March 2010

In this issue

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) wants to move the Senate Food Safety Bill to a vote. More food safety news ...

1. FDA Opens Lines for Food Safety Comments
   
2. Value Chains get Nod at Ag Outlook Forum
   
3. Kansas City Good Food Event Sparks Debate
   
4. Good Food Policy Progress in the Great Lakes
   
5. Food Safety Report
6. Good Food Media Digest
   
7. Add your profile to the NGFN Database
8. NGFN Media Outlets
   

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Stories

FDA Opens Lines for Food Safety Comments

The Federal Drug Administration is now officially open to suggestions from farms, food businesses and others on how it should write new rules for the safety of fresh produce. Those interested have until May 24 to communicate their concerns and their ideas.

The request for comments comes as the U.S. Senate edges closer to finalizing the Food Safety Modernization Act, or Senate Bill 510. Both the Senate's bill and a version that the House passed last summer, HR 2749, call for rewriting produce safety standards and re-working how the FDA handles enforcement at the farm and packer levels.

Major concerns about the rule-making exist among businesses and organizations working to develop shorter supply chains for local and regional food. The concerns revolve around the potential for the upcoming rules, prompted by large-scale, nationwide contamination cases, to create undue cost and compliance burdens for smaller and mid-size farms and food businesses. The National Good Food Network includes ongoing updates and information on these food safety issues.

Another big question in the industry is whether U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA, the two agencies involved, will work together to share notes and avoid duplication and confusion. The FDA is in charge of food safety while the USDA oversees food and agriculture markets. FDA is getting underway with food safety rulemaking at the same time that the USDA is reviewing comments on a proposed leafy greens industry marketing agreement related to food safety steps.

The two agencies attempted to allay concerns recently with an unusual joint statement announcing their intention to work together and take the diversity of food and farm business operations into consideration. The statement includes links to the Federal Register notice of the FDA's comment period, a page on FDA's produce safety activities, and a tip sheet for submitting comments. For an example of input from good food advocates, see the responses from the National Organic to the commodity-specific guidelines for leafy greens, melons, and tomatoes.

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Value Chains get Nod at Ag Outlook Forum

The federal government's growing interest in the connection between strong farms and healthy people was evident in a diverse lineup of speakers at last month's Agricultural Outlook Forum in Washington D.C. The annual USDA event is one of the oldest and biggest agriculture industry gatherings, dating back to 1923. This year it focused on sustainable agriculture as a key to health and prosperity.

A plenary panel that kicked off the two-day event, for example, dug into the notion that satisfying new consumer demand and needs around healthy food and a clean environment are fundamental steps toward a more secure future for the nation.

Speakers on the panel came from bigger companies, such as Whole Foods, Bon Appétit, and Sysco. They talked about working to bridge supply chain gaps between their large-scale purchasing and the farms that offer many of the health and environmental benefits customers want in their food but are not equipped to operate in the big companies' systems.

Rick Schneiders, who spoke as Sysco's recently retired chief executive officer, explained how the $40 billion food service company is partnering with the Wallace Center's National Good Food Network to develop a new values-based approach to supply chains.

To be successful and sustainable, a distributor like Sysco must think beyond its own business to the fate of the businesses it depends upon, and the environment and communities they depend upon, he said. "I think it’s important that we, each of us on the supply chain ... think about total responsibility and how we can work to improve the sustainability of the agricultural system," he said.

"What is the best scale for a particular product, best in terms of all the social, environmental, and economic variables?  Where is the best place to grow that product with the same considerations, the social, environmental and economic?  And then how do we optimally move it from grower to market?"

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Kansas City Good Food Event Sparks Debate

The recent Good Food and Good Health conference in Kansas City accomplished one of the organizers' main goals: To make space in the Heartland for the larger agriculture industry to engage in the new consumer-driven conversation around healthy food.

Strong reactions to positions presented at the conference like this editorial published by the cattle industry Drovers magazine, "were not unexpected," said Bill Crooks, head of the new Good Food Good Futures initiative at the American Royal, a 111-year old agrarian institution based in Kansas City.

"Larger interests might think there's a bulls-eye on their back, so there's going to be a tendency to react," he said. "But we believe that if you build platforms where people can vocalize different positions, we'll get some conversations that will help us draw closer to some solutions."

In addition to this inaugural event in Kansas City, the Good Food Good Futures initiative plans to hold mini conferences through the year to carry on conversations among small and large businesses, as well as health and community interests, involved in food. The group is also involved in innovative farm to school programming in Kansas City, along with partner KC Healthy Kids.

More than 300 attended the March 2-3 event, which brought together health professionals, community leaders, and small and large farm interests around challenging facts related to needs for healthier foods and market obstacles to meeting this demand. The Wallace Center, the National Good Food Network, and local partners -- the Good Natured Family Farms marketing cooperative and Kansas City's Buy Fresh Buy Local effort -- were also involved in organizing the regional convening of good food interests.

One of the most powerful points in the conference came as large employers, like the Kansas City's regional Federal Reserve offices, area hospitals, and locally based Hallmark Cards talked about the direct connection between food quality and employee quality. The large companies are self-insured and looking for ways to reduce health care costs and improve productivity, Crooks said.

"With better food, people are happier, productivity goes up, health care costs go down, days off are down ... these large employers are absolutely measuring those outcomes," he said.

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Good Food Policy Progress in the Great Lakes

Recent activity across the nation on policy to promote regional market linkages between farms and consumers includes movement of a bill in Illinois on farmers' market supports and a draft good food policy agenda up for comment in Michigan.

In Illinois, the House Human Services Committee recently passed the Farmers' Market Technology Improvement Act, which would help farmers' markets install the electronic equipment necessary for low-income families to use their debit-like food assistance cards at farmers' markets. This step toward electronic benefits at farmers' markets helps develop the larger supply chains needed for good food by increasing local food commerce, awareness, and accessibility.

The full Illinois House, and later the Senate, must still act on the bill, which comes out of a comprehensive set of recommendations from a statewide task force on Illinois Local Food, Farms, and Jobs. Already this task force's work has resulted in the Illinois Local Food, Farms and Jobs Act, signed into law last year. The Act includes local food procurement targets for publicly funded entities to reach 10 percent by 2020.

The potential to reach that goal is growing as events like the recent FamilyFarmed Expo in Chicago draw hundreds of farms, distributors, consumers, institutional food buyers and others together for the annual trade show and policy gathering. This year's Expo featured a special farm finance track among others and comments from USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

In Michigan, the state-level food policy council and partners at Michigan State University and the Michigan Food Bank Council presented a draft policy agenda at the recent Michigan Good Food Summit. Nearly 400 people attended the event, focused on developing a common Michigan Good Food Charter and rolling it out during this election year. Due to term limits, the state's voters will replace not only Michigan's governor but also 29 of 38 senators and 34 of 110 representatives.

The final Michigan Good Food Charter is due out by late May with comment opportunities open through April on draft strategies around 1) Healthy food access 2) youth engagement 3) institutional food purchasing 4) farm viability and development and 5) food system infrastructure. Summaries of draft priorities from these five work groups are available at the Charter's web site, michiganfood.org.

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Food Safety Report

Each month, Steve Warshawer, food safety coordinator for the National Good Food Network, writes a regular column on the status of new and changing food safety regulations. A farmer and food distributor, Steve is focused on the challenge of developing food safety rules that work for food producers as well as food regulators.

Global GAP Group Certification Pilot Programs Begin

Several National Good Food Network groups who are, or seek to be, suppliers to food service distributor Sysco are working to establish group certification pilot programs along the lines of those in place in Europe under the Global GAP system. 

The core of such programs is the development of a quality management system that applies to all members of the group, and a rigorous method of training and reporting to assure that the plan is fully implemented by all members.  The internal reporting and data gathering process, under the guidance of a trained, food safety professional, reduces dramatically the burden and cost for each individual farm, while also reducing the workload of external auditors.

NSF/Davis Fresh: An Alternative GAP Program

An alternative approach to verifying farms and food handlers under USDA's Good Agricultural Practices standards (GAP) is now in development by NSF/Davis Fresh, a division of NSF International. The global nongovernmental organization is accredited by GlobalGAP as a certification body and provides training and auditing services in the United States.

NSF is proposing a tiered approach to building capacity and verification of on-farm food safety practices. The NSF approach begins with a training and registration step that is prior to GlobalGAP’s “first level” which is “primary Farm assurance.”  The steps in continuous improvement beyond that entry-level point parallel those of GlobalGAP.

The effort focus on building buyer confidence in more voluntary approaches to food safety that can be more affordable and workable for smaller and mid-size farms.  With increased buyer acceptance will come the opportunity to educate consumers about the effectiveness of the public/private partnership to enhance food safety.  Only through effective implementation of on farm food safety standards in a fashion that is acceptable to buyers and ultimately restores consumer confidence in food safety will the current wave of demand for more and more regulation begin to recede.

Legislative / Regulatory Update

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) continues to cultivate support for amendments to the U.S. Senate's food safety bill, S. 510, that address 4 remaining areas of concern to sustainable and organic farmers and their supporters.

Early last week, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, announced his intention to move S. 510 to the Senate floor before the Easter Recess if possible, and be on President Obama’s desk by May.  NSAC organized a “farmer fly-in” on March 8 and 9 to help highlight the concerns of sustainable and organic farmers.

FDA has opened a docket for public comment/response to a series of questions that it wishes to consider as it moves forward in preparation for development of produce food safety guidelines. For more on this, see the related story, above.

GAP Harmonization initiative

As described in last month’s food safety update, the a national technical working group continues to meet regularly and is now deep into “reconciling” the details of some dozen GAP standards on the table in the groups work to harmonize these standards. The technical working group will provide a report will in mid April to a steering committee that formed after the 2009 Global Conference on Food Safety Standards. The goal is to have a complete draft to the steering committee by October.  United Fresh updates its website with details of each technical working group meeting. The most recent updates are from the Feb 17-18 meeting in Weslaco, Texas.  The group met again March 10-11 in Irvine, Calif.

New Idea: Co-management for Food Safety and Ecological Health

The concept of “co-management” incorporates the idea that food safety programs should be developed in a manner that considers and minimizes impacts to ecological health, and that resource conservation measures should be carefully calibrated to minimize any increase in risk of pathogenic contamination of harvested crops. A report from the Produce Safety Project analyzes co-management in depth.

Wild Farm Alliance, a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Organic Coalition, is working with collaborators toward a possible Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) to foster development of resources and information on how to co-manage for food safety and conservation objectives. This step is important because much of the support for conservation practices on the farm originates administratively at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which has not previously had experience in food safety.

The “Perishable Pundit” includes an excellent executive summary of the produce safety project report, as well as well-articulated concerns.

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Good Food Media Digest

FOOD SAFETY

• CDC Uses Shopper Cards to Determine Source of Salmonella Outbreak
  Shopper cards helped the CDC to trace which specific products caused a recent outbreak.  Salmonella Montevideo is such a common food borne bacterium, it is difficult to quickly characterize outbreaks.  The CDC determined from reports by effected patients that the source of the outbreak was some tainted salami, and a follow up study using purchase data collected from purchase records tied to shopper cards allowed to CDC to pinpoint the brand and initial geographic location of the outbreak.  Although this approach has been tried before by health agencies, the degree of success in this case could help officials understand how to use the data from shopper cards as a valuable food safety tool. [Sources: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/03/cdc-traces-outbreak-with-shopper-cards/ ; http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm202128.htm ]
• FDA Releases “Front of Package Violations” and Course of Action
  In an effort to increase transparency, the FDA’s website features a section detailing the current food industry front-of-package violations.  This comprehensive chart lists, by firm, the particular product that is in violation as well as the type of claim or major topic area, followed by the action taken by the FDA. [Source: http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/ucm202784.htm ]
• True Price of Unsafe Food
  A report by a former FDA economist, Robert Scharff, calculates that food-borne illnesses cost the US $152 billion per year.  This is an average cost of $1,850 every time a person becomes sick from food.  These costs include medical attention, death, disability and loss of work.  His report is jointly sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust’s Produce Safety Project and Georgetown University.  [Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-03-03-food-borne-illness_N.htm The USDA’s Economic Research Service also has information regarding the costs of illness and premature death factored by food-borne disease: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodborneIllness/ ]
• Federal Law Address the Treatment of Livestock Animals on Farms
  Two California Representatives are co-sponsoring the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (H.R. 4733) which, if passed, will require all meat purchases made by, or for, federal programs be from animals that were raised with enough room to “stand up, lie down, turn around and stretch their limbs.”  This Act follows other similar legislation in seven states that have been able to pass laws beginning to phase out the most extreme industrial farm animal confinement. [Source: http://www.agri-pulse.com/uploaded/20100304D1.pdf ]
  

POLICY

• Public Response High on GE Alfalfa Debate
  Monsanto Corporation has released a new genetically engineered Roundup Ready alfalfa, and it has been awaiting final approval by the USDA. There was an overwhelming response from consumers,  producers, and organic industry leaders, indicating a thriving good food communications network. [ Source: http://www.nationalorganiccoalition.org/GEalfalfaPressRelease1March2010.pdf ]

FOOD AND BUSINESS

• Wal-Mart Introduces Plan to Make Supply Chain More Sustainable
  Twenty million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions could be cut from total emissions with Wal-Mart’s new supply chain plan, the equivalent of 3.8 million cars taken off the road for one year.  To begin to accomplish this goal, the company is targeting categories of products that have the highest embedded carbon: milk, bread, meat and clothing.  Wal-Mart plans to work with suppliers of these products to develop more ecologically efficient ways of producing, packaging and transporting goods. [Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/business/energy-environment/26walmart.html ]

• Chipotle To Senate: Business Opportunities Exist for Good Food
  Steve Ells, co-CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. spoke at a US Senate briefing, explaining how restaurants and food companies can be very successful without supporting the use of antibiotics in livestock.  This presentation was in support of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which proposes the ban of sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals. [Source: http://www.htrends.com/article44097.html ]
  

FOOD AND HEALTH

• USDA Joins National Obesity Research Coalition
  The USDA joined the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR), a public-private collaboration researching childhood obesity’s trends and possible prevention tactics.  This collaboration was launched a year ago by The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).  USDA’s involvement includes a pledge of $25 million for childhood obesity prevention research grants from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). [Source: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010/02/0085.xml ]
  

FOOD ACCESS

• NY Grocery Chain Offers Discounted Transportation Passes
  Price Chopper’s new program could make grocery shopping more accessible in Albany, NY.  Every $50 spent on groceries enables customers to get $2 off the price of a prepaid transportation pass.  “We think it’s the first such arrangement in the country…where a regional supermarket partners with a regional transit authority.”  [Source: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=906724 ]
• Illinois Farmer’s Market Technology Improvement Act
  Newly passed state legislation in Illinois will help create the necessary infrastructure for Farmer’s Markets to accept federal and state electronic balance transfers at Farmer’s Markets.  This will allow Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women Infants and Children (WIC) recipients to use their benefits to buy local food from local producers. For more on this, see the story above.[Source: http://www.illinoisagconnection.com/story-state.php?Id=162&yr=2010 ]
• New Food Environment Atlas
  USDA’s Economic Research Service unveiled a new tool that helps to visualize the issues of food access throughout the country.  This free tool is available on the web and can be used to create maps that assemble county-level statistics on food choices, health and well-being and community characteristics.  [Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/foodatlas/ ]
  

GRANTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

• Pepsi Refresh Grant
  
• Farmer’s Markets and Local Marketing Grant from AMS
• Food Security Tour to Belo Horizonte, Brazil with Ryerson University
  
• Bank of America Foundation Neighborhood Grants
• USDA Risk Management Grants

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Add your profile to the NGFN Database

Are you part of a food and farm initiative that more people should know about? Are you skilled or knowledgeable in an area of this work and ready to be part of it? Do you have some research to share? Then create your profile on ngfn.org to make sure your work shows up in the National Good Food Network's database of experts, organizations, and information. The database is just starting. Help it grow into the comprehensive clearinghouse we could all use!

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NGFN Media Outlets

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