European Opposition to Change on Ag and Food Safety Runs Deep

January 23, 2018 Volume 15, Number 4

European opposition to change on ag and food safety runs deep

The U.S. and the EU both want a new trade pact to bring together two of the largest economic forces in the world, but agriculture is standing firmly in the way.

Influenced by decades of ag and food policy differences between the U.S. and Europe, European negotiators appear certain that including agricultural issues would essentially kill the talks.

“The idea was to have a quick deal,” Sylvain Maestracci, agriculture counselor at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., told Agri-Pulse. “We just want to have something quick.”

Both the U.S. and the EU have now released their official list of goals in upcoming trade talks. On the U.S. side, negotiators are demanding the Europeans make big changes in regulations preventing the U.S. from exporting beef, pork and grains. Americans also want the Europeans to accept that genetically modified plants can be approved quickly, beef from cattle can be treated with hormones, and poultry cleaned with chlorine is safe.

The Europeans are not even willing to talk about any of it. European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström

“We are not including agriculture,” European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in a press conference last week to debut the EU proposal for trade talks.

European negotiators were so certain that political leaders in Germany, France and other EU countries would not agree to the kinds of changes being demanded by the U.S. they did not seek a mandate to negotiate them, government and industry sources say.

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“To change fundamentally our food safety rules is very difficult,” said Jesus Zorrilla, the chief agriculture counselor for the European Delegation to the U.S. “The discussions in July were that if we do agriculture … it would be a long process.”

If the U.S. were only demanding that the EU negotiate on agricultural tariffs, those talks could go relatively quickly, says Joe Glauber, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and former chief agriculture negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative.

“Those are trade-offs that are made all the time in negotiations,” he said about tariffs.

Glauber, who represented the U.S. during years of the “Doha round” talks to try to form a new World Trade Organization trade pact, said he quickly learned that, for the most part, Europeans do not treat what they consider food safety policy as simply protections for domestic industry.

“In the Doha talks, we were negotiating access into the European market on a whole variety of products, but these non-tariff barriers were the real stumbling blocks,” Glauber said in an interview. “They were stumbling blocks 10 years ago and they are still very much stumbling blocks.”

Products like the growth promotant ractopamine in swine are generally accepted in the U.S. but remain food safety concerns in Europe for reasons that stretch back decades, says Maestracci. At the core of Europeans' food safety fears is their experience with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease.

The always-fatal brain-wasting disease that can be spread to humans first surfaced in the United Kingdom in 1986, but quickly spread through Europe, where humans contracted it as government officials tried to calm fears.

“We had problems with mad cow disease in the '90s when public authorities said the disease was under control and the public did not trust them,” Maestracci said. “When you break a trust, it is always very difficult to get that trust back.”

But European leaders have spent decades trying to do just that, including adopting the controversial “precautionary principle” as the foundation of food safety in 2002. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is critical of the policy whether it's used in relation to biotech crops or global warming, offers this definition: “The precautionary principle says that when the risks of a particular activity are unclear or unknown, assume the worst and avoid the activity. It is essentially a policy of risk avoidance.”

Along with the breaking of the public trust, the food-safety disaster of the '80s and '90s may have also contributed to the rise in power of nongovernment organizations at a level never seen in the U.S., where large agribusinesses and powerful farm lobbying groups play significant roles in policy creation.

“In Europe you have very powerful food and environmental NGOs,” the French counselor stressed. “The power of the food and farm industries is (weaker) than in the U.S. In Europe our policy is more consumer-driven.”

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Nevertheless, the Trump administration insists that it can get Europe to change its ways. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is adamant that Congress will not approve any trade pact that does not include agriculture.

“I don’t know how anybody in Europe that wants a free-trade agreement with us expects it to get through the United States Senate if you don’t want to negotiate agriculture,” Grassley told reporters.

That warning was not enough to convince Malmström, who met recently with Grassley. If there’s any chance of a speedy U.S.-EU trade pact, she said she explained to the Iowa senator, agriculture must be left out of the equation.

But there is a way to force Europe’s hand, Grassley said, and that’s the threat of hitting Europe with steep tariffs on cars and car parts. The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to make a Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa ruling soon on whether or not so-called “Section 232” tariffs are warranted to protect U.S. national security.

“I know Europe is very afraid of it,” Grassley told reporters last week. “It’s probably the only thing that will bring Europe to the table in a reasonable way.”

But such a drastic action would do more harm than good, Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., told Agri- Pulse.

“If the president wants to go down that path, there’s consequences on our side too,” Kind said. “He needs to be very careful. I would not advise that strategy because it only escalates the retaliation and makes it harder for people to come together in good faith and negotiate what needs to be negotiated.”

The EU’s Malmström warned that the car tariffs would not force the EU to relent but would torpedo the trade talks and spur retaliatory tariffs.

Meet the new members of the House Ag Committee

The House Agriculture Committee will look very different when it convenes for the first time in the 116th Congress.

There's the obvious change of who will be sitting in the big chair as Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson regains leadership of the committee, the result of Democrats winning the House in the 2018 midterm elections. But that new majority is also made up of 10 freshman members and a dozen newcomers in all, nearly half the panel's 26 Democrats. By comparison, the 26-member Republican majority in the 115th Congress had just six freshmen.

With all these new faces on the panel, Peterson says he expects one of the freshmen — he didn't say which one — to end up chairing a subcommittee. At the same time, he has also pledged to give more authority to subcommittee chairs in hopes of building a roster of Democrats with farm policy expertise. The committee oversees key issues like agricultural production, marketing and stabilization of prices, commodity exchanges, rural development, crop www.Agri-Pulse.com 3

insurance, farm credit, and agriculture research and extension services. That wide swath of authority potentially gives one of these new members an inside track to influence farm policy for years as the 2018 farm bill is implemented and discussions on the next bill begin.

Here's a look at some of the new members sitting on the House Agriculture Committee:

Majority

Rep. Cindy Axne, D-Iowa, represents the state’s 3rd district, primarily made up of southwestern rural counties along with Polk County, including Iowa’s capitol, Des Moines. “Agriculture is not only an economic driver and job creator in our state, but our Iowa farmers and producers feed people here at home and around the world,” she said. Axne won the district by grabbing 56 percent of the vote in Polk County, a 16-point advantage over Republican incumbent David Young’s 40 percent. This is critical, as she’ll have to convince the rest of her heavily rural district she’ll fight for key agriculture issues like ensuring trade agreements, opening new export markets, expanding rural broadband access and expanding biofuels. Rep. Cindy Axne, D-Iowa

Rep. Anthony Brindisi, a public school advocate from central New York, beat out incumbent Republican Claudia Tenney with 51 percent of the vote to represent the 22nd District. In 2016, Tenney won the district by 7 percentage points over Democratic challenger Kim Myers. New York’s 22nd district is classified as more than 50 percent rural. “I will work across the aisle to make sure our local farmers have the support they need to get a fair price for their goods, succeed financially, and make an honest living,” Brindisi said. A release announcing his appointment made specific reference to the district's dairy sector, which employs nearly 4,000 people and has an economic impact of $1.83 billion. Brindisi also plans to meet regularly with an agriculture advisory council to understand the challenges of farmers and rural New York Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y. communities.

California Democrat Salud Carbajal represents the state's 24thdistrict along the Central Coast. The Marine Corps veteran is in his second term representing the district, but his first on the House Ag Committee. “This new post allows me to have a louder voice in fighting for the needs of our farmers and ranchers," Carbajal said. He also favors a robust nutrition assistance program that 16,000 Central Coast families rely on. “Salud represents some of the most productive fruit and vegetable land in the world and nearly 3,000 square miles of National Forest, not to mention almost 750,000 consumers," Peterson noted, adding that Carbajal's "perspective on specialty crop agriculture will be appreciated on the Ag Committee." A longtime advocate Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif. for the environment, an early action he took in Congress was www.Agri-Pulse.com 4

introducing the California Clean Coast Act, which bans future offshore oil and gas drilling on California’s coast. He also is a member of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which is working to mitigate climate change.

Rep. Josh Harder is a former venture capital executive and business teacher who defeated four-term Republican Jeff Denham in California’s 10th District. Like Carbajal and a couple of other California Democrats already on the committee, Harder represents a district with a wide array of ag production, specifically in specialty crops. In 2017, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties produced over $8.7 billion in agricultural commodities. “We feed the nation and much of the world," Harder said in a statement. "But we also have critical challenges that we must meet head on, beginning with sensible solutions to expand our water supply, better manage our existing water resources, and help our communities Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif. better prepare for droughts.” The sector also supports a third of all jobs in Stanislaus County, located just east of San Jose, Calif.

Another California Democrat new to the committee, TJ Cox, represents California’s 21st District, which is also made up of the Central Valley. He is a former engineer and businessman who narrowly defeated three-term Republican David Valadao, who had won the district by a 17 percent margin in 2016. The race was initially called in Valadao's favor, but according to the Los Angeles Times, the incumbent's 4,400-vote lead on election night gradually dwindled before mail-in and other ballots. Now, Cox becomes the fifth Golden State Democrat on the panel. “I’m honored to be named to this critical committee and ready to get to work on behalf of all our farmers and ranchers,” Cox said. He supports ending Rep. TJ Cox, D-Calif. the so-called trade war, providing better resources for farmers and ranchers, and investing in rural communities.

Former newspaper reporter and global human resources executive Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., represents Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district just southeast of the Twin Cities. She knocked-off one-term Republican Jason Lewis, flipping the seat. Minnesota is the fifth largest agricultural state in the United States, and 75,000 farms contribute $19 billion to the nation’s economy each year. “As your representative, I will fight back against policies that harm our nation’s farmers — whether they come from Democrats or Republicans,” Craig wrote in a paid letter for a local Minnesota paper in August. She supports maintaining a strong energy title in the farm bill, fair trade, opening new markets, and lowering health care costs for farmers.

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn.

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Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-N.Y., represents the 19th District in update New York. He defeated former committee member and incumbent Republican John Faso in November. “As a member of (this committee), I can advocate for key issues ranging from supporting our farmers to expanding rural broadband to improving our water infrastructure," Delgado noted in a statement. The district is home to more than 5,000 farms and over 8,000 farm operators. Almost 20 percent of the land is farmland. Delgado supports protecting small and medium-sized farms and said it is critical for them to market local and organically grown food to customers in New York City. He also supports protecting the environment and funding programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-N.Y. Program (SNAP).

Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., a former national teacher of the year from Waterbury, beat Republican Manny Santos in a 55-44 race for the open seat to represent Connecticut's 5th District. This was an open seat after reports surfaced in August that former Rep. Elizabeth Etsy’s top aide questionably “abused” a staff member, causing Etsy to not seek re-election. The district is a mix of urban and rural area in the northwest and central parts of the state.

“As a member (of the ag committee), I will bring forth the voice of small family farmers, dairy farmers, conservationists, and all concerned with the future of agriculture and the protection of our waterways in the district,” she said. Hayes Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn. also wants to secure the future of food safety net programs like SNAP and school meal programs.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., represents Arizona’s 2nd District in the far southeast corner of the state. She previously represented Arizona’s 1st District from 2009-2011 and again from 2013-2017. She replaced Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who resigned to run for the Senate. Kirkpatrick is a strong advocate for protecting natural resources and mitigating climate change. According to her campaign website, she strongly supports development of alternative energy sources and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Other priorities atop her list include comprehensive immigration reform that secures the nation’s border and keeps families together. She recently introduced legislation that would allow Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, beneficiaries to work on Capitol Hill. After the shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in 2011, Kirkpatrick has Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz. continued to advocate for stronger gun laws.

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Washington Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier, a former pediatrician and EPA employee, represents Washington’s 8th District, located between Seattle and Spokane. Congresswoman Schrier will be the only member from the Northwest serving on the committee. “Finally, our region will have someone to speak up for our fruit, hay, and wheat farmers," she said. "I will also be able to work on policy related to food programs and making sure that our kids get the nutrition they need to stay healthy.” As a strong environmental advocate, she said she will fight any effort to reduce or eliminate air and water protections and also will promote alternative forms of clean energy. Her district also Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash. heavily depends on trade. Washington is the number-one apple- producing state, growing 64 percent of the nation's apples. The state's producers are also noted growers of wheat and potatoes.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a former CIA operations officer, represents 10 counties in central Virginia’s 7th District. Spanberger is a supporter of industrial hemp and ending the ban on marijuana as a controlled substance. “Serving on the Agriculture Committee will be a privilege that I hope to use to the benefit of our district, focusing on agricultural policy to the benefit of our rural and agricultural communities,” Spanberger said. Food security issues will also be a top priority for her, along with protecting the environment. Spanberger also supports investments in alternative energy sources, with solar being one of them. Her campaign website notes Virginia's solar energy job growth soared 65 percent from 2015-2016 in Virginia, making the state one of the fastest growing job Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va. markets in the nation.

A first-time representative hailing from New Jersey, Rep. Jeff Van Drew replaces Republican Frank LoBiondo, who retired from the House at the conclusion of his 11th term. Van Drew represents the Garden state’s 2nd Congressional District, an area known for growing specialty crops such as blueberries, cranberries, tomatoes, corn and lettuce. “I am proud to have earned a seat on the committee that shapes our nation’s agricultural priorities. The Agriculture Committee was one of my top committee choices because it will give me the platform to be an even stronger leader for our hard-working farmers in South Jersey, " Van Drew said. He also has been a strong advocate for recreational and commercial fishing in the state, opposing Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J. offshore drilling.

Peterson also has five veteran members who had to get waivers to be on the committee. Four of the five won appointments this year to “exclusive” committees such as Appropriations and Ways and Means. They are: Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., Rep. Al Lawson, D-Fla., Rep. Tom www.Agri-Pulse.com 7

O'Halleran, D-Ariz., and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif. The fifth, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D- Maine, who represents Maine’s 1st District served from 2009 to 2012. The organic farmer and small business owner left the committee in 2012 to hold a seat on the Appropriations Committee.

Minority:

The House Ag minority has not been named yet, but Ranking Member Mike Conaway, R-Tex., confirmed they will have 21 members on the committee and was “impressed” by the three incoming Republican freshmen.

Farmers, enviros alarmed by USDA’s new wetlands rules

The Natural Resources Conservation Service is likely to receive a decidedly mixed bag of comments on a rule it issued last month that seeks to clarify when producers have wetlands on their farms.

Wetland advocates are concerned that NRCS is trying to weaken its highly erodible land protections by allowing faulty maps to be used to determine whether wetlands exist on the landscape. Enacted in the 1985 farm bill, the so-called "Swampbuster" language prohibits farmers who have converted wetlands to cropland from receiving USDA program benefits.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, on the other hand, is worried NRCS may be giving itself too much leeway to determine when wetlands exist on the landscape.

For its part, NRCS says it is simply trying to make everything clearer for producers trying to figure out what’s on their lands.

The Dec. 7 interim final rule, which asks for comments by Feb. 5, would allow determinations made between 1990-96 to be “certified” for purposes of determining those benefits.

But groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation say the rule deviates from longstanding NRCS practice and would allow conversion of many wetlands to cropland.

Their concern is the accuracy of maps developed before 1996. In 1997, NRCS itself said the agency “had made over 3 million wetland determinations using these maps and that 60 percent of these determinations were inaccurate,” according to an Office of Inspector General report issued in January 2017.

The report started with a complaint from within NRCS that the agency had decided on its own in 2013 to start certifying pre-1996 determinations to deal with a backlog of requests. The backlog resulted from farmers seeking to bring land into production after commodity prices began to increase in 2009. NRCS offices in Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota implemented the new policy, but other states did not.

“After 1996 and the completion of many internal studies, NRCS policy was not to consider wetland determinations completed from 1990-96 certified unless the determination was appealed and upheld, a process which required field visits and supporting documentation,” OIG said. “NRCS published many factsheets explaining wetland conservation compliance that stated that most wetland determinations completed prior to July 3, 1996, are not considered certified.”

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Congress has rejected attempts that would let NRCS use the pre-1996 determinations, Ducks Unlimited’s Director of Public Policy Kellis Moss and its Director of Agriculture Policy, Andrew Schmidt, say.

They point out amendments to allow certification of the pre-1996 determinations failed in the 2014 and 2018 farm bills.

“In our opinion, congressional intent is pretty clear that the pre-96 wetlands maps are insufficient,” Moss says.

And the National Wildlife Federation, in a July letter that anticipated the now-issued interim final rule, said Congress in the 1996 farm bill “intended . . . to require greater methodological rigor and substantive accuracy in wetlands certifications in order to correct NRCS’s prior failure to accurately identify wetlands.”

“We know that a lot of those pre-96 determinations missed a lot of wetlands,” says Jan Goldman-Carter, NWF senior director for wetlands and water resources.

The OIG report said in 13 of 17 cases it examined in North Dakota, protection of wetland acreage was reduced by 75 percent. Accepting the pre-96 determinations succeeded in reducing the backlog “but it also resulted in inaccurate wetland determinations,” OIG said in its report.

NRCS, however, says it’s merely trying to give producers more clarity Jan Goldman-Carter, NWF and disputes that farmers had to go through an appeal process in order for wetlands to be certified.

Responding to questions from Agri-Pulse, NRCS National Leader for Wetland and Highly Erodible Land Conservation Jason Outlaw said there has been some question “whether pre-1996 determinations were considered certified, but there was never a requirement that pre-1996 determinations be appealed before they would be considered certified in national policy. Through the updated rule, we’re able to provide certainty to these producers with determinations made between 1990 and 1996.”

Outlaw also says the “updates” to the program “are explaining what the process for determining wetlands already is and describe what is already happening through administrative action. These changes will not lead to significant changes in what is considered a wetland and what isn’t.”

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Scott VanderWal, president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau and vice president of AFBF, says Farm Bureau is "in the process of analyzing" the interim rule and plans to submit comments. So far, however, the rule looks to AFBF like NRCS is trying to give itself more latitude to regulate more wetlands.

Also in the interim rule, NRCS said it will use a 1971-2000 precipitation dataset to determine “normal” soil and hydrologic circumstances for assessing presence of wetlands. NWF wants the agency to move the 30-year range forward to 1981-2010, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is scheduled to do.

In its July letter to NRCS, NWF’s Carter said NRCS acknowledged in its environmental assessment on the interim rule that using the more up-to-date information would result in more wetlands on the map. NWF urged NRCS to abandon “obsolete data” and use the later dataset, which will be more protective of wetlands. Scott VanderWal, Farm Bureau The EA does say that changing the dataset would make a difference. “More acres would be mapped in regions experiencing increases in precipitation, such as the Great Plains, Midwest, Northern California, and fewer acres would be mapped in those experiencing less precipitation (Southeast and most of the arid West),” the assessment notes.

Outlaw says “though data and average rainfall has varied over time, using this specific dataset helps make determinations more predictable and provide certainty to agricultural producers. It is also better reflective of pre-1985 conditions, upon which many exemptions are based.”

DU’s Schmidt and Moss say using the 1981-2010 data would result in more wetlands being mapped in some areas and fewer wetlands in others. But they also say changing the standard could result in producers coming in for new determinations. “Every 10 years suddenly we’d be grading on a different curve, so to speak,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt also said that if NRCS moved the dataset forward every 10 years, the next range of 1991-2020 could result in fewer wetlands being mapped in areas that suffered severe drought, such as the Dakotas.

Although the interim final rule was final upon publication in the Andrew Schmidt, Ducks Unlimited Federal Register, NRCS issued a brief announcement last week urging producers to weigh in. “As with all rules and regulations, NRCS considers the comments very seriously,” Outlaw said. “After the comments are evaluated, USDA will decide on a schedule for publishing a final rule.”

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Ostroff: Outbreaks a wake-up call to growers

Two days before Americans sat down for Thanksgiving dinner, the Food and Drug Administration delivered a stunning warning to consumers and supermarkets: Do not eat romaine lettuce, and immediately throw out any lettuce that's in refrigerators or on store shelves.

Stephen Ostroff, who was just a few weeks from retirement from his position as FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, has no regrets about the decision to deliver the alert. He’s convinced it prevented numerous additional illnesses from the deadly strain of E. coli bacteria while also showcasing the need for traceability in high-risk food products.

That outbreak, coupled with others in leafy greens, also has highlighted the need for safety standards for agricultural water, according to Ostroff. As the result of strong pushback from farms, water standards and testing requirements developed by the Obama administration under the Food Safety Modernization Act are currently on hold while the agency further studies the issue.

When the alert was issued on Nov. 20, investigators believed the contaminated lettuce probably originated in California, but they didn’t know for sure, and there was no way for consumers to tell where the lettuce they purchased had been grown.

“If you want to prevent illness, you have to do something,” Ostroff said, defending the decision in an interview on the sidelines of the International Daily Foods Association’s annual meeting in Orlando this week.

The bacteria strain at issue, E. coli O157: Stephen Ostroff H7, which was originally associated primarily with ground beef, can cause kidney failure and is especially dangerous to children and the elderly.

“There is no question that that action prevented people from getting sick,” Ostroff said. “If we hadn’t done that, contaminated product was likely out there on store shelves and in people’s homes. We would have had far more illnesses than we ended up having in this outbreak.”

More than 60 people, ranging in age from 1 to 84, were sickened during the outbreak.

The action also caught the attention of industry. Within a week of the alert, FDA announced that romaine growers had agreed to voluntarily label their lettuce with the harvest date and harvest location. Growers from other regions, including Florida and North Carolina, were appealing to FDA to narrow the recall, convinced they couldn’t be at fault.

The idea behind the rudimentary labeling plan was that it would provide consumers and retailers a way to tell whether the product they bought could be at risk.

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Meanwhile, leafy greens producers agreed to form a task force to develop a long-term labeling plan for all leafy greens. The task force includes retailers and academics as well as producers.

Some growers are already focused on traceability. Members of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, for example, have mandatory traceback protocols which are audited five times per year. However, that doesn’t mean that leafy greens – which are sold to consumers through multiple distribution networks– are always tracked all the way to the consumer.

There is no question following that outbreak that the leafy greens industry understands it has “a significant problem and that it’s in everybody’s best intent to be as absolutely creative as possible to address it,” Ostroff said.

One way or the other, producers will have to give retailers and consumers a way to trace the origin of leafy greens and other foods considered to be a relatively high risk for contamination, said Ostroff.

The law requires it: FSMA included provisions requiring FDA to mandate traceability for high- risk products but left it to the agency to decide how that traceability would work and what foods it would apply to. FDA has yet to implement that section of the law and it’s certain to be contentious, starting with the definition of what foods are “high risk,” Ostroff said.

Retailers also are increasingly demanding traceability. Ostroff’s replacement at FDA, Frank Yiannas, came to FDA from Walmart, where he was the vice president for food safety and an outspoken advocate of traceability and the use of blockchain technology to track the origin and movement of products.

“I don’t think Walmart is going to be the only company that’s going to start insisting that if you want to sell to us you’re going to have to do (traceability). I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the markets to put standards in place that are going to be the de facto regulatory standard,” he said.

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the outbreak to be over on Jan. 9, the California-based Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, an organization that sets voluntary safety practices for growers, said its members were "committed to protecting consumers and is collaborating to examine and update farming practices to make leafy greens safer. “

That outbreak as well as an earlier one linked to romaine lettuce produced in Yuma, Ariz., suggests FDA needs to tighten the regulations on irrigation water requirements that were included in the original produce safety rule that FDA issued under FSMA. The compliance date has been put off to 2022 to give the agency time to revise the requirements.

Both the produce safety rule as well as voluntary standards the industry has been following set limits for the presence of generic E. coli bacteria rather than the specific strains that are deadly. As it turns out, said Ostroff, water that meets the standard for generic E. coli may still harbor enough microbes from the deadly O157 strain to be dangerous.

Farmers may have to start going beyond testing their water to treating it to kill pathogens, said Ostroff. “At some point you have to do out-of-the-box thinking to ensure that the problem isn’t going to continue down the road that it’s been on the last year or two,” he said. www.Agri-Pulse.com 12

The outbreaks also are putting a focus on the need for other aspects of the produce safety rule. A parasite known as cyclospora was found in domestically grown produce for the first time last year and was linked to two large outbreaks, one involving Del Monte veggie trays and the other a salad mix sold by McDonald’s.

Food becomes contaminated with cyclospora through handling by workers who have the parasite, so contamination could be prevented through proper sanitation programs, a requirement of the produce safety rule.

Inspections of farms for compliance with all but the water requirements in the produce safety rule are due to start this spring.

Ostroff, a former top official at the CDC, joined FDA in 2013 as chief medical officer in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and senior public health adviser to FDA's Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine. He was named the deputy commissioner in 2016 and later served two stints as acting commissioner.

Ostroff said the agency’s food safety agenda was left unchanged after President Donald Trump took office and Scott Gottlieb was confirmed as commissioner.

"From the food safety perspective, we didn’t really miss a beat,” said Ostroff. “I never really had very much pushback at all from the administration around moving forward with what we were doing with FSMA implementation."

Broad-spectrum insecticide chlorpyrifos a target at state, federal level

Growers in California and several other states are fighting to retain use of chlorpyrifos, a broad- spectrum insecticide environmentalists and farmworker advocates have sought to ban for years, citing neurotoxic effects.

In August, chlorpyrifos opponents were successful, when a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must revoke all food tolerances for the product by Oct. 8, 2018.

That ruling has not gone into effect, however, because EPA, supported by chlorpyrifos manufacturer Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences) and numerous farm groups, asked the court to reconsider its decision. Parties have submitted briefs on on that request, meaning the Ninth Circuit could rule any day on the fate of the insecticide nationally.

“For some crops and target pests, chlorpyrifos is the only line of defense, with no viable Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue alternatives,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said when EPA asked the appeals court

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to rehear the case. Losing the use of chlorpyrifos “endangers agricultural industries and is expected to have wide economic impacts.”

Chlorpyrifos, sold under the trade names Dursban and Lorsban, among others, is used on more than 50 crops, including some for which there are no reliable chemical substitutes, according to farm groups: alfalfa, almonds, apples, citrus, cotton, cranberries, peaches, peanuts, peas, sorghum soybeans, and strawberries, to name a few.

In California, groups representing cotton ginners and growers have called it “one of the only active ingredients that have efficacy and plant canopy penetration to manage late season cotton aphid.” In addition, the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association said, “the revocation of tolerances and cancellations of registrations would be a death sentence for the California cotton industry.”

Citrus growers also are worried. The California Citrus Quality Council says that the loss of chlorpyrifos “will leave citrus growers without a good alternative.” A 2016 analysis by Dow AgroSciences said chlorpyrifos is the main active ingredient used to control a host of insect pests, including peach tree borer and lesser peach tree borer in peaches and nectarines, and codling moth and walnut husk fly in walnuts.

“The economic sustainability of California agriculture is reliant on the use of chlorpyrifos,” said the Western Integrated Pest Management Center, one of four such centers created by USDA.

Those comments, and those of other grower groups, were cited in in a brief filed with the Ninth Circuit following its order to revoke tolerances. But NRDC, this time joined not just by the Pesticide Action Network but by the League of United Latin American Citizens and farmworker groups, argued that the court could not consider economic impacts. The issue, they said, is one of health – particularly harm to children’s brains from prenatal exposure.

The court fight started in 2014, seven years after NRDC and PAN had petitioned to revoke tolerances and cancel registrations for chlorpyrifos. In August 2015, the Ninth Circuit ordered EPA to issue a final response to the petition by the end of October, resulting in EPA’s November 2015 proposal to revoke all tolerances for chlorpyrifos because it could not “determine that aggregate exposure to residues of chlorpyrifos, including all anticipated dietary exposures and all other non-occupational exposures for which there is reliable information, are safe.”

That proposal was never finalized. Instead, in March 2017, newly confirmed EPA Administrator Scott Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Pruitt delayed a final decision on the petition, allowing registrations to remain in place for chlorpyrifos until it comes up for re-registration in 2022. NRDC, PAN and other groups went back to the Ninth Circuit to ask the court to reaffirm its earlier order, which the court did last August.

Chlorpyrifos also is a target of state regulators. California has proposed designating it is a toxic air contaminant (TAC), which could lead to further restrictions on its use.

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“Collectively, it appears that high doses/exposures of chlorpyrifos are associated with various types of neurodegeneration,” the California Department of Pesticide Regulation concluded in its July 2018 TAC evaluation.

In California, the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation has recommended interim measures to county ag commissioners to reduce exposures, until DPR makes it final decision sometime in 2019. Those measures include a ban on aerial applications, and a halt to chlorpyrifos use on most crops. “Critical uses” would still be allowed for crops for which alternatives are lacking, such as control of weevils in alfalfa, aphids in asparagus, and ants in citrus.

Other measures include a quarter-mile buffer zone during any applications and for 24 hours afterwards, as well as a 150-foot setback from houses, businesses, schools and other sensitive sites.

DPR said it will consider possible mitigation measures after making its final designation, by consulting with other state and local agencies including the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment and the California Air Resources Board.

California ag groups say that DPR is going too far. California Citrus Mutual, for example, said it believes the state’s risk assessment “relies on modeling with unrealistic exposure scenarios, such as a child directly downwind of an application every day for 21 days.”

“The modeling approach used created an overly conservative assessment that is not consistent with extensive air monitoring that has been conducted,” said Casey Creamer, CCM’s Executive Vice President.

Groups fighting to ban the organophosphate were initially pleased with the state’s proposal. “We’re glad that the state has finally accepted the overwhelming consensus of federal and independent scientists who’ve studied chlorpyrifos for years and determined that it harms kids’ brains severely and irreversibly,” said Mark Weller, co-director of the statewide coalition Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR).

But after the interim measures were announced, CPR and other environmental groups said the state had not gone far enough.

“The only way to protect our children from this toxic chemical is to ban it—and this does not come close to doing that,” said Allison Johnson, Sustainable Food Policy Advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These measures are temporary and will not eliminate much of the chlorpyrifos used on food grown in California communities and eaten by families across the country.”

News Briefs:

Bill to update National FFA charter passes House, reintroduced in Senate. Updates to the National FFA charter are under consideration. On Tuesday, the House passed under a suspension vote the National FFA Organization’s Federal Charter Amendments Act (HR. 439), which would tweak some language within the organization’s federal charter, but also enable it to be more self-governing. According to FFA’s website, the Department of Education has rejected

www.Agri-Pulse.com 15 potential members of FFA’s board of directors, and “both FFA and the Department have agreed the relationship as it stands is not working optimally and needs to be addressed via the FFA federal charter.” While the charter is opened, FFA is making a handful of other changes as well, including language “that confirms the integral nature of FFA in the agriculture education classroom.” The changes could also lead to an expanded National FFA Officer Team, growing from its current six-member size. Mark Poeschl, the organization’s CEO, says the changes “allow National FFA to self-govern while maintaining our long relationship with the U.S. Department of Education, and clearly define the important integral nature of agricultural education, FFA leadership development, and experiential learning for the first time.”

SNA urges end to shutdown before school lunch funding lapse. The School Nutrition Association (SNA) is urging Congress and President Donald Trump to reopen the government before a lapse in school meal funding impacts the nation's students. USDA says there is adequate funding available to support school meal programs through the end of March, but SNA says many school meal programs lack reserve funds to continue serving students if federal support is withheld. “School meal programs operate on extremely tight budgets,” SNA President Gay Anderson said in a statement. “School districts — especially those serving America’s neediest students — are simply not equipped to cover meal expenses without federal support.” SNA says 30 million students eat school lunch on a daily basis. Of that 30 million, 22 million students rely on free or reduced-price school lunches. SNA says school lunch programs rely on federal funding to reimburse purchases of food and supplies, fund daily operations, and pay school nutrition staff. Anderson said congressional leaders and the president "must ensure students continue to receive the nutrition they need to succeed in school. SNA urges swift action to resolve the ongoing government shutdown.”

Survey: Consumers don't believe plant-based beverages should be called milk. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s comment period on milk labeling ends this week and new consumer research shows Americans largely disapprove of plant-based competitors being labeled milk. The survey also shows confusion around the nutritional content of milk versus plant-based competitors. The national survey, conducted by global market research firm IPSOS, said only 1-in-5 consumers said plant-based beverages should be labeled milk. About 50 percent of consumers mistakenly perceive that the main ingredient of a plant-based beverage is the plant itself. (The main ingredient of most plant-based beverages is water.) More than one- third of consumers believe plant-based beverages have the same or more protein than dairy milk, when milk has up to eight times more protein than its competitors. The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), which commissioned the study, hopes the data will show FDA that plant- based beverages should not be allowed to have the label milk on its products due to the amount of consumer confusion. “Plant-based beverage brands that sell nutritionally inferior products under the health halo of milk mislead consumers. FDA must enforce its existing regulations,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF. The new data builds on previous surveys that were conducted in August and October of 2018.

Farm Hands on the Potomac…

President Trump has renominated three individuals to key positions at USDA. Mindy Brashears was tapped again to be undersecretary for food safety, Naomi Earp to be assistant secretary of agriculture for civil rights, and Scott Hutchins to be the department’s chief scientist. The trio were originally nominated during the last Congress but the Senate failed to act on the nominations. The president also renominated Kip Tom to be U.S. Representative to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture. www.Agri-Pulse.com 16

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week announced Democratic additions to the House Agriculture Committee, a group that includes a number of freshmen. The rookies include: Cindy Axne of Iowa; Anthony Brindisi and Antonio Delgado of New York; Salud Carbajal, Josh Harder, and TJ Cox of California; Angie Craig of Minnesota; Jahana Hayes of Connecticut; Kim Schrier of Washington; Abigail Spanberger from Virginia, and Jeff Van Drew from New Jersey. Click here to see a full list of the panel’s 26 Democratic members. The committee’s GOP side hasn’t been named yet, but it will have 21 members, three of whom will be new, said ranking member Mike Conaway, R-Texas.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., hired Micah Chambers as his senior legislative assistant to cover his work on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Chambers previously served as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s deputy director of congressional and legislative affairs and before that, as his deputy chief of staff and legislative director. Zinke resigned last month amid several investigations into his behavior in office and into real estate dealings in his home state of Montana.

Smithfield Foods has a new leadership team in place, highlighted by the promotion of Dennis Organ to chief operating officer, a new position. Organ has been with Smithfield for eight years. Brady Stewart, who’s been promoted to executive vice president for U.S. hog production, is in line to take the job of president of U.S. hog production at the end of 2019 when Greg Schmidt retires. Under the new structure, the following members of Smithfield’s leadership team will report to Organ: Jason Richter, executive vice president, U.S. fresh pork; Russ Dokken, executive vice president, U.S. packaged meats; Scott Saunders, executive vice president, U.S. supply chain; and Joe Weber, executive vice president, U.S. growth and emerging businesses. The company also created a chief commercial officer for packaged meats, a position filled by John Pauley, and promoted Keira Lombardo to executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance. The company says the new structure signifies the ultimate realization of “One Smithfield,” an initiative to unify all of Smithfield’s operations, brands and more than 54,000 employees globally under one corporate umbrella.

Two new members have been elected to the American Farm Bureau Federation's board of directors. Arizona Farm Bureau President Stefanie Smallhouse and Wyoming Farm Bureau President Todd Fornstrom will both serve two-year terms representing the organization's western region. Fourteen other state presidents were reelected to two-year terms on the board: Montana's Hans McPherson, Maryland's Chuck Fry, Connecticut's Don Tuller, Tennessee's Jeff Aiken, Louisiana's Ronnie Anderson, Texas' Russell Boening, Georgia's Gerald Long, Mississippi's Mike McCormick, Oklahoma's Rodd Moesel, North Carolina's Larry Wooten, Kansas' Richard Felts, Illinois' Richard Guebert, Iowa's Craig Hill, and Minnesota's Kevin Paap.

Corteva Agriscience named two members to its new government relations staff. Lorraine Gershman previously was VP of regulatory affairs with the National Oilseed Processers Association and James Carstensen was on the staff of former Iowa Congressman David Young.

Jean Henning was appointed interim executive director of the North Dakota Corn Utilization Council. The position became open with the death of Dale Ihry earlier this year. Henning has been serving as the organization’s financial and research director. The council says Henning has had more than 20 years of accounting experience in the manufacturing and service industries. www.Agri-Pulse.com 17

Morgan Beach is settling in as director of government relations for the Pet Food Institute. Previously, Beach was the trade policy manager for the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

Farm Journal CEO Andy Weber selected Rob McClelland as president of the firm’s new Data- Driven Performance Marketing division, where he will oversee Farm Journal's Business Intelligence, Digital Solutions and Content Services units. Previously, McClelland spent 20 years launching technology and services businesses and has held executive leadership positions with FLM Harvest and Adayana.

Sara Fagen has taken a new job after eight years with the consulting firm DDC Public Affairs. She is now CEO at the marketing technology company Deep Root Analytics.

AeroFarms, an indoor vertical-farming company based in Newark, N.J., hired Roger Post as its chief operating officer. The company says Post brings to the job 28 years of experience in manufacturing and supply chain operation including positions with Danone and Kraft Nabisco.

Steve Wenzel of Little Falls, Minn., was elected board chairman of the Center for Rural Policy and Development. Wenzel served in the Minnesota State Legislature from 1972-2001 and was the Minnesota state director of rural development from 2001 to 2009.

Best of luck to Dave Torgerson, executive director of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers and the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, who says he’s retiring at the end of March. Torgerson has served wheat growers in the state for more than 30 years.

Who is 2018’s Potato Man for All Seasons? He’s John Keeling, the executive VP and CEO of the National Potato Council. NPC members nominated Keeling for the award, which was presented recently following the group’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Keeling will retire later this year. NPC also presented its Gold Potato Award for leadership to Justin Dagen, who has been active in the organization since 1995 and was elected president of NPC in 2011.

Best Regards,

Sara Wyant

Editor

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