The National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year, $2.7 million grant to Northeastern University Law School to research how the tobacco, fast food and sweetened beverage industries use and exploit the concepts of "personal responsibility" and "choice" to avoid liability and litigation for diseases that result from use of their products. Law professor and public health advocate Richard A. Daynard will lead the project to analyze legal and regulatory forums, advertising, public relations campaigns and news coverage to examine how the tobacco industry utilizes personal responsibility rhetoric to influence courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies and public opinion. The project will then examine the extent to which the food and beverage industries have applied the same, or similar strategies to shift blame from source to consumer to avoid legal responsibility for widespread health problems. "If the burden for addressing the harm is left with the consumer rather than the manufacturer," Daynard said, "the manufacturer benefits -- often at the expense of public health."

"The ingenuity of the food manufacturers and marketers never ceases to amaze me," remarked author Michael Pollan. "They can turn any critique into a new way to sell food." Marketers are appropriating language from the "eat local" or "locavore" movement, which encourages support for small farms, sustainable practices and better treatment of animals. Now, "several big companies" and "large-scale farming concerns are embracing a broad," or nearly meaningless, "interpretation of what eating locally means." Frito-Lay, a junk food company owned by PepsiCo, is running ads that "highlight farmers who grow some of the two billion pounds of starchy chipping potatoes the Frito-Lay company uses each year." Frito-Lay "vice president for potato chip marketing" Dave Skena said the company is "celebrating the notion of community." ConAgra "recently began a marketing campaign to highlight its Hunt's canned tomatoes, most of which are grown within 120 miles of its Oakdale, Calif., processing plant. Of course, the tomatoes would be local only to people in the area." Foster Farms, "a $1 billion company that is the largest producer of poultry products on the West Coast, markets its fresh chicken and turkey as 'locally grown' because it contracts with hundreds of local growers in the states where it operates."

The number of warning letters sent by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to corporations has dropped by 50% in the last decade. In 2002, the regulatory agency decided that all warning letters should go through the office of its chief counsel, a move "designed to strengthen the letters and make them legally consistent and credible." But the change may have just succeeded in slowing the process to a crawl. While in 2001 the agency sent out over 1,000 warning letters, in 2007 only 471 made it out the door. Members of Congress and current and former officials with the agency "criticized the change, suggesting it favored industry." Dr. David Kessler, FDA commissioner from 1990 to 1997, said "The number of warning letters has always been one of the surrogate measures of FDA's enforcement performance. It's not the only measure, but any significant drop raises significant questions of what's going on." Other measures of FDA performance are mixed. While plant inspections are down from 22,543 in 2003 to 17,641 in 2006, product recalls are up almost 50%.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that Tyson Foods routinely gave antibiotics to chicken it raised to sell as meat, and labeled it as antibiotic free. Tyson said that the antibiotics were not a type used in humans, and so were not likely to lead to "superbugs" immune to medical treatments. But the USDA found that in addition to the non-human antibiotic, Tyson was also using a drug commonly given to people. The USDA told Tyson that it can no longer consider the company's no-antibiotics label "truthful and accurate." Tyson disagreed but said it would end its misleading labeling ... after a federal court issued an injunction stopping them from making the claim.

The global increase in grain prices may make the meat supply less safe. The European Union is considering a relaxation of feed bans that prohibit animal by-products being used as feed for other animals in the human food chain. The proposal would "allow pig remains to be used to feed poultry" and would be the EU's first exception made to strict regulations enacted to respond to the BSE, or mad cow disease, crisis of a decade ago. Feeding pigs to pigs, cows and chickens is widespread and legal in the United States, which has had mad cow disease since the 1990s and is covering up its extent. But the European plan is facing opposition from a wide range of parties, including consumer groups, animal rights activists, and Muslim organizations. With nutritionists predicting that "there will be such a backlash from consumers that the idea would have to be dropped," some grocery outlets are already going on record as not being willing to carry the pork-fed poultry. The EU's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that it could "only support it if we were fully satisfied that appropriate and effective testing had taken place to control the use of such proteins in poultry feed." Meanwhile, the Korean government's decision to sell US beef in that country has led to massive street protests in the capital. CMD staffers John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote about the issue of feeding animals to other animals in their 1997 book "Mad Cow USA."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been criticized for not totally banning "downer" cows -- animals "too sick or hurt to stand for slaughter" -- from the food supply. So "when a coalition of major industry groups reversed their position and joined animal advocates and several lawmakers in calling for an absolute ban," why wouldn't the USDA agree? Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer hasn't responded to the new stance of the American Meat Institute and other industry groups. So, industry leaders are encouraging meat producers to institute their own voluntary ban. But the Humane Society of the United States says a total ban is needed and "the USDA should take immediate action." The limited regulation of downer cows was instituted after mad cow disease was found in the U.S. and Canada. CMD staffers John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote about the issue in their 1997 book "Mad Cow USA."

Soybean plantThe biotechnology industry has invoked the need for genetically modified (GM) crops to meet the growing global food crisis. For example, Archer Daniels Midland called itself the "supermarket to the world" in its ads. But a recent study carried out on soybeans in Kansas found that GM crops produced significantly less food than their conventional counterparts. A GM soybean from Monsanto produced 70 bushels per acre, compared to 77 per acre for a virtually identical unaltered soybeans. Even after adding extra nutrients that Monsanto's weedkiller, Roundup, seems to block, production was only brought up to the same level as the non-engineered plants. An earlier study in Nebraska found similar results. Monsanto said "it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would." Others are skeptical. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, said that "the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved." The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has also "concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger." And, "when asked if GM could solve world hunger," the chief scientist at the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Professor Bob Watson, said, "The simple answer is no."

A new "grassroots" farmers' group with close ties to Monsanto has been formed to outlaw labels that would notify consumers they are buying milk from cows not treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Monsanto genetically engineers rBGH, called Posilac, which is injected into cows, forcing them to produce more milk. The front group American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT), which receives funding from Monsanto, was organized by Osborne & Barr, an agri-marketing firm started by two former Monsanto employees in 1988. The founding client of Osborne & Barr was Monsanto. Consultant Monty G. Miller of Estes Park, Colorado, also helped organize AFACT, which was formally launched in California in February 2008. The only contact information AFACT lists on its website is a fax number listed as belonging to "Outer Office." Outer Office provides secretarial and operational support (such as scheduling, newsletters and message-taking) to small consulting businesses. A call to Outer Office seeking the address and telephone contact information for AFACT was not returned.

Probably not where your bottled water comes fromRep. Al Wynn of Maryland and Rep. Hilda Solis of California have asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the bottled water industry. One concern is that the packaging of bottled water often uses images of mountain stream and other pristine natural settings, but as much as a third of bottled water comes from municipal water sources. While there are some added filtration steps in the processing, the product is much closer to tap water than consumers are led to believe. Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council said "I think that consumers are under the misguided impression that bottled water is being carefully regulated and fully tested, and that it comes from whatever place is on the picture on the label. That's not the case." While the Environmental Protection Agency monitors tap water, it is the Food and Drug Administration that is in charge of bottled water. Unfortunately, the "FDA's standard of quality regulations for bottled water set allowable levels for more than 70 different chemical contaminants."

José Bové is a leading French activist against biotechnologyThe government of President Nicolas Sarkozy wants the French people to be able to opt for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), not just to opt against them. A proposed law governing GMOs and defining several broad principles has been forwarded to the Conseil d'Etat (the French equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court) and the executive branch hopes that it will be passed by Parliament by February 2008. Some passages appear positive, like "GMOs cannot be commercialized, cultivated or used except in a manner that is respectful to the environment and public health, and with complete transparency." But these are followed by obvious nods to GMO producers, such as a revision from the right to choose freely to produce and consume "without GMOs" to "the liberty to consume and produce with or without" GMOs. Arnaud Apoteker of Greenpeace said that he is disappointed. "The project doesn't give priority to non-GMO cultivation. It gives the impression that coexistence is possible, whereas the dissemination of GMOs is inevitable." GMO proponents don't see the proposed legislation as completely positive either. A spokesman for seed producers said that the articles that assign responsibility to the GMO users and the seed distributor for any damages caused to neighboring fields due to seed drift, and the need to register usage of GMO seed stock at a more local level than expected "are problematic."