Washington Insider-- Friday

By DTN's Washington Insider

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

Obama to Visit Panama Canal, Focus on Trade at Summit

President Obama will visit the Panama Canal this weekend and stress the importance of trade to regional economic growth during the Summit of the Americas, which gets underway today and which Cuba is being allowed to attend for the first time. Prior to traveling to Panama, the president's trip also included a stop in Jamaica Wednesday where he attended a meeting with Caribbean nation leaders.

There are expectations that Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro could discuss progress toward restoring diplomatic relations and reopening embassies on the sidelines of the summit. "We don't have a formal bilateral meeting" scheduled, but the two leaders are likely to interact during events Friday and Saturday with other regional leaders," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters during a briefing on the trip.

Rhodes ruled out an announcement before the summit that the two nations are restoring diplomatic relations and reopening embassies. But "I would anticipate that if there is some interaction with the Cubans at the summit that it will come up," he said.

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Middle East Could Face Threat of Animal Diseases Spreading from Syria

As the conflict in Syria drives hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is warning there could also be serious consequences for animal health in the region. Countries such as Lebanon are most at risk as some of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees bring with them large numbers of unvaccinated sheep, goats, cattle and other animals, according to FAO.

To help curb the spread of animal diseases, FAO is implementing an emergency cattle vaccination campaign along the Syria-Lebanon border. The agency says it wants to target all animals in Lebanon, but concedes this may be difficult because of the challenges in reaching remote areas and in gaining the confidence of the farmers who live there.

The project follows on from a successful initial vaccination program last year which was credited with stopping any widespread animal disease outbreaks. This year, as many as 70,000 cows and around 900,000 sheep and goats could be exposed to trans-boundary diseases if left untreated, according to Lebanon's Ministry for Agriculture. FAO recently said it believes around 50% of livestock in Syria have been lost and the cereal harvest has dropped by half since the beginning of the conflict in the country in 2011.

Containing animal diseases will prove a significant challenge for governments there, especially as their limited resources are being targeted more directly on providing food, clothing and shelter for the large number of refugees on the move in the region,

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Washington Insider: The Battle Over Organic Rules

In the never-ending war over food labels, one "fact" is often asserted. Amid the confusion over what is natural, or how much credit a fast-food company should get for its "intentions" to use only non-antibiotic meat, USDA's Certified Organic label generally means what it says, including restrictions on fertilizers, pesticides and many other modern tools.

Not so fast, as the saying goes. It turns out that USDA's seal is negotiable. And there is an ongoing fight over who gets to say what is and what is not organic in some important cases.

It is true that the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 required organic producers to use only approved substances in farming and animal husbandry, experts say. However, even in the rarified world of organic purism, a degree of reality intruded and a list of exceptions crept into use. This list is now enshrined in the system and known as the National List, because organic versions of substances like copper sulfate and hydrogen peroxide "were not available."

However, the law apparently did not say how available these products would need to be to get added or purged from the list, although it stipulated that such materials could "sunset," or lose approval after five years. Still, even that rule has some give to it. Under current rules, a two-thirds vote of the members of the National Organic Standards Board meant materials could stay on the list.

And, in real reality, there is some give to that rule, and it is leading to a fight over who can recommend additions to the list and who can vote to keep items on the list.

This is a big deal to the board and its members who say they spend a lot of time at two annual meetings listening to farmers, consumer groups, companies with organic products and others argue over whether substances should be on the list. Food colorings, for instance, which were once almost exclusively artificial, are now widely available in organic form, and some members believe they should come off the exceptions list.

A couple of years ago, in 2013, USDA changed the "list/de-list" process for some reason. The department decided that materials on the National List were to be reviewed by subcommittees of the board rather than by the entire board. Even that was not a clean break. Only the full 15-member board can vote a material off the list. Moreover, a material may not be removed without the votes of two-thirds of the board.

This seems especially confusing because a two-thirds majority of the board was previously needed to keep a material on the list.

Needless to say, USDA did not make many friends with these shifts, although it surely did have some reasons for their actions. Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute charged that the system is "… now in the land of the midnight sun — the sun that never sets.… Unless two-thirds of the board is motivated enough to take something off the list, everything stays on it in perpetuity."

Now, a coalition of grocers, seed growers and consumer and environmental advocates is filing suit against USDA over the changes it made and the way it made them. The suit charges that the department violated procedures for federal rule-making when it changed the way nonorganic substances are approved for use in organic systems without holding a public hearing or public comment.

USDA's relationship with its organics program has never been that comfortable, especially after its initial proposal for organic standards was "severely rejected" by the National Organic Standards Board for proposing to allow genetically modified organisms.

In addition, while the "list" of non-organic materials is important to growers and the industry, it hasn't attracted much outside attention. This controversy and the new lawsuit could change that. Certainly, purists already hate the fact that there is a fairly long list of non-organic materials that can be used on "organic" products and critics likely will be interested in that fact, as well.

This is a new fight for a program that has been gaining attention in the recent food label wars, and it could mean something of a setback for that trend, Washington Insider believes.

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(GH/CZ)

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