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Salon
By Martha Rosenberg, Alternet

So far, 2012 is bringing bad news for people who don’t want “free antibiotics” in their food.

ntibiotics are routinely given to livestock on factory farms to make them gain weight with less feed and keep them from getting sick in confinement conditions. But the daily dosing, at the same time it lowers feed needs, lowers drug effectiveness and produces antibiotic resistant bacteria or super bugs that can be deadly to people.

This month, researchers found 230 out of 395 pork cuts bought in U.S. stores were contaminated with a super bug called MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Worse — there were “no statistically significant differences” between “conventionally raised swine and swine raised without antibiotics,” reported the researchers.

Why would meat labeled “raised without antibiotics” be as full of super bugs as conventional and factory farmed meat? It can be contaminated with MRSA at the farm, by slaughterhouse workers who carry MRSA or by other meat, if processing equipment is not “cleaned out between runs of certified organic and non-certified organic meats,” say the researchers. A 2009 study of swine workers in Iowa and Illinois found that almost half carried MRSA.

And last month, the FDA scrapped its three-decade-long effort to regulate the use of the popular human antibiotics penicillin and tetracycline in livestock. While the FDA says in the announcement that it “remains concerned about the issue of antimicrobial resistance,” it also says “contested, formal withdrawal proceedings” consume too much of its time and money. For example, withdrawing nitrofurans from livestock use took 20 years, DES (diethylstilbestrol) took seven years and enrofloxacin took five years and cost $3.3 million, says the agency. Hey, we’re just the government that makes the laws and enforces them. They’re Big Meat!

Cynics might have seen the concession to Big Meat coming when a report from a USDA-contracted researcher that asserted that MRSA kills more Americans per year than AIDS “disappeared” from the National Agricultural Library Web site last summer with no explanation, says reporter Tom Philpott. Of course, MRSA is only one antibiotic-resistant germ and not even the one clinicians fear the most anymore. Clinicians also worry about vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), encouraged by the use of the antibiotic virginiamycin in livestock; Clostridium difficile, a serious intestinal bug developing resistance; and resistant Acinetobacter baumannii which has so afflicted U.S. troops in Iraq it has been dubbed “Iraqibacter.”

And days after the penicillin announcement, there was another concession. The FDA issued new, watered down rules on the use of cephalosporins in livestock (a different type of antibiotic) after Big Meat muscled down the FDA’s original order to prohibit cephalosporins in 2008 (which also disappeared with little explanation). Cephalosporins are antibiotics like Cefzil and Keflex used for pneumonia, strep throat, salmonella and skin and urinary tract infections in humans and one type of antibiotic that Clostridium difficile is developing tolerance to. Over a million human salmonella infections occur in the U.S. every year, resulting in 16,000 people being hospitalized and nearly 600 deaths, reported the Harford Advocate.

In 2008, the FDA announced that there was “evidence that extralabel use of these drugs [cephalosporins] in food-producing animals will likely cause an adverse event in humans and, as such, presents a risk to the public health,” and called for their prohibition. Notice the FDA says “will likely cause” not “could likely cause” and “presents a risk” not “could present a risk”?

But by the time hearings were held two months later and lobbyists had worked their magic, the “Cephalosporin Order of Prohibition,” had somehow become a “Hearing to Review the Advances in Animal Health Within the Livestock Industry.” Prohibition — advances, same idea, right?

At the hearings, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the Animal Health Institute, a Big Pharma trade group and the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries whined that they could not “farm” without antibiotics because more feed would be required and the animals would get sick from being immobilized over their own manure.

“To raise turkeys without antibiotics would increase the incidence of illness in turkey flocks,” sniveled the National Turkey Federation’s Michael Rybolt. Antibiotics “reduce the level of potentially harmful bacteria which result in infections and sickness,” contended the National Milk Producers Federation Robert D. Byrne (key word, “potential”). Antibiotics decrease the amount of land needed to raise animals and provide a lower-priced “wholesome” product for the public, said one farm operator after another. One even claimed that manure is reduced because animals eat less. In their twisted thinking that would make factory farming green.

While most ag reps at the hearings defended the use of antibiotics for “treatment, prevention and control of disease,” the AVMA’s Christine Hoang actually went so far as to call the less feed that antibiotics make possible a “health-promoting” effect and a “therapeutic use.” Maybe she meant health and therapy for the bottom line.

After the hearings, W. Ron DeHaven, who was the USDA’s top vet before leaving for industry and helming the AVMA, penned a rambling, almost incoherent 18-page letter with 62 footnotes to the FDA. Cephalosporin-resistant “human pathogens” aren’t increasing, says the letter, and even if they are, they’re not affecting human health and even they’re affecting human health, how do you know it’s from the livestock drugs and even if it’s from the livestock drugs, the FDA has no legal authority to ban cephalosporin. Got that?

Alternately maudlin and accusatory, the letter plays on terrorism fears by calling a cephalosporin ban a “food security issue” affecting “the number of animals available for the food supply.” It also plays on humanitarian sentiments by claiming a ban would impede veterinarians’ ability “to relieve the pain and suffering of animals” as if cephalosporins are painkillers and other drugs aren’t available. (And as if antibiotics are given for animals’ welfare instead of revenue welfare.)

Nowhere in the letter is mention of the reason Big Meat won’t let go of antibiotics: The industry is able to raise thousands of animals in crowded conditions that would otherwise kill them for prices as “artificial” as the drugs they are raised on. Big Pharma’s invasion into farming is probably the biggest reason for the demise of family farms which are no longer able to compete in price.

But less than a month after the letter was sent, on November 25, the FDA quietly revoked the prohibition. Good hire, AVMA!

Of course, the revolving door between government/Big Pharma lobbying has a distinguished tradition from Louisiana representative-turned-lobbyist, Billy Tauzin, who presided over the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) until 2010, to former CDC Director Julie Gerberding, who presided over the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak and turned up as — anybody? — head of Merck vaccines when she left the government.

It was not a great surprise that the FDA’s new cephalosporin livestock rules, four years later, had the Agribusiness Seal of Approval. “We thought the original order was too broad and unnecessarily prohibited uses that were not likely to cause problems for human health,” said AVMA’s Dr. Hoang, perhaps tempted to take a bow.

The new rules, which no longer ban cephalosporins, limit “large and lengthy dosing in cattle and swine,” says the New York Times, but allow uses “the F.D.A. has not specifically approved,” and wide use in ducks and rabbits. Yum. Still, the new rules prohibit one unsavory factory farming practice that few are aware of–the “routine injections of cephalosporins into chicken eggs.”

In 2008, while inspecting egg operations, the FDA caught hatcheries injecting cephalosporins directly into chicken eggs, “rather than by the approved method of administering the drug to day-old chicks.” The same year, Tyson Foods was caught injecting eggs with a different antibiotic, the human antibiotic gentamicin, linked to serious side effects. Tyson especially had egg on its face, because the previous year the government disallowed its slogan “Raised Without Antibiotics,” because the ionophores it adds to poultry feed are antibiotics. Ionophores are antibiotics added to poultry and cattle feed for the same “feed efficiency” as produced with other antibiotics but they are not used in humans. Tyson had just backpedaled into the new phrase, “Raised Without Antibiotics That Impact Antibiotic Resistance In Humans,” when it was caught playing fast and loose with gentamicin. Oops.

Several scientific journals report that antibiotics injected into the eggs of layer hens before they hatch produce drug residues in the eggs they lay.

The abuse of antibiotics on farms was one of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s last stands. “It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs,” he wrote in a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (PAMTA), which has yet to pass. “These precious drugs aren’t even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America,” said Kennedy years before this month’s report on MRSA-contaminated pork. The meat industry, “is rampantly misusing antibiotics in an attempt to cover up filthy, unsanitary living conditions among animals,” echoed Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., who cosponsored the bill and holds degrees in microbiology and public health.

Over 70 percent of antibiotics go to livestock, not people, says the bill and they are used on over 83 percent of grower-finisher swine farms, cattle feedlots, and sheep farms and found in 48 percent of U.S. streams.

Of course, it’s no surprise that Big Meat denies the dangers of antibiotic resistance and/or its part in it and opposes PAMTA. “We don’t believe we are the main cause of antibiotic resistance,” Dave Warner, the National Pork Producers Council’s communications director told Johns Hopkins Magazine. Doctors who overprescribe antibiotics are the culprit, claims Warner, since “There are only 67,000 pork producers.” Only?

The chicken industry also pleads innocent. “We believe our use is responsible and limited,” Richard Lobb, public relations director for the National Chicken Council, told the Hartford Advocate.

What is a surprise is that Big Pharma, supposed medical professionals, is also “flat earth” when it comes to antibiotic resistance. Elanco, the animal division of Eli Lilly, says that, “Monitoring antibiotic resistance in raw meat products is not an appropriate measure to represent the bacteria that reach the consumer,” in an online brochure, “because cooking destroys these bacteria, and dead bacteria cannot transmit antibiotic resistance.” Plus–who minds germs in their food if the germs are dead? Elanco also asserts, in the brochure, that livestock antibiotics keep occurrences of “food poisoning” down as if food poisoning were unrelated to farm conditions! In fact the size and industrialization of US factory farms is such a factor in food poisoning, it drove the passage of new federal food safety laws in 2010.

The Animal Health Institute, representing Abbott, Bayer Healthcare, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Elanco/Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer is even more flat earth.

“There is no scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have any significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people,” it deadpans in a brochure created specifically to oppose PAMTA. “People would be more likely to die from a bee sting than for their antibiotic treatment to fail because of…resistant bacteria in meat or poultry.” But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that hospital-associated infections, which are likely to be antibiotic resistant, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year. Under 100 people die a year from all stinging insects.

And AVMA? “At the heart of this discussion is the premise that the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture directly contributes to bacterial resistance in humans,” says the vet group, urging its members to fight PAMTA. A livestock antibiotic ban in Denmark, “has not shown any clear declines in antibiotic resistance patterns in humans,” says AVMA, though CBS News and Food Safety News find otherwise.

Antibiotic resistant intestinal infections increased in Europe after certain antibiotics were introduced on farms, reported CBS. But after Denmark declared a ban, it “drastically reduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and food.” The Denmark’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries reported that the ban resulted in “overall reductions of antimicrobial resistance countrywide,” said Food Safety News.

Nor is AVMA the only veterinary group that sides with industry over animals. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians was one of the groups filing a friend-of-the-court brief supporting this week’s Supreme Court ruling, National Meat Association v. Harris, that overturned California’s humane slaughter law. The law was enacted after the 2008 Westland/Hallmark school lunch meat scandal in which cows too sick and weak to walk were videotaped forklifted and “water-boarded” to the slaughter line. The humane slaughter law prohibits buying, selling or receiving downer animals and processing, butchering or selling them for human consumption. It requires non-ambulatory animals to be immediately euthanized.

Big Meat and its veterinarians argued the California law “criminalizes” the work of federal slaughterhouse inspectors who are presumably preventing slaughterhouse atrocities without the California law’s help. But former USDA inspectors Lester Friedlander, DVM and Dean Wyatt, DVM have testified that federal inspection is a mockery that puts the public at risk at the same time it permits appalling animal abuse.

In fact, antibiotics form such a huge part of Big Pharma revenues, antibiotic resistance literally divides medical professionals along species lines. Many medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, support PAMTA out of concern for patient infections while big veterinary groups tend to oppose it.

At first it looked like PAMTA might have a friend in the FDA’s newly appointed deputy commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein, who was a pediatrician and the former food safety staffer for Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Both he and the newly appointed FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, had public health backgrounds and were not industry insiders.

At a 2009 House Rules Committee meeting, Sharfstein surprised lawmakers by indicating that the FDA supported PAMTA. The ag lobby was enraged because Sharfstein’s remarks implied White House Office of Management and Budget approval, yet there had been no briefing.

“You deliberately tried to blindside some of us on this committee, and we don’t appreciate that,” barked Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, former House agriculture subcommittee on livestock chairman, to Michael Taylor, FDA senior adviser on food safety (considered a friend of agribusiness, until the Sharfstein remarks).

But by early 2011, Kennedy had died, Sharfstein had left the FDA abruptly and without comment, and Big Meat had already showed lawmakers where they could put their cephalosporin ban. Congress seemed to have little appetite left to go up against Big Meat.

So it’s no surprise that in 2012, the FDA is waving through major livestock antibiotics, attaching Mickey Mouse restrictions on others, and U.S. meat is full of super bugs — even meat labeled “raised without antibiotics.”

Martha Rosenberg frequently writes about the impact of the pharmaceutical, food and gun industries on public health. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and other outlets.

The Independent – London, UK
by Jonathan Owen

Bees are vital to human to survival, pollinating crops that provide most of the world’s food.

Compelling new evidence from the US government’s top bee expert that modern pesticides may be a major cause of collapsing bee populations led to calls yesterday for the chemicals to be banned.

A study published in the current issue of the German science journal Naturwissenschaften, reveals how bees given minute doses of the widely used pesticide imidacloprid became more vulnerable to infections from a deadly parasite, nosema.

Bee experts described this as clear evidence of the role pesticides play in the plight of bees. Although research into the furry insects may seem like a very academic exercise, bees are vital to human survival. More than 70 of the 100 crops that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food are pollinated by bees, and Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees died out, “man would have no more than four years to live.”

The study, led by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, the head of the US Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Laboratory, says: “We believe that subtle interactions between pesticides and pathogens, such as demonstrated here, could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies worldwide.”

Researchers found that bees deliberately exposed to minute amounts of the pesticide were, on average, three times as likely to become infected when exposed to a parasite called nosema as those that had not. The findings, which have taken more than three years to be published, add weight to concern that a new group of insecticides called neonicotinoids are behind a worldwide decline in honey bees, along with habitat and food loss, by making them more susceptible to disease.

Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity, is calling for a ban on the controversial pesticides. Its director, Matt Shardlow, said yesterday: “The science is now clear, bees poisoned by neonicotinoid pesticides are much more likely to die from disease, gather less food and produce fewer new bees.” He added: “Buglife’s 2009 review of the science of environmental impacts from neonicotinoid pesticides showed that there was serious cause for concern. We called for a ban then, and as subsequent research has only added to concerns, including the revelation that neonicotinoids make bees prone to a diseased death, we are repeating our call for these toxins to be banned.”

The Government needs to take urgent action, said Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association. He backs the findings of the new research: “Their conclusions are right … here is some data that would appear to suggest links between widely used pesticides and pathogens.”

Imidacloprid is the bestselling neonicotinoid made by Bayer CropScience, earning the company hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Neonicotinoids are “systemic” pesticides. Instead of spraying plants they are used to treat seeds – effectively becoming part of the plant, including the pollen and nectar that bees and other pollinating insects carry away. Concern over their effects on bees has led to restrictions on their use in Germany, Italy, France, and Slovenia.

Dr Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience, sought to dismiss the new findings yesterday: “The key issue here is that Jeff Pettis’s studies were carried out in the laboratory and not the open air.” He added: “Bee health is really important, but focusing on pesticides diverts attention away from the very real issues of bee parasites and diseases – that is where Bayer is focusing its effort.”

But Professor Simon Potts, of the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research at the University of Reading, disagrees: “Most reports of direct impacts of pesticides on bee mortality are usually due to the incorrect application of pesticides on farmland,,” he said. “However, the Pettis study should be taken as a warning that we may need to look much more carefully at the indirect effect of pesticides.”

Like a persistent mosquito that keeps coming back no matter how many times you bat it away, the controversial issue of mandated labeling for genetically engineered foods in the United States just won’t go away.

The latest example of that persistence is legislation proposed in Washington state that would require genetically engineered foods, or food items that contain genetically engineered foods, to be labeled so consumers can make an informed choice about what they buy.

If approved, for the most part, the labeling requirement as proposed by legislation in Washington state would kick in on July 1, 2014. Fines for not labeling such foods are included in the legislation.

Simply put, genetic engineering is the deliberate modification of the characteristics of an organism by manipulating its genetic material. Genetically modified organisms, often referred to as GMOs, are those whose genetic material (DNA or RNA) have been altered in ways that would not occur naturally through mating or cell division.

Examples of genetically modified crops are corn, potatoes and cotton that have had the microbe bT (Bacillus thuringiensis), a naturally occurring pesticide, inserted into their genes so they can resist pests, such as, in the case of corn, the European corn borer, that harm or destroy the crops.

The genetic engineering of plants is generally geared to boost production, improve their ability to survive in specific environments, give them better resistance to pests and diseases, improve their nutritional qualities, and to create immunity to certain herbicides.

Labeling supporters, including Nature’s Path Organic, say that GMO ingredients are found in 80 percent of packaged foods in the United States.

Labeling supporters also say that the bottom line in all of this is that people have no idea if the foods they’re eating are genetically engineered or contain ingredients from genetically engineered foods because there’s no labeling to tell them that.

Their common mantra comes down to this: “We have the right to know what we’re eating and feeding to our families.”

Food Safety?

For many people, genetic engineering is seen, or portrayed, as a “food safety” issue. For example, in Washington state, House Bill 2637, one of the bills calling for GMO labeling, starts right off by saying that “the genetic engineering of plants and animals often causes unintended consequences.”

Also, according to the proposed legislation: “Manipulating genes and inserting them into organisms is an imprecise process. The results are not always predictable or controllable, and can lead to adverse health or environmental consequences.”

Looking to the future, the legislation says one benefit of mandatory labeling of engineered foods could be to provide a critical method for tracking the “potential health effects” of consuming genetically engineered foods.

The legislation points to “warnings from government scientists” that the artificial insertion of genetic material into plants could cause significant problems “such as an increase in the levels of known toxicants in food, the introduction of new toxicants or new allergies, and the reduction of the nutritional value of food.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration established a policy in 1992 declaring that there is no substantial or material difference between genetically engineered foods and foods that haven’t been genetically engineered.

While genetically modified foods may be relatively safe by science-based approaches to risk assessment, the issue of labeling GMO foods is about public confidence. As Marion Nestle observes in her book, “Safe Food”: “Until people actually have some choice about whether to consume transgenic foods, there is little reason to accept them.”

A Lawmaker’s Quest

Rep. Cary Condotta, a Republican from rural Eastern Washington and sponsor of HB 2637, told Food Safety News he became involved in this issue after more than 1,000 wheat growers came to the Legislature with a petition calling for the labeling of genetically engineered foods. He said that for the wheat farmers, it was about their livelihoods. Most of the wheat grown in Washington state is exported, and many countries don’t want even a trace of GMOs in the wheat they buy.

“The wheat farmers in my district don’t want it anywhere near their fields,” Condotta said, referring to genetically modified wheat. But after attending some seminars on genetically engineered foods, Condotta said he became aware of what he thinks are food safety issues.

“People should be concerned,” he said. “There aren’t enough studies done on the potential long-term effects of this on human health. It can be scary. There are times we shouldn’t be messing with Mother Nature.”

He refers to the labeling bills in his state as “non-partisan.”

“This is an issue definitely is not going to go away,” he added but, as far as he’s concerned, even if the bill doesn’t see the light of day, it will have raised people’s awareness.

“I think we’ll see traction on this,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t pass, it will bring more attention to this issue, and people can start researching it on their own.”

State Sen. Maralyn Chase, a Democrat from suburban Western Washington and one of six sponsors of a similar bill, SB 6298, told Food Safety News that “people should be able to know what they are eating, that they are not allergic to it, and that it does not violate their medical, religious or environmental concerns.”

“The bottom line is that people need to be able to trust the American food production system to be honest about their food — in every aspect,” she said.

She is confident about the bill’s success. “It is going to pass — in spite of corporate agriculture’s efforts,” she said.

Both bills were to be the subject of public hearings this week.

Logistics

Condotta said that the Washington state labeling bills are patterned after The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act.

If the language in that measure is approved by California’s Attorney General’s office, the initiative will appear on the California ballot in November 2012 — as long as there are enough signatures (500,000) to qualify it for the ballot. If approved by the voters, it would require food sold in retail outlets in California to be labeled so consumers can know if the food is genetically engineered or if it contains genetically engineered ingredients.

Previous bills submitted to California legislators to require labeling failed to make it out of committee.

Last year, 14 states, among them Oregon, New York, Maryland and Vermont, considered bills labeling or banning genetically engineered foods. And in 2005, Alaska passed a law that requires all fish and mollusks raised in the state to be labeled as to whether they are genetically engineered. Legislators are currently considering measures to expand that to all fish sold in the state.

Labeling supporters say the states are increasingly becoming frustrated by Congress’s unwillingness to come to grips with this issue. And they often point to polls to make their point.

One of those polls was an informal survey conducted last February by msnbc.com. When asked “Do you believe genetically modified foods should be labeled,” 96.1 percent, representing 43,725 respondents, agreed with: “Yes. It’s an ethical issue — consumers should be informed so they can make a choice. Another 3.1 percent agreed with: “No. The U.S. government says they are safe and that’s good enough for me.” Less than one-half of one percent agreed with: “Not sure. It all tastes the same to me.”

Out in the marketplace, leading opponents of labeling in the United States warn that labeling foods as genetically engineered would needlessly alarm consumers, leading to dwindling sales for those products.

But labeling supporters point out that the United States is out of step with the European Union and many other countries in this. According to the bills introduced in Washington state, 50 countries, including the European Union member states, Japan and other key United States trading partners, have laws mandating disclosure of genetically engineered ingredients on food labels.

The legislation also points out that no international agreements prohibit the mandatory labeling of such foods.

Misbranding?

Taking a different tack, a petition submitted to the FDA by the Center for Food Safety starts right off by saying that genetic engineering leads to changes to foods at the molecular level that have never occurred in traditional varieties and that the absence of mandatory labeling disclosures for genetically engineered foods is therefore misleading to consumers.

It blasts FDA’s failure to require labeling for genetically foods as an abdication of its statutory mandate to require labeling for foods that are “misbranded,” because they are misleading.

The petition has more than 20 other petitioners, among them Consumer Reports, The National Family Farm Coalition, Northeast Dairy Producers and Stonyfield Farm.

The petition also faults FDA for being behind the times with “an outdated regulatory regime for food labeling that is woefully inadequate”.

“FDA is still using 19th century ideas to regulate 21st century foods, focusing only on traits that consumers can detect with their senses,” says the petition. “But modern public preferences and purchasing decisions are based not only on sensory perceptions, but also on concerns related to latent or unknown health risks, animal welfare, faith, political concerns, social justice and environmental impacts.”

According to the petition’s conclusion, “Genetic engineering makes silent but fundamental changes to our food at the molecular and cellular level, the full human health and environmental consequences of which are still being discovered.” The Center is asking that the FDA provide an answer to this petition “within a reasonable time.”

Adding fuel to the fire, the “Just Label It!” campaign is urging people to add their names to the Center’s petition. The goal is to have 1 million signatures by spring. This week, there were already 540,000 signatures, all of which will be added to the docket that the FDA has set up for the Center’s petition.

Adam Eidinger, coordinator of last fall’s “Right2Know March, said that the hope is that the petition will spur the FDA to come up with rule-making about labeling.

In all of this, there are heated claims that industry giant Monsanto and industrial ag in general are in bed with the FDA, the USDA, and the EPA, the three agencies that have oversight on genetically engineered crops and foods. Even so, the wheat growers in Washington state, for example, are not in that camp. For them, genetically engineered wheat would spell their doom as farmers.

Enough Studies?

In the Center for Food Safety’s petition to the FDA, the group says that because there has been no government-mandated, independent, peer-reviewed scientific testing of genetically engineered foods, the public has been serving as an unwitting laboratory for “this experimental food technology.”

But Karen Batra, spokeswoman for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said the organization would argue with assertions that genetically engineered foods aren’t safe to eat.

“There has never been a credible reportable food-safety concern,” she told Food Safety News. She also said that respected scientific authorities such as the Research Council of the National Academies of Science, the American Dietetic Association, the American Medical Association, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, have concluded that genetically engineered foods and those made with ingredients from those foods pose no more risk to people than other foods.

According to the organization’s information sheet on this, “Food Safety: An Important Issue for You and Your Family”, biotech crops have been cultivated for more than 15 years, and foods derived from agricultural biotechnology have been eaten by billions of people without a single documented health problem.

“The debate over this ebbs and flows,” Batra said. “We went through this 10 years ago. But when the industry came forward and provided consumers with education about this, and once they understood that there’s nothing fabricated or inserted into the food, their apprehension subsided.”

David Tribe, author of the blog “GMO Pundit” who teaches food science at the University of Melbourne, Australia, also rails at claims that not enough studies have been done on genetically engineered food.

On one of his blog entries, he points readers to more than 420 published safety assessments on this topic.

He takes issue with claims that genetically modified foods are not properly tested or that few independent studies have been published to establish their safety or that the food regulatory agencies rely exclusively on corporate information to decide whether genetically modified food and feed is safe. He blasts those claims as “wrong — merely myths.”

The Future of Labeling

For some, it doesn’t matter whether or not there have been studies and testing on genetically engineered foods. The issue is that genetically modified foods should be labeled so they can know what they’re buying.

JayDee Hansen, senior policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, told Food Safety News that with different states weighing in on this issue, there eventually could be different labeling requirements in different states.

At that point, he said, the industry will likely consider coming up with standards that make sense.

He also said that some large companies have weighed in with the Center on this issue, saying that labeling doesn’t cost that much and that companies change their labels all of the time. “It would benefit the industry and the consumers to have a consistent label instead of a hodge podge of labels,” he said.

How Many Acres?

In the past 15 years more than a billion hectares (2.47 billion acres) — an area greater than the land masses of China or the United States — have been planted with genetically engineered crops, according to a press release from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications.

By anyone’s reckoning, it’s a fast-moving train: biotech crop cultivation jumped 87-fold between 1996 and 2010, making genetically engineered crops the fastest-adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.

Biotech advocates point to these numbers, saying that there’s no doubt that genetically modified agriculture is here to stay.

In the brave new world of bio-tech agriculture, the big pesticide/herbicide makers have argued for years that their genetically modified crop manipulations would reduce the use of chemicals.

It made sense, that tactic. Almost everyone agrees that our health and the environment would benefit from reduced pesticide use. And Americans react strongly when they find their food has been compromised by chemicals. Think of the Alar apple scare, or the more recent outcry over strawberries doused with methyl iodide, a fumigant suspected of causing cancer.

Chemical companies tapped into citizen concern about pesticides by promising they could engineer corn and soybeans to resist certain “safer” chemicals, such as Monsanto’s Roundup. That would reduce environmental harm and give farmers a break, because they could use Roundup whenever they wanted without fear of harming their crops. They’d get higher yields with little downside, because the Roundup would biodegrade, and America would feed the world….

That was the promise of genetically engineered (GE) crops, also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The actual results were nearly the opposite:

• Super weeds built up resistance to Roundup, creating a tidal wave of ever-taller, ever-more-resistant weeds, stymieing farmers, who had to buy more and more Roundup or face declining yields.
• Herbicide use shot up. Monsanto sold a lot of Roundup – 4.4 million pounds in 2000, and by 2010, 57 million pounds, according to Beyond Pesticides.
• Questions arose about the effects of Roundup on the soil and plants as farm animals being fed Roundup-raised crops experienced fertility problems.

This double backfire – an herbicide that causes more problems than it solves, creating powerful weeds and degrading the soil — hasn’t caused the big chemical companies to back off their plans to create genetically engineered crops.

Far from it.

Let’s try that again, with a new chemical

In late December 2011, the public learned that Dow AgroSciences LLC had applied for federal approval to sell its solution to the Roundup seed-weed merry-go-round: A GE corn that would work in concert with a different chemical known as 2, 4-D.

Pesticide watchdogs perked up. They know 2, 4-D as an older generation herbicide that, unlike Roundup, was never promoted as safer and was a major component in the infamous defoliant, Agent Orange, used to blot out jungles during the Vietnam War and suspected of contributing to a variety of veterans’ ailments. Studies have found an increased risk for Hodgkins lymphoma, Non-Hodgkins Lymphona and certain leukemias among people exposed to Agent Orange. Some of those findings led to a private settlement in the 1970s awarding veterans help with their Agent Orange-related health issues.

Industry advocates, though, say 2,4-D on its own is safe for homeowners and farmers to use on their lawns and fields. They note that it has been submitted to rigorous testing and studies on carcinogenicity have often been inconclusive. Some of those studies show that 2,4-D does not cause cancer.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) puts it another way, 2, 4-D has not been proven to cause cancer. The agency, charged with defining the toxic effects of pesticides and herbicides and setting safe thresholds, has reviewed numerous studies done on 2, 4-D over the years, concluding that 2, 4-D is “not classifiable as to human carcinogenicity.”

Studies have found associations between certain cancers and exposure in the factory or fields to this type of herbicide, including one study of farmers in Nebraska who used 2,4-D and suffered high rates of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Setting aside the debate over whether 2, 4-D triggers cancer, the chemical is indisputably toxic with numerous studies showing it causes retinal degeneration, impaired reflexes, prostration, myotonia, ataxia and other conditions among lab animals tested.

The EPA also allows there’s “concern” that scientists don’t know much about how 2, 4-D affects the body’s endocrine system, an area of new study prompted by emerging science showing that small regular doses of certain chemicals can alter human biology. This line of research suggests that 2,4-D could have “endocrine disruption potential,” meaning it would affect the hormonal systems of humans, according to the EPA’s fact sheet on the chemical.

Animal studies detailed on Extonet, a compilation of university research, show that 2,4-d has caused reproductive problems for rats and low doses administered over two years produced malignant tumors.

“Our concern is that the traces of these chemicals are everywhere, and affect the endocrine system, especially in kids,” said Mark Kastel, founder of the Cornucopia Institute, which advocates for natural farming and food systems and is opposing the new Dow Chemical corn.

“Sometimes exposures to these toxics can have catastrophic lifelong impact. It might be a triggering device, especially in the reproductive organs, causing them to develop inadequately,” he said.

Such interference with human biology could cause later-life cancers or human infertility, which has been rising.

These new potential health effects, along with the known problems caused by pesticides, suggest a cautionary approach, according to Kastel and other advocates for organic farming. Yet, US policies embrace chemical agriculture, they say, seemingly for fear of facing down corporate giants like Monsanto and Dow Chemical, and in the process making Americans guinea pigs in a vast food system experiment.

“The question is: Why are we moving toward technologies that seem to add to dependencies on pesticides?” asks Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.

Chemical farming and the Monsanto Fail

The answer to Feldman’s question from the chemical industry has been that biotech farming squeezes more yields from less land, and therefore allows American farmers to “feed the world.”

Many farmers do report higher output with GE crops — initially. But over time, the promise of high yields erodes. The rain of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides wears out the soil, and promotes super weeds. And that’s not counting the collateral damage to the river systems and water supplies. Each farming season, the fertilizer and pesticide runoff from America’s heartland pollutes rivers and produces marine life-killing algal blooms as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. There one food system does combat with another as the algal blooms choke off shrimp and oyster production.

If biotech farming bursts from the gate like a hare, organic production is the tortoise. It may take a couple years to work the soil back to health with compost and natural fertilizers, but then, studies show, organic methods can produce robust yields.

Even if those yields aren’t quite up to the level of those produced by GE farming — and some studies show they are — Kastel argues that Americans should be looking at the tradeoffs. “Maybe you can grow more bushels per acre, but if the food is less healthy, the ground is less healthy, you’re putting toxics into our water and air, is this good?”

One person commenting on Dow’s 2, 4-D proposal portrayed the contrast in the two farming approaches this way: “The only thing you used to need on a farm was a hat to keep the sun off your face, a tobacco chew for the dust. Now you need a whole suit and respirator.”

Chemical farming has another insidious side, it threatens organic farms as sure as if it were an anvil hanging overhead, according to Feldman. When the federal government bows to chemical companies, it fails in its obligation to protect organic farmers, whose fields can be contaminated by pollen from engineered crops nearby, he said.

The government revealed how it favors chemical companies last year when it approved GE alfalfa, a crop that has never needed pesticides to grow well, he said. In doing so, it put organic milk at risk, because organic dairy operations depend upon organic alfalfa to feed their herds. If the GE varieties contaminate the organic alfalfa fields, organic dairy farmers could face feed shortages, and that would directly consumers, who’ve been buying more organic milk every year.

“If you go to Monsanto’s website, they will teach you that GE foods are going to help us feed the world, have lower impacts on the environment, and increase our yields, George Kimbrell, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety told an audience last spring. “The most recent myth is that they are going to help us solve global warming. The most basic myth is that GE is the same as conventional breeding. None of these claims are true.”

The reason GE systems fail, Kimbrell told those gathered at a Beyond Pesticides meeting, is that this type of breeding goes far beyond conventional cross-breeding to improve plants: “Basically it’s gene splicing using recombinant DNA technology. It’s inserting a gene from a species that would never breed in nature into another species. So you have a flounder [fish] gene that goes into a tomato.”

“The most prevalent form of GE crops are Roundup Ready. They use a soil bacterium gene, which Monsanto found in the wasteland of its backyard, that was the only thing alive that could survive all the polluted chemicals and [the] Roundup that was coming out of its factory. They took the genes from it and inserted it using a virus into plants. Lo and behold, the plants became resistant to Roundup as well.”

Kimbrell says that 80 percent of GE crops are “pesticide promoting,” meaning they do not increase yields, but they do increase the use of pesticides – such as Monsanto’s cornerstone product, Roundup.

When this manipulation fails after a few years, and the weeds resist the chemical drenching farmers must up the ante, using more and more herbicides each growing season.

The evidence of this vicious cycle is in the numbers, says Feldman, explaining that US farmers now use more than 10 times the Roundup they used in 2000.

Environmental and food safety advocates say this system cannot hold. In addition to the damage to soils and waterways, they believe the ever mounting use of GE crops and their attendant pesticides and herbicides is creating less healthy food in two ways:

• It leaves pesticide residues on the crops, and even though those are set to remain below certain levels, the thresholds are not indisputably safe).
• The crops are engineered in ways we don’t fully understand.

This latter issue, of genetically modified food has not been well studied, and pronouncements range from “it’s completely safe” to it’s fundamentally a new food, the product of gene manipulation and potentially capable of interfering with human gene replication (and therefore triggering disease).

Dow AgroSciences points to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its GE products as showing that the foods produced are safe. For instance, in a statement about its recently approved GE corn and soybeans, bred to work with Dow’s “Enlist” weed control system, a spokesman noted that the FDA considers the crops to be “not materially different in any respect relevant to food or feed safety from corn varieties on the market.”

Organic advocates say that’s hollow assurance from companies that have engineered not just the plants, but a cycle of profiteering in agricultural chemicals.

While the debate over whether GE crops are safe or harmful continues, the effects of pesticide residues on fields, farmers and food is more clear cut, organic advocates say.

“The problem with all these pesticides and herbicides is that they’re designed to kill,” says Kastel. “Is it any surprise that they’re dangerous?”

• The public has until February 27 to comment on the Dow’s application for it’s new GE corn, which is resistant to 2, 4-D. People can read the petition and get directions for comments at this federal government website.

For too long, funding provided by the United States’ most far-reaching food and farm legislation has primarily benefited agri-business and large scale industrial-scale commodity farms that aren’t growing food. Instead, they’re growing ingredients for animal feed, fuel and highly processed food — at a high cost to our nation’s health, environment and rural communities.

Meanwhile, only meager public resources have been invested smartly to build the kind of dynamic local food economies that support agricultural diversification and help link small- and mid-sized family farms to local and regional markets.

With the 2012 Farm Bill fast upon us, Congress has an opportunity to make smart, timely changes to help fix our broken food and farm system by embracing a package of policy reforms outlined in the Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill. This legislation was recently introduced by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and is co-sponsored by 63 representatives in the House and 9 in the Senate.

The Pingree-Brown bill includes a comprehensive package of cost-effective policy reforms that would boost farmers’ and ranchers’ incomes by helping them meet the growing demand for local and regional food. The legislation also aims to make fresh, healthy and affordable food-especially fruits and vegetables- more accessible to consumers. Given our nation’s costly epidemic of diet-related disease, small investments now that increase access and affordability of healthier food will save us billions of health-related dollars down the road.

Trends show people want fresh, healthy, local food

Demand for locally grown, sustainable food is growing in every corner of the country, with more than 100,000 growers now serving more than 160,000 outlets (pdf):

In 2011, 7,175 farmers markets were open for business, more than double the number in 2002.

• An estimated 6000 Community Supported Agriculture programs are delivering food directly from the farm to consumers.
• More than 2,000 farm-to-school programs are up and running, a five-fold increase since 2004.
• More than 300 universities are involved with the Real Food Challenge and sourcing sustainable food locally.
• More than 360 hospitals have committed to sourcing more nutritious, locally grown food through the Healthy Food in Health Care pledge.
• The number of restaurants purchasing locally-grown food has skyrocketed; For the fourth year in a row, locally sourced food is the top restaurant food trend in 2012.
• More grocery stores are carrying food produced locally or from farms within the state – and labeling it for customers!

In 2008, the USDA valued this expanding market for local and regional foods at nearly $5 billion. The total will likely surpass $7 billion by the end of 2012, when the current farm bill expires.

This growth is particularly remarkable considering the tiny amounts of federal funding that have been invested in local and regional food system projects. Since 2008, funding has almost doubled but EWG estimates that still just a measly $100 million dollars of taxpayer money a year is being channeled to projects supporting increased local food production, distribution and consumption.

Compare that to roughly $12 billion in subsidies annually that go to industrial-scale growers of commodity crops who are enjoying record income year after year.

Farm Bill must help scale up local and regional food systems

While the recent expansion is impressive, local and regional food markets represented a mere two percent of gross farm sales in 2008. We desperately need the new investments and policy reforms outlined in the Pingree-Brown bill to help this burgeoning market grow and remove the many barriers farmers face in meeting existing demand from grocery stores, restaurants, schools, universities, hospitals and consumers. The Local Food bill has a $100 million a year price tag, a small sum compared to its potential benefits.

The Local Farms, Food and Jobs bill will improve our broken food system by:

• Increasing support for local aggregation, processing and distribution so that farmers can more easily sell healthy food, including locally raised and processed meat, directly to schools, hospitals, stores and restaurants.
• Enabling schools to use more of their federal food funding to buy fresh, local foods. Public schools could opt to use up to 15 percent of their school lunch commodity dollars for buying foods from local farmers and ranchers, instead of through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nationalized commodity food program.
• Improving the diets of food stamp recipients and low-income seniors by making it easier for them to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets, community supported agriculture programs, and other direct food marketing services, putting more money in the pockets of local farmers and generating additional economic activity in nearby business districts.
• Diversifying and increasing the production of healthy and sustainable food by increasing funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grant program and increasing access to credit, crop insurance, and other support for organic producers, diversified operations, smaller-scale and beginning farmers.

Together, these modest but effective investments will yield important, much-needed economic benefits. Farms that sell locally through shorter supply chains often keep a higher portion of the retail dollar, increasing profitability and potential for expansion and job creation.

According to a recent USDA analysis, farmers producing for local markets generally provide 1.3 full time jobs compared to 0.9 for farmers who sell through traditional wholesale markets. And local food farmers grow higher value crops that generate greater sales per acre—$590 per acre versus $304 for the average farm. Local food markets also provide a critical pathway for new businesses, with beginning farmers accounting for 48% of local West Coast food producers.

Tough road ahead

Despite proven economic and public health benefits, getting this bill through the House agriculture committee may be challenging, given the panel’s hostility to the “Know Your Farmer” Program, the USDA’s comprehensive local and regional food initiative.

Pingree’s bill presents both a major opportunity and challenge for the highly decentralized local food and farming movement to work together in a unified, focused way to transform its considerable success at the local level into the political power needed to win support in the House and Senate agriculture committees.

With the stakes as high as they are, we believe that local farmers and the more than 180 hundred organizations that have endorsed the bill are up to the challenge.

“First do no harm,” a concept central to medical ethics, is important in an age when indicators of agricultural pesticide (including herbicide) pollution represent a serious threat to environmental sustainability.

It’s an unnecessary threat given the productivity, profitability, and environmental and health benefits of organic agriculture.

The return on pesticide-intensive agricultural practices has proved unrealized, considering billions of dollars in secondary or externalized costs — from $2.2 billion in annual pesticide poisonings, water treatment and pollination, according to two Iowa State University economists, to $10 billion, according to the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel.

A new study extols the benefits of conventional no-till farming and the herbicide atrazine, but ignores secondary pollution, health, and production costs.

Atrazine has been shown to affect reproduction of fish at concentrations below EPA water-quality guidelines, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study.

Used with genetically engineered crops bred to be tolerant of specific herbicides, another widely used no-till herbicide — glyphosate (Roundup) — is linked to acute human health effects and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Atrazine and glyphosate-tolerant crops contribute to a cycle of increasing dependency on toxic chemicals in agriculture.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service 2010 Agricultural Chemical Use Report finds 57 million pounds of glyphosate applied in 2009 on corn fields in surveyed states, an increase from 4.4 million pounds in 2000. Because of this, atrazine use declined.

What the chemical no-till study researchers should, but do not, ask is the question of pesticide essentiality. Organic agriculture is now a $26.7 billion industry in the U.S. and $54.9 billion worldwide. We do not need these toxic chemicals to meet our food productivity, profitability, environmental and public health goals.

A Rodale Institute study comparing organic and conventional cropping systems over a 22-year period shows equal yields for corn and soybeans, with the organic yields increasing after several years. Additionally, the study finds that 30 percent less energy is required.

Internationally, the United Nations Environment Program reports that 114 farming projects in 24 African countries using organic or near-organic practices increased yield by more than 100 percent.

Conventional no-till farming is advanced as part of a chemical approach that incorporates synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, creating a cycle of dependency as soil is depleted of its microbial life and natural mechanism for producing soil nutrients and building the soil food web, which contribute to plant health.

Organic no-till farming, though, has the benefits of conventional no-till farming and more. It minimally disturbs the soil and provides erosion control with the planting of live cover crops between rows. That eliminates toxic chemical inputs, reduces fossil fuels and synthetic petroleum-based fertilizers, builds the organic matter in the soil, increases water retention and eliminates contamination of waterways. It also protects human health and the environment, sequesters higher rates of atmospheric carbon and reduces the pressure on global climate change.

Beyond Pesticides’ pesticide-induced diseases database links pesticide exposure to asthma, autism, learning disabilities, birth defects, reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and other illnesses.

The studies signal an urgency to transition chemical-intensive agriculture to organic practices.

Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.,-based coalition, serves on the National Organics Standards Board.

WASHINGTON, DC: The Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry research and watchdog organization, announced it has formally requested the USDA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate corruption at its National Organic Program resulting in the use of illegal synthetics in organic food and then allowing powerful corporations to “game the system” for approval “after the fact.”

The controversy surrounds products developed by Martek Biosciences Corporation. Martek, part of a $12 billion Dutch-based conglomerate, recently petitioned for approval of its genetically modified soil fungus and algae as nutritional supplements in organic food.

Martek’s formulated oils are processed with synthetic petrochemical solvents in a blend containing a myriad of other synthetic chemicals. Supplements derived from these oils, commonly marketed as DHA and ARA, are being added to milk, infant formula and other organic foods by such companies as Dean Foods (Horizon), Abbott Laboratories (Similac) and Nurture, Inc. (Happy Baby).

“This is a long-standing controversy that the USDA seems to think is just going to go away,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

After a formal legal complaint by Cornucopia, and an investigative story by the Washington Post, the USDA announced in April 2010 that it had “inappropriately” allowed Martek oils to be included in organic foods.

The scandal contributed to the removal of the previous director of the National Organic Program (NOP), who overruled her staff’s decision finding Martek supplements were illegal in organics—after she met with a prominent Washington lobbyist, William J. Friedman.

The former NOP director’s decision was reversed in April 2010. But instead of immediately ordering the removal of these unapproved synthetics from organic food, the Obama/Vilsack administration at the USDA delayed enforcement by 18 months in an apparent effort to permit corporate lobbyists to properly petition for review and possibly legal inclusion in organic food.

“It’s unacceptable that these materials are still in organic food and that corporations think they can manipulate the system and get away with it,” said Kastel. “It’s even worse because, according to our research and reports at the FDA, some babies have become ill after consuming Martek supplements in infant formula.”

In December, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), the expert panel set up by Congress to advise the USDA Secretary on organic matters, narrowly approved the Martek petitions for their patented versions of DHA and ARA. “All hell broke loose at the meeting in Savannah as the controversy grew extremely heated,” Kastel noted.

In their complaint to the OIG, Cornucopia alleges that Martek misrepresented their novel, synthetic product and manipulated the vote by the NOSB.

“Martek oils, marketed under the Life’sDHA™ brand and included in organic infant formula, milk and baby food, are processed with petrochemical solvents like hexane or isopropyl alcohol, both of which are explicitly banned in organic production,” stated Charlotte Vallaeys, Director of Farm and Food Policy at Cornucopia.

Although Martek told the board that they would discontinue the use of the controversial neurotoxic solvent n-hexane for DHA/ARA processing, they did not disclose what other synthetic solvents would be substituted. Federal organic standards prohibit the use of all synthetic/petrochemical solvents, including isopropyl alcohol, which is currently used to extract DHA algal oil for use in products such as Horizon milk.

Martek again brought in William “Jay” Friedman, with the powerful Washington law firm of Covington and Burling, to lead their approval process. Friedman appeared to deliberately mislead NOSB members into believing that the powdered form of Martek’s DHA oil was not covered in the petition. This particular product formulation uses microencapsulation (banned in organics) and includes a number of additional synthetic materials that have never been reviewed or approved for use in organics.

When asked by NOSB Board chairperson, Tracy Miedema, “Are we approving dried powder or just oil?” Friedman stated on the record, “I can answer that. That’s not the petitioned material.”

Friedman’s statement was inconsistent with Martek’s formal petition to the NOSB, which states that “the petitioned material is unchanged from that which was authorized previously,” referring to the USDA’s earlier corrupted authorization of all Martek’s products, including the powdered form.

“Mr. Friedman’s statement thus appears patently false in an apparent attempt to intentionally mislead the NOSB. This apparent subterfuge led, in turn, to the NOSB’s failure to review other aspects of these materials which would have disqualified them, under law, for inclusion in organic food,” Cornucopia’s Kastel said.

In addition to the letter to the OIG, Cornucopia has requested the D.C. Bar conduct a formal ethics investigation of Mr. Friedman’s conduct.

“The dog and pony show put on by Martek and their largest customer, Dean Foods, was without precedent in the organic industry,” said Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association, who was present in Savannah.

The only scientists who testified at the meeting on the DHA issue were all on Martek’s payroll, and focused on research showing benefits of consuming naturally occurring omega-3 fatty acids (such as those found in fish and breast milk), while ignoring the preponderance of published peer-reviewed research that shows that these health benefits are not gained from consuming Martek’s novel, manufactured DHA additive.

The written statements of leading scientists in this field, who did not attend the meeting but whose findings were presented to the Board members, including assertions that this field of research is “driven to a large extent by enthusiasm and vested interest,” were overpowered by the handful of corporate-sponsored scientists with a blatant financial interest in the outcome of the vote.

Dean Foods, Martek’s largest customer, brought in a well-known web-pediatrician, Dr. Alan Greene, who has acted as a public relations agent endorsing Horizon brand organic milk with the added Martek DHA oils.

Although Dr. Greene represented himself as a “consultant,” simply answering questions for Dean Foods, and stated he had previously worked for two other organic companies, but failed to disclose his multiple conflicts of interest in commenting on the benefits of Martek’s manufactured DHA supplements.

Greene has also accepted compensation from Mead Johnson, the largest conventional infant formula manufacturer, to promote Martek’s DHA oil in their products, and even has his own product line of nutritional supplements that include Martek DHA, marketed by Twinlabs with his name and photograph on the product package.

“It is unconscionable that a physician, who accepted money from a big drug company to promote synthetic DHA—which many believes promotes the use of baby formula at the expense of the nutrients in breast feeding—failed to disclose such a gross conflict of interest when he testified before the governmental body on certified ‘organic’ standards,” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch, which helps expose corporate PR tactics.

Greene’s role on behalf of Dean Foods and Martek was to directly dispute the preponderance of scientific literature, including two meta-analyses, that discredits Martek’s claims that their supplements promote cognitive development in infants and children.

Cornucopia’s complaint to the OIG also included evidence documenting that three corporate-backed members of the NOSB, who voted in favor of this petition, had undeclared conflicts of interest.

Two of the board members work for Earthbound Farms, a giant produce distributor that also compensated Dr. Greene during 2011. A third member of the NOSB board works for General Mills which partnered with Martek, starting in 2009, on the technology to microencapsulate their DHA and ARA oils.

Cornucopia said that these board members should have considered recusing themselves from voting on this issue because of the apparent conflicts of interest. One of the members was the prime champion of the Martek petition during board deliberations.

Adding fuel to the controversy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just announced the end of its investigation into Dean Foods’ advertising campaign for Horizon DHA supplemented milk, forcing the dairy giant to alter claims in its advertising concerning “brain development or function, cognitive development or function, intelligence, learning abilities in children over the age of two.” This action resulted from a complaint filed by The Cornucopia Institute based on its research of the fraudulent and misleading health claims.

“While they did not fine Dean, or its WhiteWave division, for its misrepresentations in Horizon marketing, we are pleased that the FTC has taken this action to protect children and prevent the defrauding of their parents,” said Vallaeys.

Although the FDA has dismissed complaints about the safety of Martek products in infant formula, reports persist from parents and healthcare providers of infants who experience serious gastrointestinal symptoms from consuming Martek’s DHA and ARA oils in infant formula, raising serious public health questions about the marketing of these products.

The Cornucopia Institute has sent a formal briefing paper on these matters to all members of the National Organic Standards Board.

Cornucopia contends that the board did not fulfill its legal responsibilities of due diligence, and instead solely accepted unsubstantiated statements by Martek that their products were not genetically engineered and were not “synthetic.”

“We are asking the NOSB to reopen their deliberations and consider rescinding their approval of Martek nutritional oils,” Kastel added. “If the board fails to act now, protecting the integrity of organics, it risks changing the working definition of the organic seal and degrading its value in the eyes of consumers.”

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Stakeholders in the organic community who would like to send an formal message to the National Organic Standards Board, expressing their support for reevaluating the Martek materials, can do so by accessing an action alert distributed by The Cornucopia Institute.

The Organic Consumers Association, a Minnesota-based organization, is calling on the USDA to immediately remove the powdered form of Martek’s oils from all organic products, including infant formula and baby cereals. OCA believes that Martek’s lobbyist, Friedman, realized that the powdered form would never be approved by the NOSB, and that he, through his oral testimony, effectively changed the petition to exclude the powdered DHA oil.

“Let me play devil’s advocate here. If Friedman wasn’t being dishonest, it means that the powdered form was not recommended for approval by the NOSB and thus should be immediately removed from baby food and infant formula,” says Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Consumers wishing to reap the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids can find these naturally occurring nutrients in a variety of foods, including leafy green vegetables, fish, flax, walnuts, milk and meat from grass-fed animals, and pastured eggs.

Research suggests that increasing the amount of omega-3s in the diet by supplements, such as fish oil, will not confer health benefits unless the consumption of omega-6-rich foods, especially corn and corn-based foods such as grain-fed meat and milk, is simultaneously decreased.

An online guide to avoiding foods with Martek’s genetically mutated DHA oils will be available soon on the Cornucopia website: www.cornucopia.org. A list of organic food brands that currently contain Martek DHA algal oil is already available.

After this controversy became prominent in the media, a number of companies that included Martek’s DHA in organic foods in the past have removed these controversial ingredients. These brands include ZenSoy organic soymilk, Plum Organics baby foods, and NuGo organic nutrition bars.

SPIEGEL ONLINE International

The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.

Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

“Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated,” Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an “individual case” and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace’s genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.

However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner’s ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.

Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.

Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria’s Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a “GM food-free zone.” Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.

However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich’s Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating “an exodus of researchers.”

The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria’s CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU’s parliamentary group, has complained of the “CSU’s irresponsible, cheap propaganda,” claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.

MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.

Grocery stores are finding it harder to keep organic milk in stock these days. The tight supply is a result of organic dairy farmers’ costs rising while the price they receive for their product remains the same. These economic conditions offer few incentives to dairymen considering entering the organic business.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Sales of organic milk were up 15 percent last year over 2010. Apparently people like the taste and perceived health benefits from milk that comes from cows free of artificial hormones and that are not fed grains exposed to pesticides. Still, your next carton may be more expensive – and in some areas harder to find.

Grace Hood from member station KUNC explains.

GRACE HOOD, BYLINE: Lately, more grocery shoppers like Lisa Viviani have been reaching for organic dairy.

LISA VIVIANI: You got it?

LILY: Yeah.

VIVIANI: Good job.

HOOD: Viviani is standing in a Fort Collins, Colorado, Natural Grocers. She hands over organic half-and-half to her small daughter, Lily, who puts it into their shopping cart.

VIVIANI: I just don’t want any of the other chemicals and hormones that go into the other milk.

HOOD: At the Natural Grocers chain, sales are even higher than the national rate. And store manager Emily Krawczuk says that’s translated into issues with one supplier.

EMILY KRAWCZUK: They are still able to provide us with a product, but not nearly the volume that we were seeing in previous times.

HOOD: So far the shortage has been most pronounced on the East Coast and in the southeastern grocery chain Publix, which started posting signs in dairy cases explaining: Where’s My Organic Milk? Processors are having a hard time ramping up supply to meet demand.

(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)

HOOD: And it’s all because organic dairymen like Arden Nelson are getting pinched by the high cost of organic grain and hay.

ARDEN NELSON: What happens when you can’t pay your bills, is you look at the most expensive thing and you say we’re going to have to do with less of that. And when dairymen feed less grain, cows give less milk.

HOOD: Nelson is standing in a narrow florescent-lit milking parlor – a small building on the edge of his Northern Colorado farm. Gray metal machines and clear tubes obscure the six cows on either side. In December, feed costs were so high that the Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance wrote a letter to a dozen major milk processors asking for a 20 percent raise – that’s five dollars more per hundred pounds of milk.

NELSON: But that’s only to get to break even. That’s not to have enough of a living to have health insurance, and there’s not enough money to even fix broken equipment.

HOOD: So far the response from processors to the Alliance’s letter has been lukewarm. Just one cooperative, Organic Valley, has offered a two dollar per hundred weight increase for its farmers, starting in March – three dollars less than what was requested.

GEORGE SIEMON: The conversation about a fair price can become very difficult.

HOOD: Organic Valley CEO George Siemon cites limits in the amount and speed at which his co-op can offer farmers raises.

SIEMON: There are so many farm models out there and so many different debt levels, and droughts, non-droughts.

HOOD: Siemon says that some of the increase Organic Valley pays farmers will get passed along to consumers. He estimates, in the next month, shoppers could see as much as a 50 cent increase for a half gallon of organic milk. Ultimately, he says the goal is to adjust what farmers are paid so that new organic dairymen will want to enter the business. But that takes time – one year to transition a herd to organic feed, and up to three to transition land.

BILL WAILES: Everybody has to work together.

HOOD: Bill Wailes is a professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University. He says that while many organic dairy farmers are losing money, retailers and processors are profiting. The issue is that organic dairymen have little control over what they’re paid.

WAILES: That’s where the dairy farmers are caught because they actually know what their costs are but they can’t control their costs and they take the price that the processor’s given them.

HOOD: Despite the challenging business model, Organic Valley estimates it has 180 new farmers that will start producing milk next year.

For NPR News, I’m Grace Hood in Fort Collins, Colorado.