Improving Rural Life--Butchers and Regulations

Posted earlier on the need for Democrats to address rural issues.  

Here's another one, which fits with the liberal position about favoring small farmers, etc..  (Yes, you can take the "etc." as indicating I've some reservations about the food movement.) Better yet, it's an opportunity for a bipartisan play, as deregulation will appeal to the Republicans.

I've mentioned Walt Jeffries in this blog before. He used to post regularly at Sugar Mountain blog.  It may be now that he's switched to Facebook.  He and his family built their own butcher shop over a period of years, which was documented at the blog.  Had to go through the Vermont and USDA inspection and licensing process, which took a while but, somewhat surprisingly since he tends to the libertarian, which seemed to go relatively smoothly.

Meanwhile the Foothill Agrarian, a California sheepgrower, has lost the butcher  which used to process his lambs (as opposed to buying the lambs--the distinction is important).  His post here describes the problem.

I commented on the post with some questions, but it seems to me both Democrats and Republicans could agree on carving out exceptions to national or state regulations to ease the problem for local butchers.

Farmers Take Two Hits

Two hits on farmers in the media:

1. the World Health Organization declares processed red meat to increase the risk of cancer (not IMHO a really serious risk, but the media will play it up).
2. the big budget deal between Boehner, McConnell, and Obama includes a hit on crop insurance companies, requiring renegotiation of the reinsurance agreement between RMA and the crop insurance companies.

When Is a Farm a Farm? II

Illinois extension has a post on the FDA definition of a "farm".

To quote: "The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).... directs the FDA to implement comprehensive, prevention-based controls throughout the food supply chain...."  (Think of mad-cow concerns, as well as listeria and similar food-borne diseases.)

Without quoting the whole thing, the issues seem to be two-fold: when a "farm" also includes food preparation, and when a "farm" also includes preparing feed for animals.   There's still more regulations to come, particularly on the human food chain.   (As in my previous posts on farm constitution, the purpose of the federal program governs the definition of the farm--there is no platonic ideal of a "farm".)

FDA is setting up training: "The three Alliances—Produce Safety Alliance (PSA), Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA), and Sprout Safety Alliance (SSA) — are developing Train-the-Trainer programs to ensure that lead trainers are familiar with, and prepared to deliver, the curricula and that they understand the requirements of the FSMA rules."  (from the FDA site linked to from the ILext post.)

Ben Franklin on Lead

My father had to switch from chemical engineering to farming because of lead poisoning, so this letter by Ben Franklin, in a post at Boston 1775, is of particular interest.  The old bureaucrat was one of the smartest men ever.

NAIS Failure

From Chris Clayton  on the responsibility for the failure of NAIS:

...who at the top of the buying chain pushed back down and stated they would reward cattle feeders and ranchers for using USDA-approved ID systems? Who announced they would dock cattle that started arriving at the packer without approved-ID systems? Who defended the system at the animal ID meetings for packers? The packers complained about the idea of being responsible for essentially retiring tags when animals were slaughtered. The packers also let the livestock groups and USDA take the lead on NAIS and it has failed.

Animal ID would be a national system today if Tyson had simply decided six years ago that is the way it's going to be.

I think it's an overstatement, but points the way to the future. It's rather like when Wal-mart adopts green standards or goes organic--it has a big impact.  So too, if the big buyers push animal identification, their suppliers are going to comply.  But that's true only for the animals and the suppliers involved with the big buyers.  Meat packers would influence beef and pork, but not bison or ostrich.  And those small producers who don't sell to the big packers wouldn't feel the pressure.  So we would, and I expect we will, evolve to a two-level system.

The Next Most Surprising Statistic Today--Fruits and Vegetable Consumption Increased

(After the teachers from the Philippines in the previous post), this quote surprised me:

While consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has increased from about 192 pounds over the course of a year in 1970 to 280 pounds in 2008, the risk of food-borne diseases associated with fresh produce has also increased.

Food Poisoning at the Inaugural Dinner

Yes, and someone died! I'm sure the food system was to blame. Of course, this was in 1857, based on a couple sentences in this blog post and it was Buchanan's nephew. (Interesting cemetery in Lancaster).

Food Safety

NYTimes reports the food system seems to be more safe than it was 10 years ago. It's complicated because we're better at identifying problems than we were. "Industrial ag" can institute more controls, do more testing, police interfaces better, but a problem gets spread much wider. More organic and locavore agriculture depends less on technology and safeguards and more on the integrity and good practices of the farmer.

Thoughts on CAFO's

Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) are a big topic these days, and will no doubt continue to be. I offer my thoughts:

• the vegetarians point to CAFOs and say they're inherently cruel to animals, so people should eat vegetables. That's an extreme position, but it benefits from being logical and consistent.
  
• animal rights people point to CAFOs and say, as currently operated, they're cruel, so we need legislation/constitutional provisions to provide more room for chickens, etc. Vegetarians can support such measures because it seems a step on the slippery slope to total banning. Possibly some changes, like the Florida and California initiatives, will relieve the public pressure and concern over mistreatment of animals.
  
• good food people say CAFO's create the need to use antibiotics to fight disease and are otherwise dangerous (i.e., a breeding ground for MIRSA in some eyes).
• locavores say CAFO's are not local.
• neighbors say CAFO's pollute the air and water. Most notably, once a farming operation becomes so concentrated the resulting manure can't readily be used as fertilizer on the land, you get into waste lagoons and stream pollution.
  

I assume I wouldn't like a CAFO, having grown on a small dairy/poultry farm. But they result from the logic of economies of scale, which seem to work as well in agriculture as elsewhere. Despite all the efforts of the green community, I'd expect CAFO's to have a history similar to that of other growing industries. Where are the "dark, satanic mills" of yesteryear? Exxon, US Steel, GM, ATT, all had checkered histories in youth, but became more house-broken and acceptable to polite society as they aged, and as activists got government to impose regulations. So too with CAFO's. This domestication process will be aided by the greens:

• CAFO's are a lot more susceptible to environmental regulation. It's a whole lot easier to regulate one 40,000 cow dairy farm than 400 100 cow farms (for one thing, 400 dairies have a lot more votes, as well as being more familiar and more attractive).
  
• CAFO's can probably make more use of new technology. See this link on a $1 mill methane digester at an Oregon dairy. And this Brownfield piece on putting feed lots indoors. Banks will make loans more easily and the government will (until Obama's Secretary takes charge) make EQIP grants.

So, should I live another 20 years, I'd expect to see lots of CAFO's, but I'd also expect to see each one having a full-time job dealing with government regulation.

Another Web Site for Agriculture

The NAL Blog references a new site, called the Agriculture and Public Health Gateway, sponsored by Johns Hopkins U. I've a couple reservations: some of the documents are from journals, meaning all a layman can get for free is an introduction or summary; and, at least for the farm bill area, the only documents are dated 2007 or before.

Food Safety, Raw Milk Revisited

Ethicurean has a long post describing the back and forth over a bill to regulate raw milk in California. Now I've mixed feelings on all this. As a retired bureaucrat, I almost always believe there's a role for government regulation. As a long-ago farm boy, I remember the milk inspectors coming and forcing my father to change his operation (install refrigeration for the milk cans), put hot water in the milk house (we had hot water there when we didn't have it in the house), changes not always appreciated. As someone who drank raw milk until college, I liked the taste, but can't take the sometimes quasi-religious fervor mustered on its behalf.

But leaving all that aside, I'm a bit bemused by this thought: suppose a big food processor, a monster multinational corporation, said: we have this brand new product that provides essential minerals and vitamins and tastes great. Oh, we'll promise that it will be almost pure, no more than 10 coliform bacteria per unit.

How far do you think that proposal would get?

Just saying.

Salmonella Deaths

One thing I discovered in an attempt to follow up on this Down to Earth post is, the government doesn't seem to do a good job of tracking deaths due to food poisoning. This site has some interesting figures. I'm not quite sure what the difference between roughly 40 deaths per year reported and the 1000 deaths per year estimated tells us about the safety of the system.

I'd throw out this logic, which may be wrong. The stuff that gets reported to CDC is the widespread pattern of illness, which might result from salmonella somewhere in a big mover in the food chain; the stuff that doesn't get reported is salmonella from the smaller movers.

Looked at another way, if there's one thousand deaths in the food system and 40,000 deaths in the transportation system each year, and we eat more often than we drive, food is very, very safe.

On Aerial Safety and Food Safety

The Times has a review of airline safety today.

I think there's an interesting parallel between aviation safety and food safety.
Like the food industry, there's a broad variety in institutions: we have very big airlines operating very big planes, very small airlines operating very small planes, and individuals flying their own planes. Similarly, we have big companies operating big food processing plants, small companies operating small plants, and individuals processing food in their kitchens.

Now--safety. We know flying is safer than driving and we know flying today is safer than it was 50 years ago. See this. Now Wikipedia doesn't have comparable figures on food safety. However, for any reader of The Jungle it's likely the food safety statistics are similar to those of aviation. The reason: we are humans and humans learn. It may take a few airliner crashes, but we learn how to keep pilots from flying planes into the ground (most of the time). It may take some episodes of food poisoning, but we learn what preservatives to add to the food. Or we learn how to recall

Now, it's a truth not universally understood that big planes are safer than small planes, that American Airlines is safer (on deaths per million miles traveled) than Podunk Airlines, and much safer than Tom Bigshot flying his own Cessna. Might it be true that, on average, food from the large corporate plants is safer than from the smaller plants and even more safe than food from our kitchens? I think so, but without many things I can point to.

However, there is this story, where six members of a family were sickened by ingredients they put in their meal. And Down to Earth has an interesting discussion of safety of ground beef, comparing locally processed meat with that from national plants. I agree with the last sentence, because plants can learn, but we don't do that well.

Tracing Tomatoes

This AP story discusses the problems in tracing tomatoes from dirt to consumer. As I've said before, the desire for safe food doesn't observe the distinction between animal (National Animal Identification System or NAIS) and vegetable.. The further tomatoes advance, the more pressure on NAIS. Although there are those who fight tooth and nail against NAIS, IMHO they'd be better off to fight for graduated id--let the big producers be required to identify their animals, small producers not, unless they sell to a national distributor. It's a bureaucratic failing to apply the same rules to all, even when technology permits making finer distinctions.