Eleven Westerners present their Obama Christmas wish lists

Too bad at least one of them has already been crapped on by Santa.

Courtney White a rancher who raises grass-fed cattle and leads a group that markets that kind of beef. He wants Obama’s support for the local-food movement.

“We need a radical re-visioning, away from the subsidization of the industrial food system. If we’re going to incentivize solar and wind energy production, why don’t we incentivize local food production as well? It has just as much climate impact.”

Ahh, Mr. White. You must have filled out your wish list to Santa Obama before he named CAFO-loving Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, or Nutsack, as his Secretary of Agriculture.

Change we Need needed at USDA

Nicholas Kristof has an excellent column about how the U.S. Department of Agriculture is so in need of reform that we ought to start by calling it the Department of Food.

And, per his column, you can help push for that reform by signing an online petition to President-elect Obama at Food for Democracy.

Here’s what I wrote to personalize my e-signature:

Anything to reign in Big Ag, control CAFO pollution and give us healthier food!

Don’t wait, go sign.

E coli mystery meat will get less mysterious

The Department of Agriculture is going to start naming grocery store names as part of some meat recalls.

Now, it will only be during major, “Class I” recalls, not lesser, “Class II” recalls.

It’s a start, true. But, USDA, by leaving out Class II recalls, wouldn’t tell you want stores got beef that originated like this Class II:

Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in Chino, Calif.’s recall occurred after a Humane Society investigator filmed workers abusing “downer” cows unable to stand to force them to slaughter.

And, the original version of the rule, proposed two years ago, would have applied to all recalls.

Of course, other states can emulate California at the state level. It already requires store information on all meet recalls.

BushCo throws up straw men to fight having to fight global warming

The Bush Administration is officially disavowing the Environmental Protection Agency’s advance notice of proposed rulemaking about using the Clean Air Act to fight global warming. A joint letter from the secretaries of agriculture, commerce, transportation and energy, rejects the idea of using the act to regulate greenhouse gases, for example.

“Our agencies have serious concerns with this suggestion because it does not recognize the enormous — and we believe, insurmountable — burdens, difficulties, and costs, and likely limited benefits, of using the Clean Air Act to regulate GHG emissions.”

First, this ignores the EPA’s own estimate of potential economic benefits from GHG control, as much as $2 trillion worldwide, and here in the U.S., recouping costs on the easiest parts of the solution in no more than seven years.

Outside of auto transportation, MIT has invented a new solar concentrator that could be far better than current solar panels.

So, the White House-orchestrated attempt to undercut the EPA is the usual anti-environmentalist pack of lies.

Bullshit from USDA won’t help grow crops

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said government mandates of, and subsidies for, corn-based ethanol don’t have a major effect on food prices.

Right. And the economy really did grow in the first quarter.

As for the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association’s claims that the ethanol mandate, and subsidy, keep its members from producing cheap food, what Kraft Crap produces is not food but ‘food-like substances.” Instead of stuffing America full of white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and soybeans run through pork bellies, why not give us some real food?

USDA says trust us on meat

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to limit meat recall information except when it determines there is a serious health risk.

There are so many things wrong with this.

First is that it would let USDA protect big slaughterhouses by making its own determination of what a level of health risk actually is.

Second, this could be just a step away from USDA shielding those slaughterhouses from liability suits.

Third, it lets the USDA hide itself from criticism as to how badly it may be doing at various steps of its meat inspection process. In other words, if it’s missing a lot of stuff at the slaughterhouse level, and it is allowed to limit its recall information to not tell what stores are selling bad meat, it comes off smelling like a relative rose.

As for recent past history, here’s where the rubber would hit the road:

Had that been the rule in place last month, consumers would not have been told if their supermarkets sold meat from a Southern California slaughterhouse that triggered the biggest beef recall in U.S. history.

The story notes that currently, USDA only discloses a recall itself, not where the meat was sold.

Partly for competitive reasons, industry groups support the way recalls are currently done, where a description of the recalled product is released by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service along with some other information including where it was produced.

Retailers must remove recalled meat from their shelves but there’s no requirement that they notify their customers about meat already sold, though some take voluntary steps to do so.

But, packaged hamburger, other than a story label, doesn’t have a brand name like Del Monte or whatever. It’s hard for buyers to know if their meat is bad or not.

USDA is now trying to spell its name as CYA.

Update, added from comments by me:
I beg to differ.

First, yes, it's clear it’s a proposed rule change.

BUT, the purpose of blogs, activists, etc., is to ALERT people to proposed rule changes, before the horses are out of the barn.

I think the meatpacking industry “concern” there is disingenuous.

Second, and to correct what I originally posted and in comments, yes, I did say this would let them not tell how many pounds of meat are recalled. However, that is not to say that isn’t coming down the pike. As it is, with minimal inspection, I would not trust current USDA numbers on the pounds of meat it does list in a recall.

The “secrecy” factor is, IMO, a de facto idea that USDA would be deciding what an imminent health risk is, or not.
Why?

Without knowing all the retail stores bad meat went to, we have no way of knowing how many people got sick on the bad meat.

Of course, the “secrecy” factor is par for the course on BushCo.


As for what additional information the public will get, I’m all ears, if you want to post that info, and a link, here.