WSU to Return “Ominivore’s Dilemma” to Its Common Reading Program

Washington State University alum and former WSU regent, Bill Marler, has offered to foot the bill to bring author Michael Pollan to the school’s campus. WSU said it will take Marler’s offer to pay the speaking fee for the author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and will reinstate the school’s Common Reading Program. According to WSU, the Common Reading Program had been suspended due to financial concerns and not because of pressure from the agriculture industry. In recent days, the land grant University has faced a barrage of criticism over the suspension of the program.

We believe Washington State University has worked hard to reach its status as a leading national research institution (its College of Agriculture is ranked second in the nation in plant science by the Chronicle of Higher Education). There is, however, the continued concern that large agriculture interests have undue influence over WSU and other land grant universities which conduct important research in areas surrounding food production and its effects on the environment and public health.

Congress could alleviate these concerns by committing federal dollars to help WSU and other land grant universities and remove the potential conflict of interest by receiving financial support from Big Ag. Imagine where we would be if the biomedical research community did not have support from the National Institutes of Health and had to rely on the pharmaceutical industry for exclusive support?

We’re looking forward to Michael Pollan’s visit to WSU and the discussion of his book. He told the New York Times that he is pleased the program was restored. He said it’s especially important that it’s taking place at a land grant university, “because we are in the midst of this national conversation about the future of food and agriculture, and land grant universities have a critical role to play.”

The Changing Food Landscape and the FDA

Baltimore’s former health commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, is making news as the new deputy director of the FDA, serving under the new commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg. Hamburg and Sharfstein have pledged to reform the food safety system and encourage scientific exchange and better communication to the public.

In the New England Journal of Medicine, Hamburg and Sharfstein acknowledged the difficulty of decision-making at the FDA, often in the absence of complete information, and admitted that recent high profile contaminations (peanut butter, anyone?) have rightfully caused the public to question the agency.

This is certainly a daunting task, but Hamburg and Sharfstein seem ready for the challenge (see some background on them here).

Indeed, there are many aspects of the food system that advocates for public health, the environment, animal welfare and social justice have identified as areas in dire need of improvement. The FDA will have the authority to address some of these issues, but not all. Some recent articles have discussed complicating factors that may impact the safety of the nation’s food supply. Read More >

WSU’s Book Controversy Shines Light on Big Ag’s Influence on Land Grant Schools

It isn’t easy being a land grant university these days, especially when your Ag School depends so heavily on industry money for support. Sadly, fear of losing funding from their biggest money stream is limiting the types of research many scientists are undertaking at agriculture schools across the country. Now there are accusations that the funding fear may have crept its way out of Washington State University’s Ag School and has taken hold in, of all places, WSU’s Common Reading Program.

Months after WSU’s Common Reading Committee selected “Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” by Michael Pollan as this year’s thought provoking book, the university announced that it decided not to hand out the nearly 4,000 copies it had already purchased to its incoming freshman during WSU’s orientation sessions and cancel the reading program altogether. The first official reason offered earlier this month was, “given the circumstances currently facing our institution, changes must be made to the program.” Through an email sent to faculty yesterday, WSU’s president, Dr. Elson Floyd, and his provost, Dr. Warwick Bayly, stated that those “circumstances” are the university’s financial woes. The email goes on to say:

This is just one of scores of hard decisions that have been made in recent weeks to address the $54 million cut in our biennial state appropriation. As you well know, this austerity has forced us to reduce or eliminate a number of programs and positions. Reducing the scope of this program — including not bringing the author to campus and avoiding speaker’s fees and travel, facilities, and event costs — will save an estimated $40,000.

However, faculty members were quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education questioning the fiscal excuse:

Jeff Sellen, an instructor at the university who sat on a committee in charge of implementing the reading program, says members of that panel were told “we could not call it a ‘common reading.’”

“I think that was important because it would be less official and would maybe fly underneath the radar,” he says. “It was obvious that it was political.”

He says that there was never a substantial budget for events around the book—certainly not enough to bring in Mr. Pollan as a speaker—so he dismisses the idea that there was a financial rationale for the changes in the program.

For those of you who don’t know, Pollan’s book reveals the serious problems that our broken industrially based food system poses for the environment, our health and our own morality. It looks like the book may have hit a little too close to home for one of WSU’s Board of Regents. The Spokesman-Review quoted Regent Francois X. Forgette as saying his fellow Regent Harold Cochran “had read the book and raised concerns.” According to a release from Governor Chris Gregoire’s office, Cochran is a third generation wheat rancher and is a member of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers and the Walla Walla County Wheat Growers.

Regardless of what led to the decision, the ensuing controversy has spotlighted serious concerns regarding the influence Big Ag has over large public institutions that are entrusted to further academic research in food and agricultural sciences. I witnessed this influence first hand while serving as the communications director for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP). Read More >

Big Food Gets in on ‘Local’ Movement

The blogosphere has been buzzing following Wednesday’s New York Times story about local foods “making it big.” As unlikely as it may sound on first blush, Lay’s, the nation’s leading producer of potato chips, has jumped on the local foods bandwagon with a new marketing campaign aiming to highlight their chips as locally produced food.

Critics say Lay’s hijacking of the “local food” terminology is disingenuous and misses the point that local food systems are based on an entirely different ideology.
The Times quoted food writer Jessica Prentice, credited with coining the term “locavore,” to drive home this point.

“The local foods movement is about an ethic of food that values reviving small scale, ecological, place-based, and relationship-based food systems,” Prentice said. “Large corporations peddling junk food are the exact opposite of what this is about.”
But others argue that the definition of local food is broadening, and due to environmental reasons and food safety concerns, people increasingly want to know where their food comes from, even if it’s not anywhere close to their backyard. Companies are starting to think that letting consumers know where they grow and package their product could boost their sales, especially when they can boast production facilities close to their supplying farms.

A similar argument has risen with regard to organic production, which grew from a small movement to a $25 billion per year industry and now includes industrial-scale organic farming. Perusing the grocery store shelves, one can now find organic cookies and yes, organic potato chips. Have some companies lost touch with the true principles of organic production in their quest to make a profit in a burgeoning market? In some cases this may be true. Read More >

Dear Oprah, I Love You, But You’re Promoting KFC? Seriously?

picture-6I have to admit it took me by surprise to read that Oprah Winfrey teamed up with KFC Tuesday to help promote the fast food giant’s new Kentucky Grilled Chicken. The Oprah Winfrey Show is giving away meal coupons good for two pieces of grilled chicken, two individual sides and a biscuit. It’s all part of the show’s new “Harpo Hookups” promotion. It really was a great hookup; everyone in the U.S. who had access to a computer could print up enough coupons to feed a family of four for free. (If you didn’t download it last night, you’re too late) Before I go on, I want to make it clear that there are few people whom I respect more than Oprah Winfrey. She’s done more to help the world than I could in a dozen lifetimes.  So, I believe that the reason for this giveaway, at least in Oprah’s view, is purely altruistic. I have no idea how many people will eat their first nutritious meal in quite a long time thanks to this generous promotion. At the very least it will help families save a few bucks in this difficult economy. However, knowing what I know about how most KFC chickens are raised, I wish Oprah could have found a more environmentally friendly way to “hookup” so many people with free food. Read More >

Is There a Connection between IFAP and the Ongoing Swine Flu Outbreak?

b00528_h1n1_flu_blue_medjpgThe ongoing outbreak of Swine Flu / novel influenza A (H1N1) highlights one of the many serious public health risks that industrial food animal production (IFAP) poses on a global scale. It is known that pigs are “mixing vessels” for influenza viruses (for swine, avian and human flu), and it is believed that the last two flu pandemics, in 1957 and 1968, broke out when avian flu and human flu viruses mixed genetically with pig viruses to create a new flu virus that was transferred back to people. It has also been suggested that the 1918 Spanish Flu originated from pigs (Chasing the Fickle Swine Flu, March 7, 2003, Science).

Insufficient evidence is available to definitively determine whether the current swine flu outbreak originated from IFAP swine operations. However, through analyses of genome sequences generated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from current virus isolates, Columbia University researchers have proposed two swine-related genetic ancestors of the current virus. Of these, one that accounts for six of the eight genetic segments of the virus has been identified as the H3N2 virus, a triple reassortment of swine, avian and human virus first isolated in pigs on a North Carolina swine operation in August of 1998. (Evolution of Swine H3N2 Influenza Viruses in the United States, Journal of Virology, September 2000) The other two segments are believed to be from swine viruses of Eurasian origin (Trifonov, 2009). Read More >

Obama Sets Up Biofuels Working Group

cornThe blogosphere is abuzz today over the just-announced Biofuels Interagency Working Group, which throws a lifeline to the troubled ethanol industry. The group, headed by the secretaries of the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, has been given the charge by President Obama to make biofuels friendlier to the environment while encouraging the development of more of those “flex-fuel” cars that are so popular in the Midwest.

The formation of the working group—the administration’s first major statement on the touchy issue of enthanol use and production—will spell relief for the depressed industry, which has shuttered production facilities and delayed or canceled building new plants due to lower gas prices, higher costs for corn, and the credit crunch. Through the working group, the government will assist in refinancing some of the troubled operations and guaranteeing loans for construction of new biofuel projects. Recent earnings announcements from companies heavily-invested in the government-subsidized enthanol program have been dismal. ADM, for one, said today their third quarter profit dropped 98 percent, with a $167 million decline in the biofuel division alone. Read More >

Everyone Offering Advice; Some Get in Trouble

In this media-saturated world, where news is updated around the clock on TV and on the Web, it shouldn’t be surprising that conflicting and sometimes downright incorrect information is reported. This is especially true of such a huge emerging story as the swine flu outbreak (oh, right, we’re supposed to be calling it the H1N1 virus, or the Mexican flu, or the North American flu, depending on who you ask).

Since it’s on the collective mind of Americans (and the rest of the world), people are wondering what they can do to protect themselves and their families. It seems like everyone is offering advice— and sometimes getting in trouble for doing so. Enter Vice President Joe Biden.

On the Today Show on Thursday, Biden, who has created somewhat of a reputation for his loose lips, made some comments that the Obama administration quickly went on damage control to clarify.
He said, in part: “It’s not that it’s going to Mexico. It’s you’re in a confined aircraft; when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft.”

He added: “I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway,” he continued. “. . . . If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

Administration officials went on the record to clear the air on what Biden “meant to say.”

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It’s not that what Biden said was wrong, or that he said it with bad intentions. It’s that the federal government is trying to stay on message, and their current recommendations are the following: It is not necessary for all Americans to avoid public transportation and travel (except non-essential trips to Mexico). However, if you are feeling sick, stay home from work or school and avoid public places.

In this and any public health crisis, it is important that the public receives clear, specific guidance that conveys the relevant information without leading to unnecessary hysteria. That said, I guess it remains to be seen what the next PR gaffe will be…

-Patti Truant