Meatonomics
Page 28
40. Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton, “Purity of Federal ‘Organic’ Label Is Questioned,” The Washington Post (July 3, 2009).
41. Ibid.
42. US Department of Agriculture, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” accessed May 5, 2011, http://www.usda.gov.
43. Robert Kenner, director, Food, Inc. (Participant Media, 2008).
44. Clarence Thomas (US Supreme Court justice since 1991) was an attorney for Monsanto from 1976 to 1979; Donald Rumsfeld (US secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and 2001 to 2006) was CEO from 1977 to 1985 of G. D. Searle & Co., later acquired by Monsanto; Mickey Kantor (US trade representative from 1993 to 1997 and US secretary of commerce from 1996 to 1997) was formerly on the Monsanto board of directors; Margaret Miller (FDA branch chief during the 1990s) was a Monsanto chemical lab supervisor from 1985 to 1989; Michael Taylor (FDA deputy commissioner for policy from 1991 to 1994 and deputy commissioner for foods since 2010) was a lawyer for Monsanto from 1989 to 1991 and Monsanto's vice president for public policy from 1998 to 2000; Linda Fisher (EPA deputy administrator from 2001 to 2003) was Monsanto's vice president for public affairs from 1995 to 2000.
45. Philip Mattera, “USDA Inc.: How Agribusiness Has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” Food and Agriculture Conference of the Organization for Competitive Markets (2004), accessed October 25, 2011, http://www.nffc.net.
46. Ibid., 10–11. Specifically, the report found that:
USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman served on the board of biotech company Calgene (later acquired by Monsanto).
Veneman's Chief of Staff Dale Moore was executive director for legislative affairs of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA).
Veneman's Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Torrery was a vice president at the International Dairy Foods Association.
Director of Communications Alisa Harrison was executive director of public relations at NCBA.
Deputy Secretary James Moseley was a partner in Infinity Pork LLC, a factory farm operator in Indiana.
Undersecretary J. B. Penn was an executive of Sparks Companies, an agribusiness consulting firm.
Undersecretary Elsa Murano conducted industry-sponsored research while a university professor.
Undersecretary Joseph Jen was director of research at Campbell Soup Company's Campbell Institute of Research and Technology.
Deputy Undersecretary Floyd D. Gaibler was executive director of the National Cheese Institute and the American Butter Institute, which are funded by the dairy industry.
Deputy Undersecretary Kate Coler was director of government relations for the Food Marketing Institute.
Deputy Undersecretary Charles Lambert spent fifteen years working for NCBA.
Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations Mary Waters was a senior director and legislative counsel for ConAgra Foods.
47. Eric Schlosser, “The Cow Jumped Over the U.S.D.A.,” New York Times (January 2, 2004).
48. Organic Consumers Association, “Six Reasons Why Obama Appointing Monsanto's Buddy, Former Iowa Governor Vilsack, for USDA Head Would Be a Terrible Idea” (2008), accessed September 6, 2012, http://www.organicconsumers.org.
49. Organic Consumers Association, “Six Reasons”; John Robbins, No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution (San Francisco: Conari Press, 2012), xi.
50. Tom Philpott, “In a Stunning Reversal, USDA Chief Vilsack Greenlights Monsanto's Alfalfa,” Grist (2011), accessed September 6, 2012, http://grist.org.
51. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, Skinny Bitch (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2005), 92.
Chapter 5
1. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Price Index Average Price Data,” accessed September 1, 2011, http://www.bls.gov; Brian W. Gould, “Understanding Dairy Markets,” online database, accessed September 2, 2011, http://future.aae.wisc.edu.
2. David Leonhardt, “What's Wrong with This Chart?” New York Times (May 20, 2009).
3. Erik Marcus, Meat Market: Animals, Ethics & Money (Boston: Brio Press, 2005).
4. Michael Roberts, “U.S. Animal Agriculture: Making the Case for Productivity,” AgBioForum 3 (2000).
5. Ibid.
6. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sustaining State Programs for Tobacco Control: Data Highlights 2006 (Atlanta: US Department of Health and Human Services, 2006), accessed October 26, 2011, http://www.cdc.gov.
7. National Research Council of the National Academies, The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2010), accessed May 19, 2012, http://www.nap.edu.
8. This method isn't completely precise because not all consumers incur all costs. However, most consumers do incur most costs, so it provides a reasonable high-level picture, and the alternative methods of calculation are unnecessarily complex.
9. The annual retail sales figure of $238 billion in 2010 dollars, $251 billion today, is the sum of (a) for food consumed at home, total consumer unit expenditures on animal foods and (b) for food consumed away from home, the ratio of (i) spending (by unit type) on animal foods to (ii) total spending on food consumed at home, multiplied by (iii) total spending on food consumed away from home. This calculation shows that the portion of retail food dollars spent on animal foods is about 32 percent. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Composition of Consumer Unit,” Consumer Expenditure Survey (2011), accessed December 3, 2011, http://www.bls.gov.
10. For details, see Appendix B.
11. The exact figure might be slightly more or less than $665 billion, since producers might absorb some of the cost increase themselves, or they might pass along a greater increase to consumers.
12. Fruits and vegetables, for example, generate few costs associated with antibiotics, hazardous wastes, global warming, or real estate devaluation.
13. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict” (2011), accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.pcrm.org.
14. Bruce Sundquist, “Economics, Politics and History of Irrigation” (2010), accessed October 22, 2011, http://home.windstream.net.
15. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict.”
16. $28.9 billion of this total is from the USDA's 2013 budget: Farm Service Agency ($12.1 billion); Risk Management Agency ($9.6 billion); Research, Education, and Economics ($2.7 billion); Marketing and Regulatory Programs ($2.4 billion); and Foreign Agricultural Service ($2.1 billion). US Department of Agriculture, “Budget for 2013,” accessed September 28, 2012, http://www.usda.gov. The remaining $1.9 billion—adjusted from $1.8 billion in 2009 dollars—of the total is federal irrigation subsidies reported in Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates Limited, “Farming the Mailbox: U.S. Federal and State Subsidies to Agriculture—Study Prepared for Dairy Farmers of Canada” (2010), accessed August 8, 2012, http://www.greyclark.com.
17. Grey et al. report $21.5 billion in state irrigation spending and another $3.2 billion in general state and local subsidies (both in 2009 dollars), for an inflation-adjusted total of $26.5 billion. Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates Limited, “Farming the Mailbox.”
18. Unfortunately, this report does not show its math. (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict.”) However, PCRM's figure is consistent, in a general way, with agricultural land-use statistics (assuming such statistics represent a reasonable gauge for how subsidy dollars are spent). Thus, according to the USDA, 1,247 million acres of US land are used for all agricultural purposes, and 82 percent of this total, or 1,028 million acres, is dedicated to raising livestock (i.e., to graze animals or grow feed crops). (Ruben N. Lubowski et al., “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2002,” USDA Economic Research Service (2006), accessed August 19, 2012, http://www.ers.usda.gov.)
19. Annual US fishing subsidies total $1.8 billion in 2003 dollars, or $2.3 billion today. U. Rashid Sumaila et al., “A Bottom-Up Re-
Estimation of Global Fisheries Subsidies,” Journal of Bioeconomics 12 (2010): 201–25.
20. Environmental Working Group, “Farm Subsidy Database,” accessed October 22, 2011, http://farm.ewg.org.
21. US Department of Agriculture, “Feed Grains Data Delivery System,” accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.ers.usda.gov.
22. Ibid.
23. Timothy Wise, “Identifying the Real Winners from U.S. Agricultural Policies” (working paper, 05-07, Global Development and Environment Institute 2005), accessed October 23, 2011, http://ase.tufts.edu.
24. Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, “Feeding at the Trough: Industrial Livestock Firms Saved $35 Billion from Low Feed Prices” (policy brief, 07-03, Global Development and Environment Institute Tufts University 2007), accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.ase.tufts.edu.
25. Timothy Egan, “Failing Farmers Learn to Profit from Federal Aid,” New York Times (December 24, 2000).
26. Wise, “Identifying the Real Winners.”
27. Carol A. Jones, Hisham El-Osta, and Robert Green, “Economic Well-Being of Farm Households,” USDA Economic Research Service (2006), accessed October 22, 2011, http://www.ers.usda.gov.
28. Ibid.
29. Thomas A. Fogarty, “Freedom to Farm? Not Likely?” USA Today (January 2, 2002).
30. Grunwald, “Why Our Farm Policy Is Failing.”
31. Jan L. Flora et al., “Social and Community Impacts,” in Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Air Quality Study, ed. Iowa State University et al. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Printing Service, 2002), 147.
32. Grunwald, “Why Our Farm Policy Is Failing.”
33. Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, “Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production” (working paper, 07-04, Global Development and Environment Institute 2007), accessed October 23, 2011, http://ase.tufts.edu.
34. Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan, “Concentration of Agricultural Markets,” Food Circles Networking Project (2005), accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu.
35. James Kliebenstein, “Economic and Associated Social and Environmental Issues with Large Scale Livestock Production Systems” (concept paper for World Bank Workshop on Sustainable Intensification of Agricultural Systems: Linking Policy, Institutions and Technology, Ames, Iowa: 1998).
36. Jim Jacobson and Chris Bedford, The Manure Money Pit: How Environmental Tax Subsidies to Hog Confinements Impact Iowa's Counties (Des Moines: Human Society of the United States, 2003).
37. International Labor Rights Forum, “NAFTA, Creating a Sweatfree World: Changing Global Trading Rules,” accessed October 22, 2011, http://www.laborrights.org.
38. Max Borders and H. Sterling Burnett, “Farm Subsidies: Devastating the World's Poor and the Environment,” National Center for Policy Analysis (2006), accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.ncpa.org.
39. Ibid., 1.
40. Charles F. Conner, “Conference Call with Reporters: Announcement of a New Farm Bill from Congress,” USDA Transcript (May 9, 2008).
41. Rigoberto A. Lopez, “Campaign Contributions and Agricultural Subsidies,” Economics and Politics 13, no. 3 (2001): 257–78.
42. Elanor Starmer, Aimee Witteman, and Timothy A. Wise, “Feeding the Factory Farm: Implicit Subsidies in the Broiler Chicken Industry” (working paper, 06-03, Global Development and Environment Institute 2006), 5, accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.ase.tufts.edu.
43. Incidentally, there is some disagreement among commentators over whether certain subsidies, known as decoupled payments because they are made regardless of production levels or commodity prices, influence farmers. If these subsidies don't actually influence farmers' decisions to grow feed crops, then they wouldn't keep feed crop prices low, which means they wouldn't help livestock producers in the ways described. For example, some research suggests that subsidy payments that are fully or partially decoupled from production, such as those paid solely based on land's historic use, have only a modest effect on crop production. (William Lin and Robert Dismukes, “Supply Response under Risk: Implications for Counter-Cyclical Payments' Production Impact,” Review of Agricultural Economics 29, no. 1 [2006]: 64–86; Barry K. Goodwin and Ashok K. Mishra, “Are ‘Decoupled’ Farm Program Payments Really Decoupled? An Empirical Evaluation,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 88, no. 1 [2006]: 73–89.) As decoupled payments are thought to have little impact on global trade and are thus favored by the World Trade Organization, the United States has increasingly sought to provide its farmers with decoupled payments in the past couple of decades.
This line of logic might suggest that the subsidy tail isn't actually wagging the feed-producing dog. Nonetheless, there is evidence that a significant portion of farm subsidies does influence farmers who grow feed crops, which means these subsidies do benefit livestock producers. For example, one study found that more than two-thirds of farmers spend decoupled payments on farm purposes like operating costs, capital expenditures, and farm debt, and larger operators are particularly likely to spend payments on the farm. (Barry K. Goodwin and Ashok K. Mishra, “Another Look at Decoupling: Additional Evidence of the Production Effects of Direct Payments,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, no. 5 [2005]: 1200–10.) As a result, the study's authors found that decoupled subsidy payments “have important effects on production” (Ibid., 1206). Moreover, the latest farm bill seeks to continue both coupled and decoupled subsidies, and there's no doubt that coupled measures like price supports have a direct effect on production. Some critics even argue that the more than $80 billion spent yearly on food stamps is little more than an enormous price support program, which made the decision to omit that program from the subsidy calculation, as too attenuated, a difficult one. (Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates Limited, “Farming the Mailbox,” 256.) Thus, not only does it seem that decoupled payments do in fact influence production decisions, but larger operators, who get most of the subsidy funds, are the most likely to be so influenced.
44. Extra equity value is estimated as follows: the US meat industry's market capitalization is $38 billion or 17.2 times earnings; subsidies to the industry reduce operating costs by roughly 10 percent (the midpoint of the range of 5 to 15 percent found by Starmer and Wise); the effect of reducing operating costs by 10 percent is to increase earnings by 10 percent and hence (because market capitalization is based on earnings) to increase market capitalization by 10 percent (thus, without subsidies, market capitalization would be $38 billion – ($38 billion x 0.10) or about $34.2 billion). Annual dividend payments are calculated by multiplying total industry market capitalization of $38 billion by average industry dividend yield rate of 0.6 percent. Because net profit margin is only 2.9 percent but subsidies reduce operating expenses by roughly 10 percent, without subsidies these companies would arguably have no cash with which to pay dividends. Yahoo! Finance, “Meat Products: Industry Statistics,” accessed October 27, 2012, http://biz.yahoo.com; Starmer and Wise, “Feeding at the Trough.”
45. The subsidy figure is 13 percent of Tyson's FY 2010 operating expenses, the amount by which researchers estimate federal crop subsidies help lower Tyson's costs. Starmer and Wise, “Feeding at the Trough”; salary and expense data from US Securities and Exchange Commission, “Filings and Forms,” accessed October 23, 2011, http://www.sec.gov.
46. David Herszenhorn, “Reaching Well Beyond the Farm,” New York Times (May 20, 2008).
47. David Brooks, “Talking Versus Doing,” New York Times (May 20, 2008).
48. Quoted in “A Mediocre Farm Bill,” New York Times (June 24, 2012).
49. Steve Forbes, “Railroading the Taxpayer,” Fact and Comment, Forbes.com (August 11, 2010).
50. Starmer, Witteman, and Wise, “Feeding the Factory Farm,” 32.
51. See Appendix C, table C2.
Chapter 6
1. Véronique L. Roger et al., “Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2011 Update,” Circulation 123 (2011)
: e18–e209.
2. One in twenty-five estimate based on 2008 US population of 305 million. Department of Health and Human Services, “National Diabetes Statistics,” National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (2011), accessed January 14, 2012, http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov; American Cancer Society, “Cancer Prevalence: How Many People Have Cancer?” (2008), accessed January 14, 2012, http://www.cancer.org.
3. World Health Organization, “Obesity and Overweight,” accessed December 25, 2011, http://www.who.int.
4. Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America” (2008), accessed October 25, 2012, http://www.ncifap.org.
5. US Department of Agriculture, “Nutrient Intakes from Food: Mean Amounts Consumed per Individual, One Day 2005–2006,” accessed November 15, 2011, http://www.ars.usda.gov; Department of Health and Human Services, “Know Your Fats,” accessed January 1, 2012, http://www.csrees.usda.gov.
6. The Office of Chief Medical Examiner, “Report of External Examination: Robert Atkins,” The City of New York (2003), accessed November 15, 2011, http://www.thesmokinggun.com.
7. See, for example, Rashmi Sinha et al., “Meat Intake and Mortality: A Prospective Study of Over Half a Million People,” Archives of Internal Medicine 169, no. 6 (2009): 562–71; Teresa T. Fung et al., “Prospective Study of Major Dietary Patterns and Stroke Risk in Women,” Stroke 35 (2004): 2014–19; Walker, “Diet in the Prevention of Cancer”; Iqbal et al., “Dietary Patterns and Acute Myocardial Infarction.”
8. M. D. Kontogianni et al., “Relationship between Meat Intake and the Development of Acute Coronary Syndromes: The CARDIO2000 Case–Control Study,” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62 (2008): 171–77.
9. US Department of Agriculture, “Poultry Supply and Disappearance” (2011), accessed May 23, 2012, http://www.ers.usda.gov.
10. Campbell and Campbell, China Study.
11. National Academy of Sciences, Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005), 103.