It is no consolation to the
roughly one out of 600 families who lost their homes in the U.S. but Wall Street made a lot of money slicing and dicing mortgages it knew would implode, while hiding risks. Financial giants, like AIG, are still
buzzing along and neither penalties or new laws will prevent a future crash, say financial analysts, because the risky business models have not really changed.A similar Big Pharma bubble, leavened with risky blockbuster drugs that also blew up, is now bursting. Like Wall Street’s bundled high risk loans, the “tide” created by Big Pharma’s high risk drugs raised many ships during the 2000s from advertising, public relations and medical communication agencies to TV and radio stations, medical journals and doctor/pitchmen who shoveled in its marketing budgets. But now the joy ride is over and Pharma is shedding jobs and settling billions in claims without changing its risky business model, like Wall Street.
In Europe, governments are no longer willing to pay the high prices for drugs that they once did say
published reports
and some countries are drafting laws making drug makers “prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate.” Imagine!
Germany has already saved 1.9 billion euros in 2011 by refusing to pay higher prices for drugs unless they are clearly superior to existing medicines, and Pharma worries that other countries will also get tough and want scientific proof for drug effectiveness instead of marketing and spin. In the U.S. and elsewhere, a drug only needs to be superior to no drug (placebo) to be approved by regulators — yet “new” is conveyed as “better than any drug to date” in advertising. Some clinicians say Haldol, an inexpensive antipsychotic, and lithium, a similar affordable bipolar drug are
better than blockbuster antipyschotics and bipolar drugs that created Pharma’s 2000 bubble.Before the
Vioxx scandal and major settlements over blockbuster drugs like
Zyprexa,
Bextra, Celebrex, Geodon and
Seroquel, being a Pharma rep was probably the next best thing to working on Wall Street. Direct-to-consumer advertising did your pre-sell for you, and all you had to do was show up with your snappy Vytorin tote bag and samples case. Some Pharma reps had their own reception room with ice water, swivel chairs, and laptop ports at medical offices, and most waltzed in to see the doctor right in front of waiting and sick patients. (It didn’t hurt that reps were usually “hotties,” both men or women).
But, by 2011, the bloom had fallen off Pharma reps’ roses. The number of prescribers willing to see most reps fell almost 20 percent, the number refusing to see all reps increased by half, and eight million sales calls were “nearly impossible to complete,” reported
ZS Associates. Blockbuster drugs that were found to be unsafe after their big sales push or even withdrawn altogether, did not help the reps’ credibility with doctors. After the aggressively marketed hormone therapy was linked to high incidences of cancer, stroke and heart attack, Wyeth (now Pfizer)
announced it was eliminating 1,200 jobs and closing its Rouses Point, New York plant where Prempro products were manufactured.
As government and private insurers increasingly say, “You want us to cover what?” about expensive, dangerous drugs that are not even proven effective, Pharma bubble jobs are evaporating. Almost 20,000 jobs have vanished at
AstraZeneca,
Novartis and Pfizer in the last 12 months alone. (AstraZeneca scrapped 21,600 more since 2007). Meanwhile, Pharma is outsourcing more of its operations to poor countries.
Workers and people willing to be trial subjects are both a bargain in poor countries where many can’t understand drug risks or refuse them if they did (and most can’t afford the very drugs they help sell). In January the Argentinian Federation of Health Professionals
accused drug maker GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring poor families into joining a trial for the Synflorix vaccine, which the company says protects against bacterial pneumonia and meningitis, reported CNN. In 2010,
10 deaths occurred during Pfizer and AstraZeneca drug trials at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre which was ironically built for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, reports MSNBC. 3,878 workers perished in Bhopal when chemicals leaked at a
Union Carbide pesticide plant.
Outsourcing drug manufacturing to cheap venues also contributes to Pharma’s cascade of “quality control” problems in which drugs are mislabeled, contaminated or otherwise made dangerous. It is speculated that Johnson & Johnson’s CEO William Weldon “was pushed to retire because of all of the quality issues at McNeil as well as with the company’s hip implant products, which have resulted in a raft of litigation,” reports
FiercePharma.
Like the Wall Street bubble, the Pharma bubble was built on products that industry, but not the public, knew were risky, sold for quick profits. Now regulators are examining some of these “assets” more closely and with disturbing findings. The
FDA now warns that bestselling statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor, even approved for
children, are linked to memory loss and diabetes associated with. The equally well selling proton pump inhibitors like Nexium and Prilosec for acid reflux disease (GERD) are now believed to increase the risk of
bone fractures by 30 percent.
In March, the FDA even rejected a Merck drug that combines the active drug in Lipitor with the active drug in Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that
Forbes
calls Son of Vytorin. Vytorin (the father) was advertised to treat both food and family “sources of cholesterol” until results from a study that Merck and Schering-Plough appeared to withhold from regulators showed the drug had no effect on the buildup of plaque in the arteries (believed to correlate with heart attack and stroke). There was such a gap between marketing and science, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why the FDA was approving “drugs that appear to have little to no effect in protecting lives and increasing health.”
Yet even as clouds develop over Pharma’s top-selling drugs, some say the FDA is too hard on new drugs, not too easy. “
The FDA is impeding useful innovations in the U.S.,” says former FDA deputy commissioner Scott Gottlieb in the a
Wall Street Journal
oped and lagging behind other countries. Former FDA commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach, also writing in the WSJ, agrees. The FDA should improve U.S. drug competitiveness by
allowing drugs “to be approved based on safety, with efficacy to be proven in later trials,” while the public is already taking the drugs. Isn’t that what’s happening now?
March 07, 2012
Drug Company Coupons Are Illegal Bribes Used to Dupe Consumers, Lawsuit Alleges
Three health plans in Community Catalyst's Prescription Access Litigation coalition today filed class action lawsuits in four federal courts against eight major drug companies
BOSTON, MA - Three health plans in Community Catalyst's Prescription Access Litigation coalition today filed class action lawsuits in four federal courts against major drug manufacturers for illegally subsidizing co-payments for expensive brand-name prescription drugs such as Lipitor and Nexium through the promotion of co-pay coupons.
The lawsuit alleges that the payments by eight drug makers -- Abbott, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, and Pfizer -- are illegal under a federal statute that prohibits commercial bribery because the undisclosed payments to patients and pharmacies are made through a ‘shadow claims system' designed to keep information about the presence or amount of these payments from health plans.
Community Catalyst, a national consumer advocacy organization, warns that while prescription drug coupons appear to save consumers money by reducing or eliminating co-payments, in reality they dramatically increase the cost of health care by driving up health insurance premiums and potentially causing consumers to hit benefit caps or lose coverage altogether.
"Pharmaceutical corporations are duping consumers with misleading coupons that are more about increasing corporate profits than actually reducing the cost of drugs for consumers" said Wells Wilkinson, director of the Prescription Access Litigation project at Community Catalyst. "If not stopped, the use of these deceptive coupons will increase costs for consumers' health plans by billions of dollars, contributing to higher premiums and the increasing loss of coverage and benefits for Americans."
A recent report by the Pharmacy Benefit Manager trade association (PCMA) estimates drug coupons will increase drug costs by $32 billion nationwide by 2021. Federal government health plans like Medicare consider these coupons kickbacks and have banned them; they are also banned in Massachusetts under an anti-kickback law.
The lawsuits were filed in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Newark by the AFSCME District Council 37 Health & Security Plan Trust, Sergeants Benevolent Association, the New England Carpenters, and the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 572 Health and Welfare Fund. These health plans provide drug benefits for civilian and uniformed municipals workers, retirees and their dependents throughout the City of New York, plumbers from Florida to Ohio, and carpenters throughout New England. All of these health plans are struggling to keep up with continually rising drug costs.
"Our members are harmed by these unlawful practices by drug companies because coupons offering discounts off of brand drugs don't save consumers money in the long run." says Lillian Roberts, Executive Director of AFSCME, District Council 37, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
"By combining direct-to-consumer marketing and supermarket ‘coupon clipping,' pharmaceutical companies are steering consumers to higher priced drugs in the pursuit of greater profits" said Edward Mullins, President of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Under most health plans, consumers pay a larger co-payment for expensive brand-name drugs. By subsidizing all or the majority of a consumer's co-payment, drug companies promote the sale of these expensive products over less expensive, equally effective medications. This drives up the cost of care for health plans, employers and, ultimately, consumers. In addition, consumers who stay on expensive brand-name drugs run the risk of reaching their coverage caps sooner, forcing them to either pay out of pocket or forgo important care when they need it.
"Drug company coupons are not coupons. They are high-interest loans. We save money now, but we pay the loan sharks later," said Dr. William Jordan, a practicing physician in New York City serving low-income patients.
In 2009, half of the 109 best-selling U.S. brand-name drugs were promoted by coupons, and the number of coupon subsidy programs has skyrocketed since then, from 86 in July 2009 to 362 in November 2011. Coupons are aggressively marketed to consumers by TV, radio, Internet ads, and through physicians and pharmacists. And consumers are using them up, unaware of the negative impact on their premiums. In 2010 alone, co-pay coupons were used in one-eighth of all brand-name drug purchases, or 100 million prescriptions, according to the PCMA report.
Coupons also threaten anticipated savings from so called "patent cliff drugs," the dozens of brand-name drugs going off-patent between 2010 and 2013 and competing for the first time against generic counterparts.
Aside from cost concerns, consumer advocates and policymakers are also concerned about coupons for safety reasons. For instance, the FDA is currently studying whether drug coupons can mislead consumers concerning the safety and risks of drug products.
###
About Community Catalyst
Community Catalyst is a national non-profit consumer advocacy organization dedicated to quality affordable health care for all. Community Catalyst works in partnership with national, state and local consumer organizations, policymakers, and foundations, providing leadership and support to change the health care system so it serves everyone - especially vulnerable members of society. For more information, visit www.communitycatalyst.org. Read or comment on our blog at http://blog.communitycatalyst.org/. Follow us on Twitter @healthpolicyhub.The 130-member Prescription Access Litigation coalition, a project of Community Catalyst, has played a major role in bringing lawsuits challenging illegal pharmaceutical industry pricing or promotional tactics. One lawsuit resulted in over $360 million in settlements with 29 of the country's largest drug makers.
Harvard Medical School found that
1 in 10 premature deaths is caused by eating red meat:
Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of dying by 12%.
***
Red meat often contains high amounts of saturated fat, while bacon and salami contain large amounts of salt. Replacing red meat with poultry, fish or vegetables, whole grains and other healthy foods cut the risk of dying by up to one fifth, the study found.
***
The study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed more than 100,000 people for around 28 years asking them periodically about their diet and lifestyle.
It was found that for every serving of red meat – equivalent to 3 ounces (85 grams) – eaten each day there was an 18 per cent increased risk of dying from heart disease and a 10 per cent increased risk of dying from cancer.
***
“The research itself seems solid and is based on two large scale cohort studies monitored over a long period of time.”
Other studies have also found that eating too much meat causes cancer and other health problems.
But how much of the problem isn’t red meat … but the fact that what we’re eating isn’t what our grandparents wouldn’t even recognize as meat at all?
For all of human history – until the last couple of decades – people ate beef from cows (or buffalo or bison) which grazed on grass. The cows were usually strong and healthy. Their meat was lean, with very little saturated fat, as the critters ate well and got outdoor exercise. Their meat was high in good Omega 3 fats. See
this and
this, and
humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (
more).
Today, on the other hand, beef is laden with saturated fat and almost entirely lacking healthy fats like Omega 3s, because the cows are force-fed food which makes them sick. Specifically, instead of their natural menu - grass - they are force-fed corn, which makes them sick. Because their diet makes them ill, they are given massive amounts of antibiotics. Even with the antibiotics, the diet and living conditions would kill them pretty quickly if they aren't slaughtered.
They are also given estrogen to fatten them up. And they are fed parts of other animals, which can
give them mad cow disease.
Well-known
food writer (and meat-lover) Michael Pollan gave a
must-read account of modern beef practices in the New York Times in 2002:
Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef calf’s allotted time on earth. ”In my grandfather’s day, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter” …. now we get there at 14 to 16 months.” Fast food indeed. What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements — and drugs, including growth hormones.
***
Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as they’re placed in the backgrounding pen, they’re apt to get sick. Why? The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The shift to a ”hot ration” of grain can so disturb the cow’s digestive process — its rumen, in particular — that it can kill the animal if not managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics
.
***
Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes
vast quantities of oil — 1.2 gallons for every bushel
. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.
***
Tanker trucks back up to silo-shaped tanks, into which they pump thousands of gallons of liquefied fat and protein supplement. In a shed attached to the mill sit vats of liquid vitamins and synthetic estrogen; next to these are pallets stacked with 50-pound sacks of Rumensin and tylosin, another antibiotic.
***
Corn is a mainstay of livestock diets because there is no other feed quite as cheap or plentiful: thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing surpluses, the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the cost of growing it. The rise of the modern factory farm is a direct result of these surpluses, which soared in the years following World War II, when petrochemical fertilizers came into widespread use. Ever since, the U.S.D.A.’s policy has been to help farmers dispose of surplus corn by passing as much of it as possible through the digestive tracts of food animals, converting it into protein. Compared with grass or hay, corn is a compact and portable foodstuff, making it possible to feed tens of thousands of animals on small plots of land. Without cheap corn, the modern urbanization of livestock would probably never have occurred.
We have come to think of ”cornfed” as some kind of old-fashioned virtue; we shouldn’t. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat is demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it c
ontains more saturated fat.
A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that
the meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than grain-fed meat but that the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much healthier. (Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6, which is believed to promote heart disease; it also contains betacarotine and CLA, another ”good” fat.)
A growing body of research suggests that
many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef.
In the same way ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well adapted to eating grain-fed animals
.
Yet the U.S.D.A.’s grading system continues to reward marbling — that is, intermuscular fat — and thus the feeding of corn to cows.
The economic logic behind corn is unassailable, and on a factory farm, there is no other kind. Calories are calories, and corn is the cheapest, most convenient source of calories. Of course the identical industrial logic — protein is protein — led to the feeding of rendered cow parts back to cows, a practice the F.D.A. banned in 1997 after scientists realized it was spreading mad-cow disease.
Make that mostly banned.
The F.D.A.’s rules against feeding ruminant protein to ruminants make exceptions for ”blood products” (even though they contain protein) and fat.
Indeed, my steer has probably dined on beef tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he’s heading to in June. ”Fat is fat,” the feedlot manager shrugged when I raised an eyebrow.
F.D.A. rules still permit feedlots to feed nonruminant animal protein to cows. (
Feather meal is an accepted cattle feed, as are pig and fish protein and chicken manure
.) Some public-health advocates worry that since
the bovine meat and bone meal that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish, infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the protein of the animals that have been eating them
. To close this biological loophole, the F.D.A. is now considering tightening its feed rules.
***
”When we buy supplement, the supplier says it’s 40 percent protein, but they don’t specify beyond that.” When I called the supplier, it wouldn’t divulge all its ”proprietary ingredients” but promised that animal parts weren’t among them. Protein is pretty much still protein.
Compared with ground-up cow bones, corn seems positively wholesome. Yet it wreaks considerable havoc on bovine digestion. During my day at Poky, I spent an hour or two driving around the yard with Dr. Mel Metzen, the staff veterinarian. Metzen, a 1997 graduate of Kansas State’s vet school, oversees a team of eight cowboys who spend their days riding the yard, spotting sick cows and bringing them in for treatment. A great many of their health problems can be traced to their diet.
”They’re made to eat forage,” Metzen said, ”and we’re making them eat grain.”
Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis.
Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate.
”I don’t know how long you could feed this ration before you’d see problems,” Metzen said; another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ”blow out their livers” and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall, bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13 percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy — or healthy enough — are antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection.
Most of the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed — a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant ”superbugs.”
In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates don’t object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don’t want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding them to healthy animals to promote growth. But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for what we feed them.
I asked Metzen what would happen if antibiotics were banned from cattle feed. ”We just couldn’t feed them as hard,” he said. ”Or we’d have a higher death loss.” (Less than 3 percent of cattle die on the feedlot.) The price of beef would rise, he said, since the whole system would have to slow down.
”Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space,” he concluded dryly, ”I wouldn’t have a job.”
***
I stopped by the shed where recent arrivals receive their
hormone implants
. The calves are funneled into a chute, herded along by a ranch hand wielding an electric prod, then clutched in a restrainer just long enough for another hand to inject a slow-release pellet of
Revlar, a synthetic estrogen
, in the back of the ear. [This] is virtually a universal practice in the cattle industry in the United States. (It has been banned in the European Union.)
American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though
measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls
. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
The F.D.A. is opening an inquiry into the problem, but for now, implanting hormones in beef cattle is legal and financially irresistible: an implant costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 pounds to the weight of a steer at slaughter, for a return of at least $25.
***
The unnaturally rich diet of corn that has compromised [the cow's] health is fattening his flesh in a way that in turn may compromise the health of the humans who will eat him. The antibiotics he’s consuming with his corn were at that very moment selecting, in his gut and wherever else in the environment they wind up, for bacteria that could someday infect us and resist the drugs we depend on. We inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as the animals we eat, and whatever happens to it also happens to us.
I thought about the deep pile of manure that [the cows] and I were standing in. We don’t know much about the hormones in it — where they will end up or what they might do once they get there — but we do know something about the bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the manure beneath my feet. Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common intestinal bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980′s) that is common in feedlot cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as 10 of these microbes can cause a fatal infection.
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids — and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow’s diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so many ways to be not cheap at all. While I stood in [the] pen, a dump truck pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed. The animals stepped up to the bunk for their lunch. The $1.60 a day I’m paying for three giant meals is a bargain only by the narrowest of calculations. It doesn’t take into account, for example, the cost to the public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E. coli or all the environmental costs associated with industrial corn.
For if you follow the corn from this bunk back to the fields where it grows, you will find an 80-million-acre monoculture that consumes more chemical herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop. Keep going and you can trace the nitrogen runoff from that crop all the way down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created (if that is the right word) a 12,000-square-mile ”dead zone.”
But you can go farther still, and follow the fertilizer needed to grow that corn all the way to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. [The cow] started life as part of a food chain that derived all its energy from the sun; now that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel. (And in turn, defended by the military — another uncounted cost of ”cheap” food.) I asked David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist who specializes in agriculture and energy, if it might be possible to calculate precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight…. roughly 284 gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.
***
Much of what happens next — the de-hiding of the animal, the tying off of its rectum before evisceration — is designed to keep the animal’s feces from coming into contact with its meat. This is by no means easy to do, not when the animals enter the kill floor smeared with manure and 390 of them are eviscerated every hour. (Partly for this reason, European plants operate at much slower line speeds.) But since that manure is apt to contain lethal pathogens like E. coli 0157, and since the process of grinding together hamburger from hundreds of different carcasses can easily spread those pathogens across millions of burgers, packing plants now spend millions on ”food safety” — which is to say, on the problem of manure in meat.
***
It’s accepted that the animals will enter the kill floor caked with feedlot manure that has been rendered lethal by the feedlot diet. Rather than try to alter that diet or keep the animals from living in their waste or slow the line speed — all changes regarded as impractical — the industry focuses on disinfecting the manure that will inevitably find its way into the meat. This is the purpose of
irradiation
(which the industry prefers to call ”cold pasteurization”). It is also the reason that carcasses pass through a hot steam cabinet and get sprayed with an
antimicrobial solution
before being hung in the cooler at the National Beef plant.
***
I discovered that grass-fed meat is more expensive than supermarket beef. Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap, and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry’s populist arguments. Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar; it takes too long to raise beef on grass, and there’s not enough grass to raise them on, since the Western range lands aren’t big enough to sustain America’s 100 million head of cattle. And besides, Americans have learned to love cornfed beef. Feedlot meat is also more consistent in both taste and supply and can be harvested 12 months a year. (Grass-fed cattle tend to be harvested in the fall, since they stop gaining weight over the winter, when the grasses go dormant.)
All of this is true. The economic logic behind the feedlot system is hard to refute. And yet so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant grazing on grass. Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to the tall grass prairie it once was and grazed cattle on it. No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but would that necessarily be a bad thing? Eating beef every day might not be such a smart idea anyway — for our health, for the environment. And how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs: of antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil and so on. All these are costs that grass-fed beef does not incur.
In addition to antibiotics and estrogen, industrial meat operators feed other chemicals to the animals shortly before slaughter … which end up in our bodies.
As Alternet
reported in 2010 that chemicals which can cause severe adverse health effects, and which have been banned in China and 159 other nations, are added to the feed of cattle, pigs and turkeys shortly before slaughter – and a
lot
of the chemicals are contained in the meat we eat:
The FDA approved a livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs, according to angry farmers who phoned the manufacturer.
The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular says
Beef
magazine.
But unlike the growth promoting antibiotics and hormones used in livestock which are withdrawn as the animal nears slaughter, ractopamine is
started as the animal nears slaughter
.
As much as
twenty percent
of Paylean, given to pigs for their last 28 days, Optaflexx, given to cattle their last 28 to 42 days and Tomax, given to turkeys their last 7 to 14 days, remains in consumer meat
says author and well known veterinarian Michael W. Fox.
Though
banned in Europe, Taiwan and China
–more than 1,700 people were “poisoned” from eating Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 says the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce– ractopamine is used in 45 percent of US pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle says Elanco Animal Health which manufactures all three products.
How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?
***
In fact, in 2002, three years after Paylean’s approval,
the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine’s Office of Surveillance and Compliance accused Elanco of withholding information about “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences”
upon which ractopamine was approved, in a 14-page warning letter.
“Our representatives requested a complete and accurate list of all your GLP [Good Laboratory Practices] studies involving Paylean® (Ractopamine hydrochloride), including their current status as well as the names of the respective study monitors. In response, your firm supplied to our representatives multiple lists which differed in the names of the studies and their status. In addition, your firm could not locate or identify documents pertaining to some of the studies. This situation was somewhat confusing and created unneeded delays for our representatives,” wrote Gloria J. Dunnavan, Director Division of Compliance.
Where was mention of the farmer phone calls to Elanco reporting,
“hyperactivity,” “dying animals,” “downer pigs” and “tying up” and “stress” syndromes, asks the FDA letter. Where was the log of phone calls that included farmers saying, “animals are down and shaking,” and “pig vomiting after eating feed with Paylean”?
But, not to worry. Despite ractopamine’s dangers and the falsified approval documents, the FDA approved ractopamine the following year for cattle–and last year for turkeys.
According to Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, the “indiscriminant use of Paylean (ractopamine) has contributed to an increase in downer non-ambulatory pigs,” and pigs that “are extremely difficult to move and drive.” In Holsteins, ractopamine is known for causing hoof problems, says Grandin and feedlot managers report the “outer shell of the hoof fell off” on a related beta agonist drug, zilpateral.
A[n] article in the 2003
Journal of Animal Science
confirms that “ractopamine does affect the behavior, heart rate and catecholamine profile of finishing pigs and making them more difficult to handle and potentially more susceptible to handling and transport stress.”
Nor can we overlook the effects of “adding these drugs to waterways or well water supplies–via contaminated animal feed and manure runoff– when this class of drugs is so important in treating children with asthma,” says David Wallinga, MD of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
The FDA’s approval of a drug for food that requires impervious gloves and a mask just to handle is reminiscent of the bovine growth hormone debacle.
Like rBST, ractopamine increases profits despite greater livestock death and disability because a treated animal does the work of two in a macabre version of economies of scale.
Like rBST, food consumers are metabolic, neurological and carcinogen guinea pigs so that agribusiness can make a profit.
As can be seen from the discussion above, our grandparents would not recognize what we’re eating today as meat. (And – on top of that – there are all of the
meat additives.)
And yet the government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are
prohibited
from testing for mad cow disease, and even investigating factory farming may get one
labeled as a terrorist, even though a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter
mBio
shows that
overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers creates “superbugs”.
Healthier Alternatives
If you’re going to eat red meat, make it grass fed beef.
Cows fed grass don’t require massive amounts of antibiotics … the cows stay healthier because they’re eating the food they were designed for. The meat is much lower in saturated fats and higher in good Omega 3 fats (which makes
you and
your kids smarter). In addition, if they are fed grass, they are much less likely to get mad cow disease.
Grass fed cows also use much less oil – which goes into the industrial fertilizer, pesticides and other parts of growing corn and mixing industrial chemicals for cattle – and so are better for the environment (and reduce the “need” for foreign oil wars). Indeed, grass not only contributes less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than corn, but may actually be a “carbon sink” for greenhouse gasses –
taking more out than they add.
Stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods prominently market grass fed beef.
Ranching cooperatives are popping up. I predict they will grow in popularity, as people learn what’s in their meat.
Backyard chickens are also becoming very popular. You can get chickens and buy or
build a chicken coop for eggs and chicken meat.
Continue reading "Branson, Nadelmann To Speak In DC About Failed War On Drugs" >
U.K. researchers call for a ban on all metal-on-metal hips as more studies find that they fail more often than other hip replacements and urge the FDA to require more stringent testing before allowing such devices on the market.
MASSDEVICE ON CALL — A team of U.K. researchers is calling for a ban on metal-on-metal hip implants, citing studies that demonstrate that they fail more often than other artificial hips, especially when used in women.
News Well,
Food & Drug Administration (FDA),
Hips ,
Medicare,
Mergers & Acquisitions,
Recalls
With all the fuss about the salary cap hits given to the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys, the decision made by the league in the last week that seems most vulnerable to reversal is the suspensions handed down to Denver Broncos players D.J. Williams, Ryan McBean and Virgil Green. On March 9, it was announced that Williams and McBean would each be suspended six games without pay, and Green suspended four games without pay, for violations of the league's policies on performance-enhancing substances. The process seemed sketchy at the time, as Williams pointed out in a statement, and as Green wrote on his Twitter account.
ESPN reported on Tuesday morning that Williams and McBean have filed suit against the NFL.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the case is that the NFL contends the samples given by Williams and McBean were of the "non-human" variety. However, Peter R. Ginsberg, Williams' attorney, said that
the since-fired specimen collector was a witness to the ... uh ... "sample collection."
From Williams, the day the suspensions were handed down:
I understand from media reports today that the NFL has announced a suspension based on a specimen that the NFL acknowledges did not contain steroids or any illegal substance. Instead, the NFL contends that I provided a non-human specimen.
I have never failed a test of any kind — for steroids or illegal substances — during my eight-year pro career. I am proud of my record and proud of the way in which I conduct myself as a professional athlete and citizen. We proved — conclusively — at the NFL hearing on this matter that the NFL and its specimen collector wholly failed in their duties to safeguard and process my specimen properly.
In fact, the specimen collector was fired by the NFL after compromising my specimen as well as others'. The hearing officer, an NFL executive, ignored the NFL's own Policy, engaged in inappropriate communications with top NFL officials about this matter without my knowledge or approval, corrupted the system, ignored that my specimen had been compromised, and now has subjected me to humiliation as well as suspension. We will be vigorously pursuing my rights in the judicial system.
My suspension is unjust; the NFL has undermined and corrupted its own steroid policy.
Green wrote on Twitter that
"I was suspended for taking ADHD medication prior to approval from NFL. I have now been approved to take the medication to treat my ADHD. I apologize to my teammates, the Bronco Organization and my family and friends. Thank you guys for all your support."
According to ESPN's Josina Anderson, Green will not appeal his suspension, even though he's since been approved to take the drug for which he was suspended.
On Tuesday morning, the NFL Players Association released this statement:
The NFLPA is disappointed by the decisions in the cases of Ryan McBean and D.J. Williams. Despite substantial evidence of breaches in the collection protocol and other procedural irregularities, the NFL decided to punish these players without judicious review of the facts. The League-appointed hearing officer then affirmed the discipline, even though the specimen collector was fired by his agency for not following procedures. The NFL also failed to produce the sample collector as a witness during the players' appeals hearing.
The NFLPA and NFL have been negotiating a new and comprehensive Substances of Abuse and Steroids policies. The facts in these two cases and in recent cases in other sports, dramatically underscore the players' insistence to have independent, neutral arbitrators as part of any future policy. We will continue to fight for a fair, clean and safe game.
In other words, Roger Goodell's desire for HGH testing - -which needs agreement by the NFLPA before it will ever happen -- probably just took a pretty substantial hit. And the league may very well have to reverse course on this one as a matter of law.
It's low in fat.
It's been treated to kill Salmonella and E. coli.
It's lab-tested before it is shipped.
So what's all the fuss about?
Gerald Zirnstein, a former microbiologist with USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, calls the product "pink slime" and doesn't "consider the stuff to be ground beef," according to a report carried last Wednesday evening on ABC National News.
The meat industry, including producers such as Beef Products Inc. and HRR Enterprises, Inc. call it Lean Finely Textured Beef, or LFTB - a far less catchy, but more accurate name.
Where does Lean Finely Textured Beef come from?
Producers of LFTB start with beef trim. This is the "waste" meat and fat that results from trimming higher quality beef cuts (such as steaks) to customer specifications, and is usually used to make ground beef.
The LFTB process begins by separating most of the fat from the beef. This is done by warming the trim and "spinning out" the fat in centrifuges. The result is a very lean beef: approximately 94-97% lean, according to Beef Products Inc. This lean beef can be mixed with higher-fat beef in order to produce low-fat ground beef and processed meat products.
But beef trim is notorious for carrying pathogenic bacteria - especially, E. coli O157:H7 and its close cousins, the non-O157 STEC bacteria. So Beef Products Inc. developed an ammonia gas treatment step to kill the microbes.
What's the deal with ammonia? Is it legal? Is it safe?
Ammonia is formed naturally in the body as a result of protein digestion by bacteria that live in the intestines. The ammonia is carried in the blood (as ammonium hydroxide) to the liver; there it is converted to urea, which exits the body in the urine. It is normal and usual to find a certain amount of ammonium hydroxide in meat.
Ammonium hydroxide has been used as an antimicrobial agent in meat for more than 40 years. Its safety was reviewed in 1974 by the US Food and Drug Administration's Select Committee on GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) Substances, who had this to say:
"Ammonia and the ammonium ion are integral components of normal metabolic processes and play an essential role in the physiology of man. Although there have been no significant feeding studies specifically designed to ascertain the safety threshold of ammonium compounds as food ingredients, numerous metabolic studies have been reported in the scientific literature. Extrapolation of these findings to the concentrations of ammonium compounds normally present in foods does not suggest that there would be untoward effects at such levels. In the light of the foregoing, the Select Committee concludes that: There is no evidence in the available information on ammonium bicarbonate, ammonium carbonate, ammonium chloride, ammonium hydroxide, mono and dibasic ammonium phosphate, and ammonium sulfate that demonstrates, or suggests reasonable grounds to suspect, a hazard to the public when they are used at levels that are now current or that might reasonably be expected in future."
Ammonium hydroxide also is included in the USDA's list of Safe and Suitable Ingredients Used in the Production of Meat, Poultry, and Egg Products (FSIS Directive 7120.1, Revision 2; last revised 4/12/10). It is used as a pH control agent in brine solutions for meat products, and as an antimicrobial agent for beef carcasses (in hot boxes and holding coolers) and boneless beef trimmings. Ammonia gas (anhydrous ammonia) is also used as an antimicrobial agent for lean finely textured beef.
Ammonia and ammonium hydroxide are among several antimicrobial agents that may be used on beef and poultry without labeling disclosure. Organic acid blends, calcium hypochlorite, chlorine gas, citric acid, lactic acid, and trisodium phosphate are other examples. All of these agents are considered by FDA and USDA to be processing aids rather than ingredients, when they meet one of the following criteria:
(a) substances that are added during the processing of a food but are removed in some manner from the food before it is packaged in its finished form;
(b) substances that are added to a food during processing, are converted into constituents normally present in the food, and do not significantly increase the amount of the constituents naturally found in the food; or
(c) substances that are added to a food for their technical or functional effect in the processing but are present in the finished food at insignificant levels and do not have any technical or functional effect in that food.
Do we need to worry about E. coli and Salmonella in LFTB from Beef Products Inc.?
Beef Products Inc. has adopted ammonium hydroxide treatment of its LFTB products in order to kill the pathogenic bacteria that may otherwise be present in the meat. And they've gone beyond USDA's current pathogen testing requirements for these harmful bacteria. In July 2011, the company announced that it had initiated a "test and hold" policy in addition to its various preventative sanitation and food safety programs.
Every box of LFTB is sampled, and the samples sent to independent third-party labs for analysis. Every box of LFTB is held at the plant until the labs confirm that all specifications - including the absence of Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 and other STEC bacteria - have been met. Only once the satisfactory results have been confirmed does the company allow its product to leave the premises.
What do the experts say about LFTB?
I asked Dr. James Marsden (Regent's Distinguished Professor of Food Safety and Security at Kansas State University) for his opinion.
"There are," he said in an emailed reply, "all kinds of ingredients in food products that can be falsely characterized as unappetizing when viewed out of context. When lay persons see the processes of cheese manufacturing, wine making and the production of the most high quality gourmet processed meats, some of the stages in the process are less than appetizing."
"I think the criticism of BPI's products are based on quality perceptions, not food safety," Dr. Marsden added. "It should, however, be recognized that BPI made great strides in improving the safety of ground beef through their unique food safety processes. On the one hand, consumers demand safe foods and are right to do so; they also need to recognize that the production of safe foods requires processing interventions."
In other words, it might have an image problem, but Lean Finely Textured Beef - aka 'pink slime' - is safe to eat.
-------------------------------
"What's Wrong With Pink Slime?" was originally posted March 8, 2012 on eFoodAlert. Reposted with permission.
The petition, filed by nonprofit Center for Food Safety and supported by more than 400 health and consumer organizations and businesses, argues that consumers require more complete labeling in order to make informed decisions. Since October 2011, members of the public have submitted more than 850,000 comments in support of the petition. Genetically engineered foods are foods made from organisms -- mainly plants -- that have had their genes modified to exhibit specific desired traits, such as tomatoes modified to delay ripening or corn with built-in resistances to herbicides and insects. Such foods have been sold on the market since 1996.
Drafting of the bicameral congressional letter was led by Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR). It was signed by several members of congress recently tied to food safety issues, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY), Sen. Jon Tester (MT) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH).
The letter called the FDA's current policy on labeling inadequate because it only covers foods changed "materially" by taste, smell or other senses.
"The use of novel food technologies like genetic engineering on a commercial scale has so far slipped underneath FDA's limited threshold for 'materiality' because such technologies make silent, genetic, and molecular changes to food that are not capable of being detected by human senses," the letter read.
The 55 congress members argued that the basic issue under debate was the fundamental right of consumers to make informed decision about what they eat. Labeling foods does not imply that they are unsafe, but it does allow consumers to choose whether or not they want to purchase them, they said.
The FDA currently requires labeling for more than 3,000 ingredients, additives and processes, including other processes that similarly do not alter the food materially. The congress members cited the FDA's rule requiring labeling of irradiated foods as an example of the FDA's "reasonable" decision to look beyond sensory changes and label foods based on information consumers find important.
"We urge you to fully review the facts, law, and science, and side with the American public by requiring the labeling of genetically engineered foods as is done in nearly 50 countries around the world," the letter read.
Japan, Australia, China, Russia, Brazil and 15 European countries are among those requiring labeling for GE foods.
Today, the majority of soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets and papayas grown in the U.S. are genetically engineered. Along with being modified for resistances to herbicides and insect pests, corn, the most thoroughly engineered crop, has seen some GE varieties become vitamin-fortified with beta carotene and vitamin C.
The FDA and many scientists have declared GE foods to be as safe as their unmodified counterparts. Critics, including other scientists, say that there has not been enough testing or tracking to verify whether or not GE foods present a safe alternative.
The complete list of congress members who signed the letter, provided by the Center for Food Safety's True Food Network, follows below:
House Members: Peter DeFazio (OR-4), Richard Hanna (NY-24), Dennis Kucinich (OH-10), George Miller (CA-7), Louise Slaughter (NY-28), Keith Ellison (MN-5), Raul Grijalva (AZ-7), Peter Welch (VT-At Large), Hansen Clarke (MI-13), Earl Blumenauer (OR-3), Lloyd Doggett (TX-25), Anna Eshoo (CA-14), Sam Farr (CA-17), Maurice Hinchey (NY-22), Rush Holt (NJ-12), Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Jim McDermott (WA-7), Madeleine Bordallo (GU-At Large), James Moran (VA-8), John Olver (MA-1), Jared Polis (CO-2), Charles Rangel (NY-15), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-1), Pete Stark (CA-13), Howard L. Berman (CA-28), Robert Brady (PA-1), David Cicilline (RI-1), Yvette D. Clarke (NY-11), Steve Cohen (TN-9), Dianne DeGette (CO-1), Bob Filner (CA-5), Barney Frank (MA-4), Luis Gutierrez (IL-4), Janice Hahn (CA-36), Michael Honda (CA-15), Barbara Lee (CA-9), Zoe Lofgren (CA-16), James McGovern (MA-3), Jan Schakowsky (IL-9), Jackie Speier (CA-12), John Tierney (MA-6), Melvin L. Watt (NC-12), Lynn Woolsey (CA-6), Maxine Waters (CA-35), and Grace Napolitano (CA-38).
Senators: Barbara Boxer (CA), Patrick Leahy (VT), Bernie Sanders (VT), Daniel Akaka (HI), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Ron Wyden (OR), Mark Begich (AK), Jon Tester (MT), Richard Blumenthal (CT), and Jeff Merkley (OR).
Momentum gathers for ballot initiative that hopes to force labelling of genetically-modified ingredients – and could prompt a nationwide change in the US
In a
column last month,
New York Times
food writer Mark Bittman wondered, "Why Aren't GMO Foods Labeled?" After laying out some of the basic arguments in favor of labeling — most obviously, the contradiction between the USDA finding that genetically modified foods aren't "materially different" from non-modified foods and yet its prohibition of including GMOs within the legal definition of organic — Bittman concluded that major food companies' unwillingness to label foods containing genetically modified organisms is "demeaning and undemocratic." An overwhelming majority of Americans say they want to know if the food they're buying contains GMOs. The food processors' resistance to providing that information, Bittman argued, violates the ideals of transparency that the free market is supposed to rest on.
It looks like Bittman might get his wish. A coalition of NGOs and family farmers is working to put a
proposition on California's November ballot that would require food companies that sell in the state to put labels on their products declaring whether they are "produced with genetic engineering." If approved by voters, the California proposition (which you can read
here) would have a national ripple effect, just as the state's air rules have influenced the cars that get made in Detroit. The sheer size of the California market likely would prevent most food companies from segmenting products sold in the Golden State from those sold elsewhere; food producers would probably have to put the labels on all their products sold nationwide.
For organic food advocates, GMO labeling has been a long sought goal. "This has been a dream of many of us in the anti-GMO movement for over a decade," says Ronnie Cummins, executive director of the
Organic Consumers Association. "We realized long ago that the federal government was not going to move on the issue. Passing a mandatory labeling law in California will have the impact of a national law, because California is the most important state in the union."
In 2002, citizens in Oregon put a measure on the ballot that would have required GMO labeling. Massive spending by major food companies and the grocery lobby trounced the proposition. Then, in 2004, voters in California's Mendocino County approved a measure banning the cultivation of genetically engineered crops there. Other California counties —Santa Cruz, Marin, and Trinity — soon followed. But in recent years there's been something of a lull in national activism against GMOs, which critics say threaten biodiversity, increase corporate control of the food system, and could pose health risks to animals and people. Most of the sustainable food activism these days focuses on building alternatives to the industrial food system. Just look at young people's enthusiasm for becoming farmers, the surge in artisanal foods, and the continued growth in the number of farmers markets and CSAs. Because the USDA's definition of organic explicitly prohibits GMOs, many ag-tivists figured they could focus on building a sustainable food system parallel to the dominant industrial one and not have to worry too much about GMOs.
Recent developments have reawakened organic farmers and their supporters to the threat posed by GMOs. In October, the FDA completed a review of a super-fast growing GMO salmon, a crucial step toward approving the fish for market. AquaBounty Technologies' "AquaAdvantage salmon" would be the world's first genetically engineered fish for human consumption. Also last fall, seed and chemical conglomerate Monsanto began selling to farmers a variety of
genetically modified sweet corn. The sweet corn, which should hit supermarkets this summer, is the first genetically modified vegetable eaten directly by people. (The huge amounts of GMO canola, corn, and soy grown in the US are either fed to animals or go into processed foods.)
Then, in January, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that his agency would allow the unrestricted cultivation of
GE alfalfa. Vilsack's decision marked a major defeat for companies like Whole Foods, Organic Valley, and
Stoneyfield Yogurt that had fought hard for a ban against GE alfalfa. Dairy producers and sellers are especially worried about GE alfalfa because of how easily alfalfa seeds cross-pollinate. If — or, more accurately,
when
— GE alfalfa cross breeds with organic alfalfa, it will make it difficult, if not impossible, for dairy farmers to find organic feed for their cows. The integrity of the entire organic milk sector is at risk. That's worrisome to retailers like Whole Foods, who know that organic milk often serves as a kind of "gateway drug for organics" as new parents look for organics to feed their kids.
These threats have combined to get the attention of wealthy progressive who are funding the effort to collect the 800,000 signatures needed to get the GMO labeling initiative on the California ballot. Prominent organic growers have also signed onto the effort. The California Right to Know campaign is co-chaired by Grant Lundberg of the organic rice growers and processors
Lundberg Family Farm. In a oped published recently in the
Sacramento Bee, Grant Lundberg put the case simply: "Would you want to know if the food you are buying, eating and feeding to your children has been genetically engineered?"
Lawmakers in other states have started to push legislation modeled on the California initiative. Legislators in
Connecticut and Vermont are considering bills that would require labeling of genetically engineering foods. A state senator in
Washington pushed a similar measure. In Hawaii — a popular spot for GM crop testing, because of its tropical climate — grassroots groups are pushing a disclosure law.
The GMO seed companies, the major food processors, and the grocery store chains are getting ready to fight back. A Sacramento-based lobbyist is preparing to launch a political committee — the
Coalition Against the Costly Food Labeling Proposition — to fight the measure. That's the exact same name the industry used to fight the Oregon measure 10 years ago.
Big Food is scared for good reason. The Grocery Manufacturers Associations says that about
75 percent of processed foods found at the supermarket contain GMOs. But, according to an
NPR/ThomponReuters poll taken in 2010, 90 percent of Americans say that food labels should say whether the product contains GMOs. (Can you think of anything else that Americans agree on in numbers like that? E
ven puppies aren't as popular.) Once consumers have additional information about food containing GMOs, they will likely start shifting their purchasing habits. The NPR poll showed that just four-in-ten people would feel OK eating genetically modified meat.
The situation in Europe offers a glimpse of how food markets would be affected. Under EU law, foods containing GMOs must be labeled. The amount of land planted in GM crops is a fraction of what it is in the US —
and shrinking.
If passed, the California proposition would be a massive blow to the ill-defined "natural food" sector. Unlike products that are organic certified, there is no official definition for "natural." The California law would change that and prevent companies from using the marketing tag "natural" on products containing GMOs.
"Once you have labeling like the EU and 22 other nations, consumers will be able to tell if it has GMO ingredients and they won't be able to be hoodwinked anymore by foods that claim to be natural, but aren't natural at all," Cummins says. "The $50 billion natural food sector will shrink and the $30 billion organic food sector will increase."
Major companies like Kellogg's that have made investments in "natural food" brands will have to either drop the "natural" label — and lose sales — or find a way to source non-GMO or organic grains and oils. In the long run, the amount of land planted in organic crops should grow.
"Consumers see the [GMO] labels, consumers complain to the grocery stores, the grocery stores complain to the food processors, and the food processors start asking the farmers to grow something different," Cummins says. "It's a chain reaction that we are sure is going to happen — and it all rides on California."
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Zenegra 100 mg is a doctor prescribed medication used to treat erectile dysfunction in men. It works by expanding blood flow to the penis. This encourages men to get or keep an erection. It has a place with a gathering of drugs known as phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors.
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