Dept of Agriculture USDA
BROOKE ROLLINS AFPI 2025
no notes 3/16?
see sonny perdue pow
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6 26 NO TRANSCRIPT
Jun 11, 2026 #usda #screwworm #farmers
Chris Hayes: Trump and Musk took a chainsaw to the obscure government programs that kept flesh-eating screwworms away from American farms. And now that failure could hit farmers, ranchers, and your grocery bill.
NEWSMAX IDIOCY
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mex beef fly an 5 25:
NOTE USDA HAS SCREWED AA FARMERS
rww
04/09/2025
by
Religious right anti-choice activist Alveda King has been appointed Senior Advisor on Faith and Community Outreach at the Department of Agriculture.
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AN PP 1 26
The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.”
The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.
At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica.
The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said.
Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world.
“Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity.
Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist.
The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues.
The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names.
Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.”
International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.”
Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto.
National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations.
Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country.
But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions.
The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens.
“Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.”
Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency.
There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.”
In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.”
The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers.
In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service.
Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.”
Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported.
The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected.
The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly.
Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology.
The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.”
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politico
Agriculture Department employees have been ordered to delete landing pages discussing climate change across agency websites and document climate change references for further review, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO.
The directive from USDA’s office of communications, whose authenticity was validated by three people, could affect information across dozens of programs including climate-smart agriculture initiatives, USDA climate hubs and Forest Service information regarding wildfires, the frequency and severity of which scientists have linked to hotter, drier conditions fueled by climate change. And it is reminiscent of moves made during the first Trump administration to remove references to climate change from federal government websites.
The email sent Thursday afternoon calls on website managers to “Identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and “Identify all web content related to climate change and document it in a spreadsheet” for the office to review. It set a Friday deadline for handing over titles, links and “your recommendation on how the content should be handled.”
The action comes as funds for clean energy and agriculture programs remain in limbo amid a federal spending review ordered by the Office of Management and Budget. The Trump administration has pushed to halt and reverse spending from the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which provided billions of dollars for wildfire management, clean energy investments and credits to store carbon dioxide that benefit rural communities USDA serves.
A spokesperson for USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the first Trump administration, officials buried government-funded research that showed the impacts of climate change on American farmers, including issues like volatile weather and increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In 2019, USDA also refused to release a multiagency plan to help farmers respond and adapt to a changing climate.
As of Friday, some landing pages remained active, such as for USDA Climate Hubs, a cross-agency effort to address and adapt to climate change. Others already appeared mothballed, like a page on USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.
Extreme weather events just in the last few years have devastated the entire peach crop in Georgia, flooded farms in North Carolina and a disease called citrus greening — made worse by climate change — has led to sharp declines in Florida’s famed citrus crop. Smoke from wildfires in the West have ruined fields of grapes, and drought has forced ranchers to shrink their cattle herds.
The USDA instructions also come as California recovers from wildfires that could amount to the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, which scientists said climate change exacerbated. The U.S. Forest Service is the primary federal agency for preparing for and mitigating wildfires.
Under former President Joe Biden’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, USDA spent $3.1 billion on the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, working with private food companies, nonprofits and universities to research ways for farmers to reduce their carbon footprint, develop more resilient crops and restore land. But Trump’s executive order targeting climate spending in the IRA forced officials at USDA to temporarily pause funding disbursements through the program.
Under the IRA, Congress directed USDA to pay billions of dollars to farmers for conservation practices, including some that address climate change. But Trump’s Day 1 executive order aims to halt agency payments for major climate, energy and infrastructure projects — and could jeopardize billions in payments as farmers prepare for planting season.
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https://www.alternet.org/**2022/05**/trump-administration-meat-industry-covid/
former President Donald Trump's administration colluded with top-level meatpacking industry executives to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to drive up prices and downplay the severity of the emergency, according to an exhaustive investigation released on Thursday by the United States House Select Oversight Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.}:
Representative Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina), the House Majority Whip and chairman of the Subcommittee, said in a statement that "the shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated."
The probe began last year and uncovered a spider web of corruption and flagrant disregard for human life involving American corporate titans and individuals in the highest ranks of the federal government.
Officials at the Department of Agriculture – including Secretary Sonny Purdue and Under Secretary for Food Safety Mindy Brashears [pink slime testimony, lactic acid and microwave ~ pathogens] – "collaborated" with corporate bigwigs to prioritize profits and production over the safety of employees and the public despite being fully aware of the hazards.
"Infections and deaths among workers for five of the largest meatpacking companies—Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson), JBS USA Holdings, Inc. (JBS), Smithfield Foods (Smithfield), Cargill, Inc. (Cargill), and National Beef Packing Company LLC (National Beef)—were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers for these companies being infected with the coronavirus andat least 269 dying," the report states.
The powerful cadre also "engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight," it explains.
In one instance, the chief executive officers of the conglomerates told Purdue on a phone call that their workers “should not be entitled to unemployment benefitsif they are otherwise able to work through the pandemic” and cautioned against “creat[ing] an incentive, much less a path, for food industry workers to choose unemployment overproducing food.”
In that same conversation, they "implicitly acknowledged how dangerous plants were, asking for liability protection against lawsuits if workers were infected on the job."
There was also an aggressive campaign to skirt "pesky" local, state, and federal regulations that would have kept workers and their products safe and healthy.
"Companies lobbied the White House to make clear that—despite concerns by state and local health departments—meatpacking companies should not have to address coronavirus risks if it would impact productivity," the investigation revealed.
Alarmingly, the CEOs managed to successfully lobby Trump to draft and sign an executive order in April of 2020 that "would insulate meatpacking companies from oversight by state and local health departments and provide legal protection against lawsuits for worker illnesses and deaths."
The edict led to Trump "invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure meatpacking plants 'continue operations.'"
Shortly thereafter, records handed over to the Subcommittee show that "meatpacking industry representatives and companies—Smithfield and Tyson in particular—engaged in constant communications with Trump appointees at USDA, the National Economic Council, and the White House, including calls between Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; a joint call with Sullivan, Meadows, and Tyson CEO Noel White;a call between White and Vice President Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short; and a call from Meadows to White asking if White would be willing to meet with President Trump."
Trump subsequently "held a call with officers of the meatpacking companies who had lobbied for it on the morning the order was issued."
After Trump granted their wish, an effort was undertaken between the administration and the industry to "coordinate closely on messaging concerning the order and its effects, apparently hoping to generate positive press coverage" for the ex-commander in chief.
Worker fatalities, meanwhile, were swept under the rug.
In a particularly egregious example, an outbreak at Foster Farms in Livingston,California that infected "at least" 392 workers and killed eight in August of 2020 prompted the company to "intimidate" the Merced County Department of Public Health from shutting down the plant.
"Foster Farms attempts to obfuscate the death count by labeling fatalities as 'resolutions,'" investigators learned. "MCPH officials told the Select Subcommittee that an unidentified person on the call from either Foster Farms or USDA said these cases could be considered 'toe tag resolutions,' referring to the toe tag that is often put on a corpse at the morgue. MCPH said that Brashears asked this individual to 'stop' and said they would 'talk about this separately.'"
Operations at Foster Farms in Livingston were eventually temporarily suspended on August 31st.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/grotesque-deadly-failure-usda-slammed-for-allowing-millions-of-pounds-of-produce-to-rot-as-food-insecurity-surges/
no lnx
‘Grotesque, deadly failure’: USDA slammed for allowing millions of pounds of produce to rot as food insecurity surges
Migrant workers harvest Beets at Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, CA on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. USDA photo by Bob Nichols.
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 27, 2020
With food insecurity on the rise across the U.S. as the coronavirus pandemic continues to drive unprecedented job losses and economic disruption, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is facing backlash from lawmakers, farmers, and advocacy groups for its failure to act with urgency as millions of pounds of produce rot in fields across the nation.
“While other federal agencies quickly adapted their programs to the coronavirus crisis, the Agriculture Department took more than a month to make its first significant move to buy up surplus fruits and vegetables—despite repeated entreaties,” Politico reported Sunday, noting that the USDA’s belated response came “as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand.”
On April 17, as Common Dreams reported, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unveiled the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, a $19 billion plan purportedly aimed at providing relief to farmers and making “mass purchases of dairy, meat, and agricultural produce to get that food to the people in need.”
But critics say the federal agency’s plan doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the scale of the crisis, which has fueled calls for a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. food system.
“This thing is a joke,” Tony DiMare, owner of the Florida-based produce distribution company DiMare Fresh, told Politico of the USDA’s plan, which includes $3 billion to purchase and distribute surplus produce.
“DiMare’s company… has donated over a million pounds of tomatoes to food banks in his area,” Politico reported, “but he still had to leave some 10 million pounds in the field.”
Nikki Fried, Florida’s commissioner of agriculture in Florida, told Politico that she asked Perdue a month ago to take action to prevent mass waste of produce but received no response. “Unfortunately, USDA didn’t move until [last week],” Fried said.
As early as March 23, a coalition of produce industry groups wrote a letter (pdf) to Perdue warning that “there is at least $1 billion of perishable commodities without a dedicated destination as a result of the unanticipated closure of foodservice establishments, including restaurants, hotels, schools, and universities.”
“There is no reason these high-quality, nutritious, farmer-grown products should be left in facilities to rot when there are so many American families who are suddenly faced with food insecurity,” the letter stated.
Another grotesque, deadly failure. https://t.co/SEoXdXjVFy
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) April 26, 2020
This is infuriating. https://t.co/hhwNTfdfOa
— Lulu Garcia-Navarro (@lourdesgnavarro) April 27, 2020
Politico reported that federal officials “predicted it would take the better part of a month” before surplus food is packed and shipped to food banks, which are facing shortages and going millions of dollars over budget as they attempt to meet skyrocketing demand.
By the time USDA’s program is up and running, Politico noted, “it will be too late for many produce growers who saw a huge drop in demand right at the peak of their season.”
As New York magazine’s Matt Stieb wrote Sunday, “Two of the enduring images of COVID-19’s economic impact contradict each other: As miles-long lines back up at food banks throughout the country… ripe fruits and vegetables are being buried in their fields, with farmers losing out on half of their usual markets with restaurants, schools, and hotels closed.”
“Though the apparent simplicity of solving one crisis with the other—providing the food insecure with unsellable product, rather than dumping milk into manure pits—is frustrated by practical issues, the Department of Agriculture only emerged with a solution on April 17,” Steib wrote.
Amid federal inaction, Ryan Cranney, a farmer in the small town of Oakley, Idaho, decided to give away millions of potatoes that he is currently unable to sell.
“We saw people [come] from as far away as Las Vegas, which is an eight-hour drive from here,” Cranney said in a recent interview. “If we as a country have more understanding of our food chain and where our food comes from and really what that means to farmers and the distribution system, maybe we’ll be able to change things where we’re not quite as vulnerable going forward.”
Feeding America, the largest food bank operator in the U.S., warned in a report last week that the coronavirus crisis could lead to an all-time high in child hunger as millions of families struggle to cope with the devastating economic fallout.
The report found that “the number of food insecure children could escalate to 18 million because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The highest total ever reported by USDA in the 25 years that it has been measuring food insecurity was 17.2 million in 2009 at the height of the Great Recession.”
Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, said in a statement that the findings should “mobilize everyone from our elected officials to the public at large to provide all the resources families need to get through this crisis.”
“This pandemic has brought the plight of so many millions of our neighbors to the forefront,” said Babineaux-Fontenot. “Every car waiting in a distribution line is a family seeking food and encouragement. We will not stop being there for them and ask that if you can support us in our mission, please give what you can.”
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omfg smithfield so dak covid hotspot?!
https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-removing-safeguards-on-food-2645756313.html
by t Corbo
As the world focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating impact on public health, the Trump Administration has been busy behind the scenes doubling down on its campaign to deregulate Big Ag. At the same time, it is not providing safeguards to food production workers and government inspectors who are being made to work on the frontlines without frontline employee protections.
The USDA Is Playing Fast and Loose With Meat Inspection Lines During the Coronavirus Outbreak
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is deregulating inspection in some of the largest pork processing facilities by reducing the number of inspectors assigned to the slaughter line. They turn over critical inspection tasks to untrained company employees, and remove the cap on how fast the line can run. FSIS anticipates that 40 hog slaughter facilities will convert to this method, which is being called the New Swine Inspection System (NSIS). Those 40 facilities process over 92% of all pork in the U.S. Some of the big names in pork processing are pushing for this, such as JBS, Tyson, Smithfield, Clemens, and Quality Pork Processors. In one plant that has been experimenting with the new system, FSIS inspectors have 2.6 seconds to determine whether the company employees have performed their tasks properly.As a consequence, it is not uncommon for hog carcasses to be contaminated with feces, hair, toe nails, and bile to be greenlit for processing into bacon, pork chops, hot dogs, sausage, and other pork products.
Three lawsuits to challenge NSIS have been filed by unions representing the plant workers, animal welfare groups, and food safety advocates, including Food & Water Watch and the Center for Food Safety. FSIS hid critical information from the public when it first proposed the frighteningly minimal system. Food & Water Watch was forced to file separate litigation to obtain crucial, undisclosed information which revealed that NSIS would lead to more contaminated pork entering commerce and could lead to an animal disease — to ravage hog herds and/or be transmitted to humans. Plants that wanted to convert to NSIS had until March 30, 2020 to state their intentions. FSIS still refuses to disclose the names of those plants, leaving consumers in the dark.
Meat Companies Are Being Given Almost Full Control Over Their Own Inspection Standards
While it is struggling to keep poultry plants properly staffed with inspectors during the pandemic, FSIS has stepped up its approvals of regulatory waivers to chicken slaughter plants that want to increase their maximum line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute. In the first two weeks of April, FSIS approved 11 such waivers for plants operated by Foster Farms, Tyson Foods (4 plants), and Wayne Farms (6 plants). These plants have all converted to the so-called New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS) in which the number of government inspectors assigned to the slaughter line is reduced and many of their tasks are turned over to company employees. Under traditional inspection, each FSIS inspector is assigned 35 birds per minute to inspect. Under NPIS, there is only one FSIS inspector stationed at the end of the slaughter line. When a plant is granted a line speed waiver, that sole FSIS inspector is expected to examine 3 birds every second — or 175 birds per minute. The waiver process that FSIS uses is done in secret; it is not open to public scrutiny until the FSIS reveals that it has granted the waiver. Since taking office, the Trump USDA has approved 28 new waivers under this process, mostly to the big players in the poultry industry.
Inviting everyone to the new game, FSIS is recruiting cattle slaughter plants to deregulate inspection, too. In late March, FSIS approved a waiver through its secret process for a Tyson beef plant in Holcomb, Kansas that slaughters up to 6000 head of cattle per day. The waiver is designed to reduce the number of government inspectors assigned to its slaughter line, increasing its line speed. FSIS has not revealed how fast the line will run with this waiver or how many fewer government inspectors will be on the slaughter line, but we know it won't result in safety for consumers.
Meat Inspection Deregulation Threatens Food Safety
All of these deregulatory moves are designed to increase production; they are not being done to improve food safety. They will contribute to expanding the industrial agriculture model by promoting the growth of factory farms. It's even more disconcerting that it is occurring in the middle of a national crisis.
As the Trump Administration has stepped on the accelerator to deregulate in recent weeks, there are numerous examples around the country of meat and poultry plants being impacted by the spread of the COVID-19 virus. While the news has been focused on urban areas racked by the pandemic, hot spots have also emerged in rural communities in Colorado, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska where meatpacking plant workers have contracted the virus while being forced to work, forcing some plants to curtail or cease operations temporarily.
In those instances where meatpackers have insisted on continuing with business-as-usual even when their employees have gotten sick, it has pitted public health officials against company officials and even USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue.
Plant workers and even government inspectors who work at these plants have not been given adequate personal protective equipment. It is virtually impossible to practice social distancing in these plants because plant workers and government inspectors work side-by-side in slaughter and processing facilities. When workers protested these conditions, Vice President Mike Pence had the audacity to urge the workers to continue "to show up and do [their] jobs."
Urge Officials to Take Action Against Increased Line Speeds
Increased line speeds only create more opportunities for contamination and sickness. It's unnecessary and it's putting our health at risk.
Tell Congress to stop allowing USDA food safety waivers. This is no time to gamble with Americans' health.
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new ew 220
a lawsuit filed Monday against President Donald Trump's loosening of regulations in pork inspection plants aims to stop the rules from taking effect to protect consumers from illness and death.
Under the new regulations put forth by the Trump administration, federal inspectors are no longer responsible for examining the animals before and after slaughter and will see a reduced role on the line.
According to Food & Water Watch:
The new rules prevent such inspection and hand over these responsibilities to the slaughter companies themselves. They also surrender federal control over removing contamination from carcasses to slaughter companies without any minimum training requirements for slaughter-plant employees.
"Reducing the number of trained federal inspectors and increasing line speeds is a recipe for disaster," Center for Food Safety staff attorney Ryan Talbott said in a statement.
"USDA has an obligation to protect the health and welfare of consumers," added Talbott. "USDA cannot do that when it takes a back seat and lets the slaughter plants largely regulate themselves."
The suit, which targets Trump's New Swine Inspection System (NSIS), was filed by Food & Water Watch, the Center for Food Safety and two supporting members.
"There is no gray area here," said Food & Water Watch senior staff attorney Zach Corrigan in a statement. "The new rules curtail the ability of federal inspectors to detect serious food-safety problems and expose those who consume such pork products to serious health threats like salmonella."
According to a press release from the two groups, the new Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules are "a draconian reversal to the swine slaughter inspection system that has existed in the United States since 1906."
"We're suing the crap out of USDA for ... feeding us crap," tweeted Food & Water Watch communications manager Jackie Filson....
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see lee fang on neo-nics
Speaking of the best people…
“A small number of people at a few federal agencies have vast power over the protection of American air and water,” reports The New York Times. “Under the Trump administration, the people appointed to those positions overwhelmingly used to work in the fossil fuel, chemical and agriculture industries. During their time in government they have been responsible for loosening or undoing nearly 100 environmental protections from pollution and pesticides, as well as weakening preservations of natural resources and efforts to curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.”
*****
In related news, “a lobbyist turned senior Agriculture Department official repeatedly shared information with her former industry on policy and enforcement, according to ProPublica. Before being tapped by Trump to serve as a senior Agriculture Department official, Rebeckah Adcock “was the chief lobbyist for the herbicide industry’s trade group.”
Adcock had helped her former industry colleagues in a variety of ways. At Dow’s request, for example, she had arranged a meeting between a top company official and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue….
Before the May 2017 meeting, a Dow lobbyist emailed Adcock: “Do you know who will staff the secretary?”
Adcock wrote back, playfully, “Yes and u do too.”
“Roger,” the lobbyist, Hunt Shipman, replied. Then he joked about the potential conflict of a public servant helping former colleagues: “Maybe you can have a chair on both sides of the table…maybe you can staff them both? :)”
*****
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1219
report by the Environmental Working Group reveals that an estimated 2,000 untested chemicals, several of them known or suspected carcinogens, are legally present in conventional packaged foods sold in U.S. supermarkets. But this major public health concern is largely unrecognized by the Food and Drug Administration, which operates under a policy on food additives dating back to 1958.
By Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Independent Media Institute
A major but largely glossed over report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental and public health nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., shows that thousands of untested chemicals (an estimated 2,000, to be exact) are found in conventional packaged foods purchasable in U.S. supermarkets. And yes, all of them are legal.
The extensive collection of permissible additives includes several known or suspected carcinogens, such as synthetic sodium nitrate, found in processed meats and considered probably carcinogenic by the World Health Organization, and butylated hydroxyanisole, also known as BHA, a chemical listed as a cancer-causing chemical by the state of California and found in commonplace items like frozen pepperoni pizza. Other unappealing chemicals are commonly found in our food packaging, such as polypropylene, sulfuric acid andbisphenol A—all of which can have impacts on human health and the environment.
How much should consumers panic before their next supermarket trip? “It really depends on what level of risk consumers are comfortable with,” says Dawn Undurraga, a nutritionist at EWG and co-author of the study. “The more we learn about what is in conventional foods, the more evidence for concern we accumulate.” Independent laboratory tests commissioned by EWG, for example, found **glyphosate**, a probable carcinogen, in every sample of conventional oats tested.
The fact that dangerous chemicals are legal for use in our food is a major public health concern that goes largely unrecognized by the U.S. government. “Unfortunately, our current policy on food additives was written in 1958 and has been completely co-opted by food and chemical companies,” Undurraga says. “Additives that are deemed ‘Generally Recognized as Safe,’ or GRAS, by a food or chemical company or trade association are exempt from the food additive petition process where the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviews the safety of the additive.”
Originally, this GRAS exemption was created to cover ingredients widely known to be safe, like vinegar, but with advancements in food science, the provision has been applied to thousands of chemicals. As a result, questionable substances have been allowed into a host of conventional foods. In 2017, EWG joined several other public health groups to file a lawsuit against the FDA in an effort to eliminate the GRAS loophole.
“Rather than close the loophole, theFDA has instead allowed companies to voluntarily notify the agency about food chemicals and to allow companies to summarize the industry science supporting their conclusions,” reads the EWG study, elucidating that many scientists who conduct these reviews have been paid by the industry. Plus, the FDA does not subsequently review underlying biological and chemical data, leaving consumers to literally do the dirty work. The FDA did not respond toTruthout’s request for comment.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to be toxicologists to be able to grab something at the grocery store that doesn’t contain questionable or dangerous ingredients,” Undurraga says. Even so, toxicology literacy won’t help in the frozen food aisle. According to Undurraga, there are absolutely no defining signs on food packaging to indicate that any of the 2,000 synthetic chemicals approved for use in food are present in that specific item.
In fact, the only way to minimize exposure to these chemicals is to purchase certified organic packaged foods and look at EWG’s Food Scores, which measure nutrition, ingredient and processing concerns in more than 80,000 common foods, from frozen vegetables and baby food to packaged nuts, berries and grains across hundreds of popular brands; and EWG’s Dirty Dozen List of Food Additives, which ranks the worst food additives common in U.S. supermarket food and where you’ll likely encounter them, like potassium bromate in packaged loaves of bread and propylparaben in packaged tortillas and muffins.
If additives don’t have you worried enough about what we’re legally permitted to consume, know that pesticides, found to be carcinogenic and also severely damaging to the environment, are still more than prevalent alongside the packaged food chemicals at your grocery store. Every year, EWG reviews the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s pesticide residue tests on conventional produce.
“Last year, nearly 70 percent of conventionally grown produce was contaminated with pesticide residues,” says Undurraga. “This is especially concerning for pregnant women and small children.”
Sure, organic packaged food and organic produce are typically more expensive than their conventional counterparts, but you’re paying for more rigorous additive standards and investing in your long-term health and the health of the environment. Currently, fewer than 40synthetic ingredients are permitted in organic packaged foods—and this is only after each chemical has been reviewed by both independent and government experts. And yet only around 3 percent of packaged food sold in the U.S. is organic. Perhaps this is because people who shop organic are not interested in pre-packaged meals. More likely, it’s because the dangers of conventional packaged food are not well-known.
Those who want to plan their supermarket trips with a budget in mind can look to EWG’s shopper’s guide to know what to prioritize in their carts. Beyond opting for organic packaged goods when going the pre-made route, consumers can elect to buy organic versions of fruits and vegetables whose conventional counterparts have made EWG’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which calls out those conventionally grown items found with the most pesticide residue: strawberries, spinach, kale, nectarines, apples, grapes, peaches, cherries, pears, tomatoes, celery and potatoes.
On the flip side, consumers can opt for conventional versions of the produce items that are listed on EWG’s “Clean Fifteen”—those with relatively little pesticide residue: avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, frozen sweet peas, onions, papayas, eggplants, asparagus, kiwis, cabbages, cauliflower, cantaloupes, broccoli, mushrooms and honeydew melons.
Though it’s unlikely Americans are going to stop buying conventional packaged food in the near future (or ever), pressure on the government to make packaged food actually safe to eat is necessary to enact change. And with so little information readily available about what we’re actually eating when these chemicals aren’t disclosed, keeping up with research by independent groups like the EWG remains imperative to educate consumers.
Combining their research and policy platform, EWG has launched a petition to encourage food companies like General Mills, Quaker and Kellogg’s to remove cancer-linked glyphosate from our food. And that’s just the beginning. Other consumer safety advocates, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Food Safety, both represented by Earthjustice, have challenged the FDA’s GRAS interpretation in court earlier this year.
Ignorance may bring peace of mind to grocery shoppers, but as more information about the hazards in our daily food purchases comes to light, it’s likely we’ll see more consumer pushback against dangerous practices that have become the norm.
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Department of Agriculture launched an absurd pro-Trump podcast; the first guest was Fox contributor Sarah Sanders.
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ew 819
Top Scientist Quits USDA, Says Trump Admin Tried to Bury Study Linking Climate and Nutrition
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/1/1868871/-Climate-Change-USDA-Scientists-to-be-fired-in-2-weeks-DANGER
also trms 2x
...Why is he wanting to fire Scientists who study climate change? ( According to Rachel and other reports. www.scientificamerican.com/…
Then we have the Food and Drug inspectors who have a problem thanks to the orange dung.
USDA inspects food, and meds.
The Agriculture Department is offering employees a rare choice: accept a forced transfer to a post 1,000 miles away or be fired.
The Trump administration’s plan to move two agencies from the District to the Kansas City area includes a document with two blank boxes on it, sent to employees on June 13. Check one, it instructs: Accept the transfer by July 15 or “be separated by adverse action procedures.”
William Jolly, a research ecologist with the agency's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., was supposed to give a 30-minute presentation titled "Climate-Induced Variations in Global Severe Fire Weather Conditions" at the International Fire Congress in Orlando, Fla., next month. The event is hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE).
The travel denial follows reports last week that U.S. EPA blocked three scientists from making presentations at a conference in Rhode Island featuring climate change. Critics accused the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science.
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CHINAUSDA approves shipping slaughtered chicken to China and back, says you can eat itJASON WEISBERGER
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http://newsenter.org/lubbock/2018/05/05/253811-trump-selects-texas-tech-prof-for-usda-under-secretary-job.html
On his 470th day in the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump Friday announced his intention to nominate Dr. Mindy Brashears as the U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDAs) next Under Secretary for Food Safety. It will be many more days before the Texan food safety expert takes office.
Brashears, who was an expert witness in the BPI v. ABC trial last summer is a professor of food safety and public health who is also director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University.
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, also had positive things to say about Brashears appointment. “Consumers deserve to have confidence that their food is safe and that sound science is used to ensure they have access to the most wholesome products. That is why President Trump’s selection of Dr. Mindy Brashears as Under Secretary for Food Safety is welcome news to America’s farmers and ranchers. Her extensive and innovative track record of improving food safety standards is an excellent fit at USDA, where food safety remains a core part of the agency’s mission, and always a priority for farmers and ranchers,” Duvall said.
The departments top job over food safety, which Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue says is at the core of USDAs mission has been vacant for the past 1,604 days. And it will remain vacant until Dr. Brashears nomination is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Brashears is a professor of food safety and public health and the director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University. Brashears’ research program focuses on improving food safety standards to make an impact on public health. In a statement, USDA noted that her highly acclaimed work evaluates interventions in pre-harvest and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems. These efforts have resulted in commercialization of a pre-harvest feed additive that can reduce Escherichia coli and salmonella in cattle.
Brashears selected for food safety post
USDA unconfirmed nominations ahead of hers include Stephen Alexander Vader as general counsel, Naomi C. Hart as assistant secretary for civil rights, and James E. Hubbard as Under Secretary for natural resources and environment.
Perdue Friday pressed the U.S. Senate to take up all our nominations as quickly as possible.
Food safety is at the core of USDAs mission, because it directly affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans every day. President Trump has made an excellent choice in Dr. Mindy Brashears, and I am excited to have her join the team. Dr. Brashears has spent decades finding ways to improve food safety standards through innovation, invention, and leadership on research missions across the globe. I look forward to her bringing that wealth of expertise and track record of results here to USDA.
Government-wide, the Trump Administration is currently waiting for Senate confirmation on at least 124 additional nominations. According to the Washington Post/Partnership for Public Services tracking of the top 600 executive positions requiring Senate confirmation, only half are nominated and confirmed.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue applauded President Donald J. Trumps recent selection of Mindy Brashears to be the U.S. Department of Agricultures Under Secretary for Food Safety. After the announcement, Perdue issued the following statement:
The average time to confirm a Trump nominee is taking a historic 84 days. That means if Brashears wins confirmation, its unlikely she will take over until late summer or early fall at the earliest.
“Consumers deserve to have confidence that their food is safe and that sound science is used to ensure they have access to the most wholesome products. That is why President Trump’s selection of Dr. Mindy Brashears as Under Secretary for Food Safety is welcome news to America’s farmers and ranchers. Her extensive and innovative track record of improving food safety standards is an excellent fit at USDA, where food safety remains a core part of the agency’s mission, and always a priority for farmers and ranchers.”
Secretary Perdue Applauds President Trumps Selection for USDAs Under Secretary for Food Safety
Generally speaking, Senate Democrats cannot defeat Trump nominees, but they can and do use a bag of procedural tricks to delay them from getting to the necessary floor votes. Secret holds can be placed on a nominee by individual Senators and the minority party can demand 30 hours debate ahead of any nominees floor vote.
The following statement regarding the appointment of Dr. Mindy Brashears as Under Secretary for Food Safety at the Agriculture Department may be attributed to American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall.
Once the White House sends over the formal nomination for Brashears to serve as Under Secretary for Food Safety to the Senate, it’s certain to be assigned to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry.
USDA works to increase ag exports
The appointment of Ken Barbic as USDAs assistant secretary for congressional relations was the most recent to clear the Ag committee and get a favorable floor vote. It took 103 days.
Background: Dr. Brashears is a Professor of Food Safety and Public Health and the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University. Dr. Brashears’ research program focuses on improving food safety standards to make an impact on public health. Her highly acclaimed work evaluates interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems. These efforts have resulted in commercialization of a pre-harvest feed additive that can reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle. She also leads international research teams to Mexico, Central and South America to improve food safety and security and to set up sustainable agriculture systems in impoverished areas. She is past-Chair of the National Alliance for Food Safety and Security and of the USDA multi-state research group.
While Food Safety News last October alone reported that Brashears was one of two candidates for Under Secretary for Food Safety under serious consideration by the White House, she was last in the news during the June 2017 BPI-ABC trial.
“Food safety is at the core of USDA’s mission, because it directly affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans every day. President Trump has made an excellent choice in Dr. Mindy Brashears, and I am excited to have her join the team. Dr. Brashears has spent decades finding ways to improve food safety standards through innovation, invention, and leadership on research missions across the globe. I look forward to her bringing that wealth of expertise and track record of results here to USDA.
Her testimony, including a cross-examination that turned combative, likely contributed to the decision by Disney-owned ABC News to reach a settlement favorable to South Dakota-based BPI. The undisclosed settlement ended a state jury trial tasked with deciding whether ABC News had defamed BPI by repeatedly calling its lean finely textured beef product pink slime.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today applauded President Donald J. Trump’s selection of Dr. Mindy Brashears to be the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Under Secretary for Food Safety. After the announcement, Secretary Perdue issued the following statement:
Brashears testified with her smile and Texas twang at trial for BPI as one of the nations top beef safety experts. She said BPIs textured beef product was definitely meat and definitely beef and not pink slime.
Dr. Brashears is a Professor of Food Safety and Public Health and the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University. Dr. Brashears research program focuses on improving food safety standards to make an impact on public health. Her highly acclaimed work evaluates interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems. These efforts have resulted in commercialization of a pre-harvest feed additive that can reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle. She also leads international research teams to Mexico, Central and South America to improve food safety and security and to set up sustainable agriculture systems in impoverished areas. She is past-Chair of the National Alliance for Food Safety and Security and of the USDA multi-state research group.
Her cross-examination by ABCs attorneys from the prominent Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington D.C. was tough and spirited, but Brashears was still left smiling. Disney financial statements later indicatedABCs legal settlement with BPI was at least $177 million.
Food safety is at the core of USDAs mission, because it directly affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans every day. President Trump has made an excellent choice in Dr. Mindy Brashears, and I am excited to have her join the team. Dr. Brashears has spent decades finding ways to improve food safety standards through innovation, invention, and leadership on research missions across the globe. I look forward to her bringing that wealth of expertise and track record of results here to USDA.
Her highly acclaimed work evaluates interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems. These efforts have resulted in the commercialization of a pre-harvest feed additive that can reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle, Secretary Perdues statement said.
(Washington, D.C., May 4, 2018) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today applauded President Donald J. Trumps selection of Dr. Mindy Brashears to be the U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA) Under Secretary for Food Safety. After the announcement, Secretary Perdue issued the following statement:
In addition to her research, Brashears has led international research teams to Mexico, Central and South America to improve food safety and security and to set up sustainable agriculture systems in impoverished areas.
Dec. 13, 2013, was the last day Dr. Elizabeth Hagen served as USDAs Under Secretary for Food Safety. She was nominated in 2010 by President Obama and quickly confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“Her work evaluates interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance in animal feeding systems and has resulted in the commercialization of a pre-harvest feed additive that can reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle,” according to the release. She is also a past chair of the National Alliance for Food Safety and Security and of the USDA multi-state research group.
A-J Media Mindy Brashears, a professor of food microbiology and food safety in Texas Techs College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, has been selected by President Donald Trump as the new under secretary for food safety in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Brashears appeared as an expert witness last year for Beef Products Inc., helping the Sioux City, Iowa, food company negotiate a multimillion settlement from ABC News. The company had sued ABC, alleging it had been disparaged by the news organization when it described a beef product as “pink slime.” Brashears told the jury that BPI’s lean finely textured beef is meat, is beef, is nutritious and is entirely safe to eat.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said in a statement issued Friday morning that food safety is at the core of the USDAs mission, because it directly affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans every day.
A rose to … the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which this week highlighted USDAs success and continuing commitment to expanding trade and increasing rural prosperity through ag exports. We encourage leaders at USDA to continue talking up ag trade. The message about the importance of trade to rural America and the nations economy cannot be understated, but it can be undermined with threats of tariffs and suspicious comments about multinational trade agreements.
“President Trump has made an excellent choice in Dr. Mindy Brashears, and I am excited to have her join the team. Dr. Brashears has spent decades finding ways to improve food safety standards through innovation, invention and leadership on research missions across the globe. I look forward to her bringing that wealth of expertise and track record of results here to USDA,” Perdue said.
According to a bio on Texas Techs website, Brashears is not only a professor in classes such as food microbiology and food safety, but she also serves as the director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Tech. Her research has focused on interventions in pre- and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance. Her interests are primarily in meat and poultry products, with some work on spinach. Her work has resulted in the commercialization of pre-harvest feed additives that reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle.
Perdue said there are still qualified people in addition to Brashears awaiting confirmation to fill key roles at USDA, and urged the Senate to take up all of the nominations as quickly as possible.
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GMO Labeling: Public Interest Advocacy Group Sues Trump Over Secrecy
Last week, Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Trump Administration for refusing to make public documents surrounding its decision on how to label genetically engineered (GE or GMO) foods. On May 3, 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released long-awaited proposed regulations for the first-ever U.S. mandatory disclosure of foods produced using genetic engineering. Earlier this year, CFS sought the public data and documents about the rulemaking under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the administration failed to make public any information, leading to this CFS lawsuit to force that disclosure....
golden rice not certified b/c does nor work
https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-june-18-2018/
Andrew Kimbrell, returns to make the case that passing food labeling laws will spell the end of the GMO industry
ctr for food safety BE = bio-engr vs GM or GMO
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Proposed GMO Food Labeling Could Leave 100 Million Americans in the Dark see GMO's 5/18.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday released the long-awaited proposed regulations for the mandatory disclosure of foods produced using genetic engineering (GE or GMO), which it calls "bioengineered foods."
The regulations come out of a 2016 law signed by President Obama prohibiting existing state GE labeling laws, such as Vermont's, that required on-package GE labeling, and instead created a federal "disclosure" program, which for the first time creates a nationwide standard of required GE disclosure. There now will be a 60 day public comment period. The 2016 law requires that USDA issue the final rules by July 29, 2018.
Public comments will be particularly important because the proposal presents a range of alternatives for public comments and makes few decisions, leaving considerable unknowns about its outcome. For example, instead of requiring clear, on-package labeling in the form of text or a symbol, USDA proposes to allow manufacturers to instead choose to use "QR codes," which are encoded images on a package that must be scanned and are intended to substitute for clear, on-package labeling.
Real-time access to the information behind the QR code image requires a smartphone and a reliable broadband connection, technologies often lacking in rural areas. As a result, this labeling option would discriminate against more than 100 million Americans who do not have access to this technology. Last fall, CFS forced the public disclosure of USDA's study on the efficacy of this labeling, which showed it would not provide adequate disclosure to millions of Americans.
"USDA should not allow QR codes," stated Andrew Kimbrell, executive director at Center for Food Safety (CFS). "USDA's own study found that QR codes are inherently discriminatory against one third of Americans who do not own smartphones, and even more so against rural, low income, and elderly populations or those without access to the internet. USDA should mandate on-package text or symbol labeling as the only fair and effective means of disclosure for GE foods."
When it comes to on-package text or symbols, USDA proposes to disallow the terms "genetic engineering or GMO," and use only the term "bioengineered," or "BE," despite the fact that genetic engineering and GMO have been the terms used for 30-plus years by consumers, companies and regulators. Many food companies have long used the terms genetic engineered, GE, or GMO, and thousands of products are currently labeled as such (e.g., Non-GMO).
"USDA's exclusion of the well-established terms, GE and GMO, as options will confuse and mislead consumers, and the agency must instead allow the use of those terms," added Kimbrell.
Another big question left unanswered by the proposal is whether or not "highly refined" GE foods will be covered, such as cooking oils, candies, or sodas that have ingredients derived from GE crops, but are in processed form such that in the final product, the GE content may or may not be detectable. USDA is taking comments on whether or not to include these products, with two differing alternatives including or excluding them. The proposal also seeks comments on how to deal with newer forms of genetic engineering—which often go by different names such assynthetic biology, gene-editing, or CRISPR—and whether or not to include foods produced through them.
"Excluding highly processed GE foods would mean that consumers would be wrongly left in the dark about thousands of GE products," said Bill Freese, CFS's science policy analyst. "These products, as well as those from newer forms of genetic engineering, must be subject to mandatory labeling if this rule is to be meaningful."
Other major issues on which USDA is taking comment are what threshold to use for GE content, the timing of compliance, enforcement and record-keeping requirements.
CFS has been fighting for mandatory GE food labeling for over two decades at the federal and state levels. CFS provided legal and policy support to dozens of states that introduced GE labeling legislation, including Vermont which passed its GE labeling law in May 2014. CFS also helped successfully defend the Vermont law in court.
"This is a 'Call to Action' to all Americans who have waited for decades to finally have GE foods labeled. Now is the time to tell the Trump administration to do the right thing and meaningfully label these foods," declared Kimbrell.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-nutrition-program-2559010874.html
U
SDA Focus on Nutrition Program 'Integrity' Is a Smokescreen
By Sarah Reinhardt
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced it will hire a new "chief integrity officer" to oversee federal nutrition programs such as the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps).
The integrity of SNAP in particular has been a popular topic among those in the Trump administration, including USDA Sec. Sonny Perdue, who argue that SNAPenables a "lifestyle of dependency" and seek major program reforms in the upcoming Farm Bill. But these arguments have been conjured from very little science and a whole lot of smoke—and have the effect of distracting the public from more pressing issues at hand.
SNAP is among the nation's most effective and efficient programs
Monitoring any government program is necessary to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent effectively, and the USDA does so through its quality control process and periodic reports on fraud and abuse. In fiscal year 2011, as part of the Obama administration's Campaign to Cut Waste, the USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted an extensive review of more than 15,000 stores for compliance with SNAP program rules. The results of these assessments, combined with USDA participation data, tell us the program is working as intended, and with remarkably few problems.
SNAP fraud1—broadly defined as exchanging benefits for cash or falsifying participant or retailer applications to illegally obtain or accept benefits—happens relatively infrequently, though it's difficult to measure. The USDA's most recent report on the topic estimated that it affected about 1.5 percent of all SNAP benefits received between 2012 and 2014. This represents a slight increase since the early 2000s (1.0 to 1.3 percent between 2002 and 2011), but remains substantially lower than in the 1990s, when reported rates were as high as 3.8 percent.
Compare this to some of the other federal programs contained in the Farm Bill—like crop insurance. Back in 2013, former USDA secretary Tom Vilsack voiced concerns about the integrity of crop insurance programs due to error and fraud rates that exceeded those of SNAP. As with SNAP, illegal activity is largely uncovered by way of criminal investigations. According to the Department of Justice, recent convictions and sentences connected with the federal crop insurance program have included the indictment of a Kentucky agricultural producer for insurance fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering; an Iowa farmer who received more than $450,000 in crop insurance proceeds illegally; a Louisiana farmerwho created shell farms to receive more than $5.4 million in subsidy payments; and a Kentucky crop insurance agent whose clients received nearly $170,000 in indemnity payments for false claims. And those are just the cases from the last six months. Unlike SNAP, no chief integrity officer has been assigned to monitor fraud and abuse in the program.
So yes, we should be striving for continuous improvement in the operation of all federal programs. But explaining why SNAP in particular has come under such intense scrutiny requires some historical and political context—and a good understanding of who might benefit from maintaining old narratives
The rise, fall and flatline of SNAP fraud
Though President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act into law in 1964, the program began to gain popularity in the 1970s, when participation doubled from 5 million to 10 million over the course of the decade. As participation increased, the USDA began to discover incidents of abuse, eventually revealing a widespread pattern of illegal activity that would plague the program for the next twenty years. Reported rates of fraud at this time were between 10 and 20 percent.
The widespread abuse lent itself to growing public disapproval of the food stamps program and, accompanied by racist and classist rhetoric around so-called "welfare queens," fueled substantial program reform by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s.
But what likely ushered in drastic improvements in rates of fraud and abuse was the introduction of new electronic benefit transfer (EBT) systems, which fully replaced paper food stamps in 2004. In addition to requiring a 4-digit PIN number, EBT cards create a record of each purchase, increasing the ease with which agencies can identify and document illegal use.
That brings us, more or less, to the efficient and effective program that we've seen for the last decade.
Despite how well SNAP works, politicians have continued to frame it as a program that suffers from rampant misuse and illegal activity. For those seeking drastic budget cuts and reforms, that negative narrative grants permission to discredit both the program and those who use it—and one needs to look no further than President Trump's welfare reform proposals or Speaker Paul Ryan's comment about the tailspin of "inner-city culture" to know that the legacy of the welfare queen is alive and well.
Speaking of integrity…
To get a sense of where this is all headed, keep your eyes on USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue—if you can. He's been making some quick pivots lately.
At a May 2017 House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture hearing, Perdue stated that "SNAP has been a very important, effective program," and that the agency was considering no changes. "You don't try to fix something that isn't broken."
Less than a year later, the secretary has voiced his support for a number of proposed program changes, including stricter work requirements for adults without dependents. Not unlike the recent announcement aimed at nutrition program integrity, these proposals are often grounded more in political ideology than fact. USDA's own data shows that most SNAP participants who can work do work—albeit in unstable jobs—and counters the notion that participants stay on the program for long periods of time.
When the House releases its draft of the Farm Bill, which may happen as early as this week, Perdue's response (or lack thereof) could provide insight on the policy proposals he's prepared to support. More than likely, he'll continue to endorse the positions of his party—but then again, we've been surprised before.
- Fraud and abuse should be distinguished from error rates, or improper payment rates, which capture how often SNAP participants receive underpayment or overpayment of benefits. (The overwhelming majority of SNAP errors are attributed to unintentional error by recipients or administrative staff.) Program error rates have also experienced substantial declines in recent years: they reached an all-time low of 2 percent in 2013, down from 6.6 percent in 2003. And though a 2015 USDA OIG review of the quality control process found understated error rates in some states, the resulting corrective actions target state agencies—not individual SNAP participants.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-organic-eggs-2524568365.html
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https://www.ecowatch.com/usda-animal-welfare-2518422850.html
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USDA Gives in to Big 'Organic' Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules
Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) formally proposed withdrawing a set of rules finalized at the end of the Obama administration that establish stronger, more enforceable animal welfare requirements for certified organic producers.
The rules, titled the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule, are the product of more than a decade of collaboration and coordination among the organic community, including consumers, farmers, veterinarians, environmentalists and animal welfare groups. Unfortunately, a few large-scale egg producers fear the new rules will expose their less-than-organic practices and put pressure on USDA and Congress to stop the rule.
"The new rules are vital for protecting animal welfare, organic consumers, and the thousands of farmers that opt-in to organic certification," said Cameron Harsh, senior manager for Organic & Animal Policy at the Center for Food Safety.
The rules, which have been delayed from implementation three separate times since being finalized in January 2017, provide needed clarity on organic animal care, including prohibiting several painful alterations. In particular, the rules require all animals to have real access to the outdoors, which must include contact with soil and vegetation, and outline minimum spacing requirements for poultry. This is, in fact, what consumers already expect from the organic poultry and eggs they buy in stores. But the largest poultry producers have so far been able to consider small, cement, fenced-in areas as outdoor access and have not been required to abide by specific spacing limitations.
"The rules would hold all certified producers to the high standard of animal care that consumers expect and that the drafters of the organic law intended. If they are withdrawn, the steadily growing organic market and consumer trust in the organic seal will be at risk," added Harsh.
Center for Food Safety has submitted extensive comments in support of the rules. While the rules are not perfect, they are a substantial step toward ensuring all organic animals are provided a consistent level of care. The small but vocal opposition against the rules have misrepresented the realities of the rules in order to continue business-as-usual.
The proposal to withdraw the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule is open for public comment until Jan. 17, 2018.
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While Congress hasn’t accomplished much in 2017, it did manage to pass a budget resolution — and within that budget, a sum of $3 million stands out.
Congress appropriated that $3 million to fund the Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative. That’s a partnership between the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) “to provide consumer education on agricultural biotechnology and food and animal feed ingredients derived from biotechnology.”
What they’re really talking about is a promotional campaign for genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
There are two major flaws with this plan.
First, the FDA is tasked with building a campaign around the “safety and benefits of crop biotechnology.” But what about the risks, concerns, and unknowns?
Leaving those out means using government agencies and taxpayer funds for corporate propaganda. It benefits companies like Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, Syngenta, and Bayer, which collectively earn billions of dollars from these technologies, but does little to inform consumers.
Second, the initiative will push forward “science-based” education. The question is: Whose science are they using?
There’s very little independent or government research on GMOs and their corresponding pesticides. The lack of unbiased and comprehensive science on biotechnology is a result of corporations controlling who can do research on biotech products.
Much of the existing research is either industry-funded or straight out of biotechnology companies’ own labs. The existing regulatory framework relies on voluntary reporting and doesn’t require independent verification to prove the safety of new products before they land on dinner plates across the country.
If the government’s going to educate consumers on biotechnology, it must first do its own unbiased studies on the long-term environmental and health impacts of existing GMOs and pesticides. It also needs a much more rigorous — and mandatory — regulatory process.
The government must tell consumers the full truth, presenting balanced and unbiased information on the benefits, risks, and concerns around biotechnology. The FDA must openly address consumer concerns about long-term environmental impacts, corporate influence on government research, and corporate control of our industrialized food system.
We’re at a turning point in history where we can reverse the harm that we’ve done to our communities, farmland, and environment.
Industrialized, chemical-intensive agriculture designed to work around biotechnology is a failed system. It’s increasing herbicide use, exacerbating pesticide resistance, polluting our waterways, soil, and air, and promoting highly processed food and confined animal production.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/a-wide-open-door-for-pesticide-lobbyists-at-agriculture-department
At a private meeting in September, congressional aides asked Rebeckah Adcock, a top official at the Department of Agriculture, to reveal the identities of the people serving on the deregulation team she leads at the agency.
Teams like Adcock’s, created under an executive order by President Trump, had been taking heat from Democratic lawmakers over their secrecy. What little was publicly known suggested that some of the groups’ members had deep ties to the industries being regulated.
Adcock, a former pesticide industry executive, brushed off the request, according to House aides familiar with the exchange, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Making the names public, they recalled her saying, would trigger a deluge of lobbyists.
In fact, interviews and visitor logs at the Agriculture Department showed that Adcock had already been meeting with lobbyists, including those from her former employer, the pesticide industry’s main trade group, CropLife America, and its members. CropLife pushes the agenda of pesticide makers in Washington, including easing rules related to safety standards and clean water.
Adcock, who left the trade group in April, maintained contact with her former industry allies despite a signed ethics agreement promising to avoid for one year issues involving CropLife as well as matters that she had lobbied about in the two years before joining the government.
In one meeting, Adcock discussed issues banned by the ethics agreement with an executive who had been her lobbying partner weeks earlier at CropLife, according to the accounts of participants and the visitor logs, obtained through a public records request by The New York Times and ProPublica.
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the USDA who also spoke on behalf of Adcock, said she had not violated her ethics agreement by meeting with her former industry allies. He also denied that Adcock had discussed issues related to her previous lobbying at the meeting, or that she had suggested that her deregulation team would be swamped by lobbyists if names of its members were released.
“The career ethics officers at USDA agree that this is not a violation of the ethics agreement that Rebeckah Adcock signed,” said Murtaugh, citing a 2009 memo by the Office of Government Ethics.
Others dispute that interpretation of the memo; the ethics office declined to say whether the memo applied to the meeting, citing its policy not to discuss individual cases.
Help Us Investigate
Help Us Identify the Officials Helping Trump Roll Back Regulations
In February, President Trump ordered federal agencies to form task forces charged with finding regulations to weaken or eliminate. While the names of appointees to executive-agency task forces are typically made public, some agencies are refusing to reveal who is on their panels
Adcock is scheduled to appear Tuesday before subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is tracking Trump’s deregulation effort. In announcing the hearing, the committee, led by Republicans, applauded the deregulation teams for making an “unprecedented reduction in the federal regulatory footprint.”
Republican members of the committee declined to comment about Adcock’s activities. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, said that if Adcock had violated her ethics agreement, it contributed “to a troubling pattern of President Trump’s failure to ‘drain the swamp.”
In February, Trump ordered major federal agencies to set up the deregulation teams, to fulfill a campaign promise to cut red tape for businesses. Corporations and industry groups quickly hired lawyers, lobbyists and economists to help them influence the process with billions of dollars at stake. The regulations under review cover a range of subjects, including the cleanliness of drinking water and the safety of highways.
The Trump administration has declined to make public the names of many members of the teams. It has also generally not provided records related to the teams’ calendars and correspondence.
A joint investigation published in July by The Times and ProPublica found that the teams included former employees of industry-financed organizations that oppose environmental regulations; lawyers who have represented companies in cases against federal regulators; and staff members of so-called political dark-money groups. Some are reviewing rules that their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit personally if certain regulations are undone. In all, the two news organizations have identified 112 current and former team members, including 41 with potential conflicts.
At the meeting on Capitol Hill in September, Adcock lamented the scrutiny that her team was under, a House aide familiar with the exchange said. Adcock cited, in particular, public records requests for calendars and emails.
The Times and ProPublica asked for those records this year and have received only a few. Most other federal agencies have been similarly unresponsive. The visitor logs that have been obtained are often handwritten sign-in sheets. They appear to show only a fraction of meetings, and many are illegible. It is not known from the logs, for example, if Adcock or her team had met with environmental or science groups in addition to the industry representatives.
In response to questions from reporters about possible conflicts of interest, agency officials across the government have said the deregulation teams are abiding by strict ethical standards, including rules that bar them from working on issues directly affecting recent employers.
Records received through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Adcock entered such an agreement on April 26, pledging that she would “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which I know CropLife America is a party or represents a party” for a year.
The two knew each other well. From 2010 to early this year, Adcock and Bray lobbied together for CropLife, which represents Syngenta and Monsanto, among other pesticide makers.But in May, Kellie Bray, a lobbyist for CropLife, arrived for a meeting with Adcock, according to the visitor logs.
Disclosure records show that during those years the two advocated for the industry’s agenda at agencies, including the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and in Congress. They pushed CropLife’s interests on bills and regulations relating to the impact of pesticides on water and human health.
Adcock’s departure from CropLife left the trade association short a seasoned lobbyist, but gave it a valuable contact in the top ranks of the USDA
Bray said in an interview that in May, Adcock had met with her and the Southern Crop Production Association, a CropLife affiliate. Bray said she had sat in on the meeting but hadn’t talked.
“I facilitated the introduction,” she said. “That is all.”
After the meeting, the Southern Crop Production Association, which represents pesticide manufacturers, formulators and distributors across the South, said on its website that “Rebeckah has an exceptional understanding regarding the many issues facing agriculture due, in large part, to her previous position with CLA,” using the acronym for CropLife America.
Among the topics discussed, according to the trade group’s website, were the tests that pesticides must undergo to prove they are safe and rules governing their use near water sources. The trade group did not respond to requests for comment. Bray confirmed that the group had discussed regulations about the use of pesticides near water.
Discussing policy related to the impact of pesticides on water is deemed off limits under Adcock’s ethics agreement. Murtaugh, the USDA spokesman, said Adcock disputed that she had discussed any off-limits subject.
“If any participant declared concern regarding any issue precluded by Adcock’s agreement, she politely and firmly instructed them it was not a matter she could discuss or assist with,” he said.
He also said Adcock had instructed Bray not to participate in the meeting and did not recall her being in the room.
Murtaugh said a provision in the memorandum from the Office of Government Ethics allowed an appointee like Adcock to attend meetings with a former employer or client so long as five or more other stakeholders participated. In the May meeting, he said, four of the Southern Crop Production Association representatives were affiliated with individual companies: Syngenta, Albaugh, Triangle Chemical and Crop Production Services.
However, three of those companies are also members of the CropLife trade group, Adcock’s former employer. And they were attending in their capacity as the executive committee of the Southern Crop Production Association, according to the association’s website, not as individual company executives.
Walter M. Shaub Jr., who headed the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama and during the early months of the Trump administration, said the provision cited by the USDA did not apply to the ethics regulation in Adcock’s agreement. Even if it did apply, he said, the meeting lacked a necessary diversity because the participants were all affiliated with one trade group. He also said it was irrelevant that Bray hadn’t spoken.
“If she brought them there, signed into the sign-in log, attended the meeting that she may or may not have set up, it definitely counts as a meeting with her,” said Shaub, who has been critical of the Trump administration.
Before Adcock worked at CropLife, she served as a lobbyist for the farming industry at the American Farm Bureau Federation. Among its donors is Farm Credit, a lending institution. In July, Adcock met with a delegation from Farm Credit, according to a participant.
One of the executives who attended — Jeremy Brown, president of Broadview Agriculture, a Texas cotton producer — said in an interview that he knew Adcock from the Farm Bureau. For those who did not know her, Adcock explained her past lobbying on behalf of the farming industry, and she asked for recommendations on regulatory changes, he said.
“Any time you have people already familiar with the industry, it helps,” Brown said. “They can hopefully get their feet on the ground and get the work in.”
He said he had pushed Adcock to get cottonseed reclassified as an oil seed crop so cotton producers could be eligible again for certain government subsidies if revenue dropped. He also discussed what he termed overreach on clean-water rules.
“She was taking notes, being really receptive,” Brown said.
Another highlight, he said, was the access the group enjoyed. Never before had he attended a meeting in the private gathering room just outside the office of the secretaryof agriculture.
“I’ve been to the USDA a couple other times,” Brown said, “and this was the first time I’ve been able to go to what they call the Cage.”
Update: The Agriculture Department provided the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform with a full list of its deregulation team appointees Tuesday following publication of this story, said Jennifer Werner, a spokeswoman for committee Democrats, citing her Republican counterparts.
Filed under:
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/usda-food-stamps-school-lunch-trump-administration
micael lewis moneyball
INSIDE TRUMP’S CRUEL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE U.S.D.A.’S SCIENTISTS
The folks at the Department of Agriculture laid on a friendly welcome for the Trump transition team, but they soon discovered that most of his appointees were stunningly unqualified. With key U.S.D.A. programs—from food stamps to meat inspection, to grants and loans for rural development, to school lunches—under siege, the agency’s greatest problem is that even the people it helps most don’t know what it does.
...
More than a month after the election, the Trump transition team finally appeared. But it wasn’t a team: it was just one guy, named Brian Klippenstein. He came from his job running an organization called Protect the Harvest. Protect the Harvest was founded by a Trump supporter, an Indiana oilman and rancher named Forrest Lucas. Its stated purpose was “to protect your right to hunt, fish, farm, eat meat, and own animals.” In practice it mainly demonized organizations, like the Humane Society, that sought to prevent people who owned animals from doing terrible things to them. They worried, apparently, that if people were forced to be kind to animals they might one day cease to eat them. “This is a weird group,” says Rachael Bale, who writes often about animal welfare for National Geographic....
e first time we spoke wasn’t long after Trump had nominated her replacement. His name was Sam Clovis. He had a doctorate in public administration from the University of Alabama but no experience in science. He’d come to prominence in 2010 as a Rush Limbaugh-style right-wing talk-radio host in Sioux City, Iowa. As Iowa chairman of Rick Perry’s 2016 presidential campaign, he’d ripped Trump loudly and righteously for having “no foundation in Christ.” Then he’d quit Perry’s campaign to become co-chairman of the Trump campaign, declining to address rumors he’d done it for the money. (“I’m not going to talk about how much money I’m getting paid,” he told the Des Moines Register. “It’s just not going to happen.”) His appointment as the U.S.D.A.’s chief scientist felt like a practical joke to those who had worked there: this was the place that, back in the early 1940s, had taken Alexander Fleming’s findings and effectively invented penicillin. It had triggered the antibiotics revolution. It had coped with endless blights and outbreaks. The consequences of the science it funded—or did not fund—was mind-boggling. The person Clovis was replacing had taught at universities, worked in the White House, and, along the way, been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. (On Wednesday, Clovis withdrew himself from consideration after his name was publicly tied to a former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his connections with Russian associates.)
“They are going to politicize the science,” said Woteki. “My biggest concern is the misuse of science to support policies.”
In recent years, much of the department’s research has dealt with the effects of climate change. The head of science directs nearly $3 billion in grants each year. Woteki directed the science that leads to nutritional standards for schoolchildren. She set research priorities. Hers had been food security; domestic and global nutrition; safety of the food supply; and figuring out how best to convert plants into fuel. “All of that has to be done in the face of a changing climate,” said Woteki. “It’s all climate change.” It might sound silly that the U.S.D.A. funds a project that seeks to improve the ability of sheep to graze at high altitudes—until you realize that this may one day be the only place sheep will be able to graze. “We’re going to become even more reliant on the efficiencies that come from the investment in science,” she said. One-quarter of the arable land in the world is already degraded, either by overfarming or overgrazing. “Changing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will force changes in the way crops are grown and livestock are raised,” she said. “The changing climate brings new risks of food-borne disease. Even the pathogens are influenced by temperature and humidity.”
If the Trump administration were to pollute the scientific inquiry at the U.S.D.A. with politics, scientific inquiry would effectively cease. “These high-level discussions really worry me,” she says. Research grants will go not to the most promising ideas but to the closest allies. “There is already good science that isn’t being funded,” she said. “That will get worse.” Junk science will be used to muddy issues like childhood nutrition. Maybe sodium isn’t as bad for kids as people say! There’s no such thing as too much sugar! The science will suddenly be “unclear.” There will no longer be truth and falsehood. There will just be stories, with two sides to them.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trump-usda-klippenstein-heitkamp/
...
Choosing a centrist Democrat like Heitkamp would be quite a departure from earlier versions of Trump’s USDA short list, which included wild cards like Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who unapologetically shares fake news stories on his office’s Facebook page and once tried to bill taxpayers for a trip to take a medical procedure called a Jesus shot. Charles Herbster has also appeared as a prime candidate for USDA chief—he’s a man who currently runs a a multilevel marketing operation(a highly controversial business model that relies on a network of individual “distributors” to sell products) and who financesand helps lead a Big Ag federal super-PAC also funded by Monsanto, DuPont, Archer Daniels Midland, and other agribusiness giants.
Indeed, a day before the Politico piece hailing Heitkamp as the likely pick, Trump veered in a quite different direction, announcing a new member of the team overseeing the transition of the USDA: Brian Klippenstein, executive director of a group called Protect the Harvest. The brainchild of Forrest Lucas—a right-wing oil magnate and cattle rancher who has himself emerged as a contender to serve as Trump’s secretary of the interior—Protect the Harvest seems to exist mainly to troll the Humane Society of the United States.
On its website, Protect the Harvest warns that HSUS seeks to “put an end to animal ownership.” This is nonsense—the Humane Society is by no means coming for your furry friend. Its website features “tools you need to help the pets in your home and beyond.” I asked Paul Shapiro, vice president of policy at HSUS, whether his group opposes the keeping of pets. “That would certainly be news to the vast numbers of our staff who bring their dogs to work here,” he replied.
Protect the Harvest’s real beef with HSUS appears to be that the group promotes legislation that curtails some of the harsher aspects of factory-scale animal farming. The two groups recently clashed over a Massachusetts ballot measure this fall to ban tight cages in egg and pork production. Lucas personally donated nearly $200,0000 to defeat the measure, and Klippenstein actively campaigned against it. The measure passed with overwhelming support on November 8.
Protect the Harvest’s zeal to fight regulation of animal farming extends even to “puppy mills“—large facilities that churn out dogs like factory farms churn out pigs. Back in 2010, the year before Protect the Harvest was founded, Lucas vigorously opposed a Missouri ballot measure to “require large-scale dog breeding operations to provide each dog under their care with sufficient food, clean water, housing and space; necessary veterinary care; regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles,” and to “prohibit any breeder from having more than 50 breeding dogs for the purpose of selling their puppies as pets.” In 2014, Protect the Harvest opposed an Illinois bill banning the retail sale of puppy-mill dogs.
Klippenstein isn’t the only member of Trump’s USDA transition team. Recall that back in November, Trump picked a lobbyist whose clients include Little Ceasar’s Pizza, the soda and snack industries, and the Illinois Soybean Association to lead the agency’s transition. He soon abruptly quitafter Trump announced a ban on registered lobbyists serving in the transition.
But then, a few days later, Trump tapped Joel Leftwich, Republican staff director for the Senate Agriculture Committee, to help lead the USDA transition. Leftwich took the Senate job in 2015—after having spent the previous three years as the director of government affairs for Pepsi. In 2010—just before another stint on the Senate ag committee staff—Leftwich had worked as a lobbyist for seed and chemical giant DuPont. In other words, Team Trump pushed out a current lobbyist for Big Soda and Big Ag—only to replace him with a guy who basically lives in the revolving door between government and agribusiness, and whose latest turn as a lobbyist ended way back in 2015.
So basically, we’ve got a two-time industry lobbyist and an anti-animal-welfare zealot teaming up to choose the next USDA chief.
What that means for the prospect of Heitkamp taking the USDA reins is unclear. She narrowly won her North Dakota Senate seat in 2012, and Trump won the state in 2016 with 63 percent of the vote. As a Democrat, she faces a hard fight for reelection in 2018, which may be why she agreed to meet with Trump on December 2, in what was widely read as a job interview. If she exits the Senate now, North Dakota would have to hold a special election to replace her, and the winner would almost certainly be a Republican. On Monday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev,), the soon-to-retire former Democratic leader of the Senate, sought to throw water on the Heitkamp-to-USDA rumor, telling CNN that “I would doubt very seriously” that she’d agree to join the Trump administration. Whether he has knowledge of Heitkamp’s intentions, or is just hoping to keep a Senate seat in the party fold, is unclear.
...
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guardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-climate-change-language-censorship-emails
no link doc
Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead.
A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers’ land conservation, show that the incoming Trump administration has had a stark impact on the language used by some federal employees around climate change.
A missive from Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, lists terms that should be avoided by staff and those that should replace them. “Climate change” is in the “avoid” category, to be replaced by “weather extremes”. Instead of “climate change adaption”, staff are asked to use “resilience to weather extremes”.
The primary cause of human-driven climate change is also targeted, with the term “reduce greenhouse gases” blacklisted in favor of “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency”. Meanwhile, “sequester carbon” is ruled out and replaced by “build soil organic matter”.
Firefighters battle a wildfire in California.
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Firefighters battle a wildfire in California. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP
In her email to staff, dated 16 February this year, Moebius-Clune said the new language was given to her staff and suggests it be passed on. She writes that “we won’t change the modeling, just how we talk about it – there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail [sic], climate mitigation is just one of them”, and that a colleague from USDA’s public affairs team gave advice to “tamp down on discretionary messaging right now”.
In contrast to these newly contentious climate terms, Moebius-Clune wrote that references to economic growth, emerging business opportunities in the rural US, agro-tourism and “improved aesthetics” should be “tolerated if not appreciated by all”.
Trump is deleting climate change, one site at a time
Read more
In a separate email to senior employees on 24 January, just days after Trump’s inauguration, Jimmy Bramblett, deputy chief for programs at the NRCS, said: “It has become clear one of the previous administration’s priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch.”
Bramblett added that “prudence” should be used when discussing greenhouse gases and said the agency’s work on air quality regarding these gases could be discontinued.
Other emails show the often agonized discussions between staff unsure of what is forbidden. On 16 February, a staffer named Tim Hafner write to Bramblett: “I would like to know correct terms I should use instead of climate changes and anything to do with carbon ... I want to ensure to incorporate correct terminology that the agency has approved to use.”
On 5 April, Suzanne Baker, a New York-based NRCS employee, emailed a query as to whether staff are “allowed to publish work from outside the USDA that use ‘climate change’”. A colleague advises that the issue be determined in a phone call.
Some staff weren’t enamored with the new regime, with one employee stating on an email on 5 July that “we would prefer to keep the language as is” and stressing the need to maintain the “scientific integrity of the work”.
In a statement, USDA said that on 23 January it had issued “interim operating procedures outlining procedures to ensure the new policy team has an opportunity to review policy-related statements, legislation, budgets and regulations prior to issuance”.
The statement added: “This guidance, similar to procedures issued by previous administrations, was misinterpreted by some to cover data and scientific publications. This was never the case and USDA interim procedures will allow complete, objective information for the new policy staff reviewing policy decisions.”
Kaveh Sadeghzadeh of the Natural Resources Conservation Service added that his organisation “has not received direction from USDA or the administration to modify its communications on climate change or any other topic”.
[Trump's planned EPA cuts will hit America's most vulnerable]
Trump has repeatedly questioned the veracity of climate change research, infamously suggesting that it is part of an elaborate Chinese hoax. The president has started the process of withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scrap or amend various regulations aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, and has moved to open up more public land and waters to fossil fuel activity.
The nomenclature of the federal government has also shifted as these new priorities have taken hold. Mentions of the dangers of climate change have been removed from the websites of the White House and the Department of the Interior, while the EPA scrapped its entire online climate section in April pending a review that will be “updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership”.
The series of emails. Some parts were redacted before the emails were released. The Guardian has further redacted phone numbers, and highlighted key passages.
“These records reveal Trump’s active censorship of science in the name of his political agenda,” said Meg Townsend, open government attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“To think that federal agency staff who report about the air, water and soil that sustains the health of our nation must conform their reporting with the Trump administration’s anti-science rhetoric is appalling and dangerous for America and the greater global community.”
The Center for Biological Diversity is currently suing several government agencies, including the EPA and state department, to force them to release information on the “censoring” of climate change verbiage.
While some of the changes to government websites may have occurred anyway, the emails from within the USDA are the clearest indication yet that staff have been instructed to steer clear of acknowledging climate change or its myriad consequences.
US agriculture is a major source of heat-trapping gases, with 15% of the country’s emissions deriving from farming practices. A USDA plan to address the “far reaching” impacts of climate change is still online.
However, Sam Clovis, Trump’s nomination to be the USDA’s chief scientist, has labeled climate research “junk science”.
Last week it was revealed that Clovis, who is not a scientist, once ran a blog where he called progressives “race traders and race ‘traitors’” and likened Barack Obama to a “communist”.
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https://agriculture.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bramblett_testimony.pdf
12k watershed dams, vol chesapeake bay pgm
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legit soil ppt 11/15
Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health
http://www.firt.org/sites/default/files/TFI%20FIRT%20FOTC%20-%20Bringing%20Science%2C%20Production%2C%20and%20Conservation%20Together%20-%2011%20November%202015.pdf
cornell
https://soilhealth.cals.cornell.edu/about/cornell-soil-health-team/ donors look ok
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http://www.ecowatch.com/usda-glyphosate-testing-2326808630.html
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has quietly dropped a plan to start testing food for residues of glyphosate, the world's most widely used weed killer and key ingredient in Monsanto's branded Roundup herbicides.
The agency spent the last year coordinating with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in preparation to start testing samples of corn syrup for glyphosate residues on April 1, according to internal agency documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. Documents show that at least since January 2016 into January of this year, the glyphosate testing plan was moving forward. But when asked about the plan this week, a USDA spokesman said no glyphosate residue testing would be done at all by USDA this year.
The USDA's plan called for the collection and testing of 315 samples of corn syrup from around the U.S. from April through August, according to the documents. Researchers were also supposed to test for the AMPA metabolite, the documents state. AMPA (aminomethylphosphonic acid) is created as glyphosate breaks down. Measuring residues that include those from AMPA is important because AMPA is not a benign byproduct but carries its own set of safety concerns, scientists believe.
On Jan. 11, USDA's Diana Haynes, wrote to colleagues within USDA:
"Based on recent conversations with EPA, we will begin testing corn syrup for glyphosate and its AMPA metabolite April 1, 2017 with collection ending August 31, 2017. This program change will need to be announced at the February PDP Conference Call."
Haynes is director of a USDA Agricultural Marketing Service division that annually conducts the Pesticide Data Program (PDP), which tests thousands of foods for hundreds of different pesticide residues.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/politics/sonny-perdue-georgia.html
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-picks-sonny-perdue-for-agriculture-secretary/2017/01/18/
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http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-agriculture/2016/12/trumps-usda-landing-team-looks-like-its-klip-and-zip-217913
TRUMP’S USDA LANDING TEAM LOOKS LIKE IT’S ‘KLIP’ AND ZIP: USDA, the federal department that most directly serves rural America — one of the key voting blocs that propelled President-elect Donald Trump to victory — has had little contact with his landing team — the transition team’s crack crew responsible for collaborating with agency staff to ensure a smooth handoff from the Obama administration, reports Pro Ag’s Helena Bottemiller Evich. Inauguration Day is little more than a month out and yet it’s questionable whether the Trump transition has even fielded a landing team — as in a group of transition officials working together — at the federal government’s sixth-largest department, which has more than 100,000 employees.
As of Monday, one Trump transition volunteer, Brian Klippenstein, began showing up at USDA. Klippenstein, known to many as “Klip,” is executive director of Protect the Harvest, a group that advocates for safeguarding animal agriculture and was founded by oil executive Forrest Lucas (who was considered for Interior secretary early in the transition’s search process).
Before Klippenstein arrived at USDA this week, the sole person named to the landing effort was Joel Leftwich, the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Republican staff director. But Leftwich has been in limbo for weeks, as questions swirled about how involved in the transition he should be, particularly since Senate Ag will be tasked with confirming many key USDA appointments in the coming months, multiple sources told POLITICO. As a result, Leftwich hasn’t been showing up at USDA regularly, and it isn’t clear how much of a role he is playing in the transition effort. The Senate Agriculture Committee deferred questions to Trump transition officials, who did not respond to requests for comment.
At four other large federal agencies, however, the Trump transition has dispatched landing teams consisting of more than a handful of people.
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huge # trumpistas:
| Agriculture | Joe Alexander | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/20/17 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | David Blair | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Turner Bridgforth | Deputy White House Liaison | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Nicholas Brusky | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Samuel Clovis | Senior White House Advisor | SES | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Carly Couture | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Charles Crowe* | Staff Assistant | 2/13/17 | |
| Agriculture | Jody Cummins | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Brian Dansel | Special Assistant | GS-14 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Brock Densel | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | George Dunlop | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Jacob French | Staff Assistant | GS-09 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Joseph Gilson | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/22/17 |
| Agriculture | Heidi Green | Senior Advisor | SES | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Donald Gutman | Senior Advisor to OCFO | SES | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Austin Harris | Staff Assistant | GS-09 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Bethany Hudson | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Kevin Jayne | Confidential Assistant | GS-13 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Dino LaVerghetta | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/22/17 |
| Agriculture | Russell Laird | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | David Matthews | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Auria McAlicher* | Special Assistant | 2/1/17 | |
| Agriculture | Brenton McNeely* | White House Liaison | 2/6/17 | |
| Agriculture | Thomas Midanek | White House Liaison | GS-15 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Ella Mizrahi | Staff Assistant | GS-04 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Christopher OHagan | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Tim Page | Confidential Assistant | GS-12 | 1/22/17 |
| Agriculture | Cameron Quinn | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Elias Rella | Staff Assistant | GS-07 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | James Renne | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Michawn Rich | Special Assistant | GS-15 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | William Russell | Confidential Assistant | GS-13 | 1/25/17 |
| Agriculture | Campbell Shuford | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Joel Small | Staff Assistant | GS-07 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Stephen Vaden | Senior Advisor to OGC | SES | 1/22/17 |
| Agriculture | Thayer Verschoor | Special Assistant | GS-14 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Nicholas Westcott | Confidential Assistant | GS-11 | 1/30/17 |
| Agriculture | Joshua Whitehouse | Confidential Assistant | GS-13 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Robyn Whitney | Staff Assistant | GS-09 | 1/20/17 |
| Agriculture | Larry Young | Senior Advisor to the Secretary | Senior Advisor to the Secretary | Senior Advisor to the Secretary |
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re shirley sherrod james o keefe
Number of Black Farmers in U.S. Is Growing, Thanks in Part to the New Policies at the USDA
By Sylvia A. Harvey, Yes! Magazine
By partnering with local farmers, the Department of Agriculture has begun to tackle its racist past. READ MORE»
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rev dr
As it moves ahead with its $130 billion merger with fellow chemical giant Dow, DuPont has made quite a hire. To lead the company's "public policy and government affairs strategies," DuPont has tapped Krysta Harden, who just ended a six-plus-year stint at the US Department of Agriculture, where she served as chief of staff to Secretary Tom Vilsack and, most recently, as deputy secretary, the department's No. 2 position.
Krysta HardenDuPont
Harden's move from the USDA to DuPont is not her first whirl through the revolving door separating industries from the government watchdogs that regulate them. According to her USDA bio, she started her career on Capitol Hill, where she worked as staff director for the House subcommittee on peanuts and tobacco and as chief of staff and press secretary for former Rep. Charles Hatcher (D-Ga.), who was defeated in 1992. From there, she moved to Gordley Associates, which handles "legislative initiatives" for the American Soybean Association. The soybean-industry lobbying stint lasted until 2004. After a stretch as CEO of the National Association of Conservation Districts, Harden moved to the USDA in 2009, where she started as assistant secretary for congressional relations before working up to the No. 2 spot under chief Vilsack.
Harden is joining DuPont before the deal with Dow is fully consummated, but when it is the combined company plans to split into three independent parts, one of which will likely emerge as the globe's biggest agrichemical/seed company, bigger even than rivals Monsanto and Syngenta.
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