According to a news source, a district court in the District of Columbia has denied a request seeking an order that the Justice Department submit a proposal for settling claims of loan program discrimination filed by female farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Instead, the court apparently urged the lawyers representing the litigants to work together to reach an agreement and to report back during a January 14, 2011, status hearing. Unlike recent cases addressing charges that USDA discriminated against African-American (Pigford I and Pigford II) and Native American (Keepseagle v. Vilsack) farmers, Love v. Vilsack reportedly involves putative class claims that have not been certified. Counsel for the women farmers and those representing Hispanic farmers with similar claims (Garcia v. Vilsack) contend that the government’s settlement proposals thus far pale in comparison to the sums agreed to in Pigford ($2.25 billion) and Keepseagle ($680 million). See National Journal Daily, December…
Category Archives Department of Agriculture
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reportedly issued a temporary stay of a district court order mandating the destruction of 256 acres of genetically engineered (GE) sugar beet seedlings that were, according to the lower court, planted illegally in September 2010. Ctr. for Food Safety v. Vilsack, No. 10-04038 (N.D. Cal., decided November 30, 2010). Press sources indicate that the Ninth Circuit’s postponement is scheduled to expire December 23, when the court will either allow the crop destruction to proceed or extend the stay until it can thoroughly review an appeal from the lower court order granting the plaintiffs’ motion to remedy violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by pulling the seedlings out of the ground. The seedlings were being grown to produce seed for future Roundup Ready® sugar beet crops, which are resistant to glyphosate, an ingredient in a popular herbicide. GE sugar beet critics contend…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has reportedly been asked by a Canadian biotechnology company to approve its genetically modified (GM) apple, which resists browning after it is sliced. The British Columbia-based company apparently licensed the non-browning technology from an Australian company that developed it for potatoes. Approval of the GM technology could take several years, and U.S. apple growers have reportedly expressed concerns about cross-pollination with conventional apple trees as well as the cost of replanting apple groves with the “Arctic” apples, a figure estimated at $10,000 to $20,000 per acre. Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, criticized the proposal, apparently claiming, “A botox apple is not what people are looking for. I’m predicting failure.” Yet, the sliced apple market has increased in recent years, with suppliers relying on calcium and ascorbic acid to maintain product freshness. The company seeking the GM apple’s approval claims that the…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced an advisory committee meeting to “discuss whether available relevant data demonstrate a link between children’s consumption of synthetic color additives in food and adverse effects on behavior.” FDA plans to provide background material no later than two business days before the March 30-31, 2011, public meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland. Calling the news “welcome and overdue,” Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson said that the meeting was in response to CSPI’s 2008 petition calling for FDA to ban Yellow 5, Red 50 and six other food dyes. The dyes “have long been shown in numerous clinical studies to impair children’s behavior,” Jacobson said. “But for years—FDA— which actually commissioned one of the first controlled studies—dismissed the mounting evidence against the dyes.” See Federal Register and CSPI News Release, December 1, 2010.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report titled “USDA Could Enhance Pesticide and Fertilizer Usage Data, Improve Outreach, and Better Leverage Resources.” GAO was asked to investigate the effect of budgetary cutbacks on a program that gathers, analyzes and disseminates information about the use of agricultural chemicals. According to the report, the cutbacks forced data users to rely on older statistics, “which hindered their ability to make informed decisions because agricultural chemical use can change from year to year due to the emergence of new pests, weather variations, changing market conditions, and other factors.” GAO recommends various improvements to the system, including incorporating data from other publicly available sources, minimizing potential overlap with other data sources and identifying and consulting with data users on a regular basis.
A recent investigation by NBC’s Today show has apparently revealed that some imported seafood “may contain toxic chemicals that can cause serious health problems.” Testing conducted by Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Oklahoma authorities has reportedly found contamination in shrimp, catfish, crabmeat and tilapia imported from China, Indonesia Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. “Footage taken by a U.S. advocacy group of seafood being raised in Vietnam, for example, showed fish in dirty sewage water, pumped with toxic antibiotics and banned drugs just to keep them alive, boosting production and driving down costs,” states the Today report, which claims that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests less than 2 percent of all seafood from overseas. Those test results allegedly indicated that in 2010, 8 percent of the sampled seafood from China and 16 percent from Taiwan was tainted with chemicals and drugs prohibited in the U.S. food supply. In response, FDA released…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reportedly “completed its most recent check of amounts of lead in some commercial juice and food products that contain fruit,” finding no cause for consumer concern. FDA tested apple juice, grape juice, peach slices, pears, mixed fruit, and fruit cocktail in response to a 2009 study by the Environmental Law Foundation, which sent notices “to numerous manufacturers of juice and packaged fruit products alleging the companies were not in compliance with the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, also known as California Proposition 65, because the manufacturers failed to disclose that the products contained lead.” According to the most recent results, “Almost all the products FDA tested contained a small amount of lead, but in each case the level found would not pose an unacceptable risk to health.” The agency has further explained that lead in soil “can be deposited…
“Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate,” writes New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss in this article about Dairy Management Inc., a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) “marketing creation” with a $140 million annual budget “largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry.” According to Moss, “The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.” Moss claims that despite federal efforts to curb the consumption of saturated fats, Dairy Management has “worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products,” in addition to spending “millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products.” His exposé opines that the group’s…
Beyond Pesticides, a Washington, D.C.-based organization opposed to the use of pesticides, has issued a call for comments to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) supporting recommendations by the National Organic Standards Board that would prohibit the use of engineered nanomaterials from certified organic products. According to the organization’s blog, the board passed the recommendations during its October 25-26, 2010, meeting. Among other matters, the recommendations include a working definition for engineered nanomaterials and propose that engineered nanomaterials be prohibited in both organic production processing and packaging. The board also called for NOP to schedule a symposium on the topic to consider whether the definition is adequate and enforceable and the best regulatory approach to address the matter. Beyond Pesticides is concerned about the unknown “long-term impacts of nanomaterials on human health and the environment.”
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published a notice inviting public comment on its draft environmental assessment for genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets. Comments must be submitted by December 6, 2010. APHIS conducted the assessment in response to a request that it partially deregulate GE sugar beets “to authorize the continued cultivation of the GE sugar beets subject to carefully tailored interim measures proposed by APHIS.” A federal court in California determined in August that APHIS had violated federal environmental laws by approving the crop’s deregulation without the preparation of an appropriate environmental assessment. More information about the court’s decision appears in Issue 361 of this Update. When USDA then began issuing permits to sugar beet seed producers to allow GE sugar beets to be planted in fall 2010, environmental groups and farmers challenged the action, and the court found…
