Consumer Reports on Pork

If you haven't heard, Consumer Reports will be putting out a story after the first of the year with the headline, "What’s in that pork? We found antibiotic-resistant bacteria and traces of a veterinary drug."  The story has been picked up all over the web and reported on the nightly news.

I'm glad there are consumer watchdogs out there, but one thing I learned years ago is that Consumer Reports (you know the source to which you turn to find out which TV or automobile to buy) often gives sensationalized and one-sided accounts on many food issues.  In that vein, it is useful to see what is the "other side" of the story.

Over at Feedstuffs, Richard Raymond weighted in with a long critique of Consumer Reports account of their findings.  Here are a few of his observations:

You can find antibiotic-resistant bacteria in your navel and on your bed post. They are everywhere, including in your nose where 1 out of 50 Americans harbor Methicillin Resistant Staph aureus (MRSA), a bug they just had to mention in the report.

and

The big splash seems to be the often quoted bit about "Yersinia enterocolitica was in 69% of the tested pork samples. It infects about 100,000 Americans a year."

Want some facts you can take to the bank? 

The Centers of Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), in its own Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases January 2011 edition, states that there were only 950 "aboratory confirmed" cases of Yersinia in 2009.

The same CDC says, in its annual Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report titled 'Incidence and Trends of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food", June 10, 2011/60(22):749-755 that the incidence of Yersinia infections have declined by 52% over the last 10 years.

and

Consumer Reports also says 11% harbored enterococcus, which "can cause problems such as urinary tract infections."

Are they even remotely trying to get their readers to think that you can get a bladder infection from eating contaminated pork? I haven't been out of medicine that long to have forgotten how people get an enterococcal bladder infection, and it is not from eating pork. Trust me, I'm a doctor

and

That drug, ractopamine to be specific, causes swine to reach a leaner market weight more quickly, saving the Earth's precious resources such as land, water and feed.

It was approved after years of study by the FDA in 1999. It has been used as a feed additive in over 330 million pigs in the U.S. alone, with not one single case of a human suffering any ill effects from consuming pork.

Its safety for humans is beyond reproach. Because of this, 27 other countries have established MRLs [maximum residue levels] for ractopamine and approved its use in their swine herds. 

 and

The MRL for ractopamine established by FDA is 50 ppb in muscle. The 20% of samples that had any residue were all below 5 ppb, but Consumers Report will not tell if the residue was 1 ppb or 4 ppb. Not that it makes any difference, they are all safe.

The Need for Agricultural Research

Five agricultural economists published an article in the latest issue of Science on the effects of public and private R&D spending on agricultural research.   

Here is the summary:

Most of the increase in global agricultural production over the past half-century has come from raising crop and livestock yields rather than through area expansion. This growth in productivity is attributed largely to investments in research and innovation (1). Since around 1990, there has been a decline in the rate of growth in yield per area harvested for several important crops (2). In parallel, the rate of growth in public spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) has also fallen, which may account for declining crop yield growth and may be contributing to rising food prices (3).

To this, I would add that a deluge of books and documentaries on food have demonized precisely those research developments responsible for yield growth.  It's hard to know exactly what effect these cultural influences have had on firm and government decisions to invest in agricultural research.  

However, many in the food community haven't connected the dots.  Mark Bittman wrote just two days ago about hunger, saying:

It seems absurd to have to say it, but no one in this country should go hungry.

His answer for the problem was more government spending on food stamps and food banks.  Yet, he has repeatedly denounced modern agricultural technologies and has called for food policies that will ultimately increase food prices.  

There is the old saying that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; If you teach him how to fish, you can feed him for a lifetime.  Food stamps give people fish for the day.  Developments in agricultural R&D are the gifts that keep on giving.   

Krugman and Steinbeck on Food

In this post a week ago, Paul Krugman compares the 1950s to today.  I'm not sure that I completely agree with his assessment, but one statement with which I wholeheartedly concur is the following:

Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.

There is a lot of romantic idealism in food but I'm pleased to see that Krugman hasn't succumbed to that sort of thinking.  If you find yourself wishing for 1950's era food, I offer the following quote from John Steinbeck's book Travels with Charley  (written in the 1960s):

Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

How Many Labels Are Too Many?

One of my bright former students sent me these pictures today.  Are each of these labels actually contributing new information?  What is the company trying to communicate?  Amazing that so much can be claimed on one package! Here are the claims:

1.       Grass-fed 

2.       Organic

3.       Animal-friendly (Certified Humane)

4.       Non-GMO

5.       Real California Cheese

6.       American Cheese Society winner

7.       No artificial hormones or pesticides (written on back)

8.       Milk from local family farms (written on back - ironic since this picture was taken in Illinois and they claim real California cheese)

Constitutionality of Food Labels

Henry Miller from Stanford University's Hoover Institution weights in with a letter to the editor in the WSJ in reference to my most recent op-ed.

Here is a spinet:

Jayson Lusk is correct that radical activists will likely continue their efforts to lobby state governments to require labeling of certain "genetically engineered" foods ("The Food Police Are Routed at the Ballot Box," op-ed, Nov. 20). However, whatever such requirements state legislatures or electorates attempt to impose, those efforts are destined to fail in the courts.

Federal law pre-empts state labeling rules that conflict with FDA policy, which requires labeling only if a food raises questions related to nutrition or safe use. Just last year, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled that a California requirement to label genetically engineered foods "would impose a requirement that is not identical to federal law" and would therefore be pre-empted.

He's probably right with respect to food labels.  I'm not so sure about the fat taxes which I also mentioned in my piece.