The Harder They Spin: What USFRA Wants Us to Believe and Why It’s Still Not the Truth

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Meat Industry

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011, 12:10 PM

Cross-posted at Civil Eats
October 5th, 2011 By Anna Lappé
I recently wrote about attending the Food Dialogues, a national “conversation about food” hosted by the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association funded by some of the biggest players in the food industry—including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto. There have been a number of comments on my post. I wanted to respond to one in particular from Hugh Whaley, USFRA’s General Manager.
Whaley takes issue with how I characterize the makeup and mission of the USFRA, writing:
Contrary to those who suggest, imply or state otherwise, USFRA is NOT a policy organization. USFRA is America’s farmers and ranchers who are committed to continuous improvement in how food is grown and raised to provide healthy choices for people everywhere. Our mission is to build consumer trust in today’s agriculture…all forms.
The farmer- and rancher-led organizations that are affiliates of USFRA have all sizes, shapes and production methods represented by their members. Small, medium, large; organic, natural, conventional.
To understand Whaley’s spin on who and what USFRA stands for, it might be helpful to share a little background on Whaley himself and how USFRA fits the mold of a common food-industry PR strategy.
For nearly 13 years, until March 2009, Whaley was an executive at the communications firm Osborn & Barr, founded in 1988 by former executives at Monsanto. While the company was its founding client, the firm has brought on other agricultural clients, including John Deere, United Soybean Board, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board/National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and the National Pork Board—all of which are current USFRA affiliates.
During Whaley’s tenure, Osborn & Barr helped to launch American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT). Like USFRA, AFACT describes itself as a group “organized by farmers.” In the case of AFACT it was allegedly created “to defend members’ right to use recombinant bovine somatotropin,” or rbST, Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone sold to dairy farmers under the brand name, Posilac.
Though it was presented as a group speaking for farmers, AFACT was created in part by Osborn & Barr, which had been handling the Posilac account since 2007. AFACT’s formation came at a time when Monsanto was reeling from campaigns by real farmers and consumer advocates against the artificial growth hormone. Responding to concerns that ranged from the health of dairy cows pumped with the hormone to possible human health effects rbGH, Yoplait, Dannon, Cabot Cheese, and other companies had by 2009 stopped sourcing milk produced with Posilac. Grocery chains had started to eliminate it from their store-label milk, according to Food & Water Watch.
Similar to the spin about AFACT, Whaley describes the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance as “farmer- and rancher-led,” with affiliates of “all sizes, shapes and production methods.”
Yes, USFRA technically represents a range of farmers and ranchers, but only because much of its total budget—$11 million a year or $30 million depending on who you ask—comes from federal “check-off” commodity marketing programs. These programs, now covering 19 different commodities, compel all or most producers of these commodities, no matter the size, to pay into promotion programs. Beef ranchers for instance must pay $1 per head on domestic sales. The money adds up: In 2007, beef check-off programs spent more than $90 million.
You might not have heard of these programs, but you’ve probably seen their ads. Check-off dollars fund campaigns like “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner?” “Pork: The Other White Meat” as well as dubious marketing efforts like the 2010 dairy industry partnership with Domino’s Pizza to amp up cheese use on its pies.
So because USFRA gets a good chunk of its budget from the biggest commodity check-off programs—like beef, cotton, eggs, and pork—Whaley is technically accurate: Farmers of all sizes do pay into this marketing campaign, but whether the Alliance represents diverse interests is a different story.
When I asked Laura Batcha, the Vice President of the Organic Trade Association whether the Alliance reflects their members’ interests she said: “We don’t believe the Alliance is communicating the benefits of organic agriculture.”
The bottom line is the USFRA is being funded, in part, with organic producers’ money without their consent or participation, since many organic producers are required by law to pay into these check-off programs. “While organic producers and handlers have been paying into these check-offs for years, we have yet to see the funds be used to promote organic food and agriculture,” said Batcha. “It’s essentially taxation without representation.” In fact, sustainable and small-scale farmers have been fighting in the courts against the legality of check-off programs, for precisely this reason.
Fred Stokes, founder of the Organization for Competitive Markets and a cattle rancher in Mississippi, concurred. The Alliance doesn’t “‘represent all farmers and ranchers,’” he said, “These are the people who put family farmers and ranchers out of business! This is an alliance only of groups that preach ‘get-big-or-get-out’ and ‘efficiency through vertical integration.’”
It’s also an alliance, Stokes noted, that gets a healthy portion of its budget from big business, too. As members of USFRA’s “Premier Partner Advisors Group” Monsanto, John Deere, and chemical giant Dupont each have pledged $500,000 a year.
So what is the platform USFRA is pushing? Whaley says I missed the mark here, too, writing:
None of the issues discussed during the Food Dialogues can be answered strictly in black and white terms. That’s why continued dialogue is so important. Making grandiose (positive or negative) statements about any form of agriculture won’t achieve solutions or help Americans make sound and informed food decisions.
I agree with Whaley in one sense: Food systems are complex and more dialogue is certainly needed to figure out the best approaches to creating a safer, more affordable and sustainable food supply. But, I would argue that some food issues are black-and-white and taking a clear stand on these issues is the only way we will achieve such solutions.
To give several examples directly relevant to USFRA membership:
I believe everyone should have a right to know if the food they’re eating contains genetically engineered organisms (GMOs). So do most Americans who overwhelmingly want the right to know what’s in their food. Yet, USFRA’s industry partner Monsanto has been leading the fight against GMO labeling in this country, despite the fact that most other countries with commercialized GMOs require it, even China.
I believe we should be doing everything possible to protect the effectiveness of antibiotics—one of the most important tools in our public health toolbox. So do most Americans. Yet, as much as 80 percent of antibiotics in the U.S. are used not for human health but in factory farms, often for growth-promotion. A broad coalition is calling for restrictions on these non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics, citing mounting concerns about antibiotic resistance, while many USFRA affiliates have been spearheading the fight against such restrictions.
I believe we should be actively working to phase out the most toxic pesticides in agriculture, those known to cause cancer, disrupt hormones, or impair brain functioning. So do most Americans. Yet, members of the Alliance, including the National Cotton Council and the National Corn Growers Association, have been actively fighting against regulations that would help us move in that direction.
I believe our tax dollars should be incentivizing healthy food production and healthy food access. So do most Americans. Yet, members of the USFRA are among the key forces lobbying for payments to commodity producers, including those, like corn growers, that are not even producing food for people. Forty-four percent of corn last year went to ethanol production; nearly half was diverted to animal feed; much of the rest went to high-fructose corn syrup. (Thanks in part to the success of this lobbying, from 1995 to 2010 the 15 members of the board of the National Corn Growers Association—a USFRA board member—received subsidies totaling $12,048,167, while 62 percent of American farmers, and nearly all organic producers and fruit and vegetable growers, received no federal subsidies at all).
Finally, I believe that protecting our nation’s water is one of the most important issues of our time. So do most Americans. Yet, many in USFRA leadership roles are among the key players fighting federal policy that would promote tighter regulation of water pollution, especially from “conventional” agriculture’s nitrogen fertilizer runoff and industrial livestock waste.
Many of USFRA’s board, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Pork Producers Council, Cattlemen’s Beef Board/Beef Checkoff, and the National Corn Growers Association, as well as USFRA partner, The Fertilizer Institute, work together under the auspices of the Waters Advisory Council. The Council may sound like an environmentally minded organization, but as The New York Times reports, it’s a “lobbying outfit” for some of the country’s “largest industrial and agricultural concerns.”
These are just some of food’s “black-and-white” issues. Without indication otherwise, we’re left to assume the USFRA’s position on these critical food issues reflects that of its membership—and is out of step with the real concerns of many, and in many cases most, Americans.
Whaley also suggests I misrepresented who was able to ask questions at the Food Dialogues at the four sites, noting:
Questions were taken for all four of our panels from in-person audience members, from people on Twitter and from questions posted on our two websites. It is really unfair to say questions for the event only came from industry. The questions represented many voices…
Questions may have come in from Twitter and Facebook, but, as I wrote in my original post, at the New York City event I attended, and where we in the media were asked to write down and hand in questions for the panel, only one person got to ask a question: He was a rep from the National Pork Council, a USFRA affiliate. Only one attendee got to ask a question from the D.C. event that was shown at our venue: It was Jay Vroom, head of the agrochemical trade group, CropLife America. Whaley may contend questions represented many voices; it didn’t seem that way to me. But see for yourself. The Food Dialogues are available online at http://www.fooddialogues.com.

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Who’s Behind the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance and Why It Matters

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Blog,Meat Industry

Monday, September 26th, 2011, 4:14 PM

Cross-posted on Civil Eats, September 23rd, 2011 By Anna Lappé
On Thursday, September 22, the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association made up of some of the biggest players in the food industry—including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto—hosted what they called “Food Dialogues” in Washington D.C., New York City, U.C. Davis, and Fair Oaks, Indiana.
The USFRA describes the Food Dialogues, and their broader multi-million dollar media campaign, as an effort to amplify the voice of farmers and ranchers and help consumers know more about “how their food is grown and raised.”
Sounds good, on first blush.
Most of us are in the dark when it comes to the story of our food. And, farmers and ranchers—the people working hard every day to bring us our food—are nearly invisible in mainstream media. But dig into the Alliance’s membership, and its impetus for forming, and you start to wonder whether it truly represents the voices of grassroots food producers or whether this well-funded media campaign is agribusinesses latest attempt to push back against well-documented and well-publicized concerns about the environmental and health consequences of industrial agriculture.
When I asked a rep from Ketchum—the public relations firm hired by the Alliance—what motivated these groups to come together, without skipping a beat, he answered: Food, Inc. and movies like it. “People see Food, Inc.,” he said, “And think everything in that movie is accurate.” But, he continued, the film only presents one side of the issue and USFRA members feel they didn’t “have a voice in it.” Now, as the Ketchum rep put it, USFRA wants to “clear the air” and “get a national dialogue, a conversation, going.”
There are two big holes in this argument: Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc. did try to get industry voices into the film. And, while USFRA members may not like it, Food, Inc. is an accurate, if unpleasant, account of our industrial, toxic food system.
When I mentioned that Kenner approached many food companies to get their perspective, and they refused to go on camera, the PR rep said: “I’ll be honest with you: this is a change with how they’ve done things in the past. They’re trying to open their doors up.”
While these industry players may be saying they want to “open their doors up,” it seems only on their terms. Certainly the Food Dialogues yesterday gave a semblance of impartiality: Highly-credentialed journalist Claire Shipman of Good Morning America moderated from a satellite location in D.C. and celebrity chef John Besh hosted the panel in New York City.
But the reality was an orchestrated framing of the message about “modern agricultural production” from the perspective of big business. In the staged kitchen set at the New York City, the questions from the “audience” included only one: a pre-arranged question from the head of the National Pork Board. In D.C., Jay Vroom, from the agrochemical trade association CropLife America, was handpicked to join in the “conversation” and lob a softball question to John Besh about chefs and portion control.
Earlier this year, a trade publication explained that this image campaign, and others like it, not only aims to counter Food, Inc.’s “misconceptions” about food, but also to convert all those “Pollan-ated” minds. (Reading Michael Pollan is apparently unnerving to the food industry and it should be to the rest of the public, too.)
This media campaign, the industry publication continued, is also intended as a “preemptive strike” against “a long list of new regulations and restrictions coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food & Drug Administration, ranging from tighter rules on pesticide applications to a potential ban of routine, preventative use of animal antibiotics.”
Take a look at the policy priorities of USFRA members and you’ll see exactly that: Most of its affiliates are hard at work, lobbying on Capitol Hill to weaken the very regulations that the consumers the USFRA itself surveyed say they care most about: Pesticides and antibiotics, for instance, as well as artificial hormones in animal production, and air and water pollution.
As one of its current policy priorities, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), a USFRA board member and the marketing organization and trade association for the beef industry, is fighting for the Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act. If passed, the Act would limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, as many in the environmental community have pointed out, the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide pollution is key to addressing global warming in the absence of strong climate policy. This USFRA member attack on climate legislation shouldn’t be surprising considering the Alliance is working with Frank Luntz, the political strategist who has helped foster climate change skepticism. In a strategy memo leaked to the media in the early 2000s, for instance, Luntz advised Congressional Republicans that the best tactic to undermine public support for climate legislation is to cast doubt on the “scientific certainty” surrounding the issue.
To give you another sense of where USFRA membership stands, consider that the NCBA, along with other Alliance members, is actively fighting a policy that would reign in antibiotic abuse in livestock production. Called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the Act, according to the Cattlemen’s Association, is unnecessary: The industry already uses antibiotics “judiciously” to prevent disease.
Rep. Slaughter and other backers of this policy stress that research shows most antibiotics in livestock production are not given for disease prevention, but delivered at “sub-therapeutic levels” to speed growth—and therefore increase profit. And, as experts at the Government Accountability Office reported earlier this month, the inaction of the USDA and FDA to regulate antibiotic use, especially in animal production, is a serious threat to public health. It was chillingly ironic that the study came out on the heels of another major recall of Cargill ground turkey linked to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella.
Lest you think the Cattlemen’s Association is out on its own on this fight, other USFRA affiliates that are vocal opponents of regulating antibiotics in livestock production include the Dairy Farmers of America, National Pork Producers Council, American Egg Board, U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.
Another USFRA affiliate and board member, the National Corn Growers Association, is also battling policies that would help us protect public health. In a May 2011 statement delivered to the House Committee on Agriculture and on Natural Resources, Rod Snyder, the Corn Grower’s Policy Director and chair of the Pesticide Policy Coalition, dismissed the use of the Endangered Species Act’s to control toxic pesticides, describing the policy as “dysfunctional.”
He called for the Administration to “immediately suspend implementation” and continue with business-as-usual, regulating pesticides under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). But stress the importance of using the Endangered Species Act, explaining that FIFRA is “notoriously weak” and “industry-friendly.” According to advocates, the pesticide lobby, including USFRA members like the Corn Growers, wants to keep regulation under FIFRA because they know how to “sidestep and subvert it.”
While I believe the majority of our nation’s ranchers and farmers are respectful stewards of the land with the public’s best interest at heart—they’re working hard to reduce their environmental impact and address pesticide, artificial hormone, and antibiotics overuse—the USFRA clearly is not representing them. Instead, a look at the Alliance affiliates reveals that it is made up of, and funded by, the biggest players in the food industry, including those who profit most from toxic agricultural chemicals, polluting farming and food processing practices, and concerning animal welfare policies. No wonder, then, that that limiting protections from toxic pesticides and pushing back against antibiotic regulation are just two of the current policy priorities of USFRA affiliates.
The USFRA is working hard to present itself as a voice of farmers and ranchers interested in a conversation with consumers. I’m all for open, honest conversation, but let’s not be duped by polished PR into thinking that’s what the Alliance and its inaugural Food Dialogues is intended to be.

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Environmental Working Group’s new Meat Eaters Guide to Climate Change & Health

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Blog,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Monday, July 18th, 2011, 11:15 AM

Today, Environmental Working Group released its new Meat Eaters Guide to Climate Change and Health! In it, they take a hard look (a lifecycle analysis, actually) at the links between meat and greenhouse gas emissions. This is the most comprehensive and definitive online consumer tool to date looking into the environmental, climate and health impacts of the production and consumption of meat. I really trust the thoughtful research they do.
For those who know me well, you know that I believe strongly in the power of the fork.
While EWG’s conclusion is not that your fork will solve it all (no one thing will solve anything!), the guide helps consumers make better choices by ranking protein foods on their full carbon footprint. It also examines other environmental and health factors that clearly show that wasting less and eating less less, leaner and greener is the best choice for your body and the planet (which are, of course, intimately connected). Ultimately, the guide finds that all meat is not created equal. Here’s a link to the site – be sure to check out our consumer wallet card, the lifecycle infographic and great summary brochure, too: www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/
If you still love your meat, all is not lost. The Guide provides many health, environmental and animal welfare reasons to choose healthier, leaner, greener meat and dairy products that come from organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed animals. It’s less fatty, less toxic and provides more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are critical to good health. By eating less red and processed meat overall, you can effectively reduce your toxic exposure since toxins accumulate more in fat. While it may cost more (a whole other issue!), when you buy less meat overall, its easier to afford the healthier and greener options – and there are more and more of them all the time!
Hope you’ll visit the site (http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/), take the quiz, get more information for good recipe sources on meatless dishes and, to bring it all home, and take the pledge to eat less meat (on Mondays, if that suits you).

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Read the Report: Global Warming and Pasture-Raised Beef in the U.S.

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Blog,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011, 9:55 PM

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers important recommendations for lowering emissions from U.S. beef production. U.S. pasture beef producers could reduce the sector’s annual global warming impacts by as much as 140 million metric tons. Read the whole report here.

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Bon Appetit Serves Cheeseburgers While Lowering Carbon Footprint

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Blog,Meat Industry

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009, 12:38 PM

The folks over at Bon Appetit Management Co., a California-based catering company that serves 80 million meals a year at schools and companies across the country, recently announced that it has reduced the beef it purchases by 25 percent.

According to an article over at Meatingplace, Bon Appetit has “exceeded its carbon footprint goals for the year by reducing beef purchases by 25 percent, cheese by 10 percent, tropical fruit by 50 percent and total food waste by 20 percent.”

A representative from Bon Appetit said: “Chefs are able to offer the usual cheeseburgers to diners who want them, and still reduce the amount of beef they purchase. This reduction is a key component of the program because regardless of how far it travels, or how the animals are raised, beef and cheese come from methane-emitting ruminant animals and methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than CO2.”

–Deepa

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European Union Parliament Joins the Climate Change Conversation

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Blog,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Thursday, February 26th, 2009, 2:12 PM

The European Union’s Parliament joined a growing debate when they assembled in early February: how to combat climate change and livestock emissions while ensuring adequate food supplies for their 27 member-nations.

According to an article on “The Pig Site,” the EU Parliament said “changes in behavior by consumers and the consideration of targets for reducing agricultural emissions should accompany regulations to cap industrial greenhouse gases and improve energy efficiency.” The 80-page report also reiterated the EU’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020.

A step forward, right? Well, the assembly also took a huge leap backward when they decided to DELETE a piece of the report that demanded a cut in global meat consumption, especially in wealthy countries. Why the hesitation? Read the article and tell us what you think.

– Deepa

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The New Scientist Jumps into the Fray

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Blog,Meat Industry

Sunday, February 15th, 2009, 2:06 PM

Check out this new article from one of my favorite science mags, The New Scientist. Jim Giles does the math on what eating less meat could save us in terms of cold hard cash. His conclusion? Choosing to cut back on the tenderloins could “wipe $20 trillion off the cost of fighting climate change.” Read it yourself and let us know what you think!

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UK Hospitals to Go Veg?

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Blog,Food Industry News & Trends,Meat Industry

Monday, February 2nd, 2009, 10:00 PM

We gotta say, the pronouncement perked our ears up: British hospitals to promote cutting back on meat to help the climate?

Juliette Jowit, from the British rag The Guardian, reported on a plan to eliminate meat from hospital menus across the UK. The action would be part of a larger strategy by the National Health Service (UK) to lower carbon emissions and save money, which could then be redirected into patient care.

Check it out here.

The National Health Service was inspired by a study they conducted last year through which they discovered that their emissions alone account for approximately 3% of the country’s s total emissions. If the NHS was a country, this emissions toll would rank them the planet’s 81st worst emitter in 2004.

The NHS has proposed both long- and short-term changes, from “urging people to drink less bottled water to more phone-in surgeries by GPs to the food: The NHS is planning to limit meat and dairy on hospital menus. David Pencheon, director of NHS’s sustainable development unit, said, “We’d like higher levels of fresh food, and probably higher levels of fresh fruit and veg, and more investment in a local economy.”

Sounds good to us.

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America: Land of Fast Food?!

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Blog,Meat Industry

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009, 5:05 PM

Meredith Niles wrote a great article for Gristmill about Burger King’s new marketing scheme, a seven-minute film called Whopper Virgins. You might have seen it earlier from the FoxNews clip of my mother debating the Burger King ad-guy about it. (see below)

The filmmakers fly to remote locations and give the locals their first taste of a Burger King burger as they discuss so-called “American culinary culture” and refer to the United States as the “land of fast food.”

Niles asks, “What is the point of this film? And what about the health and climate impacts of this type of food? I doubt that the crew took the time to tell them that if they actually ate the whole Whopper they consumed 40 grams of fat. They also probably failed to mention the greenhouse gas emissions tied to animal production (18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions according to the U.N.) or the other environmental pollution problems associated with mass-produced animals. And I wonder if they bothered to note that the beef they were eating was probably confined in its own feces for the better part of its life.”

Misdirected advertising concept? We thought so, too.

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Oprah on Prop 2 and Conscious Consumption

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Blog,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008, 11:21 AM

We wrote a while back about Oprah’s foray into veganism, now she’s taking viewers into the heart of the livestock industry with an in-depth show on Prop 2 (the California animal welfare proposition on the ballot) and the state of livestock production.

Oprah’s show includes speakers from across the spectrum, including Wayne Pacelle (president of the Humane Society of the United States and the original sponsors of the Proposition 2 legislation) as well as Prop 2 critics. Proponents of the bill say Prop 2 would ensure more humane treatment of poultry in the state. Opponents counter that it would make production more expensive, putting farmers out of business and driving up costs.

Pacelle sums up Prop 2 this way: “This is just about basic decency,” he said. “It’s about, if animals are going to be raised for food—and that’s certainly the case in this country—then the least we can do for them is allow them to move. I mean, what’s more basic than allowing animals with legs and wings to move around?”

The average American consumes approximately 254 eggs a year. 95% of egg-laying hens are raised in caged facilities. Human decency and common sense indicate that we should care about the quality and size of these cages, to ensure a better quality of life for food-producing animals and a better quality of the food we’re consuming.

You can watch a really great online slideshow about the show and learn how to be ever-more “conscious” consumers.

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City of Angels Mouths Off on Meat

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Meat Industry

Thursday, September 18th, 2008, 12:41 PM

Last week the Los Angeles Times opined about Rajendra Pachauri’s statement as chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that cutting meat from our diets is the most effective personal act we can take to combat climate change.

We’re glad to see the message is getting out there.

Now, for the backlash.

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UN Climate Change Expert Says: Eat Less Meat!

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Blog,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008, 9:40 AM

Taking a page out of our Take a Bite out of Climate Change playbook, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says tackling climate change through our diet choices is an easier adjustment to make than changing our modes of transportation, if we want to personally address global warming.

He told The Observer that we should each practice a non-meat diet at least one day a week, and then gradually reduce our meat intake over time.

(See #3 on our list Ten Ways to Take a Bite out of Climate Change.)

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that meat production is responsible for one fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and that at the rate consumption is increasing we will double that production by 2050.

“In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity,” Pachauri told The Observer. “Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there.”

Pachauri also stressed that we need to make changes in every sector the economy in relation to climate change. Diet is just a starting point.

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Important New Paper on China’s Rising Consumption and Production of Meat and Dairy

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Food Industry News & Trends,Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry

Friday, August 22nd, 2008, 7:47 PM

Our friend and colleague, Mia MacDonald, has written a powerful new report on factory farming in China.

Check out the full report in English (China translation coming soon): www.brightergreen.org/files/brightergreen_china_print.pdf

Here’s Mia’s press release:

New York–based policy action tank Brighter Green’s new report, Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming, explores the emerging superpower’s “livestock revolution,” which is having serious impacts on public health, food security, and equity in China—and the world. The Beijing Summer Olympics are showcasing a resurgent nation, which only two generations after a devastating national famine is eating increasingly high on the food chain. In the past ten years, consumption of China’s most popular meat, pork, has doubled. In 2007, China raised well over half a billion pigs for meat.

Given that every fifth person in the world is Chinese, even small increases in individual meat or dairy consumption will have broad, collective environmental as well as climate impacts. Increasingly, what the Chinese eat, and how China produces its food, affects not only China, but the world, too.
“When I was a child, every person was allotted one pound of pork a month,” says Peter Li, a professor of political science at the University of Houston in Texas who grew up in Jiangxi province in southeast China says in Eating Skillfully. “We could not eat more than that. You could not get it. Now, though, more people have access to more meat and want to eat a lot of it.”

In yuan terms, meat is the second largest segment of China’s retail food market. China has also opened its doors to investments by major multinational meat and dairy producers, as well as animal feed corporations, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield, and Novus International. Western-style meat culture has gone mainstream. Fast food is a U.S. $28-billion-a-year business in China. McDonald’s, a major sponsor of the Olympics, had more than 800 restaurants in China, with at least a hundred more set to open by the time the games began. Four McDonald’s are operating in Olympic venues, including the press center and the athletes’ village.

“China is not yet a bone fida “factory farm nation” like the U.S.,” says Mia MacDonald, Brighter Green’s executive director and co-author of Skillful Means. “But the strains of its fast-growing livestock sector are becoming harder to ignore. In the U.S., a re-examination of the multiple human, environmental, economic, and ethical costs of factory farming is taking place. Such a process needs to get underway in China—before it’s too late.”

Although these realities won’t be fully obvious to the millions of people cheering on the Olympic athletes in China and across the globe, they demand attention:
• China’s livestock produce 2.7 billion tons of manure every year, nearly three and a half times the industrial solid waste level. Run-off from livestock operations have created a large “dead zone” in the South China Sea that is virtually devoid of marine life.
• In northern China, overgrazing and overfarming lead to the loss of nearly a million acres of grassland each year to desert.
• Diet-related chronic diseases now kill more Chinese than any other cause, and nearly one in four Chinese is overweight.
• More than 90 percent of some bacteria in Asia can no longer be treated effectively with “first-line” antibiotics like penicillin—due to their overuse in farmed animals.
• China can still feed itself. But this is likely to change as its meat and dairy sectors expand and intensify. The Chinese government is looking abroad, not only to international food markets but also to Africa, Latin America, and other parts of Asia for land on which to produce food for people and feed for livestock.
• In 2008, China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Per capita emissions of CO2 in China have more than doubled, from 2.1 tons of CO2 equivalent in 1990 to 5.1 tons today. Meat and dairy production have a direct relationship with global climate change: fully 18 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stem from the livestock industry.

Even though the Chinese government seems set on emulating industrialized nations’ meat and dairy culture, a small but growing number of Chinese non-governmental organizations and individuals are questioning this path. To them food quality, not quantity, is important, along with issues of sustainability and animal welfare.

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Ground-Breaking Lecture from Nobel Prize Winner on Diet and Climate

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Food Policy & Politics,Meat Industry,Organic Food & Farming

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008, 11:31 AM

We were so excited to learn that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC and joint-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will deliver the Compassion in World Farming’s annual Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture, named after the organization’s founder, this September, in London.

In the talk, “Global Warming: The Impact of Meat Production and Consumption on Climate Change,” Pachauri will focus on industrial farming’s impact on the environment and the impact of our industrialized diet on climate.

In London in September? Get your tickets now: here.

You can read more about the impact of agriculture on climate change in CIWF’s report ‘Global Warning: Climate change and Farm Animal Welfare.’

We’ll report more in September!

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See Our Response to NYT’s ‘If We Are What We Eat, Then Let’s Be Kind’

Topics:

Meat Industry

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008, 11:20 AM

Check out Anna’s letter to the editor in The New York Times responding to Nicholas Kristoff’s column, ‘A Farm Boy Reflects,’ from July 31. “It’s time that our tax dollars no longer finance the inhumane conditions — for workers and animals and the climate — of factory farms,” Anna Lappé, The New York Times, August 2, 2008.

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