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03/13/13Return from Barcelona● This past Sunday I arrived back from Barcelona, Spain. There, I had attended the 2013 Global Food Safety Conference, the main annual gathering for GFSI, the Global Food Safety Initiative. About 780 delegates from some 53 countries were present. It was clear to me that this private organization is primarily driven by the commercial needs and requirements of large retailers (for example, Walmart and Carrefour) and major international food companies (for example, Cargill, Coca-Cola, and Tyson Foods). One participant from Nestlé mentioned that his company had 328,000 employees, 461 factories in 83 countries, 10,000 branded products, and dealt with over 12,000 vendors. Given the complexities of today's global food system, GFSI would like to be the entity that the United... |
02/25/13Barcelona● This Sunday I journey to Barcelona, Spain, to attend the Global Food Safety Conference. This annual meeting, to be held on March 6-8, is a project of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), a European-based effort by large international retailers to establish a method of approving various food safety standards. (One of the officers of GFSI is the vice-president of food safety & health at Wal-Mart USA.) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's lead person for food safety policy, Mike Taylor, will be a prominent speaker at the conference in Barcelona, which is expected to attract about 1,000 participants from some sixty countries. ● The Feds are making a statement about the seriousness of food safety enforcement. Last Friday four former... |
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02/20/13Sasquatch● Sequestration is set to go into effect on March 1. I do not see this action being averted, so large automatic budget cuts in most federal programs and services will likely kick in. The only question is how quickly after March 1 before House Republicans and the White House reach a political agreement to revoke this blunt policy instrument. I think the budget solution that is known as sequestration is somewhat like our region's Sasquatch: to be feared, but, in truth, never really to be found. ● President Obama's nominee to lead the Interior Department is a Seattle-based executive, Sally Jewell, president of the out-of-doors outfitter REI. This may pose a problem for former Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire's appointment hopes: having two cabinet... |
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01/29/13Recess● A powerful court decision handed down this past Friday involving Noel Canning and the National Labor Relations Board made page-one headlines in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal over the weekend. The United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia Circuit) decided that an NLRB ruling against Noel Canning was invalid since President Obama had improperly named three of its five members by way of “recess” appointments. This sets up a United States Supreme Court review of the conflicting constitutional powers of our government’s Executive and Legislative branches. What does this have to do with the tree fruit industry? Not much. Except it is interesting to me this high profile case originated with a Yakima, Washington, based beverage firm... |
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01/25/13Potomac Views● The Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology and Foreign Agricultural Service of the House Agriculture Committee is now led by Austin Scott (R/Georgia). This week, the ranking member of the minority party for it was named: Kurt Schrader (D/Oregon). First-term Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D/Washington) also has joined this subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over many issues of interest to tree fruit growers and shippers. ● Congressman Doc Hastings (R/Washington) has assigned some of his legislative policy work on agriculture to Annick C. Miller Rivera. She will work closely on these matters with the office’s legislative director, Kate Woods. ● U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R/Georgia) announced today he will not run for reelection in 2014. With his... |
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01/22/13Hudson Valley Apple Pie● If the apple industry of Washington state would like to address some of its trade access problems with the People’s Republic of China, now is not a bad time. The United States ambassador to China is Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington, while Washington’s new governor, Jay Inslee, is familiar with apple export issues and has a keen interest in trade questions involving China. ● If you don’t think a politician can help his state’s agricultural products, look at yesterday’s luncheon hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. The dessert? Hudson Valley Apple Pie with Sour Cream Ice Cream. The chairman of the committee who decided on the menu? Senator Chuck Schumer (D/New York). ● Changes at USDA’s... |
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01/08/13Drugged Media● Last Friday, the Food and Drug Administration released two of its proposed regulations implementing FSMA, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. They deal with the safety of produce and food facilities. Setting aside the merits of the proposals, what was interesting to me was the choreographed release. FDA successfully controlled the media message by releasing the lengthy documents on a Friday and then holding explanatory conference calls for the media and other interested people on very short notice. The upshot was that there was only laudatory press for FDA’s regulatory actions over the weekend. The national media focus was how government was protecting consumers rather than whether more intrusive federal regulation was actually needed at the orchard level.... |
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01/02/13Potomac Precipice● The fiscal cliff legislation, H.R. 8, that passed the House last night, did so by a vote of 257 to 167. The Pacific Northwest’s delegation was in favor by 11 to 5, with “No” votes being cast by four Democrats (Blumenauer/Oregon, DeFazio/Oregon, Schrader/Oregon, Smith/Washington) and one Republican (Labrador/Idaho). ● Passage of H.R. 8 killed all hope in the 112th Congress for a new five-year Farm Bill. Instead, there will be an extension to September 30, 2013, of most of the provisions of the Farm Bill that had lapsed last fall. I think that with major fiscal budget battles in the offing in 2013, it will be difficult for the produce industry to keep the gains that were achieved in last summer’s Senate-passed version of the Farm Bill. It will... |
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12/17/12Activist Agenda● Over the past few years there has been a minor boom in publishing books critical of conventional systems of agricultural production. I try to read some of these efforts, as they do influence the opinions of urban consumers and often have an impact on public policy debates. Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food (2013) by Frederick Kaufman is one of the better-written examples of this genre. A sample: “ What has gone wrong with food? […] Modern food consciousness has been rooted in the writings of Wendell Berry, Frances Moore Lappé, Marion Nestle, Raj Patel, Michael Pollan, and Eric Schlosser, to name a few. The activist agenda has been set: slow versus fast, small versus big, nutritional versus chemical, organic versus conventional, diversity versus... |
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12/11/12Lame Duck● The 112th Congress continues to lumber towards its eventual close, with a raft of policy decisions still awaiting resolution. Most of my agricultural lobbyist friends in Washington, D.C., are deep into the mode of writing weekly or daily updates to their respective clients with variations on the recurrent theme of “It’s really complex; no one knows whether the Farm Bill or Fiscal Cliff issues will be successfully resolved by Christmas; but here are three or four plausible guesses at eventual outcomes; and be assured I’m working hard for you tracking events as they unfold on The Hill and at the White House.” ● I have decided to initiate a new occasional feature for “The Wind Machine.” It will be about a word or phrase that I view as an... |
