Subject: Food Bytes #3 (Nov. 4, 1997)
From: alliance@MR.Net (Ronnie Cummins)
Organization: Skidland
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 1997 18:18:24 -0600 (CST)
Message-ID: <MOD$971104.23044@rec.gardens.ecosystems>


FOOD BYTES
News & Analysis on Genetic Engineering & Factory Farming
Issue #3 (November 4, 1997)
by: Ronnie Cummins, Pure Food Campaign USA
email: alliance@mr.net
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1527
____________________________________________________________________
Recent Developments of Note:

* USDA Will Propose Controversial National Organic Standards in November
* Organic Foods Boom as Consumer Food Safety Concerns in US Increase
* Activists in 16 Nations Carry Out Successful Global Days of Action
____________________________________________________________________
USDA To Publish Proposed National Organic Standards in November

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to publish its long-awaited
and controversial federal rules on national organic food standards by
late-November, according to informed sources in Washington. The 600 pages
of proposed regulations will be published in the Federal Register, as
required by law. Following official publication, the public will have 90
days to send in their comments and criticisms on the standards. Comments
will be accepted via email, fax, or regular mail. Under federal statutes
the USDA is required to take into consideration and make available for the
public record all comments submitted by consumers or industry. At the close
of the comment period the USDA will then publish a revised, final version
of the rules for final Congressional approval, with likely implementation
of these regulations by the summer of 1998. As soon as the USDA proposed
standards are published in the Federal Register, you will be informed via
this newsletter. The USDA has announced that it will be posting the full
text of the proposed organic standards on the internet at:
<http://www.ams.usda.gov/tmd/tmdnop.htm>

In 1992 several thousand people submitted official comments in regard to
the FDA's interim rules on gene-altered foods and crops, objecting to the
U.S. government's decision not to require mandatory labeling or special
pre-market safety testing. The Pure Food Campaign estimates that this time
the USDA will need to receive at least 25,000 comments objecting to the
weakening of national organic standards before they become sufficiently
alarmed to even reconsider their proposals.

Under heavy pressure from factory farm and biotechnology interests, the
USDA intends to decisively weaken current organic standards, which are
presently upheld and enforced by 40 private and state organic certification
boards. The most controversial proposed regulations to be put forth in
November by the USDA will include: (1) allowing genetically engineered
foods and crops to be eventually considered on a case-by-case basis as an
allowable "synthetic" and thus be labeled as "organic"; (2) allowing
inhumane, intensive confinement of farm animals, and not explicitly
prohibiting factory farm-style operations; (3) precluding "private label"
and state organic certification programs from upholding and enforcing
stricter organic standards than those required by the USDA.

Finally the USDA plans, according to government sources, to work with the
Congress and the Clinton administration to amend the 1990 Organic Foods
Producion Act so as to weaken or eliminate the present "veto power" of the
National Organic Standards Board, an official advisory group, over what can
be considered as an allowable "synthetic." The fourteen member NOSB
currently supports relatively strict organic standards, at least in
comparison to what the USDA advocates, including a recommended prohibition
on considering genetically engineered foods and crops as an allowable
"synthetic."

As soon as the proposed regulations appear in the Federal Register,
accompanied by an official "docket number," address, email address, and fax
number, the PFC urges everyone to flood the USDA with critical comments.
Natural food stores, farmers markets, and community restaurants are urged
to turn their businesses into centers of letter-writing and activism, and
to mobilize their workers, members, and customers to take action both
during and after the 90 day official comment period.

People sending in their comments by email are urged to make "hard copies"
of these comments as well and mail them in to USDA with the appropriate
address and docket number in Washington, D.C. Sympathetic government
officials have warned that the USDA cannot always be trusted to make an
honest count of all comments received (especially those sent by email) and
to make them available for public inspection by activists, attorneys,
journalists, and other concerned citizens. People are also urged to send
their comments in the form of a constituent letter to their state and
federal legislators, and then to follow this up with a phone call asking
legislators to contact the USDA officials directly and tell them not to
weaken present organic standards and not to take away the power of states
and private certification bodies to uphold stricter standards than the USDA
requires.

Since June, when the USDA handed over its proposed rules to the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), controversy over organic food standards has
been steadily building. (See "Whose Organic Standards: USDA Prepares for an
'Unfriendly Takeover' of the Natural Foods Industry" and "Preserving Strict
Organic Food Standards: Six Steps to Begin 'Live Wire' Networking and
Public Education in Your Local Area" on the PFC website
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1527>. Hundreds of retail food coops,
natural food stores, buying clubs, community-supported agriculture
organizations, organic farmers, community restaurants, public interest
organizations, and natural food manufacturers have vowed to fight USDA
moves to significantly degrade current organic standards, with the Pure
Food Campaign, Greenpeace, Sustain, Mothers for Natural Law and other
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) preparing themselves for an extended
battle on the issue. The PFC and other NGOs, along with a national network
of food coops, have recently launched a campaign called "SOS" (Save Organic
Standards), which is designed to build up a natiowide "Live Wire Network"
of activist-inclined consumers, farmers, progressive retailers,
community-oriented restaurants, and food professionals.

According to Washington insiders, the USDA, the USTR (U.S. Trade
Representative's office), and the OMB have clashed over the USDA's proposed
national organic standards. The OMB has lobbied basically to keep the
current set of (private and state certification) rules in place and not
have national regulations, while the USTR bureaucrats predictably have
argued that we shouldn't have process-based (i.e. genetic engineering etc.)
rules at all, since these types of regulations "inhibit free trade."
Despite these internal disagreements, the USDA viewpoint has prevailed.

The USDA, reacting to unexpectedly determined resistance, has decided on a
more subtle strategy than what they initially envisioned to deal with the
genetically engineered foods controversy. Instead of using relatively
explicit language in the proposed federal rules that would allow
genetically engineered foods to be labeled organic on a case-by-case
basis--a move opposed by nearly everyone in the natural foods industry--the
USDA has decided on a different tactic: basically to use ambiguous language
for the moment (an outright prohibition has never even been seriously
considered) and then wait for Congress to weaken or eliminate altogether
the veto power of the National Organic Standards Board. With the passage of
time the USDA will be able to "stack" the NOSB with more agribusiness and
biotech-friendly appointees. With this more sophisticated strategy the USDA
intends to divide and coopt its critics, including those on the NOSB, get
its new proposed rules in place, and then to lift the gene-foods
prohibition, with or without the support of the NOSB, when it is more
politically convenient.

As organic foods consultant Bill Wolf, past president of the Organic Trade
Association, explained in an article written by Nancy Nachman-Hunt in the
October issue of Natural Business, a leading natural foods industry trade
publication, "since the Clinton administration has come out in favor of
genetic engineering for conventional agriculture, the development of
organic standards has become a battleground for the larger worldwide social
issue... The reason the regulations have been delayed so long is because
they present a difficult issue for the administration." Natural Business
then went on to point out that "If the standards come out banning GMOs in
organic agriculture, the administration's EU policy could backfire."

As soon as the USDA's proposed regulations are published in the Federal
Register, the PFC and other groups will issue a nationwide Action Alert.
Meetings are already being planned for December and January to organize a
nationwide Save Organic Standards (SOS) campaign.

____________________________________________________________________
U.S. Organic Sales Boom as Consumer Alarm Over Food Safety Increases

A hard-hitting new book and several recent national consumer surveys
underline the fact that America's food safety crisis continues.
Predictably the Clinton administration and agribusiness absolutely refuse
to address the underlying cause of the problem (i.e. the industrialization
and globization of food production) and instead are opting for a
authoritarian "solution" that includes stripping away consumers' rights to
know what's been done to their food and using nuclear waste to irradiate
feces and bacterial-contaminated foods. As a corollary to their "nuclear
option," America's food giants, joined by the White House, have launched a
national PR campaign called "Fight BAC" (i.e. Fight Bacteria), which
basically blames consumers for poisoning themselves with unsanitary
hygiene, kitchen, and cooking practices. The only positive note in all this
is that grassroots food activism is increasing and natural and organic food
sales continue to climb.

Nicols Fox's new book, Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth About a Food Chain Gone
Haywire, <http://www.harpercollins.com> provides ample evidence that the
routine U.S. practices of feeding antibiotics, steroids, hormones, rendered
animal parts, and feces to intensively confined animals, using them
essentially "as garbage dumps for agricultural waste" is literally
poisoning the nation and laying the groundwork for disaster. As Fox points
out, by fundamentally industrializing and dehumanizing the way we produce,
process, distribute, store, and prepare food, we are evermore rapidly
moving toward an ecological catastrophe, a "Chernobyl of food safety."
Among other unsavory details illuminated by Fox's book (Harper Collins
Publishers $25.00 in hardback) are the following:

* A top official at the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Morris Potter,
admited publicly in December 1994 that there may be as many as 266 million
cases of food poisoning a year in the USA. And among at least 25% of the
population (the young, the old, the ill, and those with compromised immune
systems) food poisoning can be extremely dangerous, causing chronic
illness, and even death. At least 10,000 people a year die from acute food
poisoning inthe U.S.

* Although many consumers consider it a "healthier" alternative than beef,
poultry is the "most contaminated product Americans bring into their
kitchens," with a 1995 USDA study finding that 99% of broiler chicken
carcasses had detectable fecal e-coli contamination. Other scientific
studies reveal dangerous salmonella and campylobacter contamination on up
to 80% of all chickens, poisoning and seriously injuring millions of
consumers annually.

* A USDA microbiologist told Time magazine that processed chicken is "no
different than if you stuck it in the toilet and ate it." Salmonella fecal
matter in eggs and contaminated raw milk also pose increasing risks.

* The genetically engineered L-tryptophan catastrophe in 1989 (39 dead,
1500 permanently disabled) and the narrowly averted case of allergenic
gene-altered soybeans spliced with Brazil nut DNA nearly going onto the
market in the early 1990s are just the beginnings of what will likely be
another serious health threat, agricultural biotechnology.

* Approximately 3% of all hamburger meat contains the deadly bacterium
e-coli 0157.

* Leading U.S. scientists, including Dr. C. Joseph Gibbs and the late Dr.
Richard Marsh, have warned USDA officials for almost 10 years that a
distinct USA strain of BSE or Mad Cow Disease is likely already present in
American cattle; but top officials, concerned about agribusiness profit
margins, continue to ignore or try to cover up the problem. Another top
scientific expert, Dr. Paul Brown, warned in 1996 that Mad Cow-like
infectious diseases may also be spreading among chickens and pigs.

* Contaminated irrigation water, lack of hygienic facilities for
agricultural workers and food handlers, toxic sewage sludge, and
cross-contamination from filthy meat have now begun to taint even fresh and
frozen fruit and vegetables with dangerous pathogens.

After finishing Nicols' book, Spolied, it comes as no surprise to read in a
recent food industry poll by CMF&Z, a leading public relations firm, that
52% of American consumers say that they are now more concerned about food
safety than ever before <http://www.cmfz.com/foodsafety/>. The survey also
found that only 40% of the public "had confidence" that the government and
the meat industry were doing a good job in regard to food safety, while
73-86% were concerned about safe drinking water, food contamination,
unsanitary food processing, and toxic pesticide residues.

A recent survey of U.S. consumers by Prevention magazine reveals how
concerned consumers are increasingly turning to organic foods. According to
poll results, 28% of Americans are already buying at least some organic
produce, 43% are checking product labels to see if foods are certified as
organic, 35% are willing to pay more for organic foods, 40% would like to
buy organic processed foods, and 51% would be likely to buy organic meat
and poultry if they were labeled as such. A poll by biotech and
pharmaceutical giant Novartis released in February 1997 found 54% of
American consumers stating that they would prefer to see chemical-intensive
agriculture move toward organic production. In the same poll 93% said that
genetically engineered foods should be labeled, with 73% indicating that
they felt "strongly" about this.
____________________________________________________________________
NGOs Carry Out Second Global Days of Action Against Biotechnology Oct. 2-17

Activists in 50 cities and at least 16 nations carried out protests and
public education events during the Second Global Days of Action Against
genetic engineering, life form patenting, and factory farming between
October 2-17. The first Global Days of Action took place in April of 1997.
Countries where GDA or World Food Day actions took place included, among
others, the U.K., Canada, the U.S., Germany, Australia, Japan, Sweden,
Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Netherlands, Hungary,
Ireland, and New Zealand. The most successful and extensive GDA
campaigning, as in April, was in Europe and Japan. (See PFC web site for
more details on events.) Serving as a global media clearinghouse for the
GDA, the Pure Food Campaign received over 100 calls from media
organizations around the world seeking information on the GDA. On World
Food Day, October 16, Greenpeace International organized several
well-publicized events in Luxembourg (where EU environment ministers were
meeting) and France and issued an important position paper entitled
"Genetic Engineering: Too Good to Go Wrong?"
<http://www.greenpeace.org/cbio.html>

End of Food Bytes #3 (November 4, 1997)