Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

http://www.progress.org/2007/food10.htm
Consumers Have a Right to Know About Tainted Food Imports
Small Steps Toward Food Safety

In the midst of Bush's tainted food import scandal, China continues  
to dump unhealthy products in the U.S., without any objections from  
Bush.

Here are excerpts from an article appearing at seattlepi.com
by Andrew Schneider

Where did that food come from? Your guess is as good as the label Law  
would streamline regulations -- if it passes

The apple-blackberry sauce sold widely in Seattle supermarkets, with  
the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic seal on the label, says it  
comes from Chino, Calif. It also says "Product of Canada."
So how do you know where it's from? You don't.

Dried banana chips are labeled as being from Sumner. But banana trees  
don't grow in Sumner. Peanut butter from Canada? There are no peanut  
farms in that country.

Congress passed a law in 2002 saying that consumers were to be told  
where the food they buy comes from. But five years later, shoppers  
who try to determine the origin of meat, poultry, fruit, vegetables  
and frozen or canned food in most of America's grocery stores often  
enter an Oz-like land of obfuscations, omission or outright lies.

Without knowing where the food came from, consumers can't be certain  
it is safe, experts say.

"This labeling becomes vital in ensuring that products are of high  
quality," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the  
Center for Science in the Public Interest. "If people know they're  
going to get caught for shoddy practices, they're much less likely to  
engage in them."

So what happened to the labeling law?

The Agriculture Department, bowing to pressure from the meat lobby,  
the grocery industry and a Republican-dominated Capitol Hill,  
postponed the launching to 2004, then 2006 and finally to 2008, with  
the exception of seafood, which has been labeled since 2005. But the  
litany of recent reports on tainted food -- E. coli in spinach,  
salmonella in peanut butter, botulism in chili and the still-growing  
list of tainted Chinese products -- has prompted action.

Last month, the House Agriculture Committee updated the labeling law  
and the full House included it as part of a complex and long farm bill.

But don't expect labels to immediately sprout throughout grocery  
stores. The Senate still has to weigh in, and then the Department of  
Agriculture has to write rules telling everyone in the food supply  
chain what the law actually demands. Also, President Bush has  
threatened a veto of the entire farm package.

However, the White House is "well aware" that more than 92 percent of  
consumers polled this spring said they want to know the origin of the  
food they buy, said Patty Lovera, assistant director of the public  
interest group Food and Water Watch.

The updated law would require that beef, pork, lamb, goat, fresh and  
frozen fruits and vegetables carry a label with the origin of the  
food. The no-man's-land of labeling would be the grocery store aisles  
of processed food in cans, jars and pouches. Labeling country-of- 
origin for processed food is voluntary and the new law would not  
change that.

A few groceries, especially high-end chains, already do extensive  
labeling of fresh produce.

"Because some stores are already labeling some of their produce, it  
will grow harder for other companies and interest groups to argue it  
cannot be done," said Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist with the  
Organic Center, a nationwide, non-profit, food research organization.
Relying on the supplier

However, Benbrook and other food scientists say the inconsistencies  
even within chains trying to do it right can be enormous and food  
hazards can exist even if the origin is properly labeled.

"The globalization of the food system is occurring faster than  
government's ability to even understand the sources of new risks, let  
alone prevent them," said Benbrook, whose 28 years of experience  
includes leading congressional investigations and National Academy of  
Science studies into food safety issues.

There are a dozen different federal agencies in charge of the food  
supply, which DeWaal calls "chaotic and inefficient."

Because cargo enters the United States through more than 300 ports  
and the government has inspectors at only a small fraction of the  
entry ports, how do stores ensure the quality of what they're  
importing to sell?

Produce managers in several chain stores serving the Pacific  
Northwest and buyers or sales staff at some Pike Place Market stalls  
all said the same thing: They rely on the integrity of the companies  
from which they purchase.

Perceived integrity may not be enough, especially with fresh fruits  
and vegetables that may not be cooked before consumption, said Barb  
Bruemmer, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington's  
Nutritional Sciences program.

"These products may be contaminated in the field or during handling,"  
she said. "It can be an issue with produce from the U.S. as well as  
from other countries, but the more lax the regulatory system, the  
higher the risk."

Contamination may occur from many hazards, including tainted  
groundwater in the field, lack of safe water to rinse and clean  
produce, and the absence of the sanitation such as restrooms and hand- 
washing facilities, Bruemmer added.

"It's not uncommon for dangerous food to be imported because  
manufacturers often work through brokers who don't go to the growing  
fields or processing plants," said Mary Mulry, who heads FoodWise  
Inc., a technical and scientific consulting firm to the natural and  
organic food industry.

Without direct, on-site inspections by either the broker or a  
reliable agent, the U.S. distributors would never know if the foreign  
manufacturer or grower substituted ingredients or mislabeled products  
or committed outright fraud, Mulry said. In some large chains, more  
than 80 percent of all produce is imported.

Budget-conscious consumers aren't the only ones likely to buy  
mislabeled food. Shopping at the most expensive stores, even for the  
most costly items, is not a guarantee of quality and safety. Two  
extreme examples are exorbitantly priced fresh Italian white truffles  
and Russian beluga caviar. Some specialty stores have discovered that  
some suppliers selling them had mislabeled white truffles from China  
as Italian and purported Russian caviar actually was made from soy meal.

'Local' as marketing device

But even dealing with domestic products at the best stores, consumers  
still can get misleading information.

For example, food retailers long ago determined that consumers are  
attracted to products labeled "locally produced."

Cooks think local means fresher. Environmentalists see eating local  
as energy saving, with lower fuel consumption for transportation. And  
most people, when they think of it, say they like helping the local  
farmer.

But who decides what local is?

At one large Seattle supermarket, baskets of fresh mangos sit under  
signs that read "Washington Pride. Grown right in your own backyard."  
Some mangos near the bottom of the pile still bore the label "Product  
of Mexico."

"Even the term local is not defined and may mean Western Washington  
or western U.S.," Bruemmer said.

"It is a poorly controlled marketing device that's sometimes used to  
make products called local more attractive to the consumer," Benbrook  
said.

Some stories do try to offer definitions. Whole Foods' Web site says  
only produce that has traveled less than seven hours from the farm to  
its facility can be labeled "locally grown."

Another generally lucrative concept is to label foods produced in the  
United States as homegrown.

In the thousands of pages of public comments submitted over the years  
to Agriculture and congressional committees, corporate lawyers for  
gigantic agribusinesses as well as individuals working tiny family  
farms urge the mandatory use of "Made in USA" on food grown or  
processed in this country. Many openly discuss the increased  
profitability from the domestic label.

"Many farmers believe consumers will preferentially choose those  
products because they are made in USA, and consumers may believe that  
domestically produced food is safer," DeWaal said.

But even that label can be misleading.

Does the "Made in the USA" label mean the food was grown  
domestically, or does it just mean the jars, cans and pouches were  
packed in the U.S.?

Tour the aisles in almost every grocery store and thousands of  
products can be found that say "Packaged by ..." or "Distributed  
by ..." or "Shipped from ..." with no mention of the where the food  
came from.

That can lead to such puzzlements as the dried banana chips from  
Sumner, powdered mango from Seattle or guava filling from  
McMinnville, Ore.

There are some justifiable reasons why it is more complicated to do  
country-of-origin labels in a multi-ingredient food product.

"A single portion of chicken Kiev can have ingredients from 20  
different countries," DeWaal said. "Another reason that the  
traceability becomes a great deal more difficult is that supplier may  
be using salmon from Alaska one week and salmon from Chile the next."

'We don't grow peanuts'

While the "Made in the USA" label may be comforting to most shoppers,  
marketing specialists agree that "Product of Canada" is not far  
behind in the warm and friendly category. Hundreds of products from  
north of the border can be found on grocery shelves throughout the  
Northwest.

But "Product of Canada" can be just as misleading as "Made in the USA."

"There is already this bizarre discrepancy in labeling rules," said  
Stephanie Wells, the Canadian liaison to the Organic Trade  
Association. "For instance, I can buy peanut butter that says  
"Product of Canada," but I know we don't grow peanuts.

"The country of origin thing is a bit of a sticky wicket," she said.  
"We don't know if we can ask for a more, shall we say, honest system.  
It is misleading and in many cases, not at all honest to falsify the  
origin of a product.

"And of course, consumers aren't happy about it either. If they want  
to buy Canadian, they really want something that is Canadian, not  
that just the final processing was done here."

For 30 years, Paddy Doherty has been raising organic vegetables and  
sheep on his 500- acre farm in central British Columbia. He also is  
the chairman of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture  
Movement Accreditation Committee.

"Consumers don't like the idea of labels that say 'Made in Canada,'  
when in fact, it was only packaged or labeled here. I don't like it  
either, nor do most of the most other farmers I know," he said.

"It's a question of integrity, national pride and safety," he said.  
"If food is coming from China, I don't want it sold here -- or  
shipped to the states -- with a Canadian label on it.

"It is bizarre to see coffee labeled 'Made in Canada' when I don't  
believe there are any coffee plantations up here."

Meanwhile in Japan

A new in-store computer system is being instituted that enables  
consumers to track the origin of the ingredients from the harvest to  
the neighborhood market.

Shoppers can trace the history of the vegetables for extensive  
information including the day of harvest, when and where they were  
packed and how they were shipped. Some producers display a photo of  
the farmer involved "to bring a sense of proximity as additional  
reassurance to the consumer," the newsletter of Japan's Food Safety  
Commission Secretariat reported earlier this year.