The Center for Food Safety (CFS) submitted comments strongly criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) disappointing failure to implement a 2010 settlement agreement it reached with environmental groups and called on the agency not to capitulate to industry pressure and weaken its much needed action. CFS’s comments were also joined by Friends of the Earth.

In 2010, EPA agreed to conduct an inventory and profile the largest animal factories by requiring reporting of very basic operational information such as geographic location, ownership, quantity of manure produced, and use of manure.  Despite widespread animal factory farming in the U.S., EPA never previously tracked this data, and thus has no understanding of the scope of the manure problem that is polluting our nation’s waters and placing our food supply at risk.

EPA recognized years ago that it has absolutely no handle on the billions of gallons of manure annually entering the nation’s waters and food supplies from U.S. animal factories.  A 2008 Government Accounting Office report entitled “EPA Needs More Information and a Clearly Defined Strategy” sharply criticized the agency’s lack of action.  However, EPA’s late 2011 draft rule only required reporting of less than half of the information required by the agreement, without explanation.  Under the EPA proposal, the animal factory industry would be allowed to continue mismanagement of manure and would leave to local communities the burden of enforcing environmental laws.

“EPA’s proposal is a misguided, head-in-the-sand approach to an issue that the government has recognized as a significant problem for many years,” said Elisabeth Holmes, CFS Staff Attorney.  “EPA’s draft rule is contrary to the Court Settlement, the GAO Report, the Pew Commission recommendations, as well as EPA’s overarching duty to protect the public and the environment.”

Most of the dairy, beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and egg products sold in U.S. grocery stores – and served at institutional facilities such as schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons – comes from animal factories.  Animal factories raise hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of animals destined for human consumption in large-scale, high-density confinements and as a result produce large quantities of meat, dairy or egg products at a low economic cost.  Animal factories also produce too much manure to fertilize their own fields, and the manure is so laden with pharmaceutical products, animal feed additives and heavy metals that it can actually kill crops instead of promoting soil fertility and moisture.  Animal factories frequently disregard restrictions on applying manure as a fertilizer so over-applications and mis-applications result in manure, pharmaceutical products and additives escaping and flowing into drinking water supplies and rivers.  Manure management is a major operational concern and a constant source of water pollution for every animal factory.  Annually, a single animal factory can produce 1.6 million tons of waste, or more than 1.5 times the sanitary waste produced by the 1.5 million residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  One cow can produce 20 times the amount of waste as a single human.  Animal factories store millions of gallons of manure usually in “lagoons”, which are susceptible to breakage and leakage.

The federal government claims that approximately 20,000 animal factories exist in the U.S., but other data suggests there may be as many as 238,000 animal feeding operations.  Without an inventory and data tracking system the EPA cannot estimate the number of animal factories in the country or their environmental effects.

Under the current Clean Water Act permitting structure, EPA only requires certain animal factories to report limited information.  The information reported for permitting purposes does not correspond to that required by the 2010 agreement, which was designed specifically to begin meaningfully assessing the scope of the nationwide pollution problem.

“The Center for Food Safety is just as concerned with security issues facing our nation’s food supply as farmers,” said Holmes.  “As the GAO Report and Pew Commission Report on Industrial Animal Farm Production demonstrate, this problem is an immediate threat to our waters, our health, and our food supply.  EPA must require animal factories to report basic operational information that other industries have had to declare for decades, and EPA must make this information available to the public.”

EPA has indicated it will respond to comments on its proposal by July 13, 2012.

Read CFS’s Comments

Read the GAO Report

Read the Pew Report

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The Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. More information can be found at www.centerforfoodsafety.org

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) pushed back today against longtime biotech crop supporter, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, over its announcement that it has invested nearly $2 billion in a campaign to fund the development of genetically engineered (GE) crops in an attempt to address global hunger.  The Gates Foundation has been widely criticized by food security and public interest groups for promoting GE crops in developing countries rather than investing in organic and sustainable local models of agriculture.

“The biotech industry has exploited the image of the world’s poor and hungry to advance a form of agriculture that is expensive, input-intensive, and of little or no relevance to developing country farmers,” said Andrew Kimbrell Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety.  “It’s long past time that the Gates Foundation redirect its investments in biotech companies like Monsanto, and its funding of dead-end GE crop projects, to promote agroecological techniques with a proven record of increasing food production in developing countries.”

Since their introduction in the mid-90s, developers of GE crops have claimed their crops will reduce agriculture’s environmental footprint, provide benefits to farmers and meet the needs of a hungry planet.  Yet across the board GE crops have failed to deliver results.  GE crops have remained an industrial tool dependent upon costly inputs, such as patented seeds and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, that farmers in the most food insecure regions can ill-afford.  For instance, 5 out of every 6 acres of GE crops worldwide are herbicide-resistant varieties designed explicitly to increase dependence on expensive herbicides, and this remains the major R&D focus of the industry.[i]

In contrast, the emerging consensus of international development experts is that real solutions to addressing global hunger must be inexpensive, low-input and utilize local/regional resources as much as possible[ii] – all areas where GE crops fail to deliver.  For instance, the UN and World Bank’s 2008 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which engaged some 400 experts from multiple disciplines, concluded that biotech crops have very little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger.[iii]  Instead, IAASTD recommended support for agroecological approaches and food sovereignty.

In 1998, African scientists at a United Nations conference strongly objected to Monsanto’s promotional GE campaign that used photos of starving African children under the headline “Let the Harvest Begin.” The scientists, who represented many of the nations affected by poverty and hunger, said gene technologies would undermine the nations’ capacities to feed themselves by destroying established diversity, local knowledge and sustainable agricultural systems.^[iv] 

Developing nations also object to seed patents, which give biotech firms the power to criminalize the age-old practice of seed-saving as “patent infringement.”  Thousands of U.S. farmers have been forced to pay Monsanto tens of millions of dollars in damages for the “crime” of saving seed.[v]  Loss of the right to save seed through the introduction of patented GE crops could prove disastrous for the 1.4 billion farmers in developing nations who depend on farm-saved seed.[vi]

It is increasingly understood that poverty, inadequate access to land and food, and unfair trade policies are the major causes of hunger in the world, rather than absolute shortage of food.  Additional factors contributing to food insecurity include declining investments in infrastructure (storage facilities, roads to markets) and increased diversion of food crops for biofuels and animal feed.  The UN World Food Program notes many farmers in developing countries cannot afford seed or other materials for crop production,[vii] so GE seeds, which cost twice to over six times the price of conventional seed, are even less affordable.

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The Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. More information can be found at www.centerforfoodsafety.org

While we are disappointed that AB 88 failed today, we are encouraged by the level of support the bill received in a tough Committee. The bill’s failure in Committee came despite clear consumer demand for labeling of GE fish. As Huffman told TakePart today, “If we had put this bill before the people of California, it would have passed overwhelmingly.”

Thank you all for your tremendous support for this bill! Had it not been for our CFS True Food Network members emailing and calling Committee members, the bill would not have received the support it did. Thank you!

For more information on GE fish, visit CFS’s campaign website http://www.ge-fish.org

For information on federal bills:
The U.S. Senate: S. 230 (ban) and S. 229 (mandatory labeling)
The U.S. House: H.R. 521 (ban) and H.R. 520 (mandatory labeling)

Exposure to 2,4-D has been linked to major health problems that include cancer (especially non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma), lowered sperm counts, liver disease and Parkinson’s disease.  A growing body of evidence from laboratory studies show that 2,4-D causes endocrine disruption, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity and immunosuppression.  Further, industry’s own tests show that 2,4-D is contaminated with dioxins, a group of highly toxic chemical compounds that bioaccumulate, so even a minute amount can accumulate as it goes up the food chain, causing dangerous levels of exposure.  Dioxins in Agent Orange have been linked to many diseases, including birth defects in children of exposed parents; according to EPA, 2,4-D is the seventh largest source of dioxins in the U.S.

Read More and TAKE ACTION! >>>

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) applauds the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today for pre-releasing its long awaited prohibition on the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs in food-producing animals.  Cephalosporin drugs are an essential tool in both human and animal medicine but mounting evidence has linked extra-label use of these drugs to the development and spread of cephalosporin-resistant organisms.

“This is a critical win for consumers, food safety advocates and the medical community,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. “But it’s high time that FDA wakes up to the dangers that non-therapeutic uses of all antibiotics pose to our health and the safety of our food supply,” Kimbrell said.

Cephalosporins are a vitally important class of antibiotics used most often in the treatment of serious Salmonella infections but also used to treat many other serious infections.  The announcement today comes more than three years after the FDA first published an order prohibiting for the extra-label uses in food-producing animals of these drugs.  That order was then withdrawn by the FDA before it could go into effect, citing the need for additional review of the public comments it received.

In its notice today, FDA said that it plans to publish the Final Rule in the Federal Register on Friday announcing the prohibition of the extra-label use of cephalosporin drugs in food-producing animals.  The Final Rule will go into effect 90 days from being published in the Federal Register and FDA will accept public comments for 60 days following the Federal Register notice.  FDA’s Final Rule will continue to allow approved label uses of these drugs for food producing animals as long as they are done in a safe and effective manner.

“The extra-label ban is just the first of many actions that FDA must make in order to better protect the public from the dangers of antibiotic-resistance,” said Paige Tomaselli, Staff Attorney for the Center.  “Losing the effectiveness of critically important antibiotics as a result of our own misuse would be a catastrophic loss for modern medicine,” added Tomaselli.

In August 2010, more than 180,000 citizens sent letters to the FDA responding to the agency’s request for comments on rules governing the judicious use of antibiotics on industrial farms.   Those letters joined dozens of scientific experts and public interest organizations calling on FDA to tighten oversight and curtail misuse and overuse of antibiotics on industrial farms.  In its comments to the FDA, CFS thanked FDA for initiating discussion on the critical issue but expressed deep concern that its measures would not be voluntarily implemented and that regulation mandating immediate action is required instead. Further, in the absence of a clear timeline and strict goals, CFS stressed that the agency’s approach lacked the urgency that this critical issue demands.

Yesterday afternoon a coalition of 11 food safety, environmental, consumer and fisheries organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) calling for a halt to its approval of a genetically engineered (GE) salmon after learning that the company’s – AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. – research site was contaminated with a new strain of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), the deadly fish flu that is devastating fish stocks around the world.

“This new information calls into question the reliability of AquaBounty’s data and the validity of its claims that their fish are safe for the environment” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The FDA must respond appropriately and conduct their own environmental impact statement that looks at a broad range of environmental risks from these genetically engineered salmon, including the risk of spreading diseases such as ISA and antibiotic use for other diseases.”

AquaBounty has claimed that the company’s process for raising GE fish is safer than traditional aquaculture.  However, documents that were revealed last week indicate that their production site was found by Canadian Authorities to have been contaminated in Nov. 2009.  This information was hidden from the public and potentially FDA and other Federal agencies consulting on the GE salmon application.  ISA is a deadly disease and is classified as a ‘Listed’ disease by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) – alongside diseases such as Anthrax, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Foot and mouth disease, rabies, sheep pox, swine fever, avian influenza, West Nile fever, scrapie, fowl cholera, bovine tuberculosis and myxomatosis.

“Infectious Salmon Anaemia threatens wild fisheries around the world and the communities whose livelihood depend on those fish” said Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth US. “ISA infections in Chile cost the industry around two billion dollars. A similar infection in Canada and the U.S. could be the last blow to wild Atlantic salmon populations and bring a collapse in wild salmon fisheries.”

The December 19 letter urged FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to release all health data on AquaBounty’s GE salmon and to suspend any approval actions until all the data is disclosed and the public has an opportunity to review the data. Additionally, the coalition asked the FDA to conduct a full environmental impact statement that includes review of the effect of fish diseases, like ISA, on wild fish populations that might come into contact with the AquaBounty fish.  Currently, the FDA has only performed a less comprehensive environmental risk assessment.

This news comes on the heels of a Senate subcommittee hearing held last Thursday on the environmental risks of GE fish, the first hearing of its kind in Congress.

The Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing at 10:30 AM today to discuss the environmental risks of genetically engineered (GE) fish, the first hearing of its kind in Congress.

“Members of Congress have once again raised the stakes in the GE fish debate on Capitol Hill,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety.  “FDA can no longer continue to ignore the environmental risks that GE fish pose.”

Subcommittee Chairman Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), a strong advocate for the responsible management of wild stocks has been a vocal critic of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) failure to adequately address the environmental risks posed by GE fish, most notably the current review of the AquAdvantage Salmon, produced by AquaBounty Technologies, Inc.  If approved, the GE salmon would be the first GE animal approved for human consumption by the FDA.  The company has also developed a genetically engineered trout and tilapia.

Today’s hearing will examine the risks that GE fish pose to wild fish stocks, fisheries, and aquatic ecosystems should these fish escape into wild habitats, including the spread of parasites and disease, increased competition for food and mates and the potential genetic contamination of wild stocks.  Similar concerns have been raised a number of times by Members of Congress, FDA’s Advisory Committee and the scientific community.

“FDA has failed to ask the tough questions about escapes, disease transfer and the full environmental impacts of GE fish,” said Colin O’Neil, Regulatory Policy Analyst for the Center for Food Safety.  “By assuming that escapes won’t happen, FDA is putting our marine ecosystems, our health and our fisheries in harm’s way.”

In a recently released study, Canadian researchers concluded that if GE Atlantic salmon were to escape from captivity they could succeed in breeding and passing their genes into the wild.[i]  Another recent study focuses on developing risk assessment approaches that incorporate the genetic backgrounds and environmental conditions that are likely factors in a real escape of GE fish.[ii]  Yet, data on the GE salmon provided by the company notes that the fish studied were raised at Prince Edward Island, while the actual planned location to raise the fish is in Panama – something FDA properly criticized AquaBounty for.

Earlier this summer, 93 environmental, consumer, health, and animal welfare organizations, along with fishing groups and associations and food companies and businesses, celebrated the passage of the Young-Woolsey amendment that was included in the House-passed Agriculture Appropriations Act of 2012 that would bar the FDA from using funds in the 2012 fiscal year to approve GE salmon.  The Senate measure sponsored by Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) did not reach a vote.

The Subcommittee hearing comes just three months after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it had awarded a $494,162 grant to AquaBounty to research technologies that would render fish sterile to decrease the risk of gene flow from transgenic tilapia.

“Today’s hearing further highlights the scientific unknowns at play and makes you look back at the USDA grant and why the USDA is in the business of funding this company to research something it has already assured the FDA it can do,” added O’Neil.

Citing risk to the environment, consumer backlash and the potential for economic impact, a number of fishing associations as well as salmon farming companies have already voiced their opposition to the use of transgenic salmon including Marine Harvest ASA, the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, International Salmon Farmers Association, the Irish Salmon Growers Association, the New Brunswick Salmon Growers’ Association, Alaska Trollers Association, the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, the Massachusetts Fishermen Partnership, Inc., Cooke Aquaculture, Inc., Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance, Scottish Salmon Producers Organization, California Fisheries Network, SalmonAid, North Atlantic Marine Alliance, the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance, and many others.

Click here to watch the hearing (archived version)

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The Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS currently represents nearly 200,000 members across the nation. To learn more, please visit: www.ge-fish.org

After an intensive public trial covering a range of human rights violations, jurors issued a scathing verdict to the six largest pesticide and biotechnology corporations, urging governments, especially the US, Switzerland and Germany, to take action to prevent further harms.

“The trial shed light on widespread and systematic human rights violations by the world’s six largest pesticide corporations,” said Kathryn Gilje, co-director of Pesticide Action Network North America, and who reported live from the trial. “The existing justice system has failed to provide adequate protections for our health, our food and farmers’ livelihoods. Pesticide corporations will continue to go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for their human rights violations until we create a strong system of accountability.”

The verdict was handed down to the six largest pesticide corporations – Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and Dupont – collectively known as the “Big 6”, for their human rights violations, including internationally recognized rights to life, livelihood and health. The agrichemical industry is valued at over $42 billion and operates with impunity while over 355,000 people die from pesticide poisoning each year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill. In addition, pesticide corporations have put livelihoods and jobs in jeopardy, including, farmers, beekeepers and lobstermen.

“Pesticide corporations have gotten away with human rights violations for far too long,” said Paige Tomaselli, staff attorney from the Center for Food Safety, and a prosecutor at the trial. “We have brought them to this international court to shine a spotlight on their brazen violations of rights to live, health and livelihood.”

Over the past few days, witnesses from across the globe, including the United States, shared their stories of the harms of pesticides and biotechnology. Their stories, available on YouTube, in addition to a 230-page legal indictment, document violations of human rights to life, health and livelihood.

“The right to care for and work the land is basic and fundamental,” said David Runyon, a 900-acre Indiana farmer. “Monsanto and Co. have undermined my ability to provide for my family and prosper as a farmer. And the Big 6 have overstepped any system of justice and need to be held to account for their activities.”

Runyon is one of over fifteen witnesses to testify at the trial in Bangalore, India. He and his wife Dawn almost lost the family farm when pesticide and genetic engineering giant Monsanto found contamination of seeds on their property. The company threatened to sue Runyon unless he paid them for genetically modified seeds, seeds that had been carried by the wind from a neighboring farm.

The verdict also names three particular nations as culpable alongside the corporations. Their preliminary findings state, “The United States, Switzerland and Germany [home states for the pesticide corporations] have failed to comply with their internationally accepted responsibility to promote and protect human rights…The three States, where six corporations are registered and headquartered, have failed to adequately regulate, monitor and discipline these entities by national laws and policy.”

The trial began on the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, in which over 20,000 people have died after an explosion at a Dow Chemical facility. And it concluded before International Human Rights Day. The trial was hosted by the Pesticide Action Network International, a network of over 600 participating nongovernmental organizations, institutions, and individuals in over 90 countries working to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives.

The Permanent People’s Tribunal was founded in Italy in 1979 as a people’s court to raise awareness of massive human rights violations in the absence of another international justice system. The PPT draws its authority from the people while remaining rooted in the rigors of a conventional court format. Citing relevant international human rights laws, precedents and documents such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights in its findings, the Tribunal examines and passes judgment on complaints of human rights violations brought by victims and their representative groups.

A summary of the trial, including summaries of cases against the Big 6, can be found at www.panna.org/PPT.

Today, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a petition calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to vastly reduce the legally permissible level of arsenic in meat. Pharmaceutical companies produce and sell three arsenic compounds which are added to animal feed, despite serious risks to public health.

“Arsenic’s a poison that causes cancer, among other harm,” said physician David Wallinga, M.D. of IATP. “The FDA can’t seriously uphold its public health mission while allowing residues of arsenic in the meat our children and families eat. That’s why we’ve submitted this petition.”

In 1944, 3-Nitro became the first arsenic-containing product approved by the FDA for use in food animals. On June 8, 2011 the FDA announced that Pfizer had voluntarily agreed to stop selling 3-Nitro, also known as roxarsone, of which it is the sole producer. FDA sought the voluntary ban based on its own study that detected inorganic arsenic in the livers of chickens treated with 3-Nitro, and not in the untreated chickens. Inorganic arsenic is a known carcinogen.

Before the FDA action, IATP had estimated in its 2006 report, Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat, that more than 70 percent of all U.S. chickens raised for meat are fed arsenic. The European Union has never approved the use of arsenicals in animal feed, acknowledging the lack of science supporting health or safety standards for such use. U.S. organic producers do not use 3-Nitro.

“Allowing arsenic residues in animal feed additives is irresponsible and dangerous,” said the Center for Food Safety’s Paige Tomaselli. “FDA’s own research shows that when arsenic is added to animal feeds, it ends up as carcinogenic residues in meat and other tissues. It’s time for FDA to change the tolerance for these drugs to reflect what the agency knows to be true. The tolerances must be reduced.”

While IATP and CFS applaud Pfizer’s agreement to stop selling 3-Nitro in the U.S., Pfizer has provided no indication it will stop marketing 3-Nitro in as many as 11 other countries in which it has been sold, or that it will stop selling other FDA-approved arsenic feed additives such as carbarsone, nitarsone or arsanilic acid. See online table for full list.

In announcing the Pfizer ban, FDA stressed that it does not think the increased arsenic in meat poses a human health threat. Inorganic arsenic, however, is known to cause multiple types of cancer in humans, and the science suggests that exposure in food or elsewhere will increase risk of developing those cancers across the population. In December 2009, IATP and CFS also submitted a citizen’s petition to the FDA seeking withdrawal of its approval of roxarsone, nitarsone, carbarsone and arsanilic acid in animal feed. FDA has made no decision on that citizen’s petition. Read the 2009 full petition.

Read IATP’s 2006 report on arsenic in poultry: Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat.

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The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems. www.iatp.org.

The Center for Food Safety is a national nonprofit membership organization, founded in 1997, that works to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. www.centerforfoodsafety.org.