They weren’t alone. According to AAA, international trips are on the rise this year —up more than 200 percent compared to 2022.

“Travelers are making up for lost time and willing to spend more to see the world,” said Paula Twidale, Senior Vice President of Travel at AAA.

But that doesn’t mean that caution should be thrown to the wind especially when it comes to food safety. Quite the opposite. Travelers actually need to be diligent about avoiding foods and drinks that could make them sick and ruin their overseas vacation.

Unfortunately, this young couple weren’t diligent enough. They were thrilled to be able to sample and dine on foods they didn’t ordinarily eat at home. After all, wasn’t that one of the best parts of travel — eating food grown in foreign countries and prepared by chefs in fancy restaurants or quaint sidewalk cafes. Or even buying interesting foods from sidewalk vendors or outdoor markets. 

Unfortunately, they paid the price for that trust. After only several days, they came down with diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal cramps. This left therm trapped in their hotel room. Seeing all of the sights of the city they were visiting, enjoying its night life, or even dining out weren’t in the cards for them. At least not for several days.

“Montezuma’s revenge,” said the doctor they went to, explaining that according to the Centers for Disease Control, traveler’s diarrhea affects 30 to 70 percent of travelers. And while the highest-risk destinations are in most of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and Central and South America, it can occur anywhere.

The doctor advised them to get plenty of rest and drink a lot of clear fluids, not apple or pear fruit juice though. “You’ll be as good as new in a couple of days,” he told them. But he also gave them some food-safety advice from the Centers of of Disease Control (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/preparing/food-and-water-precautions), which they heartily welcomed, They definitely didn’t want to get sick again.

Tips for travelers from CDC
As a starter, travelers should choose food with care and follow basic food-safety practices recommended in the United States when abroad. 

°Stay away from “raw.” Raw food is especially likely to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria. That includes raw or undercooked meat, fish, shellfish and produce, all of which can be contaminated. Foods of animal origin, including meat and eggs, should be cooked thoroughly. In general, fully cooked foods that are served hot and foods that travelers carefully prepare themselves are the safest. 

In the case of dairy products, travelers should select pasteurized milk and milk products. That means steering away from unpasteurized, raw milk or cheeses made from raw milk.

°In areas where hygiene and sanitation are inadequate, or unknown, travers should avoid eating salads, uncooked vegetables, raw unpeeled fruits and unpasteurized fruit juices. Fruits that can be peeled are safest when peeled with a clean knife by the person who eats them. As healthy as fresh fruits and vegetables may be, if they’re contaminated with foodborne pathogens, they can make you sick — very sick.

°Be “water safe.” In many parts of the world, especially where water treatment sanitation and hygiene are inadequate, tap water can contain disease-causing bacteria, viruses, parasites or even chemical contaminants. Bottomline: it might not be safe to drink or use it for preparing food and drinks, making ice, cooking and even brushing teeth. And using questionable water to wash fresh produce won’t remove foodborne pathogens that might be on it.

Then, too, travelers should avoid drinking or even putting tap water into their mouths, unless they have assurances that it’s safe. Along these same lines, travelers should also avoid ice since it may have been made with contaminated tap water. In places where the safety of the tap water is questionable, travelers should opt for only unopened commercially factory-sealed water. And they should also ask that all beverages, even alcoholic drinks, be served without ice. The alcohol content of alcoholic beverages will not kill bacteria in ice made from contaminated water.

However, when served in unopened, factory-sealed cans or bottles, water, carbonated beverages, commercially prepared fruit drinks, alcoholic beverages, and pasteurized drinks generally can be considered safe. That’s also true for beverages made with water that has just been boiled — tea and coffee, for example.

When soap and water are not available, travelers should use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60 percent alcohol, then wash hands with soap and water as soon as possible. Hand sanitizer is not as effective as handwashing for removing some germs, like Cryptosporidium or norovirus, and does not work well when hands are visibly dirty or greasy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website Handwashing: Clean Hands Save Lives provides additional information.

About those babies. CDC says that for infants 6 months and younger, the safest way is to breastfeed exclusively. For infants on formula, parents should consider using liquid-ready-to-feed formula, which is sterile. When preparing formula from commercial power, the manufacturers instructions are usually sufficient. In addition, travelers should consider packing enough for their trip because manufacturing standards vary widely around the world. 

Some tips from AAA
Dr. Kyle Staller, a gastroenterologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, understands that the tendency to arrive somewhere new is to embrace it in all aspects.

But instead, he says, travelers should keep their food choices more in line with what they eat at home, drink plenty of clean water, and eat moderate portions.

He advises travelers to plan ahead when eating out. Check the restaurants and menus ahead of time to make sure at least one item will not only be delicious but also easy to digest. And in line with what CDC suggests for avoiding a foodborne illnesss.

In the event that you’re worried that some food where you’re going will disagree with you or you’re wary about it how safe it is to eat, pack some familiar snacks or even a meal substitute. Examples would be granola bars, nuts, trail mix or dried fruit. Whatever the case, they should be filling.

And just in case, take along a variety of over-the-counter products to counteract digestive woes while you’re traveling. Examples of this would be antacids, such as Tums for heartburn; Pepto-Bismol or Kaopectate for indigestion or diarrhea; Colace, Surfak, Metamucil, or Dulcolax for constipation; and Imodium for diarrhea. However don’t use Imodium if you also have signs of infection such as fever or blood in your stool. In that case, said Staller, go see a doctor.

Street food beware. Food from food trucks is more likely to contain harmful bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella and Listeria, especially in developing regions.

“This isn’t fun because some of the tastiest food is street food,” said Staller. “But if you indulge, know that you’re taking that risk. If you’re easily derailed by digestive issues, street food is a “no-go.”

Travelers insurance. AAA recommends that people research and purchase travel insurance since it does cover a variety of things, oftentimes foodborne illnesses.

Destinations. Go here (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/list) for a list of  health-related information that travelers should know about the countries they’re planning to travel to. This would include required vaccinations, common diseases and how they’re spread (water plays a big part in this), and how to eat and drink safely.

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Into the cart it went. When she got home, she opened it and excitedly showed it to her husband. Does it look OK to you, she asked. He picked it up and gave it a sniff test. Looks and smells fine to me, he said. That assured her, but in the back of her mind, she wondered about what she had read about not buying cut up fruit.

At supper, she ate almost all of the fruit and declared it delicious. Her husband had a few pieces.

Late at night, she woke up feeling sick. She ran into the bathroom with what she immediately realized was a severe case of diarrhea. Worse yet, she started vomiting. While still on the toilet, she picked up the nearby trash can and started vomiting into it. Her entire system was exploding. It scared her. To make matters worse, she was experiencing painful cramps. What could it be? Was she dying?

Her husband told her not to worry, that it was nothing more than an upset stomach. The stomach flu, perhaps. But the diarrhea and vomiting wouldn’t stop. Nor would the cramps.

She wanted to call her doctor but it was late and night, and it was Saturday. Besides which she knew he was on an overseas vacation with his family.

When morning came, she was still feeling miserable but managed to get dressed and ready to walk around the corner to an urgent care facility. But diarrhea hit again and she had to turn back. But later that afternoon, she did manage to get there.

She told the medical provider that she thought it was the cut-up fruit she had eaten. But he said it would be hard to say what it was. But he did recommend the BRAT diet — bananas, rice, apples and toast. But when she got home and googled it, she found that some physicians caution that the BRAT diet does not alleviate diarrhea and can actually cause individuals to have diarrhea for longer periods, according to randomized clinical trials.

She called the grocery store where she had bought the fruit and asked to speak to the manager. He told her he had had no complaints from any customers. When she told him how sick she was and suggested he throw out all of the cut-up fruit, he told her he was too busy “to deal with this” and hung up on her.

So much for that. She was exhausted and decided to take the Urgent Care medical provider’s advice and get plenty of rest and drink a lot of fluids. She did exactly that for 2 days and began to feel better. But she felt drained, both physically and emotionally, by the entire experience.

Several days later when she called a friend and told her about how her digestive system had “exploded,” her friend told her it could have been a foodborne pathogen, perhaps E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria or norovirus. And she explained that any of these pathogens could have gotten into the package of cut up fruit in various ways. The person handling the fruit, for example, might not have washed his or her hands before cutting it up. Or perhaps the cutting board had been used for something like meat and not washed off before being used to cut up the fruit. Maybe the knife that was used to cut up the fruit hadn’t been cleaned. Or maybe the fruit, itself, had come in with pathogens on it.

Or maybe it wasn’t even the fruit. 

Once again she turned to Google and quickly discovered that she probably would never know what germ had invaded her system mainly because some of the foodborne illnesses had the very symptoms she had experienced. But her friend told her the vomiting and diarrhea had been her system’s way of getting whatever the pathogen that had been in her out of her, which is why a person shouldn’t take medicine to stop the diarrhea, unless recommended by a doctor.

She was scared and confused.

Some advice about what to do
Seek medical help as soon as possible if your symptoms are severe. Examples would be dehydration, prolonged vomiting and diarrhea, stomach pains, nausea and/or a fever over 101.5 degrees F.

Food safety attorney Bill Marler said that in many cases, doctors hedge their bets and jump to the conclusion that it’s norovirus, often referred to as a “stomach bug,” and that it will usually pass. Norovirus is the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea, and foodborne illness in the United States.

Even so, Marler said that a patient can always ask for a stool culture to be done.

“I would push for that,” he said. “It’s good practice for doctors to order them.”

He pointed out that if the “bug” that has caused the problem turns out to be a reportable foodborne disease, such as E. coli, listeria, Salmonella, norovirus, or hepatitis, then the health department can take the necessary steps to determine what caused it and then, if enough cases have been reported, issue a recall.

Marler said that’s very important because a recall can help prevent other people from becoming ill.

Marler also said that in the case of children under 5, adults over 65, or anyone whose system is immunocompromised (in cancer treatment, for example), “You can’t mess with these infections.”

According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

More than half of all foodborne outbreaks in the United States are associated with restaurants, delis, banquet facilities, schools, and other institutions.

Advice from the Mayo Clinic
Here’s what to do to prevent dehydration and reduce symptoms at home when you are recovering from a foodborne illness:

° Drink plenty of clear liquids: water, clear sodas and broths, gelatin and juices. But steer clear of apple and pear juices, caffeine and alcohol.

° Avoid foods such as dairy products, fatty foods, high-fiber foods or highly seasoned foods, which can make the symptoms worse.

°When you start feeling better you can go back to your normal diet.

What to do if seeking medical help

°Write down any symptoms you’re experiencing, even any that might seem unrelated to what you’re experiencing.

° Write down key personal information, which would include any international travel or recent life changes.

°Take along a list of all medications, including vitamins or supplements, that you’re taking.

°Take along a family member or friend, who will be able to help you remember what the medical provider said.

°Write down questions to ask the medical provider.

°Record any foods eaten in the past 7 days.

°Save the receipts, if possible.

°If any of the food you suspect turns out to be the problem, save some of it (if possible) in case the health department asks for a sample. But keep some of the sample.

°Use the Internet to tap into iwaspoisoned.com, which may have some information about other people near you who have gotten sick.

°Go to foodsafetynews.com or to stopfoodborneillness.org/recent-recalls to to see if there has been a recall of food you have eaten or outbreaks of the illness for which you tested positive.

Go here (https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/prevention.html) to learn how to prevent coming down with a foodborne illness.

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Three environmental groups, CARE, Friends of Toppenish Creek, and the Center for Food Safety, took it upon themselves to tell the court that this mishandling of animal waste and over-application on fields as fertilizer is contributing to high levels of nitrates in groundwater, which in turn affects people’s wells. 

The decree requires the dairies to upgrade the way they manage their manure, help restore the aquifer by remediating nitrate and ammonia contamination beneath the dairies’ lagoons, and fund research to compare two remediation methods that focus on shallow aquifers beneath porous soils.

This is not an isolated case. This spring, six residents from Eastern Oregon, along with members from Oregon Rural Action, went to the state Capitol to ask the governor for a specific plan to stop nitrate contamination. Their concern is that the groundwater in the area, which includes Morrow and Umatilla counties, has suffered from nitrate pollution for more than 30 years. And they pointed out that groundwater is the main source of drinking water in the region. They have demanded that the governor declare a public health emergency in the region. As in the case in Washington state, manure from mega-dairies and how it is handled is the problem.

Manure and more manure

Together the two diaries in Eastern Washington have 5,800 cows. That adds up to a lot of manure because a mature dairy cow can generate anywhere from 65 to 120 pounds of manure a day. 

Large dairies typically have manure lagoons, where they dump the dairy waste and pull it out when the lagoons reach a certain level. That manure slurry is typically applied to the land as a form of fertilizer. The problem with the lagoons is that the leakage of millions of gallons of manure from the storage ponds can lead to nitrates and phosphorus contamination of groundwater and drinking water.

In the settlement, the dairies are required to double the linings in the lagoons or close them, install more than a dozen groundwater monitoring wells, improve land application of dairy waste to avoid further contamination and participate in a pilot project set up to extract nitrates from area groundwater.

“We now have a plan to stop future pollution and clean up the existing pollution,” said Helen Reddout, president and co-founder of Care. “It’s about time.”

Time comes into the picture.

“The remedial measures to be undertaken should speed clean-up of the groundwater by a decade or more said Charlie Tebbutt, lead counsel for the community groups and an attorney for CARE for 25 years. “The community deserves better protection that what the state has provided, which has been virtually nothing.”

He said that once again, the people had to use the federal environmental laws to protect themselves from rampant pollution.

“The rest of the dairy industry needs to follow suit.”

How bad was it?

CARE’s Helen Reddout, a determined 93 years old, said that the nitrate levels in the tap water were so bad that doctors were telling people not to touch the water— not even when they were washing their hands under running water.

“You can’t see it, smell it or taste it,” she said. “But it can cause serious health problems.”

As part of the settlement, the dairies will fund alternative sources of clean drinking water for people who live near the dairy operations. 

Another concern in all of this are the many farmworkers who work in the valley. 

With all the persistent pushing for improvements that her group and others did, Reddout said the dairy owners actually became more aware of the problem.

“When we first started, you’d see black manure coming out of the dairy pipes and going into the creeks.” she said. “ The dairy owners would say, ‘‘Once it’s off my property, it’s not my problem.’”

CARE’s Helen Reddout, a determined 93-year-old, said that the nitrate levels in the tap water were so bad that doctors were telling people not to touch the water— not even when they were washing their hands under running water.

Then, you’d also see manure slurry flowing out of the barns and into the road ditches that led to the creeks.

And the smell, it was awful she said. “So awful that you couldn’t keep an air conditioner going. And you didn’t even want to go outside in the summer.”

“It tore up my life,” she said, explaining that she had wanted to have a nursery where people could come out and buy flowers and plants. “No one would want to come out to a place that smelled so bad,” she said.

Then there’s food safety

Amy van Saun, an attorney with the Center for Food Safety, said that mega-dairies are problematic for food safety in several ways. 

“First, they generate a massive quantity of waste, which contains not just nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but also pathogens like E coli, animal drug residues, and heavy metals,” she said. “That waste is then spread on crop fields, some of which feed the cattle, but others are crops we directly eat, including some that are certified organic. They also contaminate surface and groundwater that is used for drinking water and to irrigate crops.”

She also said that many of the outbreaks of pathogens on lettuce and spinach and other crops like that are tied to nearby spraying of waste or contaminated irrigation water from large animal operations. 

“By getting these mega-dairies under a consent decree, they will be required to better manage their waste to avoid that ground and surface water contamination, and be more careful about what they’re spraying on crops,” she said. 

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That’s how cardiologist Uma Valeti, MD, CEO and founder of UPSIDE Foods (https://upsidefoods.com) describes the upshot of USDA’s approval this week to sell lab-grown chicken. The approval, the first in the nation, will allow Valeti’s company, as well as Eat Just and its manufacturing partner, Joins Biologics, to begin producing and selling lab-grown chicken. 

While the chicken is expected to appear on select restaurant menus in the near future, it will likely be years before these companies will be ready to supply regional grocery chains, primarily because of price competition with meats from conventionally raised livestock. 

However, the companies are working toward building commercial-scale facilities to increase the amount of cultivated meat they can make. This, in turn, will help them reach more customers and establish more competitive prices. 

When asked to describe the taste of UPSIDE’s chicken, the company’s website says “Our chicken looks, cooks, and tastes like chicken because it is real chicken.”

Enter the USDA

USDA’s action came months after the US Food and Drug Administration deemed that the companies’ lab-grown chicken products are safe to eat. From there, the companies had to get USDA approval. The approval involves a rigorous process, which includes assessing a firm’s food-safety system. The agency conducts inspections at a facility at least once per shift to verify the production of safe and properly labeled products. 

Earlier this month, USDA approved USIDE foods’ and Good Meat’s labels to include the term “cell-cultivated chicken” for packaging. 

I’m thrilled to share that cultivated meat will now be available for consumers in the United States,” said Valeti. “This approval will fundamentally change how meat makes it to our table.”

“Everything has changed,” said UPSIDE Foods COO Amy Chen just after USDA’s approval. “Everything about the way meat makes it to the table is about to be different. I’m really, really excited for what this represents for the future of food.”

Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick said that USDA’s approval, which he describes as a major milestone for the industry, said the approval legitimizes cultivated meat as an industry and as a technology now that it has been approved for production and sale in the United States.

Before USDA’s approval, Eat Just was the only company in the world that could sell cultivated meat thanks to an OK from Singapore in 2020.

How is it done?

Also referred to as cultivated meat, lab meat is grown in steel tanks using cells that come from a living animal. In other words, no animals need to be killed.

In producing lab-grown meat, the cells are grown in bioreactors similar to those that make beer. That’s where they’re immersed in a carefully regulated nutrient solution that spurs them to grow until they come actual pieces of meat. As such, it is real meat, not “fake meat,” as some detractors refer to it.

Important to keep in mind: cell-based meats should not be confused with plant-based meats, which are made with vegetables.

As for antibiotics, they say there’s no need for them since lab-grown meat is produced in sterile labs. Another plus is that there’s no need to use growth-promoting hormones.

“Clean, safe and humane,” is how lab-grown meat advocates describe the advantage of this technology over conventional ways of raising livestock, which can harbor foodborne pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella that are harmful to human health.

More about chickens

        •       Chicken broiler meat is the most consumed meat in the U.S., with an average person eating 96.4 pounds per capita, according to Sentient Media.

        •       In 2020, 9.8 billion broiler chicks were hatched in the U.S.

        •       The number of chickens in the U.S. is growing, and chicken production has even overtaken pig farming to become the top source of reared meat worldwide.

        •       There are currently 25.9 billion chickens living in the world, according to the latest data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Most of these chickens are in China and the U.S., and more than half of them are in Asia. Chickens clearly outnumber humans on the planet by a massive number.

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Now that the Food and Drug Administration has authorized letting gene-edited pigs enter the human food chain, that may be the case for a vastly different sort of pig than the one in the Mother Goose poem. 

As a starter, German-style sausages, made from five 2-year-old genetically edited pigs, which were cooked up earlier this month at Washington State University, were a test case. Jon Oatley,  a professor in the college’s School of Molecular Biosciences, said he went through the FDA food-use authorization process for the pigs to show that food made from the animals using a CRISPR application is safe to eat. 

Oatley explained that the “base genetics” of the pigs was a mix of commercial breeds and reflective of what a standard pig operation would have.

“The CRISPR editing application targets a specific gene that is conserved in all mammals, so this would definitely be relevant to all types of pigs,” he said.

For Oatley and his fellow researchers, the overall goal is to develop desirable traits for improved food production and meat quality, which will help feed the planet’s growing population. This, in turn, is an important goal for boosting protein sources in developing nations.

But the research goes beyond pigs. 

“We are working as well on cattle, goats, and sheep, all of which are important food-producing animals,” he said. “But the research on pigs has advanced faster compared to other livestock we work with because they bear litters and the generation interval is comparatively faster.”

Pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world. Pigs are usually butchered for meat at only 5 1/2 to 6 months of age, whereas beef cows are generally butchered at 30 to 42  months.

The FDA authorization is investigational and limited to the pigs in Oatley’s research. 

“But in the future, we will be seeking food-use authorization for the other species as well,” he said.

Food safety?
As for food safety, Oatley said there is no concern about food safety from the CRISPR edits that were made. 

“The DNA changes were not in any part of the genome that would make the animals more susceptible to infectious disease compared to normal non-edited pigs,” he said. “The USDA FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) inspected the animals prior to processing and the carcass after processing using the standards applied to all processed livestock and found no abnormalities.”

Oatley also confirmed that as long as standard food-safety practices are used in raising, slaughtering, packaging, and cooking the meat, the pork will be free of foodborne pathogens.

What is this all about
In the gene-editing technology, known as CRISPR that Oatley used — a 2-year process that cost $200,000 for collecting data for the FDA authorization — the male pigs were “gene-edited in a way that let researchers use them to produce offspring with traits from another male pig. That was done by making the pigs sterile by knocking out a gene called NANOS2, which is specific to male fertility. With that much done, the animals were implanted with another male’s stem cells that created sperm with those other males’ traits, which can be passed on to the next generation.

To see a YouTube video about CRISPR, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pp17E4E-O8.

The offspring of the pigs in Oatley’s research are not gene-edited and have not yet been reviewed by FDA for possible inclusion in the food chain. 

But Oatley said that in the future, the research team will be seeking food-use authorization for the other species as well. 

It won’t happen overnight, of course. Oatley conceded that scaling up to a large production setting is one of the next challenges ahead.

“My estimation is that we can achieve commercial scaling within 5 years,” he said.

Surrogate studs
Some are referring to this procedure as a “high-tech form of selective breeding,” and the pigs as “surrogate sires.” Traditionally, producers had to rely on selective breeding . . . or even just time, often a long time, . . . for the sort of improvements that Oatley and his fellow researchers achieved. 

The pigs are not genetically modified animals (GMOs), which involves a different technology that involves inserting DNA from an outside species into the genome of an organism.

In the case of genetically modified salmon, for example, the salmon have an added gene from the ocean pout fish that acts as an “on switch” to produce the growth hormone year-round. This, therefore, shortens the time it takes to grow a mature salmon.

Oatley said that the GMO salmon possess foreign DNA that could never have arisen in nature without humans purposely inserting the foreign DNA.

“Our gene edits did not involve incorporation of foreign DNA, rather they were changes that could arise in nature,” he said. “Gene-editing is a modern cutting-edge technology that works only within a species’ own DNA and that can make changes that could come about naturally or through traditional breeding practices,” he said.

A genome is the complete set of DNA (genetic material) in an organism. In the case of humans, for example, almost every cell in the body contains a complete copy of the genome. The genome contains all of the information needed for a person to develop and grow.

Two sides of the coin
Any artificial manipulation that invades living cells for the purpose of altering its genome in a direct way, including gene editing, constitutes genetic engineering, according to a Friends of the Earth report (https://foe.org/news/gene-editing-risks-health-environment/).

Going one step further, the report points to the importance of human acceptance of gene editing.

“While it is critical for more scientific studies to be conducted about the specific impacts of the unintended consequences of gene editing on agricultural systems, ecological systems, human and animal health, the discussion regarding the use of gene editing in agriculture also needs to go further than a science-based risk assessment to encompass wide public discussion about the future of agriculture.”

The report also calls for more safety assessment and oversight of gene editing..

The Institute for Responsible Technology’s website describes gene editing as a cheap, easy, prone to side effects, poorly regulated and can permanently alter nature’s gene pool — a Recipe for disaster. Go here for a video outlining the organization’s concerns.

Labels?
As for the need to label genetically edited foods, Oatley said that currently labeling is not required, which he believes is the best way to go.

“The DNA changes we are making with CRISPRs are changes that can arise in nature to be propagated via selective breeding, but it would take screening thousands of animals to identify those with the desired combination of genetics and then decades to breed out a pure line for eventual use in a production setting,” he said. “Therefore, from my perspective, if a label would be required on edible products from an animal with CRISPR edited DNA, we should also apply a label to all products because traditional selective breeding also generated genetic combinations that have arisen by way of human intervention.

The future
Charlie Arnot of the Center for Integrity describes gene editing as one of the many tools agriculture can use to produce the healthy affordable food consumers expect using fewer natural resources.

“It can allow breeders to make genetic improvements more quickly and precisely than other breeding methods,” he told Food Safety News in an earlier interview. “Being able to make improvements more quickly and precisely to produce the food we need with less environmental impact is an important social benefit.”

He also said that gene editing has “tremendous potential to help farmers grow the food we need using less land,  water, chemicals and other resources. 

The Coalition for Responsible Gene Editing in Agriculture continues to refine the Framework for Responsible Use of Gene Editing in Agriculture as a market assurance program that organizations can follow to demonstrate their commitment to the safe and transparent use of gene editing technology. 

“We designed the process with a focus on continuous improvements and an annual review to ensure the program remains credible, workable and affordable and the technology and applications evolve over time,” said Arnot.

When Oatley looks to the future, he believes that over the next 30 to 50 years, food animals will need to be more resilient in changing climate conditions and more efficient in how inputs like water and feedstuffs are converted to outputs for human consumption.

“Conventional production practices will not be sufficient for feeding the global population in 2050,” he said. To address the future of food security, adoption of biotechnologies like CRISPR gene editing will be critical.

“We’re just driving to the ballpark,” said John Dombrosky, CEO of Ag Tec Accelerator in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Gene editing will be free to do tremendous things across the ag continuum, and the promise is just gigantic. We’ll be able to fine-tune food for amazing health and nutrition benefits.”

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“I like growing things,” she says, as she stands in her front yard surrounded by all manner of plants, including vegetables, herbs, berries, and flowers. 

But she’s quick to say that it goes further than that. “I want to know what I’m eating,” she says. “I’m skeptical about modern farming practices. Everything I grow is organic.”

When her town, Sedro-Woolley, WA, went into partial lockdown in 2020 because of Covid-19, she decided she’d grow her own food, although she had already turned her entire front yard into a garden years ago. This time, though, she would be growing more food than usual.

“It saved my sanity,” she says, referring to having a project like this to keep her busy and happy.

Gordon is not alone in this. According to Trust for Public Land neighborhood gardening statistics, there are more than 29,000 community garden plots in city parks in the 100 largest U.S. cities. And though Gordon’s garden isn’t a community garden in a city park, it represents the growing interest people have in planting gardens in their own yards.

Gordon’s garden is a bit unusual in that she grows her plants in large trash cans and other containers. By early September, she had already harvested most of her potatoes as well as greens such as lettuce and kale, although there was still a lone kale plant reaching for the sun. Large green tomatoes hang from sturdy plant branches, sweet basil is abundant and vigorous, and strawberries peek up from their containers. In her backyard, grapes and kiwis thrive.

Since the house was built in the 1920s, she’s not worried about lead or other contaminants left over from things like a parking lot or factory, or a house that has been torn down on the site, all of which could leave contaminants in the soil.

“It’s good sandy loam,” she said, referring to the soil she filled the planting containers with. 

And even though she’s on city water, she washes her produce with water from a friend’s place whose water has been “super filtered.”

The soil
When it comes to planting a garden in town, or a city, there’s more to it than putting a shovel into the ground and planting some seeds or plants.

That’s because the way the land has been used in urban areas can often leave an unfortunate legacy of contaminated soils. The plot itself might have been through quite a lot of uses, and some of them can be worrisome for a gardener.

For example, sites, where there were commercial or industrial buildings, are often contaminated with lead-based paint chips, asbestos, petroleum products, dust, and debris.

Then too, vehicle exhausts can be a problem. As the result of past use of leaded gasoline, lead can also be found in the soil near major roadways or intersections.

And old houses, as charming as they may be, often have lead concentrated near their foundations. And when they’re torn down or renovated, lead dust can contaminate the soil. Another thing to consider is that if the house is 50 years or older and if it’s painted, lead paint may have chipped off the house and landed in the soil directly next to it.

Even an apple tree can be suspect simply because it could have been sprayed with an arsenic-based pesticide, year after year.

Then, too, soil in former parks and along railroad rights-of-way can harbor pesticide residues.

All of this means that urban gardeners concerned about food safety will want to have the soil tested before planting any seeds in the ground.

But because testing the soil for an array of possible toxins can be expensive, some urban gardeners remove the old soil, place an impermeable barrier on the ground, and add new topsoil. Or, like Gordon, simply put new topsoil in large barrels or tubs and plant their gardens in them. Potatoes and carrots even do well when planted this way, not to mention lettuce, greens, and an array of vegetables.

Even former First Lady Michelle Obama had to make sure that the lead levels in the ground where she wanted to plant an organic garden on the South Lawn of the White House didn’t have dangerous levels of lead in it. The initial concern was that the ground had previously been spread with biosolids, also known as sewage sludge.

Fortunately, testing showed that lead levels were far lower than what was considered to be a possible danger to human health. And with that much confirmed, the crops were planted directly into the ground. Happy kids and vegetables are galore.

The water
An urban gardener needs to consider the source of the water used to water the garden. Fortunately, most public water systems provided by cities or other municipalities should be safe. Water authorities use filtration, chlorination, and testing to make sure the water meets U.S. Environmental standards for drinking water.

But that’s not the case with untreated water from unregulated sources such as rivers, streams, irrigation ditches, ponds or wells, all of which can be contaminated with biological and chemical hazards such as lead, bacteria, viruses, domestic waste, nitrate nitrogen, combustion products from roadways, petroleum residues and heavy metals. That’s why if the garden is being irrigated with untreated water, regular testing of the water is advised.

Well water should also be tested to make sure it’s up to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for drinking water.

Bottomline, if you wouldn’t drink the water, don’t apply it to the edible parts of the plants.

Another problem is what is called “splash.” If the soil does contain some lead, when it rains or when the garden is watered with an overhead system, some of the water will splash up from the soil onto the plant, thus depositing some lead onto the plant.

That’s why using drip irrigation or applying the water at the base of the plants is the best way to cut down on soil and water splash, thus reducing risk. Hand watering is another option as long as the water is applied carefully so it only touches the base of the plant.

According to a new study done by researcher Sara Perl Egendorf and her team at Cornell University, placing some mulch around plants such as lettuce, greens, and other crops that could get “splashed,”  or using hoop houses, or small greenhouses, are effective ways to reduce lead contamination simply because they keep contaminated particles away from the plants.

Rain barrels?
While there is a lot of interest in collecting water in rain barrels or cisterns to be used to water a garden, some precautions are in order.

For example, what about water runoff from a roof? Factors to be considered in this sort of situation are the climate, the age of the roof, the roofing materials, air quality, and the slope of the roof. Roofs with metal surfaces require more water-safety considerations, which would include the type of coating used on the metal. In addition, nonmetal gutters and downspouts should be installed. 

As for using rainwater in barrels, it should be tested to make sure it doesn’t test positive for pathogenic E. coli or other foodborne pathogens. If it does, it should never touch the edible part of crops, although it can be just fine for watering ornamental plants.

Lead
The most common type of contaminant in urban soil is lead. Elevated lead in urban soil generally comes from the historic use of leaded gasoline and lead paint. Lead in exhaust from cars when leaded gasoline was still in use will have contaminated the soil.

The soil in an urban garden is most likely to be contaminated with lead if the site is next to a very busy, high-traffic road that has existed for more than 40 years.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage multiple organ systems and can pose a dire threat to children especially.  

“It is incredibly important to know if urban gardeners are being exposed to lead when they consume their produce,” says Cornell researcher Egendorf, lead author of a new study showing that washing lettuce grown in urban gardens can remove most lead contamination. 

The study, “Effectiveness of washing in reducing lead concentrations in lettuce,”  was published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.

Egendorf and her colleagues grew lettuce in an urban community garden in Brooklyn, NY, and in a rural field site in Ithaca, NY. They focused on lettuce because predicting lead levels in leafy greens like lettuce can be tricky.

“Leafy greens often have intricate surfaces,” says Egendorf. These surfaces can trap lead-containing soil particles that may be hard to wash off. “We really didn’t know if washing lettuce could effectively remove contaminated soil.”

The lettuce was grown in soils containing either high or low levels of lead in an urban community garden in Brooklyn and in a rural field site in Ithaca.

Some unwashed lettuce grown in low-lead soils had elevated lead levels. All unwashed lettuce grown in high-lead soils had lead levels above government standards. However, washing the lettuce reduced lead levels to below these guidelines in all cases. 

The researchers tested different washing strategies: rinsing with tap water, soaking in water, soaking in vinegar, or soaking in a commercial vegetable wash solution.

The conclusion, according to a press release about the study: Washing effectively removed lead contamination from lettuce leaves. 

“All the wash methods we tested worked,” says Egendorf. “We also found that washing lettuce grown in low-lead soils was still important to reduce lead levels before consuming. Some unwashed lettuce grown in low-lead soils had elevated lead levels. All unwashed lettuce grown in high-lead soils had lead levels above government standards. Washing reduced lead levels to below these guidelines in all cases.”

Using mulch or covers over the lettuce can work to prevent soil splash and lead deposition on the plants. But even more effective is combining these practices and washing the lettuce gave the best result.

For example, according to the study, mulching alone reduced lead levels in unwashed lettuce by 76 percent while washing alone reduced levels by 85 percent. Better yet, says the study, mulching, and washing combined reduced lead levels found on the lettuce by almost 97 percent.

Egendorf says reducing exposure to lead is of the utmost importance. 

Children are especially at risk from lead exposure because lead can cause major harm to brain development. In adults, long-term exposure to lead can cause many issues, which include kidney damage and a decline in cardiovascular and nervous system health. Lead exposure has been shown to cause more than 400,000 premature deaths per year in the United States.

Children can be exposed to lead in soil by swallowing or breathing in lead-contaminated soil while playing.

Lead-contaminated soil particles can also be brought inside as lead dust or on shoes, clothing, or pets.

Egendorf and colleagues are sharing their findings with organizations, agencies, and extension specialists. 

“We want to encourage urban gardeners to keep doing their important work,” says Egendorf. “We also want to make sure they have access to strategies for safe and effective gardening.”

Strategies
Here are some tips from the Soil Science Society of America: 

Remember this: Lead stays where it lands.

°If you have an older home with a high potential for lead paint, plant your vegetable garden away from your home’s drip line. The lead contamination is almost certain to be highly localized — right under your house. Move away from the drip line and you move away from the high-lead area.

°If you live near a busy street, the easiest thing to do is to plant your garden a few feet away from the curb. The farther you are from the street, the lower the soil lead concentration will be.

°Till your soil. Because lead typically lands on the top of the soil, it’s likely that high concentrations will be limited to the top inch or two of your soil. Mixing the soil with a hand tiller will reduce the lead concentration by mixing the contaminated soil on top with the lower-lead soil on the bottom.

Researchers also recommend putting a layer of compost on top of lead-contaminated soil, which significantly dilutes the lead concentration, according to several previous studies. In some instances, compost will actually render the lead insoluble, meaning it’s unlikely to be absorbed into the bloodstream if eaten.

°Add fertilizers to your soil. Remember that urban soils are often neglected soils. Adding fertilizers, especially phosphorus fertilizers, will help your plants grow. Phosphorus will also bind the lead and make it much less dangerous over time. The EPA has tested adding phosphorus to Superfund sites as a way to take away the hazard while still leaving the lead in place.

What about other crops?
According to research done at the University of Washington, while lead might get into the roots of plants such as lettuce and other greens, it usually doesn’t go past the roots.

However, root crops such as potatoes, carrots, turnips, and beets can have a slightly higher lead content when grown in an urban garden. If soil testing shows that the soil does have lead, many root crops can be grown in containers using new topsoil. Go here (How to grow potatoes in containers YouTube) and (How to grow carrots in containers YouTube) to see how it can be done.

Crops such as tomatoes and tree fruit will be fine since they’re so far up from the soil.

Even so, the rule of thumb is to wash all produce with running cold water.

“The real danger is in the soil, not in items grown in the soil,” say researchers.

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The key word here is biotechnology. And President Biden is all for it. In fact, he goes so far as to say it should be used to make agriculture more productive and sustainable, create safer and healthier food, protect plants and food animals from pests and diseases, and even help protect the world from environmental harm.

All of this is found in Biden’s recently released Executive Order on “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.”

In the report, the President offers his vision for a “whole-of-government” approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing. This would be done by creating a research agenda that outlines the needs that will lead to innovative solutions in agriculture, health, climate change, energy, food security, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security. 

Beyond R&D, says the report, we have the domestic capacity to make in the United States all the bio-based products that we invent here. This will create new jobs, build stronger supply chains, and contribute to our climate goals.

Not that biotechnology hasn’t been around for a long time when it comes to improving agricultural endeavors. It just wasn’t called that. Choosing the best cows for breeding to get better cows, for example. Or saving seeds from the most productive plants to sow at planting time. Cross-breeding plants to get hybrids. Or even using microorganisms to make wine and cheese. These are good examples of how farmers increased productivity and quality with biotechnology.

But there’s something new in the wind now. Modern biotechnology actually veers away from this basic biological approach and instead generates new tissues by manipulating genes and living tissues in a controlled environment.

No, this doesn’t sound anything like “back on the farm,” but rather something like “out of the lab.” And it’s already happening. 

When it comes to food safety, time and time again, the farmers and companies that are using biotechnology to grow crops or create meat, chicken, fish, or even milk, say that food safety isn’t a problem — as long as everything is done right before, during and after production. That’s because, in the case of livestock, for example, there’s no manure or slaughterhouses involved.

For vegans and environmentalists, this is a decided plus. But for President Biden, the real plus is that it makes farming more productive while also reducing climate change.

When it comes to crops — corn is a good example of the benefits of biotechnology.

The National Corn Growers Association says it welcomes additional support for the use of biotechnology in agriculture. 

“Since corn growers started using seeds created with biotechnology in the mid-1990s, average yields have increased by nearly 50 bushels-per-acre, leading to an increase in food and fuel security for both domestic and export markets,” said an association spokesperson. “Biotechnology also contributes to the sustainability profile of corn production, allowing farmers to grow more on less land with seeds designed to withstand challenging weather events, such as drought or excess rain, and pest pressures.”

This is but one example of how biotechnology makes it possible to achieve high yields of food products, while using fewer resources and reducing the carbon dioxide footprint of food production thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Not that agricultural biotechnology hasn’t provoked heated controversy. On the food-safety front, some biotech critics warn that genetically modified foods should not be used for food. They warn that consumers are being used as guinea pigs in what they consider to be an unproven science. On the other side of the divide, the FDA says there’s no substantial difference between genetically modified foods and non-biotech foods.

Infrastructure, yes
The president’s new report calls for going forward with biotech agriculture.

This would include building more food-grade biomanufacturing facilities,  including ones for precision fermentation; supporting the necessary infrastructure for more plant and animal gene sequencing and breeding; and developing a greater understanding of consumer acceptance of food products made with the assistance of biotechnology.

In the case of precision fermentation, for example, food can be produced without using living things, soil, or conventional farming practices thanks to innovative technologies that include tissues taken from animal biopsies and grown in nutrients in bioreactors. In this approach, the animal is not killed. For “animal rights” advocates, this is a definite plus.

The report describes goals for developing new food and feed sources, enhancing nutrient density in foods, and reducing foodborne illness. Innovations in food and feed can boost both dairy and cultivated protein companies, for example, sustainably expanding the range of available protein options. 

The report concludes by saying that by leveraging innovation in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, “we can expand the toolbox for farmers, ranchers, and other producers to meet the many challenges in food and agriculture.”

Again, food safety comes into the picture.

“Improving nutritional quality and reducing foodborne illness is essential for increasing food security,” says the report.

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Turns out that an Israeli company, Vgarden Ltd. has developed what it calls a “game-changing’ vegan tinned tuna.”

“Game-changing” in more ways than one because tuna is the most popular fish in the world. Open up a food cupboard in just about any household, and you’ll likely find a can, or more, of tuna on one of its shelves. And look at a family’s list of meals, and you’ll likely see favorites such as tuna casserole and tuna sandwiches.

But with tuna so plentiful on the grocery shelves, why the push to produce fish-free tuna, especially since it’s such an affordable and convenient source of protein not only in the United States but also in Europe and Asia, not to mention growing markets in South America and the Middle East.

For the Israeli company, the problem is that overfishing of this high-in-demand fish has had a devastating effect on their numbers to the point that it has put several species, such as the yellowfin and the Atlantic Bluefin, on the edge of extinction, said Tom Rothman, head of global sales of the Israeli plant-based start-up Vgarden.

“This not only poses problems in terms of food security,” he said, “but also negatively impacts the delicate and fragile balance of the marine environment.”

Hoping to “turn the tide” on this, the company has devoted 12 months of research and development to the challenge of creating a canned tuna that will help contribute to restoring the ocean’s wild tuna populations.

The goal of this venture is to create a product with the taste, texture, and smell of tinned tuna with plants. 

“This was the greatest challenge,” said Omer Eliav, chief of research and development and Vgarden co-founder explained. “The biggest challenge in creating an identical tinned tuna is to provide the complete sensory experience of taste, texture, and smell. We want to make it enticing to all consumers, not just vegans.”

After a lot of trials and tastings, the start-up managed to achieve what the company says has the “exact look and feel” of tuna.

Ilan Adut, CE of Vgarden, said the company’s tinned tuna has a very distinct flaky, yet moist and chewy texture, with a powerful fresh-from-the sea aroma.

With a bow to the modern consumer who wants foods with “clean labels” Eliav said it was also important to clean up the label from any unwanted additives and make sure it contained just a short list of ingredients.

”Our new tuna-like product is clean-label, scalable, affordable, and sustainable,” he said. “But for our plant-based creation to serve as a true substitute, even beyond compellingly mimicking all of the sensory qualities, it also has to match tuna as much as possible in nutritional value.”

Vgarden’s tuna is based on pea protein, with a total protein content of 11.2 to14 percent before and after filtration. It contains a short list of natural ingredients including fibers and sunflower oil.

The company’s private-label tuna is already available in some retail and food-service sectors.  It is available in two packaging formats: pouches for chilled storage and cans to give the full authentic tuna experience and to facilitate convenient non-chilled storage. 

What about food safety?
Conventional tuna has some food-safety setbacks, the major one being mercury.

In recent research, Consumer Reports tested five brands of tuna to check mercury levels: Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, Starkist, Safe Catch and Wild Planet in cans. Pouch containers have the same kind of tuna as cans, but pouches were not tested.

There was a wide range of mercury levels between types — light and albacore — and brands. Albacore had higher levels of mercury in all brands, not surprisingly because the fish are larger, according to Consumer Reports.

Albacore tuna is a larger fish with a lighter colored flesh, a firmer texture, and a milder flavor than the solid or chunk light fish varieties.

Generally speaking, the larger the fish of any kind, the more mercury it can contain.

The researchers found that regardless of brand or type, mercury levels can spike from can to can, therefore pregnant women are advised not to eat the fish.  And children should not have any albacore at all.

A known neurotoxin, mercury can cause many problems with a developing fetus. It is also a health risk for children whose bodies and brains are still growing and harmful to adults, causing problems with fine motor coordination, speech, sleep, walking and prickly sensations.

Company spokesman Ben Dotan told Food Safety News that plant-based tuna does not contain any animal derived ingredients. And because it doesn’t contain fish parts, it doesn’t contain any mercury, heavy metals, microplastics derived from marine and fish farming contamination, or cholesterol.

“One of the major challenges in the development of this product was getting it to maintain its texture and taste after canning and sterilizing the product at high temperature,” Dotan said. “Our canned tuna goes through sterilization in very high temperatures for a long time and therefore does not spoil over long periods of time.”

According to Consumer Reports, if your child will only eat tuna and no other fish, safe amounts per week are listed below:

Age 1-3 — 2 ounces

Age 4-7 — 4 ounces

Age 8-10 — 6 ounces

Surprisingly, canned tuna actually has less mercury than fresh tuna primarily because smaller fish, which contain less mercury than larger fish, are used in the canning process.

Canned tuna is widely consumed in America and is often the only fish a person ever eats, according to Consumer Reports.

The well known benefits of fish, including tuna, make it a delicate balancing act to know how much is enough.

About one-third of Americans eat canned tuna two or more times per month and 10 percent eat it at least once a week, according to a Consumer Reports 2022 national survey of 2,185 adults. 

Globally, tuna is the world’s most consumed fish, according to a United Nations report. The global tuna fish market is projected to grow from $41.06 billion in 2022 to $49.70 billion in 2029. 

Even so, tuna’s popularity coincides with a major rise in ethically and ecologically motivated health-conscious consumers seeking plant-based seafood alternatives, say Vgarden officials.

Consumer Reports asked all companies and the National Fisheries Institute, a trade association representing canned tuna manufacturers, to comment on the research. The institute said the levels Consumer Reports found were well below the FDA limit and said the products are safe. 

Where does the Mercury come from
Mercury occurs naturally at low levels in rock, soil and water throughout the world, according to an article in “FoodPrint”. But human activities have increased total mercury concentrations in the atmosphere by about 450 percent. This makes it a serious human-health issue.

The burning of fossil fuels like coal and gold mining are the most to blame for human-caused mercury emissions,

Once the mercury is in the air, it can travel for thousands of miles and will eventually make its way into the ocean or large bodies of water, either by being deposited there or on land and getting washed downstream.

When bacteria in the ocean process mercury, the highly toxic chemical methylmercury is created. This chemical builds up in seafood thus causing health problems for humans, especially the young.  

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For many, dark chocolate is the chocolate of choice, and those who prefer dark chocolate will quickly tell you it’s healthier than milk chocolate. Why? Because studies suggest that its rich supply of antioxidants may improve heart health and other conditions. That and its relatively low levels of sugar.

Even the USDA gets into the act, saying that a typical 1-ounce serving size of dark chocolate packs roughly 3.4 mg of iron, with some brands containing only 8 grams of sugar per 12-piece serving.

Asked how they rate dark chocolate compared to sweets in general, more than half of the people in a recent survey conducted by the National Confectioners Association described it as a “better-for-you” candy.

But when it comes to health, it’s not a slam dunk. Research has found that some dark chocolate bars contain cadmium and lead—two heavy metals linked to a host of health problems in children and adults, according to research done by Consumer Reports.

A recent article in the publication points out that scientists measured the number of heavy metals in 28 dark chocolate bars. In doing so, they found cadmium and lead in all of them.

Worse yet, in the case of 23 of the bars, eating just an ounce a day would put an adult over a level that public health authorities and Consumer Report’s experts say may be harmful to at least one of those heavy metals. What’s more, five of the bars were above those levels for both cadmium and lead.

A health risk
This is obviously a health risk simply because just a small amount of heavy metals can cause some serious health problems. Consistent, long-term exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals can lead to a variety of health problems. The danger is greatest for pregnant people and young children because the metals can cause developmental problems, affect brain development, and lead to lower IQ, says Tunde Akinleye, the CR food safety researcher who led this testing project. 

“But there are risks for people of any age,” said, Akinleye pointing out that frequent exposure to lead in adults, can lead to nervous system problems, hypertension, immune system suppression, kidney damage, and reproductive issues. 

While most people don’t eat chocolate every day, there are some people — a surprising 15 percent — who do. That is according to research conducted by Mintel, a research firm.

But even if you don’t eat chocolate on a regular basis, lead and cadmium can still be a concern. It can be found in many other foods — such as sweet potatoes, spinach, and carrots — and small amounts from multiple sources can add up to dangerous levels. That’s why the researchers say it’s important to limit exposure when you can.

Why sweet potatoes and carrots? Root vegetables absorb more toxins from the soil, especially carrots and sweet potatoes. In tests, these foods contained high levels of lead and cadmium, but some also contained mercury and arsenic. That’s because the roots of plants, which are in the closest contact with the soil, have higher concentrations of heavy metals than other vegetables. 

In other words, you need to be careful not to build up levels of toxic metals in your body by eating too many of the foods that contain them. That’s why overindulging in chocolate can be a food-safety issue, especially when added to lead and heavy metals from other sources.

However,  that doesn’t mean you should stop eating root vegetables altogether because they do have vitamins and nutrients that are healthy. Nor should you quit eating chocolate. But moderation is the key.

Not a magic bullet
“In terms of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, I think that it’s important to keep in mind that chocolate isn’t a magic bullet,” cautions Dr. Joshua Lambert, professor of food science at Pennsylvania State University. “Eating chocolate regularly, under 30 grams three times a week, can be part of a diet and lifestyle that is optimized for longevity and good health.”

And food safety comes into the picture in another way.

“Not only does processing help develop the flavor and aroma of the cocoa into the chocolate we know and love,” said Lambert, “it also pasteurizes the cocoa, reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses.”

While cocoa and chocolate are two terms often used interchangeably, they are not one and the same. Cocoa is the seed of a cacao tree while chocolate is made by mixing cocoa with other ingredients which can include milk, sugar, or cream.

Choices
The safest choices of the 28 bars tested were by brands including:

 Mast
Taza Chocolate
Ghirardelli
Valrhona

The chocolates that were high in both lead and cadmium include bars from:

Trader Joe’s
Theo
Lily’s
Green & Blacks

How to decide
Look for dark chocolates with lower cacao percentages. If you’re considering a bar that CR didn’t test, you may want to opt for a 70 percent dark chocolate product over an 80 percent one, for example, or a 65 percent bar over a 70 percent one. 

While that’s not a foolproof measure, Consumer Reports tests, as well as testing done by other organizations, suggest that cadmium levels tend to increase with the percentage of cacao. Lead levels don’t seem to be as closely tied to cacao percentage. 

Alternate with milk chocolate. Cacao levels are lower in milk chocolate than in dark chocolate, so milk chocolate tends to have lower levels of heavy metals. But that doesn’t mean you can eat it with abandon: It has a lot more added sugars. So it is best to eat both kinds of chocolates only occasionally, not every day. 

Consumer Reports’ petition to reduce toxins in dark chocolate

Consumer Reports has called on leading dark chocolate makers to reduce the level of dangerous heavy metals in their products. 

Go here (https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/) to read more about how CR tested dark chocolate. 

In letters accompanied by nearly 55,000 petition signatures, CR urged Trader Joe’s, Hershey’s, Mondelez, and Theo to make a commitment to take action by Valentine’s Day.

Go here (https://action.consumerreports.org/20221215_heavymetalschocolate_cro) to sign the petition.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, noted in the letter to the companies, “Consumers are troubled that many of their favorite dark chocolate bars contain high levels of heavy metals. Many choose to eat dark chocolate because of its potential health benefits and relatively low levels of sugar. But there’s nothing healthy about ingesting heavy metals.”

Not just chocolate
Consumer Reports is also advising consumers not to buy the popular Valentine’s Day hearts candy made by Spangle Company. The reason for this is that they are made with Red Dye No. 3, which is a known cancer-causing substance.

This iconic candy with its “cute flirty” sayings is a Valentine’s Day tradition.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t prohibit this dye from being added to food, it does require that it be listed as an ingredient on a food item’s label.

More than 2,900 food products contain Red Dye 3, including many artificially flavored and artificially colored candies.

In addition to urging candy companies to stop using Red Dye 3, Consumer Reports joined the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other groups in October 2022 to petition the FDA for a ban on the cancer-causing ingredient in all food.

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Except when it isn’t.

That’s the quandary that many Pacific Northwest and Columbia River Basin tribal members face as they try to balance their strong historic and cultural ties to salmon with modern studies that show salmon in their area can be polluted by contaminants — among them mercury and a host of other toxic chemicals.

The quandary arises because many tribal members eat more than what health officials suggest is the safe amount of salmon each month — eight 8-ounce servings. Because of that, they are particularly vulnerable to the contaminants that can be in the fish.

A serving is about the size and thickness of a person’s hand.

That recommendation is based on findings that contamination in some fish is high enough to advise people to eat that small amount each month. For most non-tribal people, who average less than that amount, the health risk associated with eating fish is minute.

In comparison, many tribal members in the Pacific Northwest and in the Columbia River Basin, who eat an average of about 16 servings a month over a lifetime, this amount is a health risk. One study went so far as to say that tribal people, on average, eat 6 to 11 times more fish than non-tribal members. Another study said that “according to fish consumption surveys of several tribes in Washington State, tribal people currently eat more than 20 times the amount of fish commonly eaten by non-tribal people.”

In other words, the recommended amount for the general population, which allows for a certain amount of contaminants,  doesn’t take into account the amount of fish tribal members actually eat, and therefore their health and the health of tribal communities are at risk.

According to the Washington State Department of Health, fish is a healthy food, known to be high in protein, low in saturated fats, and rich in other nutrients such as vitamin D, iodine, and selenium. The health benefits of eating fish are well documented and linked to the reduction of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and partial reduction of certain types of cancer. These major chronic diseases afflict much of the U.S. population.

Contaminants in the water — and fish
Mercury is at the top of the list when it comes to dangerous contaminants.

The top three sources of mercury from human activities are diesel fuel combustion, coal-fired power plants, and wastewater treatment plants.

Agriculture and logging are also part of the picture. And rain can even wash chemicals from the land or air into waterways.

According to the Washington State Department of Health, products containing mercury that is improperly thrown in the garbage or washed down drains end up in landfills, incinerators, or sewage treatment facilities. The mercury then leaches into the ground and water. 

Some household products containing mercury are fluorescent light bulbs, pocket calculators, thermostats, and button cell batteries in watches.

Once mercury enters the water and soil, it is naturally converted to methylmercury by bacteria. In water, the bacteria are eaten by plankton and other small creatures, which in turn are eaten by small fish, then larger fish. 

Mercury tends to stay in a body of an organism, so the amount of mercury builds up in species as they go up the food chain in a process called bioaccumulation. Larger, older fish accumulate more contaminants than smaller, younger fish.

As for what a person can do to reduce mercury levels in fish, cooking is not a solution, as would be the case for foodborne toxins such as E. Coli and salmonella, which are killed by heat, simply because mercury is stored in the meat of the fish.

Meanwhile, other toxic chemicals can also get into the water and therefore into the fish through industrial and municipal discharges, agricultural practices, and stormwater runoff. 

When it comes to human health, all of this is a serious food safety issue mainly because contaminants can build up in a person’s body over time and may result in serious health problems, among them, cancer and heart disease. Mercury, for example, is a highly toxic element that can harm the brain, kidneys, and lungs. 

It can take 5 years or more for women in their childbearing years to rid their bodies of some toxic chemicals and 6-12 months to significantly reduce their mercury levels. 

Mercury and other contaminants can be passed on to a developing fetus through the placenta.

Mercury-related health problems are most severe for the developing fetus and young child. Babies born to mothers who have a lot of mercury in their bodies may develop more slowly and have problems learning, according to health officials.

This is serious
When it comes to mercury, the Environmental Protection Agency recently determined that the Willamette River, which flows through Oregon’s most populated areas and feeds into the Columbia River, would need to cut mercury pollution from industry, agriculture, and logging by 88 percent.

But even though Congress gave the EPA orders to clean up Columbia, it didn’t come through with the necessary funding to do so. 

In 2011, Oregon adopted new water-quality standards aimed specifically to protect the health of tribal people. The goal was to reduce chemicals released by industrial facilities and waste-water plants so that people could eat more than one-third of a pound of fish per day without increasing their health risks.

But state regulators took only a few stops to make sure polluters actually met the state’s new limits. Worse yet, it let more than 80 percent of polluters operate with expired permits.

Why do the tribes eat so much salmon?
To begin with, salmon has always been an important part of their diet. For them, it’s medicine. Like other natural foods they’ve always eaten — berries, shellfish, and roots, for example — it keeps them not only well-fed but also healthy.

“All of our foods were medicine because there were no chemicals,” said Wilbur Stockish, who serves on the Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission.

That approach to healthy eating is no different from modern-day medical experts who advise people to stick to a natural diet and avoid processed foods.

But it’s more than health.  For many tribal members, fish, especially salmon, is an important part of their identity and their values. They have annual ceremonies welcoming the fish back to their “native rivers,” and tribes make sure their elder members get some of that fish. Not surprisingly, salmon is considered a source of strength and medicine — the most important of all foods on the table.

According to EPA documents, agency staff members have flagged the potential for exposure to chemicals in salmon caught not just in the Columbia but also in Washington’s Puget Sound, British Columbia’s Skeena and Fraser rivers, and California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. 

Salmon are born in streams and rivers, migrate out to the open sea, and then return to their native waters, including rivers, again to reproduce.

Recommendations to eat less salmon
The seemingly simple solution for health officials is to recommend that tribal members eat less salmon. Whereas that solution, at first glance, appears to be a practical one, it isn’t one that meets tribal customs and cultural needs.

“Absolutely not,” said Fran Wilshusen, Habitat Services director at Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “It’s a precious resource. From a health standpoint, it’s one of the best foods you can eat.”

“The long-term solution to this problem isn’t keeping people from eating contaminated fish — it’s keeping it from being contaminated in the first place,” said Aja DeCoteau, executive director of the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

Stocking agrees. “It is wrong,” he said,” for the government to allow pollution and then, instead of cleaning it up, decide it can tell people not to eat the fish they always have.”

The right to fish
Back in the 1850s, some Washington tribes entered into peace treaties with the U.S. government. In doing so they relinquished millions of acres but in exchange, they preserved their perpetual right to their “usual and accustomed” fishing areas. The 1974 Boldt decision reaffirmed the Tribes’ rights to half of the fish harvested in Washington.

But back in the time of the treaties, the focus was on making sure the tribes had the right to harvest enough fish for their needs, based on their historical catches. 

And while fishing areas and the amount of fish were at the heart of the treaties, water quality was not. It’s likely that back then when the country was so new, that pollution was not something signers on either side of the treaties thought about. 

But since then, of course, water quality has become a critical issue when it comes to fish simply because polluted water contaminates the fish. And that, in turn, can make it unhealthy for tribes, who generally eat more fish than the general population, to eat as much fish as in times past.  

Later, after the signing of the peace treaties, the Supreme Court compared this right to the fish as being as important to Native people as the air they breathe.

Some might say that an option for the tribes is to eat wild-caught salmon from Alaska. But that ignores the ties the tribes and the salmon have to waterways in the Pacific Northwest. It’s those ties that bind them to the land and to their communities.

In Native American tribal communities, fish and other seafood are important to food security, community cohesion, ceremonies, and cultural practices that promote individual and community health and well-being.

For tribal members, ”it’s who they are,” said Wilshusen. “If they lose that, they lose themselves. It’s hard for a lot of people to understand the critical nature of this.”

Wilshusen also said tribal communities are advising people about how to prepare the fish and to fish from waters with low contamination.

Standards
The big argument against cleaning up the waterways to benefit the fish has always been that it would cost too much.

“The truth is,” said Wilshusen, “standards should reflect what we know based on science. If you don’t have standards based on science, you won’t get there.”

She is pleased that the public and the water-quality jurisdictions are starting to care.

“People are becoming aware of the toxicity in the water,” she said. “Standards are a way to drive social change. It will make the water we depend on – even the duck hunters and recreational crabbers — clean enough to keep our seafood healthy. And that’s important for food safety. Much good is going on to protect an incredible resource.”

And she pointed out that this is a critical part of “treaty-protected rights, which are the supreme law of the land.”

No easy answers
When all is said and done, The Washington State Health Department has this “bare-boned” conclusion: “Clean water is essential to have healthy fish.” A simple enough decision, but the problem, of course, is how to get there without disrupting the economy.

It’s a food revolution in the making. But it’s not happening down on the farm. Instead, it’s happening in labs where cells taken from live chickens, cows, or other livestock are grown in bioreactors similar to those that make beer. That’s where they’re immersed in a carefully regulated nutrient solution that spurs them to grow until they become pieces of meat.

An important part of this is that no animals need to be killed.

As sci-fi as this may sound, this is the same process that happens in naturally occurring cell proliferation and tissue developmental processes in living animals. The final product is not “fake meat,” as it has sometimes been called, but actual meat.

In this case, it’s lab-grown chicken made by UPSIDE Foods (https://upsidefoods.com/about/) of California that’s at the forefront of the food revolution that’s occurring here in the United States.

“Our chicken looks, cooks, and tastes like chicken because it is real chicken,” says a company website.

In a breakthrough announcement last week, cultivated meat maker UPSIDE Foods said it received a green light from the FDA for its chicken grown from animal cells. This is the first regulatory approval for any cultivated meat in the United States.

“This is a truly historic milestone that we’ve been working toward since the company was founded in 2015,” said cardiologist Uma Valeti, MD, CEO and founder of UPSIDE Foods. “It marks a major step toward a new era in meat production and brings us closer toward our ultimate goal of making meat a force for good. This greenlight paves the way for our path to market in the United States, and brings us one giant step closer to arriving on consumers’ plates. We’ve never been closer to building a more sustainable, humane and delicious world.”

According to a statement from the company, “the no-questions” letter from the FDA (https://www.fda.gov/media/163261/download) indicates regulators have found nothing unsafe about the cultured chicken the company makes.

“We have no questions at this time about UPSIDE’s conclusion that foods comprised of or containing cultured chicken cell material resulting from the production process . . . are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods,” the agency’s no questions letter states.

The FDA also evaluated the firm’s production process and the cultured cell material made by the production process. They evaluated the establishment of cell lines and cell banks, manufacturing controls, and all components and inputs.

In addition to meeting the FDA’s requirements, which include facility registration for the cell culture portion of the process, the firm will need a grant of inspection from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for the manufacturing establishment. The food itself also requires a mark of inspection from USDA before it can enter the U.S. market.

Meanwhile, the company is closely coordinating with FSIS to ensure that its chicken is properly regulated and labeled.

“We are thrilled at FDA’s historic announcement that, after a rigorous evaluation, UPSIDE Foods has become the first company in the world to receive the FDA’s greenlight for cultivated chicken,” David Kay, director of communications at UPSIDE Foods, said.

He pointed out that “At scale, cultivated meat is projected to use substantially less water and land than conventionally-produced meat.”

Even so, cultivated meat companies still require a lot of electricity to grow products.

As for antibiotics, which are typically used in meat animals and poultry to fight disease and speed the animals’ growth, the lab meat researchers say they don’t need to use antibiotics in their products because the sterile laboratory process makes them unnecessary. Nor do they need to use growth-promoting hormones.

“Clean, safe and humane,” is how cultured meat advocates describe the advantage of this technology over conventional methods of raising livestock, which typically involve tons and tons of manure.

Important to keep in mind in all of this is that cell-based meats, also called cultured meats, are not plant-based “meatless meats” such as products like MorningStar Farms’ chicken nuggets, Beyond Burger and Awesome Burgers, which are made from a variety of vegetables.

Looking to the future

“The world is experiencing a “food revolution,” said a statement from FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Director Susan Mayne.

Of the other lab-based meat ventures in the United States, UPSIDE Foods is closest to being able to produce meat at scale. Just more than a year ago, the company opened a 53,000-square-foot facility in the San Francisco Bay Area that will be able to make 400,000 pounds of meat a year — enough to serve a significant number of restaurant customers.

Meanwhile, in addition to working toward full approval to sell the product, UPSIDE Foods is planning to build its first commercial-scale facility. This plant will have an annual capacity of tens of millions of pounds of cultivated meat. UPSIDE hopes to have the facility up and running in the next couple of years, said a company official.

Barry Carpenter, a former president and CEO of the North American Meat Institute and an UPSIDE Foods adviser, applauded the FDA’s announcement.

“Demand for meat is skyrocketing, and we need every tool in our toolkit to feed the world,” he said in a statement. “Cultivated meat, along with conventionally-produced meat, will play a crucial role in enabling our food system to get to this point.”

On the environmental front, cell-based meats require vastly less water and land compared to raising livestock in the conventional way.

Advocates predict that cultured meat will reduce the need to slaughter animals for food and will help with the climate crisis. They say that the current food system is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which are from animal agriculture.

FDA officials say that through its “no questions” approval that the agency “is showing its commitment to supporting innovation in the food supply.” President Biden has also recently said the country needs to move forward in innovative approaches to producing food.

The agency stressed that the FDA’s first priority is food safety. Food made with cultured animal cells, the agency wrote, must meet the same stringent requirements as other food regulated by the FDA.

Looking beyond UPSIDE Foods, FDA said it is ready to work with additional firms developing cultured animal cell food and production processes to ensure their food is safe and lawful under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

“We encourage firms to have these conversations with us often and early in their product and process development phase, well ahead of making any submission to us,” said an FDA statement. “We are already engaged in discussions with multiple firms about various types of food made from cultured animal cells, including food made from seafood cells that will be overseen solely by the FDA. Our goal is to support innovation in food technologies while always maintaining as our priority the production of safe food. Human food made with cultured animal cells must meet the same stringent requirements, including safety requirements, as all other food.”

Still not there yet

The FDA’s review of the first-ever cell-cultured food for U.S. approval is a start, but grossly inadequate, according to a statement from the Center for Food Safety (https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/6768/statement-on-fdas-first-ever-approval-of-lab-grown-chicken). “In this “pre-market consultation,” neither the company nor the FDA presented the actual data from tests looking at the effects of raising these cells in fetal bovine serum and enzymes from the intestines and pancreas of animals. 

Likewise, while the company notes that it uses genetic engineering to keep the cells growing, it fails to share which genes are being used, the Center’s statement says. This is vital information that consumers and policymakers need to know to make informed decisions in the best interests of public health. We should make certain that genes linked to cancer are not being used. In short, the documents shared by the FDA and the UPSIDE Foods Co. show us where more research and more transparent data are needed, but this is a woefully deficient review by the FDA. In its review of the company’s documents, the FDA states it has “no further questions” about this experimental product’s safety—but we have many more questions. In the name of protecting public health, consumers and policymakers deserve better.

Food safety and chickens

Salmonella, a foodborne disease widespread in conventionally raised chickens, where chickens are often raised in crowded conditions and therefore more vulnerable to becoming infected with Salmonella, which can in turn infect people who eat the contaminated meat. This poses a potentially deadly risk to consumers, said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports.

But this is not a cause for concern in cell-based meats because they are produced in sterile conditions.

Consumer Reports estimates that 1.35 million Americans get sick from salmonella every year and nearly a quarter of those cases come from chicken or turkey.

The good news is that the USDA has recently proposed a new strategy to reduce salmonella illnesses from poultry. Under the proposal, poultry producers would be required to test flocks for salmonella before slaughter and provide documentation of salmonella levels or serotypes to processing plants. The requirement is meant to incentivize plants to implement measures to reduce the salmonella load in the final poultry product. USDA is also considering the adoption of a final product standard to ensure that poultry contaminated with salmonella likely to make people sick is not allowed on the market. 

More about chickens

• Chicken broiler meat is the most consumed meat in the U.S., with an average person eating 96.4 pounds per capita, according to Sentient Media.

• In 2020, 9.8 billion broiler chicks were hatched in the U.S.
• The number of chickens in the U.S. is growing, and chicken production has even overtaken pig farming to become the top source of reared meat worldwide.

• There are currently 25.9 billion chickens living in the world, according to the latest data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Most of these chickens are in China and the U.S., and more than half of them are in Asia. Chickens clearly outnumber humans on the planet by a massive number.

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As she went searching through CraigsList, she spotted a post for a dairy cow. Good idea, she thought, since Nick loves milk — to the tune of up to one-half gallon or so a day. It looked like a good cow and was advertised as being healthy.

In addition to buying Peaches, the Guernsey cow posted on Facebook, she bought 2 more cows, both Guernseys. She’s currently milking 2 cows, Peaches and Delilah. She gets an average of 10 gallons a day. Peaches are due to have a calf in March. 

Two years ago, Bokor launched Peachy Keen micro-dairy. She was on her way. But there was more to come.

On Sept. 9 this year, Peachy Keen micro dairy was licensed to sell raw milk. As such, it is the only dairy in Skagit County licensed to sell raw milk. Washington state is one of 11 states that allows the sale of raw milk in retail stores. Twenty states prohibit the sale of raw milk for human consumption.

While some people swear by the health and nutritional benefits of raw milk, others warn of its dangers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html), the risk of getting sick from drinking contaminated raw milk is greater for infants and young children, older adults, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, such as people with cancer, an organ transplant, or HIV, than it is for healthy older children and adults. But healthy people of any age can get very sick or even die if they drink raw milk contaminated with harmful germs.

Raw milk is milk that hasn’t been pasteurized to kill harmful foodborne bacteria such as E. coli, Brucella, Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, Listeria, and Salmonella that might be in the milk.  

The Washington State Department of Health (https://doh.wa.gov/you-and-your-family/food-safety/raw-milk) says that milk can get contaminated in various ways, among them, animal feces coming into direct contact with the milk; bacteria that live on the animal’s skin; feces, dirt, and processing equipment; and unsanitary conditions in the milk processing plant.

According to the Washington State Agriculture Department, foodborne illness outbreaks associated with raw milk or raw milk products such as soft cheese, yogurt, and ice cream occur every year. That’s why this label is required for any sale: 

“WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria. Pregnant women, children, the elderly, and persons with lowered resistance to disease have the highest risk of harm from the use of this product.”

Yet despite this targeted advice, Washington’s Agriculture Department describes the demand for raw milk as “explosive,” citing an increase in raw milk dairies from 6 in 2006 to 39 in 2016 in Washington alone. Since then, even more, have come on board.

When explaining why the state is licensing raw milk dairies, a state department official said that it’s “a practical way for dealing with reality.” If raw-milk sales are illegal, consumers will seek it out anyway, putting themselves and their families at risk.

A study cited by the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.html) found that states that allow the sale of raw milk had more outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk than those that didn’t allow sales of raw milk.

More about Peaches

Bokor was happy to learn that Peaches is a registered pure-bred Guernsey cow, formerly owned by a 4-H member. She also discovered that Guernsey milk, often referred to as “golden milk,” has a lot of health benefits.

The unique golden color of Guernsey milk comes from an unusually high content of orange beta-carotene, which the body converts into Vitamin A (retinol), according to a Mount Sinai Healthcast newsletter (https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/supplement/beta-carotene). According to the same newsletter, the body needs that for a robust immune system, good vision, and eye health, and for healthy skin and mucous membranes.

Bokor also learned that most Guernsey cows produce milk containing the A2 protein, while milk from most high-producing cows such as Holsteins contains the A1 protein.

A1 and A2 are genetic variants of one another that differ in structure by only one amino acid. However, some research (https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/a1-vs-a2-milk#a1-concerns) shows that for some people, Bokor among them,  who generally self-report an intolerance to milk, or who are lactose intolerant, A 2 milk may be a good alternative to prevent commonly reported stomach upset complaints. But that’s also true for lactose-free milk.

“It was complete luck. We got exactly what we wanted even though we didn’t know that it was what we wanted,” said Bokor, smiling at the irony of it.

Bokor said her dairy’s raw milk immediately proved to be popular. Not long after the dairy received its license to sell raw milk, it was sold out. She said she had had a feeling there would be a lot of interest in it. 

Getting licensed

Getting licensed to sell raw milk is not a one-stop deal. The state’s agriculture department will first inspect a dairy as part of the standard licensing process for a Grade A dairy. Later, periodic inspections will check that the dairy is complying with the Retail Raw Milk rules and regulations.

The animals must also test negative for diseases that can be transmitted to people through raw milk. The department will collect and test the dairy’s Retail Raw Milk approximately once a month. Legal test results must not exceed certain standards for harmful bacteria.

Currently, WSDA conducts surveillance testing for these human pathogens: Campylobacter, E. coli O157:H7, and Shiga toxin E.Coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella. 

The department WSDA also tests products for antibiotic residues and performs surveillance testing for pathogens and pesticides.

If the test results are above the standards listed by the department or are positive for antibiotic residues, pesticides, or strains of human pathogenic organisms, the dairy will receive a notice of non-compliance, which may trigger a recall. Although some recalls are due to illness outbreaks, others are due to failing test results.

Bottomline, a raw-milk dairy must meet the same food-safety standards as milk from conventional Grade A dairy.

 A licensed raw-milk dairy can sell its Retail Raw Milk only directly to the end consumer or to locations that sell to the end (retail) consumer in labeled containers. Retail Raw Milk cannot be sold in restaurants or institutions such as schools, nursing homes, or hospitals.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), does not allow raw milk to be distributed or sold across state lines.

Knowledge and confidence

Bokor said she has done a great deal of research on raw milk and believes that “exceptional milk handling” can prevent raw milk from being contaminated and keep it safe to drink.

“Knowledge,” she answered when asked how she fits the science that advises against raw milk with her faith in it. She explains that milk is a medium and because bad bacteria can multiply in it, it’s her job to make sure it doesn’t get in the milk in the first place.

When it comes to “exceptional milk handling” she said it comes down, for the most part, to sanitation — keeping everything absolutely clean.

Even so, some dairy owners whose raw milk did get people sick — sometimes severely so — believed that they had been doing everything right.  

Bokor, meanwhile, has a separate room for handling the milk, which includes a stainless steel sink, a refrigerator with a digital thermometer, and Petri dishes. After milking, she quickly cools the milk to 36 degrees. And while the state tests the dairy’s milk once a month, she tests each batch to make sure it’s safe to drink.

Her husband Nick says she’s a stickler for detail, perhaps because she spent 12 years working as a helicopter mechanic. No mistakes are allowed.

Bokor is pleased with the way things are going at the dairy and is even thinking of expanding it, but not immediately. She said she had a feeling that there would be a lot of interest. The dairy already has a long list of potential customers. However, the expansion will take time and some added investment. For example, while she’s currently using surge belly milkers, she would likely want to get more modern equipment.

Even so, she’s happy that she’s making enough money to feed the two milking cows. And she’s happy that they seem to be content with the care she’s providing for them.

It’s not your grandfather’s E. coli

Many farmers and old-timers believe that E. coli illness outbreaks are caused by the “over-pampered” immune systems of the city and suburban dwellers.

“We drank raw milk all of the time and never got sick,” they’ll say.

Or: “No one we knew ever got E. coli.”

But the potentially fatal form of E. coli that’s causing the outbreaks today wasn’t around 40 years ago.

As explained in simple layman’s terms by microbiology food scientist Karen Killinger formerly of Washington State University, what led to ”the birth” of E.coli O157:H7 was a disease-causing form of E. coli that absorbed some genes from another pathogen to produce a virulent toxin and adjust to acidic environments. The new form of pathogenic E. coli that emerged was many times more virulent than its weaker cousins. 

Symptoms of E. coli infection

The symptoms of E. coli infections vary for each person but often include severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, which is often bloody. 

Some patients may also have a fever. Most patients recover within five to seven days. Anyone who has consumed raw milk and developed these symptoms should seek prompt medical attention and tell their doctor about their possible exposure to the bacteria. 

However, others can develop severe or life-threatening symptoms and complications, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About 5 to 10 percent of those diagnosed with E. coli infections develop a potentially life-threatening kidney failure complication, known as a hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Symptoms of HUS include fever, abdominal pain, feeling very tired, decreased frequency of urination, small unexplained bruises or bleeding, and pallor.

Many people with HUS recover within a few weeks, but some suffer permanent injuries or death. This condition can occur among people of any age but is most common in children younger than five years old because of their immature immune systems, older adults because of deteriorating immune systems, and people with compromised immune systems such as cancer patients.

People who experience HUS symptoms should immediately seek emergency medical care. 

People with HUS will likely be hospitalized because the condition can cause other serious and ongoing problems such as hypertension, chronic kidney disease, brain damage, and neurologic problems.

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“But, what’s that?” the young girls asks as she points to something she has never seen before.

“Oh, that,” says her aunt smiling, “is a 3D printer.”

“Here in the kitchen?”, the young girl asks. “What’s it doing here?

“I can make all kinds of food — including steaks with it,” her aunt says, obviously enjoying her niece’s bewilderment.

No, this isn’t a true-to-life scenario — not yet anyway. But it does lend a hint of what lies ahead in the almost hard-to-believe changes coming to the world of food — in this case 3D food printers.

And while some advocates say that 3D printed food is a highly anticipated innovation, others are not so sure. Just listen to what some of the shoppers, young and old, at a farmers market in Washington state had to say about it.

“Weird. How do they even do that?”

“Bizarre.”

“Too futuristic for me.”

“We’re old-fashioned,” said a Washington State University Master Gardener, who was at the market to provide answers to gardeners’ questions. “We think of food as coming from growing things.”

“Is it nutritious?” asked one of her fellow Master Gardeners. “That’s the whole purpose of food.”

“Scary. No thank you.”

“No way I’d get one for our household. We were slow to even get a microwave.”

“Maybe for decorating cakes, but definitely not for real food.”

On the other side of the coin, market manager Jeremy Kindlund said he thought it sounded exciting. “I can see a lot of potential in it,” he said.

He’s not alone in that outlook. In fact, a recent survey done by Hub.com, 3D printing experts, revealed that 3D printed food garnered an impressive number of Google searches per month when looking at a range of 3D printed advancements.  

Coming in second in the poll with 9,800 Google searches per month, 3D printed food followed 3D printed houses, which garnered 76,000 searches. Included in the 3D printed items in the survey were cars, shoes, human organs, drones, rockets, furniture, robots, dentures and even printed dresses.

In the category of 3D printed food, meat received 4,500 searches a month, thanks to what Hubs.com refers to as a “breakthrough” advancement last year.

That’s when an Israeli bioprinting company announced that it had actually printed a 104-gram (3.67 ounces) cultivated steak, perhaps the largest cultured steak produced until that time.

Simply put, cultured meat is not the same as plant-based meat. Instead it is produced from beef cells by taking a biopsy from a living cow and growing it in a nutritious medium until there’s enough critical mass to make the cells into bio-ink. The bio-ink is then printed using the company’s bio-printer. From there the printed steak is left in an incubator to allow the stem cells to differentiate into the fat and muscle cells that form the tissues found in steak. And, yes, it’s real meat.

This doesn’t involve slaughtering a cow to get beef — a decided plus for people who don’t like the thought of killing animals.

It’s also a plus for concerns about climate change because it means herds of cattle don’t have to be raised, and then slaughtered, to get beef, which adds up to impressive savings in water and other environmental benefits.

Once again, climate change comes into the picture. And beyond that scientists in favor of 3D printing point to the vast amount of resources needed to raise livestock, which is why they see this technology as a solution to meeting the pressing needs of the world’s growing population.

Regardless of their origin, plant or animal, it increasingly seems like the meat of the future will be coming not from animals, but from 3D printers, says an article in IDTechEx.

Then there’s the more down-to-earth prediction: Before long, every consumer’s kitchen will have a 3D food printer on one of its counter tops — just another kitchen tool to make preparing meals (or snacks) easier and faster.

How do food printers work?
Most people know what a printer is. It prints out copies of pages you’ve put information on. That technology has been around for a long time. But a printer to make food? And what’s this about climate change? And protecting the environment?

Actually, there’s nothing all that complicated about how a 3D food printer works, at least the concept of how one works. Do you remember the pizza vending machines that popped up in 2015? In that case, dough is prepared and extruded from one of the printer’s cartridges onto a plate. Next, the dough is topped with tomato sauce and cheese and then sent to the oven — all of this in the same machine. Think of this as a primitive 3D food printing process.

Since then, advances have been made that involve using laser technology to heat up the food — again all in the same machine. Just imagine, pushing a button on the printer for ravioli and having cooked ravioli ready to eat when you open the printer’s door.

All of this, or at least some of it, is still in the future, but the future has a way of coming faster than we imagine.

Getting down to basics, most 3D food printing is done by feeding food materials such as doughs, cheeses, frostings and even raw meats into syringe-like containers that are then extruded from them as the nozzle is moved around “trace shapes” on a “plate” and forms layers one at a time. That’s how you get layers, such as for pizza.

Will you find this technology in a fast-food restaurant? Hardly. Instead, these printers are found in gourmet restaurants and fancy bakeries. Or you can go to special events featuring 3D food printers.

And there’s even a traveling restaurant that features not only 3D printed food but also tables, chairs, silverware and more made from 3D printing.

But what about nutrition?
In Lynette Kucsma’s TedxHigh Point talk she lets her audience know right away that she has always considered herself a healthy eater. Which is why at first she was so skeptical about foods made using 3D printing.

But as she did some research on this, she discovered that she could eat healthy when using a 3D printer. In fact, she is now the co-founder and chief marketing officer at Natural Machines, the makers of Foodini.

When describing the status of this new technology, she told her audience: “This is science fact, not science fiction.”

She goes so far as to predict that 3D printers will follow the path of microwaves. When they were first introduced in the 1970s, “people didn’t get it,” she said. Some people even thought they could cause cancer. They’d ask “why do I need one when I already have a perfectly good oven in my kitchen?”

But things have changed, she said. Microwaves are now in 90 percent of our kitchens.

She predicted that 3D printers will follow the same route, but at a much faster rate simply because these days, technological advances move so fast. Before long, she said, they’ll be the size of a microwave and be a common kitchen appliance.

Turning to nutrition, she told her audience “Let’s print more of our food using fresh, healthy, real, wholesome ingredients. Let’s get away from packaged processed foods.”

She pointed out that by getting away from these foods, you’ll be eating more nutritious foods instead.

“And that’s healthier,” she said.

What about cost?
Filemon Schoffer, cofounder and CCO of Hubs.com, a 3D printing expert, said that the prices of 3D food printers vary depending on their features and audience.

A precise printer that can reach high nozzle temperatures is likely to be much more expensive, he said, and more appealing to businesses.

However, for those looking to get started at home you can get a basic model for around $100 to $500. Advanced home users are likely to spend around $300 to $1,000, while commercial users who want a more sophisticated model, can expect to pay over $5,000.

He said there are many models available to purchase for home use, however it’s important to do your research before spending money on a 3D printer, as there are so many different options.

What about food safety?
No problems with food safety, say the printers’ advocates, but that’s only if the food has been prepared in a machine that’s sterile and if the preparer follows sanitary procedures. No different from what’s necessary in any kitchen.

However, in The Essential Guide to Food Safe 3D Printing: Regulations, Technologies, Materials, and More, food safety with 3D printing is not a simple matter that will boil down to a clear yes or no answer. Producing 3D printed parts for food contact items requires careful consideration of the risks depending on their intended use.

A 3D printed part can turn into a petri dish squirming with bacteria within weeks. Even though some materials will survive the dishwasher, so will dangerous bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella that live in the little nooks and crannies. Some toxic molds find favorable growth conditions on several types of plastic and are hard to remove. Neither cleaning with bleach nor microwaving is an option for eliminating germs.

No matter what, food that is consumed by people must meet strict safety standards.

Future
As 3D printing technology continues to soar, new research predicts the overall 3D printing market will continue to grow by 24 percent to reach $44.5 billion by 2026, according to research done by Hubs.com.

As it is now, there are dozens of food printers available on the market, thanks in part to public interest and the rapid growth in the technology involved.

Filemon Schoffer, cofounder and CCO of Hubs.com, said that overall, more signs of growth in 3D printing will be seen in 2022 and beyond, thanks to enhanced automation, scalable quality controls, reduced processing costs, and further industry consolidation.

He said, key factors such as this “will help 3D printing become the robust industrial manufacturing process that befits its massive potential.”

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Incubating since 2009, the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), which began certifying produce farms in 2014, brings growers, farmworkers, farmworker organizations and retailers together to improve working conditions, food safety practices and pesticide management in the produce industry. 

Earlier this month, EFI announced that its food safety certification has been recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). As such, it is the only fresh-produce certification that satisfies multiple retail requirements in a single audit.

Peter O’Driscoll, executive director of EFI, said that earning GFSI recognition for its certification program is “an essential step in creating a one-stop shop that eliminates the redundancy of multiple audits.

“EFI has aimed to create a system that raises audit standards while reducing the overall burden of time and cost for growers,” he said. “Our ongoing partnership with industry stakeholders, and now with GFSI, is bringing this vision to fruition.”

“The benefit of this to growers is awesome,” said EFI spokesperson LeAnne R. Ruzzamenti, pointing out that major retailers already accept EFI as a third-party certification for both responsible sourcing and pollinator health/integrated pest management. The addition of a GFSI-recognized food-safety certification streamlines the audit process even further.

Amalia Zimmerman-Lommel, director of corporate social responsibility at Andrew & Williamson Fresh Produce/Good Farms, was quick to praise the value of a comprehensive audit.

“The demand of multiple standards from different retail buyers quickly creates audit fatigue and is costly and time-consuming for farming operations,” she said. “EFI certification already satisfies social responsibility requirements for the majority of our retail buyers, and the addition of a GFSI-recognized food-safety audit will reduce our number of audits even further.”

She also pointed out that EFI certification has already helped lighten a lot of that burden by reducing dedicated staff time by more than 50 percent as it relates to audit work.

Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said that in developing a single audit that drives meaningful benefits for growers, farmworkers, retailers and consumers alike, “EFI is poised more than ever to transform agriculture and improve the lives of farmworkers.”

“EFI brings all the pieces together into a package and replaces three different audits. It’s a holistic approach that makes your company better,” said Margaret Stewart, senior compliance manager, Rogue River Farms.

About EFI
EFI provides training and EFI certification, which, in turn, promotes the interests of workers, growers, retailers, food-service companies and consumers. Some refer to it as a “win, win, win” solution. At the heart of all of this is the belief that collaboration among all of the partners — from field to market — will result in increased assurances that produce is harvested as safely as possible in conditions that respect the dignity of the workers. 

“Building a safer and more equitable food system,” is how EFI puts it.

With EFI certification, farms can use the green “Responsibly Grown, Farmworker Assured” label on their packages. Among the farms receiving EFI certification are Andrew & Williamson’s Crisalida Berry Farm in Ventura County, CA., Houweling’s Tomatoes, Windset Farms, Keystone Fruit Marketing, Borton Fruit, Naturesweet Tomatoes, and Alpine Fresh.

Retail collaborators include Costco Wholesale and Whole Foods Market.

“Safe and wholesome produce begins with dedicated training of, respect for, and protection of farmworkers,” said Costco’s vice president for general administration Arthur D. Jackson Jr. in a news release about the chain’s agreement with EFI. He also said that EFI “creates value and improves working conditions and corporate culture at the same time.”

An independent non-profit, EFI receives funding support from The Atlantic Philanthropies, Broad Reach Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Rosenberg Foundation, Cedar Tree Foundation, Oxfam America and The Walt Disney Co.

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– COMMENTARY –

The original compliance date was January 2022, but the Food and Drug Administration has delayed it.

Because agricultural water can be a major pathway for pathogens, the Food Safety Modernization Act’s produce ag-water rule originally established microbial quality standards for agricultural water, including irrigation water. 

These original requirements were for water that comes into contact with certain produce, namely fruits and vegetables such as strawberries and lettuce that are typically eaten raw. Crops that are cooked before eating aren’t affected by this because cooking involves a kill step — heating the food to temperatures high enough to kill pathogens. This includes pasteurized fruit and vegetable juices.

The FDA has clarified that the proposed rule only applies if the agricultural water contacts the harvestable portion of a crop. It does not apply to water applied during or after harvest. That water must still meet specific microbial standards.

As part of this, FDA points out that it is important to keep in mind that there may be other water use that requires microbial compliance, such as the water used to make up fertilizers or other crop treatments.

The feedback that the FDA received on its original version was that these microbial standards, which included numerical criteria for pre-harvest microbial water quality, may be too complex for growers to understand, translate, and implement.

In response to these concerns, the FDA considered how it might simplify the water standards in an attempt to reach a balance that decreases regulatory burdens on growers, whenever appropriate, while at the same time keeping consumers safe.

The good news is that “the FDA apparently listened and has made changes many have asked for,” said Ramkrishnan Balasubramania, executive director of Florida Organic Growers, in a webinar produced for growers. “The microbial water quality profile and water testing frequency, these are gone right from the get-go,” he said. “This is very welcome.”

Bottomline, if finalized, the revised rule would replace the pre-harvest microbial quality standards and testing requirements with requirements for growers to conduct pre-harvest agricultural water assessments once annually, which do not necessarily include testing, — and whenever a change occurs that increases the likelihood that a known or reasonably foreseeable hazard will be introduced into or onto harvestable parts of produce or food contact surfaces.

As part of their pre-harvest agricultural water assessments, produce farms covered by the rule would be required to evaluate certain factors, such as the location of the farm’s water source, the way the crop, or crops, are irrigated, and the frequency of environmental conditions such as heavy rains that could impact water quality and therefore jeopardize produce safety.

The proposed rule contains information about what farmers will need to assess and what to do if they bump into problems or make changes to their operations. For example, what they should do if they switch from well water to surface water from streams, lakes and rivers, among other sources. Or if their neighbor begins running livestock on adjoining land. It also includes ways to deal with these problems.

Balasubramania, meanwhile, pointed out that the growers will need some guidance, tools, and even funding to comply with the rule. The FDA says it plans to help with that.

For a quick background, the act’s Produce Safety rule establishes, for the first time, science-based minimum standards for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of fruits and vegetables grown for human consumption. As such, the rule is part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law in 2011.

Not a slam dunk
Not everyone thinks that FDA’s decision in favor of having growers assess and solve their problems is a silver bullet.

“One of the biggest issues so far is that we don’t have a final rule on what the water rule is going to be, just a vague impression of where they’re going,” said Keith Schneider, food safety professor at the University of Florida. “The idea of whether it’s better or not really depends on what that final ruling ultimately turns out to be.”

Even so, he thinks the farmers would love not having to test their water, but that the new scheme would have them become risk assessors. 

“It’s much easier to take a water sample than it is to learn risk assessment,” he said. “The bigger question now is whether or not individuals can perform an adequate risk assessment to determine how to handle their irrigation water. I do believe you will have more confusion and frustration only because the paradigm has changed again.”

Some warn this will entail a long learning curve.

As for how important it is to get this right, Schneider said that if you don’t, “you can end up getting people sick, and no one wants that.”

“Conversely,” he said, “if you make it too restrictive you might discourage farmers and end up driving production outside the borders of the U.S., which is what we also don’t want.”

Click here to see a Florida Organic Growers podcast on the FDA’s ag water rule.

Brandon Roozen, executive director of the Western Washington Agricultural Association said he worries that “one grower’s self-assessment might not be so thorough as another grower’s and that could leave buyers wondering exactly whom to trust.”

Yet at the same time, he appreciates the FDA’s desire to keep things flexible and not take a one-size-fits-all approach, especially considering how diverse agriculture across the country is.

“It’s good to have some wiggle room for local conditions,” he said. “But food safety can’t be compromised.”

During public hearings, some growers and ag associations took a different tack altogether, saying that the removal of required testing would be a drawback and that the rule should be more strongly encouraged or even required under certain circumstances.

Meanwhile, except for the section in the Food Safety Modernization Act dealing with ag water, all of the other sections of the act have been finalized.

The delay is not surprising since water is so important both to farming and to food safety. As Schneider was quick to point out: “Water has the biggest potential to turn small problems into large problems.”

What’s a grower to do?
Getting the pre-harvest ag water rule to where it is now — proposed, then revised, and not yet finalized — has been a long haul, about 5 years. And it’s not there yet, especially since the FDA says the actual compliance date has not yet been set. 

However, an agency spokesperson did say the FDA is moving ahead on finalizing the proposed rule. The projected publication date is October 2023.

The spokesperson also said that stakeholders will have the opportunity to comment on the compliance dates, but not the proposed rule, when they’re announced. Given how long this has taken already, some food safety experts don’t expect it to happen soon. 

Meanwhile, the FDA will be exercising what the agency refers to as “enforcement discretion” until the final new rule passes.

Until then, growers are encouraged to abide by the original proposed rule, which was based on microbial standards. 

“That one’s still in place, and everyone is supposed to be doing what it requires,” said Schneider. “But the biggest ambiguity right now is if and how the FDA will be enforcing it.”

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As such, it reverses the withdrawal by the Trump Administration in 2018 of the 2017 Organic Livestock and Poultry rule.

The 2017 rule, which took 10 years to develop, governed the living conditions, transport and slaughter of organic livestock.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) proposes to amend the organic livestock and poultry production requirements by adding new provisions for livestock handling and transport for slaughter and avian living conditions; and expanding and clarifying existing requirements covering livestock care and production practices and mammalian living conditions.

“USDA has again confirmed our stance that ‘organic’ does mean consistently protecting animal welfare,” said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety.

She also said that USDA’s proposed rule appears to fully reinstate the requirements recommended by the National Organic Standards Board and organic stakeholders. This would also include crucial updates that require organic chickens to have adequate space indoors and access to the outdoors, thus eliminating  “porches” that have allowed some factory-farm chicken operations to market their poultry and eggs as organic.

Screened-in “porches” are generally small enclosures placed just outside of the chicken houses that the chickens can access from inside the chicken house. However, some say this is a loophole that large commercial chicken farms, where thousands of birds can be housed in a single unit, use to say their chickens have access to the outdoors and that their eggs and chickens are therefore organic. 

A 2002 decision to count screened in porches as outdoor space caused a rift among large-scale and small-scale producers, with the small-scale producers saying the porches don’t give the chickens an equal opportunity to access the outdoors.

In June, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he wanted the rulemaking to include a proposal to disallow the use of porches as outdoor space in organic production.

Years of litigation
After four years of litigation on the issue of humane treatment of organic livestock, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California decided in favor of allowing the USDA to redo and update its rulemaking. The Trump Administration had said it wasn’t USDA’s job to regulate humane treatment of animals.

But in 2018, the federal court rejected the former administration’s arguments and held that the withdrawal of the rule that had set organic animal welfare standards injures the organizations’ members because it undermines the organic label for consumers. 

Agriculture Secretary Tom  Vilsack said the agency looks forward to receiving public comments on this, and after reviewing comments, USDA will publish a final rule.

“We are glad the court has cleared the way for the National Organic Program to finally align with the expectations of consumers,” said Cristina Stella, managing attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund (https://aldf.org), one of the plaintiffs in the case. 

Consumer trust key to organic farming
“Reinstating the organic animal welfare rule is a huge victory in securing the trust of consumers and farmers alike, who expect meaningful and consistent standards for animal welfare under the organic label,” said Abby Youngblood, executive director at the National Organic Coalition and a plaintiff in the case.

Rick Salazar of Earp, CA, is organic all the way. As far as he’s concerned, organic food is healthier for him and his wife.

Like many other organic advocates, he assumes that meat and poultry bearing the organic label has been raised humanely, which includes access to the outdoors and not being confined to housing that can be unhealthy. 

When asked if humane treatment is important to him, his answer comes quickly. “Definitely,” he says. “It makes a big difference to us.”

Beef raiser Virginia Good Vlahovich’s email address is “Happy Cows Forever” — a clear message that she and her husband Tom treat their cows humanely. They have their cows out on pasture and haven’t grained them for four or five years. And although their farm isn’t certified organic — which is true for many small-scale farms that follow organic practices, such as not using synthetic fertilizers or harmful pesticides — they know that their customers trust them to treat their animals humanely. It’s an important part of being good farmers and attracting and keeping customers.

“I would say that’s true,” said Vlahovich.

As a board member of the Sedro-Woolley Washington Farmers Market, she said she can see that more and more people are choosing organic. And she can also see the trust they have in organic farmers to treat their animals and poultry humanely.

“I welcome this news,” said Eiko Vojkovich, co-owner of the Skagit River Ranch in Western Washington. “Our job as farmers is to let our animals thrive in their own environment. Treating them humanely is important to us. Consumers trust that we’re doing that.”

Eiko, her husband George and their daughter Nicole raise organic cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys. According to their website, their broiler chickens are grown outdoors in movable pens where they can roam on green pastures in the fresh air. They eat grass and organic grain supplemented with flaxseed and sea kelp to help ensure they have plenty of vitamins and trace minerals.

As for the farm’s eggs, the farm’s website says that “Unlike so called ‘free-range’ chickens that are raised in confinement, our laying hens really live on pasture and eat grass, insects and organic grains as they roam in the green fields all day long. Our eggs sell so quickly at farmer’s markets that our customers stand in line for 15 minutes before the opening bell rings. They are that good!”

Honing in on consumer trust, Vilsack said earlier this year: “I understand we’ve got some work to do in rebuilding the trust between the department and the organic industry, and I am committed to that. And those who work at USDA are committed to that.”

About food safety
According to a paper published in PubMed.gov by A M de Passillé  and J Rushen: “A greater appreciation of the link between animal welfare and animal health makes the link with food safety clearer. Improvements in animal welfare have the potential to reduce on-farm risks to food safety, principally through reduced stress-induced immunosuppression, reduced incidence of infectious disease on farms and reduced shedding of human pathogens by farm animals, and through reduced antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance.

“Health problems of farm animals continue to be serious threats to animal welfare, and measures of disease incidence can serve as animal-based measures of animal welfare. Continued development of hazard analysis and critical control point-based approaches to animal welfare would allow a smoother integration of animal welfare and food safety standards.”

The proposed rule
The proposed rule would update the USDA organic regulations for livestock production. The proposed changes would address a range of topics related to the care of organic livestock, including:

Livestock health care practices — The proposed rule would specify which physical alteration procedures, such as debeaking and tail docking, are prohibited or restricted for use on organic livestock. The proposed livestock health care practice standards include requirements for euthanasia to reduce suffering of any sick or disabled livestock;

Living conditions — The proposed rule would set separate standards for mammalian and avian livestock living conditions to better reflect the needs and behaviors of the different species, as well as related consumer expectations. The proposed mammalian livestock standards would cover both ruminants and swine. The proposed avian livestock living standards would set maximum indoor and outdoor stocking densities to ensure the birds have sufficient space to engage in natural behaviors;

Transport of animals — The proposed rule would add new requirements on the transport of organic livestock to sale or slaughter;

Slaughter — The  proposed rule would add a new section to clarify how organic slaughter facility practices and USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulations work together to support animal welfare.

Go here (https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-16980.pdf) to learn more about the rule.

A listening session
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will host a virtual listening session on Aug. 19 from noon to approximately 2 p.m. EDT to hear comments regarding this proposed rule. The deadline to register for oral comment is 11:59 p.m. EDT, Aug. 15. Access information will be published on the AMS website prior to the listening session at https://www.ams.usda.gov/event/listening-session-organic-livestock-and-poultry-standards.

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As improbable and far-fetched — and maybe even blasphemous — as it may seem, scientists are working on doing just that. More than that, some are predicting the final product will be available in three or four years.

“Startups are racing to reproduce milk in the lab,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And for good reason. As startling as it may seem, there’s never been enough human milk in the world to feed all the world’s babies until they’re 6 months old, said Shayne Giuliano, CEO of North Carolina based 108Labs.

How can that be? Well, it actually starts at the beginning when babies are born. According to the World Health Organization, breast milk is the most effective way to ensure a child’s health, and even survival. In short, the ideal food for infants.

“It is safe, clean and contains antibodies, which help prevent against many childhood illnesses,” says WHO.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that infants be exclusively breastfed for about the first 6 months with continued breastfeeding while introducing appropriate complementary foods for 1 year or longer.

The World Health Organization also recommends exclusively breastfeeding up to 6 months with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to 2 years of age or older.

Good advice, but nearly two out of three infants are not exclusively breastfed for the recommended 6 months.

As an example of that, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which covers the 2017-18 financial year, only 29 percent of 6-months-old babies were exclusively breast fed.

Globally, three in five babies are not breastfed at the first hour of life. Giuliano suggests this is a problem that cell-cultured milk can help solve.

Scientists have found that breastfed babies have fewer infections and hospitalizations than formula-fed infants. That’s because during breastfeeding, antibodies and other germ-fighting factors pass from a mother to her baby and strengthen the immune system. This, in turn, helps lower a baby’s chances of getting many infections, among them meningitis, pneumonia, diarrhea, and ear and respiratory infections.

But, for various reasons, such as a medical condition or medications they’re on, some women can’t produce enough milk for their babies. Malnutrition can also be a factor. Or an infant can be allergic to milk. Then, too, adoptive parents can’t breast feed their adopted babies. And men, or relatives or friends, who are the sole caretakers of a baby, perhaps because the mother has died, can’t either. Bottomline, producing milk can only happen when a mother gives birth.

Options other than human breast milk
What about cow’s milk? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention feeding a children younger than 12 months old cow’s milk may put them at risk for intestinal bleeding. It also has too many proteins and minerals for babies’ kidneys to handle and does not have the right amount of nutrients babies need.

Or, as has often been said: cow’s milk is for cows; human milk is for humans.

Infant formula immediately comes to mind as an option to human breast milk. And it has a long history.

In 1865, when Justus von Liebig developed, patented, and marketed an infant food — first in a liquid form and then in a powdered form for better preservation — women were finally “freed” from breastfeeding, which many in the developed world saw as “uncivilized and something that peasants in poor countries did.”

Liebig’s “formula,” consisting of cow’s milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate, was considered the perfect infant food, according to an article about the history of infant feeding in The Journal of Perinatal Education.

Since then, families have a range of formulas to choose from, including some made with soy instead of milk. But researchers quickly discovered that formula, as convenient as it was, came with some attendant problems.

According to the World Health Organization, infant formula does not contain the antibodies found in breast milk.

“The milk proteins, including antibodies, in human milk protect babies,” said Giuliano. “It’s that simple. Until babies can develop their first antibodies and microbiome and full immune system by around 6 months, they’re vulnerable to infections and serious health problems.”

Another consideration comes into the picture. When infant formula is not properly prepared, there are food-safety risks arising from the use of unsafe water and unsterilized equipment, or the potential presence of bacteria in powdered formula.

That was the apparent case in a recent recall of infant formula from Abbott Laboratories in Sturgis, MI, where inspectors found, among other things, a failure to make sure clean-in-place conditions were maintained and monitored. Some babies became infected with cronobacter, germs that can live in dry foods, such as powdered milk formula. Tragically, two of the infants died.

Times have changed since Liebig’s times, and parents now have a range of formula products to choose from. But none of them are as healthy as human milk, according to some experts. Even so, said Giuliano in an interview with Food Safety News, they can be important sources of nutrients for babies who don’t have access to human milk. And they have even saved babies’ lives when no human milk is available.

But that doesn’t mean that scientists like Giuliano aren’t working on producing cell-cultured breast milk — breast milk made in a lab. Those who are involved in this believe it will be healthier than conventional formula and therefore better for infants.

“We’re not anti-formula,” he said. “Formula was created to give mothers an option. “But the world has changed. The future will be different. The option of human milk is now possible. Unlike meat and cow’s milk, which you can buy in stores and restaurants, human milk has never been broadly available. Yet human milk is the most important and least accessible food on earth.”

In 2019, 108Labs created the first cell-cultured milk. The next year, it announced work on Colostrupedics, whole-human infant formula. Today it’s building the first milk Cellufacturing® facility.

Long term, the company’s goal is to replace bovine milk for infants globally with human milk by 2040.

“Mothers deserve this,” said Giuliano. “They’ve been working around the clock for millions of years to keep us alive.”

Several other companies are working on this challenge as well, although no one can say when exactly their products will be available. Three to four years is their best guess. However, private investment is growing rapidly, as well as interest among university-based researchers.

Among those closest to releasing a product into the marketplace are US-based 108Labs, US-based BIOMILQ,  Israeli Will (formerly BioMilk), and US-Singporean Turtle Tree Labs.

“We’re a step closer to empowering parents with another infant-feeding option, one that provides much of the nutrition of breastmilk with the practicality of formula,” said cell biologist Leila Strickland, who, with CEO Michelle Egger, a food scientist, founded BIOMILQ.

In an article in Food Navigator, Strickland pointed out that cell-cultured milk is not designed as a replacement for breastfeeding. But it does offer a better option than soy or cow’s milk for the four-fifths of women who start feeding their infants formula before the six-month period recommended by WHO and other health organizations.

The partners said they can now confirm that BioMILQ’s product has macronutrient profiles that closely match the expected types and proportions of proteins, complex carbohydrates, fatty acids and other bioactive lipids that are known to be abundantly present in breastmilk.

They also make it clear that their product “gets as close to the real thing by essentially replicating the mammalian milk production process.”

“Put simply,” they say, “this takes cells from mammalian mammary glads, keeping them happy so they proliferate, and then triggering them to differentiate and start producing milk. Those cells are mini-factories that churn out milk”

BIOMILQ won’t be identical to mothers milk, and the founders say they’re not confident it can be.

For example BIOMILQ’s milk won’t contain immunoglobulins, proteins that are made by person’s immune system after exposure to an antigen  — something harmful to your body that causes an immune response. Immunoglobulins fight off germs, illness, and disease. They circulate throughout the body and can be found in blood, sweat, saliva and breast milk.

Yet the founders told Food Navigator that BIOMILQ’s milk contains the full complement of human milk oligosaccharides, which provide health benefits, to infants, as well as other bioactives that will support immune development, microbes population, intestinal maturation, and brain development in ways that cow-based infant formula fundamentally cannot.

Bottomline, say the founders, BIOMILQ is not bio-identical to breastmilk, but it’s significantly closer to it than any infant formula currently on the market.

You won’t need cows
Referring to what he calls a “paradigm shift that’s on its way,” food-tech  entrepreneur Zoltan Toth-Caifa of Real Deal Milk, founded in 2021, even goes so far as to predict that this century is going to be about cellular agriculture — and in the case of milk and milk products “you won’t need cows.”

His company is going forward on the belief that cellular agriculture will beat traditional alternatives everywhere. And he predicts his company’s cheeses will be on the market in the next several years.

In the case of cellular agriculture, a process known as precision fermentation is used to make milk proteins. It can use DNA from a database that goes into microorganisms to “grow” them into cow-free milk proteins, but without needing a cow to do this. From there, the proteins, which have been made in a lab (https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/02/cow-free-proteins-signal-possible-new-day-for-dairy/), can be used to make milk, cheese, yogurt, cream cheese and even ice cream.

It can also be made to produce human milk and human-milk formula.

It’s important to note that while precision fermentation, can make meats and even fish without the actual animals or fish, except for taking some small biopsies from them, it is different from making plant-based meats, which are made from plants. And the animals/fish don’t need to be killed to get the biopsies, something that appeals to people who disdain what they see as inhumane treatment of animals.

The biggest challenge yet
Not surprisingly, human milk is not a simple formula but rather made up on an optimum balance of water, carbohydrates, fats, proteins and micronutrients as well as some maternal immune cells, stem cells’ antibodies, and even healthy bacteria that can benefit an infant’s gut.

“Science has made impressive gains in the art of producing animal products minus the the animal, said Ruth Purcell, a consultant for Nourish Ingredients, a company working with Cellular Agriculture, Australia, and Bianca Le, the founder and executive director of Cellular Agriculture Australia. “Now this emerging field is taking on its biggest challenge yet: breastmilk.”

When it comes to food safety, Giuliano suggests that the Food and Drug Administration has avoided having strong public opinions that would regulate or discourage informal breast milk sharing networks, and this relative silence speaks volumes to the importance of human milk in newborn health because human milk saves lives.

“While any raw mammalian milk could be considered potentially unsafe for consumption due to microbes present in all naturally produced milk, science and instinct clarify that the benefits of raw human milk outweighed the risks because there was nothing truly comparable to human milk in modern medicine or nutraceuticals until now with the dawn of cell-cultured human milk,” contends Giuliano.

In the case of milk sharing, the advice is for recipients to pasteurize it — heating it to 150 degrees F for at least 30 minutes or 162 degrees F for at least 15 seconds.

The FDA recommends that if, after consultation with a healthcare provider, a person decides to feed a baby human milk from a source other than the baby’s mother, she or he should only use milk from a source that has screened its milk donors and taken other precautions to ensure the safety of its milk.

The agency also points interested people to the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), a voluntary professional association for human milk banks. This organization issues voluntary safety guidelines for member banks on screening donors, and collecting, processing, handling, testing and storing human milk.

But even with human milk banking supporting the most vulnerable newborns in hospitals, Giuliano suggests that cell-cultured human milk can bridge the gap to feed all babies human milk until 6 months old to create the first true surplus of human milk in human history.

“It’s so valuable and so life-saving,” he said.

The future
When talking about his work in this field, Giuliana readily admits he’s “hooked.”

“Now it’s a responsibility,” he said about continuing on with this. “I can’t quit. It’s gone too far to walk away from it.”

What about the cost?

The scientists working on this agree that currently cost is a major hurdle, especially since they want the human-milk formula to be affordable and accessible. As such, they’re strategizing how to cut costs so the milk won’t be more expensive than formula.

The cost of baby formula across popular brands can average between $1,200 and $1,500 during a baby’s first year, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.

Giuliano said that beast milk substitutes is one of the fastest growing food segments when looking at the compound annual growth rate.

With a value of $24.3 billion in 2018, Allied Market Research estimates the global infant nutrition market wll grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.7 percent from 2019 to 2026. At that point, it is estimated to hit $61.6 billion.

“It’s big business,” said Giuliano, predicting that cell-cultured human milk may replace all bovine breast milk substitutes one day.

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As with other holidays, food is an important part of this annual celebration, with the main observances centering around a special home service called the seder, which includes a festive meal. The foods served must all be kosher.

Derived from Hebrew, kosher means to be “pure, proper or suitable for consumption.” It’s a term that describes foods that comply with dietary guidelines set by traditional Jewish law. Not only do these laws set forth which foods may be consumed, but also how they must be produced, processed and prepared. And which foods should not be eaten.

With the extra supervision required to be accepted as kosher, with oversight by rabbis for example, kosher food is perceived by many people — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — as being healthier and cleaner.

No wonder then that a kosher label on food attracts shoppers of all kinds. In fact, according to research in 2017 by Kosher Network International, the global market for kosher foods was worth $24 billion, with growth expected to hit 11.5 percent by 2025.

OK Kosher, one of the largest kosher certification organizations in the world, has certified about 700,000 products made by 4,000 manufacturers, which include Kraft, Heinz, Kellogg and General Mills. Even Coca Cola has gone Kosher.

Rabbi Eli Lando, executive manager of OK Kosher, said that by and large, “consumers see a kosher certification as a verification that a product is healthy, clean and safe. And while the certification has roots in religious traditions that are thousands of years old, it now speaks directly to the modern consumer’s demand for wholesome foods.”

Although there are 6 million Jews in the United States, according to World Population Review, Lando said Jewish people represent only 20 percent of the kosher product consumer base.

In other words, kosher has gone mainstream, with social media helping to boost people’s awareness of it.

Roger Horowitz, author of “Kosher USA,”  describes a Kosher seal as a “silent salesman.

“It may seem ancient,” he said, but the people doing it are modern and in the modern marketplace.”

What’s kosher and what isn’t
Food that is kosher must adhere to specific Biblical-based dietary laws. Some of these rules require only eating animals that are kosher — cloven (split) hooved mammals that chew cud. These include cows, sheep, goats, lambs, oxen and deer. Cuts of beef from the hindquarters of the animal, such as flank, short loin, sirloin, round and shank, are not considered kosher.

Some meats, such as meat from pigs, rabbits, squirrels, camels, kangaroos and horses are not considered kosher.

Pigs? Pigs can transmit trichinellosis, or trichinosis, a disease transmitted by eating raw or undercooked pork contaminated with the parasite Trichinella, which is not visible to the naked eye. Symptoms range from nausea to heart and breathing problems. In the past, trichinosis was fairly common and can still be a problem in rural areas.

The best way to prevent trichinellosis is to cook meat to a temperature of 71 degrees C (160 degrees F). Freezing, curing or salting, drying, smoking, or microwaving meat may not kill infective parasites. Of course, In the case of kosher, you can prevent infections by not eating pork altogether. In Biblical days, this was a practical safeguard against it.

Certain domesticated fowl, such as chicken, geese, quail, dove and turkey may be eaten. But predator birds such as eagles and hawks may not.

Fish is considered kosher only if the fish has fins and scales. This would include tuna, salmon, halibut and pickerel. But shrimp, crab, oysters, lobster and other types of shellfish are not permitted. That’s because they have spread typhoid and are also a source of a type of hives.

Meanwhile fish and eggs and plant-based meats are classified as “neutral,” meaning they don’t contain milk or fish.

Fruits in their unprocessed forms are kosher but they can’t contain insects, which means they must be inspected to make sure no insects or larvae are present before being sold or eaten. Specially trained rabbis do the inspections.

Nuts and seeds and the oils from them are kosher, although sometimes the processing of these foods can make them non-kosher because of possible cross-contamination from equipment that was used for meat or dairy products.

Also, under kosher rules, meat and dairy may not be made or eaten together. In other words, it’s one or the other at mealtime. This is based on the belief that dairy foods and meat digest at unequal rates, which is hard on the body.

Grains for the most part are fine. But during Passover, all leavened grain products — those made with yeast or a leavening substance — are forbidden. But unleavened breads such as matzo are allowed.

Kosher slaughtering  . . .  and after
Kosher requires that an animal or bird be slaughtered by a trained kosher slaughterer. The process involves severing the trachea and esophagus with a special razor-sharp knife. This also severs the jugular vein, which kills the animal or bird instantaneously and is said to cause a minimal amount of pain to the animal or bird..

After the animal has been slaughtered, the internal organs are inspected for any abnormalities that would make the animal non-kosher. The lungs are also checked for abscesses and other health problems.

The blood, which is a medium for the growth of bacteria, is drained. Meat must be “koshered” within 72 hours after slaughter so that the blood won’t congeal. Eating the blood or an animal or bird is forbidden.

Labeling is important
Because foods nowadays can contain so many different ingredients and also because of the complexities of modern food processing, it would be hard for a consumer to know if a product is kosher or not. That’s where labeling comes in. A kosher label on the packaging indicates that the product has met all of the necessary requirements. For those who want to adhere to kosher dietary guidelines, the advice is to choose only foods with these labels as a way to avoid accidentally eating something that isn’t kosher.

In North America, kosher certification ranges from around $5,000 to $15,000 for an annual certification. As well as regular inspections, unannounced inspections are also part of the certification process. Rabbis are involved throughout the certification process. This gives consumers added trust in kosher products because an extra set of eyes are involved.

According the JIFA, the Jewish Initiative for Animals 74 percent of Americans choose kosher based on concerns for food safety. In fact, of the people who buy kosher products, the majority point to food safety as their key concern. And previous research has shown that American shoppers believe that kosher food is safer.

Washington state dairyman Dick Klein, who isn’t Jewish, is one of them. He said he always buys kosher, if it’s on sale, because “it’s healthier and safer.”

Some problems
Meanwhile, JIFA, says that despite the fact that people think kosher food is inherently better, this is despite the fact that almost all kosher and non-kosher meat, poultry, dairy and eggs come from animals raised on factory farms, which raises concerns about the overuse of antibiotics.

When it comes to how kosher animals are bred and raised, JIFA says that kosher certification has no relationship to antibiotic use, health genetics, confinement, or access to pasture.

Food safety enters the picture
Although many people consider kosher foods to be safe when it comes to standard food-safety requirements, that isn’t necessarily the case.

Kosher Check, a Canadian certifying company, is a full-service certification agency — but one with an important difference, according to its website. While kosher agencies world-wide aim to certify that the ingredients and manufacturing processes of their clients follow the Jewish laws of kosher as set out in the Torah (the Jewish Bible) Kosher Check goes further.

Formerly BC Kosher, it was the only agency in the world that required their clients to be in good standing with all applicable food safety rules as a condition of kosher certification.

Now Kosher Check certification has been introduced for those manufacturers that want to promote not only their kosher compliance, but their commitment to food safety as well.

The company says that certification of a company’s products and manufacturing processes by Kosher Check is mark that “not only guarantees your ingredients and products kosher status, it also acts as a mark of assurance that food safety laws have been strictly followed to a minimum level of HACCP compliance.”

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) compliance requires businesses to identify potential food safety issues and review their entire food storage and handling processes and procedures. The goal of using HACCP is to ensure a business is HACCP compliant. Compliance implies all aspects of food storage and handling are conducted in a safe manner.

Kosher Check says it can work with companies that don’t meet this standard to achieve it.

The company’s website also says that this double-layered guarantee formalizes and reinforces the widely-held belief among consumers that Kosher products are safer to consume. Besides attracting Jewish shoppers, the Kosher Check label will attract “the throngs of shoppers concerned about food safety issues,” thus greatly expanding the market for a company’s kosher products.

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You’ve probably heard a lot about the new plant-based foods — meatless beef and poultry and dairy-free milk, for example, but most people don’t know much, if anything, about them. In fact, the first time you heard about them, you might have said “Forget about that. If I want food, I want ‘real food.’ ”

But now that you’ve heard friends talk about plant-based foods or seen ads about them in restaurants or grocery stores, you can’t help but wonder if this — as crazy as it sounds — is here to stay. Or is it just one of those fads that burst onto the scene with a lot of hullabaloo and then disappear?

As for food safety, which is a major consumer concern, plant-based foods don’t involve slaughtering or butchering animals. In other words, no blood or guts here. But even so, basic food safety principles have to be followed. Keeping products and processing facilities clean and sanitary and keeping plant-based foods and ingredients away from products such as meat that could contaminate them with foodborne pathogens is essential.

The marketplace
When looking at the marketplace, some questions come to mind: “How popular are they? Are they healthy to eat? Are they good or bad for the environment?  And what do they cost  compared to ‘real food?’ ” And maybe more important to you as a consumer, do they taste good?

Good questions and ones that a lot of everyday shoppers are asking. And even some of the major producers are asking now that some are seeing declining sales.

A recently released report  (https://www.plantbasedfoods.org/2021-u-s-retail-sales-data-for-the-plant-based-foods-industry/) on how plant-based meats, poultry, milk, and eggs are faring in the marketplace has some answers to questions about each of the categories. And plenty of encouraging news for producers of plant-based foods. For example, overall, plant-based food retail sales have grown three times faster than total food retail sales, with most plant-based categories outpacing their conventional counterparts when it came to growth.

Released on March 24, the new data was collected by the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), The Good Food Institute (GFI), and SPINS.

Even so, there are other reports that show that the popularity and revenues of plant-based categories are slipping.

As for the future, for the most part, it will be in the consumers’ hands. What they buy and how much of it they buy will provide a lot of the answers about the industry’s future. We’re not there yet.

Contrasting predictions
In August 2021 the news was all rosy. According to a report from Bloomberg Intellingence, “Plant-Based Foods Poised for Explosive Growth,” the projected plant-based food market would make up 7.7 percent of the global protein market.

Also according to the report, global retail sales of plant-based food alternatives might even hit $162 billion by 2030 — up from $29.4 billion in 2020. That’s a lot of billions.

The report predicted that the two largest subcategories of plant-based alternatives — milk/dairy and meat — will continue to dominate sales in the segment.

While most people are familiar with plant-based milk — almond and soy milk, for example — meatless meats such as Beyond Meat burgers and Impossible Meats burgers are not as widely known by the general consumer, even though they are popular with consumers who’d rather eat less meat, are concerned about how meat animals are treated, and see advantages to the environment in having fewer animals on the land.

Even so, Jennifer Batashus, senior consumer staples analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, went so far as to predict that plant-based protein alternatives will become a long-term option for consumers — not just in the United States but around the world as well.

“If sales and penetration for meat and dairy alternatives continue to grow,” she said, “meat and dairy alternatives could even obtain 5 percent and 10 percent of their respective global market shares in the next decade.”

But, then, by early 2022, the situation had taken a different tilt, with one headline declaring “Fake Meat is Bleeding Money.” The featured food item in the AgWeb article (https://www.agweb.com/news/livestock/beef/fake-meat-bleeding-money) was none other than Beyond Meat, hamburgers made with plant-based ingredients — in other words, no meat at all. According to the article, for three years the company has been bleeding cash. It’s gotten so bad that investors in the once trendy company have seen losses mounting.

Another major player acknowledged slowing growth. Based on that, the Canadian meat giant Maple Leaf will downgrade its 40 percent plant-based growth estimate to 10 percent to 15 percent.

All sorts of reasons come into play, among them the disruption the market suffered because of Covid-19. Then, too, other plant-based meat products are now available for consumers to choose from. But Beyond Meat company officials acknowledge that a major obstacle to sustained growth is that it remains higher priced than beef —as much as two times higher. Bottomline: Beyond Meat is still not meat. For many consumers, that’s a no-brainer of a reason to stick with meat.

Meanwhile, consumers still see meat as a major part of their shopping list. According to the 2022 Power of Meat report, (https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/26302-sneak-peek-the-2022-power-of-meat-report) nearly all American households (98.5 percent) purchase meat, with volume sales up 3.9 percent for all meat compared to pre-pandemic levels.

And just this month, the United States and Japan hammered out an agreement that will allow for more beef exports into Japan. Why? Because demand for beef is so strong in that country.

The ‘new report’
Despite all sorts of up-and-down challenging economic conditions, among them them inflation, supply-chain problems (think ‘empty shelves’), and especially the pandemic, plant-based foods held on tight in 2021.

According to the report released on March 25 by the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), The Good Food Institute (GFI), and SPINS, U.S. retail sales of plant-based foods grew a hefty 6.2 percent in 2021 over a record year of growth in 2020. No small change here considering that it brought the total plant-based market value to an all-time high of $7.4 billion.

As for the ingredients, besides the traditional soy, wheat, and corn that used to be the staples for earlier versions of plant-based meats, newcomers like chickpea, mung bean, fava beans, mushrooms, sorghum, and barley are now on the list.

Here’s how the categories did, according to the recent report:

Meatless meats
Think meatless burgers, meatless chicken nuggets, and even meatless bacon. And more. There’s a surprisingly wide range of meatless items that consumers can now choose from either in a conventional grocery store —  or dining out at fast-food chains.

What about plant-based chorizo? Chipotle’s plant-based chorizo’s main ingredient is pea protein, and it’s flavored with chipotle peppers, tomato paste, garlic, smoked paprika, and olive oil. In addition to being certified vegan, the chorizo is also free of gluten and soy.

And what about jerky? Beyond Meat and PepsiCo recently announced the debut of plant-based jerky, the first snack made under a partnership between Beyond Meat and and the soft drink giant.

Data in the recently released report show that plant-based meat dollar sales in 2021 remained strong, delivering a repeat year of $1.4 billion in sales, and growing 74 percent in the past three years, outpacing growth of conventional meat by almost three times.

The unit comparison is even more striking — while conventional meat unit sales have grown 8 percent in the past three years, plant-based meat unit sales have outpaced that by more than six times, growing 51 percent during the same period.

How mainstream has this become? According to the report, 19 percent of households purchased plant-based meat in 2021, up from 18 percent in 2020, with 64 percent of buyers purchasing plant-based meat more than once throughout the year.

Not surprisingly, plant-based burgers lead the pack when it comes to sales in the plant-based meat category.

Even so, there’s now more to choose from. Variety is the spice of life, and that’s what consumers are looking for. What about some plant-based meatballs, chicken nuggets, tenders and cutlets — and even some deli slices. These were the fastest growing plant-based meat items in 2021.

McDonald’s is even getting into the game, with some of its restaurants testing a McPlant burger.

Meanwhile, a relative newcomer into the game, plant-based seafood grew 14 percent, hitting a whopping $14 million. The future in this category beckons.

Plant-based milk
Already a major player, plant-based milk saw its sales grow 4 percent and 33 percent in the past three years to an impressive $2.6 billion.

All the more impressive considering that animal-based milk sales fell 2 percent in 2021.

Representing 16 percent of all retail milk dollars, plant-based milk, is referred to as the “growth engine” of the milk category. As such it contributes $105 million in growth, compared to a loss of $264 million in animal milk sales.

According to the Natural Enhanced Channel, plant-based milk represents 40 percent of all milk sold, up from 34 percent in 2018.

As proof as another mainstreamer on its way, 42 percent of households bought plant-based milk, with almond milk being the most popular. Not only that, 76 percent of plant-based milk buyers purchased it multiple times in 2021.

Of course, there’s more to milk than a glass of milk. Plant-based milk opens the way to a host of popular dairy products — none of them made with cow’s milk.

Think products like yoghurt, ready-to-drink items, cheese, ice cream and even creamers.

As for yoghurt, plant-based yogurt sales grew 9 percent — three times the rate of conventional yogurt. Plant-based cheese grew 7 percent, while conventional cheese declined 2 percent. And plant-based ice cream and frozen desserts grew 31 percent over the past two years to reach $458 million.

Plant-based eggs
No crowing roosters needed here. In fact, JUST Egg’s website (https://www.ju.st/plant-based-eggs?utm_source=google_ads&utm_medium=search_cpc&utm_campaign=JE-US-Branded-Google-Search-Exact-%5BKNOWN%5D&utm_content=Just_Egg&utm_term=just%20eggs&creative=543156369521&matchtype=e&device=c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6ceChezp9gIVqGxvBB1N5A5bEAAYASAAEgJ6kvD_BwE) says “We’re living in the golden era of eggs.”

“No cholesterol,” it says. “No industrial chicken farms. No artificial flavors. Just really delicious eggs made from plants.”

You can use plant-based eggs to make all sorts of popular dishes — scrambled eggs as a starter, omelettes, French toast, quiches and soufflés.

With some consumers looking for what they consider a healthier “egg choice,” it’s no surprise that the plant-based egg category also enjoyed rapid growth in 2021, recording a 42 percent increase in dollar sales.

According to the report, plant-based egg dollar sales have grown more that 1,000 percent. At the same time, conventional egg dollars declined by 4 percent in 2021.

Consumers with dollars
According to the report, 62 percent, or 79 million, U.S. households are now buying plant-based products —an increase from 61 percent the previous year.

Industry leaders point to increased repeat rates in plant-based food across already numerous record-breaking years.

And they point to who these consumers are and what’s motivating them.

For example, consumers, particularly Millennials ages 26-41 and Gen Z ages 10-25, are motivated by an interest in foods that are better for their health and deliver on positive environmental impact and social responsibility.

We’re talking about an important shopper demographic. We’re talking about the present but also the future consumer public.

That’s why leaders in this sector say this is important to keep an eye on what’s happening in all parts of the grocery store and in restaurants in general. It’s a new day, they say, and no one wants to be left behind.

Voice of a beef raiser
Western Washington cattleman Larry Gadbois is definitely not part of corporate agriculture. His herd, which includes 65 mother cows, is grass fed, and the hay he raises for the animals and also to help meet expenses is organic. He’s been a cattleman for decades and takes pride in his cows and his hay.

He admits he hasn’t kept up-to-date about plant-based beef. After all, his cattle operation keeps him plenty busy. But he has heard you can go into Burger King and get a burger that’s not made of meat.

“There’s probably going to be a place for plant-based meats,” he said. “You’ve always got someone looking for something different. And there are the people who don’t want animals to be killed. Right now there’s a lot of experimentation going on. People will want to try it, but how many people will actually settle into it. That’s the important question.”

As far as he’s concerned, the real question is “How long is this going to last?”

Is he worried that this “meatless” option is going to hurt his business?

“I do worry about it a little bit, but that’s where it ends,” he said.

For him, there are a some dark clouds looming over small-scale operations like his that have him plenty worried.

“It’s very challenging,” he said. “We need the small farmer, but we’re being forced out. You have to be bigger to get good prices at the auction.”

“There will always be beef,” he said. “But the real question is who’s going to be able to afford it.”

At this point, plant-based industry officials say that although plant-based products are selling for more than conventional products, they also say that as the industry gears up and gets larger, the prices should be more on par with conventional products. When that happens, they say, price will no longer be a stumbling block to increased and sustained sales.

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Local, of course, she says when asked about this. It’s fresher, and I like knowing I’m helping to support our local farmers.

This is pretty much par for the course in the minds of today’s U.S. shoppers. No wonder then that.many large grocery stores now have LOCAL printed on their bags. And in many cases, there are large signs saying LOCAL placed randomly throughout the store, as though the word encompasses everything in the store.

Of course, the word, “imported,” might be on some of their wares, cheeses, for example, that are known for the country where they’re produced. And some fruits and vegetables do bear small stick-on labels talking about their country of origin — Granny Smith apples from New Zealand or onions (in winter) from South America. But unless they’re touting a specific food that has been raised in a local area those “local” signs are not describing food in the store.

No surprise then that you won’t see shoppers proudly carrying bags that say IMPORTED.

Yet consider this: More than half of the fresh fruit and almost a third of the fresh vegetables Americans buy now come from other countries. That’s a lot.

But there’s more: According to the USDA, food imports will likely continue to increase, with imports of fresh fruits and vegetables rising 45 percent from 2016 to 2027. In other words, 75 percent of our fruit and almost half of our vegetables will likely be imported by then.

What about meat and fish

In most years, the United States exports more meat than it imports, according to the USDA. Meat from foreign sources accounts for roughly 8-20 percent of total U.S. meat supplies, but only the portions that are imported directly as meat are obvious.

Most U.S. livestock imports come from Canada and Mexico. The high costs associated with quarantine requirements and transportation limit imports from other countries. Even so, by by the end of 2021, The United States had imported beef from 20 different countries

As  for beef, Americans love their hamburgers and because of that beef imports are largely driven by the ravenous market for ground beef in the United States.

China, meanwhile, was the largest beef importer in the world in 2020. Coming in next were the United States, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Nearly all hogs imported into the United States are feeder hogs, and most originate in Canada.

As for chicken, more than 99 percent of the chicken sold in the United States comes from chickens hatched, raised and processed in the United States. None currently come from China. Less than 1 percent of the chicken consumed in the United States is imported from Canada and Chile.

Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), the Poultry Products Inspection Act, and the Egg Products Inspection Act, imported products are prohibited from entering the United States unless the exporting country meets all food safety public health standards applicable to similar products produced in the United States

Fish is another story. About 80 percent of fish and seafood products coming into the U.S. is imported, much of it from Asia.

A quick look at food safety and imports

Food coming into the United States from other countries may contain pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, or other disease-causing microorganisms, or toxins, which are mostly produced by microorganisms, according to the USDA. And these pathogens and toxins could lead to foodborne illnesses.

From 2002 to 2019, a total of 22,350 pathogen violations occurred from imported foods, again according to the USDA. About 70 percent of those violations came from two food sources: the fishery and seafood products industry and the spices, flavors, and salts industry.

Fishery and seafood products had 9,857 pathogen violations over this period, accounting for 44.1 percent of the total refused imports. This category was followed by spices, flavors, and salts, which had 5,886 violations, or 26.3 percent of the total. Cheese and cheese products accounted for 7.1 percent of the total, followed by fruits and fruit products with 6.2 percent, nuts and edible seeds with 5.1 percent, and vegetables and vegetable products with 4.1 percent.

In total, the top six food industries accounted for 93 percent of the total pathogen violations over the period, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service report (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=103196) published in 2021.

Clearly, U.S. consumers, who rely on government agencies to safeguard wouldn’t wouldn’t be pleased with these numbers.

What’s driving rising imports?

U.S. consumers are wealthier and more ethnically diverse than in years past when imports such as bananas and coffee took up only a small part of their shopping baskets.

But things have changed, and U.S. consumers have developed an appetite for foods from other countries, some of them tropical countries that can grow some of the foods that meet shoppers’ acquired new tastes.

Some of these countries are least-developed and develoing countries. Their climates allow these farmers to produce food when many areas of the U.S. are in the throes of winter. But many  farmers in those countries are small-scale farmers and don’t have the knowledge, tools or finances to make sure their food is safe. Yet there are overseas markets hungry for their food if only they could produce food that meets international food-safety standards.

The World Bank lists more than 45 countries as “developing countries.” Among them are many African nations, some Asian and Arab countries and some mid-Eastern and Latin American countries.. Go here ( https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/developing-countries) to see the list and where the countries stand in the rating.

The countries at the bottom of the ranking are often referred to as “least developed countries.”

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration oversees the safety of most of the human and animal food consumed in the United States. The goal is to make sure that food imported from other countries meet the same food-safety standards as those in the United States.

In the past, the approach focused on intercepting unsafe foods at the border and preventing them from entering into the U.S. marketplace. However, with increasing shipments of food from other countries coming in to U.S. ports, it became clear that a shift in perspective was needed.

Now, instead, the agency’s oversight includes preventing food-safety problems before the food arrives at the border and is sold in the marketplace — and before it ends up on consumers’ plates. No easy task to be sure since there are so many overseas farmers, producers and companies eager to get their goods into the United States. Even more challenging, some of them are from developing and less-developed countries and don’t have the means to meet U.S. food-safety standards at the foods’ point of origin.

Reaching out to developing countries

If the Covid 19 pandemic has taught people anything else it’s that, like it or not, they are part of a global community. And with food being imported from and exported to so many countries, many people are coming to realize that as consumers they’re also part of a global community. With that, comes the stark realization that food safety is not only a personal concern but also a global issue.

“ . . . it seems that the world is changing before our eyes,” said Roberto Azevedo, formerly the World Trade Organization director, when he spoke during a conference on food safety and trade several years ago. “Access to safe food is essential. It is a central element of public health . . . .”

Now in 2022, that message comes in even clearer as world trade in food continues to ramp up. And with predictions that it will only increase in the coming years.

That’s why Norway and Germany’s recent pledges of grants to help developing and least-developed countries  strengthen their ability to comply with international food-safety standards, which would, in turn, boost their access to regional and international markets, comes as such good news.

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) is pledging nearly $2.75 million from 2021 to 2023 to the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) https://www.standardsfacility.org).

The organization was established by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), World Bank Group, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WTO. Examples of ongoing STDF projects include developing remote inspection techniques, which allows more farms to be inspected, which can hasten the process.

In December 2021, Germany contributed just more than $3 million to STDF for projects that will help small-scale farmers, producers, traders and governments access global and regional markets for food and agriculture products.

Bettina Waldmann, Germany’s ambassador to the WTO, said that her country “recognizes the need to support developing and least developed countries that have been and still are particularly affected by the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Along those same lines, Bård Vegar Solhjell, director general of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation said that the global pandemic emphasizes that “we must continue to invest in and scale up safe trading systems.”

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the money will support countries in implementing sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards, including using science-based approaches to protect plant, animal and human health.

“These efforts strengthen the safety and stability of a developing country’s food supply, so thousands of farmers can sell goods in new markets, improving livelihoods,” he said.

A win-win

Bottomline, expanding food safety programs and tools to developing and least-developed countries will help farmers and other agricultural entities in those countries gain more markets and therefore help improve their economies, thus giving the people there more spending power, much of which can be used for food.

But it will also give overseas consumers more safe foods to choose from year round. This, in turn, will also benefit them because prices will be more competitive.

It also fits in with the focus on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s goal to preven food-safety problems before the food arrives at the border and is sold in the marketplace — and before it ends up on consumers’ plates.

As for one of those consumers, John Gottula of Montana, who has raised cattle and hogs before retiring, said he likes the idea of helping farmers in developing and less-developed lands learn the basics of food safety.

“The whole thing is about getting safe food from Point A to Point B,” he said, referring to international trade. “I think what Sweden and Germany are doing is great. It’s good that people are beginning to see the light . . . that a lot of the food we depend on comes from other countries. Here in America, we’ve become so used to seeing so much variety in the stores that we think it’s all produced here.”

When it comes to helping other countries strengthen the safety and stability of their food supply, which will help thousands of farmers and other food producers benefit and improve their livelihoods, he said he hopes other countries, including the United States, follow what Sweden and Germany are doing.

“I’m all for it,” he said. “It will help lift all boats. The bottomline is that it will make their lives and our lives better. And our food safer.”

How could this be?

No easy accomplishment for sure. It’s taken 15 years of research at Tel Aviv University, led by Imagindairy co-founder and chief science officer Tamir Tuller, to come up with this novel way of making milk based on animal-free proteins.

Although it hasn’t come out into the marketplace yet, Israel’s Imagindairy recently closed a $13 million seed round to commercialize cow-free milk proteins.

“The market is eager to develop new dairy analogs based on our animal-free proteins,” said Eyal Afergan, company co-founder and CEO, in a statement, referring to products that are equivalent to dairy products.

Turns out that instead of feeding cows, this new approach will involve feeding microorganisms that the scientists say are up to 20 times more efficient than a cow’s system in turning feed — hay and grain, for example — into human food.

Imagindairy does this by using what is called “precision fermentation” to create “true” milk proteins — including, in particular, casein and whey, two of the key compounds responsible for taste, texture and other properties of cow’s milk and its derivatives.

What’s going on here?
In fermentation, the power of microflora is tapped. These tiny microorganisms are busy fermenting things all around us — in the soil,  in plants, inside cows’ digestive systems and even inside of ours, where they help our bodies digest the food we eat.

Simply put, fermentation is the process in which a substance breaks down into a simpler substance. It’s what makes bread rise, yogurt thicken, and beer to fizz. In other words, it’s nothing new.

In the case of “precision fermentation,” scientists give these busy microflora the precise DNA sequence that provides a blueprint for making cow whey and casein proteins. Casein makes up 80 percent of the milk protein, while whey, which gives milk its flavor and texture, accounts for 20 percent.

Getting this specific DNA blueprint requires no involvement whatsoever on the part of a cow. Special software is what makes it possible.

The microflora is put into a tank filled with broth, which is made of water, nutrients and sugar. Because the microflora have the blueprints for making the two proteins, when they ferment the broth, they can make pure animal protein.

From there, the protein is separated from the microflora, filtered, purified and finally dried.

The company says what you get from all of this is a pure protein powder that can be used to make milk, cheese, yogurt, cream cheese and even ice cream — all of which are identical to the original dairy products.

“We integrate AI (artificial intelligence) technology with system biology to unlock the potential of cellular agriculture,” says the company’s website.

The environment and ethics
On the environmental front, Imagindairy says it can avoid many of the environmental problems, including greenhouse gas emissions, associated with traditional dairy cattle production. It also says that its microorganisms are up to 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feedstock into human food.

Then, too, there’s the ethical part of the equation, which is also important to many consumers.

“Ethical claim is one of the key drivers of our innovative solution” said Eyal Afergan, co-founder and CEO. “Consumers want the sensation of real milk, but at the same time, they don’t want to harm the animals. Our vision is to enable every dairy lover worldwide to enjoy tasty and nutritious dairy products while preserving the environment and protecting animals. Together, we can create a world where a dairy cow is just a cow nurturing her calf.”

The company expects its product to be available on the market in two years.

Along similar lines, another company, Perfect Day — with regulatory approval for a new animal-free milk protein — developed its first product, ice cream, in 2019.  Since then, a growing catalog of brands and products are using Perfect Day’s animal-free protein from flora to make their products.

“We just get there in a different, kinder way,” says “Perfect Day’s” website.

What about food safety?
When asked about food safety, a Perfect Day sporkesperson said their protein is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA and is some of the purest protein in the food industry.

”To maximize the amount of protein we can produce, and for the most sustainable process possible, we grow our microflora in large tanks at the optimal temperature, pH, and salinity following standard fermentation practices in the food industry,” said the spokesperson in an email to Food Safety News.

“The production of proteins for food via fermentation has been utilized for over 30 years, and Perfect Day’s process uses thoroughly vetted and well-established food safety systems and practices under
HACCP/HARPC, as well as third party-certified ISO-compliant food safety programs.”

Now what?
This new technology has the potential to usher in a host of significant changes in agriculture — changes that were not foreseen by most people and policymakers even just five years ago.

“We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago,” says the executive summary of a report by ReThinkx.

“The impact of this disruption on industrial animal farming will be profound.

“By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50 percent and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. All other livestock industries will suffer a similar fate, while the knock-on effects for crop farmers and businesses throughout the value chain will be severe.”

ReThinkx is an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts the scope, speed and scale of technology-driven disruption and its implications across society.

Back on the farm
Fourth-generation Oregon dairyman Jon Bansen, a spokesman for Organic Valley, a nationwide co-op, isn’t surprised by this sort of talk. He says that a large part of the reason that these companies are working on producing what could be called “lab milk” comes down to money.

“They see an opening and they want to get into it,” he said, referring to beliefs on the part of  some modern-day consumers that agriculture is ‘cruel and environmentally harmful.’

“Unfortunately, many people in this new generation are equating all of agriculture with agribusiness,” he said. “They’ve never been on a farm. They’re so decoupled from the natural world that they wouldn’t know what good food is. They have no understanding of it.  Agribusiness is taking us away from how food should be produced.”

In contrast to the cows in large confinement dairies, his dairy’s 175 cows are out in the fresh air grazing on green grass and producing nutrient-dense milk, he says.

Explaining that the many nutrients in the plants the cows are eating come from their interaction with the soil, he said that that’s why you need to farm as close to the soil as possible.

“The microbial health of the soil is so important,” he said. “When you ramp up the health of the soil, you ramp up the nutrients in the plants. And when you do that, you boost the nutrients the cows are getting and therefore the nutrients humans are getting.

“You won’t get that from lab milk, he said.

Referring to agribusiness and megadairies, he laments that they’ve been abusing the soil for too long.

As an organic farmer, he uses non-toxic pesticides, no chemical fertilizers, no antibiotics, no added hormones, and no genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The cows must also be out on pasture, which must be organic, for a specific amount of time each year. And they must be treated humanely.

Go here to see a video of Bansen on his farm, Double J Jerseys.

More on food safety
Bansen said that the chances of milk from healthy cows being infected  with foodborne pathogens such as E. coli are just about zero, as long as the proper sanitary practices are followed.

“Healthy animals — that’s where it starts,” he said. “When a cow is eating the grasses and other plants in a pasture, that’s what they’re supposed to be eating. That’s what makes them healthy.”

His dairy must meet state requirements for a Class A dairy, which involves inspections and testing of the dairy’s milk, which is  pasteurized. Pasteurization is a heat-treatment process that destroys pathogenic microorganisms.

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

“Super bugs” is a popularized term for “antibiotic resistance,” or “antimicrobial resistance.” They don’t go by that name for nothing. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year in the United States, at least 2.8 million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria or fungi. More than 35,000 people die as a result. Antibiotic resistant bacteria frequently show up in outbreak strains of pathogens such as E. Coli, Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.

When looking ahead, the picture only gets more daunting. Some medical experts predict that worldwide by 2050 the number of deaths attributed to antibiotic resistance could reach 10 million and cost trillions of dollars — unless collective action is taken on a global scale.

No wonder then that some human and animal health experts are referring to this as a “slow moving pandemic.”

What in the world is this all about?
Antibiotics, often referred to as “miracle drugs,” are medicines that kill or stop the growth of bacteria, which is a good thing. That applies to humans and animals alike. But in the case of livestock and poultry, especially at large-scale operations such as industrial farms, antibiotics are often overused in ways that promote drug resistance to them. This can happen when low doses are routinely added to feed and water to promote growth and to prevent health problems caused by overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions. That’s different from using them to treat a specific medical problem.

In this conflict between bacteria and antibiotics, resistance happens when the bacteria develop the ability to evade the antibiotics designed to kill them. That means the germs continue to grow and to outcompete other drugs — potentially leading to infections that are harder to treat. Thus the name “super bugs.”

To see an animation about how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, click here.

As a result of the over use of antibiotics, some dangerous strains of foodborne bacteria found in animals and poultry, such as E. coli, Salmonella and S. aureus are now resistant to multiple antibiotics. If a person becomes infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of a foodborne pathogen, what was once, in many cases, an easy-to-treat disease can quickly develop into a life-threatening illness — one that requires expensive medical care and can even lead to death.

But what does this have to do with food safety?
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, when animals are slaughtered and processed for food, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, if present in the animal, can contaminate meat or other animal products. Microscopic amounts of animal waste can also carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Fruits and vegetables can become contaminated in many ways, including through contact with soil or water containing waste from animals.

People can get foodborne infections in different ways:

• From handling or eating meat, seafood, milk or eggs that are raw or undercooked and contaminated with resistant bacteria;
• From handling or eating fruits and vegetables contaminated with resistant bacteria;
• From contact with animal waste, either directly or when it gets into water and the environment;
• From touching or caring for animals without proper handwashing;
• From breathing in dust particles downwind of livestock farms or feedlots on which drug-resistant bacteria are hitching a ride.

In the case of food safety, foodborne antibiotic-resistant bacteria have already made their way into the food chain, which can make curing people sickened with the bacteria all that more challenging.

According to a 2013 CDC report, of the 18 drug-resistant organisms highlighted as “alarming,” four are potentially fatal foodborne bacteria: Campylobacter, E. coli, Salmonella and Shigella.

The report also points out that resistant bacteria in food-producing animals are of particular concern because these animals serve as carriers. Resistant bacteria can contaminate the foods that come from those animals, and people who consume these foods can develop antibiotic-resistant infections.

Bottomline, animals — like humans — carry bacteria, including antibiotic resistant bacteria, in their gut. When meat animals and poultry are slaughtered and processed, these bacteria can contaminate the meat or other products. In addition, the people handling these products can then be infected. And so can the people and produce crops downwind or downstream from where these animals are raised.

Over time, warns the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine, the use of antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs will further complicate health care professionals’ efforts to select the appropriate antibiotic for treatment.

This issue of antibiotic resistance applies to humans and animals alike, especially considering that humans rely on some of the same antibiotics — referred to as “medically important” antibiotics — as animals to cure health problems. Some of these problems in humans are pneumonia, meningitis, and strep throat.

As in the case of livestock health, these medically important antibiotics cannot be misused or overused without running the risk of having a patient develop antibiotic resistant pathogens.

Examples of medically important antibiotics are penicillins, tetracyclines, erythromycins, cephalosporins and fluoroquinolones.

Although the CDC points out that the majority of drug-resistant infections occur in hospitals, it also says that there’s growing concern over antibiotic-resistant infections from food.

Also, according to the CDC, 75 percent of dangerous new infections, including pandemics, spill over from animals to human populations. These animal-borne threats include viruses as well as new forms of antibiotic resistance genes and the multi-drug resistant superbugs that carry them.

Pointing out that effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing people to live longer, be healthier and benefit from modern medicine, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, formerly a Special Representative for Antimicrobial Resistance for the Director-General at the World Health Organization (WHO), put it this way: “Without urgent coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries that have been treatable for decades can once again kill.”

“Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods, and the implications will be devastating,” he warns.

Tackling an out-of-kilter problem
For decades now, U.S. policymakers, as well as medical and veterinary professionals, have sent out warnings about the rising threat from superbugs.

All in all, the general public believes that “surely something is being done about this,” especially since it’s such a serious health issue.

But consider this: According to recent research done by the Center For Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the use of antibiotics in livestock is rising while medical use in humans is falling.

“Our analysis shows 44 percent more medically important drugs are destined for cattle and swine than for human medical use,” says a website developed by the two associations.

In coming up with this conclusion, they joined forces to fill in what they see as a “critical data gap.” They did this by presenting a side-by-side comparison of antibiotic use in animals and humans in the United States over time. In a post, they supply charts and graphs highlighting their findings.

“In the United States, we don’t track antibiotic use very well,” said Dr. David Wallinga, senior health officer at NRDC and one of the authors of the blog, in an interview with Food Safety News. “FDA does report each year on antibiotics sold for use in livestock, including those that are medically important. In terms of the latter, our latest blog showed that nearly twice as many antibiotics are being sold for use in poultry and livestock as are sold for human medicine.”

One of the main problems, he said, referring to the gap in data, is that there’s no specific information supplied about when the antibiotics were administered to the animals, how and why.

This would bring to light why antibiotics are being given to the animals in the first place. In 1973, the FDA ruled against using medically important antibiotics to promote growth in animals. However, they are allowed to be used to prevent disease as would be the case if some of the animals in a herd were ill or they had gone through stress through shipping or hot weather, for example.

Unfortunately, they’re often used to prevent diseases when there are no sick animals in the herd.

Since 2016, FDA officials have been saying that they wanted to get more concrete “duration limits” — how long certain antibiotics can be used — on the labels of antibiotics put into animal feed. This year, the agency put forward a draft “concept paper” for how duration limits might come about for different antibiotics already on the market.

However, Wallinga said that the ”flawed approach” depends too much on drug companies to set their own limits, and even then would allow supposed limits that instead would be too vague and meaningless to offer the needed level of public health protection.

Administering antibiotics for a longer time than needed, which is often the case with livestock, can trigger antibiotic resistance, said Wallinga. “The more we use them, the faster they’ll become ineffective. Long-term, it will be the superbugs rather than us that benefit,” he said.

This doesn’t translate well to the U.S. livestock industry, where many if not most medically important antibiotics are routinely put into animal feed for entire herds for so-called disease prevention, said Wallinga.

He said he believes that FDA’s approach has been primarily to get the livestock industry to voluntarily decrease antibiotic reliance, but he also points out that in the United States, three or four companies control 80 percent of production.

That’s why he believes “comparable and integrated analyses” covering both sales and use of medically important antibiotics are urgently needed.

Such analyses are essential, he says, for policymakers and the public to understand more precisely how these precious medicines are being used on farms and feedlots, and whether U.S. efforts to curb unnecessary use is succeeding or falling short.

Wallinga said that since 2009, the FDA has reported annual sales of livestock antibiotics but no information on veterinary prescriptions or orders. At the same time, human sales data also are not reported. Meanwhile, the CDC now issues annual reports on antibiotic prescriptions in human medicine, but these reports do not provide national data on medical antibiotic sales.

Providing the public each year with side-by-side comparisons of the use of these precious medicines in human medicine and in food-producing animals, is an important step, said Wallinga.

He said that these additional essential steps should also be followed:

• Ensuring that livestock producers are required to report annually on their on-farm use of antibiotics.
• Making critical investments to create a national system that collects, integrates, and publishes annual data on antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance, both in human and animal settings.
• Setting national targets for reducing medically important antibiotic use, especially in specific livestock sectors such as the beef and pork industries where most such antibiotics are now used.

Unlike Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark or the Netherlands, the U.S. government does not release annual reports that integrate the human and animal sides of the antibiotic resistance problem. Wallinga said countries that do release such information have seen cases of resistance decline.

Some good news from the FDA
In recent days, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine published a report summarizing antibiotics sold or distributed for use in food-producing animals in 2020. It puts out a report on this topic each year.

It had some good news to share. It shows that domestic sales and distribution of medically important antimicrobial drugs approved for use in food-producing animals decreased by three percent between 2019 and 2020.

That represents a 38 percent decrease since 2015, which was the peak year of sales.

“This suggests that continued efforts to support the judicious use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals are having an impact,” says the report.

According to the agency, although sales data on antimicrobial drug products intended for food-producing animals do not necessarily reflect the actual use of antimicrobial drugs, sales volume observed over time can be a valuable indicator of market trends related to these products.

It also points out that sales and distribution information does not represent actual use of the products.

And it reminds the public that the agency’s goal in all of this is to to slow the development of antimicrobial resistance and preserve the effectiveness of antimicrobials for fighting disease in animals and humans.

“The agency’s aim is not simply measured by a reduction in sales volume of antimicrobials but also includes fostering good antimicrobial stewardship practices by optimizing the use of these products and limiting their use in animals to only when necessary to treat, control, or prevent disease.”

Good farming tactics
Wallinga said that every country in the European Union is already collecting information about antibiotic use on farms, or will soon be legally required to do so.

“In Europe, it was the federal officials telling livestock producers the direction they need be going,” he said, pointing out that the approach there is to promote healthier animals so as to prevent disease and therefore avoid antibiotics in the first place. In fact, next month the use of antibiotics for disease prevention absent any disease, will become illegal in livestock production in Europe. By contrast, he said, FDA not only allows it, but goes one step further by claiming that such use is “therapy.”

“By now, many of the largest livestock-producing countries in Europe have reduced their use of antibiotics by 50 to 60 percent in the last 10 years,” Wallinga said.

Here in the United States, many sustainable farmers rely on good farming practices instead of antibiotics, to keep their animals healthy.

“If we do that, why would we need antibiotics. unless, of course, an animal is actually sick,” said Linda Neunzig, a sheep farmer in Western Washington.

Organic producers, meanwhile, are not allowed to use antibiotics, or, if they do, in the case of treating a sick animal or bird, they can’t sell the meat, milk or dairy products as “organic.”

Dairy farmers who treat their cows with antibiotics can’t sell milk from those animals until the animals’ systems are clear of them.

For George Vojkovich, co-owner of Skagit River Ranch, which produces and sells pasture-raised organic beef, broilers, pork and eggs, it all comes down to good animal husbandry. His farming practices include building the soil, culling animals with genetic tendencies for certain health problems, using selective breeding, rotational grazing, planting a diversity of grasses and legumes and making sure the animals get the trace minerals they need.

Oregon organic dairy farmer John Bansen, said that raising healthy cows is a matter of making sure that the good bacteria outnumber the bad bacteria.

“It can’t be about ‘no bacteria,’ ” he said. He also believes that when the bacteria in the gut is healthy, the whole cow is healthy.

“You don’t want to subtract from a cow’s natural immune function,” he said. “Our job isn’t to replace her immune system with antibiotics and vaccines.”

Although many people believe that smaller “family-size” farms are the only places where animals and poultry can be raised without an excessive use of antibiotics, veterinarian Charles Hofacre, formerly a professor at the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety in the Avian Medicine Department, would disagree.

In an earlier interview with Food Safety News he said that raising animals and poultry in large-scale farming operations without pumping them full of antibiotics is being done every day and has been done for the 30 years that he’s been a poultry veterinarian.

And Wallinga is quick to praise Perdue Farms for being one of the first large companies to say that it will move away from antibiotic use, “No antibiotics ever” say the labels on its chickens and turkeys,

On a broader scale, the CDC offers this perspective about what it refers to as antibiotic stewardship:

“Perhaps the single most important action needed to greatly slow down the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant infections is to change the way antibiotics are used. Up to half of antibiotic use in humans and much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe.

“Stopping even some of the inappropriate and unnecessary use of antibiotics in people and animals would help greatly in slowing down the spread of resistant bacteria,” according to the CDC. “This commitment to always use antibiotics appropriately and safely — only when they are needed to treat disease, and to choose the right antibiotics and to administer them in the right way in every case — is known as antibiotic stewardship.”

CDC’s advice to livestock and poultry producers:

• Only give antibiotics to animals under veterinary supervision.
• Don’t use antibiotics for growth promotion or to prevent diseases in healthy animals.
• Vaccinate animals to reduce the need for antibiotics.
• Support the implementation of effective interventions put in place to reduce the spread of AMR through the environment.

A global prospective
Early this month, the World Health Organization came out with its own guidelines for national governments and the global food animal industry. No waffling here. The guidelines not only call for a prohibition on the use of medically important antibiotics for disease prevention but also urge significant limits be put on using critically important antibiotics in food animals to treat diseases.

Here are the new guidelines:

• Reduce overall use of all medically important antimicrobials in food animals.
• Fully prohibit use of all medically important antimicrobials in food animals for growth promotion.
• Fully prohibit use of all medically important antimicrobials in food animals for preventing infectious diseases that have not yet been clinically diagnosed by a veterinarian.
• Prevent use of critically important antibiotics in food animals for disease control and use of highest priority critically important antibiotics in food animals for disease treatment.

“We have consistently advocated for FDA to better align domestic policies with the WHO and to take stronger measures to restrict and reduce use of antibiotics in food animals raised in the U.S.,” said Cameron Harsh, senior manager for Organic & Animal Policy for the Center for Food Safety. “The new guidelines illustrate the degree to which our regulators and large food animal producers are falling short.”

Harsh also said that the Center for Food Safety “will continue to advocate for best practices that include stocking densities that allow for full freedom of movement and expression, adequate access to sunlight and the outdoors, appropriate and nutritious diets, and breeding for traits that prioritize health and immunity benefits over growth and productivity.”

What about labels?
Food labels such as“No Antibiotics Ever (NAE)” or “Raised Without Antibiotics,” or “No Added Antibiotics” are used by farmers who voluntarily avoid using antibiotics on their livestock or poultry. When these labels accompany a seal that states “USDA Process Verified,” it means USDA inspectors visited the farm to verify antibiotic use on that farm.

Symptoms mimic foodborne illness
Symptoms of antibacterial infection are similar to symptoms foodborne illnesses but often more severe:

• Bloody diarrhea
• Fever over 102 degrees F, measured by mouth
• Frequent vomiting that prevents keeping liquids down
• Signs of dehydration, including little or no urination, a very dry mouth and throat, or feeling dizzy when standing up
• Diarrhea that lasts more than 3 days

In cases like this, medical attention should be sought.

Food safety advice for consumers
Go here https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://battlesuperbugs.com/article-archive/new-arac-video-safe-handling-meat-and-poultry-products__;!!NO21cQ!Th3N6fotqpDJCEV0mge-8QFJbUVj3tagnOcJjZt5CG38HlxwDggs2SPyIc4g4g$ for some advice from the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center about choosing meat and poultry in the store and preparing it in the kitchen. One of the points is to look for labels. Another is to avoid eating raw or undercooked meats.

An important priority
“Pandemic preparedness and public health protection should be our nation’s foremost priority,” said Wallinga. “We must therefore invest to robustly track antibiotic resistance and antibiotic use wherever it occurs.”

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

Mention sustainable agriculture and you’ll likely get a hearty thumbs-up. Ask why this is so, and you’ll hear how sustainable farmers take good care of the soil, their animals, the environment, their employees — and that this way of farming benefits consumers’ health and safety.

You’ll also be told that farmers who practice sustainable agriculture don’t overload the soil with chemicals and don’t confine their livestock in crowded, unhealthy quarters, making for safer food from a safer environment. Family farms, not corporate agriculture, will be a common theme in answers to questions about sustainable farming.

But ask someone for a definition of sustainable farming and while you’ll get an opinion about what it is, you won’t get a point-blank definition. That’s because there really isn’t one.

Even so, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition takes a good stab at it, saying that its vision of agriculture is one where a “safe, nutritious, ample, and affordable food supply is produced by a legion of family farmers who make a decent living pursuing their trade while protecting the environment and contributing to the strength and stability of their communities.”

By “family farmers,” advocates generally mean small- and mid-sized farms, although larger farms can also be sustainable.

Other goals include improving the tilth of the soil by building up organic matter, reducing erosion, avoiding the use of antibiotics in food animals, and, with an eye on climate change, keeping more carbon in the soil.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, agricultural sustainability is a complex idea with many facets, including the economic because a sustainable farm should be a profitable business that contributes to a robust economy;  and the social, so it deals fairly with its workers and has a mutually beneficial relationship with the surrounding community, and the environment.

Among other things, this involves

•Building and maintaining healthy soil;

•Managing water wisely;

•Minimizing air, water, and climate pollution; and

•Promoting biodiversity

Some refer to sustainable agriculture as “the wave of the future.” One reason for that description comes down to a marketplace reality: Many consumers are increasingly seeking out food that isn’t grown with harmful or synthetic pesticides or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Or as one customer of Sylvanaqua Farms in Virginia put it: “Makes me feel a lot better about what I am eating and serving to my family!”

Unlike organic agriculture, there is no official certification or label for sustainable agriculture.

According to “Tillable,” organic agriculture and sustainable agriculture embrace two different concepts, although they may overlap.

While organic farming focuses on inputs such as synthetic fertilizers, sustainable farming focuses on the physical treatment of the land, which can include no-till practices, cover crops, and buffer zones. While both approaches are perceived as being environmentally friendly, farmers often go about them in very different ways.

And while organic food generally commands higher prices in the marketplace, that’s not the case with sustainable crops or livestock. Even so, some restaurants, grocery stores, and consumers who value sustainable agriculture are willing to pay more for food produced this way.

What about food safety?
That’s a good question. When asked if sustainable farming and food safety go hand in hand, Virginia Good, a farmer and board member of the Sedro-Woolley Farmers Market, said “that’s old thinking.” 

The two aren’t automatically entwined, she said, something that used to be assumed when sustainability became a buzzword. Some sustainable farmers, herself included, incorporate food safety practices into their farming; others don’t, although they should, of course.

Unfortunately, some farmers and consumers assume if you’re farming in “natural” ways there will be no problem with foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, parasites, and viruses. Many see corporate agriculture as the true villain when it comes to contamination.

Looking around at the happy scene of vendors and their customers at the outdoor market, Good said most customers know the farmers they buy from and have faith they’re doing the right thing.

“Local” has become what’s important to them, she said.

Even so, so-called local doesn’t ensure that food safety practices are being followed. And it doesn’t necessarily mean the food is local; some of it comes from hundreds of miles away. No matter where it’s from, produce should be washed in clean water, the containers that food is transported in should be clean, and produce eggs, and meat should be kept cool while being transported to the market and at the market. Handwashing is also important because bacteria can travel from contaminated produce and meat to people, causing serious infections.

Food safety practices are no small matter because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year 48 million people in the United States get sick from foodborne pathogens, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 people die.

Enter the backyard chickens
With time on their hands and concerns about their health dominating their thoughts during COVID lockdowns, some people decided to embark on a new venture: backyard chickens. This was true even for people who live within city limits.

Some have called it “explosive” growth in the practice. 

A lot of backyard poultry owners believe having a backyard flock is a good step toward sustainability. Besides this, it helped relieve boredom during lockdowns and they got fresh eggs in the bargain. And once the expense of building a chicken house and buying the chicks are factored into the equation — or ignored — there is the feeling that they can save money by going out and collecting their own eggs.

But this doesn’t mean there isn’t the need to become informed about foodborne pathogens, especially Salmonella, and how to prevent the bacteria from contaminating their flocks, their eggs, themselves, and family and friends.

Salmonella infection, known as salmonellosis, is a bacterial disease affecting the intestinal tract of humans, chickens and other birds and mammals. It can also be found on fresh produce.

Backyard chickens and other poultry can sicken people with Salmonella infections. In an ongoing outbreak that spans 47 states, the confirmed patient count currently stands at 863, according to recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than a fourth of those who have been infected are children younger than 5 years old. Thirty-three percent of patients have been hospitalized, and two people have died. The illnesses started on Dec. 15, 2020, with the most recently reported illness on Aug. 8, 2021.

Health officials say there are likely many more people who have been infected but did not seek medical attention or tests to confirm that they are part of the outbreak.

State and local public health officials are interviewing people about the animals they came into contact with the week before they got sick. Of the 527 people interviewed, 365 reported remembering contact with backyard poultry before getting sick.

Typical symptoms are diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps. 

Most people recover without treatment after 4 to 7 days. But some people — especially those younger than 5 and adults 65 and older, and those with weakened immune systems — may become severely ill and need medical treatment or hospitalization. The CDC’s advice in cases like this is to seek medical attention right away.

Joe McGuire, a Sedro-Woolley resident who has a backyard flock of four chickens, said he thinks part of the problem is that some people treat chickens like pets instead of chickens.

“They’re flock animals, not pets like dogs and cats,” he said, pointing out that children especially shouldn’t hold them up to their faces and cuddle them.

The CDC agrees with that. It advises people to closely supervise children around backyard poultry.

“Don’t let children younger than 5 years touch chicks,” it says. “Don’t kiss or snuggle backyard poultry, and don’t eat or drink around them since that can spread Salmonella to your mouth and make you sick.”

Bottom line: Young children are more likely to get sick from germs like Salmonella. One in four sick people is a child younger than 5 years.

Backyard poultry such as chickens and ducks can carry Salmonella germs even if they look healthy and clean, advises the CDC. These germs can easily spread to anything in the areas where the poultry live and roam.

McGuire is serious about keeping everything clean when it comes to his backyard flock. Each and every day, he rakes up their droppings and puts them in a barrel.

When it comes to food safety, he dons boots that are only used when he goes into the pen. And he puts on a pair of gloves when he cleans the pen. He keeps the nesting boxes clean, and he washes his hands after cleaning the pen and collecting the eggs. From there, he puts the eggs into the refrigerator to keep them cool. And regularly cleans the fridge.

“You have to get used to it,” he said, about being so diligent about keeping things clean. “You want your chickens to be healthy.”

He views his setup as sustainable in large part because he applies the nitrogen-rich chicken droppings to his garden and enjoys a bountiful harvest during the following season months later. Thanks to this strategy, he doesn’t have to use synthetic fertilizers.

And while he appreciates the eggs the chickens lay, he said that “just watching them is more fun than anything else.”

Former dairyman Dick Klein agrees with McGuire on the importance of keeping things clean. He makes sure his chicken house is well-ventilated, and he cleans it on a regular basis. 

“Keep their environment as healthy as yours,” he said. “If you do that you shouldn’t have problems.”

And while he would like to let his chickens roam about, if he did, they would make short order of his garden. 

Besides this, there are too many predators, not the least, hawks and coyotes, that would quickly make a meal of them.

“I’ve even had a coyote grab a chicken in broad daylight,” he said.

Like McGuire, he counts himself as “sustainable” because he takes good care of his chickens and applies their manure in the garden soil to nourish it months before planting, which means he doesn’t have to use synthetic chemicals. And like most sustainable farmers, he doesn’t use antibiotics. 

As for how sustainable his operation is, he can’t count himself in that equation 

“I spend a lot on feed, but I give most of the eggs away,” he said laughing.

According to a research study, 93 percent of the 150 most populated U.S. cities allow people to have backyard chickens in some capacity. How many chickens you can have depends on local city ordinances. In most cases, roosters are not allowed.

Depending on the breed of chickens you raise you can expect 200-300 eggs per hen each year.

Go here for more information about food safety practices to use when raising backyard poultry.

What about farms and food safety?
Chris Newman and his wife Annie’s 120-acre farm “Sylvanaqua Farms” in Virginia, use an array of sustainable practices to produce eggs, pasture-raised chicken, grass-fed beef, and pork. Most of the land is forested.

Rotational grazing for the cattle and letting the pigs roam in the woods are key to raising their livestock in a sustainably environmental way, they say.

But Chris says that while a lot of the conversation about sustainability is about technological things such as no-till, no sprays, and no GMOs, the important part of sustainability is about people.

“Ultimately, feeding people needs to be at the heart of sustainable farming,” he told a reporter.

On a smaller scale, Nita Hodgins, manager for the farmers market and farm stand at Eagle Haven Winery Farmers Market and Farm Stand in Skagit County, WA, said that as a consumer she likes the thought of sustainable farmers using food safety practices. But she said she knows you can’t assume they are.

“I ask farmers about how they harvest their crops, how they clean them, and even how they transport them,” she said.

Sean Doyle, co-owner of Father and Daughter Farm, also in Skagit County, said that food safety and food quality go together.

He keeps his greens on ice, and those that aren’t on display are kept in a cooler until they’re put up on display.

He said food safety calls for robust cleaning and that the challenge is in sorting the produce to keep it away from anything that might contaminate it.

“We’re very sanitary,” he said. “We have to be.”

Gail Blackburn, the owner of Innis Creek Farm in Whatcom County, WA, always ices almost all of her produce.

The greens are on “beds” of ice, and ice crystals are sprinkled among the broccoli heads.

Temperature is critical, she said about food safety. “You have to keep things cool.”

According to FDA, raw food including lettuces and greens should be kept at 41 degrees F or cooler to keep bacteria, especially E. coli, from proliferating. 

A sign at Blackburn’s booth lets people know that she’s “uncertified organic.” “All produce and flowers are grown using organic practices,” the sign says. “No pesticides or chemical fertilizers are used.”

Like many small-scale farmers, she has found that the organic certification process calls for too much time and paperwork. But she said that her sign lets customers know that her produce is grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers, which is important to many people. 

Not two separate issues
In a publication for SCS Global Services, an international organization that deals in sustainability and food safety issues, Lesley Sykes, a service manager in the company’s Food and Agriculture division, cautions that food safety and sustainability are not entirely different issues, as many people might think, but rather flip sides of the same coin.

When it comes to the sustainability of a farm or ag company,  managing food safety risks is “an economic imperative,” she said. “One false step can cost a company its reputation.”

“Rather than flipping the coin to see which side of the food safety/sustainability divide we land on,” she said, “it’s time to build food safety and sustainability together.”

A global perspective
This past summer, the World Health Organization discussed plans to include food safety in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. But as of yet, no food safety indicators have been recognized, despite the links that food safety has with sustainable development goals, which include zero hunger, good health and well-being, and decent work and economic growth. 

During a webinar to mark World Food Safety day on June 7, experts did bring up the subject of the potential of a Sustainable Development indicator for stronger food safety accountability to track global and national progress and to reduce the health burden from unsafe food.

Information from WHO said the topic could be introduced when there is a review of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2025.

But that’s not as soon as some people would like.

“We need to make a big noise at the pre-summit and an even bigger noise at the summit for food safety issues to breakthrough, said Lawrence Haddad, chair of an action track for the UN Food Systems Summit. Saying that though “he was shocked” that there wasn’t yet a food safety indicator. He is nevertheless glad that FAO and WHO are working on it. 

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That was his reaction to the climate-change report (https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/) released on Aug. 8. It was done by a panel of 234 authors from all over the world. Known as the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, it was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.

“The alarm bells are deafening,” said Guterres. “Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”

“This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years,” said the panel’s Vice-Chair Ko Barrett. 

Quick ABCs of climate change
Put simply, climate change is what happens when greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere trap the sun’s heat and stop it from leaking back into space, which, in turn, causes global warming.

Go here (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data) to see charts and graphs of scientific data about global gas greenhouse emissions.

While many of these greenhouses gases occur naturally, industrialization with its dependence on burning of fossil fuels and coal, along with other human activities including agriculture, has led to a speed up of increased atmospheric concentrations of some of these gases, notably carbon dioxide.

As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels rise, the land and the ocean can’t be as effective as in the past in absorbing and slowing the build-up of these gases in the atmosphere.

By 2020, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere had risen to 48 percent above its pre-industrial levels before 1760.

Another culprit in climate change is deforestation. Because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, when they are cut down, the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse effect. And with deforestation, the trees aren’t even there to absorb the carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

Increased livestock farming also comes into the picture because cows and sheep produce large amounts of methane when they digest their food. Methane is actually a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although its atmospheric timeline is shorter.

Surprisingly, rice production is also a major methane producer.

Another agricultural culprit is nitrous oxide emissions, which happen when fertilizers containing nitrogen produce nitrous oxide emissions.

Looking at these causes, it quickly becomes evident that humans are the main reason for the buildup of greenhouse gases. And that means, of course, that it will be up to us to lower the emissions. We can’t just hope they’ll go away.

Humans . . . and some good news
The good news, according to the report, is that people still have the potential to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxides and other greenhouse gases, which would, in turn, limit climate change.

Electric cars, biofuels, wind turbines, solar energy — these are some of the ways that people are hoping to bring about some changes. But there are also important changes brewing in agriculture, which globally accounts for about one-third of total greenhouse gases and black-carbon emissions. (Black carbon is made up of tiny particles of carbon that are released when fossil fuels, biofuels and biomass aren’t completely burned.)

Turning cows upside down
Think cows and you think of beef and milk products. A juicy steak, a hamburger on the grill, tacos, a slab of cheese, some yoghurt and, of course, an ice cream cone.

But climate scientists also think about the ways that cows contribute to global warming.

To begin with, cattle are at the top of the list when it comes to agricultural sources of greenhouse gases worldwide.  Raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power, they are responsible for the most emissions —about 65 percent  — of the livestock sector’s emissions.

This is in large part because cows are ruminants. Grasses and other roughage that cows eat are hard to break down and digest, which is why cows have specialized compartments, often referred to as “four stomachs.” Microbes in these multi-chambered stomachs help them digest their food by fermenting it. This is the process that produces the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which gets released into the atmosphere when they burp.

Each year, a single cow will belch about 220 pounds of methane. Although methane from cows doesn’t live as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it is 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere. 

But there’s more than that to consider. For example, trees are cut down to open up more grazing land and fertilizers are applied for crops that are grown to feed cows. As for water, a conventional hamburger requires about 660 gallons to produce.

Down on the farm
Some cattle farmers — both dairy and beef — are looking at different feeds and even different breeds to help decrease greenhouse gases. 

As part of that, they’re using dietary supplements and additives to decrease methane emissions.

Some are also changing the way they store and handle manure. In some cases they’re covering manure lagoons to prevent methane and other gases from escaping into the atmosphere. The upside to this is that these gases can then be used to generate power on the farm and in some cases for neighboring homes. 

Up in the lab
Then there’s “alt meat,” often called, cultivated meat, lab meat or even clean meat.

This is different from what’s being hailed as “meatless meat” — plant-based meats sold as Beyond Meat and Awesome Burgers. 

To produce cultivated meat, a biopsy is taken from a cow and the cells are incubated in media rich in nutrients that mimics the natural body of the animals. These nutrients help the cells thrive and divide. With the use of a bioreactor and some technological aids, muscle and fat tissues are created. The end product is biologically the same as the meat that comes from an animal. Bottomline, it’s real meat made from real animals.

When it comes to food safety, there’s no need of feedlots or slaughterhouses, where foodborne pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella can run rampant. And the cow, itself, doesn’t have to be killed. In addition, the entire process is done under sterile conditions and monitored for possible contaminants the whole way through.

Bill Gates, an advocate of this approach, describes the finished product like this: “Cultivated meat has all the same fat, muscles and tendons as any animal . . . all this can be done with little or no greenhouse gas emissions, aside from the electricity you need to power the labs where the process is done.

Uma Valeti of Memphis Meats, now rebranded as UPSIDE Foods says he expects meats made this way will produce up to 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions and need that much less water and land than conventionally produced meat.

But out in the marketplace, price comes into the picture. In 2013 when news about the first lab-grown hamburger came out, the burger would have cost $330,00. But over time some industry experts said it could be produced for $9 for a quarter-pound burger. Market gurus say when that number is under $10 per pound, consumers — not just “ultra-consumers” — will be interested.

In the case of plant-based products, such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meats, which contain no meat at all, some consumers have already shown that they’re willing to pay slightly more for them than for actual meats.

Some predict that producing meat in a lab rather than out in the field will one day render the cattle industry obsolete. And that the land currently used to raise cattle can be used to grow crops for human consumption or trees instead.

But others say it won’t happen overnight. Ten years might be more like it, and that’s just to take a 10 percent share of the global meat market by 2030. Meanwhile, demand for meat keeps growing. 

Food safety
When asked if this breakthrough approach to producing meat will open the door to improvements in food safety, Paul Burridge, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Northwestern Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Cultivated meat by its nature is sterile. With traditional meat, there are so many potential points of contamination. The animals come from so many different places and are raised in so many different ways. During slaughter, there’s the risk of organ and fecal contamination.”

In contrast, he said, meat made in a lab is extremely uniform. And the process is easier to monitor, which makes it very safe.”

Not that there still won’t be cows in the future. Just as there are still horses even though people have cars now.

“But they’ll be more of a legacy,” Burridge said. “They won’t be bred for meat anymore.”

Pointing out that as it is now, agriculture is heavily subsidized, he said: “We’re all paying for that through our taxes,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be great to replace it with a self-supporting system that’s much cleaner and greener. This will be a real game-changer.”

Go here (https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/One-pager_-2020-Cultivated-Meat-SOTIR.pdf) for the 2020 state of the industry report on cultivated meats. 

Cheese without the cows
“We aim to create a kinder, greener tomorrow by developing new ways to make the foods you love today.”

That’s Ryan Pandya, cofounder and CEO of Perfect Day Foods, which is making cheese and other dairy products without using cows.

Instead it uses a process called precision fermentation, relying on microorganisms instead of cows to produce milk proteins.

To do this, genetic information is fed into a culture of microorganisms such as fungi or yeast. This culture is then grown in fermentation tanks. Once enough proteins have been produced, the proteins are then separated from the microorganisms.

What you get from this is cultured milk proteins that are identical to conventionally produced animal proteins, and which, in turn can be used to make dairy products such as cheese, yogurt and ice cream. 

“By utilizing microflora as miniature factories, we’ve figured out how to make these components of milk without cows,” says an article on the company’s website.

Fermentation is nothing new. It is a long-established proven process that uses microbes such as yeast or fungi, to break down a compound, such as sugar, and create a by-product, like alcohol – or, in this case, protein.

When it comes to food safety, the benefits of creating milk products this way are obvious. Instead of dealing with cows, all of their manure, and the foodborne pathogens such as E.coli that can contaminate their milk, fermentation is done in sterile tanks in a sterile setting. 

As for helping to reduce greenhouse gases, climate scientists say that reducing the number of dairy cows on the land would make an important difference. 

They point out that while most of the concern about food and climate change focuses on meat, dairy also has a significant footprint. By one calculation, it accounts for more than 3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions — far more than the entire aviation industry.

According to Perfect Foods’ website, if U.S. food makers were to switch to only 5 percent of the bovine protein made with the company’s precision fermentation process, it would be equivalent of removing up to 2.7 million passenger vehicles from roads each year. That’s equivalent to the number of cars each registered in Arizona, Colorado or New Jersey. And it would offset the emissions from 2.2 million homes’ electricity use each year, which is equivalent to more than all new homes built annually in the United States.

By removing cows from the equation, the production of milk is “dramatically more efficient,” says the company’s website, producing up to 97 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional dairy.

According to figures from The Good Food Institute (gfi.org) — a nonprofit that aims to boost innovation in alternative proteins — $590 million was invested in fermented alternative proteins in 2020, and $300 million of that went to Perfect Day.

Rice and methane; no easy solutions
Rice presents a two-fold challenge. Methane and arsenic. The first has to do with climate change and the second has to do with food safety.

A nutritional staple for more than half of the world’s population of 9.7 billion people, rice has its downside: Rice production emits methane, a greenhouse gas that’s more than 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Although figures vary, recent research suggests that flooded rice fields, referred to as “rice paddies,” account for about 10 percent of emissions from agriculture globally.

Why is this so? It turns out that water that floods the fields blocks oxygen from penetrating into the soil. As a result, the low-oxygen, dense, and waterlogged soils that the plants grow in provide the perfect environment for microbes that produce methane gas. The longer the fields are flooded, the more those bacteria build up.

Looking to the future, the world’s growing population, and along with it, increased rice production, could present even more of a problem when it comes to climate change.

Solutions aren’t easy to come by, primarily because rice is grown in so many ways in so many parts of the world. But researchers are working on figuring out ways to help reduce the methane emissions.

One possible solution that has shown good promise is a sequence of wetting and drying of the fields to prevent methane from building up. If timed perfectly, this has the potential to reduce emissions by 90 percent.

However, this is no slam dunk. This and other irrigation-related possibilities, face many challenges. For example, in areas where rice is grown during the rainy season, farmers can’t drain their fields. Another challenge is the farmers’ ability to control water well enough to make sure both wetting and drying are happening when they should. And even in California, where fields are so large and irrigation delivery so slow, farmers can’t wet and dry their fields “on cycle.”

Then, too, farmers are not rewarded for reducing emissions and don’t suffer any penalties for increasing them. To change this around would take millions, if not billions, of dollars, money for something that some governments consider a low priority.

Nevertheless researchers and farmers see rice management as a good opportunity for the Global Alliance for Climate Agriculture (http://www.fao.org/gacsa/en/) to show on-the-ground projects in the most promising locations and also ways to boost incentives to make improvements in water management.

Food safety tied to arsenic in rice
Rice contains arsenic. That goes for organic and brown rice, as well as for conventional rice. In fact, some studies have shown that organic and brown rice can contain more arsenic than conventional rice. That is especially the case with brown rice because arsenic is mainly concentrated in the husk of the rice.

So how does arsenic get into rice? To begin with, arsenic is naturally present in bedrock and is absorbed by the rice through the soil or irrigation water. 

A common way of growing rice is in paddy fields — fields that are flooded with a great deal of  irrigation water. In many growing areas, this water is contaminated with arsenic. In addition, arsenic may accumulate in the soil of the paddy fields, which makes matters worse. Then, too, rice absorbs more arsenic from water and soil than other crops.

Even so, while the levels of arsenic in many rice products aren’t high enough in themselves to pose acute health risks in the short term, including cancer, consumers are advised to keep an eye on how much they’re eating. According to a research project in Sweden, eating rice and rice products a few times a week is fine. However, arsenic content in baby food containing rice has remained a concern. It can cause developmental problems as well as other issues for babies and developing systems in children’s bodies and brains.

Rinsing rice before cooking can help get rid of a minimal amount of the arsenic. But it also washes off valuable nutrients, among them iron, folate, thiamine and niacin. Boiling rice with a generous amount of water that is then discarded can decrease arsenic content by half. Some varieties such as jasmine and basmati contain less arsenic than other varieties. And some brands have less arsenic than others. 

One of the solutions to the problem of arsenic in rice is a lot like one of the solutions to lowering methane emissions in rice production: manipulating the amount of paddy water in the fields. In one study, plant scientist Daniela Carrijo of Oregon State University found that letting soil moisture drop to 35 percent volumetric water content twice during the growing season could cut the amount of inorganic arsenic by half compared to what happens when the paddies are continuously flooded.

Another research project found that while while keeping the fields dry for a longer time reduces the accumulation of arsenic in the rice grains, it decreases total yield and productivity and can also increase levels of cadmium, which is another deadly toxin.

How hot is our planet getting?
Climate scientists say that the earth’s surface temperature has already warmed by about 1 degree C, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 1800s, before industrialization took hold. The fear is that it’s on its way to reaching 1.5 degrees C, or 2.7 F by as early as 2030.

According to the panel’s recent report, the increase is already at 1.2 degrees C — and rising. 

What does this mean to all of us? Bottomline, the more the Earth’s temperature rises, the more changes in the climate system we’ll see. For example, more frequent and intense high temperature extremes, heavier rains, agricultural droughts in some regions, intense tropical cyclones and even less Arctic snow ice, snow cover and permafrost, which lead to rising sea levels.

Climate change scientists warn that at an increase of 2 degrees C when compared to the temperature in pre-industrial times will seriously harm the natural environment as well as human health and wellbeing. And with that comes predictions that dangerous and possibly catastrophic changes in the global environment will occur.

For this reason, the international community has recognized the need to keep warming well below 2 degrees C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C.

“We need immediate action on energy,” said UN Secretary General Gutteres.”Without deep carbon pollution cuts now, the 1.5-degree goal will fall quickly out of reach . . . . If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”

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The outbreak has already surpassed the highest number of cases ever recorded by the state for the month of July, according to the state’s Health Department. Distribution details are incomplete but it is known that some of the oysters have gone to Asian and Canadian buyers as well as customers in the United States.

A recent heat wave, coupled with very low tides at mid-day, are likely to blame for the increased rate of illness, which is associated with eating raw or undercooked shellfish, especially oysters that are contaminated with Vibrio. 

The extremely low tides are part of an 18.6-year tide cycle, which means there will be more to come for a period of time during the cycle.

As of July 16, there were 52 lab-confirmed cases, of which 46 were foodborne Vibrio parahaemolyticus cases. That’s compared to 5 in 2020 and a high of 25 in 2018. These last two counts included another type of Vibrio but were mainly Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

The department says it’s likely that not all of the cases have been reported and that it’s investigating some pending cases that are beginning to come in from other states. Because this outbreak included the July 4th holiday, tourists to Washington may have been affected.

And because it is still analyzing the data as it comes in, it can’t confirm if anyone has been hospitalized.

So far, no problems with retail food or restaurant handling practices have been found.

What’s especially troubling about this situation is that although the weather has cooled considerably, investigators are finding high levels of Vibrio in the water. Because of that, they expect to see additional cases as temperatures rise through the summer.

The harvest dates cited in the information about the recall provided by the state are June 29 through July 16. 

The growing area will be closed for a minimum of 21 days as of July 17, but the closure can be extended if sampling results warrant an extension.

What to do now
Consumers who have fresh oysters from Samish Bay are encouraged to fully cook the shellfish prior to eating to reduce the risk of illness. Recreational harvesters throughout the state are encouraged to check DOH’s Shellfish Safety Map prior to collecting shellfish: www.doh.wa.gov/shellfishsafetyShellfish Safety Map

Food establishments that serve molluscan shellfish should review their current supply of shellfish and must remove the recalled oysters from service.

Samish Bay
Samish Bay is in Puget Sound northeast of Seattle and south of Bellingham. The entire commercial growing area is included in the recall. The area is the major oyster producing area in North Puget Sound.

Oysters from the bay are esteemed by chefs for for being deep-cupped with firm meats, medium brininess and a mild, sweet flavor. While some people choose to cook their oysters, some commercial producers cater to a crowd that prefers raw oysters, often ordered at oyster bars in trendy urban restaurants. Some go to Asian and Canadian buyers.

“Consumer demand is really high,” said Bill Dewey of Taylor Shellfish, pointing out that when it comes to raw oysters especially, producers and sellers must abide by strict regulations.

What is vibrio?
Vibrio bacteria are natural microscopic residents of certain coastal waters. When temperatures get warmer, as they typically do between May and October, vibrio become more numerous. And that’s when they can become a serious human health problem.

The most commonly reported species, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, is estimated to sicken about 45,000 people in the United States each year. 

Vibrio infection, which usually begins 24 hours after exposure, includes watery diarrhea, abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting, fever and chills. The illness usually lasts about three days. However, people with with chronic liver disease, diabetes, or AIDS, or compromised immune systems, should see their doctor if they have what they suspect might be vibriosis.

These people, and anyone who wants to avoid illness, should eat only thoroughly cooked shellfish, advises the state’s Health Department.

Recreational oyster gathering
Instead of digging for oysters, as is the case with clams, you actually walk along the beach gathering them. At low tide, of course, otherwise they’re under water. It’s best to gather them as soon as possible after the tide goes out. That way, they’re fresher. Don’t harvest them if they’ve been exposed to direct sunlight for more than two hours.

“When they’re out of the water and in the sun, they become little incubators,” Taylor Shellfish’s Dewey said. “The odds are pretty high that the bacteria will start multiplying to dangerous levels.”

Take a cooler with ice with you when harvesting shellfish recreationally or purchasing from a store or seafood stand, or have them packed on ice. Oysters should be put on ice or refrigerated as soon as possible.

Some states require recreational harvesters to shuck the oysters and leave the shells on the beach so that the spat attached to the shells can reproduce. In that case, the shucked oysters should immediately be put in a container on ice, and they must be kept cold until eaten. That’s also true for oysters in the shell. Even oysters that will be cooked should be kept cold until cooked.

When cooking oysters, they need to reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees F and stay at that temperature for 15 seconds. This is especially important when barbecuing oysters on a grill because many people think they’re ready to eat once they open up.

The FDA suggests boiling shucked oysters for 3 minutes, frying them in oil at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes, or baking them at 450 degrees F for 10 minutes.

It also suggests steaming oysters in the shell for 4 to 9 minutes or boiling them for 3 to 5 minutes after they open.

Beware of bio toxins. Recreational oyster gatherers should pay attention to any signs posted on the beach. If there’s a warning about biotoxins, they shouldn’t even think about harvesting them, regardless if they had plans to cook them or eat them raw.

“Biotoxins don’t cook out,” Dewey said.

Go here for the Health Department’s Shellfish Safety Map (https://www.doh.wa.gov/CommunityandEnvironment/Shellfish/BeachClosures) before heading to the beach to harvest shellfish recreationally.

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The draft rules, which were approved 3-2, added a temperature threshold of 95 degrees to the current calendar-based moratorium, which extends from June 1  to Oct. 15.

The emergency calendar-based shutoff ban was adopted in June 2019, following the heat-related death of an Arizona Public Service Co. customer whose power had been turned off for nonpayment.

Under the approved amendments offered by Commissioner Anna Tovar, electric utilities would be prohibited from shutting off electricity either when the temperature is above 95 degrees, or between June 1 and Oct. 15 each year.

The draft rules likely won’t be finalized until next year because the state wants to gather more information on its current moratorium, which will be in place from June 1 through Oct. 15.

Heat and health

When asked why this is such an important issue, Corporation Commissioner Anna Tovar, who proposed the tentative rules, told Food Safety News that heat is a serious threat to health. 

“Arizona is one of the hottest places in the country during the summer and our citizens are at risk for heat-related health problems more than other states,” she said. “I wanted to make sure our citizens were safe and not at risk from heat-related injury because their electricity was shut off over an unpaid bill.” 

She said she chose the 95 degree benchmark because she looked at the heat-related health and death data and based her amendments on what will protect the health and safety of Arizonans.

She said that in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, more than 90 percent of heat-related deaths occur between June and September. In addition, more than 95 percent of heat deaths occur when the temperature is above 90 degrees.

Considering that in the Phoenix area, the average high is above 95 degrees from May and September, she said she felt that giving the utilities the choice between a calendar moratorium of June 1 to Oct. 15 or a temperature moratorium of 95 degrees addressed the health and safety concerns for heat-vulnearable populations.

Currently, nine states have temperature-based shutoffs. Of those states the temperatures range from 95 degrees (NJ, MD, IT, MO, and AR), 98 degrees (GA), and 105 degrees (DE and NV). Six other states (including Arizona under the prior rules) prohibit disconnection in “extreme heat,” based on the National Weather Service’s extreme-weather advisories.

Go here for information about Maricopa County and heat-related deaths: https://docket.images.azcc.gov/E000012381.pdf?i=1619558986954

And, yes, climate change is part of this picture.

“It’s the major reason why Arizona’s summers are getting hotter, Tovar said.

According to the Billion Dollar Weather Disasters database compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, heat waves are listed as four of the top 10 deadliest U.S. disasters since 1980. And extreme heat, more than all other impacts (except hurricanes) combined, is one of the leading causes of weather-related deaths in the United States, killing over 600 per year

What about food safety?

“It’s a food-safety crisis in the making,” said one food-safety expert referring to the effect of high temperatures, electricity cutoffs and food poisoning. “If food isn’t kept at the right temperature, it isn’t safe.”

The numbers say it all when it comes to how serious this is. According to FDA estimates, there are about 48 million cases of foodborne illness annually – the equivalent of sickening 1 in 6 Americans each year. And each year these illnesses result in an estimated 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.

Many foods, among them meat, milk and eggs, start to spoil when the temperature rises above 40 degrees. After food warms to that temperature, you have just two hours in which you can either return it to cold conditions or cook it — or toss it.

According to the American Meat Science Association, the ideal temperature for storing fresh meat is 28 degrees F to 32 degrees F. As storage temperatures approach 40 degrees F, its perishability increases. 

Rapid growth of bacteria begins at about 50°F.

Mold, parasites and potentially deadly bacteria including Salmonella and E. Coli procreate in rotten food, particularly spoiled meat. 

According to the Hendricks, IN, Public Health Department, foods whose temperatures are between 42 degrees F and 140 degrees F are considered to be in the “Danger Zone,” and that germs that can cause foodborne illness grow very quickly on foods held at temperatures in the “Danger Zone.”

Foods that fall into the “Danger Zone” should be thrown away.

The Food and Drug Administration warns that consuming dangerous foodborne bacteria will usually cause illness within 1 to 3 days of eating the contaminated food. However, sickness can also occur within 20 minutes or up to 6 weeks later. 

Although most people will recover from a foodborne illness within a short period of time, some can develop chronic, severe, or even life-threatening health problems.

Foodborne illness can sometimes be confused with other illnesses that have similar symptoms. The symptoms of foodborne illness can include:

•Vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain

•Flu-like symptoms, such as fever, headache, and body aches

According to the FDA, while everyone is at risk of developing foodborne illness, some groups are more likely to get sick than others. These groups include children, pregnant and post-partum women, people over 65, and those with compromised immune systems.

When asked how important the temperature of food is to human health, Blanca Caballero, Deputy Director, Maricopa County Environmental Services Department, didn’t mince words.

“Temperature is extremely critical to food safety,” she said, “as it can prevent or result in a foodborne illness.  Keeping food products under temperature control, and out of the temperature danger zone, limits the growth of pathogenic bacteria and toxin formation.” 

She pointed out that when food is in the temperature danger zone, which is between 40 degrees F and 140 degrees F, bacteria multiply rapidly and can easily lead to foodborne illness.  

“Taking too much time to cool foods to safe temperatures has been consistently identified as one of the leading contributing factors to foodborne illness,” she said. “During slow cooling, time/temperature controls for safety foods are subject to the growth of a variety of pathogenic microorganisms.

Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, a Maricopa county public health official, said that many foods are harmful to eat if not kept at the right temperature for long enough a time. However, dairy, meat, eggs and other animal products are the most susceptible to spoiling.

She pointed out that there are a variety of foodborne pathogens that can be associated with food that is kept out of the safe temperature zone for too long.  Some of the most common ones are Staphylococcal food poisoning (https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/diseases/staphylococcal.html), which is caused by a toxin produced by the bacteria and Clostridium perfringens (https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/diseases/clostridium-perfringens.html), which also causes food poisoning via a toxin. 

Other common foodborne illnesses include those caused by Salmonella and Campylobacter, which are both bacteria typically associated with undercooked or spoiled chicken or eggs but can be associated with other foods. E. coli O157, which is often caused by contaminated meat and sometimes raw produce, is another bacteria that can cause severe foodborne illness, especially in young children.

Sunenshine said anyone can be vulnerable to foodborne illness. “But we know that young children, seniors and those with depressed immune systems can have more severe complications of foodborne illness.  Certain people, like pregnant women, can have severe illness when exposed to certain pathogens, like Listeria, which is why pregnant women have to be very careful with what they eat.

Blanca said that people living in a congregate setting, such as a home with a lot of people or several generations living in it, are more likely to experience a foodborne illness.

What’s next

Commission Chairwoman Lea Marquez Peterson said she wanted to keep the current rules process going, noting that the commission could make changes to the final rules based on additional required data about shutoffs and their impact this summer.

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That’s why he wants to develop the first fully transparent source-to-plate supply chain that has everyone in that chain, including the consumer, in mind. For example, a buyer will be able to track a vegetable or fruit’s journey from where it sprouted as a seed to your grocery store shelf, or restaurant. And although a lot of produce now bears labels saying what area it comes from, information about how it grew and how it got there is still unknown to most people and not verifiable.

In Giscombe’s mind, this is not the way things should be. He blames this lack of knowledge for allowing foodborne illnesses to become such a serious health crisis. The numbers say it all. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, foodborne illness is a preventable public health challenge that causes an estimated 48 million illnesses and 3,000 deaths each year in the United States.

Not that this dismaying situation happened overnight. It wasn’t all that long ago that people did know where their food came from. Family farms that supplied local stores dotted the landscape. Giscombe believes that the change started with industrialization and the resulting “busier” lives people live.

“Convenience and immediacy, that’s the consumer dynamic,” he said. “If a consumer wants something, and it’s not there, he or she will go go somewhere else to buy it. When it comes to agriculture, stores have to keep enough food on their shelves to satisfy consumer demand. And that means there has to be a system in place that can supply it even if it means getting the food from distant places.”

The problem is that a lot of produce grown conventionally is in most cases coming from thousands of miles away, “and that means it has lost 50 percent or more of its nutrition by the time the consumer buys it,” he said. 

As a result, most consumers don’t even remember how good food used to taste — food that’s been grown in their own area. And their level of expectations have fallen. 

“We can’t expect reality to change until consumers change,” said Giscombe. “The average consumers — they’re the ones who have to demand quality food. Until they do that, the industry won’t change. That’s why it’s so imperative to educate the consumer.”

Giscombe believes that “we’re on the brink of a generational change,” and he refers to technological breakthroughs that can be used for innovations and improvements across the agricultural chain.

“We have a generation of consumers who want to know what they’re getting and where it’s coming from. This is a demand issue, not a supply issue,” he said. 

One fell swoop
While there are companies hacking away at fixing parts of the farm-to-table journey, Giscombe believes it will take what he refers to as one fell swoop to fix what he sees as the “broken system.” 

This comes in the form of what he calls Agriculture as a Service (AaaS), a novel and unique combination of cutting-edge breakthroughs, among them high-tech greenhouse farming, blockchain to track products across the supply chain, and environmental monitoring systems that can collect and analyze billions of gigabytes of data points around the clock. 

Giscombe said that if all this sounds familiar, it’s because this is very much “big data.” But unlike what we’ve come to expect from the tech titans, the PLANT-AG platform is being built on an open source framework. In other words, it’s accessible for free to anyone engaged in any area of fruit and vegetable development and production.

In the coming months, consumers will be able to access verifiable information on the DNA of a produce item, the cultivation (planting, growing and harvesting), see inside the actual facilities where their lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and more are being produced and even transported, all in real-time on their smartphone. When you talk about last-mile visibility across the fresh produce supply chain, PLANT-AG is looking to set the standard.

“If ever there was a time to ask society ‘what do you want to know about food’, this is it,” he said.

A lot of this comes down to what he would call the “front end” of the system. In the case of food safety, for example, instead of figuring out how a foodborne pathogen contaminated a crop, it will use all the gigabytes of information being collected to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Giscombe says that taking a preventive stand means making the process before shipment safer instead of reacting to outbreaks after they happen.

Taking care of the environment is also part of this. In contrast to outdoor farms, the greenhouse facilities are designed to optimize regenerative power sources that allow for the best environmental alignment based on availability by location. This includes, solar, and wind to  power expansive hydroponic systems. Hydroponics, which relies on using water instead of soil to grow crops, uses 15 times less water than conventional farming.

Meanwhile, the produce grown inside these greenhouses is protected not only from harmful weather but also many pesticides. Not to mention wild animal intrusions, many pests, and the dangers of agricultural run-off, and even the humans interacting with the produce who can bring contaminants in with them.

“Food safety is paramount to what we’re doing,” he said, pointing out that there are many overlaps with the Food Safety Modernization Act and PLANT-AG, especially when it comes to traceability. 

Go here (https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/02/safety-aspects-of-indoor-farming-signal-a-change-in-agriculture/#more-192514) for more information about food safety and greenhouse growing.

Go here (http://ceafoodsafety.org/) for information about the Controlled Environment Agriculture Food Safety Coalition (http://ceafoodsafety.org/). 

Fresh food year-round
There are advantages in all of this to be sure, but Giscombe said there’s another important one: “This sort of farming gives broader and more equitable access to communities and allows for year-round access to fresh produce grown in their area. And it’s this access, alongside the kind of efficiency you’d expect from Amazon, that will ensure your food is not only fresh, but with stipulations such as hold time for distributors being not not more than 72 hours, PLANT-AG products will be the freshest you can get. And that can translate into an important food-safety advantage compared to food that’s been trucked across the country under all sorts of weather and storage conditions. 

“No one can do it faster,” he said, referring to getting food delivered quickly.

More nutritious food is also part of this. 

Michael Barron, of AeroFarms, sums it up this way: “With the increased control you can produce more, and you can also have it be higher quality. You can change the nutrition of it. There is a lot more you can do. It gives you a lot more control over the crop and the production of the crop.”

The dreamer
Who is this dreamer who wants to transform the current agricultural system by launching a $9 billion infrastructure project that will close the knowledge gap about where our food comes from?

 A former investment banker at Merrill Lynch, Giscombe, 45, is the founder and CEO of PlANT-AG, whose first facility is a sprawling 700 acres of greenhouse production capacity that looks more like a Silicon Valley complex than a farm. There are plans to deliver a total 3,000 acres for the next five years. When asked for comment on dates, the only response given was that produce units will be available for the markets served by the first site by the fall of 2022.

Along the way in his former career in investment banking, Giscombe gained the rare ability to see how businesses are nurtured. With that, he decided it was time to step aside and make a change.

“I had a greater appreciation for market dynamics than in years past,” he said. 

Giscombe has put more than six years of his life into this and is currently raising $9 billion to make it happen. What’s driving him is the belief that more and more consumers want to know where what the food they’re buying comes from. 

To fund it, Giscombe said, “the capital marketplace wasn’t ready for a project like this,” which necessitated alternative thinking on capital structuring. Phase one of the massive infrastructure project totals just more than $9 billion, with less than $800 million being offered to investors outside of the green-bonds, brought to market by the over 100-year-old Chicago-based investment bank B.C. Ziegler and the sizable J.P. Morgan, whose commitment to sustainable finance and specifically green bonds leads the industry.

Institutional investors in this financing will be betting on Giscombe’s vision, the high powered team assembled around him, including former Victoria’s Secret PINK COO Richard Dent and former Pepsi CMO Cie Nicholson, that this network of high-tech greenhouses is in fact “The Future of Food.” 

The first site, a greenhouse complex just outside Jacksonville, FL, was originally slated to begin construction this month, but has been pushed back to allow for the expansion of the site which was originally 400 acres, but grew based on demand across the series area and to allow for the incorporation of technology, which Giscombe says was worth the wait. By fall 2022, the PLANT-AG expects to be supplying produce such as lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, blueberries, strawberries, kale and sweet peppers to markets across the southeastern U.S. 

The USDA refers to greenhouses and controlled-environment agriculture, or CEA.

According to a report from Fast. MR, Marketing and Consulting, in 2019, 55 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68 percent by 2050. Yet, the population living in urban areas are demanding locally grown foods such as fruits, vegetables and meat.

CEA producers across the globe are setting up their production centers near urban consumers to take advantage of this trend because of their close proximity to urban centers.

It is estimated that the global controlled environment agriculture market will be worth more than USD $1,42,222.6 million by 2024. 

One thing we can say about indoor farming in 2020: it grew, both in market size and investment, says an article in “The Spoon.”

Into the future
Giscombe points out that there are many cities 500 miles or closer to the north Florida site. That translates into faster shipping and fresher food. More than that, it will taste better because the process by which it is grown was designed for quality and flavor and not to withstand the rigors of thousands of miles of travel. And it will be more nutritious for the same reason.

But that’s just the beginning. From there, the company has already secured contracts in more than nine other key markets to supply the south-central U.S. and the broader Eastern Seaboard by 2025. The goal is to fully decentralize production of “high-risk produce items” — lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, blueberries,

strawberries, kale and sweet peppers, for example — via a widespread network that will allow food produced in the protected environments to be shipped to customers in the same region where the production sites are located. That, in turn, will help tackle the consolidation of the produce industry, which often leads to produce being shipped across the country instead of to markets close to where it was grown. 

Within four years, the company predicts it will be able to feed one-third of the United States with fresh produce that was growing a scant 72 hours earlier. Not only that, it expects to be able to do that with “consumer-friendly” prices. “No more $6-head-of-lettuce.” 

“If this isn’t accessible to everybody we (the industry) have failed in our responsibility to the consumer and society at large,” said Giscombe. 

Markedly reduced shipping costs are part of the cost savings achieved. 

The company has brought in other industry leaders such as VB Greenhouses Projects, a top Dutch builder, to build its mega sites, and Green Automation for leafy green production systems, among many others.  

Giscombe said that the goal is to optimize automation and human labor.

“It takes more than just operational knowledge to accomplish that,” he said. “It takes innovation and the humility to acknowledge the critical importance of experience, which is why we chose partners like these. Green Automation already had the premier lettuce system in which the seeding is done with an automated machine, and cutting the lettuce leaves is also automated, eliminating the need for human hands touching the item.”

All technicians which is what farmworkers are called, must adhere to stringent protocols before entering the production areas, all of are part of the safety-first approach to working in the protected environment.

Should a pathogen get into a greenhouse, that specific zone will be locked off, thus keeping one area separate from others. In addition, workers in one zone can’t intermingle with workers in other zones. And tools are also row-specific.

All of these precautions, and more, are based on the goal of keeping food safe for consumers, who are becoming increasingly aware of how important food safety is. 

Another advantage to controlled environment agriculture is reducing food waste. According to the USDA, moving production to controlled environments, such as greenhouses or vertical farming concepts, has the potential to reduce food waste by minimizing environmental exposure that can create cosmetic imperfections. 

“These production systems also allow production schedules to synchronize to the timing of typical consumer demand patterns rather than to favorable weather patterns, which may also reduce waste through closer alignment of the timing of the demand and supply of perishable produce,” the USDA researchers conclude.

How will consumers know
“Oh, trust me, they’ll know,” Giscombe said with regards to how PLANT-AG will set itself apart from the competition. “We don’t believe that the current agricultural system is sustainable nor even meeting the true needs of the consumer, and we aren’t going to pretend. No meaningful change has ever occurred in any industry without challenging the status quo, and we fully appreciate that fact.”

He said that’s reflected in the brand identity and “we’re excited about it.”

When looking at consumer demographics, he said that Gen Z (people born between 1995 and 2010)  is tomorrow’s consumer, and has a right to be heard.

“We’ve listened, and now we’re responding,” he said.

 In addition, PLANT-AG will be launching a nationwide billboard campaign in the end of May to educate consumers about their food to empower them to choose. And it will be launching its website this month also. 

“To be clear, this in not advertising,” he said. “If you buy our product, it will be because you made an educated choice, not because you were sold on a story. It (the approach taken in PLANT-AG’s educational campaign) might rattle people’s cages just a little.”

Another unique component of the company and its approach is it’s not-for-profit research and development arm, PLANT-4TMRW which plans to continue its work in education through partnerships across K-12, and advanced research initiatives with distinguished entities like the University of Florida – IFAS (Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences).

The solution is here
Giscobme believes the solution to transforming the current agricultural system is already here.

“Hidden in the technological advancements of our time and the given ability to source both qualitative and quantitative data in ways previously unavailable to us, is a ‘solution set’ that can  — if used objectively and made accessible to all — reconstitute the dynamic, which is the global food supply system,” he said. “The question that must be answered is how that is developed with the consumer and their needs at the center.”

“The world has changed,” he said, “and large corporations are looking to evolve because consumers are expecting more.”

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The win-win-win here is the ability of agrivoltaics to increase food production, boost renewable energy production and achieve important water savings — all on the same piece of land.

A cutting-edge technology, agrivoltaics, differs from typical large-scale utility installations of solar panels, which are typically placed close to the ground with gravel underneath them. While these can generate a lot of energy, they take a lot of crop land out of the mix. And with the world’s population continuing to grow and expected to reach 8.1 billion by 2025, according to the United Nations, the demand for food will increase. Agricultural researchers say that covering crop land, or land that could be growing crops, just doesn’t make sense.

That’s where agrivoltaics comes into the picture. Instead of placing the panels close to the ground, they’re positioned about 7 to 10 feet above the ground. There’s also some spacing between the “clusters” of panels, thus providing a mix of shade and sun to the plants.

The shade pattern moves during the day so that all of parts of the growing area receive direct sun during each day, which allows the amount of reflected sunlight to be maximized.

At the same time, the crops do better in the shade — compared to a full day of direct sunlight.

One of the benefits to this is that the land and the air under the panels is much cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Another plus is that solar panels cost much less now than they did 10 years ago, thus spurring interest in this new technology.

The ‘sweet spot’
As strange as it might seem, too much sunshine — not just in drought conditions, but also in normal growing conditions — can be hard on plants. That’s because plants can use only so much sunshine. Any sun received after that “point of light saturation” doesn’t help the plant grow or even increase photosynthesis. Instead, it increases the plant’s need for water. In other words, the plants becomes thirsty and want more water. This, in turn, means they need to be irrigated more. 

But with agrivoltaics, the panels can be positioned to give the plants just the right amount of sunlight and shade. And this, in turn, allows the excess sunlight to be harvested for electricity. The advantage here is that this system can produce up to 10 percent more electricity, according to field trials done in several states.

This surplus electricity can then be sent to the grid for consumers’ use or stored in batteries to run electric tractors and equipment or to supply electricity to the owner’s house and/or barn.

“The sweet spot” is how University of Massachusetts agronomist Stephen Herbert, author of “Growing Vegetables Under Solar PV,” refers to the positioning that allows maximum sun to reach the ground so the vegetation gets what it needs while the rest is captured for generating electricity.

Or as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory website puts it: “Beneath solar panels, the seeds of opportunity sprout.”

Ah, shade, blessed shade
Anyone who has been out in the sun for too long, knows how wonderful it is to escape into the shade. Some water, yes, but certainly not as much a “thirsty” crop would need for irrigation.

Field trials done in an Oregon State University Extension project, showed that each irrigation event in an agrivoltaic system can support crop growth for days instead of just hours as in a typical agricultural setting.

In one field trial, when irrigating every other day, the soil moisture stayed about 15 percent higher in the agrivoltaics system than in the control plot.

Not only that, the shade provided cooler daytime temperatures and warmer nighttime temperatures than in the conventional setting.

The news was also good for crop production in a trial “salsa garden.” Total chiltepin pepper production was three times greater in the agrivoltaics system than in the control setting. And cherry tomato fruit production doubled. 

Growing crops in an agrivoltaic system was also good for the panels, because it helped keep them cool. This, in turn, made them more efficient. Solar panels actually lose efficiency when they get too hot.

Suitable crops to grow this way are lettuces, tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and some herbs as well as bedding plants, nursery crops, and short-statured fruit trees or shrubs. In addition, small-to-medium sized livestock could be grazed in land separated from the crops. Not goats, though, they’re too frisky.

Bees also like agrivoltaic settings. One beekeeper said he gets a premium price for his honey because customers appreciate the environmental benefits of agrivoltaics.

However crops that need a lot of sunlight, for example, watermelon, eggplant, corn and certain types of pepper, might not be as successful.

Bottlomline, more research needs to be done on how various crops will grow in an agrivoltaic system and what regions they will work well in. 

A recent OSU study estimates that converting just 1 percent of American farmland to agrivoltaics would meet the nation’s renewable energy targets, save water, and create a sustainable long-term food system. In addition it would give farmers more economic opportunities, which would help keep farmland in production. This translates into benefits for consumers. More food means healthier people and therefore less malnutrition.

In contrast, the typical solar power installation, where the panels are close to the ground and the land covered with gravel, is no slam dunk when it comes to renewable energy. Far from it. It would take 32 acres of land to provide electricity for 1,000 homes.

According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, by 2030, utility-scale solar could cover almost 2 million acres of land in the United States. The problem with this is that traditional solar development would monopolize this land for just one use: energy

Ask a farmer
Massachusetts farmer Paul Knowlton knows all about the value of solar energy. He already has 18,000 solar panels on 19 acres, which provides enough clean energy for almost 1,200 homes. It’s a cash crop for him.

But now he’s going to go one step further. He plans to expand solar on his farm to another 14 acres. But this time, he’ll be using agrivoltaics.

The solar panels will be mounted on racks about 8 feet off the ground, a height that will allow farm machinery to operate under them. And, of course, this will also allow him to grow crops underneath them. This way he’ll get a “double crop” off the land: energy and food.

Another plus to this sort of setup is that farmworkers will be able to stay cooler. Preliminary data show that skin temperature can be about 18 degrees cooler when working in an agrivoltaics setting than in a traditional setting. That’s important because in the Southwest, for example, farmworkers suffer a troubling number of heat strokes and heat-related deaths.

Iain Ward, a solar expert and land planner who helped design this new system for Knowlton’s farm refers to it as groundbreaking technology. The panels in this project are an innovative translucent design. While the top of the panels absorb the sun’t energy, they also let some light through. And because they can capture the sunlight reflected off the ground, they’re more efficient. 

A state SMART program, which offers grants to expand conventional solar and jump start dual-use technology, is funding the project. State officials are hoping to set up 18 to 19 projects to be ready for the upcoming farm season.

As is the case with most farmers, Colorado farmer Byron Kominek, owner of Jack’s Solar Garden near Boulder, CO, likes his tractor. But he also likes knowing that tractors and agrivoltaics make a good team.

“The idea that our land can do more than just create electricity, that we can also figure out how to produce food in combination with our solar array is very interesting,” he said. 

“Society needs to figure out how to get the most good from our natural resources while not depleting them — in fact, we need to figure out how to best use them while improving them, which is a possibility with agrivoltaics.

This year he’ll be planting his first crops in an agrivoltaic setup on his farm — 30 different crops, along with prairie grasses and wildflower seed mixes, on 5 acres. 

“I was looking for something else to do,” he said, referring to previous years of growing hay and grasses for livestock — something his farm has been doing since 1972. “We want to move forward.”

Kominek is also enthusiastic about “spreading the word” about the value of agrivoltaics and the benefits it offers to farmers and communities.

Jack’s Solar Garden will educate the next generation by offering regular school tours under its solar panels. Farmers, government officials, students and the public will be invited to tour the farm. The goal of these tours is to publicize the possibilities agrivoltaics offers to society.

“With the innovativeness and openness we offer, we hope to inspire our community to support local farmers as they embark on creative paths to better our community with locally produced foods and solar power,” says the farm’s vision statement.

For more information about volunteering at or touring Jack’s Solar Garden visit his website.

Kominek is working on his farm’s new endeavor in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado State University and the University of Arizona.

Go here for a farmers guide to going solar. This site has a long list of questions (and answers) that farmers might have.

Go here (https://openei.org/wiki/InSPIRE/Project) To read more about the efforts to site solar and agriculture through the Energy Department’s InSPIRE project.

What about food safety
Stephen Herbert, professor of agriculture at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture in Massachusetts, said he doesn’t see any more of a problem when it comes to food safety than in conventionally grown crops, as long as there is ample air circulation and the shade pattern moves during the day so that all of parts of the growing area receive direct sun during each day.

The minimum gap distance he would recommend is 4 feet with solar panels arranged horizontally.

“And since most solar installations are fenced, most wildlife would be excluded, further ensuring food safety,” he said.

This is an important consideration because wildlife wandering through crops often leave droppings. In a case in Oregon in recent years, some people became ill and one person died after eating strawberries contaminated with E. coli from deer droppings in the field.

Don Stoeckel, a researcher with the Produce Safety Alliance, has questions about wildlife when it comes to food safety. He wonders about wildlife incursion and how the solar infrastructure would affect this. For example, do birds roost on the panels or support structures, thus causing a risk to any produce growing underneath. And what about rodents? Do they seek shelter in the shade cast by the panels?

Food safety expert Trevor Suslow, Emeritus Extension Research Specialist at the University of California-Davis, who specializes in pre-market and post-market produce quality and microbial safety, said that specialty crops rarely consumed raw — in other words, usually cooked, which kills foodborne pathogens or non-food crops, such as ornamental crops — “might be a better target for proof of concept” of agrivoltaic technology. 

He pointed out that any crop production system conducted in an open environment is susceptible to potential and diverse sources of contamination, not effectively prevented by fencing or screening. 

“Agrivoltaic sites and structures should be evaluated for their potential to provide roosting and nesting sites for birds or other potential vectors of foodborne pathogens,” he said. “

Shading can reduce water use and even, potentially, reduce some solar injury in crops at sensitive stages, sun scalding of fruit vegetables, for example, Suslow said.

But on the flip side, he said that shading is known to increase the potential for persistence of zoonotic bacterial pathogens on the surface of a crop — lettuce and spinach for example — and shading also alters the growth habit, surface structure, cuticle thickness, and other plant aspects shown to potentially increase pathogen attachment, survival, and internalization. 

In addition, the said that too much shading at key developmental stages may result in thinner leaf structures or thinner fruit wall structures, leading to reduced shipping and shelf life.  

While he can appreciate the advantages offered by agrivoltaics, Suslow said it’s important to make sure that “food safety and quality are part of the mix.”

The global map
Japan has been the pioneer in agrivoltaics. Between 2004 and 2017, more than 1,000 open field power plants were developed in that country.

Some of the other countries using agrivoltaics are China, South Korea, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Austria, Italy and France.

Some researchers say most people don’t realize how much agrivoltaics is going to change the “global map of agriculture” in the future.

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If you’re a farmer who has something customers want, it only makes sense to do your best to get it to them. Unless, of course, if it’s something that’s illegal to sell in your state — something like raw butter, for example.

That’s the dilemma that Billie Johnson, a dairy farmer in eastern Oregon, is facing. She says there are businesses that want to buy her farm’s unpasteurized, raw butter, but because Oregon doesn’t allow retail sales of raw butter, she’s had to turn to politics in search of a solution.

For the second year in a row, she has gone to the state Capitol in hopes of resolving this issue This year she’s pitching a plea for the passage of House Bill 2612, which would allow for the sale of butter made from milk that hasn’t been pasteurized. The bill would also direct the state’s Agriculture Department to establish grades and standards for such butter.

Supporters of the bill say it will give new options to dairy farmers and consumers without sacrificing food safety.

Violations of the regulations would be punishable by up to a year in prison, a criminal fine of up to $6,250 and a civil penalty of up to $10,000.

But that doesn’t scare Johnson, simply because she believes that raw butter is safe. So safe, in fact, that she calls it “brain food.”

“I want anyone who wants it to be able to get it,” she said. “I want to be able to sell it anywhere in the state where there’s a market for it.”

“We have a lot of demand for raw butter,” she told legislators during a recent hearing before the Oregon House Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee.

On the national level, the Food and Drug Agency has banned raw butter and other unpasteurized, raw dairy products — except aged cheese — from being transported or sold across state lines.

In comments about the Oregon bill, Lapsley McAfee of Raw Farm (originally Organic Pastures Dairy Company) in California said that in his state, raw butter is sold in 500 stores.

“It is a top seller,” he said. Describing it as a low risk food, he said that it’s considerably safer than raw milk. Not only that, he said there have been no illnesses associated with it in the past 10 years in CDC’s database.

“All people should be able to enjoy the healthful benefits of raw butter,” he said.

Mark McAfee, owner of Raw Farm, said that his dairy can’t make enough unpasteurized butter to meet demand “at this point.” In the past 20 years, it has sold more than 2 million pounds of raw butter without any known incidents. Yet even though he can legally sell his raw butter in California, he cannot ship it out of state.

While the retail sale of raw butter is prohibited in Oregon, it is legal in 11 states. And selling it directly to customers is legal in three states. However, the Food & Drug Agency prohibits it from being sold across state lines.

“Businesses are asking us for this product,” Johnson said during a recent hearing before the House Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee.

The food safety debate
While raw-butter consumers and advocates give it an enthusiastic thumbs up, Tami Kerr, executive director of The Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, urged lawmakers to carefully consider the oversight and regulation of products such as raw butter.

“If people get sick from it, it gives the industry a black eye,” she said, referring to dairy in general. “And it’s not so much a matter of if but when.”

“We understand the desire of some small producers and their markets to have access to raw products, including butter,” she said. “We also understand the value of pasteurization and combating micro-organisms in retail products.”

Those microorganisms include E. coli, Listeria and Salmonella, foodborne organisms that can get people sick, very sick, or even kill them.

But to Johnson, providing raw milk and raw milk products for people is all about the survival of the family farm. As part of that, food safety is paramount.

“It’s a way of developing a way to get what we produce on the farm directly to consumers,” she said.

Saving the farm
Johnson’s farm, Windy Acres Dairy Farm (https://www.windyacresdairy.com) in Eastern Oregon, has 70 cows, although not all of them are milkers. The farm is a herd share, which means that members own part of it. Besides raw butter, it produces raw milk, kefir, yogurt, cream and aged cheese — “anything you can think of that can be made with raw milk,” Johnson says.

Under a herdshare arrangement, members don’t buy any of the dairy’s products because they’re part-owners of it. This is a way that dairies can offer raw milk and other raw milk products without being under the state’s Agriculture Department’s regulations. Some people call it a loophole that lets them get away with producing raw-milk products that are prohibited under state law. It also frees them from inspections.

But to Johnson and other raw-milk dairy producers, herd shares are a way to stay in business. And that’s where raw butter comes into the picture. Considering the strong demand for it, to be able to sell it to restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and other outlets would help flush more money into the dairy’s bottomline.

And people are willing to pay a pretty penny for it: $16 a loaf. (A loaf is equivalent to a pound.)

“It’s all in the eyes of the beholder,” Johnson said about the price of raw butter. “It you value your health, you’ll value your food.”

She also said that it is “real food” and has better flavor than the conventional butter you buy in the store.

Proponents say that the passage of HB 2612 would give dairy farmers a better shot at making a living and could help stem the decline in the number of Oregon dairy farms. In 1992 Oregon had 1,900 farms with dairy cows, according to USDA data; the latest figures from the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association shows there are 194 dairy farms left in the state.

Johnson said being able to buy raw butter in retail outlets would help keep customers from  traveling to northern California to buy it. And that, in turn, would help keep more of the state’s food dollars in the state.

If the bill were to be adopted, it would go into effect on the 91st day after the session has adjourned in June.

To follow the progress of this bill, click here.

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She can grow some mean salad greens. “So healthy for you and your family,” she’ll cheerfully tell the customer who makes regular stops at her booth at the local farmers market.

At another booth, a farmer has some farm-made cheese on display. “Comes from cows that are raised out on grass,” he says to a group of customers wandering through the farmers market and stopping at his booth.

At a restaurant on Main Street, a farmer proudly holds up his strawberries for the chef, who buys his berries on a regular basis. “Real beauties,” he says. “They’re large and red-ripe. Your diners will love them. Sweet and juicy and no pesticides.”

These farmers have several things in common. They would be identified as small-scale farmers and therefore exempt from many provisions, such as mandatory inspections, in the Food Safety Modernization Act. They primarily sell direct to their customers.

They also have something else that’s even more valuable. Their customers’ trust.

On a business level, that’s of utmost importance, Rachel Armstrong, founder and executive director of Farm Commons, will quickly say. But while knowing how to farm and having a loyal customer base is one thing, knowing how to keep your customers safe from foodborne pathogen problems and your farm safe from lawsuits is another.

Lawsuits? What does that have to do with small scale farms, many of which are organic, some people will ask. But the logic that if you do everything right what can go wrong can be dangerous, warns Armstrong.

Things do happen. Tiny microscopic enemies such as E coli, Salmonella and Listeria can contaminate a crop or farm product and sicken your customers. And even though your customers value you as a farmer, the expenses associated with medical care if a customer comes down with a foodborne illness, especially if it  causes life-long health problems or death, can add up to a staggering amount. Sometimes is  so high it could even mean the loss of a farm.

“It isn’t the customer who’s pushing this,” Armstrong said. “It’s the health insurance companies. They’re the ones you’ll see across the negotiating table or in court.”

Bottomline, making sure you prevent foodborne pathogens from infecting your customers is a basic business foundation of a farm.

“I see a lot o starry-eyedness,” Armstrong said about dealing with small-scale and organic farmers, especially new ones. “Many think they can rely on common sense and intuition. But some of this in not necessarily intuitive. There’s also the role that expertise, studies, research and scientific inquiry plays in this. It goes further than the common sense that might be used in a household.”

With that in mind, Farm Commons offers food safety tips ranging from complying with food safety regulations, including the Food Safety Modernization Act, to getting insurance coverage, to creating a record-keeping system showing food safety diligence, to implementing a food safety plan, and more. There are checklists, flowcharts, guides and multimedia materials for preventing a foodborne illness incident while building resilience to endure if one occurs.

Joe Bermudez of the Berrian Insurance Group shared this warning about the harm foodborne pathogens can do — no matter how careful a farmer might be.

“. . .  you still can’t stop this with some foods,” he said, referring to foodborne pathogens. “The nature of the beast is that it’s going to sneak through. Human error is our biggest enemy.”

It could be something as unnoticeable as an employee coming to work with norovirus or Listeria monocytogenes that comes into a food environment on a fork lift or someone’s boots.

“Pathogens don’t care if the food is local or comes from big ag,” he said.

Armstrong agrees: “There’s nothing inherently true that food from small or organic farms is safer.”

In an earlier interview, Cornell food scientist Elizabeth Bihn, who is also director of the Produce Safety Alliance, said that having worked with growers for more than 20 years, she thinks that foodsafety training is really valuable because “I do not think all of this is common sense.”

“Every farmer should understand food safety risks, how to assess their farm risks, and reduce them,” she said. “But how do you know you have the knowledge you need if you’ve never been exposed to the information?”

Legal insurance is more than a money pit
Of course, the reach of a smaller farm is nowhere near to the reach of a large farm, which often distributes its produce to many outlets, some of them across the nation or even overseas. Large operations have a plethora of regulations to comply with.

But while many small-scale farms are exempt from the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act, that doesn’t mean they’re exempt from being sued.

“Absolutely not,” said Armstrong. “The lack of regulations doesn’t mean a small-scale farmer will be able to avoid legal obligations if his or her food gets someone sick.

“Some medical costs can be very expensive. Some expenses could even be needed to cover a lifetime of treatments.”

And, again, she reminds people that it’s not the customer the farmer will be looking at across the table or in court.

“It will be the health insurance companies representing the customers,” she said.

In describing liability insurance, she said it’s more than “shoveling money into a hole.”

And she points out that having it before something happens is definitely better than looking for a lawyer after something happens.

“You don’t want to be on the edge of loss,” she said, referring to the loss of a farm.

But why?
Food safety liability insurance is emerging as one of the latest trends in market-based food safety regulation.

But why? asks John Aloysius Cogan Jr. of the University of Connecticut School of Law and author of “The Uneasy Case for Food Safety Liability Insurance.”

The answer, he says, is simple: food is our most dangerous consumer product, and our federal and local governments do not fully protect us from its perils.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in six — about 48 million Americans suffer from foodborne illnesses caused by pathogens such as Salmonella, Norovirus, Listeria, and Escherichia coli (E. Coli), each year. Annually, 128,000 Americans require hospitalization and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses, according to CDC estimates.

Medical expenses, productivity losses, and the economic cost of premature deaths, pain, and suffering in the United States due to foodborne illness have been estimated at $77.7 billion annually.

A sue-happy society
“We live in a litigious society,” said Troy Smith, director of partnerships for Veracity Insurance Solutions.

Several years ago, Veracity decided it should explore niche opportunities  —  people or businesses being neglected by typical insurance policies. As a result of the research, the company launched its Food Liability Insurance Program, an insurance policy with 20,000 policy holders to its name.

The program’s goal is to be part of a movement to buy food from local farmers, gardeners, chefs and farmers markets.

And it keeps things simple.

“You don’t even have to talk with an agent,” Smith said, pointing out that customers can fill out an online applications.

Do some more research about this and then make your own decision about where to go from there.

“If  you pull food out of the ground or off a bush or tree and you take it to sell somewhere, and someone gets sick, you definitely want to have some kind of insurance,” Smith said.

Armstrong said that “legal resilience” is of utmost importance. And it’s doubly important when considering that many small-scale and organic farmers are involved in doing “bold, creative things the world needs.”

“We need that in our food system,” she said.

About Farm Commons
After earning a bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Ecology, Armstrong worked on local farms, managed a community garden, started a nonprofit farm-to-chef program and did everything she could for food and agriculture.

It was through all of these ag-related experiences she began to see that  there was a persistent need for legal knowledge.

The solution: “Knowing we couldn’t afford legal services as a community, I decided to go to law school,” she said. With that in mind, she built up her expertise in sustainable agricultural law.

From there, she went on to found Farm Commons.

As the founder and executive director of the organization, she is focused on a single thing: building stronger, more legally resilient farm businesses.

“Every day, I get to test, deploy, and magnify strategies that help famers step into their own power to create strong, legally resilient businesses,” she says in a biography summary about herself. “In my mind, justice demands that farm communities have control over the paperwork that shapes their success: farmland leases, operating agreements, sales agreements and more. We help make that happen. “

Farm Commons also offers advice and information about such things as leases, trusts and wills, sales and contracts, workers, and value-added agritourism.

“Strong, resilient farm businesses are built on a solid legal foundation,” says the organization’s banner on its web page.

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