Washington Insider -- Tuesday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

FDA's Proposed Adulteration Rule Worries Dairy Farmers

The Food and Drug Administration currently has a proposed rule under consideration that is designed to prevent hazards from being introduced to the food supply by acts of terrorism. One way FDA proposes to do this is by requiring foreign and domestic processing and handling facilities to develop mitigation strategies to prevent weak spots in the food supply chain. The agency proposed the rule under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which expanded the FDA's authority to ensure U.S. food is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination after it has occurred to preventing it in the first place.

But caught up in the new rule are the nation's dairy farmers whose trade association, the National Milk Producers Federation, says current milk handling regulations already in place are adequate to assure the safety of the product before it leaves the farm.

FDA has concluded fluid milk storage and loading in a dairy operation are activities that are vulnerable to possible terrorist activities, so owners would be required to implement strategies at certain steps in those processes. The NMPF disagrees that milk storage and loading pose threats because milk is distributed to many parts of the country to meet processing demands, making it difficult to target its final destination. And since milk is manufactured into a variety of products, it limits the shock value of any terrorist steps aimed at milk itself. The organization also noted dairy farmers already conduct strategies to protect equipment, animals and the milk supply at FDA's direction.

FDA's comment period on the proposal already has closed and the agency is expected to talk a long time before issuing a final rule. By law, FDA is required to incrementally issue final rules for FSMA between Aug. 30, 2015, and May 31, 2016.

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EPA Decision on 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard Now Not Expected Until Fall

The Environmental Protection Agency was supposed to have set the amount of ethanol and other biofuels it would require to be used this year by last November, but the agency has yet to make the announcement. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters that it now appears unlikely that the announcement will come before late September.

In addition to members of Congress, another group that is monitoring the pending EPA closely is the American Petroleum Institute, whose members are the ones who will be required to blend into the nation's gasoline and diesel supplies whatever amount of renewable fuel EPA mandates. An API spokesman last week told the press that "all indications point to September" for EPA to finalize the 2014 Renewable Fuels Standard.

The uncertainty that EPA injects into the annual decision has been problematic for both supporters and opponents of the RFS in the past, but the likelihood that EPA will for the first time reduce the 2014 RFS mandate from the previous year's levels has put both sides even more on edge. The fact that the 2014 proposal has not yet made it through EPA's rulemaking process or been vetted by the White House Management and Budget (which is required to sign off on all federal rules), shows just how political the annual decision has become.

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Washington Insider: Secretary Vilsack's Biotech Labeling Road to Nowhere

In his recent trip to Europe, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apparently told the publication Agra Europe that smartphones might be able to solve the GMO labeling debate.

Vilsack said barcode labels on products containing GMOs to be read by smartphones could solve the longstanding debate on whether to label products in the United States. He claimed to be impressed enough with Swiss multinational Nestlé's barcode labels that he sees it as a potential solution for the issue of labeling products that contain genetically modified organisms.

If you are wondering how a more efficient way to attach potentially misleading information to food products would help, you are not alone. Even Vilsack backpedalled in the same interview with the observation that labeling products with GMOs as such could provide "misleading information" to consumers if not used carefully –– for example making it seem as though conventional products were dangerous.

He correctly notes that the "challenge" in the GMO labeling debate is that U.S. food labels are intended to either provide nutritional information about products or warn consumers about possible allergens or other health hazards. Labeling for GMOs does not fit into either of those categories, he thinks, but still argues that "the consumer has a right to know," although he seems unable to suggest what it is that should be known.

Observers note that it is far from clear what Secretary Vilsack intends from his "technology muses." He clearly thinks bar code labeling adds information, and suggests that "eventually you will go into a grocery store and you will have your smartphone and there will a bar code and symbol to give you all the information on that product". But, he has failed in efforts to explain the specific, non-misleading information he has in mind.

So, in a "summing up" comment, he also said that neither the European Union nor the United States is happy about the state of negotiations on agriculture in the potential Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in which GMOs and other food safety standards are a central and controversial theme. This is especially true since European officials have stated repeatedly that they have no intention to negotiate regarding the "precautionary principle" that it uses to ban GMOs including even those that pass muster with EU scientists.

In response to Vilsack's comments, the powerful Grocery Manufacturers Association, which opposes labeling of biotech foods says that maybe Vilsack has something with regard to the possibility of barcode labeling. "The use of bar codes as a vehicle for providing consumers with more information about the products they purchase is something worth exploring," said a spokesman from the organization when asked about Vilsack's comments.

However, the organization still thinks a national GMO labeling standard would be needed to prevent a 50 state patchwork of GMO labeling laws that would be both costly and confusing for consumers, the spokesman added.

So far, labeling advocates have been unable to agree on what the labels they advocate should say, and how they should say it without suggesting that other foods are unsafe or unhealthful. And, until that language can be defined, Vilsack's political dance around barcodes or other communications technology is unlikely to solve the intensely political problem of how to define better labels for foods, Washington Insider believes.

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