Poor Reporting on GMOs

As if to prove that aversion to food technologies is bipartisan, a segment of the Carol Alt show on the Fox News Channel ran one of the most biased, one-sided stories on biotechnology that I've seen on a major media outlet in some time.  On the show, which aired yesterday (this was apparently re-aired from the initial showing a couple months ago), the host unquestioningly accepted every assertion thrown out from her guest Max Goldberg.  The host never reveals that Goldberg is a major organic food advocate, a major supporter of GMO labeling, and a vocal critic of GMOs (e.g., see here, here, or here).

I think one can reasonably disagree over the topic of mandatory labeling of GMOs, but to present such a one-sided view of the science surrounding the topic is irresponsible journalism and a disservice to the audience.  

A few points that should have been raised:

• Most of the studies showing aversive effects of GMOs in animal studies have been roundly criticized by reputable scientists (here is one blogger's criticism of a previously Fox News story which also failed to mention this).  Here is my own critique of one such study.
• Numerous high-quality studies based on animal feeding trials show NO effect of feeding GMOs. 
• Mentioning that countries around the world have GMO labeling policies is a red herring unless one also discusses how those countries enforce those policies while also mentioning that most, including the EU, has actually approved many GMO varieties for cultivation.
• Where are the mentions of all the major scientific organizations positions on safety of GMOs or their positions on GMO labeling?  Say, the National Academy of Science? Or the American Medical Association?  Or the World Health Organization?
• It is totally irresponsible to say that 90% of people want GMO labeling when less than half the voters in California and now Washington failed to vote in favor of GMO labeling.
• Biotechnology does NOT just mean pesticide resistance as Goldberg asserts.  How about golden rice?  Or high-oleic soybeans? Or bio-fortified cassava? Or non-browning apples? 

Clearly, this story was anything but "fair and balanced."  

John Stossel had a guest on his show on the Fox Business Network that aired some similar views as Goldgerg, but at least Stossel had me on to provide some perspective.

Assorted Links

An interview with Fashion Spot on the Food Police (I'm sure I'll next be invited to walk the runway in New York or Paris!)

Jeff Stier rightly takes issue with the National Food Policy Score Card

Some interesting statistics calculated by the USDA on the cost of eating

In case you missed it, the FDA is moving to restrict use of antibiotics for growth promotion in livestock

The Cost of Corn in Meat

I recently ran across this publication from the USDA-Economic Research Service back in 2008.  The piece, written by Ephraim Leibtag, is mainly about the high costs of corn at the time (they subsequently went much higher), and the potential impacts on the cost of food.

That publication had a little back of the envelope calculation that I found very interesting, as it relates to the argument that meat production is wasteful - a topic I've discussed before.

Here is Leibtag:

To avoid downplaying potential impacts, this analysis uses upper-bound conversion estimates of 7 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of beef, 6.5 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of pork, and 2.6 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of chicken.  Using these ratios and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a simple passthrough model provides estimates of the expected increase in meat prices given the higher corn prices. The logic of this model is illustrated by an example using chicken prices. Over the past 20 years, the average price of a bushel of corn in the U.S. has been $2.28, implying that a pound of chicken at the retail level uses 8 cents worth of corn, or about 4 percent of the $2.05 average retail price for chicken breasts. 

I don't know about you, but 8 cents doesn't seem like a lot.  If that corn is "wasted" (I've previously argued that "waste" is the wrong word here), that's not much waste.

I don't know exactly how Leibtag made his calculation, but I'll make an even cruder one using current figures.  The price of corn today is around $4.15/bushel.  There are 56lbs in a bushel, so corn costs $0.074/lb.  So, if a steer requires 7 lbs of corn to make 1 lb of beef, then the cost of the corn in a pound of beef is: $0.074*7 = $0.519.  The retail price of beef today is around $5/lb, so about 10.3% of the retail price of beef is feed corn.  That means about 90% of the retail price of beef is due to other stuff.  

Similar calculations show that for a pound of pork $0.48 of the retail cost is due to corn and for chicken it is $0.19 (this is higher than Leitbag's numbers because, among other things, the cost of corn today is much higher and because my calculation also underestimates the costs of feed in a pound of retail product because it doesn't take into account the ability of farmers to substitute toward cheaper feeds).  Given retail prices of for pork and chicken are $3.8/lb and $2/lb, that means that 12.8% and 9.9% of the retail prices of pork and chicken.  

So, the vast majority of the cost of meat - around 90% - is due to non-feed factors.  

Sometimes a little context is useful in these debates.

The Story of Nitrogen

I've been reading the Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager.  It is one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time.  It chronicles the history of nitrogen fertilizer, and Hager does a got job describing the fact that the availability of nitrogen has been the key limiting factor to food and population growth throughout much of man's agricultural history.  He writes:

As a species we long ago passed the natural ability of the planet to support us with food.  Even using the best organic farming practices available, even cutting back our diets to minimal, vegetarian levels, only about four billion of us could live on what the earth and traditional farming supply.  yet we now number more than six billion, and growing, and around the world we are eating more calories on average than people did in Crookes's day [late 1800s].

He describes the problem as follows:

These three elements, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, constitute more than 90 percent of our bodies by weight . . . But, the most important element in many ways for humans is the fourth most common in our bodies - and the hardest to find in nature (at least in forms we can use): nitrogen.  It is stitched into every gene in your DNA and is built into every protein.  If you don't get enough nitrogen, you die. . . . the absolute necessity of nitrogen or life leads to a paradox: We are swimming in nitrogen, but we can never get enough.  

The problem is that all the nitrogen in the air is unavailable to humans and to most plants.  It must be "fixed" before it becomes chemically available to us.  

Hager documents the fact that cover crops and manures in the middle ages simply weren't enough to replenish nitrogen in the soil, so there were constant yield declines.  The only answer was to find new land. No wonder colonization was so attractive to European powers.  By accident, farmers found that various forms of nitrogen found in nature could enhance yields, but after depleting guano deposit in Peru and mining the Chilean desert, there still wasn't enough to go around.

It is hard to imagine a greater discovery for the prospects of mankind than the process created by Haber, Bosch, and other German scientists in the early 1900s to "fix" nitrogen from the air.  And yet, it is probably one of the the most under-rated scientific advancements of all times (perhaps because it cause a great deal of damage too by allowing Germany to prolong WWI by converting ammonia into gun powder).  

Indeed, I had a college student try to tell me in a Q&A after a lecture I gave at another University a few weeks ago that nitrogen was not a limiting ingredient for agriculture.  It might be possible for a small farm feeding a small number of people to be somewhat self sufficient in nitrogen (yet even they must get their nitrogen from somewhere). But, it is simply not possible to support urban populations like those in NYC, Boston, London, or Hong Kong by using only the nitrogen available in manure and fixed by currently available cover crops.  

If you're bored over the Christmas break, you could probably find worse things to do than read a little about the history of nitrogen.

FooDS December 2013

The December edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now up.

A few observations from the survey:

• Willingness-to-pay (WTP) for chicken products was down in December.  In fact, WTP for chicken breast was at the lowest level since the survey started back in May.
• WTP for steak only declined 4.3%, but was also at the lowest level seen since FooDS started.
• The only meat product to witnessed increased WTP was hamburger.
• Stated concern for all 17 food issues we track fell in December relative to November.  
• This month, consumers heard less in the news about Salmonella and E coli and more about GMOs and farm animal welfare.
• In a ranking of seven food challenges, the largest increase in December was "loosing weight".

As in the past, we added several ad hoc questions.  Given my recent visit to BPI, I was curious to learn more about consumers' perceptions of lean fine textured beef (LFTB), a product that has been called "pink slime" by some media outlets (I should note that these questions were added of my own volition, not at the request of BPI).  We asked "Which of the following do you believe is true or false about lean finely textured ground beef (otherwise known as "pink slime")?"  Here is what we found:

Most consumers correctly indicated that LFTB lowers the price of lean ground beef.  however, they also got quite a few facts wrong, and the results underscore the misconceptions people have about the product, some of which have been fostered by media outlets.  For example, more than half the participants thought LFTB led to illnesses, was used in dog food, and is unsafe to eat.  Only 25.59% thought beef is the only ingredient (so much for the effectiveness of the "beef is beef" campaign), and more than three-quarters disagreed that LFTB improved the taste of beef.  

We also asked a subsequent question, where respondents ranked the desirability of different hypothetical ground beef options that varied by price, LFTB content, fat content, and taste.  Analysis of this data suggests taste is the most important factor but that people were WTP substantive premiums to avoid LFTB.  That said, people also stated a preference for leaner ground beef.  Overall, the results imply that some the consumers' dislike of LFTB can be offset by: 1) better taste, 2) lower price, or 3) some combination of lower fat content and lower price or better taste.