Let's break up the GMO/non-GMO monopoly on our environmental debate

Some environmentalists are rethinking their opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). That's terrific. The line between GMOs and non-GMOs always was the wrong way to describe the problem our food system faces.

The best road forward for environmentalists and sustainable food thinkers is to end the monopoly that the GMO/anti-GMO fight has had on our food system debate. Like breaking up a big corporation so that smaller businesses can thrive, let us break up the GMO debate into its smaller pieces.

The highest-profile recent example of an environmentalist writer rethinking GMOs is Nathanael Johnson's six-month series at Grist. Johnson points out that GMOs are just one contributor to the many ills that have been attributed to GMOs. Hence, a world that had no GMOs would be surprisingly similar to our current world.

GMOs were neither the first, nor have they been the last, agricultural innovation, and each of these technologies comes with its own potential hazards.

This view infuriates some of the most respected people in the sustainable food movement. This week at Civil Eats, Anna Lappé describes Johnson as "meandering about in the woods for the past six months" leading to nothing more than an "attempt at a clever journalistic gesture." I read Johnson's series more favorably, and I'm not the only one. Dan Charles has a nice overview at NPR's Salt. Well, nobody said every post at Civil Eats had to be civil!

After the strong criticism, Lappé then turns to an excellent list of seven real issues at stake.

What’s become abundantly clear is that there are at least seven things we need to get right in agriculture, right now. We need to:

• Reduce reliance on fossil fuels in agriculture;
• Conserve water in agriculture systems;
• Free ourselves from dependence on chemicals, especially those most toxic to humans and wildlife;
• Promote on-farm resilience to climate change;
• Protect biodiversity and the food security it engenders;
• Limit the expansion of confinement livestock operations; and
• Support farmers to learn practices for productivity that don’t come at the high, and rising, cost of inputs such as chemicals, seeds, or technology fees to chemical companies, especially Monsanto.

This is a fine list of seven enterprises that are left behind after we break up the GMO/anti-GMO monopoly on our public debate. In a way, by focusing on seven multi-faceted challenges, rather than on the technical line between GMO and non-GMO foods, Lappé seems to me closer to Johnson than it might appear at first.

What attitude should anti-GMO environmentalists and GMO-tolerant environmentalists adopt toward each other, when they agree on these seven global challenges? I think they each should say, "Hi, friend, let's get to work!"

Washington Monthly covers "government speech" and Big Beef

At the Washington Monthly, Siddhartha Mahanta describes the unusual coalition of animal welfare and conservative groups opposed to the federal government's semi-public beef checkoff program:

With liberals and conservatives for once in agreement, it’s time to have a barbeque. Big Beef subsidies. It’s what’s for dinner. 

This blog's previous coverage of checkoff controversies includes the Humane Society's earlier work on the sale of the pork checkoff's "Other White Meat" brand, and the results of my 2006 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that triggered the Humane Society's interest in this topic.

Dietary guidelines and health

[An excerpt from Chapter 8 in Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan, 2013).]

It is sometimes said that there is no need for a government role in dietary guidance, because people know how to eat well and simply lack the willpower to do so. Is it true that people in the United States already know how to eat healthfully? While many nutrition and health experts say that something is wrong with U.S. eating patterns, they disagree about what is unhealthy.

Consider four perspectives, which each have a large public following:

• A long tradition, including the physician Robert Atkins and the science writer Gary Taubes, blames carbohydrates for weight problems and recommends a diet that may be high in meat and saturated fat (Taubes, 2007).
• An equally well-developed tradition encourages a low-fat plant-based diet and blames meat consumption for health problems (Campbell and Campbell, 2007).
• The respected epidemiologist Walter Willett and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health advise a mostly plant-based diet that is not necessarily low in fat, allowing plenty of vegetable oils (Willett et al., 2005).
• Others, including former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and journalist Michael Pollan, are most concerned about the highly palatable artificial creations of an industrial food system (Kessler, 2009). 

These views about diet and health are partly overlapping and partly contradictory. Yet at least some scientific research in peer-reviewed journals can be found to support each one. To make sound judgments, a layperson needs a skeptical attitude towards dietary fads and a trustworthy summary of the balance of the scientific evidence.

One influential summary of the scientific evidence is the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans (U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). The federal government issued the first Dietary Guidelines in 1980 and has revised the document every five years since then. Regardless of a reader’s own views on diet and health, it is useful to understand the mainstream position of the Dietary Guidelines on controversial questions in nutrition science.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans is used as a source of evidence for claims about diet and health on food labels (see Chapter 9). It provides key inputs for USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan and other model diets for people at different income levels (see Chapter 10). It informs policies and regulations for nutrition assistance programs, including school lunch and school breakfast (see Chapter 11).

This chapter covers how the federal government develops and uses dietary guidance. The chapter:

• reviews historical trends in chronic disease and nutrition, so that we can pay the most attention to the most important health concerns (Section 8.2); 
• considers several market failures that have been cited as motivation for a government role in dietary guidance (Section 8.3);
• explains the process of creating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and related consumer-oriented graphics (Section 8.4);
• compares current U.S. consumption patterns to the Dietary Guidelines (Section 8.5); and
• explores several policy instruments that have been proposed to guide Americans toward healthier food choices (Section 8.6).

Food policy advocates and "personal responsibility"

In an interview with Jayson Lusk, author of the Food Police, the Casual Kitchen blog today asks: 'Why is it that many food policy advocates strongly dislike the phrase "personal responsibility"?'

Jayson's answer, expressing a balanced sense of personal responsibility combined with awareness of environmental influences, is fine.  It is worth adding that many food policy advocates talk about "personal responsibility" all the time.  Just do a search for "Michelle Obama" and "personal responsibility."  You will find the topic thoroughly covered by the Cato Institute (an institution rarely accused of being part of the "Food Police"!).  You will find a lively discussion of how much the Obamas emphasize "personal responsibility" in tough non-pandering commencement speeches.  The Obamas' views, with a mix of personal responsibility and public purpose, sound a lot like Jayson's.

The Casual Kitchen, and Jayson too, can win arguments any time they like against the almost satirically narrow-minded caricature of the "Food Police" that they have set up.  But, perhaps it will become boring after a time to knock down row upon row of carnival dolls sitting on a shelf.  If so, they will want to engage in greater detail the issues that Michelle Obama raises in her speeches for the "Let's Move" campaign.  Here is a good speech to begin with.

At Civil Eats, nutrition policy reformer Andy Bellatti included a kind word for Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan) as part of his year-end review for 2013.

Let’s wrap up this look back at 2013 by remembering just a small selection of the many great books that saw the light of day. When it came to an inside look at the world of processed foods, two journalists masterfully pulled back the curtain: Melanie Warner in Pandora’s Lunchbox and Michael Moss in Salt Sugar Fat. Food politics were front and center in Dr. Gyorgy Scrinis’–a lecturer in food and nutrition politics and policy in the Department of Agriculture and Food Systems in the Melbourne School of Land and Environmen–Nutritionism, and literally illustrated in Marion Nestle’s Eat, Drink, Vote.

The plight of restaurant workers was well-detailed in Saru Jayamaran’s Behind the Kitchen Door, while New York Times writer Mark Bittman made a solid case for eating a plant-based diet before 6 PM in VB6. In the textbook realm, Parke Wilde, Associate Professor at Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, released Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction to much acclaim from his peers.

Okay, 2014, now it’s your turn. Impress us and give the “good food” movement something to cheer about, please!

U.S. cranberry policy

Even the cranberries on Christmas tree chains have a U.S. food policy story to accompany them. I enjoyed speaking to David Gura for his Christmas Eve Marketplace Morning Report story this morning:

The Congressional Cranberry Caucus -- yes, such a thing exists -- asked the Department of Agriculture to add cranberries to what’s called the “USDA Foods Available List.” These are “foods that are available for schools to purchase as part of their commodity feeding programs,” says Scott Soares, the head of the Cranberry Marketing Committee.

These are the kinds of fruits and vegetables the federal government buys for school meals programs.

“When the National School Lunch Program started in 1946, it was very explicitly half about helping children and half about commodity disposal,” says Parke Wilde, who teaches nutrition at Tufts.

These days, Wilde says, that balance has shifted; now it is more about nutrition goals.

A debate in NYC over soda policy

Heritage Radio Network has posted in full a debate Thursday night about the NYC soda policy proposals.

The debate had four participants:

• I spoke gently in favor of New York City's effort to experiment with moderate policies to change the environment in which sugar sweetened beverages are marketed and sold.  I suggested that the Board of Health's proposed limit on sweetened beverage container sizes was not as radical as it has been portrayed. My 2-minute opening statement begins at 17:25.
• Lisa Young, an author and adjunct professor at New York University, spoke strongly in favor of the proposal, using cups of various sizes as props to buttress her points.
• J. Justin Wilson trashed the proposal on libertarian and free-market grounds.  Wilson represents the Center for Consumer Freedom, an industry-funded organization that runs ads calling NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg a nutrition nanny.
• Joel Berg directs the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.  He appealed strongly for broader policies to address U.S. poverty and expressed his organization's intention to neither endorse nor oppose the beverage size limitation proposal.  Then, Berg livened the debate by launching into an enjoyably vivid and highly critical analysis of such paternalistic policies.

The event was organized by the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) and hosted by the New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College.