and pesticides and other environmental causes. It was written by Jackie Hunt Christensen, former director of IATP's Food and Health program. The fact sheet outlines the causes of Parkinson's, including detailed information on a number of pesticides that have been strongly linked to the disease in animal studies. It also includes some helpful tips on minimizing your exposure to environmental risk factors for Parkinson's.

The Globe and Mail reports that in response to recent research Ontario announced a ban on sale and use of certain types of pesticides in gardening to reduce health risks. We need more such efforts by governments to assess and reduce the public health risks of pesticide use. 

—Ben Lilliston

April 17, 2008

Salmonella, the FDA and Honduran Melon Exports

IATP Senior Fellow Mark Muller is working in a volunteer program in Honduras through July. He is blogging periodically on his experiences there.

If people in southern Honduras were looking for an issue to focus an overall, slow-simmering resentment of the United States, the recent ban on Honduran melon imports certainly has provided the spark. As the Honduran newspaper La Tribuna stated recently (in Spanish), “The fruit of discontent is no longer the apple…it is now the melon.” Fifty nine people in U.S. and Canada were sickened by salmonella, and the outbreak was linked to melons imported from Honduras, although the origin of the salmonella is in dispute. Much to the chagrin of the Honduran government, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has blocked Honduran melon imports.

My first impression of the issue – surely formed through spending most of my life as a U.S. food consumer – was thankfulness that the FDA acted to protect the integrity of the U.S. food system. At least 59 people have fallen ill to a potentially serious bacterium; maintaining a safe and healthy food system should take precedent over trade relations or corporate profits. But I am probably the only person in southern Honduras who feels that way. Everyone I have talked to, whether they have financial interest in melon production or not, feels that the U.S. government is fabricating the situation in order to protect U.S. domestic fruit production, or perhaps to provide leverage in future trade negotiations.

Agropecuaria Montelibano, the exporter that allegedly shipped salmonella-tainted melons, claims that the ban has cost them $8 million and has put 5,000 jobs at risk. The potential loss of this employment would be devastating for small, rural communities here in southern Honduras, many of which are practically surrounded by melon fields.

(At left is a mural in the center of town in Choluteca, paying homage to the region´s watermelon and cantaloupe production.)

I don’t know enough about the situation yet to have a position in this debate. But this is clearly another example of a food system built without resiliency. The salmonella outbreak, wherever it occured, seems to have no geographic rhyme or reason, infecting people in 16 states and Canada. This region of Honduras has become completely dependent on exporting melons, sugar and shrimp, and few jobs exist in many communities outside of these industries. While top government officials and corporate executives will drive this issue, it will be a few unlucky U.S. and Canadian consumers – and thousands of very poor Honduran laborers – that will be most hurt.

—Mark Muller

February 21, 2008

Clinton campaign responds to huge beef recall

Senator Hillary Clinton has responded to the animal abuse at the Hallmark/Westland slaughter house and a subsequent recall of 143 million pounds of ground beef, much of it already consumed by school children. The response reflects just how difficult it is to propose policy while responding on the campaign trail to widely publicized events. (I go into more detail on the recall in a commentary that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Feburary 19).

Senator Clinton’s food safety plan calls for a “thorough audit of our nation’s food safety system to locate weaknesses and gaps.” While there is nothing objectionable in this proposal, the system has been audited frequently over the past 20 years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Inspector General, by the General Accountability (then Accounting) Office, by Congressional investigators, by academics and by non-governmental organizations. Their recommendations often have been “accepted” by USDA but seldom implemented. The deregulation of the food safety system and its replacement with de facto industry self-regulation that began in the Reagan Administration continues - audits, foodborne illness, and meat product recalls notwithstanding. For example, when testing determines that a company’s product is contaminated, the company may withhold the product from further government testing that would confirm the initial test and result, at the very least, in bad publicity for the company.

Senator Clinton’s proposal to increase resources for USDA food safety funding by 50 percent echoes many similar proposals. But the problem is not just funding level but the willingness of USDA management to use the funds appropriated by Congress for their intended purpose. USDA management used previous Congressional appropriations to add management layers and commission risk assessments to justify the need for less inspection. Despite the “continuous inspection” requirement of the Meat and Poultry Inspection Act, even large volume producers like Hallmark/Westland lack federal inspectors working fulltime onsite to inspect product. Instead management instructs federal inspectors to inspect the paperwork of plant inspectors who carry out industry “self-regulation.” A new Administration would have to stand up to industry’s attempts, with USDA management cooperation, to restrict federal authority and oversight of slaughterhouses and meat processors. 

The regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration are even weaker than those of USDA, as the multiple import product safety incidents have demonstrated over the past year. Reorganizing U.S. food safety under a single agency, as Senator Clinton proposes, along with many others, will do little to protect consumers, and indeed, the food industry, if current industry and management practices remain prevalent. If the next Administration extends the current "lite" federal oversight of industry to all products and outsources product inspection, as proposed in November 2007 by President Bush’s Interagency Working Group report, U.S. consumers will be yet more vulnerable to product hazards. The off-shoring and outsourcing of government inspection to private organizations that would certify products as safe for export may provide plausible deniability for the government and a corporate liability shield if imports harm consumers. But the privatization of government inspection and enforcement functions is very unlikely to prevent harm to consumers, the stated goal of the report.

Senator Clinton, and indeed, all candidates for federal office, should develop well-researched food safety policies for a new Administration and a new Congress. The Clinton campaign’s effort to respond to the Hallmark/Westland animal abuse and beef product recall has merely touched the tip of a very large iceberg.

—Steve Suppan

February 14, 2008

Chicken Fight Over Antibiotics

Six years ago, IATP and the Sierra Club published the first study to test brand-name poultry products from stores for the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The study was at the beginning of our work to stop the routine and unnecessary use of human antibiotics in animal feed to make healthy animals grow faster - a practice the science shows is leading to more antibiotic resistant infections in people.

The study got lots of media attention and some expected criticism from the poultry industry, particularly Minnesota-based Gold'n Plump - which produced some of the chicken we tested. The company didn't dispute our findings of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on its chicken, rather they disputed the media coverage of our findings, arguing before the Minnesota News Council that a local TV story overstated the risks to consumers.

Fast-forward to 2008. Gold'n Plump's current marketing strategy for its "natural" chicken hinges on not using hormones (already banned in chicken) and not using antibiotics except to treat sick chicken. Minnesota/St. Paul Business Journal wrote about the company's research in 2006 which found that "freshness, health and food safety" were most important to customers. The company has billboards up all around the state touting their "natural" chicken without antibiotics. Certainly admirable progress from six years ago.

But the company has gone a step further to defend its label. In January, Gold'n Plump along with Perdue, Sanderson Farms and Foster Poultry asked for a temporary restraining order in federal district court, charging that Tyson Foods had continued to make false and misleading advertising claims that its chicken were "raised without antibiotics." In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture told Tyson's to stop claiming its chickens were raised without antibiotics because of a dispute over whether the company's use of ionophores constituted an antibiotic. In December, the company and USDA reached an agreement on language related to their antibiotic use. Goldn Plump et al, working together under the banner of the Truthful Labeling Coalition, alleged that Tyson's is still using the old labeling. Although a District Court judge ruled against the restraining order, Conde Nast blogger Jack Flack writes about how the ruling is "not much of a win at all."

This legal ruckus among chicken companies shows how far we've come in six years. Poultry companies are actually fighting amongst themselves on how they can best market their chicken as antibiotic-free - instead of arguing that antibiotic-resistant bacteria aren't a risk at all. IATP and the Keep Antibiotics Working Coalition have had enormous success in pressuring meat and poultry companies to stop inappropriately using antibiotics, particularly those that treat humans.

At the same time, the salvos flying between chicken companies, and consumer confusion around what the industry's labels actually mean, point to the need for a level playing field for all. That's why we need Congress to pass the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. This Act would keep all the chicken, pork and beef companies from adding important human medicines to their animal feeds for animals that aren't even sick.

Maybe we can even get Goldn Plump's support?

—Ben Lilliston

December 20, 2007

Agri-food in Brisbane

I spent three days at the end of November in Brisbane, a booming but still small-ish city, some 930 km North of Sydney, on Australia's east coast. I went for the 14th annual meeting of the Australasian Agri-Food Network, which brings social scientists of various stripes (rural sociologists, agricultural economists, foresters, nutritionists) together with a few public health officials, NGOs and others for a few days of discussion around the food system. The food system writ large, that is. Issues discussed ranged from the growth of private sector devised and implemented quality standards, to the social causes of obesity, to urban gardens.

The keynote address was given by Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University, London. Tim is also Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner on the UK's Sustainable Development Commission, an independent public body that reports to the Prime Minister on sustainable development policy issues. Tim's keynote speech talked about the food system and the role of social scientists in advocating urgently needed changes. Tim highlighted the very imperfect nature of the connection between evidence and policy in the real world, suggesting the need for more flexible but also more directed advocacy to avoid getting bogged down in proving each detail of the proposals made.

Drawing on his recent book, Food Wars, written with Michael Heasman, Tim discussed the big picture fight in the food system: emerging from decades of "productionism," where policy and technology have focused on increasing the total food supply available, come two divergent new paradigms. The first the authors call the Life Sciences Integrated Paradigm, which is centred on biotechnology and a view of food that is akin to medical science. Where the productionist view pushed chemical inputs to raise yields, the Life Sciences view uses biology - particularly gene research - to manipulate food to repress or enhance given traits (from drought-resistance to micro-nutrient content). The contrasting paradigm is called the Ecologically Integrated Paradigm. It is also rooted in biology, especially the biology of our ecosystems. But the approach is holistic rather than reductionist, and is based in integrated approaches to food that respect human and environmental health. As the authors say, this approach is not new, but it has been on the margins of food policy discussions for decades. With widespread agreement that our existing model has failed, we have the chance to put an integrated approach at the front of a renewed food system.

A simple example contrasting the two approaches relates to public policy responses to obesity. The first is to engineer foods to taste as sweet without the calories. The second is to think about the relative cost of food (candy bars and soft drinks that cost less than an apple), to think about where and how we shop (can we walk to the store or must we drive?) and to rethink policies that allow companies to market junk food to children, using films or pop stars to encourage unhealthy eating habits.

Together with Tim Lang, IATP is interested in and contributing to the emerging body of work that links human, animal and environmental health to farm policy and the food system. IATP's healthobservatory provides articles and analysis on these issues, ranging from campaigns to ensure hospitals serve ecologically sound and healthy food to their patients to monitoring antibiotic resistance that results from prophylactic use of antibiotics in "confined animal feeding operations" (industrial livestock facilities).

Brisbane was a heartening experience. A group of diverse, committed academics who are reaching out to the wider policy world with their work, committed to using their research to make a better world, and who know how to have a good time doing it (am I biased by having been part of the winning team on quiz night? Maybe just a little). The detailed program of speakers and papers presented shows the range of talent and ideas on display. For this "auslander", still new to the food policy circles of Australia, it was a wonderful few days of learning. My own contributions were a few thoughts on biofuels that had occurred to me working on a paper on the trade and investment issues emerging from the growing biofuels sector worldwide. More on that another day....

—Sophia Murphy

November 16, 2007

MRSA and Animal Antibiotic Use

A new study published in the scientific journal Veterinary Microbiology should cause the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take notice. The study's findings suggest the agency might start looking at confined hog operations as a possible source for the deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus (MRSA).

The study (unfortunately not available for free) is the first to show the antibiotic-resistant MRSA in North American hog farms and hog farmers (MRSA had already been found at European hog farms). Researchers found MRSA at 45 percent of the Ontario farms they studied and in nearly one in four pigs. Also, one in five pig farmers they studied carried MRSA.

There were almost 100,000 MRSA infections in 2005, and nearly 19,000 deaths in the U.S., according to a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW), which includes IATP, points out in a press release that HIV/AIDS killed 17,000 people that same year.

"Last summer, when we raised the MRSA issue, the FDA told us that it had no plans to sample U.S. livestock to see if they carry MRSA," says David Wallinga, M.D., director of IATP's Food and Health program, in the KAW press release. "Given the latest science that hog farms may generate MRSA, we need Congress to give FDA and other relevant agencies the necessary funding and a sense of urgency. Sampling needs to be done as soon as possible."

For the last five years, IATP and KAW have been working to eliminate the inappropriate use of antibiotics in food animals because the practice is increasing the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and threatening the ability of doctors to treat humans. Alex Koppelman of Salon writes a great piece explaining the link between antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA and the way confined food animals are raised. Earlier this year, IATP's Wallinga co-authored one of six studies in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives outlining the role of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance.

As the science advances, it is becoming clear that CAFOs have an enormous price tag that isn't fully calculated when we step into the supermarket checkout line to buy our meat and poultry.

—Ben Lilliston

November 08, 2007

Local Foods: a Global Idea

IATP has always had a strong local dimension to its work. The Institute was founded during the U.S. farm crisis of the 1980s, with a vision toward strengthening local action with an understanding of global pressures. Twenty years later, IATP's work on local food systems has taken on a new level of importance.

It was with real pleasure, then, that I recently learned about something that is local for me, in Adelaide, Australia. Friends of the Earth Adelaide has launched a sustainable food and agriculture campaign, called Reclaim the Food Chain.

Since most of my work is taking place 10,000 miles and more away, in either Geneva, Washington or Minneapolis, events happening locally take on a particularly rosy glow. Mind you, it took a global search to alert me to what was happening in my own backyard - I learned about the campaign in a regular email I have set-up from Google that alerts me to new internet postings related to "trade and agriculture." This time I caught an article by Joel Catchlove that talks about food sovereignty and a conference held last February in Mali, where Joel went as a delegate for Friends of the Earth Australia (scroll down at the link below to find his article on the conference, which was all about food sovereignty).

One dimension of the campaign is called The Urban Orchard, which is a monthly meeting place for people who want to swap and share their garden produce, and to give or take workshops on gardening and post-harvest processing. The inaugural session was held November 3rd and apparently went very well.

Another dimension is the production of some informative factsheets--nanotechnology, genetic engineering, agriculture and climate change are just a few of the topics already addressed, in clear and simple language with references for further reading.

It is the perfect place for a local food campaign, too. Year-round, one can eat excellent food in South Australia and sacrifice little. If Australia as a whole counts as local, there is almost nothing that cannot be grown or raised. But even just within the state the climate allows an enormous variety of foods to be grown. The outstanding question is water use - there is an acute water crisis in Australia, and our state is not exempt. For today, I am just happy to have met some colleagues on my own doorstep that share IATP's commitment to local food, informed by their analysis of global forces as well as an instinctive preference for buying from communities they know and work with. I suggested they try IATP's idea of a chef's local food "pie cook-off". Let's see where the campaign goes next.

—Sophia Murphy

October 20, 2007

No Free Lunch?

An important report that has received surprisingly little attention from the media and Members of Congress writing a new Farm Bill comes from the Organic Center and Brian Halweil of Worldwatch Institute. Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient Levels in U.S. Food Supply Eroded by Pursuit of High Yields looks at one of the little studied downsides of modern industrial agriculture.

Halweil examined historical records from the USDA and found that while farmers have doubled or tripled yields of major grains, fruits and vegetables over the last half century the range of essential nutrients has declined, with double-digit percentage declines of iron, zinc, calcium, and selenium. "As a consequence, the same-size serving of sweet corn or potatoes, or a slice of whole wheat bread, delivers less iron, zinc and calcium."

Halwiel writes, "Think of this relationship between yield and nutritional quality as farming's equivalent of `no free lunch.' That is, higher yields, while desirable, may come with the hidden cost of lower nutritional quality, and in some cases, heightened risk of food safety and animal health problems."

The current high yield system has worked tremendously well for seed and grain companies. Not so well, it turns out, for nutrient-rich foods, public health and even farmers (over-production has led to below-cost prices). The public health community has already written Congress calling for a Health Food Bill as a substitute for the Farm Bill.

In the next few weeks, the Senate will write its version of the Farm Bill. They would do well to read Halweil's report and think about what type of food system serves the health of eaters.

—Ben Lilliston

June 18, 2007

Got organic milk?

The power of organic food is that it forces consumers to think about how their food is grown. Organic food presents consumers with a choice about whether they care about the use of pesticides, genetically engineered crops, or antibiotics in food production. And consumers are welcoming that choice. Over the past 10 years, the organic industry has grown around 20 percent a year and over 60 percent of U.S. consumers say they buy organic at least occasionally, according to the Organic Trade Association.

Organic milk has been one of the main drivers of the organic market and has faced recent supply shortages. So it is not surprising that milk is at the forefront of a battleground over the future of organic standards. Recently, the USDA announced that a California dairy operation had lost its organic certification for not complying with organic standards. The dairy had been one of many targeted by the Cornicopia Institute, an organic food watchdog, for confining their animals to pens and sheds rather than open grazing. The rebuild-from-depression blog has numerous photos and video of the California dairy.

Efforts to water down standards for organic dairy operations have been at the forefront recently as larger companies and operations try to take advantage of the fast-growing market. Organic certification expert Jim Riddle outlined the key issues facing organic milk production on the August 21 issue of Radio Sustain listed here.

To retain it's power, organic standards need to stay strong. Recent action to protect the integrity of organic milk was an important first step.

—Ben Lilliston

May 29, 2007

Rachel Carson's Legacy

One hundred years ago on May 27, Rachel Carson was born. Considered by many to be the mother of the environmental movement in the U.S., Carson's seminal book Silent Spring was published in 1962 and changed the way we think about toxic chemicals in the environment. Carson died two years later of breast cancer. As IATP's Kathleen Schuler and Carin Skoog write in a commentary that appeared in the Duluth News Tribune, "Her writing warned of the risks of DDT and other pesticides to the environment, to wildlife and to human health. Though many have tried to discredit Carson, her courageous work has stood the test of time and offers continued inspiration for reducing our exposure to toxic chemicals."

And boy have they tried to discredit her. Opposite Schuler and Skoog's commentary is a rebuttal by a representative of the industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, charging that Carson used "junkscience to advance an anti-chemical agenda." CEI began as a front group funded largely by the tobacco industry, and most recently has fought efforts to address global warming with big money from Exxon/Mobil.

Fourty-five years after her death, the toxic chemical industry is still scared of Rachel Carson.

—Ben Lilliston