Tell FDA: tainted eggs should be destroyed, not hidden in processed foods

Sep 032010

Idaho dodged a bullet during the recent half-a-billion egg recall: Jack DeCoster’s factory-farmed eggs were nowhere to be found in our state’s grocery stores. However, that may change very soon– FDA is allowing DeCoster to process the tainted eggs into dry-egg products that will be included in things like baking mixes. This is an insult to law-abiding Americans and our true family farmers who take care to produce safe food.

Click here to sign on to Food & Water Watch’s letter to FDA and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and tell FDA and USDA to stop excusing, and even implicitly encouraging, the unsafe practices that led to the massive egg recall. Tainted eggs should be destroyed, not turned back into products that end up on Americans’ plates.

Help bring competition back to the meat industry

Aug 032010

The folks at Food & Water Watch will be road-tripping through the Midwest this summer, meeting with farmers, citizens and local officials about why our food system is broken and how to fix it.

Cows graze on pasture on a sustainable ranch in Owyhee County, Idaho

As a kick-off to the road trip, Food & Water Watch is collecting signatures on a petition that will be submitted to the US Department of Justice. The petition asks DOJ to fully enforce pro-competition laws already on the books and break up the corporate monopolies that have hijacked our food system–  destroying the livelihoods of farmers in the U.S. and abroad, bringing us the monstrosities we’ve come to know and despise as factory farms (or CAFOs), and making our food supply less safe and more prone to price spikes like those that ignited the 2008 global food crisis.

Cows stand ankle-deep in their own manure at an Owyhee County Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)

Please take a moment to read the petition, and consider adding your name to the thousands already gathered.

For more information on why competition is important to keeping our food supply safe, sane, and equitable, check out Food & Water Watch’s fact sheet: “Why Antitrust Laws Matter for Agriculture and Food”.

For a clear picture of how this applies to Idaho’s particularly severe infestation of dairy and beef animal factories, read “Consolidation and Price Manipulation in the Dairy Industry”, and “Horizontal Consolidation and Buyer Power in the Beef Industry”.

Abuse of antibiotics by factory farms gets FDA's attention

Jul 052010

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a draft guidance, ‘‘The Judicious Use of Medically Important
Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals,’’ to address the public health threat posed by antibiotic abuse in industrial animal production. A summary of the document that was published in the Federal Register on June 29th notes that:

Misuse and overuse of antimicrobial drugs creates selective evolutionary pressure that enables antimicrobial resistant bacteria to increase in numbers more rapidly than antimicrobial susceptible bacteria and thus increases the opportunity for individuals to become infected by resistant bacteria. Because antimicrobial drug use contributes to the emergence of drug resistant organisms, these important drugs must be used judiciously in both animal and human medicine to slow the development of resistance.

MRSA-- one of many antibiotic resistant "superbugs"

Given the pattern of reckless abuse of antibiotics by owners & managers of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Idaho– who have been caught red-handed time and again for attempting to sell animals  contaminated with (sometimes 100x the accepted amount of) antibiotic residues for slaughter as human food– and the fact that our Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has found livestock-only antibiotics in ground water (i.e. drinking water) in three CAFO-heavy areas of the state (Washington, Cassia, and Gooding counties), this guidance is a critically important step towards protecting public health in Idaho and across the country. It is by no means the final solution to the problem, but it is a clear recognition that the problem exists– a notable departure from  Congress’ willful ignorance and continued failure to act on the common-sense Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA)– and an attempt to steer industrial food animal production away from one of its most destructive practices.

The FDA is accepting comments on the guidance through August 30, 2010. Idahoans in particular cannot afford to allow corporate Ag to bully the FDA into watering down this important document. Please join ICARE in thanking the FDA for standing up for public health and encouraging it to stick to its guns in the final version.

Click here to submit comments electronically; or you can submit written comments to:

Division of Dockets Management (HFA–305)
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061
Rockville, MD 20852.

NOTE: If you submit comments by mail, be sure to include the docket number [Docket No. FDA–2010–D–0094] in your subject line.

Go one step further and tell Idaho’s congressional delegation to support PAMTA–click here to sign the petition!

To contact Senators Risch and Crapo (who only accept emails submitted through their official portal), copy the petition text:

I am writing to urge you to cosponsor the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (H.R. 1549, S. 619).

It is estimated that 70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States each year are used in CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), added to the feed of animals that are not sick. A mounting body of scientific evidence links this practice to the rise in antibiotic-resistant diseases in humans, including those caused by Salmonella, Campylobacter, and MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Effective antibiotics are also essential to treatment of sick animals.

Antibiotic resistance means that patients suffer longer illnesses and pay higher medical costs, and doctors are left with a dwindling arsenal of drugs to fight disease. In addition, by misusing antibiotics, CAFOs are squandering these drugs–once hailed as medical miracles–for use by future generations.

I urge you to keep antibiotics working by supporting the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act.

And paste it into their official contact forms here and here.

Better yet, put in a call!

Senator Risch:
Phone: 202-224-2752

Senator Crapo:
Phone: (202) 224-6142

Congressman Minnick:
Phone: (202) 225-6611

Congressman Simpson:
Phone: (202) 225-5531

C Bar M expansion written comment deadline

Jun 172010

Important! The deadline to submit substantive written comments (longer than a page) on the C Bar M dairy CAFO expansion application is this-coming Monday, June 21st.

We are posting this notice and asking you to join us in submitting comments in opposition of the expansion. C Bar M is looking to expand to approximately 2,800 cows in an area that is already saturated with mega-industrial-dairy CAFOs (C Bar M is located at 268 A S. 500 W., in Jerome and is up on our interactive map– check it out and see for yourself!).

2009 satellite image of C Bar M from GoogleEarth

Importantly C Bar M was fined $5800 by EPA in 2009 for discharging into Canal J (which, of course, ultimately flows into the Snake River). C Bar M is also within a mile of a home in which a family has already lost one son due to an asthma attack– brought on by “environmental causes.”

You can send in comments by email, but if you’re going to do that we would encourage you to send a fax as well and cc us on the email. Also, make it clear in the subject line of your email that you’re sending in “comments on the C Bar M dairy expansion application.”

Jerome County’s Planning and Zoning office fax # is 208-324-9263
Art Brown’s (P&Z Administrator) email address is: abrown@co.jerome.id.us

Addtionally, here are the email addresses of Jerome County’s two Administrative Assistants, just in case:
Judith Arthun: jarthun@co.jerome.id.us
Sylvia Garcia: sgarcia@co.jerome.id.us

Please tailor your comments to be as concrete and site-specific as possible: i.e. focused on issues with the application itself (click here to access the application documents we have online), disconnects between the application and the County’s Comprehensive Plan, and/or the surrounding environment (nearby fields already overloaded with phosphorous, extant water & air pollution issues in the area, etc.).

The actual hearing is scheduled for the following week, June 28th, 7:15pm at the old Jerome County Courthouse, 300 North Lincoln.

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