From Field to Fork

Consumers believe fruits and vegetables can help prevent cancer and heart disease – more than any other food or beverage items, according to a FDA consumer survey. FDA released the findings March 2 from a 2008 nationwide survey of more than 2,500 adults.

And yet, though fruits and vegetables were most frequently linked with reducing heart disease in consumers’ minds, fewer people made this link in 2008 than in 2002. These were the only food categories to drop (awareness of the impact of trans fats and omega 3 fatty acids rose, and the impact of saturated fats remained stable).

Specifically, when asked what foods could help prevent heart disease or heart attacks, 32% said fruits and 34% said vegetables. The next highest item was fiber at 24% (produce can fit here, too). When asked about foods that can help prevent cancer, the numbers were even better. Some 42% mentioned fruits and 49% listed vegetables. The next highest was the fish and omega 3 category at 19%.

Some other interesting tidbits from the survey: 64% percent of consumers saw nutrition labeling in restaurants. About half (52%) of these consumers use this information often or sometimes.

So, what does this mean? Consumers get it. Even though two-thirds of consumers are confused by the onslaught of information on health and foods, fruits and vegetables still wear the halo of health in consumers’ minds. Consumers are reading nutrition labels at the store and at restaurants, so it’s important that we make sure our strong nutrition story is out there, on the label. But awareness doesn’t translate into action, otherwise we’d see much greater consumption. Perhaps the new focus on healthy eating, including the First Lady’s efforts, will help spur that.

Consumers believe in our products and are aware of the benefits. If any food group is poised for quantum leaps in consumption, it’s fruits and vegetables. We have our work cut out for us to be sure consumers continue to see that health halo and take the next logical step – eat more.

In today’s Federal Register, a joint task force consisting of USDA, DHHS, and the Department of Education issued a request for comments to assist the task force in making recommendations on public and private sector actions that can be taken to solve the childhood obesity epidemic. This call for comments complements the efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama as she leads the Let’s Move national public awareness childhood obesity campaign.

President Obama’s memo on childhood obesity directs the joint task force to focus on four pillars: ensuring access to healthy, affordable food; increasing physical activity in schools and communities; providing healthier food in schools; and empowering parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families.

Written comments must be submitted or postmarked on or before March 26. PMA members planning to submit comments are encouraged to answer the questions posed in the Federal Register notice. Among the 16 questions posed are:

• Which federal government actions aimed at combating childhood obesity are especially in need of cross-agency coordination?
• What are the key unanswered research questions that need to be answered with regard to solving childhood obesity and how should the federal government, academia, and other research organizations target their scarce resources on these areas of research?
• What are the most promising steps that can be pursued by the Federal, State, and local governments, schools, communities, the private sector, and parents to ensure that children are eating healthy food in schools and child care settings?
• What are the biggest challenges to enhancing access to healthy and affordable food in communities across America, and what are the most promising strategies to overcome these challenges?

Data nerds (like me) rejoice. You may already be using this resource, but if you’re not, take a look at what USDA has done. Those of you who have used USDA availability data as a surrogate for consumption data (as we do here at PMA) may link your failing eyesight to the tiny print on the enormous tables you previously had to scour for fresh produce information, especially if you want info on specific commodities.

Take off your glasses and grab your mouse to visit USDA’s Economic Research Service’s Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System. You can explore to your heart’s content. Here’s one example. If you click on the Food Availability data series, you can then choose “custom reports,” then “individual fruit,” then uncheck all the boxes except fresh (or dried if you’re interested in that). Choose the button “graph selected columns” and watch the magic. You have fresh fruit consumption from 1970 (about 101 pounds per person) to 2008 (about 127 pounds per person).

You can refine your selection by commodity if you want. Take avocados from less than a half pound per person in 1970 to nearly 4 pounds in 2008. Then you can make graphs, charts, export the data however you want. It’s a beautiful thing – useful to companies, commodity boards, nutrition experts, consumer affairs folks, anyone who is interested in tracking consumption of our industry’s products. There’s far more information there; once you get into it you’ll find more wonderful data and tools.

Thanks, USDA.

Continuing our series on grassroots advocacy here on Field to Fork, today we’ll look at connecting with Congressional staff. Members of Congress have staff people that specialize in certain issue areas. Because PMA policy issues vary, you may need to speak with different people in the office based on the specific issue. Every office is different, so be prepared to dig a little in order to figure out exactly who best to talk with. Following are some of the potential issue assignments in legislative offices for PMA issues:

• Child nutrition reauthorization: Some offices may have a staff person who handles child nutrition issues. In other offices, this may be handled by the staff person who handles agriculture.
• AgJOBS: Usually either the labor, immigration or the agriculture staff person.
• Transportation / Border trucking: This issue might be handled by a staff person who handles either transportation or trade issues.
• Food safety: Again, most offices will have a staff person assigned to food safety. In some offices, this may be handled by the staff person who handles agriculture.

Be prepared for the possibility that some offices may not yet have assigned someone specifically to work on produce marketing issues. Part of your job is to bring these issues to their attention so that they know they need to start tracking these policy concerns. Once you’ve figured out who they are, put their name and contact information in your database – and be prepared to schedule a meeting or phone call with them to discuss produce marketing issues in the district.

Speaking of the district, there is a state work period coming up for both the Senate and the House beginning March 29 through April 9. To learn more about effective advocacy, click on the Advocacy category on Field to Fork for past posts on this topic.

PMA’s Advocacy Guru, Stephanie Vance, occasionally shares tips and techniques for getting heard on Capitol Hill. This tip is part of a series on “rules for effective advocacy.”

In today’s Federal Register, the USDA announced proposed fee increases associated with the administration of the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. Among them: branch location fees would increase from $200 for branch locations in excess of nine to $600 for each branch location. The maximum amount a licensee would pay per year would increase from $4,000 to $8,000. Additionally, the regulations would be amended to remove the provisions to phase out license fees by retailers and grocery wholesalers and the provisions to phase in triennial license renewal for retailers and grocery wholesalers as these processes have already occurred. USDA is proposing to eliminate the multi-year license renewal option for commission merchants, brokers, and dealers.

Comments on this proposal are due to USDA by May 10. It’s important to note that PACA fees have not increased in 15 years. However in the current economic climate, the increases may create a financial challenge for some businesses. Since its inception, PACA has been a highly valued and trusted regulatory mechanism for protecting buyer-seller transactions.

We will be commenting on the USDA proposal and we encourage all members of the supply chain to do so as well, lending your real-world produce experience to USDA as the agency considers the proposed fee increases.

Last week, PMA Chief Science and Technology Officer Dr. Bob Whitaker discussed on his blog insights from the Global Food Safety Conference he attended. The Consumer Goods Forum sponsors the Global Food Safety Initiative, which is a global benchmarking organization that benchmarks different food safety standards or schemes, against GFSI-defined set of standards. The goal is to try to bring some equivalency to all the different food safety schemes and audits out there, on a global basis. In effect, GFSI believes that by using a benchmarking approach, the various food safety standards can be equilibrated and brought to a common level.

Bob believes that the GFSI meeting is significant because, in North America, we are now broadening our view of standards and what’s going on elsewhere in the world in food safety. Also, the discussion at this meeting indicates GFSI is working to address some of the challenges which have been brought up in the past about their approach. He notes that the biggest issue revolves around whether they can really reduce the cost of food safety auditing and be relevant to small growers – for example, benchmarked audits so far have been more expensive than other audits. The GFSI is recognizing they need to have a system that is accessible to small suppliers as well as large ones. If the higher costs of benchmarked standards exclude smaller suppliers, it may prove to be a major stumbling block for retailers dealing with local growers and seasonal sources.

For more details on this topic and others, you can visit Dr. Whitaker’s blog directly and sign up to get new updates via e-mail.

As recently reported on Bloomberg.com, children snack almost three times a day in the U.S. – unfortunately, they are not snacking on fresh produce. A study has found that kids get about 27 percent of their daily calories from salty, fatty, and sugary treats. Researchers discovered that children of all ages increased their daily energy intake from snacks by 168 calories a day, with a gain of 182 calories in children aged two to six. The biggest gains occurred with candy along with crackers, pretzels, and similar salty products. Dessert foods and sweet drinks remain the most popular foods between meals.

Drivers behind increased snacking are foods available in vending machines and other outlets at schools; vending machines were available in 21 percent of U.S. public elementary schools, 62 percent of public middle schools and 86 percent of public high schools. Another factor is that children have replaced milk, which contains calcium and nutrients necessary for proper growth, with sugar-packed fruit juices and high-calorie sports drinks.

Turning the tide on this snacking trend and childhood obesity won’t be an easy task. However, the child nutrition reauthorization bill (which seeks more fruits and vegetables in school feeding programs, nutrition standards for foods sold outside of school meals, implementation of school wellness policies, etc.) is the primary piece of legislation of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, which seeks to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.

PMA recently called on its members to write Congress on child nutrition reauthorization, and we thank those of you who have taken action. For those who haven’t, it’s not too late to make your voice heard on this important issue.

According to a report from Pike Research, the sustainable packaging market is growing much faster than the overall packaging industry, and is expected to double in size from $88 million in 2009 to $170 million in 2014. The report finds that, along with the growth rate, is an increasing burden on the environment in terms of raw materials, energy, transportation, and disposal. Researchers recommend several key areas where changes by the packaging industry can reduce its environmental impact.

In the produce industry, packaging has become an integral part of many companies’ sustainability efforts. In fact, last year at Fresh Summit, Earthbound Farm received the PMA Impact Award: Excellence in Packaging for the environment/sustainability category. I spoke with Chad Smith of Earthbound about their award-winning packaging.

“Earthbound has switched to post-consumer recycled polyethylene teraphthalate (PCR PET) plastic for all our clamshell salad packages. Post-consumer recycled PET is made from plastic products, like soda and water bottles, which have been used and then recycled. As the price of virgin PCR PET increases, there’s more value on the recycled product,” Chad said. Specifically for Earthbound, the switch to PCR PET will:

• Save 424,224 million BTUs (MMBTUs) of energy
• Avoid 16,191 tons of carbon dioxide emissions
• Save 68,307 gallons of water
• Keep 1,308,623 pounds of solid waste out of the landfill

He added that while Earthbound hasn’t seen an ROI per se on the PCR PET switch, it’s not something that should scare other companies as it’s been relatively price neutral – and that he’s seen no major challenges so far in working with the recycled plastic. This is just one of many efforts Earthbound has undertaken to become more environmentally friendly.

As the produce industry looks to become more sustainable, it’s important that we share stories of our industry successes to help educate one another and show the positive steps we’re making to become more environmentally friendly, more energy efficient, better stewards of the land, and so forth. Many thanks to Chad and Earthbound for sharing their insights with us. If you have a sustainability story or video you’d like to tell us about, please let us know.

Hats off to Reps. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) and Rick Larsen (D-WA) for their efforts to solve the Mexican trucking stalemate. As you know, the U.S. Congress stopped a cross-border trucking safety pilot project run by the U.S. Department of Transportation by eliminating funding for the project. This prompted Mexico to announce retaliatory tariffs on about $2.4 billion of U.S. manufactured and agricultural exports to Mexico, including several produce crops.

Reps. Cardoza and Larsen sent a letter (endorsed by 54 co-signers in the U.S. House of Representatives – thanks, PMA GROW members for your help in this effort) to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, calling for information on the Obama administration’s efforts to resolve the issue.

In part, the letter said: “Over the past 11 months, Administration officials have repeatedly expressed confidence that a resolution to the current dispute could be found that would fulfill our obligations to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Obama expressed his commitment to resolving the issue to (Mexican) President Calderon during their meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico in August, 2009. However, to date, the Administration has not shared any of the principles or the parameters of a proposed plan. Finally, in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Bill, Congress chose not to continue the funding limitation for the pilot program.

“The current situation is unsustainable and untenable. Our constituents need help immediately and we implore you to work quickly to implement a solution that ensures safety and normalizes trade between the U.S. and Mexico. Please communicate your plans for a solution so that we are better able to understand the Administration’s strategy to address this matter and resolve this situation permanently. Our constituents need to move forward.”

For more information on the issue, visit the Alliance to Keep U.S. Jobs (of which PMA is a member). We continue to work to resolve this issue.

Like many others interested in food safety, PMA offered traceability comments to FDA on March 3 – in particular produce traceability. FDA had asked specific questions about food traceability, and we answered those questions. You can find the details in our comments. We supported the Produce Traceability Initiative and provided information on how the protocols for that initiative could meet FDA’s needs.

We urged that FDA consider that case-level, rather than item-level, traceability is appropriate because the case is the unit of commerce that is recognized and “touched” at each link in the chain. We called for the agency to use existing standards and systems as they provide practical, real-world solutions.

We stressed that solutions must be globally applicable. The fresh produce industry is a global industry that relies on product movement around the world. Systems must work for product entering the United States from other countries and must work for U.S. producers who export their products. It is highly inefficient for companies to maintain multiple traceability systems. Globally recognized, market-proven product identification standards are essential to the success of global traceability.

We also noted that traceability should apply to all companies, regardless of size, method of production, location, or commodity type. PMA has long said that there cannot be any holes in the safety net. That said, solutions must be scalable and workable for companies of all sizes and the industry’s varied production methods, locations and commodity types.

FDA is working toward regulatory solutions for traceability even as Congress considers traceability as part of its overall food safety bills. Stay tuned.