Produce Growers and Pesticide Makers Deepen Their Bond

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 by The Huffington Post
Best Friends Forever?
by Ken Cook

 

In nearly two decades of research and advocacy on pesticides and human health, Environmental Working Group has never before seen the produce industry take a high-profile role in debates over pesticide policy and safety, as it has this year. Invariably, it was the trade association for the pesticide industry that took the lead.

That group, which began life as The Agricultural Insecticide and Fungicide Association and evolved into the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, most recently rebranded itself "CropLife America" after it became evident that even the mention of "pesticides" or "agricultural chemicals" evoked a negative public response, Similarly, most agribusinesses have adopted the pesticide industry's defensive code words, "crop protection chemicals" or "tools."


In the past year, however, EWG observed a striking change: an unprecedented, highly public lobbying and PR campaign by fresh produce organizations aimed at downplaying consumer concerns about pesticides.

A recent editorial in The Packer, the trade publication of record for the industry, stated:

The industry can't win, but it should still fight. The worst response would be no response. The truth may be unpleasant, and counterintuitive, but eating fresh produce, with trace levels of pesticides, is indeed healthy. Consumers should fill half their plate with it. That message is worth spreading.

It became even more obvious to us that the produce industry wants to keep information about the harmful effects of pesticides out of the hands of the public after we read U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman Michael Jarvis' response in the Chicago Tribune newspaper to the unusual delay of the release of this year's pesticide data report.

USDA spokesman Michael T. Jarvis said the report was delayed by an unusually large number of official comments on the report from activists and the produce industry. "Some wanted it sooner and some later," Jarvis said. "Some wanted more detail and some less detail, and so we put more time into how we presented it. We wanted it to be more understandable to the consumer."

Who wants less detail? It's certainly not the public. USDA didn't say, but the answer is obvious.
In October of last year, a contingent of leading produce organizations met with top officials of the USDA, EPA and FDA to discuss the impending annual release of pesticide test data by the agriculture department. As one participant explained to The Packer:

The objective in the initial organizational meeting was that we want to see if we can figure out that whatever data is out there be less likely to be misconstrued and misinterpreted," said Ray Gilmer, vice president of communications for the Washington, D.C. based United Fresh Produce.

"We're trying to make sure that anyone who reads that PDP (Pesticide Data Program) report sees -- as do all the people in the room (Oct. 19) -- that there is no risk associated with the consumption of fresh produce due to pesticide residues.

The produce industry claims that public health concerns prompted it to become the public face of a campaign to defend pesticides on produce, primarily to counter Environmental Working Group's popular annual Shopper's Guide to Pesticides.

EWG is skeptical. Spearheading that opposition to the Shopper's Guide was the national produce trade group, the United Fresh Produce Association. If public health were its core mission, then why would it boast on its website that it has "monitored and helped block over 100 legislative proposals on food safety in Congress" in the past two years?

EWG believes Big Produce's motivation is profits, and threat posed by the rapid growth in the organic industry's market share, which jumped from 3 percent in 2000 to 11.4 percent in 2009 (even higher for some particular fruits and vegetables).

Part of the effort to defend pesticides was actually funded by taxpayers through a highly controversial $180,000 grant to the Alliance for Food and Farming from the state of California -- a pass-through of federal funds provided under the 2008 farm bill.

EWG wonders why the produce industry might mount such a risky campaign, other than from a desire to blunt market pressure from consumers eager to reduce their pesticide exposure, or to slow the directly related, and dramatic, expansion of organic produce.

To find out, EWG has sent a FOIA request to USDA asking for all communications between the agency and produce and pesticide representatives to determine whether the AFF grant was improperly used to support the lobbying activities of its member organizations, including United Fresh Produce, Western Growers, the California Strawberry Commission, and the Produce Marketing Association. These AFF members have lobbied Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to overhaul the USDA pesticide data program.

Produce and Pesticide Industry Ties:

Since it launched its campaign against EWG last year, the AFF has insisted that its mission is to promote consumption of fresh produce and to serve as a voice for farmers. In its 2010 IRS Form 990 tax return, its stated mission is to:

Promote food safety and the benefits of consuming fresh fruits and vegetables; provide a voice for farmers to communicate their commitment to produce safe food and care for the land.

But in the previous two years (2008 and 2009), AFF described its goals in strikingly different terms in its IRS Form. Then it said its purpose was to:

Promote food safety and the benefits of agricultural chemicals in ensuring safe, affordable food supply for consumers.

The AFF reportedly has 50 members; while the full list of members is not public, EWG understands that the California Association of Pest Control Advisers and other pesticide interests are among them.

Another AFF member is United Fresh, which also counts pesticide companies in its leadership ranks. Like the AFF, United Fresh presents itself as a defender of public health and promoter of healthier diets rich in fresh produce. But United Fresh has been at the forefront of the recent lobbying campaign against EWG's Shopper's Guide. EWG has found that large, multinational pesticides companies, including Dow, Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer, all play a leadership role in United Fresh as members of its Chairman's Roundtable.

As the United Fresh website describes it:

Chairman's Roundtable provides extra support for programs in government relations, food safety, nutrition policy and other areas to help grow the produce industry.

Chairman's Roundtable is an opportunity for United Fresh member companies to contribute above and beyond their basic dues. Roundtable members are industry leaders who set the pace in building United Fresh's strength in government relations, food safety, nutrition policy and other areas critical to industry success.

Not surprisingly, pesticides made by members of United Fresh show up prominently in USDA's tests of pesticide residues on fresh produce. EWG's preliminary analysis of USDA data found that 11 of the 20 pesticides most frequently found in the government tests were products of companies on the United Fresh Chairman's Roundtable.

They include pesticides made by BASF, Syngenta, Dow and Bayer. Monsanto the devil was the only pesticide company on the Chairman's Roundtable whose products were not found.

The Roundtable's membership underscores the tight linkage between conventional agriculture and the pesticide industry, underscoring EWG's position that there is not a dime's width of difference between the two sectors. It is clear that when top officials of produce front groups and trade associations lobby government officials and speak to the media about EWG's annual Shopper's Guide and USDA's pesticide program, they're going to bat for the pesticide industry.

Chemical Industry to Nation's Infants & Toddlers: Suck It (Up)

Thursday, November 18, 2010 by NRDC Blog
by Daniel Rosenberg

In the major food safety legislation that the Senate is debating, which will likely pass today or tomorrow, one important provision will probably be missing: a ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles or sippy cups.  The provision wasn’t included in the bill, and an amendment to add it before passage wasn’t able to get a vote on the floor of the Senate, due in large part to objections from the chemical  industry – represented in Washington DC by its trade association The American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association).

Give the chemical industry some credit: it has been acting consistently for years, even decades, to oppose any meaningful regulation of chemicals at the federal or state level, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and blocking protection for the public from chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects and learning and developmental disabilities.  And yet, blocking passage, or even a vote, on an amendment to ban bisphenol A in baby bottles and sippy cups still seems like a new low.

Senator Dianne Feinstein has emerged as a strong national leader in the fight for strong public protections from toxic chemicals, especially chemicals to which people are most widely exposed.  She was instrumental in banning three phthalates commonly used as plasticizers in childrens’ toys, and suspending the use of three others pending additional study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  That was a fight the chemical industry lost, largely because no Senator was willing to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and publicly oppose her efforts.  The chemical industry learned its lesson from that fight, and, in the battle over bisphenol A, the industry was determined to prevent her provision from making it into legislation, or ever allowing it to come up for a vote. According to at least one report, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr has been working with the chemical industry behind the scenes to block the Feinstein provision from being included in the bill.

The food industry, represented by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has also gone to great lengths to prevent Senator Feinstein from successfully restricting the use of BPA, or fully assessing its potential effects on women and children.  But that is a story for another post.  At the end of the day, the Grocery Manufacturers were willing to go along with legislation that at least banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (where GMA members have less of a direct interest), and that required FDA to complete a safety assessment and determine whether BPA met the safety requirements of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by December 2012.

But the chemical industry couldn’t even stomach that.  The ACC – whose members include some of the largest chemical companies in the world such as BASF, Dow, and DuPont and other plastics manufacturers -- has spent millions of dollars to defeat state-led efforts to restrict the use of bisphenol A in infant formula, baby food, baby bottles and sippy cups.  They’ve had a poor return on that investment, though. To date, seven states have adopted some version of restrictions on the use of BPA, along with the City of Chicago.

A little more than a year ago, the ACC, the GMA, and several industry lobbyists and representatives of companies including Coca-Cola and Del Monte met at a private club in Washington DC to plot a strategy for defeating more of those state led-efforts.  Minutes from that meeting ended up in the hands of the Washington Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which both ran stories about industry’s plans.   These included searching for a pregnant mom to be a spokesperson for BPA, buying the support of scientists, and convincing African-Americans and Hispanics that a ban on BPA in infant formula and baby food would make those products unavailable where they lived.

The industry had one temporary victory in California this year, where it spent millions of dollars to defeat legislation to ban BPA in children’s food products.  The industry (which has continually complained about the “high cost” of complying with the most basic proposals from EPA or Congress to expand the public’s right to know about what products contain toxic chemicals, and which chemicals people should be concerned about) can look forward to spending millions more dollars in California in the near future.  But don’t worry, industry profits remain healthy during these tough economic times. And they’ve shown that they’ll spend whatever it takes on lobbyists, paid scientists, misleading ad campaigns, and, of course, campaign contributions to member of Congress, to ensure that they can block as much reform as possible.

The industry will say: all of the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies by independent scientists not funded by the chemical industry that show strong associations between BPA and breast and prostate cancer, as well as effects on the reproductive system are wrong, mistaken, etc. etc.  My colleague Dr. Sarah Janssen and many others have responded to those bogus charges repeatedly.  But, even if we acknowledge that everything there is to be known about BPA is not yet known, that is hardly an argument for keeping BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, or any other packaging where it can migrate into our food supply.  BPA is routinely found in more than 90% of us, even though it is quickly excreted from our bodies (we pee it out).  That means we are essentially being exposed to BPA constantly, and the major source of that exposure is our food (including beverages).  BPA crosses the placental wall, which means the developing fetus is being exposed in utero (not only to BPA, but to dozens, and possibly hundreds of other toxic chemicals).

The failure to protect the public from constant exposure to BPA is one part of a much larger problem: our current laws do not protect us from unsafe chemicals, and keep us in the dark about the potential effects of thousands of others, which may be unsafe.  That is why NRDC and our coalition, the Safe Chemicals Healthy Families campaign, is working to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The chemical industry has given lip service to supporting TSCA reform and the need to protect children from unsafe chemicals (the trick being that, in the chemical industry’s view, there are no unsafe chemicals). The Feinstein amendment was an attempt to take a tentative baby step toward reform.  But the Chemical Industry snuffed it out.  So, big win for chemical industry lawyers on K Street.  For the children of America and their parents?  Not so much.