Homogenizing the world

More catch-up in spare minutes: I'm not sure this is a good idea. I've already heard from a local producer that an attempt to sell her product (goat's milk cheese) at the local Wal-Marts fell through because the contract would have required her to provide whatever amount they requested, delivered the day it was requested, to any store they chose. Small producers can't meet those standards, and they certainly can't meet these auditing requirements (or their cost).

Wal-Mart to push for uniform standards for suppliers

By Janie Gabbett on 1/25/2008 for Meatingplace.com

Wal-Mart wants to lead an effort over the next three years with other major global retailers to create common social and environmental standards for suppliers, CEO Lee Scott told employees.

"We believe that there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global retailers. And there should be one third-party auditing system for everyone," he told 7,000 Wal-Mart managers at an internal leadership meeting.

Scott said Wal-Mart is working on such a system with global retail and CIES, a consumer goods network, starting with social standards then planning to expand to environmental stipulations.

Wal-Mart supplier standards

Scott also said Wal-Mart would build specific environmental, social and quality standards into its own supplier contracts. He said these standards would apply to all suppliers who work with Wal-Mart through global procurement, who are domestic importers, or who are manufacturers of Sam's Club or Wal-Mart private brands.

"We have already started doing this, and we hope to extend the requirement to all the suppliers I mentioned within the next three to five years," he said in prepared remarks. He said the company believes suppliers can reduce the amount of energy they use to make Wal-Mart products by 20 percent.

Wal-Mart will only work with suppliers who maintain these standards, will make certification and compliance part of supplier agreements and will ask suppliers to report to them regularly.

To underscore the seriousness of Wal-Mart's commitment, Scott said, "We will favor — and in some cases even pay more i for suppliers that meet our standards and share our commitment to quality and sustainability."

The pandemic that wasn't?

I have 10 minutes, so I thought I'd play a little catch-up. Basically, this article is saying that we got a combination of lucky and prepared to avoid pandemic avian flu. Good summary -- we were lucky it wouldn't (and didn't) mutate that quickly and we were prepared with large investments in vaccine and diagnostic research. The question now, of course, is how to keep those dollars coming in the face of large-scale complacency by the public. Here's hoping this doesn't turn into a "boy who cried wolf" scenario!

Epi 101: Publishing bias

Why are we now finding out that antidepressant-making drug companies only publish (the better) 2/3rds of their trials? Is it because drug companies are evil, money-grubbing, and soulless? Not exactly -- it's probably also a form of publication bias. Journals don't like to publish papers that report no differences (although this is a valid, and important, scientific finding). I've recently had that complaint from a reviewer -- we didn't find a significant difference (actually, we did, just not an easy one to distinguish, but I digress), so what's the point in publishing the results?

The point is that science consists of two types of trials:

1. trials that work, and
2. trials that don't work.

Number 1 shows us what to do next. Number 2 shows us what not to do next. Both very useful to know. Never publishing number 2 leads to repetition of useless trials. This is one of my pet peeves.

Oh, and the drug companies probably didn't want to report less than stellar findings.

Cloned meat is safe? Or offspring . . . oh, never mind

I've put off blogging for a little while (too much writing in my real job), but I do need to comment about this:

The FDA ruling does not mean you will be eating Beta. It means that people who have spent large amounts of money to clone their best cows will be able to sell you the milk and meat of their offspring. The actual cows are worth too much to butcher.

I'm not taking a stand on this issue -- I just don't want people to be more confused than the media has already made them.

Interesting thought, hard to prove

No, despite Simon's suggestion, I didn't get a special Epiphany post up. Thought about it, but it didn't happen. Oh well.

I was intrigued by this article, though. It's an interesting idea, that violent movies could reduce crime, but there's an inherent flaw: how do you prove it? I haven't read their study, but I can guess that there are a lot of potential biases. Do you control for policing or sentencing changes, which would require using data from a regional or even local scale? Then you would need to include the presence of movie theaters, the dates violent films are shown, some sort of temporal analysis relating crime to the release of a movie. If so, your power is going to rapidly decrease (the more possible biases your study considers, the lower your degrees of freedom, the harder it is to notice anything). If not, well, any or all of those things could be biasing your results. The article hints at a possible temporal relationship:

Crime is not merely delayed until after the credits run, they say. On the Monday and Tuesday after packed weekend showings of violent films, no spike in violent crime emerges to compensate for the peaceful hours at the movies. Even a few weeks later, there is no evidence of a compensating resurgence, they say.

What did they use to measure this? Survival analysis? Whatever they did, to really get these results, would be pretty tricky stats, which the article doesn't mention.

Still, interesting thought.

Epi 101: Treatment Bias

Here's another basic lesson in epi: if you give different treatments based on socioeconomic status, region, or willingness to pay, you will get different results. If you give the same treatments, but spend more money on one, you won't get different results. You will get more money.

That's the sort of bias this book seems to be addressing. There is no scientific basis for our bureaucratic nightmare of a health care system actually improving our health. All it does is improve the financial health of the people who own it.

Why typing is good, but can't do everything

One of my friends sent me a link to news about the Listeria outbreak in Massachusetts. I hadn't followed it too closely because it wasn't really a new story to me, but I have studied these things more than most normal people.

In this case, the bacteria that sickened at least 4 and killed 2 was linked to a milk processor by typing, a useful process that can tell us how related 2 cultures of bacteria are. That lets us go in, shut the plant down, find the culprit, spread the horror stories (one that I heard a few years back: cartons used to take waste milk to a swine herd were pressure-washed in the bottling room), and hopefully learn something.

What typing can't do is stop the outbreak before people get sick. For that, we need to rely on processors to follow S.O.P.'s and farmers to control disease within their herds. This is what my research group focuses on, modeling food safety at all the levels of production. No, it's not "bench" research, but it can be useful.

I'm guessing that the plant in this case will find a simple procedural change that led to a Listeria overgrowth. This is why modeling is important; we can predict what changes will do before people have a chance to get sick. No amount of fancy DNA technology will do that.

Please forgive the rant; I get peeved sometimes about the bias against modeling. We are important!

More waiting for a Farm Bill

It's been delayed for a few years because the process is so time-consuming. It's been delayed this year because Congress and Bush can't agree on anything. Oh, wait, it's still going to be delayed, because whatever they turn out is going to be vetoed.

Well, that's legislation for you -- but the ag committee can't do much else until this goes through. That means delays in funding the USDA. The USDA does a number of important things (food inspection, WIC and food stamps, not to mention basic research like mine) that really shouldn't get put on the back burner for too long.

But I guess that's why the bill is so difficult -- it has to cover all these things, too, along with little stuff like subsidies.

Senate passes farm bill, moves to conference under veto threat

By Janie Gabbett on 12/17/2007 for Meatingplace.com

The Senate on Friday voted 79-14 to pass a version of the 2007 farm bill the White House has already threatened to veto, sending the legislation to the House-Senate conference committee to hash out differences and agree a bill that the White House will sign. "This legislation is fundamentally flawed. Unless the House and Senate can come together and craft a measure that contains real reform, we are no closer to a good farm bill than we were before today's passage," Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner said in a statement. Conner acknowledged he was disappointed the Senate approved the bill by such a wide margin. Broadly, the Administration opposes the cost of the $286 billion farm bill, which it says includes $22 billion in unfunded commitments and includes $15 billion in new taxes, as well as the fact that it did not limit subsidies to wealthier farm owners as much as the Administration sought. Packer livestock ownership The Senate version of the bill includes a livestock title (Title X) that contains a provision that would only allow meatpackers to own livestock 14 days before slaughter. "We have a number of concerns with key aspects of that whole competition title," Conner said, when asked on a teleconference with reporters if the Administration would seek changes in the packer livestock ownership provision. "We're going to be working very closely with the conferees in both the House and Senate to address this issue very directly as we go into the conference," Mark Keenum, under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, told reporters, adding that the provision is, "impeding commerce and trade with a specific commodity, in this situation livestock, and that's a slippery slope." Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) praised the livestock title, saying in a statement, "The bill's livestock title will promote market opportunities for producers; it will protect animal health; and it will strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act." COOL and state-inspected meat Both House and Senate versions of the bill contain mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) provisions that meat industry groups have agreed they can live with. The House version of the bill includes a provision that would allow some state-inspected meat to cross state lines.

Taking everything into account . . .

. . . you can't.

New research is saying that local foods don't necessarily have a lower carbon footprint. When you consider technical economies of scale (i.e. more efficient transport -- containers on trains instead of boxes in pickups), mass-produced fruits and vegetables shipped across the country use less gas than local ones from small farms. This is based on, for example, the gas per strawberry. Many strawberries makes light footprint.

There are other things the article didn't go into (machinery efficiency, farm supply shipping, etc.) that large monoculture farms have going for them as far as carbon footprint goes. With all of these things, I have to admit that buying all your groceries at Wal-Mart, especially with only one trip a week, uses the least carbon.

If that's your goal.

Me, I eat locally for other reasons. I want to support local farmers and local industry. I want the flavor of the heritage varieties (wonder why they taste better than the shipped ones? flavor and storage value are inversely related for most fruits and veggies). I want to know where my food came from.

Yes, I feel guilty when I drive my car all alone to the farmer's market, only to go to the grocery store once or twice a week on separate trips. I used to bike it, but that was when I lived in Kansas (ah, flatness; the prospect of hauling my shopping up two blocks at 40% grade or more is rather discouraging). I used to do all my shopping on Saturday morning, going without rather than doing quick runs for one ingredient. I need to get back into at least some of those good habits.

Still, I can't help thinking that basing a drastic shift in behaviors (an all-local diet, for example) on one good-hearted idea is dooming it to failure. As soon as you start bringing in other calculations, you'll run into complications, realize how complicated life is, and give up. Yes, we need to consider confounders. We still need to act, though, and it's up to you what confounders you use in your analysis.

Controlling(?) E. coli

Someone was telling me last night about her friend's revolutionary work on controlling pre-harvest E. coli in cattle by feeding hay for a few days. I had to break it to her that it's common knowledge, now, that that works. There are probably thousands of studies going on right now to figure out E. coli reduction in cattle.

With all this work, though, who do people trust? The activists.

Yes, the people (in some cases) who say raw milk is healthier than pasteurized, or veganism is healthier than carnivorism, or homeopathy works. I'll grant them homeopathy -- there is a documented placebo effect if people believe something will work. Still, less than half surveyed trust the government on food safety! That technically includes me right now: I work for a land-grant university, studying pre-harvest food safety. But government isn't looking out for us like the activists are . . . I'm just going to stop now . . .

Less than half Americans see meat safety regulations as adequate: survey

By Janie Gabbett on 12/6/2007 for Meatingplace.com

In the wake of this year's spike in ground beef recalls, fewer Americans are confident the government has adequate food safety regulations for meat and poultry, according to a new GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media survey.

The telephone survey, commissioned by The Worldcom Public Relations Group, showed only 46 percent of 1,009 adults polled were confident meat and poultry were adequately regulated, compared to 48 percent for seafood, 57 percent for dairy, 58 percent for fruits and vegetables and 65 percent for cereals and grains.

At an average of 50 percent, confidence in food regulation in general ranked below every other category polled, other than toys (37 percent).

Trusting activists

The survey also found that U.S. consumers have more faith in activists and retail grocers than either the government or food companies when it comes to providing information about food choices.

While 64 percent said advocates and activist groups have consumers' best interests in mind when providing information about food choices, 62 percent felt that way about grocers, 53 percent about food manufacturers, 47 percent about the U.S. government and 26 percent about fast food companies.

"These results support the idea that activists may have been successful in dominating discussions about food policy," said Bob Giblin, a senior public relations counselor and research director who tracks food and agricultural issues for Morgan&Myers.

Subsidies aren't bad?

Depends on who you are. If you're Malawi, it turned out to be the answer, the way out of the poverty trap.

The lesson here is not to ignore the experts, as the article's title says, but to work to your situation, not someone else's expectations and desires. Those experts Malawi was ignoring? The ones that said subsidies and big government would sink a poor country? They wanted Malawi to spend less of their (loaned) money. Most people could tell you, though, that sometimes a little more money spent is worth it in the long run.

Sometimes we're right

Apparently, epidemiologists have been saying for a while that the UN's estimation of AIDS cases in low-income countries is flawed. Turns out, they were right.

I hadn't heard anything about the criticisms before this article, but I don't blame them for criticizing: estimates were based on anonymous women coming to free clinics for pregnancy or STD tests. Free clinics are primarily in the cities, and women needing pregnancy or STD tests are, by definition, sexually active. Rural, sexually inactive women would be ignored by this method. And they overestimated?

Lesson: think about biases before you extrapolate results to a general population.

Can you pay extra for a sterilized cooking staff?

My first thought seeing this article: what will this mean for the CDC's 'cruise ship of the week'? After all, those things are great infection vats! Mostly because all the people are shoved together, though . . . maybe this will help.

Slow food revival? Nah.

A friend was just asking me if slow food was as popular out East as it was back (for him) West. This seems to say that no, slow food isn't overly popular in the US in general.

I'm very worried by the statistic that 25% of family dinners are at restaurants. 1) You don't teach your kids to cook by going to a restaurant. 2) That probably includes (and is overwhelmed by) fast-food restaurants. Eek.

Americans like hamburgers, locally grown and convenience foods: poll

By Janie Gabbett on 11/8/2007 for Meatingplace.com

According to PARADE magazine's biennial "What America Eats" survey, 21 percent of Americans would choose a hamburger as their only food on a deserted island.

Respondents to the survey of 2001 Americans over 18 years of age were given a choice of seven foods. Pizza was the top choice at 37 percent, followed by hamburger (21 percent), fruit (17 percent), veggies (12 percent), chocolate (8 percent), apple pie (3 percent) and French fries (2 percent).

The survey also found that 82 percent of Americans use convenience foods (pre-made fresh, frozen, refrigerated, canned or packaged) and 22 percent are using more of such foods than a year ago. While 46 percent believe these foods are more expensive, 71 percent said the cost is worth it for the time saved.

Local, natural and green

The movement towards eating foods grown locally is "one of the hottest culinary trends to come along in years," according to the survey, which cited recent E. coli scares and tainted food from China as factors driving Americans to think about where their food comes from and how it is grown.

When shopping for groceries, 38 percent of respondents said that all-natural claims are important, while 34 percent said recyclable packaging is a big factor and 32 percent said "environmentally friendly" labels are an important purchasing consideration. And 70 percent said they are at least somewhat likely to buy products that won't harm the environment, even if they cost more.

Where we eat

• 87 percent said they eat home-cooked food for dinner, 5 percent chose restaurant take-out and only 1 percent eat supermarket-prepared meals
• 81 percent said they eat breakfast at home, but 59 percent admit they skip it and 4 percent eat it in a restaurant
• 60 percent eat lunch at home, with 36 percent skipping it and 10 percent in a restaurant
• 25 percent of family dinners are at a restaurant and only 5 percent don't eat dinner

More men in the kitchen

Men are doing more grocery shopping and cooking more meals than 20 years ago. The survey said 71 percent of women now do the grocery shopping versus 93 percent 20 years ago, and 68 percent of women said they prep and cook food for their household versus 94 percent two decades ago.

Fantasy meals

If a TV family could join them for dinner, 29 percent of respondents picked the cast of "Friends", while 24 percent preferred "The Brady Bunch" and 15 percent want to eat with "The Simpsons." Only 7 percent want to eat with The Costanzas from "Seinfeld".

Rachael Ray was the pick (38 percent) for the chef Americans want to cook their dinner, followed by (30 percent) Emeril Lagasse.

And if calories and nutrition were no object, 26 percent of Americans would most often eat pizza, 20 percent Chinese food, 14 percent fried chicken, 10 percent fast-food hamburgers and 9 percent deli sandwiches or wraps. A hot dog with the works was the choice of 3 percent of those polled.

The survey was sponsored in part by Sara Lee Food and Beverage and conducted by Mark Clements Research Inc.

Translation: foreigners are dirty!

Okay, this doesn't really surprise me. What does surprise me is that this hasn't come up before. The real lesson: cook your meat fully (and don't drink raw milk -- the population of poultry workers and that of milkers isn't all that different).

More than 200 test positive for TB at poultry plant

By Alicia Karapetian on 11/5/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Some 28 percent of the 765 employees screened for tuberculosis at one of Wayne Farms LLC's poultry processing facilities in Decatur, Ala., tested positive, the Decatur Daily reported.

Final testing was completed at the Alabama State Department of Public Health's Tubrerculosis Control Division Wednesday, with a total of 212 positive skin tests.

The testing was done in two batches. On Oct. 11, 167 employees were tested, resulting in 47 positive skin tests, one of which was an active, and contagious, case.

More recently, the final group of tests was completed last week, which resulted in 167 positive skin tests from a pool of 598 samples. Those most recently tested and with positive skin tests will receive chest X-rays on Thursday to determine if any of those cases are active and contagious, according to the Decatur Daily.

Scott Jones, interim director at the state's TB division told the Decatur Daily that he is not surprised by the number of positive skin tests given that many of the workers at the facility were born outside of the United States.

Really?!?! Not a lobbyist?

This is surprising! No, I'm not bashing Republicans -- most secretaries of agriculture have industry ties. Schafer, though, seems to be clean (of the ag industry; he has worked in other industries). Nice change . . . although the new Farm Bill looks like more of the same . . . one step at a time!

Bush nominates new ag secretary

By Tom Johnston on 11/1/2007 for Meatingplace.com

President Bush has nominated Edward T. Schafer to serve as the nation's next Agriculture Secretary, saying Schafer's service over two terms as governor of North Dakota has well qualified him for the job, the White House announced.

Schafer, a Republican who elected not to make another run for North Dakota governor office in 2000, will succeed Mike Johanns, who resigned to campaign for Nebraska's Senate seat. (See Johanns announces U.S. Senate bid on Meatingplace.com, Oct. 11, 2007.)

Chuck Conner, who has been serving as acting agriculture secretary, applauded the president's pick.

"Having served two terms as governor of an agricultural state, he (Schafer) knows the issues," Conner said. "He has led trade missions, promoted renewable energy and advanced rural development in his home state. His reputation for being a strong leader with a straightforward approach and optimistic outlook will fit perfectly here at the department, and it will be appreciated by the farmers, ranchers and other stakeholders whom we serve."

Jay Truitt, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, also spoke highly of Schafer.

"He will bring a fresh perspective to USDA at a time when American agriculture is facing many new challenges in policy development and opportunities in innovation and technology," Truitt said. "This is a critical time for U.S. agriculture, and we're looking forward to working with Mr. Schafer to help guide the cattle and beef industry into the future."

The title says it all

Yep, no surprises here:

New cancer report says limit red and processed meat; industry disagrees

By Janie Gabbett on 10/31/2007 for Meatingplace.com

A new report by the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research suggests limiting intake of red meat and avoiding processed meat as one of ten recommendations to reduce cancer risk.

The report, which updates the group's 1997 findings and reviewed over 7,000 studies, said it found that both red meat (defined as beef, pork, lamb and goat) and processed meat (defined as meat preserved by smoking, curing or salting or chemical preservatives) increased risk of colorectal cancer if eaten in large quantities.

It cautioned people who eat red meat to consume less than 500 grams (18 ounces) of cooked red meat a week and that they consume "very little, if any" processed meat, such as bacon, ham, sausage and lunchmeat.

"The panel emphasizes that this overall recommendation is not for diets containing no red meat or diets containing no foods of animal origin," the report said, noting that meat can be a valuable source of protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B12.

"An integrated approach to the evidence also shows that many foods of animal origin are nourishing and healthy if consumed in modest amounts," it said.

The report pointed to excess body fat as a major cancer risk and noted that, "diets with high levels of animal fats are often relatively high in energy, increasing the risk of weight gain." It linked excess body fat to cancers of the esophagus, pancreas, colon and rectum, endometrium and kidney, along with breast cancer in post-menopausal women.

To view the entire report, click here.

Industry response

The American Meat Institute (AMI) said the study's meat intake recommendations, "reflect WCRF's well-known anti-meat bias and should be met with skepticism because they oversimplify the complex issue of cancer, are not supported by the data and defy common sense."

"Given the complexities and conflicting research findings, it is inconceivable that WCRF could draw definitive conclusions and make such precise recommendations about specific food categories," said AMI Foundation Vice President of Scientific Affairs Randy Huffman, noting the causes of cancer involve factors like genetics, the environment, lifestyle and a host of other issues.

AMI also disputed the report's recommendations on processed meats. "Our own systematic review of the literature by independent epidemiologists has documented that 15 of 16 comparisons regarding processed meat and colorectal cancer were not statistically significant," said Huffman.

Harvard data

Huffman also questioned why WCRF didn't take into account a 2004 Harvard School of Public Health analysis that concluded that red meat and processed meat were not associated with colon cancer.

He said the Harvard study, involving 725,000 men and women, was presented at the 2004 American Association for Cancer Research Conference in abstract form but never has been published in its entirety.

Huffman called the Harvard paper, Meat and fat intake and colorectal cancer risk: A pooled analysis of 14 prospective studies, the largest study ever done on red meat and colon cancer. He said lawmakers are now asking Harvard why the study has not been published, given its completion three years ago and its federal funding.

The point is, again, how much can we trust epi studies? We can design a study to say almost anything; whether we can get it published is another issue. Should you refute a published study with an unpublished study? Or is it, as they imply, refuting a p.c. study with a politically blocked study?

How not to be part of the problem

Good, timely article in the NYT today about MRSA and antibacterial . . . umm . . . stuff.

MRSA: methicillin-resistant Staph. aureus, which caused, apparently, 19,000 deaths in the last year, 2 recently in healthy high schoolers.

antibacterial stuff: soaps, toys, cutting boards, etc. that have been impregnated with triclosan (an antibiotic) to prevent bacterial growth.

There is no direct epidemiological link between the two, but lab tests seem to indicate that over-use of the latter can lead to the former. (Interesting side note: should we reject a theory for lack of epi back-up, even though it works in the lab? Even when we also reject theories for lack of lab back-up, even when there's a statistical link in epi studies? Are we biased in our trust of the two methods?) Do we over-use the stuff?

If you want to control bacterial growth on stuff, as the article suggests, alcohol-based cleaners work better. If you want to control bacterial growth on your hands, ditto, but soap and water works too. Just in case, lets be sensible.

Geniuses can be stupid, too

James Watson has been known to say stupid things about women, but now he's added Africans -- apparently, he thinks there's no reason for them to be as smart as Caucasians. After all, tests have proven it!

Much as I generally don't agree with Stephen Jay Gould, just read The Mismeasure of Man. Tests don't measure IQ (or IQ doesn't measure intelligence, if you prefer). We have to acknowledge that cultural familiarity plays a role in both questions and answers. I'm sure that an African-created IQ test would show the same differences . . . in the opposite direction.

Food is a right

I hadn't seen anything worth the trouble of writing in a while, but apparently I missed World Food Day. It's good to see so many countries coming out in support of food as a human right (after all, if life is a right, food has to be a right). My one question: where was the US and why didn't we hear about this?