Food safety regulations drive interest in water seminar
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
A large number of people eager to learn more about proposed federal food safety regulations are signing up to attend the Idaho Water Users Association Summer Water Law and Resource Issues Seminar June 17-18.
The regulations proposed by the Food and Drug Administration have the potential to impact agriculture in a very negative way and interest in them is helping drive people to sign up for the seminar, said IWUA Executive Director Norm Semanko.
“The potential to have completely unrealistic and unachievable regulations imposed on growers is a big issue,” he said.
The proposed food safety regulations, which are related to the Food Safety Modernization Act, would destroy the profitability of many Idaho and U.S. producers and cause them to have to shut down, Boise attorney Scott Campbell said.
Campbell, who specializes in agricultural and water law, will discuss the proposed rules in-depth during a presentation titled, “Pure Water, Pure Food, Pure Disaster.”
Campbell said the FDA proposal is fraught with unintended consequences. For example, he said, a proposed regulation on allowable microbial levels in agricultural irrigation water could not be met by most farmers who use surface irrigation.
If the water fails a required weekly test, the farmer can’t use it.
“That’s not really an option if you’re growing a crop,” he said.
“The reach of this proposed rule is not understood by many people, even in the agricultural industry,” he added. “I’m going to … try to educate people about exactly what’s involved.”
The seminar includes several other major topics, including the future of new dams in Idaho, changes to Idaho’s irrigation district election laws, what the Columbia River Treaty means for Idaho and an update on bull trout critical habitat consultation.
Marc Thalacker, manager of Three Sisters Irrigation District in Sisters, Ore., will discuss pending federal legislation that could pave the way for a large number of small hydroelectric generation projects on irrigation systems in the West.
The legislation, which has passed the House and a Senate committee, would remove a lot of the regulatory hurdles for these projects, he said.
“There is the potential in the West for thousands of these sites,” he said.
The seminar will take place in Sun Valley, Idaho. More information and registration details can be found at the IWUA web site at www.iwua.org or by calling (208) 344-6690.
Attendance at the annual seminar has grown the past two years, from 170 to 180, and 163 people were already signed up this year through early June, with many more expected to sign up at the door, Semanko said.
“The interest in the seminar has grown and a lot of that has to do with the speakers and topics,” he said.
Consumer groups worry US-EU trade pact will weaken health, privacy regulations
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer groups plan to raise concerns on Wednesday about a proposed free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union, which they fear could weaken important government health, environmental and food safety regulations and undermine privacy on the Internet.
Negotiations on what would be the world’s largest free trade pact are set to begin in July. A U.S. government panel led by the Trade Representative’s office is holding hearings this week to finalize its goals for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP.
About 60 supporters and critics of the proposed deal have been given 10 minutes each on Wednesday and Thursday to make their cases and answer questions from the panel.
Since tariffs between the United States and the EU are relatively low, the most difficult part of the talks will be reducing regulatory and other “behind-the-border” barriers that impede trade in sectors ranging from agriculture to chemicals to autos to finance.
That worries consumer groups such as Public Citizen, which says the United States and the EU have different regulations because the concerns of the citizens in those countries are not the same. For example, EU consumers have voiced stronger objections to genetically modified food than their U.S. counterparts.
“Trying to eliminate a big swath of regulatory differences via a trade deal would have a democratic cost because you’re taking away a power from the electorate,” said Ben Beachy, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Meanwhile, U.S. plans to ease the movement of electronic data across borders have alarmed Internet activists, who see that push as a “backdoor way” for U.S. companies such as Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O) to get around EU privacy rules that have restricted their businesses in Europe.
“We’ve made it very clear that we’re not to give up privacy for the sake of a few digital dollars,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, which includes consumer groups on both sides of Atlantic, also has urged the two sides to tread carefully in talks on financial services, an area that EU member Britain is especially keen to pursue to bolster the position of London as a major world financial center.
“It is essential that consumer protection measures, many of which are still under development in response to the collapse and rescue of major portions of the banking system, should not be pre-empted by this agreement,” the group said in a brief.
Meanwhile, other groups hope to use the hearing to push their special concerns onto the U.S.-EU negotiating agenda.
Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, wants the two sides to limit subsidies that promote overfishing and reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing around the globe.
Together, the U.S. and the EU account for slightly more than 16 percent of the global catch by weight and are in the top five importers and exporters worldwide.
“If you can fix a problem in those two (economies), it makes a huge difference,” said Jackie Savitz, a deputy vice president at the conservation group. “This presents a chance to say ‘All right, what do we want to do about fisheries issues?’”
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
New EU food safety regulations brings healthier and safer produce
The entire bureaucratic apparatus regarding the processes, procedures and administrative fees which farmers, breeders and operators in the food sector (producers, processors and distributors) deal with will also be slimmed down.
“A slimmer regulatory framework means more precision, rationalization and efficiency” – explains Professor Donegani. “Overly complex, articulated regulations can become contradictory and dispersive. With the move to only 5 legislative acts, producers will have fewer but clearer regulations and inspectors will need to follow fewer but more precise and safe guidelines. We hope that the fruit and vegetable sector will move ever closer to what happens in the organic production sector: simple, clear and unequivocal rules that make it possible for consumers to serve an ever greater number of controlled products on their tables”.
Regarding on-site inspections, the competent authorities will have more efficient tools to check compliance with European regulations and European member states will have to integrate anti-fraud controls with their respective national supervision plans.
“The harmonisation of controls between member States and the European system will not create any great problems,” adds Professor Donegani. “I am sure that thanks to a phase of confrontation between the various countries, the change will be perceived as harmonious and to the advantage of final consumers, without penalizing local situations which may in some cases be protected with a few specific derogations”.
More simple rules will be introduced for the sale of seeds and other reproductive plant material aiming to create a wider choice for users, in order to guarantee productivity, adaptability and diversity in the plant and forestry production in Europe.
“Opening up to a wider variety of seeds is a positive and essential move in dealing with the reduction of biodiversity and therefore product uniformity. An advantage for the environment, but also for health and taste” – says Professor Donegani. “Always consuming the same products exposes the intestines to a repeated stimulus that can have a negative effect in the long term. Varying the food we eat can also help to prevent developing intolerances”.
FDA Food Safety Regulations Delayed Again As Court Grants Extension In Lawsuit
Is the Food and Drug Administration ever going to finalize the regulations mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act?
We have to assume it will, eventually. But when? It’s anyone’s guess. Twenty-eight months have already elapsed since the bill passed. The agency was supposed to have released most of its regulations by summer of 2012. The FDA finally released proposals for the two most important of the regulations this past January, on the second anniversary of the bill’s passage. But it’s extended the deadline for public comment on those proposals twice — first to May 15, then to mid-September. Meanwhile, the rest of the regulations, including those regarding imported foods, haven’t seen the light of day in any form.
The delays got so bad that, when the Center for Food Safety sued the FDA for its foot-dragging, federal judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that the agency had “unlawfully withheld” the regulations. She ordered the FDA to negotiate with the Center for Food Safety to develop a concrete timeline for the release of the regulations by May 20.
Guess what happened next!
The FDA stalled again. On May 17, its lawyers filed a “Joint Stipulation for Extension of Time” requesting that Judge Hamilton give them until June 10 to agree on a timeline. She granted the order on Tuesday.
Friday’s joint filing [pdf] includes some rather obvious clues as to what happened. The Center for Food Safety’s attorneys asked the FDA for its initial proposal for the timeline on April 26, days after winning its injunction agains the agency. They followed up with the FDA on May 7, 9 and 10, but heard nothing. Not until last Wednesday, May 15, did they get any response. The FDA’s proposed timeline wasn’t to the Center for Food Safety’s liking — and they didn’t have time to negotiate a compromise before the May 20 deadline, two business days later. So they agreed to another extension.
Maybe the FDA will release a swift, decisive timeline on June 10 and we’ll have, at least, proposals for the rest of the regulations before July 4. Or at least Labor Day. But we aren’t holding our breath.
Also on HuffPost:
Loading Slideshow
Study Shows Ag Food Safety Regulations Hurt Wildlife
A study by the Nature Conservancy, published in the journal Nature, shows that regulations and farming interventions that were supposed to help stop foodborne illness outbreaks caused by produce have instead caused a loss of ecosystem diversity in Salinas Valley without making produce safer. That California agriculture area called “California’s salad bowl” has voluntary standards that were put in place after the spinach E. coli outbreak in 2006. Many produce distributors are refusing to buy products from farmers who do not abide by these guidelines.
The guidelines recommend that farmers clear land of native vegetation, put up fences and set poison to keep wildlife away from the fields. Some farmers are clearing swaths of land more than 100 yards long between farm fields and wildlife habitat.
Salinas Valley is a prime wetland and riverside habitat for migrating birds such as raptors and shorebirds and endangered species such as the steelhead salmon. Author Sasha Gennet said, “Farming practices for food safety that target wildlife are damaging valuable ecological systems despite low risk from these animals.” Uncultivated areas between farms and waterways are called “fallow strips” and are important for preserving ecosystems.
But those guidelines haven’t made our food safer. Since the guidelines have been put in place, eight E. coli outbreaks from produce have been reported from food grown in California. The study states that, “over a 5-year period following an outbreak of toxic Escherichia coli from spinach, a crop grown extensively in the region, 13.3% of remaining riparian habitat [the area between land and a river or stream] was eliminated or degraded. If these practices were implemented statewide, across all crops, up to 40% of riparian habitat and 45% of wetlands in some counties would be affected.”
The study’s authors recommend that managing farms for ecological health and food safety should be accomplished only through evidence-based, adaptive management approaches. Loss of biodiversity is not good for the ecological health of the planet.
Wildlife forced out of California ‘salad bowl’ by food safety regulations
In California’s ‘salad bowl’ – a landscape portioned into emerald fields of spinach, lettuce, kale, and other leafy vegetables, grown to satiate the nation’s appetite for greens – hush-hush food safety standards are deforesting land and forcing wildlife out. These practices are unnecessary for ensuring safe food, say experts in a new study, and yet they spell marginalisation for a number of species.
The Californian Salinas Valley is the fertile, riverside floodplain where salad growing is concentrated in the state, and where 70% of America’s greens are produced. It is also near to the site of one the most devastating bacterial outbreaks in recent American history. In 2006, E coli bacteria found nestling in the folds of spinach leaves killed five people, and sickened over 200 others.
Spinach was recalled across the United States, and producers suffered a major economic dent due to buyer concern and consumer boycotting. “Everyone wants to trust the food that they eat,” says Lisa Schulte Moore, a landscape ecologist working to restore habitat around Iowa’s farms, who commented on the new research.
Bacteria could have come from water sources contaminated with fecal matter from livestock farms upstream, bacteria-affected handlers, or from direct contact with wild animals like feral pigs, an investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration later showed. Because of the variability of the threat, and the impact that single-source produce can have on people across the country, the industry dramatically ramped up its food safety standards.
The result was a number of industry-led groups intent on improving safety in salad-growing regions by imposing more stringent regulations on producers who voluntarily joined in. In the Salinas Valley, that industry collective is embodied by the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement (LGMA), which advertises science-based solutions to bacterial spread.
But in the wake of the E coli disaster, some corporate produce buyers have taken matters into their own hands, requiring producers to abide by apparently superfluous safety regulations. Ecologically, these translate into large chunks of land cleared of natural vegetation, and impermeable fencing designed to stave off wildlife, so restricting the movements of deer, coyote, and likely the endangered mountain lion says Sasha Gennet, a Central Coast ecologist with the Nature Conservancy, and an author on the study.
There’s no proof that these rules make food any safer. If they did, they’d be included in official, third party-audited guidelines like those put forward by the LGMA, Schulte Moore says.
Maybe most problematically, these businesses are not required to make their dealings transparent, “and therefore even savvy consumers would not have any way to suspect this might be occurring,” Gennet adds. “It’s been an invisible issue.”
Workers harvest iceberg lettuce at a Nunes Company farm on October 4, 2010 in Salinas, California. Photograph: Tony Avelar/Getty Images
What’s in it for the buyers? Greens that they deem ‘extra-safe’, and therefore less likely to cause financial havoc. It’s what Schulte Moore calls a “gut reaction”, lacking a scientific base. But for farmers, these advances are hard to reject. “There are lots of businesses that enjoy a huge share of the food market,” she says, including grocery stores and restaurants. “So by being a kingpin in the supply chain of a food between the producers and the consumers, [buyers] can say, we’re not going to buy your product unless you do these things.”
Most farmers must accept their land’s fate. “Farmers care about their land. Many in this region had invested time and money in conservation, for example wetlands restoration,” Gennet says. “I can’t imagine it’s been an easy choice to reverse all that.”
Between 2005 (before the spinach E coli outbreak) and 2009 (three years afterwards) Sasha Gennet and her team took aerial photographs and analysed farmer surveys in the Salinas Valley, picked for its agricultural importance, but also because of its conservation value. The floodplain habitat is a stopover and feeding ground for migrating birds like the Great Blue Heron, its plains and river harbour a number of endangered species like the steelhead salmon, and the waterway connects with one of the country’s largest marine sanctuaries.
But in that 2005-2009 period, the area lost 13% of its riverside and wetland habitat. Strips of land—some more than 100 meters wide—were completely cleared or degraded, says Gennet, apparently to create a suitable wildlife buffer, since animals are treated as potential carriers of bacteria.
If the destruction continues at its current rate, the researchers predict natural habitat losses of over 2000 square kilometers in California alone—which incorporates a 20% slash in riverside vegetation across nine Californian counties.
Bare ground also acts like a slipway between farm fields and nearby rivers for the pesticides and fertilizers showered over fresh produce. “Vegetation plays a key role in stabilising soils, in terms of uptake of nutrients and chemicals before it gets in the water way,” Schulte Moore explains. Without natural cover to aid drainage, these contaminants sluice across the earth and into the water—bearing untold impacts on aquatic life.
There’s the loss of ecosystem services to consider too: an intact system brings with it valuable pollinators, fertile soil, and unpolluted water. On fragmented lands, those features fade away.
Right now, it’s not even clear who is instilling these hyper-safe reforms. Because private company activities aren’t transparent, it’s impossible to tie the changes to anyone in particular. Yet the researchers hold what they call “compelling evidence”—largely through bold farmer testimonies—that the degradation of the land and corporate paranoia are linked.
For consumers, the covert influence of some in the fresh produce industry makes it harder to weed out a good bag of greens from a questionable one. But, says Gennet, the more consumer pressure there is for information about food sources, the more likely big players are to feel the push.
“The health of the food we eat is tied directly to the health of the land it’s grown on,” she says—an overplayed sentiment to some perhaps, but one that holds true here.
Ministry issues strict food safety regulations to agro exporters
Workers of an exporters process agricultural products ( File Photo: SGGP)
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has issued a new circular warning agencies of temporary ban on agricultural exports if food hygiene and safety norms are violated, amounting to freeze in exports for one year.
Enterprises found to violate food hygiene and safety regulations of importers will be ordered to stop export of agricultural products into that particular country or firms that have three batches of products that fail to meet the food safety regulations of importers will have to stop exporting for one year, said the ministry warning.
This is one of the most important contents in the ministry circular, which also stated that exporting companies of any batches of products which receive warnings of food hygiene violations of importers must produce certificate of origin, and such products will be seized or destroyed as per ministry rules.
The circular also regulates that vegetable, fruit and flavoring vegetables must have food hygiene and safety certificates issued by responsible agencies. These produces should be processed by units that meet Viet Gap or Global Gap standards for export.
Food Safety Regulations ‘Unlawfully Withheld’ By FDA, Court Rules
The Food and Drug Administration has officially broken the law by failing to release regulations needed to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the 2011 legislation meant to overhaul the nation’s food safety system.
That was the key finding in the case of Center for Food Safety v. Hamburg, released Monday by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Northern District of California. The Center for Food Safety had sued Margaret Hamburg, the FDA commissioner, after the agency failed to release seven key regulations by July 2012, which the FSMA had set as the deadline for their release.
The Center for Food Safety asked the court to order the FDA to release the regulations in a timely manner. The FDA responded that the rules were complicated and technical, and that releasing them prematurely would compromise their efficacy. (The agency didn’t directly address widespread accusations that the regulations were held up by the White House for political reasons.)
It looked like the lawsuit took a hit this January when the FDA released the two most important draft rules for public comment. But those two proposals weren’t enough for the judge.
Hamilton ruled Monday that the seven food safety regulations were being “unlawfully withheld” and that “the FDA has violated the FMSA and the [Administrative Procedure Act] by failing to complete the regulations by the statutory deadlines.” She ordered the FDA’s food safety officials to meet with representatives from the Center for Food Safety to draw up a concrete timeline for the release and finalization of the regulations and to present it to the court no later than May 20. She will use the proposed timeline as the basis for a judicial injunction with the force of law.
George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, described the decision as a “comprehensive victory” in a phone call with The Huffington Post.
“We think it’s an important case,” Kimbrell said. “It’s literally life or death. One in six Americans contract a food-borne illness every year and, tragically, thousands of them die. Congress knew that when they passed the statute. It was their intent with the Food Safety Modernization Act to fix it. But without its regulations, the statute is an empty vessel, which is why I’m so glad the court decided in our favor.”
FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said that the FDA could not comment on pending litigation. Kimbrell noted that the agency could appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Barring that, however, the next step in the case is the meeting to set a timeline. Kimbrell wouldn’t say how soon the Center for Food Safety would ask the FDA to release the rules, though it wouldn’t be “tomorrow.” In her decision, Hamilton agreed with the FDA that “the purpose of ensuring food safety will not be served by the issuance of regulations that are insufficiently considered.” And any proposed regulation will be subject to a public comment period of at least 30 days. So the FSMA won’t be implemented over night.
But Kimbrell insisted that the regulations’ release would be “way way sooner than it would have been without this litigation.”
The seven regulations could conceivably be released by July, one year after the deadline in the FSMA.
Also on HuffPost:
Loading Slideshow
Fox News Ignores Food Poisoning In Segment Attacking Food Safety Regulations
Fox News fearmongered about the costs of proposed federal food safety regulations without informing viewers that foodborne illnesses sicken millions of Americans annually and lead to the deaths of 3,000 people per year.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Food and Drug Administration has proposed two food safety regulations – not yet finalized and still subject to public input — which, among other safeguards, would require “science- and risk-based standards at fruit and vegetable farms and packing facilities.”
On the April 2 edition of Happening Now, Fox News host Jon Scott and correspondent Shannon Bream reported in detail what one conservative policy group estimated the rules, if adopted, would cost the agriculture industry. While the Fox figures paid brief lip service to the issue of public health – Bream said that ”it’s a worthy goal, of course, keeping the food supply safe” — they omitted any other discussion of consumer safety and the problem of foodborne illness outbreaks.
Specifically, Scott and Bream failed to inform viewers that, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 48 million Americans suffer from foodborne illness every year, and contaminated food is responsible for 3,000 deaths annually.
While Bream cited “critics” who claim the new regulations “may be completely unnecessary,” a rash of E. coli, salmonella and listeria outbreaks made national headlines in 2012 as the proposed rules were being crafted. Here are a few food safety stories Fox News ignored while questioning the need for stronger food safety rules:
FDA Halts Operations At Peanut Butter Plant Linked To Salmonella Outbreak
Tainted Cantaloupes: How Long Will Listeria Outbreak Continue?
Recalled Wegmans salads linked to local hospitalizations
Spinach Recalled For Salmonella Risk
Pork Investigation By ‘Consumer Reports’ Finds Rampant Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Kellogg Company Recalls Mini-Wheats. Metal Fragments In Cereal
FRESH & LOCAL: The Food Safety Modernization Act and New FDA Regulations
Posted: Friday, March 29, 2013 12:00 am
The Daily Progress
Farming is an interesting occupation. It is hard work and demanding, but it also has its rewards and fringe benefits. I get asked from time to time if I am still happy with my decision to farm full time, and I have found that my answer is always somehow strangely dependent on what the current weather is like. When the weather is nice, there is no better job in the world and it was the best decision I ever made. Then there are the other times.
When I look out the window lately, it looks like a scene of the ice planet Hoth from the Star Wars movies. We had a single abnormally warm day in January. Ever since then we have had one long, largely uninterrupted arctic blast. Terry and I have started joking that we may have to keep our winter farming activities going all year long. The spring greens are way behind schedule, so my mood was already somber.
Then the FDA dropped 1,200 pages of new food safety regulations on produce farmers. Now, I am downright gloomy.
Some background will make this issue easier to understand. Since World War II, the predominate economic model for fruit and vegetable production has been huge mega-farms in places like California and Florida that ship their produce all over the country. This model is usually called “industrial agriculture.”
The industrial agriculture model has its strengths. For example, it is a very cost effective way to produce food. But it also has some serious weaknesses. I taught a class recently for the local agricultural extension office, and I concluded the class with a picture from an industrial spinach farm. Fresh cut spinach is being loaded in the field from a conveyor belt into a tandem-axle dump truck. I love this picture because it clearly shows one of the big weaknesses of the industrial model: systemic opportunities for pathogen contamination.
Pathogen contamination is not as serious a problem in vegetables that are normally cooked before eating. But it is an extremely serious problem in fruits and vegetables like salad greens that are normally eaten uncooked.
My primary purpose in writing this column is to highlight the differences between the industrial model and the local market model. Local market produce has some very real advantages, and one of the big advantages is this issue of pathogen contamination.
Because of all the chronic problems with pathogens in industrial produce, Congress felt they had to do something. In the final days of 2010, they passed what they called the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) which gave sweeping new powers to the FDA to regulate the way foods are grown, harvested and processed. The 1,200 pages of regulations that were just released are the FDA’s proposed rules for fruit and vegetable production, and processed foods. These regulations are in a public comment period until May 15.
My feeling is that since the local market farms are not the problem, there is no reason to apply these regulations to us. My fear is that small local market growers are going to get swept away by regulations for problems they didn’t create. The FSMA contains an amendment named the Tester-Hagen Amendment that does provide some exemptions for local market growers. Growers with less than $25,000 in annual gross receipts are exempt from these regulations. In addition, growers with less than $500,000 in annual gross receipts are eligible for partial exemptions in certain cases if their sales are within 275 miles of the farm.
At this point, I still have no idea how much of this is going to apply to us. Maybe I’ll feel better if the weather improves.
Bryant Osborn and his wife Terry own Corvallis Farms in Culpeper County. His column on fresh and locally grown food runs every Friday. He can be reached at bryant@corvallisfarms.com
© 2013 The Daily Progress. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
More about Opinion
- ARTICLE: READER’S VIEWS: Thank you to Culpeper Senior Center
- ARTICLE: ‘Professional sleeper’ is the gig of a lifetime
- ARTICLE: PERSPECTIVE: At the court
- ARTICLE: Feel the sting
Posted in
Columnists
on
Friday, March 29, 2013 12:00 am.
| Tags:
Recent Posts
Categories
- and safety
- car safety
- child safety
- health & safety
- health and safety
- job safety
- national safety
- phone safety
- safety 1st
- safety at
- safety center
- safety checklist
- safety council
- safety devices
- safety equipment
- safety first
- safety gate
- safety harness
- safety jobs
- safety kits
- safety locks
- safety management
- safety manager
- safety manual
- safety meeting
- safety moment
- safety officer
- safety posters
- safety products
- safety program
- safety ratings
- safety regulations
- safety sign
- safety signs
- safety slogans
- safety standards
- safety tips
- safety toolbox
- safety topics
- safety training