Valentine Time - Feb. 6-12

Retail food page ads emphasized roses and hearts for the week of Feb. 6-12. HyVee featured a dozen roses for $25 (Celebrate togetherness)with Hen House offering a double dozen at $35 (twice the love, twice the roses) while Price Chopper offered a dozen roses for $24.99 and Wal-Mart offered a dozen for $19.96.

Here are some headliner produce ads:

Hen House
California navel oranges - 4 lb bag (2 for $3)

Hen House Inside
Red seedless grapes: $1.99/lb
Vine ripened cantaloupe: 2 for $5
Hot House tomatoes: $1.69/lb
Iceberg lettuce: 99 cents each
Red bell peppers: 5 for $5
Earthbound Farm Certified Organic grape tomatoes: 2 for $5 (10 oz. package)

Price Chopper
Fresh green asparagus $1.49/lb

Price Chopper inside
California large navel oranges: 4 for $1
Nectarines, peaches, plums: $1.99/lb
Roma tomatoes: 99 cents/lb
Large baking tomatoes: 2 lbs for $1
Texas Ruby Red grapefruit: 2 for 99 cents
Earthbound Farm Organic Romaine Hearts: 2 for $5

HyVee
Front page
Golden cantaloupe: $1.88 each
Dole Iceberg lettuce: 77 cents/head

HyVee Inside
Washington pink lady apples: $1.38/lb
Texas Rio Star grapefruit: $5.99/18 lb bag
Mini sweet watermelon: $2.99 each
Monterey whole white mushrooms: $1.28/8 oz package
Red strawberries: $2.99/16 oz. package
Braeburn: 99 cents/Braeburn
Jumbo stem strawberries: $6.99/16 oz. package
HyVee salad blends: 2 for $4



Aldi
Del Monte bananas 37 cents per lb
California navel oranges; $1.69/lb
Blueberries: $1.29/4.4 ounce package
Grapefruit: 29 cents each

Not good enough

The FDA's budget has failed to impress. The teleconference with FDA officials today featured several reporters asking whether the FDA has enough money to overcome its oft-observed shortcomings. Agency officials answered indirectly, stating that momentum was clearly preserved in the fiscal year 2009 budget to make food safety gains despite the lean dollars. Here is the take from the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, who argue for greater public funding and no new "food taxes" to pay for food safety oversight:

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) issued the following statement by Cal Dooley, GMA president and CEO, in response to President Bush’s 2009 FDA food safety budget proposal:

“The food industry has made significant new investments in food safety to meet the challenges of today’s evolving global market and we are doing our part to ensure consumers have full confidence in the safety of the foods they buy. Now, Congress must make a commensurate investment in FDA's food-related programs so that the FDA has the resources it needs to fulfill its critical food safety mission. “The President's proposal to increase FDA food-related spending by $32 million does little more than cover the cost of inflation and falls short of what is ultimately needed to make certain FDA has the tools it needs to get the job done. However, we are confident that Congress will provide the necessary resources to rebuild FDA's scientific capacity. “America enjoys the world's safest food supply, but rising imports and changing consumer preferences pose new challenges for the food industry and for the FDA. Like national defense, highways and bridges, food safety is a benefit every American has a right to expect. We urge the Administration and Congress to increase FDA funding from general revenue and reject any new food taxes - especially at a time of economic uncertainty.”

What we are in for...

I saw a link to this news release from the Food Research and Action Center newsletter. The Center for Economic and Policy Research is from what I can tell is a socially active think tank, and they have issued a study that examines the impact of a potential recession on the U.S. economy. From the news release about the report:

Along with a sharp rise in unemployment, a recession in 2008 would eventually result in 4.7 to 10.4 million more men, women, and children living in poverty, at least 4.2 million people losing health-insurance coverage, and a drop in the inflation-adjusted median family income of between $2,000 and $3,700 per year. The estimated effects would extend as far as 2010 or 2011, depending on the severity of the downturn.
“For financial markets and employers recessions are fairly short-term events,” noted Schmitt. “For labor markets and workers, though, recessions have historically been long and painful.”
The report projects the likely effects of a recession in 2008 based on the experience of the last three recessions --the severe recession of the early 1980s, and the mild-to-moderate recessions of the early 1990s and the early 2000s.
If the experience of the last three recessions holds for the next economic downturn, the labor-market impacts would last far longer --three or four years-- than the formal recession itself, which would likely last six to 24 months.
"If our past experience of recessions repeats itself, we may well still be feeling the effects of a recession as we enter the presidential election cycle for 2012," said Schmitt.


TK: Here is the link to the pdf of the full 13-page report One thing is clear - we can't afford a severe recession. From the report:

A severe recession, along the lines of the early 1980s, would have far worse effects. The unemployment rate would likely increase to 8.4 percent, increasing the pool of unemployed by over 5.8 million workers. The economy would lose a total of 4.6 million jobs. The inflation-adjusted income of the typical family would fall almost $3,750 per year, and the number of Americans living in poverty would rise by 10.4 million. Again, racial minorities would bear a disproportionate share of the economic hardships. Blacks, for example, would account for 1.3 million of the total 5.8 million worker increase in unemployment. If the historical pattern repeats itself, the labor market would not likely begin to recover until 2011.

Schafer: USDA budget summary

Here are some highlights from Agriculture Secretary Schafer's summary of the White House fiscal year 2009 agriculture budget. Note the large proportion of spending that is mandatory as opposed to discretionary funding and the big drop in farm program payments this year:

Total USDA expenditures are estimated at $95 billion in FY 2009, which is approximately the same level as FY 2008. Roughly 76 percent of expenditures, or $72 billion in 2009, will be for mandatory programs that provide services required by law, which include many of the nutrition assistance, commodity, export promotion and conservation programs.

USDA's discretionary programs account for the remaining 24 percent of expenditures, or $23 billion in 2009. Discretionary programs include the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program; rural development loans and grants; research and education; soil and water conservation technical assistance; management of National Forests and domestic marketing assistance.

In January 2007, the Administrationnnounced a comprehensive set of farm bill proposals for strengthening the farm economy and rural America. These proposals represent a reform-minded, fiscally responsible approach to supporting America's farmers and ranchers. The President's 2009 budget is based on the provisions of the 2002 farm bill and reflects the Administration's proposals for changes. Enactment of a farm bill will affect some of the estimates in the 2009 budget.

TK: The White House still pines for its own farm bill - but will it get what it wants?


Highlights....

Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative. The budget proposes $264 million for on-going programs to support the multi-agency Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative. The 2009 budget represents an $81 million increase for USDA to continue improving the safety and security of America's food supply and agriculture. Funding increases include: $14 million to enhance research related to protecting the Nation's food supplies; $20 million for research to improve animal vaccines, diagnostic tests, and other efforts; and $47 million to enhance surveillance and monitoring of pest and disease threats, strengthen response capabilities, improve animal identification, and other efforts.

Food Safety. The budget requests a record funding level of $1.1 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service. This funding will ensure that the demand for inspection is met and will allow us to build on our success in improving the safety of the food supply. USDA has been working to strengthen the scientific basis of meat, poultry and egg products inspection so the risk of exposure to any food contaminant will be even less than it is now. This includes continuing the Department's effort to increase the speed with which we can detect and respond to outbreaks of foodborne illness.

Farm Support Programs. The Department's farm support programs receive mandatory funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). Under current law, CCC expenditures are projected to decline from $20.2 billion in 2005 and 2006 to $10.5 billion in 2009 under current law. The decline in net outlays since 2006 has been the result of higher commodity prices due to the growth in ethanol production, poor weather conditions around the world, rising market demand in Asia, and other factors. In 2007, the Administration submitted a comprehensive set of fiscally responsible farm bill proposals for strengthening the farm economy. The Administration's proposals would save about $600 million in commodity program outlays in 2009 compared to projected costs under current law.


Domestic Nutrition Assistance Participation and Funding. The budget provides resources for increased participation and food costs in USDA's three major nutrition assistance programs: Food Stamps, Child Nutrition and WIC, with the nutrition assistance budget totaling $62 billion. Food Stamp participation is projected to increase 200,000 from an average of 27.8 million in 2008 to about 28 million in 2009. The maximum Food Stamp allotment will increase by approximately 5 percent. The budget of $40.2 billion includes resources to fully fund estimated Food Stamp participation. The budget also provides a $3 billion contingency fund if actual costs exceed the estimated level. School Lunch participation is estimated to reach 32.1 million children each day. The budget provides nearly $600 million in increases in Child Nutrition Programs to accommodate program needs for a total budget of $15.3 billion. The budget proposes $6.3 billion to support an average of 8.6 million WIC participants per month, up from 8.5 million in 2008.
dget includes nearly $15 billion for rural development programs. This level of funding supports the Administration's policy to maintain rental assistance for 230,000 low-income households that reside in USDA financed multi-family housing. An estimated 43,000 rural homeownership opportunities would be generated by $4.8 billion in loan guarantees. Funding for USDA's other key loan, loan guarantee and grant programs includes $1.6 billion for the water and waste disposal program, $4.1 billion for electric loans, $690 million for the telecommunication program, $298 million for the broadband access loan program, $512 million for the community programs, and $700 million for the business and industry program.

Obesity - No biggie?

Debating the health risks of obesity was the name of the story that suggested some researchers - presumably ample in stature - don't think obesity is a big deal. From the AP story:

Is the health risk from obesity being exaggerated?

Most medical experts would say no. But a provocative minority says yes.

This week, two prominent skeptics match wits with two obesity experts in a heated debate in the British Medical Journal.

Patrick Basham, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, and John Luik are both health policy experts at the conservative Democracy Institute. They argue that there's a lot less to the obesity epidemic than meets the eye.

TK: Wait a sec.; Democracy Institute - funded by who, exactly.... Here is a link to
American Democracy Institute.

Robert Jeffery, a professor at the University of Minnesota, and Nancy Sherwood, a researcher at HealthPartners, say that the skeptics are simply denying the obvious.

Who says yes?

Pointing to increased life expectancy and reductions in heart disease in recent years, Patrick Basham and John Luik, coauthors of “Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade,” say scientists haven't proved obesity carries major health risks.

Opening shot:

“Media claims about an epidemic ... often exceed the scientific evidence and mistakenly suggest an unjustified degree of certainty.”

What's normal?

Research in various countries “suggests that as populations grow healthier, prosperous, and long lived they gain in height and weight.”

Shouldn't we be worried?'

The data are “highly equivocal in their support for claims of an epidemic.” The average weight gain in the U.S. in the past 42 years has been about 20 pounds, or a half-pound a year. From 1999 to 2002, “there were no significant changes in the prevalence of overweight or obesity.”

Isn't obesity deadly?

The evidence is not as strong as you might think. In 1997, the National Institutes of Health found that thin men had the same risk of dying prematurely as overweight men. Any increase in risk is relatively small compared to, say, smoking. “Despite the supposedly abnormal levels of overweight and obesity, life expectancy continues to increase,” the two wrote in the British Medical Journal.

Doesn't obesity make us sicker?

There's reason for skepticism. The death rates from heart disease and stroke have been falling, not rising. There's no direct evidence that excess fat causes diabetes. “We argue ... that obesity is a symptom of Type 2 diabetes, rather than a cause,” said Luik in an e-mail interview. “For instance, changes in physical activity and diet reduce diabetes risk even without loss of weight. How does this support a cause and effect relationship?”

Bottom line?

Health advocates have resorted to “deliberate exaggeration or, indeed, misrepresentation of the risks” of obesity.

Who says no?

Evidence of serious health problems caused or accelerated by obesity is overwhelming, say Robert Jeffery of the University of Minnesota and Nancy Sherwood of HealthPartners Research Foundation. They accuse Luik and Basham of cherry-picking data and ignoring the body of research.

Opening shot:

“The fact that obesity is developing rapidly in many parts of the globe is incontrovertible,” they write in the British Medical Journal.

How much weight have we gained?

Obesity rates have tripled in the last two to three decades in many countries, including ours. Thirty years ago, 5 to 7 percent of U.S. kids were obese; by 2003-2004, it was 17 to 19 percent.

Why should we be worried?

“The adverse effects of obesity on health are well established,” including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. “We are facing the potential for a major health crisis.” Some predict it will result in a decline in life expectancy in a few decades.

What's the biggest danger?

Diabetes. Weight gain is “strongly associated” with diabetes, which is rising dramatically. Yes, people can lower their risk without losing weight, says Sherwood, “but you'd still do much better if you lost weight.”

Bottom line?

The skeptics cherry-pick their evidence, but the overall trend is clear. That's no exaggeration, said Sherwood. “What would be gained by that?”

TK: To suggest that obesity is a conspiracy concocted to achieve some public policy outcome is giving permission to all of us overweight Americans to ignore our best instincts and take better care of ourselves. We have enough trouble as it is doing the right thing, without some think tank hired gun throwing cold water on our will to eat better and exercise more.

White House Budget Fiscal Year 2009

Here is the link to the White House budget "Fact Sheet" for fiscal year 2009. No mention of FDA and food safety in the "fact sheet," by the way. A press conference at 1 pm will feature FDA officials talking about their fy 2009 budget, so we will have some coverage of that.

Here is a link to a more detailed break down of the fiscal year 2009 budget.

Here is the breakdown for USDA.
Here is the link for Health and Human Services/FDA.
Here is the link to Homeland Security.
Here is a helpful summary table for all agencies.

Fruitification

I received this very offbeat email today, and I share it with you only because it is so odd. Here it is:

Fruits on Public Areas to Curb Spreading Obesity

Fruits are low in calories and highly nutritional already grown on public places at increasing ratios to face obesity trends. Tree climbing also can be a body exercise for kids harvesting fruits.Fruits have around four times more water content than cookies and easily satisfy hunger taking less energy. Refrigerators full of fruits easily beat junkies. In Brazil we are increasing fruit trees in the public areas changing the country to a large tropical orchard. Then, sidewalks, squares, parks, roadsides will be plenty of free fruits bearing appropriate food to fight spreading obesity. Free fruits are protected from the power of the economic system pursuing profitability. Other countries are invited to join us on a fight against global obesity toward a Public Fructification. Brazil intends to become a developed country without common problems of a superpower.

Planting fruit trees is easy!.

http://revver.com/watch/225528

http://revver.com/watch/529604

Carnivores?

http://revver.com/watch/218695

Elson Silva, PhD

http://frutificacaopublica.blogspot.com/

TK: Good luck with the concept in Fargo, but I admire the passion.

Giants Stun Patriots in Super Bowl, 17-14

Manning eats NY grown apples.

Agenda item

Hope you find benefit from the new presentation of the Fresh Talk calendar at the bottom of the blog. I changed the appearance to an easier to read "agenda" style. Also, make sure you keep sending me news of industry events you would like to see referenced on the calendar. Send calendar items to tkarst@thepacker.com.

Home grown problems and what to do

This article published in USA Today is worth noting. Called "Home Grown Problems Threaten U.S. Food Safety," the article mentions the paradox that the food safety system is increasingly concentrated, complex and fragmented. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Fresh produce now the focus

"One of the big issues of the day is fresh produce," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. "Produce is where the action has been in the last few years, and there are a lot of reasons for it. One is a greater interest by consumers in eating fresh foods uncooked, and cooking serves a very important purpose of killing harmful bacteria."

"We've been consuming more produce, which is a good thing from a nutritional standpoint," he added. "But along with that, there have been issues with harmful microbes being present."

The cause of the E. coli outbreak in spinach that swept the nation in 2006 was never determined. However, the episode provided a glimpse into what can and does go wrong.

Increasingly today, produce is grown in fields close to cattle and, sometimes, wild animals. The E. coli spinach contamination could have come from cattle or boar feces, or from contaminated irrigation systems, federal officials concluded.

The widening of E. coli cases from protein products to fresh fruits and vegetables is related to "the fact that U.S. agricultural commodities tend to be grown in areas that have cattle, which are reservoirs for bacteria," explained Bruce Clark, a partner in the Seattle law firm of Marler Clark, which represents victims of food poisoning. "As soon as you have manure on the ground, and you have birds and wild animals and water, you have all these vectors for transferring bacteria to fresh fruits and vegetables."

And, most of the time, Clark added, produce is not subjected to the "kill step" (usually cooking), which would eliminate the pathogens. In fact, washing may not even help because of the ability of the organisms to cling to food surfaces.

Does bigger equal safer?

The food safety issue is inescapably linked to the ongoing revolution in U.S. agriculture, with the emergence of mega-farms, mega-distribution centers and mega-transporters.

"Once you start to have larger and larger units and these bigger and bigger companies, any contamination incident automatically gets much worse by orders of magnitude," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union. "Before, it was just bad produce coming from one farm."

The problems are particularly pronounced in California, often called the nation's "salad bowl."

"Now we have this whole new question mark about leafy produce and the whole ecological question out there as we grow our leafy greens in the same area where more and more intensively we are producing milk," the CDC's Tauxe said. "Wisconsin used to be the biggest dairy state, and California was where we grew produce. Now California is both. And there's also wine production in California, so you have vineyards and cattle and lettuce patches competing for the same land and water. Agriculture is really sort of bumping into each other."

And problems can also arise after the produce has left the field. Today, it's more likely that one huge agri-business ships its product to processors who bag it under different labels and then distribute it to every state in the union.

The whole food production system has grown increasingly concentrated, overwhelmingly complex, and — paradoxically — at times fragmented.

TK: Look for the drumbeat to continue for Congress to address food safety this year. Here is an editorial from The New York Times on the issue, and here is a letter from Cal Dooley of the Grocery Manufacturers Association on the issue to the NYT.