Where Did That Burger Come From?

Monday afternoon.

Man and wife in kitchen. Man slapping some ground beef into patties.

“Honey?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Where did that beef come from?”

Jabs hand into plastic bag littered with tomato and lettuce bits. Pulls out black styrofoam with crinkled plastic wrap attached.

“Huh. It doesn’t say.”

This afternoon.

Wife and husband in kitchen. Wife, just done finely dicing some ginger, moves to put some chicken thighs into a hot pan.

“Honey?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Where did that chicken come from?”

Jabs hand into plastic bag littered with cilantro stems, coconut milk can top. Pulls out white styrofoam with crinkled plastic wrap attached.

“Canada.”

“It’s aboot time.”

Country of origin labeling on many, but by no means all, food is here. It has some glitches, however.

That’s because the regulations exclude a variety of foods that fall under the labeling requirement but are considered to be processed, including roasted peanuts, breaded chicken and bacon. The exemption for processed food also means that certain foods that are mixed together don’t have to be labeled, such as a bag of lettuce that includes both Romaine and iceberg, or a package of frozen peas and carrots.

Consumer and food safety advocates say they are generally happy with the rules, and relieved that the regulations are finally going into effect at all after so many delays. Still, they expect the guidelines will be puzzling to some consumers.

Frozen peas are a “processed food”? Technically, I guess they aren’t fresh out of the ground, so freezing and bagging required some sort of, well, process. But I don’t think frozen peas are what most people think of when they think of processed food.

It seems like where a food comes from should be a pretty straightforward question, eh? Me thinks me smells a regulatory nightmare.

The nearly final rules are now scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 30, and retailers will then have six months to make sure they understand the regulations correctly and come into compliance. The next step will be for the government to come out with a final set of rules, incorporating separate seafood and shellfish regulations, but there is no date set yet for that to happen.

Me thinks me also smells the wretched scent of industry lobbyists.

That’s one of the great things about this time of year. Much of the food we’ve been eating comes from Pennsylvania.

From within 60 miles of our house.

Often within 10 miles of our house.

Very often from our yard.

Maybe I should make my own label:

“Poblano pepper from garden 10 yards from back patio.”

Milk Labeling: They Listened, They Really Listened!

Who are the four, well-dressed gentleman above, you ask? Why, the remaining members of the legendary Kool & the Gang, of course.

And, why, you ask, is there a picture of Kool & the Gang on a food blog? Because, it's time to celebrate, baby!

It’s now official: Government bureaucrats who engage in sneaky maneuvers to the potential detriment of the public sometimes get their rear ends handed to them.

Or, more plainly put, milk labels in Pennsylvania with terms such as “rBGH free” will continue to be allowed!

In a letter to Pennsylvania milk processors, William Chirdon from the Department’s Bureau of Food Safety and Laboratory Services (who I spoke to previously about this issue, and whose name I misspelled in that report!), explains that the PDA received “a great deal of input” on the (cough… BOGUS) labeling standards it issued last fall that would have banned any labels on milk that said the product was hormone- or antibiotic-free because they were cutting into Monsanto’s profits “misleading.”

Under new standards PDA released today, this information is allowed on a milk label, as long as it also contains language that explains the FDA has found “no significant difference” between milk from clean cows and those that have gotten Monsanto's special juice. From my experience, most labels already included this disclaimer.

This really is a stinging rebuke to what I still contend was some highly dubious and downright slimy actions by PDA Secretary Dennis Wolff—actions that were quickly met with a public outcry from food bloggers (pathetic self promotion, I know!) and, of course, dairy farmers who don’t use synthetic growth hormone in their dairy cattle and want to let people know about it.

To be honest, I’m shocked. I was almost certain that these guys would drag their feet for a few months, thinking the public would forget about it—get lost in a fog of American Idol and American Gladiator—and on some random Friday afternoon at 4:00, quietly announce the initial standards change would stand.

It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised once in a while.

Scrapin’ Up the Bits: Bah-Humbug Style

I can’t really do it any justice, because I’m just not as familiar with the ins and outs of the Farm Bill as I’d otherwise like to be. But, I believe I can sum up the recent activities surrounding the Farm Bill in one sentence:

The Democrats are a bunch of craven, corrupt pieces of rotten (overfished) tuna who turned their backs on family farms and sustainable agriculture practices.

The Democrats failed to:

• Place a meaningful cap on subsidies paid to already rich individuals who happen to operate a farm
• For that matter, enact any sort of meaningful subsidy reform whatsoever
  
• Prevent big meat packers from manipulating cattle prices
• For that matter, enact any sort of meaningful reform to reign in Big Meat
  

What was it Dianne Feinstein said on the floor at one point after Democrats took majorities in both chambers? "Elections have consequences." Yes, apparently they do. Meaningless ones.

Let’s see, what other good news is there to report. Well, gee, wild salmon are headed toward extinction, clearly a positive development. And bluefin tuna — the tuna sashimi and nigiri so many sushi-eaters, including myself, love — aren’t far behind.

Been meaning to get to this, but Unbossed has THE LIST, that is, the list of members of the heretofore mysterious Labeling Advisory Committee convened by Pennsylvania Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff to support his already-decided decision to force certain dairies to remove helpful language from their milk labels.

At some point, I’d love to dig into this list a little more, but, with the holidays upon us, the time just isn’t there right now.

I did notice that one committee member, Dr. Terry Etherton, has a blog on agriculture and biotechnology (he's clearly an unabashed proponent of the latter). His most recent post discusses the milk labeling issue. I wanted to leave a comment, but, alas, the “comment” function is disabled. This could be a Penn State-wide policy, since the blog appears to be hosted on the university’s Web site. But it isn’t real conducive to providing a forum for a discussion of the issues Dr. Etherton raises, including his criticisms of “countless [advocacy] groups who don’t care about the facts” because “[t]heir first priority is their agenda and raising funds to continue their campaigns of propaganda and false attacks.” Nice ad hominem attack there, Dr. Etherton.

Well, after all of this pleasant talk, the very least that can be done is to imagine something delicious, like chocolate truffles!

Labeling Victory, for the Moment

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Daniel Malloy reported yesterday that Gov. Ed Rendell has finally waded into the milk labeling fiasco, putting on hold the new rules banning claims like “hormone-free” on milk sold in Pennsylvania.

Chuck Ardo, press secretary for Mr. Rendell, said the governor's office heard complaints from elected representatives of rural districts and agriculture lobbyists, prompting the review.

That's right, y'all. Power to the people! ... For now, at least. There will be a delay of a few months while Rendell's office reviews things.

More on this topic soon.

Scrapin’ Up the Bits, Rock n’ Roll Style

First, a mea culpa. A few weeks ago, I was whining about how the cold weather would terminate my herb picking around our back patio, requiring serious alterations in my cooking activities. Well, I spoke a little too soon. Despite the generally cold weather, we’ve still been able to salvage fresh oregano (vinaigrette for greek dressing), tarragon (sauce for pan-seared scallops), and mint (Ziti with Tuscan-style cauliflower – Oh, Molto, I just can’t quit you!) — all in the last week! It’s not going to last too much longer, but it’s been a welcome surprise.

Second, the local protectors of the Fourth Estate, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, weigh in on the milk labeling fiasco.

Next, and in what appears to be a bona fide act of some supernatural being, the current administration has appointed a non-Crony to lead an important component of a federal agency. The extremely well-respected Dr. Brian Wansink from Cornell University has been selected to head the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the folks in charge of putting together the much-maligned food pyramid.

And, what, in my opinion, has been a long-time coming, the Food Network is ceasing production of “Emeril Live.” I haven’t watched Mr. Bam in years because I was going to scrape the skin off of my back with a zester if I saw Emeril play with his stove knobs one more time. But Ed Levine at Serious Eats gives Emeril some props.

Finally, but not lastly, for Tony Bourdain fans, be sure to check out the Dec. 10 episode of “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel. Tony’s special guests? Progressive rockers Queens of the Stone Age—the only band that could make only the lyrics “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, and alcohol” into one incredibly kick-a@# song. Of course, the hippest mp3 blog on the planet, Stereogum, had this story like weeks ago.

Milk “Label-Gate” Update – Eggs, and Hopefully a Lawsuit, Are Next

To be honest, I’m surprised that this story has managed to maintain any traction. Heck, on Sunday morning, one of the local news channels even managed to squeeze in a 2-minute segment on it between the weather and a story about some guy who kicked the snot out of a neighbor who had broken into his house.

And even more surprising was that a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) representative actually called in response to an email I sent expressing my dismay with this decision.

First, the highlights of my talk with Bill Sherdan (can’t confirm this is the correct spelling – amazingly, I forgot to ask how you spell his name!) from the PDA’s Food Safety & Laboratory Services division. To be honest, the volume of my voice was a tad-bit raised at times. I’m used to writing about complex subjects and I don’t like somebody trying to spin me under the guise of, “This is complex and you just don’t fully understand it,” which is how I felt this discussion went at times.

• Mr. Sherdan said repeatedly that there is no difference between milk produced from cows shot up with rbGH and those that haven’t. Why? Mostly because there’s no test to find rbGH in milk. This latter point, according to this excellent and very timely report from the dairy industry publication The Milkweed, is fairly scandalous. Normal FDA regulations typically require that a “residue assay” be developed in a situation where a company is potentially altering a product that will end up in humans via the introduction of another substance – in this case, a synthetic hormone. For some reason, this was not required when the FDA approved rbGH in 1993!

• Second, he argued that dairy farmers are using it, so we should just shut up and let them do it. This is close to verbatim. “Farmers are saying, ‘We don’t care. We know it’s safe and we’re going to use it.” Except for the ones who aren't, of course. And, these days, that's a lot of them.
  

• He tried to use the argument that cows normally produce hormones in their milk, so saying “hormone-free” is misleading. This made me want to curse, loudly.

• And, finally, I noted that other products in the grocery-store are labeled as hormone-free, like meat, poultry, and pork, and asked whether they were next. He said, frighteningly enough, that eggs were most likely the next thing to come under the scrutiny of PDA and this mysterious Food Labeling Advisory Committee. The slippery slope indeed!

Two other things of note. Mr. Sherdan said that PDA staff met with representatives from York, Pa.-based Rutter’s Dairy, which has been vocal about its opposition to this decision. I don’t blame them! Rutter’s received approval from the PDA in August 2007 – a whopping three months ago – to use a new label that proclaimed its milk free of artificial growth hormones. A decision they then, of course, reversed a whole two months later.

During the meeting, Mr. Sherdan said, PDA staff encouraged Rutter’s to “tell their story” about their product, using the back part of the label. I don’t know if this means they can still say their product is hormone-free, however. But there does appear to be some truth to what Mr. Sherdan told me:

The Rutter's officials called the meeting "productive" and said they hope the exchange will lead to a common ground that will allow Rutter's to continue with its current labeling, or similar labeling.

Meanwhile, it sounds like some legal action could be in the future. Earl Fink, of the Pennsylvania Association of Milk Dealers (which doesn’t have a Web site!), tells the Pittsburgh Tribune Review they may sue to prevent the new rules from taking effect.

[Fink’s] organization is talking with state agriculture officials to work out more acceptable labeling requirements, but it is one of many state and national groups (emphasis added) planning to sue to stop the ban from going into effect, he said.

"The labels are allowed in 49 other states," he said. Processors would have to have Pennsylvania-specific labels and face increased costs in separate inventories and by rearranging delivery routes, he said.

This is what really pisses me off: Are financial and logistical realities going to prevent the smaller dairies/companies that provide hormone-free, antibiotic-free products from doing so in Pennsylvania because of this change?

I have also been in contact with the folks at the Campaign for Safe Food and they apparently are about to take some "action" on this issue, although it's unclear at this point whether that's a lawsuit or something else.

It's important to make something very clear: I am not a tin-foil hat kind of guy. I don’t see conspiracies around every corner and, after more than a decade as a medical/science writer, am extremely skeptical of claims that, for example, say cell phone use causes brain cancer or that drinking pomegranate juice is going to prevent Alzheimer’s.

All of this said, since I have started investigating this issue, it seems that valid concerns have been raised about whether milk from rbGH-treated cows has potential risks for humans who consume that milk. This is particularly true with regard to what rbGH does to levels of the protein known as IGF-1 in a cow’s milk. In well-conducted studies published in leading peer-reviewed journals, this protein has been linked to some of the most common cancers, including breast and prostate cancer. It also turns out that IGF-1 is molecularly identical in cows and humans – it has the exact same amino acid sequence. And, in its own studies to support FDA approval of rbGH, Monsanto showed that IGF-1 levels were significantly higher in treated cows versus untreated cows.

Along those same lines, a 2002 study out of Harvard by a highly-respected group linked dairy consumption to higher IGF-1 levels. Now this result came with the entirely appropriate disclaimer that “more research must be done to determine whether milk consumption itself is directly linked to cancer risk."

The problem is, nobody at the FDA seems to be very keen on conducting this research. They’d rather just stick with the language they used when they approved rbGH in 1993 – no difference in the milk from an rbGH-treated cow and a non-rbGH-treated cow.

Of course, they are saying this. Imagine the furor if they even intimated they were now uncertain. They’d have to admit that the original decision – and the research they based it on – was a little shaky! They’d be giving the impression that perhaps children and adults are everyday consuming dairy products – thanks to that government-subsidized “Got Milk?” campaign - that could potentially increase their risk of disease, including the big C. It would be a PR nightmare of remarkable proportions.

So, instead, they do nothing.

Finally, to get back to the whole BS reasoning PDA Sec. Dennis Wolff and his Food Labeling Advisory Committee used to justify this decision: The labels are misleading. When a somewhat similar discussion around milk and rbGH came up in Maine in 2003, Dr. Michael Hansen, from the Consumer’s Union (home to Consumer Reports), sent a letter to the Maine State Attorney General that laid out some of the scientific concerns I cited above. But Dr. Hansen also made this excellent point:

Monsanto also argues that the ads “mislead consumers by creating the false impression that milk is somehow better if it is produced without the use of rBST. Indeed, these claims falsely suggest that there are health or safety risks associated with milk from rBST-supplemented cows.”

We do not necessarily believe that a truthful label—such as “from farms that pledge not to use artificial growth hormone” or “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones”—always leads to the conclusion that milk from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones is “safer or superior to non-supplemented milk.” While some consumers may draw such a conclusion from these ads, others may not. Indeed, if such labels are considered to mislead consumers, then, by the same logic, labels such as “contains no artificial flavoring or colorings” or “contains no preservatives” would also be considered to mislead consumers. Yet no one has suggested that such labels should be banned.

Milk Labeling Shenanigans

Man, this stinks like, well, rotten milk! About a week before Halloween, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture announced that, as of January 1, it is no longer going to allow dairy products sold in Pennsylvania to indicate on the label that they are “hormone-free” or “antibiotic free.”

The rationale behind the move -- which was reportedly made in concert with a 22-member Food Labeling Advisory Committee composed of “dietitians, consumer advocates and food industry representatives” – is that the labels are misleading. Oh, and as the PA Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff explains, these products also tend to cost more.

Here is the money quote:

“Consumers rely upon the labeling of a product to make decisions about what they buy and what to feed their families,” said Wolff. “The department must approve the labels for milk sold in Pennsylvania and we’re seeing more and more marketing that is making it hard for consumers to make informed decisions.” (emphasis mine)

Um, Denny, if I may call you that (I’d like to call you something else right now), you know what helps me make informed decisions? Knowing what is being done to the cows from which the milk my kids are drinking or the yogurt I am eating comes. To me, Denny, it’s important to know that the cows are not being pumped full of synthetic growth hormone produced by the chemical giant Monsanto so each cow can produce an extra gallon of milk a day. And, Denny, it’s apparently important to a lot of other people, as well, otherwise companies like Kroger and Starbucks wouldn’t be making the switch to only synthetic hormone-free products.

It’s also important to me because, when I use the Google, I find out little bits of disturbing information, like the fact that Canada and Europe have banned the use of this growth hormone, rGBH, in cattle there. And that decision was made based on research performed by Canadian and European researchers which turned up some disturbing findings:

After more than nine years of study that took into account the findings of two independent advisory panels, Health Canada (the FDA's Canadian counterpart) made the decision to ban the hormone, citing greatly increased health risks to cows and potential health risks for humans exposed to rBGH. Canadian researchers reported that "long-term toxicology studies to ascertain human safety" must be conducted, as their research indicated that rbGH may cause "sterility, infertility, birth defects, cancer and immunological derangements" in humans. Other recent studies, as reported in the Journals Science (1/23/98) and The Lancet (5/9/98) have linked IGF-I (Insulin-like Growth Factor), high levels of which are present in milk produced with rbGH, to much increased incidence of prostate and breast cancer.

Now, from the quick reading I have done, the science here is far from settled. FDA researchers, in what is now an apparently famous – or infamous, depending on who you ask – paper published in the highly respected journal Science in 1990, concluded that use of this hormone in dairy cattle would not lead to dairy products that are dangerous to humans.

But this paper had some serious flaws:

Among the findings, the agency said that the rbGH in the milk of injected cows was degraded by commercial pasteurization. The sole research cited for this claim was that of a Canadian graduate student, whose master's thesis studied the feeding of rbGH-derived milk to calves (not humans). This study erroneously heated milk for 30 minutes at the 15-second pasteurization temperature.

So, again, it seems safe to say that, despite having been approved by U.S. federal regulators for use in cattle, there are serious concerns that have been raised by some pretty smart people about the use of these hormones.

Which brings us back to the main point here: making informed decisions.

There are dairy companies that go through extraordinary efforts to provide a product that consumers want, a product that they purchase because they think it is potentially safer, or because they don’t agree with pumping cows full of hormones that make them sick, which means they need lots of antibiotics so they don’t die, or perhaps for some other reasons.

In our house, we strictly buy milk from Organic Valley, which, in our nearby Giant Eagle, is more expensive than the other milk products they have. We consider the added expense – which, admittedly, isn’t as big as an imposition for our family as it might be for others – well worth it. The label on Organic Valley milk boxes says “Produced without antibiotics, synthetic hormones, or pesticides,” all three of which Uncle Denny cited as potentially “misleading” terms on milk labels.

One Pennsylvania dairy, Rutter’s, did receive a warning letter, according to this USA Today report, and is fighting back.

Rutter's Dairy Inc., a central Pennsylvania company that sells about 300,000 gallons a week, began promoting its milk as free of artificial hormones this summer. It has fired back at the state decision with full-page newspaper ads and a lobbying campaign. It is also urging customers to protest.

"We just think the consumers are more keenly aware in today's world about where their food comes from and how their food is manufactured or handled," said Rutter's President Todd Rutter.

Rutter’s has made it easy for you to contact your state legislator to complain about this unwarranted decision.

Mark A. Kastel from the Cornucopia Institute -- a great organization and dairy industry watchdog that produced this fantastic report last year on which dairies really live up to the organic standard (Organic Valley – 4 cows out of 5!) and which are just factory farm organic phonies (Horizon – 1 cow, barely!) – told me via email that his organization has been working with others in Pennsylvania to respond to this action, and will be putting out an alert urging Pennsylvanians to contact Gov. Rendell about it.

So, let’s review, shall we:

An unelected state official convenes an advisory board to fix something that he has provided no evidence to support is broken. This was done with no public hearings, no scientifically valid surveys to measure whether consumers actually are being misled, and singles out dairy products, despite the fact that as of January 1, I’ll still be able to go buy beef, pork, and poultry at Giant Eagle under it’s “Nature’s Basket” brand that has the very same misleading claims on its label. Well, that seems… really freaking stupid and, if I might don my little tin foil hat, very suspicious.

To wit, one question that cannot help but be asked is what role Monsanto or big dairy operations played in bringing this issue to the forefront of Mr. Wolff’s agenda.

Monsanto, which reportedly has seen the sales of rgBH slide dramatically, has tried to get federal regulations enacted that would prohibit this very same type of labeling. That effort has stalled. But it’s amazing to see the similarities between Mr. Wolff’s statements and those of Monsanto:

[Monsanto’s] letter to the FTC outlines deceptive advertising and milk promotions that mislead consumers…

[snip]

“Deceptive labels suggest to consumers that there is something wrong with the milk they have been drinking for the past 13 years. Even though the companies that print these labels know this is not true, they choose to mislead consumers in an effort to charge more money for the same milk."

So, with federal efforts failing, is this the beginning of a state-by-state effort? Has Mr. Wolff or other members of the PA Department of Agriculture met with Monsanto officials or any firms who represent them? Who was on this Food Labeling Advisory Committee? Who selected the members to be on it? Was there any consultation with the Governor’s office before this decision was made?

I’m planning on submitting these questions to the Department. Something stinks in the Keystone State, and its origins are in Harrisburg.