Just as Southeastern oyster producers are clamoring for the government to stay out of their business, catfish farmers have launched a new ad campaign asking for more regulation of their industry.
Catfish farmers contend imported seafood should be held to the same stringent standards now applied to imported beef, poultry and pork. Unlike those commodities, which are inspected by the USDA, imported seafood is the domain of the FDA. According to government reports, only 2 percent of the 5.2 billion pounds of seafood that entered the U.S. last year was inspected.
"People are taking it for granted that everything's inspected, and they need to know what's going on," CFA president Joey Lowery says. "This is something that shouldn't even be negotiable, food safety for the American people."
Growers in the nation's southernmost commercial apple-producing region are fighting a change in crop insurance law, which they claim could wipe out a 200-year-old industry.
Henderson County, N.C. -- a stretch of Southern Appalachia where the first apple trees were planted by a Loyalist on the run from the Revolutionary Army -- today generates about $24 million in annual apple revenue, representing 85 percent of the state's apple crop. But the region's 150-plus growers have been hard hit in recent years by calamities including frost, wind and hail.
Owings credits the Federal Crop Insurance Program, which reimburses growers for lost apples at a rate of $9.25 a bushel, with keeping area orchards solvent. He's worried a new proposal to significantly lower disaster payouts for lesser-grade apples could prove devastating.
Yesterday in Washington, D.C., Tom Vilsack, the Agriculture Secretary and Kathleen Merrigan, the Deputy Secretary, announced a new USDA initiative, "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food." Officials say the almost $65 million program will "begin a national conversation to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity."
"An American people that is more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture," said Vilsack. He also posted a video on You Tube outlining the details of the program. On a consumer level, part of this initiative means knowing where your food comes from, beyond the grocery store produce aisle, as well as bringing locally farmed fruit and vegetables to schools.
The program will also help smaller farmers ship meat and poultry across state lines, in order to boost rural economies and small agriculture businesses. There will be changes to existing USDA programs that cut down logistical and bureaucratic road blocks that make sustainable local agriculture more costly and more difficult.
A California company has recalled 2,268 pounds of beef and bean burritos on fears they may be contaminated with listeria monocytogenes.
Windsor Foods of Riverside, Calif., issued the recall for 18-pound bulk cases of individually wrapped Butcher Boy Red Chile Beef and Bean Burritos, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service said. The cases contain 72 burritos each, carry the the establishment number "EST. 1905" within the USDA mark of inspection as well as the package code "1219215" and the case code "2080001."
Burritos in question were produced on Aug. 3 and delivered to a Minnesota storage facility. Consumers with questions about the recall should phone Windsor Foods at 909-477-4813.
Consuming foods contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, which can be fatal in infants and the elderly, and can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea among healthy people.
Are you concerned about food safety? Let us know in the comments below.
The FDA is expected to approve laser-etching of fruits and vegetables in the next month or so, paving the way for produce "tattooed" with product information to hit store shelves, an official with the USDA tells Slashfood.
"We figure maybe next month or the month after it will get FDA approval," says Jan Narciso, a research microbiologist with the USDA's Citrus and Subtropical Products Laboratory in Winter Haven, Fla.
But will these new labels affect the taste of your fruits and vegetables?
A California meat packer has recalled more than 825,000 pounds of ground beef that may be linked to salmonellosis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week.
Beef Packers, Inc., of Fresno, Calif., recalled the ground beef products on Aug. 6, 2009. Meat included in the recall was produced between June 5, 2009, and June 23, 2009; contains the code "EST. 31913" on its labels and was distributed to 11 states.
Officials say the meats may be linked to an outbreak of salmonella in Colorado. The strain of that particular outbreak -- salmonella Newport -- is resistant to many commonly prescribed drugs.
Breaking News: Organic food expert Kathleen Merrigan has been named Deputy Secretary of the USDA, the second-in-command job at the nation's main agency for making policy regarding farming and food. Merrigan, a longtime advocate of sustainable agriculture, is currently the director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment MS and PhD Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
As Obama and McCain relentlessly feint and parry towards Tuesday, has any word been volleyed more often than "taxes"? Whether your taxes are, not to mention will be, lowered, raised, leveraged, undercut, overspent, distributed, re-distributed, undistributed or even, perhaps, unpaid, it's important to remember the basic fact that taxes fund government. This includes departments, agencies, entities and initiatives concerning food, from growing it to cooking it to eating it. With election day finally ascendant, isn't it time to check in on some of the entities supported by public funds, to see what we're paying for?
Modern science is an amazing thing. Scientists are working on coding the DNA sequences of just about everything, nowadays. You can add cacao to that list.
According to the BBC, the Mars Company, in conjunction with IBM and the US Department of Agriculture, is working on coding the DNA of cacao, which is the tropical tree that we get chocolate from. They're calling it the Cacao Genome Project, and it should take about five years to complete. Some of the aims of the project include finding ways to make the trees more disease resistant and less susceptible to water shortages, as well generally improving crop yields.
One thing about this research project that is particularly admirable is that all of the information will be publicly available as the information comes. Everything they learn will be put into the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture, so researchers all over the world will have access to the information.
We posted a few weeks ago about several schools banning the sale of beef that originated in California. At that time, the USDA was investigating.
It's now official.143 million pounds of frozen beef has been recalled by the USDA.
That's not a typo. It really is 143 million pounds. It's the largest meat recall in U.S. history. The beef comes from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company and goes back to February 1, 2006. The USDA says that cattle at the California factory was mistreated and that there were other health regulations that weren't met. Officials have undercover video that shows sick and crippled cattle being mistreated by employees.
And this isn't just frozen meat that you get at the supermarket. Westland/Hallmark is a big supplier to fast food chains and schools. Officials think that most of the meat has already been eaten (though no sicknesses have been reported as of yet).
Scientists at the University of Minnesota recently performed a study that was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to see if vegetables grown in soil that was fertilized by manure that contained antibiotics would then in turn also contain antibiotics. They focused specifically on corn, lettuce and potatoes, growing them in a green house, in soil that was fertilized by pig manure that contained antibiotics. They discovered that all three varieties of vegetables soaked up the antibiotics, and that the amounts in the potatoes were especially high, possibly because the edible portion of the plant comes in direct contact with the soil.
What this means for those of us eating these antibiotic infused vegetables is still unknown. The researchers believe that this could be a cause of allergic reactions in children and other sensitive populations. This finding could also have an impact on organic farms, because in order for them to be organic, they have to keep antibiotics out of their crop stream. The interconnectivity of our food chain always impresses me.
The New York Timesreports (as did The CBS Evening News last night) that a House subcommittee is going to meet today to investigate not only all of the food recalls and contaminations of the past couple of years but to examine just how the FDA operates in general.
Evidence has come to light that the FDA may have been aware of the spinach and peanut butter contamination several months before the sicknesses occurred but didn't do as much as they could have. One problem is the resources. As CBS said, even though the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food in this country and the USDA for the other twenty, for some reason, the USDA has three times as many inspectors. The FDA has also been busier with the "D" part of their name in recent years.
Meat and milk from cloned animals have been deemed safe by the FDA and won't make it to market for some time yet, which is a relief to many consumers because the USDA has also determined that there needs to be no label distinguishing between cloned meat and naturally-bred meat and some would like to see that policy change before the products are on store shelves. Another issue that needs definition is whether or not clones can be organic. Many feel that as long as the clones are "raised organically," living the same lifestyle and receiving the same food as conventionally organic animals, they should receive the designation.
Others, all supporters of the organic movement, range from strongly against the issue to rabidly against it. The terms "organic" and "cloned" just don't belong together, they say. The current guidelines state that genetically modified foods cannot be consider organic. By implication, an animal made in a lab - even if it isn't "genetically modified" - should also be excluded. "Surely, these opponents conclude, no animal is more engineered than a clone."
For the moment, it seems that the current organic rules would apply and that it would not be difficult for cloned foods to qualify as such, but ultimately, the decision lies in the hands of the USDA, which could be considered by an advisory panel as early as spring. After this decision, we may see a revision of the definition of "organic" itself.
Breaking News: Organic food expert Kathleen Merrigan has been named Deputy Secretary of the USDA, the second-in-command job at the nation's main agency for making policy regarding farming and food. Merrigan, a longtime advocate of sustainable agriculture, is currently the director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment MS and PhD Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. 
Patience, everyone. It's almost over.
We 
The New York Times 
Meat and milk from cloned animals have been 
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