Big Food Is Trying to Dupe You Into Loving Industrial Agriculture

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Moms campaigning to raise awareness of pesticide use in industrial agriculture are elitist control freaks; organic farming uses dangerous chemicals too. And those antibiotic-resistant superbugs you’ve been hearing about on factory farms? Don’t worry, the livestock industry has it all under control.

Those are just some of the demonstrably outrageous messages that have been cropping up across the media landscape in relation to the ongoing cultural conversation about the food we eat, how it’s raised, and the effects it has on our health and the health of our environment. As more consumers than ever become aware of the staggering social and ecological costs associated with industrial-scale agriculture, they’ve increasingly been turning to things like organic and locally grown food. Guess who’s none too happy about that?

A report released Tuesday by Real Food Media Project, Friends of the Earth, and U.S. Right to Know details how ag-tech giants such as Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont—not to mention corporate heavy-hitters ranging from Coca-Cola to General Mills and powerful lobbying groups such as the American Beverage Association and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association—are spending millions to try to dissuade consumers from leaving their products behind. They’re intent on assuring you, dear reader, that the chemically laden, environmentally destructive, cost-cutting, GMO-reliant system of industrial farming that dominates American agriculture is all A-OK.

But really, would you trust the CEO of Monsanto telling you that genetically modified crops are not just environmentally friendly but the answer to feeding the world’s hungry? Probably not. What about if that message came from the seemingly friendly folks at the “Center for Food Integrity”?

In an effort to take control of public opinion on issues ranging from the proposed mandatory labeling of GMO ingredients on food packaging to whether organic farming really is more sustainable, the conventional food industry is spending tens of millions of dollars a year trying to get inside your head. Its Trojan horse of choice? Front groups with often deceptively innocuous-sounding names—like Center for Consumer Freedom, Protect the Harvest or Alliance for Food, and Farming.

“The food industry is using a host of covert communication tactics to shape public opinion without most people realizing the stories are being shaped behind the scenes to promote corporate interests,” Anna Lappé, founder of the Real Food Media Project, said in a statement.

The eye-opening report can only just begin to document the extent to which these front groups, funded in most cases exclusively by the food corporations and overseen by boards of directors packed with industry insiders, are waging a stealth campaign to counter growing consumer wariness about conventional agriculture. Their tactics go far beyond supplying industry-friendly spokespeople as sources for journalists. The Alliance for Food and Farming, for example, launched a website, SafeFruitsandVeggies.com, that greets viewers with the message “Your fruits and veggies are safer than you think,” while Keep Food Affordable has sponsored conferences for the BlogHer Network with the intent of helping so-called mommy bloggers to “sort through the myths” and “gather third-party facts” about the safety of the conventional food supply. Meanwhile, neither group makes clear that it is founded and funded by Big Ag.

The report is worth reading, if only to remind ourselves just how insidious the PR machinations of big food and Big Ag can be.

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Republicans push back against proposed dietary guidelines

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Republicans are pushing back against proposed dietary guidelines that urge Americans to consider the environment when deciding what foods to eat.

House and Senate spending bills say the guidelines must focus only on nutrition and diet. That’s a clear effort to thwart a recommendation by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee that eating a diet higher in vegetables and other plant-based foods is better for the environment than eating a diet based more on foods from animals.

The advice from a government advisory panel of independent doctors and nutrition experts has raised the ire of the meat industry.

The dietary guidelines come out every five years, and the government advice informs everything from school lunches and food package labels to advice from your doctor. The departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services are expected to issue a final version by year’s end based on the advisory committee’s February recommendations.

While the guidelines always have been subject to intense lobbying by food industries, this year’s version has set off unprecedented political debate, fueled by Republicans’ claims the Obama administration has gone too far in telling people what to eat.

The advisory panel also suggested a tax on sugary drinks and snacks as one way people could be coaxed into eating better. That idea angered beverage companies and conservatives in Congress.

Two spending bills in the House would set a new threshold for the science that can be used in setting the guidelines, saying the government only can make recommendations based on the strongest science. One of the bills was approved by a spending subcommittee last week, while the other was approved by the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., offered an amendment to strike the dietary guidelines language from the bill but it was rejected.

The guidelines panel had used three grades to determine the strength of the science supporting its recommendations: Grade 1 is strong, Grade 2 is moderate and Grade 3 is limited.

The advisory committee sent a letter to lawmakers Tuesday strongly opposing the legislation.

“I don’t think public policy should be driven by the economic interests or the lobbyists,” panel chairman Barbara Millen said in an interview. “It needs to be driven by science, and good science.”

Millen said “strong” recommendations are unlikely to change over the years and are much harder to come by with limited research dollars.

The recommendation that a more plant-based diet is better for the environment is based on science rated “moderate” in the report. The moderate threshold means there’s a strong body of scientific evidence to support the recommendation, but it’s not as conclusive.

“Research evolves and we expect it to change,” Millen said. “That doesn’t negate the importance of a large body of consistent data that may have limitations of a certain kind.”

Rep. Robert Aderholt, the author of one of the House bills, said the goal “should not be to ‘dumb down’ the standards but instead increase the science certainty of each guideline.” Aderholt, R-Ala., also has pushed back against healthier school lunch rules, and his bill tries to delay federal menu labeling requirements.

Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the author of the other House spending bill, said the advisory committee had “enormously expanded” the scope of the guidelines.

The bill has frustrated groups such as the American Cancer Society, which says the legislation could strip the dietary guidelines of a recommendation that reducing consumption of red meat and processed meats can lower the risk of colon cancer. The cancer society’s own guidelines have long urged people to take the same step.

“We wouldn’t make that recommendation in our own guidelines if we didn’t feel that the evidence was convincing,” said Gregg Haifley of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Based on the Grade 1 parameters, the guidelines also may be prevented from making recommendations on physical activity, including advising increased exercise based on its benefits for heart health and other disease prevention. It could also prevent the panel’s recommendations on package labeling and health and wellness in the workplace.

A Senate bill overseeing spending for the Health and Human Services Department is vaguer, saying the guidelines must be “based only on a preponderance of nutritional and scientific evidence and not extraneous information.”

Read Full Article: AP

Federal cafeterias to serve meat with fewer antibiotics

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s effort to curb the use of antibiotics in meat is starting with his own employees.

The White House said Tuesday that many federal cafeterias will start buying meat and poultry produced with fewer antibiotics later this year. The directive would apply to all of those civilian government restaurants within five years.

The announcement is part of a White House summit on the responsible use of antibiotics. The Obama administration announced a plan earlier this year to fight the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Repeated exposure to antibiotics can lead germs to become resistant to the drugs, so that they are no longer effective. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that drug-resistant bacteria cause 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses each year in the United States.

Obama has said such drug-resistant bacteria are one of the most serious public health issues and asked Congress to increase funding to fight the problem.

Critics said the White House needs to go further, particularly in terms of the antibiotics used in animals processed for meat. The Food and Drug Administration has already successfully encouraged many drug companies to phase out the use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion. But advocacy groups have called on the agency to limit other uses of animal antibiotics as well, such as for disease prevention when holding animals in crowded conditions.

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Walmart, Nation’s Biggest Food Seller, Adopts Five Freedom Principles for Farm Animals

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This morning, Walmart, one of the world’s biggest companies–and the nation’s biggest food seller by a long shot–announced it has adopted the “five freedoms” principles for farm animals, effectively renouncing the use of extreme confinement and other abusive practices in animal agriculture, and signaling an extraordinary change in agriculture in America. Precisely because it’s Walmart, this is the most definitive statement yet that the era of confining farm animals in cages will come to an end. We applaud the company for adopting a comprehensive animal welfare policy, which comes on the heels of declarations and pledges from dozens of other major food retailers against gestation crates, battery cages, and tail docking of dairy cows.

Walmart is calling on its suppliers to, among other actions, work toward ensuring that animals 1) are raised in ways that allow them to engage in natural behaviors, including having sufficient space and socialization with other members of their species; 2) are provided more comfortable living conditions; 3) are free from painful mutilations; 4) are spared mental discomfort or distress; and 5) are given ready access to water and feed. These changes, so grounded in common sense, would nonetheless herald major improvements over how much of agribusiness currently treats animals.

With these principles in mind, Walmart singles out the confinement of hens in battery cages, sows in gestation crates, and calves in veal crates as practices that must end. Walmart is also working with its suppliers to address the welfare issues surrounding painful mutilations like tail docking, dehorning, castration, and to move to slaughter systems that don’t cause as much pain.

This policy applies for all of Walmart’s U.S. operations and includes its subsidiary Sam’s Club. With the company capturing a staggering 25 percent of the grocery market, there’s no greater agent of change within our country’s food system.

As Walmart says, this announcement is part of its pledge to continually improve farm animal welfare. In other words: it’s a first step–and like all first steps, there’s room for more. For example, Walmart doesn’t yet have timelines for getting animals out of cages, or for achieving its commitments on other welfare issues–something we hope to solve with the company.

Timelines aside, this announcement helps create an economy where no agribusiness company–for business reasons alone–should ever again install a new battery cage, gestation crate, or veal crate. Walmart is helping drive the transition away from immobilizing cages and other inhumane practices, and toward a more humane, more sustainable approach to production agriculture.

This is an unstoppable trend, and that was the trajectory even before Walmart made the announcement. The company’s embrace of a more ethical framework for the treatment of all farm animals serves as perhaps the most powerful catalyst for change throughout animal agriculture.

Read Full Article: The Huffington Post

Wal-Mart presses meat suppliers on antibiotics, treatment

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NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest food retailer, is urging its thousands of U.S. suppliers to curb the use of antibiotics in farm animals and improve treatment of them.

That means asking meat producers, eggs suppliers and others to use antibiotics only for disease prevention or treatment, not to fatten their animals, a common industry practice.

The guidelines also aim to get suppliers to stop using sow gestation crates and other housing that doesn’t give animals enough space. They’re also being asked to avoid painful procedures like de-horning or castration without proper pain management.

The push is part of an industry trend responding to shoppers who want to know more about where their food comes from and are choosing foods they see as more healthy or natural. It comes after activists have reported animal abuse at farms supplying Wal-Mart and other major companies.

Wal-Mart wants suppliers to provide it with an annual report and publicly report their progress on their own websites. It’s also pressuring suppliers to report animal abuse to authorities and take disciplinary action.

Kathleen McLaughlin, senior vice president of Wal-Mart’s sustainability division, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday that the retailer is not putting deadlines on suppliers and the steps aren’t mandatory.

Still, Wal-Mart’s size gives it big influence on its suppliers’ practices, and changes it pushes can affect products at all stores.

“We think what’s needed is a fresh look at how we can look at producing food. This is an industrywide change. It won’t happen overnight,” she said. “It’s about transparency. We don’t know a lot about who was using what for what reason.”

The guidelines, which apply not only to suppliers to Wal-Mart stores but also to Sam’s Club, are part of the company’s pledge to make its food system more eco-friendly and improve food safety.

Wal-Mart said its own research showed 77 percent of its shoppers said they will increase their trust and 66 percent will increase their likelihood to shop at a retailer that improves the treatment of livestock.

Wal-Mart is facing pressure from critics like Mercy for Animals, a national animal rights group that has conducted six investigations over the past few years on farms that supply pork to Wal-Mart. It found many instances of pigs being hit and punched with metal cans, according to Ari Solomon, a spokesman for the group.

The group leaked a video of mistreatment at an Oklahoma hog farm in 2013. In that video, pigs were seen being pummeled with sheets of wood, and pregnant sows were caged in such small spaces they could barely move. After that, Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart terminated the contract with the supplier.

Solomon said that Wal-Mart has been one of the last remaining major retailers to take a stance against “gestation” crates. “This is quickly going out of vogue,” he said.

In July 2014, Wal-Mart announced it was requiring its fresh pork suppliers to have video monitoring for sow farms and would be subject to unannounced animal welfare video audits by a third party.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Gardner said that requirement wasn’t in reaction to the video, but to “address the industry topic in general.”

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman at Tyson Foods Inc., based in Springdale, Arkansas, told The Associated Press that it was making “significant progress” in the areas of antibiotic use and animal well-being.

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Meat demand sparks dramatic rise in antibiotic use – report

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Demand for meat across the world has caused a sharp increase in farmers’ use of antibiotics, with China and the United States at the top of the list. The use of antimicrobial drugs is projected to rise drastically by 2030.

Pig farmers use four times as many drugs as cattle ranchers, with poultry farms falling somewhere in between, says a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week. China, the world’s largest pork producer, is also the world’s biggest consumer of antibiotics in farming. The US comes in second, consuming 10 percent, while Brazil, India and Germany round off the top five.

The study says that farmers around the world used over 63,000 tons of antibiotics to raise livestock in 2010 and projected the number will rise to over 105,000 tons by 2030. Antimicrobials are used to boost and accelerate growth in animals, as well as keep them healthy while penned up in barely sanitary industrial farms.

“We’ve found that when animals have good nutrition, good genetics and there is good hygiene on the farm, the added value of antibiotics is quite minimal,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics Economics & Policy in Washington DC.

While cattle take a while to build up herds, poultry and pigs can be raised quickly and in confined spaces, explained Timothy Robinson, principal scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute and one of the authors of the study.

In most of the world, researchers say, there are few if any laws regulating the use of antibiotics in farming. The European Union has strict laws against growth-boosting drugs, but allows farmers to treat animals to prevent disease. In the US, farming accounts for 80 percent of all antibiotics used. The Food and Drug Administration has urged a halt to using human antibiotics on livestock since 2013, following a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showing that at least 23,000 Americans die every year from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

“Antimicrobial resistance is a tragedy of the commons, but with more direct individual effect than climate change,” said the study’s lead author, Princeton University ecologist Thomas Van Boeckel.

Several major US restaurant chains have sworn off antibiotic-treated meat. Chipotle has suspended the sale of pork at many of its locations since January, after its supplier was unable to meet demand using only humanely-raised pigs.

Read Full Article: RT

A fifth of schizophrenia cases ‘may be attributable to T. gondii infection’

A parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis – Toxoplasma gondii – may be involved in the cause of around a fifth of schizophrenia cases in the US. This is according to a new study published in the journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that around 60 million people in the US may be infected with T. gondii. Infection most commonly occurs through eating undercooked, contaminated meat, drinking contaminated water and coming into contact with cat feces that contain T. gondii.

Most people with T. gondii infection are unaware they have it; people with healthy immune systems are usually able to stop the parasite causing illness. But for those with weaker immune systems, such as older people, pregnant women and those with immune system disorders, the parasite can cause toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasmosis a disease characterized by flu-like symptoms, including swollen lymph glands and muscle aches and pains. In severe cases, toxoplasmosis can cause damage to the eyes, brain and other organs.

Some studies, however, have linked T. gondii infection to mental health conditions. In 2012, for example, Medical News Today reported on a study linking T. gondi to increased risk of self-harm or suicide among new mothers.

More recently, studies have linked T. gondii infection to schizophrenia, and some have found that antipsychotic medication may even stop the parasite from replicating. But such research has been met with much criticism.

In this latest study, Gary Smith, of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to gain a better understanding of the link between T. gondii infection and schizophrenia.

Link between T. gondii and schizophrenia ‘should be considered, not ridiculed’

Smith wanted to determine the proportion of schizophrenia cases that could be attributable to T.gondii infection. He did this by calculating the population attributable fraction (PAF) – a measure used by epidemiologists to understand the importance of a risk factor.

“In other words,” explains Smith, “we ask, if you could stop infections with this parasite, how many [schizophrenia] cases could you prevent?”

Read Full Article: Medical News Today

Vegetarians have much lower sperm counts

Vegetarians and vegans may be harming their chance of having children after a study found that men who do not eat meat have significantly reduced sperm counts.

Although a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables can protect against many illnesses and can prolong life, it appears that it may also harm fertility.

Researchers at Loma Linda University Medical School, in southern California, embarked on a four-year project to find out how diets affect sperm.

The region has a high population of Seventh-Day Adventist Christians who believe that meat is impure and so are strict vegetarians.

Seventh-day Adventists live an average of 10 years longer than the American life expectancy of about 79 years and the researchers wanted to find out if their astonishing longevity might be linked to sperm quality.

However they found the opposite. Vegetarians and vegans had significantly lower sperm counts compared with meat eaters, 50 million sperm per ml compared with 70 million per ml.

They also had lower average sperm motility – the number of sperm which are active. Only one third of sperm were active for vegetarians and vegans compared with nearly 60 per cent for meat eaters.

The team believes that vitamin deficiencies may be to blame but also believe that replacing meat with soy could be responsible.

“We found that diet does significantly affect sperm quality. Vegetarian and vegan diets were associated with much lower sperm counts than omnivorous diets,” said Dr Eliza Orzylowska an obstetrician at Loma Linda University Medical Centre in California.

“Although these people are not infertile, in is likely to play a factor in conception, particularly for couples who are trying to conceive naturally. the old fashioned way.”

One factor could be diets rich in soy, the researchers hypothesis. Soy contains phyto-oestrogens which have similar properties to the female hormone oestrogen.

“The theory that we have come up with is that vegetarians are replacing meat with soy, which contains phytooestrogens and could be affecting fertility,” added Dr Orzylowska.

“For children who have grown up with those kind of diets, it may have impacted on sperm quality from puberty.

“It’s hard to tell people not to be vegetarians if they are trying to conceive, but I would caution against using soy, at least for 74 days beforehand, which is the time it takes for sperm to be replaced.”

The researchers also think that vegetarians and vegans may be deficient in vitamin b12. The study compared 443 meat eaters with 26 vegetarians and five vegans.

Separate research from Harvard University also found that a diet high in fruit and vegetables may impact fertility because men are consuming high quantities of pesticides.

Jorge Chavarro of Harvard University, one of the authors on the paper.

said: “There has been a lot of interest on whether pesticides may impact fertility in general.

“There is some evidence that both occupational and environmental exposure may have an adverse impact on male fertility.

“On the one hand, fruit and vegetables may have a positive effect on fertility, especially fruits very high in antioxidants.”

But he warned that pesticides in the fruit and vegetables could potentially have “opposing influences” on the good effects of antioxidants and other benefits.

The study looked at the sperm quality of 155 men who visited the Massachussetts General Fertility Centre between 2007 – 2012.

Researchers calculated whether men were likely to be high pesticide absorbers or low or medium pesticide absorbers using a US national database which evaluates how much pesticide residue is expected to remain on various foods, depending on how they are usually eaten.

An apple would be tested with its skin on, but an orange peeled.

Those with the highest intake of fruit and vegetables had 70 per cent lower quality and 68 per cent lower sperm motility.

“We found men who had the highest intakes of fruit and vegetables high in pesticide residues tended to have lower sperm quality, specifically lower total normal count and mobile count” said Dr Chavarro.

Foods considered high in pesticides include celery. Those considered low include avocados.

Both studies will be presented at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in Hawaii.

-The Telegraph