Diet | Center for a Livable Future

Focus on Food Day: The Consequences of Meat

Earlier this week, CLF’s Robert S. Lawrence, MD, and Keeve Nachman, PhD, kicked off the Center for a Livable Future’s countdown to Food Day with a webinar, “Industrial food animal production and the high-meat American diet: health and environmental consequences.” (Audio; sli des).

October 24, 2011, will be the first inaugural Food Day, a grassroots movement that promotes a healthy, sustainable, and just food system. In support of this nationwide campaign, organizations across the country will orchestrate events ranging from food-policy lectures to protests of junk-food stores to local, sustainable dinners and garden-building. Michael Jacobson, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), is leading the effort. Read More >

CLF opposes Rehberg amendment, antibiotic-resistant Salmonella infections in children

The FY 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill, voted out of the House Appropriations Committee last week, includes an amendment that would severely limit the authority of FDA to regulate the use of antimicrobials, including antibiotics, in food animal production-a key concern of public health researchers. Sponsored by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), the amendment would prohibit the agency from spending any money appropriated by the bill on actions “intended to restrict the use of a substance or a compound” unless certain conditions are met. Although the amendment is broad-affecting any “substance or compound,” notably including tobacco-Rep. Rehberg has told The Washington Post that his goal was to block FDA action on the use of antimicrobials by food animal producers. Indeed, the amendment would, among other things, preempt upcoming FDA restrictions on the misuse use of cephalosporin-the antibiotic of choice for serious Salmonella infections in children. (Researchers have reported increased incidence of cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella infections [Foley and Lynne, 2008].) Joining many others in the public health community, researchers at the Center for a Livable Future recently sent a letter to Congress , urging members to strike the amendment from the legislation before final passage.

The Rehberg amendment reads as follows (we have broken it into numbered and lettered points to make the language easier to follow):

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Food and Drug Administration to write, prepare, develop or publish a proposed, interim, or final rule, regulation or guidance that is intended to restrict the use of a substance or a compound unless the Secretary

bases such rule, regulation or guidance on hard science (and not on such factors as cost and consumer behavior), and
determines that the weight of toxicological evidence, epidemiological evidence, and risk assessments clearly justifies such action,
including a demonstration that a product containing such substance or compound

a. is more harmful to users than a product that does not contain such substance or compound, or

b. in the case of pharmaceuticals, has been demonstrated by scientific study to have none of the purported benefits. Read More >

Food and Farm Policy: this is not the image and style that you’re used to

HFHP Summit 2011

Recently, my boyfriend offered to give me a dollar for every blog I started with, “Stop what you’re doing, ’cause I’m about to ruin the image and the style that you’re used to.” I responded to his idea with a barrage of reasons why it was ridiculous and certainly not appropriate in my line of work to write blogs citing The Digital Underground’s “The Humpty Dance.” On second thought, however, those 18 words are an oddly apropos summary of the overarching goals of the Healthy Farms, Healthy People (HFHP) Summit, recently held in Arlington, VA, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hosted by Public Health Institute. The Center for a Livable Future was a co-organizer of the Summit-along with American Farmland Trust, California Food and Justice Coalition, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Public Health Law and Policy-which brought together interests from conventional and sustainable agriculture with public health professionals, physicians and health insurers to discuss potential shared issue-areas in food and agriculture policy. The goals of the Summit were to: Read More >

Study finds new MRSA strain in European milk

Researchers at Cambridge University say they have found a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in milk from England, Scotland and Denmark, which they are calling LGA251.

The findings – published online by The Lancet Infectious Diseases – can be seen as a further signal that the routine use of antibiotics in industrial food animal production is producing novel public health risks, and diminishing the effectiveness of antibiotics in human medicine.

Center for a Livable Future Director Robert Lawrence said the new findings “underscore the urgent need to protect the effectiveness of a critical medical and public health resource – and this unambiguously translates to the obvious step of eliminating the irresponsible administration of antibiotics to food animals.”

In December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed that 80% of the antibiotics used in the United States are used in food animals.

The authors of the Lancet study stressed that current testing protocols would fail to identify this new strain as MRSA, and that “new diagnostic guidelines for the detection of MRSA should consider the inclusion of tests for [LGA251].”

U.S. Dept. of the Interior among 2,000 Sodexo clients offered Meatless Monday

The Meatless Monday campaign just gained America’s protector of natural resources and heritage as one of its latest supporters. The U.S. Department of the Interior is one of Sodexo’s more than 2,000 corporate and government clients, which the food service giant encouraged to adopt its Meatless Monday initiative.

Sodexo announced today that it is all part of the company’s ongoing efforts to boost health and wellness and promote sustainability in the North American communities where it serves as many as 10 million meals a day. The Department of Interior joins several of Sodexo’s well-known clients, such as Toyota and Northern Trust Bank in adopting Meatless Monday.

The non-profit Meatless Monday campaign, which is operated out of New York City, was launched in 2003 with the help of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for a Livable Future. The public health campaign was first started simply to reduce America’s saturated fat consumption by 15%, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2000.

While reducing potential negative health effects, such as cardiovascular disease, remains a key goal, a few years ago the initiative expanded its focus to environmental impacts of intensive meat production. Those impacts can be quite substantial. Research suggests that it takes 20 times the amount of fossil-fuel energy to produce conventional beef protein than plant-based protein. According to a study out of California, it takes about 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. That’s almost ten times more than the 220 gallons water needed to produce a pound of tofu.

A Sodexo spokesperson says the Department of Interior reports that, “the population of customers at DOI is very health and environmentally conscience, so that Meatless Monday is a welcome addition to our program.” In a Sodexo news release, Toyota executive Will Nicklas was quoted as saying, “Meatless Monday has been successful here primarily because Sodexo helps our customers understand that it is not at all about becoming vegetarians or even weight loss, it’s about taking easy steps to guard our health and be good stewards of our environment.” Read More >

Corn Panic

By Dr. Dennis Keeney, Visiting Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

The USDA 2011 Prospective Plantings Report was one of the most anticipated planting reports in several years. It came on the heels of a shocking Grain Stocks Report issued last month, which showed that corn stocks have come down 15% since March 2010. Ending stocks are projected to be only 675 million bushels, about 5% of the projected marketing year consumption, while consumption of the current marketing year corn was higher than in 2009 and well above projected consumption. Lowered stocks were also caused by a smaller than expected corn crop due to cold and rainy weather in the Corn Belt in 2010. Corn prices almost immediately increased by another $1 per bushel on the heels of a doubling of price during the past year. This dramatic price jump portends another round of world-wide food price increases, similar to those in 2008-2009. Already, some political uprisings in the Middle East have been blamed to some extent on rapid food price increases. In 2008-2009, yields bounced back to normal and the ethanol demand was much lower.

Why has this happened? Will it be alleviated by a bumper crop on more acres in 2011? Or has the grain commodity price structure started a trend towards a “new normal” of steadily increasing prices and more shortages?

The March 31 crop report indicated that farmers “intend” to plant 5% more acreage in corn, 8% more in wheat and 15% more in cotton while cutting soybean planting by only 1%. This adds up to 4 million more acres of cropland than there were in 2010. One wonders where that extra land is coming from. Most likely, it is land being retired from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and includes more fragile meadow and grassland. That is not good news for the environment. Just recently, a number of congressional members called for the immediate release of some of the 31.2 million acres of CRP for cropland.

I would like to explore what corn is used for and why the sudden drop in ending stocks surprised so many people, before presenting some scenarios that may play out in the near future. Read More >

Calling all Farmers: Baltimore Accepting Applications for Urban Agriculture Projects

Courtesy Baltimore Office of Sustainability

This spring, something new is sprouting up in Baltimore. In the coming months, small-scale farm plots will be allocated to local farmers —an initiative aimed at filling vacant city-owned lots, encouraging community development, improving neighborhoods and increasing access to healthy food.

Last month, city officials in the Office of Sustainability released their Request for Qualifications (RFQ), beginning the search for qualified farmers willing and able to transform an empty plot into a productive asset. Between now and May 6, the city will be accepting applications from aspiring urban farmers.

In preparation for this project, CLF collaborated with the city on a land assessment to identify potential sites suitable for urban agriculture. Abby Cocke, an environmental planner within Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, said that about 35 acres within the city met the criteria. In addition to being flat and sunny, the land needed to be city-owned, vacant, and with no short- or medium-term plans for development. Ten of those acres will likely be allocated in this first phase of the project.

Holly Freishtat, Baltimore’s Food Policy Director, said that sites were also considered based on need for better access to fresh fruits and vegetables. According to CLF, 18 percent of Baltimore City is considered a food desert, defined as a census block group more than ¼ mile from a supermarket and with 40 percent or more of the population with an income below 125 percent of the federal poverty line.

This summer, the city will work with farmers to identify specific plots that will work with their needs. The 5-year leases will charge just $100/year for use of the plots, which are up to 1 acre in size. The city may also provide grants or loans to help farmers cover start-up costs.

Cocke describes this initiative as a tangible way to transform problems into solutions. Baltimore has 30,000 abandoned properties dragging down neighborhood values. Urban agriculture can create valuable opportunities for residents including jobs, environmental improvements and enhanced access to healthy foods, she said.

“In addition to all the other benefits, we believe this will be a very important education and awareness-raising tool,” Cocke said. “More people in Baltimore will realize that it’s possible to grow your own food in your neighborhood. I’m hoping we’ll also see more community gardens get started as an after-effect.”

Across the country, interest in urban agriculture has piqued among urban planners and environmental, public health and sustainable agriculture advocates. From Boston to Seattle, cities are finding that they now want to reverse what city planners did a century ago when they moved farming out of cities completely. Now, with concerns about climate change and sustainable food production, “local” food has experienced a resurgence.

“While in some ways this is an experiment, we really are on the forefront of the urban agriculture movement in the U.S.,” Cocke said. “A lot of people are eagerly awaiting to see how this project goes here in Baltimore.”

Will the U.S. Hog Industry Ever Kick Its Reliance on Low-Dose Antibiotics?

The editors of Scientific American recently encouraged U.S. hog farmers to “follow Denmark and stop giving farm animals low-dose antibiotics.” Sixteen years ago, in order to reduce the threat of increased development of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their food system and the environment, Denmark phased in an antibiotic growth promotant ban in food animal production. Guess what? According to Denmark’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries the ban is working and the industry has continued to thrive. The government agency found that Danish livestock and poultry farmers used 37% less antibiotics in 2009 than in 1994, leading to overall reductions of antimicrobial resistance countrywide.

: Courtesy: Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, July, 2010

Except for a few early hiccups regarding the methods used in weaning piglets, production levels of livestock and poultry have either stayed the same or increased. So how did Danish producers make this transition, and why isn’t the U.S. jumping to follow suit? Like many things in industrial agriculture, the answer is not clear.

If any country knows how to intensively produce food animals, particularly pigs, it is Denmark. In 2008, farmers produced about 27 million hogs. In fact, the Scandinavian country claims to be the world’s largest exporter of pork. Thus Scientific American editors argue that the Danish pork production system should serve as a suitable model to compare to ours. U.S. agriculture economists from Iowa State University agree. In a 2003 report, Drs. Helen Jensen and Dermot Hayes stated that Denmark’s pork industry is “…at least as sophisticated as that of the United States… and is therefore a suitable market for evaluating a ban on antibiotic growth promotants (AGPs).” Read More >

Making Health the Default

holly-henry-guest-blogger1

A recent article featured in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation News Digest on Childhood Obesity highlights a simple strategy that can be implemented in restaurants and other venues to improve the food environment.

The innovative new strategy is to change the offerings on children’s menus to highlight the healthier options. One way to do this is to set the default side options for children’s meals to healthier items. The default refers to the items that come with a combination meal if you do not explicitly ask for certain items. Traditionally, the default side options for combination meals have been soda and french fries. Healthier options are items that are advertised as alternatives to the defaults, such as apple slices, carrot sticks,100% fruit juices, low-fat milk, or water.

Shifting the restaurant food environment in this way-making lower-calorie beverage options and fresh fruits and vegetables the norm-may help to improve children’s nutrition when eating away from home. This is significant, as the number of meals children eat away from home has been increasing in recent years. Offering healthier items as the default also changes the decision-making environment by facilitating healthy choices rather than requiring people to alter their own behavior.

This type of strategy has been dubbed “libertarian paternalism” by University of Chicago professors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their recent book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. A “nudge” is designed to steer individuals towards a certain behavior without taking away their freedom of choice. Read More >

How much meat do we eat, anyway?

Reading the new federal dietary guidelines made me want to look into this question. The guidelines, just released, say that Americans presently eat an average of 3.7 ounces daily of meat and poultry. But, the figures I typically see are double that, or more. So, why, in the brand-new guidelines, are USDA and HHS telling us that Americans eat less than a quarter pound of meat on a given day? I set out to reconcile these figures:

Who says what? US per capita meat consumption (ounces per day)
	*High estimate*	*Mid estimate*	*Low estimate*
Source	FAO of the UN	NHANES data from the CDC*	New NCI analysis of NHANES data	2010 federal dietary guidelines**
Meat & poultry	12	7	3.9	3.7
Red & processed	n/a	~5.3	2.6	2.5

*In: Wang, 2010. **See: table 5-1 on page 51 of the guidelines.

High estimate

An oft-cited estimate for meat consumption in our country comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). The FAO figure of three-quarters of a pound daily has gained traction: The New York Times and The Guardian both cited this data for national meat consumption, propagating an image of Americans consuming a very large amount of meat on a daily basis. This reporting appears logical, because the FAO data combine US meat production and imports, and then subtract exports and typical rates of spoilage and waste, arriving at 124 kilograms per capita per year, or 12 ounces per day.

However, Hodan Farah Wells of the USDA Economic Research Service points out that the FAO data appear to represent the carcass weight of meat, not its retail weight (e-correspondence, March 2011). There is a big difference between the two. Retail weight represents cuts of meat, ready to cook. Carcass weight is heavier: it includes the weight of the bones, tendons, ligaments and fat that do not end up in the eventual retail cuts. For a beef steer, the difference between carcass weight and retail weight can be a couple hundred pounds.

	Live weight (lb)	Carcass weight	Retail weight (% of live weight)
Steer (beef)	~1100	60%	42%
Pig (pork)	~235	70%	56%
Broiler (chicken)	~6	66%	66% (less if boneless)

Sources: Cornell Waste Management Institute fact sheets; Advances in Meat Research, Pearson & Dutson, eds.; Principles of Meat Science, Hedrick et al., eds. (thank you Mary Schwarz)

Carrie Daniel of NCI, author of a recent paper in Public Health Nutrition about trends in US meat consumption, explains that the FAO definition of “consumption” in this case is the total amount of “the commodity” available for human consumption (e-correspondence, March 2011). Yet a bunch of this matter gets diverted from the human food supply and sent for rendering into products other than human food. (Industrial and agricultural products, and pet food, are some of the biggies). FAO keeps the numbers rougher than it might for the sake of international comparison: not every country can provide equally precise information on how livestock and meat circulate in society, so FAO reports the data at a level that permits cross-border comparisons. Read More >

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