Washington Insider - Thursday

By DTN's Washington Insider

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

FDA Urged to Collect Farm-Level Data on Antibiotic Use

Federal regulators should collect farm-level data on antibiotics in cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys to track whether use of the drugs is diminishing, public health groups, scientists and several senators urged.

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposal would require drug companies to report antibiotic sales estimates broken down by species is a positive step, the agency needs more information to study the impact of policies designed to curb antibiotic use, according to comments on a Federal Register notice and a letter by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

The senators asked the secretaries of Defense, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, who jointly lead the interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, to outline a plan to address gaps in enforcement, data collection and policy evaluation. After waiting for a response to a December 2014 letter, the senators resent their request on Aug. 17. “The FDA has access to data on antibiotic sales and distribution and can measure resistance patterns in food samples, but does not have any clear mechanism for collecting data on how antibiotics are actually being used in food production,” the senators wrote.

The FDA should collect data through the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), a rule the agency recently completed that tells veterinarians what practices to follow when authorizing the use of medically important antibiotics in animal feed, the groups said. “FDA should require submission of all VFDs and publish an annual report summarizing the information contained in them, including drug class, animals species for which they are issued and indication,” more than 50 scientists that study antibiotic resistance wrote in comments on the FDA proposal to collect sales data. “Even though all VFD’s written might not be filled, this information is still helpful in understanding intended antibiotic use in food animal production.”

FDA should collect information from feed manufacturers on the amount of antibiotics distributed in feed to farms. “When this information is combined with the information contained in VFDs it will provide important information about the 70% of antibiotics administered in feed every year,” the scientists said.

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Lingering Drought to Cost California Ag Economy $1.8 Billion

The fourth year of drought in California will cost the state’s agricultural economy $1.8 billion – 20% more than in 2014, although farmers and their irrigation districts “are showing more resilience to the drought than many had anticipated,” according to a report by the UC-Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.

In 2015, the state’s agricultural economy will lose about $1.84 billion and 10,100 seasonal jobs because of the drought, the report estimated, with the Central Valley hardest hit. The analysis also forecasts how the industry will fare if the drought persists through 2017.

The UC Davis team used computer models and the latest estimates of surface water availability from state and federal water projects and local water districts. They forecast several drought-related impacts in the state’s major agricultural regions for the current growing season, including:

The direct costs of drought to agriculture will be $1.84 billion for 2015. The total impact to all economic sectors is an estimated $2.74 billion, compared with $2.2 billion in 2014. The state’s farmers and ranchers currently receive more than $46 billion annually in gross revenues, a small fraction of California’s $1.9 trillion-a-year economy.

The loss of about 10,100 seasonal jobs directly related to farm production, compared with the researchers’ 2014 drought estimate of 7,500 jobs. When considering the spillover effects of the farm losses on all other economic sectors, the employment impact of the 2015 drought more than doubles to 21,000 lost jobs.

Surface water shortages will reach nearly 8.7 million acre-feet, which will be offset mostly by increased groundwater pumping of 6 million acre-feet.

Net water shortages of 2.7 million acre-feet will cause roughly 542,000 acres to be idled -- 114,000 more acres than the researchers’ 2014 drought estimate. Most idled land is in the Tulare Basin.

The effects of continued drought through 2017 (assuming continued 2014 water supplies) will likely be 6% worse than in 2015, with the net water shortage increasing to 2.9 million acre-feet a year. Gradual decline in groundwater pumping capacity and water elevations will add to the incremental costs of a prolonged drought.

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Washington Insider: Disconnect on GMO Safety

The national debate over labels for genetically modified foods that has been underway for several months seems to be taking a somewhat weird turn. In a recent Pew poll, 57% of US adults said they believe that GM foods are generally unsafe, the Pew Research Center reported.

Opinions vary by demographics, education levels and science knowledge with those with lower levels of educational attainment or science knowledge more inclined to view GM foods as unsafe.

The most puzzling aspect of the survey is the extent to which these opinions contrast with those of American Association for the Advancement of Science members who nearly unanimously believe GM foods are generally safe.

Pew polled 3,748 scientists in a wide variety of fields, not just crop scientists with specific expertise. And, the AAAS notes that the scientists’ views are supported by numerous scientific panels that have investigated this issue without finding health threats.

The wide gap between consumers and scientists is puzzling to scientists, although they suggest that most people haven’t bothered to find out much about GMOs and aren’t aware of what scientists think about them. Indeed, one press report emphasized an earlier 2013 survey of Americans that found that 54% of people said they knew little or nothing about genetically modified foods, while 25% said they’d never even heard of them.

Experts also suggest a general anti-science bias among people who have heard of GMOs, such as college students who don’t trust the scientific majority. Anti-GMO activists have been fairly successful at raising doubts about genetic engineering especially since GMOs are often associated with large, unpopular corporations.

In addition, there is a tendency for surveys to bias results by their questions. Who is not in favor of “consumers right to know” when there is no mention of cost? And, who is not worried at least a little about the possibility of some future unintended consequence from complicated food technologies?

At the same time, Pew thinks GMOs don’t seem to be a pressing concern for most people. Americans eat GMOs every day without worrying too much about it — the vast majority of US corn is genetically modified, and more than 60% of processed foods in the grocery store contain GM ingredients. What’s more, when voters in states like Colorado and California have considered initiatives to label GMOs, they’ve usually rejected them.

Perhaps the most important question in this debate is why scientists believe GMOs are safe. For one thing, billions of people around the world have been eating GM foods for decades without noticeable ill effects. And numerous scientific studies have concluded that the GM crops currently on the market pose no more of a health risk than conventional crops.

In addition, in its 2012 statement, the AAAS said, “The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe.” The European Commission agreed, after sifting through 25 years of research. So did the American Medical Association — although the latter is in favor of stricter pre-market safety testing.

It is true that traditional crop-breeding techniques long have altered the genes of plants and animals using random mutations and that sometimes produced unexpected outcomes, while GMO techniques are more specific and better controlled. Nevertheless, food produced by conventional breeding is broadly considered “safe.” So, most scientific advisory panels have concluded that GMO techniques to alter plant DNA are no riskier than using conventional breeding. The fact that consumers doubt this logic continues to trouble public policy experts, as well as food industry officials.

However, few GM opponents seem likely to be persuaded by expert opinions, although voters do seem to notice when arguments about food costs are introduced, since labels can lead to expensive changes in how foods are manufactured. Thus, in the short run, the label debate may continue to turn on food cost implications as it seems to have done in recent votes over mandatory labels, Washington Insider believes.

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