July, 24 2013, 08:54am EDT
FDA/USDA Collude to Eliminate True Organic Egg Production
Onerous Food Safety Rules Could Abolish Outdoor Access for Laying Hen
CORNUCOPIA, WI
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a draft guidance document to clarify how egg producers, including organic farmers with outdoor access, can comply with its 2009 egg safety rule aimed at reducing salmonella contamination in the nation's egg supply.
Since organic producers are required by federal standards to grant outdoor access to their laying hens, the guidance applies to all organic egg producers. The FDA, which collaborated with the USDA's National Organic Program in promulgating their guidance, recognizes minute covered porches, which do not afford true and meaningful outdoor access to laying hens, as one of four possible organic production systems and thereby legitimizes their use.
Already the focus of controversy and threatened lawsuits, the USDA has been widely criticized for allowing giant "organic" factory farms, confining as many as 100,000 birds to a building, to skirt the requirements for outdoor access by employing tiny screened porches, often with a capacity of only 1-3% of the confined birds. The USDA is currently allowing these giant poultry operations to claim these structures as the legally required "access to the outdoors."
"This is collusion between two Obama administration agencies to significantly and permanently weaken the integrity of the organic standards," says Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute.
"By giving the OK to use covered porches as 'outdoor access,' and putting additional burdens on producers with legitimate outdoor runs or pasture, the recommendations in this food safety document decisively tilt the playing field to industrial-scale producers," added Kastel.
Some in the organic community had been concerned that the FDA would require impractical swabbing and disinfecting of the outdoor areas but the draft guidance puts these concerns to rest. However, other prevention and control measures that are included in the guidance could force organic producers to devote significant additional resources, or may even make it impossible for pastured poultry operations to comply.
Stephanie Alexandre, a producer of certified organic, pastured eggs near Crescent City, California, objects to the draft guidance. "It's ironic that federal regulators would apply such scrutiny, and costly and labor-intensive requirements, to my farm when there is abundant published, peer-reviewed research indicating that the real danger to society, from salmonella contamination in eggs, comes from giant industrial operations, generally with caged birds, not with modest sized flocks of pastured poultry," said the organic farmer.
For example, despite weak scientific evidence that contact with wild birds is a significant risk factor for salmonella contamination, the FDA requires organic producers to minimize contact with other birds. The agency recommends noise cannons, temporary confinement, or netting, or even structures with roofs (porches) which would be cost prohibitive for most organic producers with meaningful outdoor access.
Some of the recommended measures would discourage chickens from using the outdoor space. For example, while noise cannons would be effective in scaring wild birds, they would also scare the laying hens and effectively make the outdoor area an inhospitable environment for the organic birds.
"In effect, the FDA's proposed recommendations would steer organic egg producers toward the use of porches, which would be the most effective and cost-efficient way to ensure complete compliance with the rule," Kastel explained. "Why would farm operators invest the extra labor and expense to meet the FDA requirements, and put their birds outside, when they can create a token structure, attached to their main building, and continue to confine their animals?"
"The recommendations in this draft guidance essentially give organic producers a textbook of excuses for why their birds can legally be confined in industrial settings," says Kastel. "To create the safest and most nutritious eggs, we should be encouraging more and better use of outdoor space, for laying hens so that they can exhibit their true, native behavior. But this FDA document does just the opposite."
The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit.
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57 House Dems Call On Biden to Prevent Israeli Assault on Rafah
"An offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable."
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Dozens of U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday joined Congresswomen Pramila Jayapal and Madeleine Dean in pressuring President Joe Biden to prevent a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip that's now full of over a million displaced Palestinians.
"We write with urgency to say: an offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable," states the letter from Jayapal (D-Wash.), Dean (D-Pa.), and 55 other members of Congress. "We welcome your administration's efforts to dissuade the Israeli government from this military operation, which would deepen both the humanitarian catastrophe for people in Gaza and the strategic challenges that regional and global stakeholders face in this conflict."
"We now urge you to enforce U.S. law and policy by withholding certain offensive weaponry or other military support that can be used for an assault on Rafah, including the offensive weaponry and aid already signed into law," the letter continues.
The Democrats highlighted how Israel's retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack has impacted the city:
Rafah has become one of the most overcrowded places in the world. With shelters too full and insufficient, many families now live on the streets. The collapsed health infrastructure, in addition to sewage overflow and the scarcity of food, water, and medicine, has accelerated the onset of severe malnutrition and the spread of communicable diseases. Acute food insecurity is endemic in Rafah, even as the international community circulates credible reports that famine is setting in elsewhere in Gaza—all as a result of six months of military operations that you have described as "indiscriminate." In addition, we know in fact that Israeli strikes on Rafah have already occurred, including one on April 20th that killed 18 people, including 14 children.
Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have killed 34,568 people and wounded another 77,765—mostly women and children—while leaving thousands more missing in the rubble of bombed buildings, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Biden has resisted mounting global pressure to limit or fully cut off military aid to Israel, which the International Court of Justice in January concluded is "plausibly" committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. That case is ongoing.
"In addition to the catastrophic civilian toll—and risk to as many as 130 hostages, including as many as six or more Americans—an offensive in Rafah would ultimately undermine the Israeli and U.S. governments' strategic interests," the Democrats argued. "Israeli and U.S. military bases in the region have recently been the targets of repeated drone and missile attacks—a dangerous indication of how unstable the Middle East has become as a result of the Gaza war."
"An Israeli offensive in Rafah risks the start of yet another escalatory spiral, immediately putting the region back on the brink of a broader war that neither Israel nor the United States can afford," they warned. Along with calling on the president to withhold aid to Israel to protect civilians in Rafah, the lawmakers urged Biden to keep working "toward achieving a lasting cease-fire that will bring hostages home and build a path toward safety and security for all."
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In a joint statement last month, the Washington Democrat and 18 of her colleagues said that "our votes against H.R. 8034 are votes against supplying more offensive weapons that could result in more killings of civilians in Rafah and elsewhere."
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Friends of the Earth senior program manager Chloe Waterman declared that "House Republicans have proposed a dead-on-arrival Farm Bill framework that puts Big Ag's profits over everyone else: communities, family farmers, consumers, states and local rule, farmed animals, and the planet."
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