Who Spoke: Civil Eats’ Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held moderated our conversation with expert panelists David Ortega, a professor and the Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics and Policy at Michigan State University; and Lindsay Owens, an economic sociologist and the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative.

What’s at Stake

• Food prices are up about 25 percent since 2020.
• There’s been a sharp rise in food insecurity. The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows:
  • 13.5 percent (18 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2023.
  • That’s up from 12.8 percent (17 million) just the year before.

The full talk: Become a member today to access the full recording and invitations to future salons—along with other benefits that come with being a Civil Eats member.

What’s Driving High Food Prices?

• Dwindling supply plus rising demand, said Ortega.
• Several factors caused supplies to sink.
  • During the pandemic, people rushed into stores and cleaned out the shelves, throwing suppliers into a tailspin. Then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to a global shortage of wheat, vegetable oils, and other grains. There were also export restrictions on staples such as palm oil, leading to price increases.
  • On top of this, significant drought in the U.S. affected beef prices, and a multiyear avian flu impacted commercial poultry and eggs.
• All of these shortages caused prices to spike.

Meanwhile, What Caused Demand to Rise?

• Fiscal stimulus payments made during the pandemic added more money to the economy. And, at the same time, households accumulated more savings because they weren’t traveling or going on vacations.
  • Now people are spending, but there’s not as much to buy—so the demand drives up prices.

Price Gouging Also Factors Into High Prices

• Price gouging is when suppliers raise prices by 10 percent to 25 percent or more during periods of crises such as a hurricane, power outage, and other triggers in the market.
  • Nearly 40 states have laws banning price gouging, but there’s no law at the federal level.
  • Owens supports a federal ban on price gouging. “I think it’s one more tool that the federal government would have to prevent against this kind of extractive disaster capitalism,” she said. Ortega worried the law could have unintended consequences.
• Price fixing through corporate consolidation is also an issue, with companies joining up with other companies to set a price.
  • Owens said, “I like to use a true crime metaphor: It requires means, motive, and opportunity to commit the perfect crime. The motive is pretty clear . . . companies are out to make a buck. The means is the power and size that these companies have been amassing for decades. But what changes is you finally have that opportunity, under the cover of inflation, to push harder, faster, higher, and longer for pricing. And that’s what we’ve been seeing in the grocery sector.”

The Overall Takeaway

Presidents actually have little power to affect food prices in the short run. There’s a need to address the root causes of high prices, and there are ways our country can do this:

• Take action to make sure our food system is more resilient to future shocks, including those caused by climate, by taking steps like planting drought-resistant crop varieties.
• Strengthen the social safety net to make sure food is more affordable for everyone; support the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
• Build resilience in the supply chain–such as buffer stocks for grain—that would help prepare for the next disruption or emergency.
• Antitrust policy is a critical tool to tackle consolidation over the long term. “In a world in which we have increased competition, we have more players in the space, and that will have good impacts on pricing,” Owens said.

Reading and More

• “Under Trump, consolidated corporations generally benefited. The Trump administration dissolved the USDA agency tasked with regulating anti-competitive practices in the livestock, poultry, meat, grain, and oilseed industries. . . . The Biden administration made some attempts to rein in consolidation. In 2022, for example, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at creating more competitive practices, especially in meat and poultry supply chains. Harris’s plans to go after “price gouging” fall in line with these initiatives.” — from Can Lawmakers Really Tackle High Food Prices? by Nick Bowlin
• Sign up here for Civil Eats’ weekly newsletter–and join thousands of others who want to keep the pulse on food systems reporting and analysis.
• Civil Eats recently removed our paywall—which means our reporting is free now to everyone, everywhere, for at least the next year. To keep the stories free, we need your support. Become a Civil Eats member to support our work, and to stay in the loop about future virtual salons.

The post The High Cost of Groceries: Experts Weigh In appeared first on Civil Eats.

In a subsequent speech, Harris blamed high grocery prices on large, consolidated food companies, which have raked in record profits, but offered few further details about what a price-gouging ban might entail. The campaign then added a policy platform to its website, repeating the pledge to install a national price gouging ban.

“As president, she will direct her administration to crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition,” the website states.

Republicans and pro-business groups pushed back immediately after the announcement. The National Grocers Association called the proposal a “solution in search of a problem,” while former President Donald Trump posted on social media about “Soviet style” price caps.

“If you think things are expensive now, they will get 100 times WORSE if Kamala gets four years as President,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The former president has also mentioned high food prices repeatedly in recent weeks; he informed Elon Musk, in an interview on X, that bacon prices are “four to five times” more expensive than they were a few years ago.

While Trump’s statement about bacon is false, there’s no question that groceries have become increasingly expensive. Food prices ballooned by 25 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), outstripping increases in other important spending categories like housing and medical costs.

And it’s clear that voters are not only taking notice of the high prices, but also increasingly see corporate profits and consolidation as part of the cause. In recent polling focused on voters in seven swing states, 56 percent said food was the hardest essential good to pay for. And 61 percent of respondents, including 63 percent of independents, blamed across-the-board high prices on corporate greed.

Few other goods and services are as omnipresent as food purchases, and food prices are often where everyday Americans feel economic shifts most immediately.

“It’s the most frequent purchase most households make,” said Dawn Thilmany, an agriculture and resource economics professor at Colorado State University. “You eat three times a day. You probably shop at least a couple times a week. There’s almost nothing else like it in our economy.”

In a tight presidential election, where nearly one in five voters is still undecided, food prices could be a key issue, but what can elected officials actually do to bring them down?

Consolidation and ‘Greedflation’

Supply chain disruptions, resulting shortages, and inflation have contributed to high food prices in recent years. Economists note that other factors, like increases in the minimum wage across the country, ballooning energy costs—inflated by the war in Ukraine—and changing consumer behavior have likely played a role. Some pandemic-era habits, like the newfound love for baking bread, and cooking at home in general, seem to have stuck, according to Thilmany. “Even controlling for inflation, we found that people are seemingly allocating a higher share of their budget to food spending,” she said.

But even as inflation has slackened in the past year, prices remain high, and some economists and progressive Democrats argue that large corporations have taken advantage of the recent economic disruptions to keep prices artificially high—a tactic known as “greedflation.”

A recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative found that “corporate profits drove 53 percent of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023,” and more than a third of the inflation since the start of pandemic—vastly outstripping the price growth attributable to corporate profits in recent decades. Corporations can do this, according to the report, thanks to decades of corporate consolidation, resulting in a lack of competition.

“From the fertilizer industry to the feed production industry to the grocery retail industry, all along this food chain, you have deeply concentrated markets with only a few major players,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative, “and that lack of competition means that at every point in the system, these companies don’t have to lower their prices.”

Policymakers can curb this by discouraging consolidation and encouraging competition. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), for example, is attempting to block a $25 billion merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. A merger would allow Kroger to acquire its main rival, and the FTC argued in a hearing in Oregon earlier this year that the consolidation would be anti-competitive and push costs onto consumers.

Details from the hearing, meanwhile, show that food pricing isn’t all driven by inflation. In a March email to other company executives, Andy Groff, Kroger’s senior director for pricing, seemed to confirm that the grocery chain had raised its prices to higher levels than required by inflationary conditions. “On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation,” Groff wrote. In response to questions from FTC lawyers about the email, Groff said that Kroger attempts to “pass through our inflation to consumers.” He also acknowledged that Kroger was able to raise prices in areas where it faced little competition without seeing a drop in sales.

Under Trump, consolidated corporations generally benefited. The Trump administration dissolved the USDA agency tasked with regulating anti-competitive practices in the livestock, poultry, meat, grain, and oilseed industries.

The Biden administration made some attempts to rein in consolidation. In 2022, for example, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at creating more competitive practices, especially in meat and poultry supply chains. Harris’s plans to go after “price gouging” fall in line with these initiatives.

The problem is deeply embedded in the U.S. food system, and it continues to have real impacts. In cities or regions with just a few large food distributors, the consumer costs of consolidation can be stark: USDA data from June shows that, in a few major Midwestern cities with notably scant competition in the dairy distribution supply chain, consumers were paying almost $1 more per gallon of milk, according to The Milkweed, a dairy industry newsletter.

Kansas City, for example, has virtually no competition among its milk producers. One distributor, Hiland Dairy, a joint venture between two large-scale dairy cooperatives, dominates the area Over the past two years, Kansas City has experienced the highest milk prices among 30 major cities, according to The Milkweed. In Chicago, milk prices increased in 2023, even as raw milk costs declined for the two major milk distributors that dominate the local market.

“The food industry is just full of cartels,” said Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. “And that’s what cartels do. They gouge.”

Extreme concentration can be seen everywhere in the food industry. Walmart sells approximately one in three grocery items nationwide—and more than half the groceries in dozens of regional markets. Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef buy and process 85 percent of beef in the U.S. JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world, has agreed to multiple settlements in recent years related to bribery and price-fixing.

Similarly, in the egg industry, a few large corporate entities hoard the market; Cal-Maine alone controls about 20 percent of egg production in the U.S. This concentration allowed companies to keep egg prices high in 2022 and 2023, after supply chain issues and an avian flu outbreak cut into supply, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Massachusetts) office. Cal-Maine, with no reported avian flu cases in its operations, saw profits increase by 65 percent in late 2022.

“In times of crisis like we saw over the course of the pandemic and over this inflationary period, these companies, in many cases, have added to the prices that consumers or downstream purchasers are paying, because they can, because there’s no competition to put them down,” Mabud of Groundwork Collaborative said.

Other Legal Tools to Address Excess Prices

It is one of 38 states with similar laws on the books, including red states like Texas and Tennessee. In Tennessee, two Nashville-based state lawmakers—Sen. Charlane Oliver and Rep. Aftyn Behn—recently urged the state attorney general to join a multi-state collaboration task force with the USDA to address anti-competitive actions in the food industry.

“High prices at the grocery store have weighed heavily on Tennessee families, and they deserve to know that their state government is taking every possible step to ensure fairness in the marketplace,” Oliver said in a statement.

In some states, price hikes are illegal beyond a certain percentage increase. Others use standards like “grossly excessive” to evaluate the legality of sudden cost raises. In her recently released platform, Harris said that national price gouging legislation would build on the existing state laws. However, the patchwork nature of state price-gouging laws currently makes this challenging, given the diffuse nature of supply chains and distribution networks.

A bill introduced earlier this year by Senator Warren offers a glimpse of what legislative action might look like at the federal level. Warren’s bill would codify price gouging as an “unfair and deceptive” practice under federal law, allowing both the federal government and state attorney generals to tackle exploitative pricing nationwide.

The law would also target large corporations, those with at least $100 million in revenue. And during periods of severe stock-market shock, as during COVID or, say, during extreme natural disasters, the bill would require large, publicly traded companies to disclose extra information to the SEC, especially the cost of goods sold, gross margins, and pricing strategies.

This proposal and others would require an empowered FTC, one willing to use existing antitrust law and any new legislation to target large corporate entities. During the Biden administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan has aggressively used antitrust law to target monopolies and consolidation, including the Albertsons–Kroger merger. Since announcing her candidacy, Harris has been pressured by populist economists and the left wing of the Democratic party to keep Khan, while billionaire donors have urged Harris to get rid of her, seeking a more business-friendly administration.

Government leaders have other tools at their disposal as well. The American Prospect recently detailed a variety of anti-price gouging tactics, ranging from a vigorous corporate tax regime and expanded enforcement to counter “unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices”—to a greater array of public, not-for-profit institutions like publicly owned grocery stores and credit unions.

Though details remain scant, Harris’s announcement against price gouging could have teeth. Her speeches to date suggest support for legislation similar to Warren’s bill, antitrust efforts against large corporations—including civil penalties—and possible federal support for small businesses. Trump, too, has said he’ll tackle inflation, though policy details are minimal.

Any solution will need to also factor in the impact that prices have on farmers. When commodity prices are low, or supply is too high, for example, a power dynamic widens, benefiting brokers in the middle and hurting farmers. Supply management, where farmers grow what’s needed and are paid fairly in the process, is one policy solution.

But those are long-term issues likely far from most voters’ minds. What many of them are thinking about now is the cost of food.

For Mabud, the fact that Harris’ first big economic announcement focuses on food prices is grounds for hope—especially when combined with a more vigorous FTC and broader conversations about policy tools to take on monopolies.

“Concentration is not just a theoretical concept,” she said. “It’s actually harming people, full stop.”

“The reason I’m heartened by the focus on the high cost of groceries,” Mabud went on, “is because it’s really emblematic of a broader problem in our economy—which is that corporations have too much power and people have too little power.”

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https://civileats.com/2024/09/03/our-reporting-is-now-free-for-everyone/ https://civileats.com/2024/09/03/our-reporting-is-now-free-for-everyone/#comments Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:00:51 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57385 In that time, our stories have had significant impact and reach, thanks in part to support from our readers and donors. We raised an unprecedented $100,000 via Kickstarter in 2013; we were named Publication of the Year in 2014 by the prestigious James Beard Foundation; we were inducted into the Library of Congress in 2019; […]

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When Civil Eats launched in 2009, no major media outlets focused on the relationship between food and other significant social and political issues. For the past 15 years, we have led the charge in creating robust conversations around food and farming, and worked to make complicated, underreported stories more accessible to a mainstream audience.

In that time, our stories have had significant impact and reach, thanks in part to support from our readers and donors. We raised an unprecedented $100,000 via Kickstarter in 2013; we were named Publication of the Year in 2014 by the prestigious James Beard Foundation; we were inducted into the Library of Congress in 2019; we won a 2022 IACP Award for best newsletter for our members-only monthly column, The Deep Dish, which also won best newsletter from the Online News Association in 2024; we were awarded a James Beard Foundation Media Award for our 2022 investigative series on animal agriculture workers, Injured and Invisible; and we were nominated for best micro newsroom by the Online News Association twice, in 2023 and 2024. Here is a list of our many other awards and recognitions.

In order to make it all work, in 2015, we put up a paywall—like many independent nonprofit news organizations have done. Readers could access a small number of articles for free, and they could pay to become a Civil Eats member and get full access to our reporting. Our members care about independent food systems news, and the membership program has been critical in supporting our work as a small, nonprofit newsroom.

We’ve always wanted to remove our paywall in order to make our journalism free and accessible to everyone. And in our surveys, we heard that sentiment from members, too. Because the membership program provided a significant amount of our budget, removing the paywall has been a constant concern. Until now.

We are thrilled to announce that, in honor of our 15th anniversary, two generous funders, the 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, and GRACE Communications Foundation, have provided us funding to help us remove our paywall for one year. Our reporting will now be free to everyone, everywhere.

But we will still need your support! In order to keep our paywall down, we’re launching a membership drive to keep the site free, open, and accessible to all beyond this first year.

Without you, Civil Eats’ stories don’t just go unread—they go untold. Become a member today by making a contribution to ensure our vital reporting continues and thrives.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/09/03/our-reporting-is-now-free-for-everyone/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/#respond Wed, 28 Aug 2024 09:00:41 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57389 While the ultraconservative vision has received much scrutiny, its proposal to sharply cut the federal nutrition safety net—and the devastating impacts this could have on food security and hunger—has largely flown under the radar. These plans are detailed in the project’s chapter on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which calls for drastically narrowing the […]

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Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for the executive branch, has gained feverish political attention in recent weeks as a central talking point of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and many speakers at the Democratic National Convention. The sweeping, 920-page document calls for drastic overhauls of federal agencies as well as the erosion of civil rights and the expansion of presidential powers. It’s an agenda many have described as authoritarian.

While the ultraconservative vision has received much scrutiny, its proposal to sharply cut the federal nutrition safety net—and the devastating impacts this could have on food security and hunger—has largely flown under the radar. These plans are detailed in the project’s chapter on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which calls for drastically narrowing the scope of the agency to primarily focus on agricultural programs. This would involve radically restructuring the USDA by moving its food and nutritional assistance programs to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“Proposing to reduce benefits to millions of people who are counting on food assistance for their basic well-being is alarming.”

Criticizing the USDA as “a major welfare agency,” the agenda takes issue with the agency’s long-standing nutrition programs that help feed millions of low-income Americans every year, including pregnant women, infants, and K-12 school children. It outlines policies that would substantially cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). It would also shrink federal support for universal school meal programs.

“We have really effective federal food assistance programs that are evidence-based, and there’s just a long history of seeking to continuously improve them,” said Stacy Dean, the former deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services at the USDA under the Biden administration. Project 2025’s plan would reverse that trajectory. “Proposing to reduce benefits to millions of people who are counting on food assistance for their basic well-being is alarming,” she said.

The proposal to restructure the USDA builds on a previous Trump-era proposal to consolidate federal safety net programs. This included moving SNAP and WIC–which it rebranded as welfare programs, a term often used pejoratively–from the USDA to HSS. It’s a move that experts pointed out would likely make these programs easier to cut, including by designating them as welfare benefits, often deemed unnecessary by conservatives.

“I think the effect would be to make [nutritional programs] more vulnerable to a kind of annual politics on Health and Human Services issues,” said Shawn Fremstad, a senior advisor at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who researches food assistance programs. He notes that the level of vulnerability would partially depend on whether these programs are mandatory or discretionary spending programs in HHS.

As Project 2025 has gained scrutiny, Trump has publicly distanced himself from the proposal. The project was assembled and published by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has long helped set the conservative agenda and informed previous Trump policies. For instance, Trump’s 2018 proposal to restructure the federal government and move nutritional programs to the HHS was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation.

Many of the policies in Project 2025’s USDA chapter are a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s previous efforts to dismantle the federal nutrition safety net. This agenda stands in sharp contrast to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent endorsement of Trump as a president who will “make American healthy again.” Instead, as Trump’s former administration assumed its duties, guided by a transition team that included 70 former Heritage Foundation officials, it repeatedly targeted food and nutritional programs without any sign of changing this policy directive.

This agenda includes another conservative policy goal that was pushed for by the previous Trump administration and has been gaining traction on a state level: imposing stricter work requirements as a condition for receiving SNAP benefits. The plan references a Trump-era rule—which was challenged in court and abandoned—that would make it more difficult for states to waive SNAP’s work requirement for able-bodied adults without young children in regions of the country with high unemployment rates or a lack of jobs.

While Project 2025 doesn’t specify how it would tighten work requirements, re-introducing the Trump-era rule is one avenue alluded to in its agenda. The USDA estimated that this rule would have forced 688,000 recipients, unable to meet the work requirement of at least 80 hours per month, to leave the federal assistance program. It’s a rule that experts have pointed out can be challenging for gig workers with inconsistent schedules, people with undocumented health conditions, and people simply struggling to find work.

“You’re taking a vulnerable group of people, and you’re removing their one critical access point to food, which is SNAP,” said Dean. The group of adults affected by this policy “might be unemployed, temporarily unemployed, or they might be in jobs where the hours fluctuate dramatically, or they might have medical conditions that make it harder for them to work but not access to health care to document their health condition,” she added.

The tightening of SNAP work requirements is often proposed under the assumption that receiving SNAP benefits disincentivizes work, but this isn’t supported by existing academic research.

“These rules basically penalize people who are in need of food assistance for no economic gain,” said Pia Chaparro, a public health nutritionist and researcher at the University of Washington who has studied the program. “Research shows that SNAP participation reduces food insecurity but does not act as a disincentive to work. Moreover, research shows that the work requirements don’t lead to increased employment.”

The amount of supplemental assistance people receive on SNAP can stretch a food budget, but isn’t enough to disincentivize working, noted Ed Bolen, the director of SNAP state strategies at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive think tank. “The theory is that if you get $6.20 a day in SNAP, you’re not looking for work enough or not working enough hours. But $6.20 a day, it’s not going to pay your rent,” he said.

The Trump-era rule was struck down in 2020 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who determined that it “radically and abruptly alters decades of regulatory practice, leaving states scrambling and exponentially increasing food insecurity for tens of thousands of Americans.”

Since the rule was blocked, employment levels have improved, but food insecurity has not. In fact, the USDA found that levels of household food insecurity soared to nearly 13 percent in 2022, exceeding both 2021 and 2020 levels. This has been attributed to both inflation and the end of pandemic food assistance. In 2022, 44 million people lived in homes without enough food, including 7.3 million children.

“I see these [proposals] as really doing a lot of harm to working-class communities, rural communities, urban communities alike.”

The proposal to tighten SNAP work requirements is one of many that would collectively chip away at federal food assistance programs that have supported low-income Americans for decades. It would also eliminate some of the streamlined processes that allow participants in other social benefit programs to more easily receive SNAP benefits, including a cash-assistance program for low-income families and a program that helps low-income households with the often steep costs of energy bills.

The plan also calls for reforming the voucher program for infant formula under WIC, which provides nutritional benefits to pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children under 6 years old. Currently, states award contracts to whichever infant formula manufacturer offers the lowest net cost in a competitive bidding process. Project 2025 proposes to regulate this process (though it doesn’t specify how), claiming it’s driving monopolies in the marketplace. At the same time, the plan calls for weakening regulations on infant formula labeling and manufacturing to, in theory, prevent shortages.

“Upending this process could result in a funding shortfall, jeopardize access to WIC for millions of parents, infants, and young children, and result in higher formula prices for all consumers,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the CBBP. “WIC’s competitive bidding process for infant formula saves the program between $1 billion and $2 billion each year.”

Bergh pointed to a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences on supply chain disruptions in the U.S. infant formula market. It concluded that the “competitive bidding process is not the driver of industry concentration at the national level,” while also finding that eliminating the program would lead to higher WIC costs and higher formula costs for all consumers.

In yet another cut to food assistance for children, Project 2025 would also threaten the future of some universal school meal programs. This plan specifically calls to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, which was established in 2010 to allow schools in districts with high poverty levels to provide free meals for all students. This provision is widely used across all 50 states, providing over 19.9 million school children with free breakfast and lunch. The alternative, used in schools without CEP or another universal meal program, is to individually assess each student’s eligibility for free meal tickets.

Fremstad, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points to how CEP reduces the stigma of students being sorted into a different lunch line based on their family’s income, which can be a source of shame and behavioral issues. It also removes the penalties that low-income parents face when they can’t provide their child with money for school meals.

“We have a situation where there literally is something called ‘school lunch debt collection,’ where some schools have been sending debt collectors after very low-income parents to pay for their [child’s] lunch,” he said. It’s one of the many nutrition program cuts in Project 2025 that would further hurt working families, he continued.

“I see these [proposals] as really doing a lot of harm to working-class communities, rural communities, urban communities alike,” said Fremstad. “And I also see them as bad for middle-class people, who are often insecure in the middle class themselves.”

Read More:
Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country
WIC Shortfall Could Leave 2 Million Women And Children Hungry
‘It’s Not Enough.’ SNAP Recipients Struggle Amid High Food Prices

California poised to ban food dye in schools. The California Senate is expected to vote this week on a bill that would prohibit K-12 schools from serving food that contains synthetic food dyes. The bill would specifically ban six dyes—Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, Green No. 3, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6 and Red No. 40. While the F.D.A. has maintained that these food dyes are safe, emerging research has found links between synthetic dyes and behavioral issues in children. The bill is the first of its kind in the nation, which could usher in more nationwide change and similar bills.

Read More:                                                                                                                                                
The Dangerous Food Additive That’s Not on the Label
Op-ed: The Rise of Ultra-Processed Foods Is Bad News for Our Health

Kamala Harris Proposes Ban on Price Gouging. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has proposed the first federal ban on price gouging in the grocery store industry, aimed at curbing high food prices. “My plan will include harsh penalties for opportunist companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules,” said Harris, at a campaign speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on August 16, her first address on economic policies. This would be enacted through a Federal Trade Commission ruling, though details of the ban have yet to be unveiled.

Read More:                                                                                                                                       
Food Prices Are Still High. What Role Do Corporate Profits Play?
How Food Inflation Adds to the Burdens Disabled People Carry

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/28/project-2025-calls-for-major-cuts-to-the-us-nutrition-safety-net/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2024 09:00:22 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57374 Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website. Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of seven to eight per […]

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Recycled content in food packaging is increasing as sustainability advocates press manufacturers to cut their use of virgin plastic.

Since 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for ensuring food contact materials are safe, approved at least 347 voluntary manufacturer applications for food contact materials made with recycled plastic, according to a database on its website. Approvals have tripled in recent years, from an average of seven to eight per year through 2019, to 23 per year since then, and they continue to climb. The FDA has already approved 27 proposals through June this year.

Other than Coca-Cola, most manufacturers seeking approval are petrochemical giants such as Eastman Chemicals, Dupont, and Indorama; and lesser-known plastic packaging manufacturers, including many from China, India, and other countries.

“The FDA has been very reluctant to adopt a modern perspective.”

The end buyers of the recycled materials aren’t included in the FDA database, but many popular brands are using recycled content. Cadbury chocolate bars come in a wrapper marketed as 30 percent recycled “soft plastic packaging.” The Coca-Cola Co. in North America reports it sells soft drinks in 100 percent recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, while General Mills says its Annie’s cereal boxes use a liner made from 35 percent recycled plastic film.

Increasing recycled content in packaging may be good news for the planet, but researchers say the FDA has a lax approval process for plastic food packaging that hasn’t kept pace with the science on chemical hazards in plastics. The agency’s approval process for recycled plastics is voluntary and ignores the potential risk of chemical mixtures, researchers told EHN. Companies can seek guidance on their recycling process, but they are not required to. In addition, the FDA relies on manufacturers’ test data when it approves materials, leaving companies essentially in charge of policing themselves. Meanwhile, some studies show that recycled plastic can harbor even more toxic chemicals—such as bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, benzene and others—than virgin plastic.

FDA spokesperson Enrico Dinges defended the process, telling EHN the agency “reviews [industry] data against stringent scientific guidelines” and can “use its resources to spot test materials” if it sees an issue.

But researchers say the agency fails to protect the public from the toxic chemical soup found in recycled plastics.

“[The] FDA is most concerned about pathogen contamination coming with the recycled material, rather than chemicals,” Maricel Maffini told EHN. The approval process “is very lax,” she said.

Recycled Plastic Is More Toxic

Globally, just 9 percent of plastic is recycled. Most is recycled mechanically, by sorting, washing, grinding, and re-compounding the material into pellets.

Most recycling centers collect a mix of materials, allowing milk jugs, say, to intermingle with detergent bottles or pesticide containers and potentially absorb the hazardous chemicals from those non-food containers. Recycling facilities that are set up to collect one plastic type, such as PET bottles, can better control potential contamination, although chemicals could still be introduced from bottle caps or the adhesives in labels.

Hazardous chemicals can also be introduced when plastics are decontaminated and stabilized during recycling. Plastics degrade with recycling, “so you may need to add more stabilizers to make the material as robust as the virgin material,” Birgit Geueke, senior scientific officer at the nonprofit Food Packaging Forum, told EHN. “Recycling can therefore increase the material complexity and the presence of different additives and degradation products.”

Geueke, who led a review of more than 700 studies on chemicals in plastic food contact items, said that research on recycled plastics is limited. Despite that caveat, “there are a few studies really showing that contamination can be introduced more easily if you use recycled content.”

One study found 524 volatile organic chemicals in recycled PET versus 461 in virgin PET. Chemicals detected in the recycled PET included styrene, benzene, BPA, antimony, formaldehyde, and phthalates—chemicals linked to an array of health issues, including cancer, and the ability to hack hormones and cause development delays in children, obesity, and reproductive problems.

Most studies have focused on recycled PET, which is “not as prone to picking chemicals up,” in comparison to other plastics such as recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene, or PP, Geueke said. “HDPE milk bottles really take up chemicals during all stages of their life cycle, much more than PET bottles, and [those chemicals] are harder to remove, because they stick harder to the material,” she said.

Indeed, a study on recycled HDPE pellets obtained from various countries in the Global South identified pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals in the pellets.

FDA’s Lax Approach

The FDA must authorize all materials that contact food before they reach the market. To be authorized, a material cannot contain intentionally added cancer-causing chemicals nor any other chemicals that leach from the material at a level of more than 0.5 parts per billion.

But as Maffini pointed out, the FDA recommends, but does not require, the type of testing that manufacturers should do to ensure their products are safe, and it doesn’t always require them to submit any safety data, she said.

“If you tell the FDA the substance or substances used to make the plastic are not mutagenic or genotoxicant, and the exposure in the diet would be less than 0.5 parts per billion, FDA does not expect you to send any safety data [to back up these claims].”

In defense, the agency’s Dinges said, “the FDA has robust guidelines for the underlying scientific data that should be provided” by industry. But he also said, “it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure that their material meets all applicable specifications.”

For recycled plastics, companies may also voluntarily submit a requested review of their recycling process. In this case, the FDA asks companies to provide a description of the process, test results showing that the process removes possible incidental contamination, and a description of how the material will be used.

The FDA further advises manufacturers to conduct “surrogate testing,” which involves challenging recycled materials with, or submerging them into, different classes of hazardous chemicals that could theoretically contaminate the plastic, to determine whether the company’s recycling processes can eliminate those toxic chemicals.

Surrogate testing is the “best available practice” for evaluating chemical migration from recycled plastics, Gueke said, although research shows it works better for PET than for other plastics like PP or HDPE. Though the FDA doesn’t require surrogate testing, Tom Neltner, executive director at Unleaded Kids, said, “I don’t think you’re going to find a market in the industry without having gone through FDA review.”

Neltner, who formerly worked with Environmental Defense Fund’s Safer Chemical Initiative, said that in his experience, big food companies are skittish about using mechanically recycled plastic on packaging that touches food.

According to the FDA database of recycled plastic applications, two-thirds of the approvals are for recycled PET, for a broad range of products from drink bottles to clam shell containers for fruits and vegetables to tea bags. Most of the remaining approvals are for recycled PP for products including clam shells, disposable tableware, cutlery, caps, and lids; recycled HDPE for grocery bags, milk and juice bottles, meat trays, and disposable tableware, and recycled polystyrene (PS) for meat and poultry trays and clam shells.

Most requests are for mechanical recycling processes, though a couple dozen were submitted for chemical recycling, which uses an energy-intensive, largely unproven, process to convert plastics back to their original monomer chemicals. [The FDA no longer evaluates chemical recycling proposals for PET because it says the process produces material of suitable purity for food-contact use.]

Outdated Approach to Evaluating Toxics

“The FDA has been very reluctant to adopt a modern perspective,” Tom Zoeller, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told EHN, referring to testing for the effects of endocrine disruptors or for the mixtures of chemicals found in plastics.

FDA’s requirement that a chemical not exceed a threshold of 0.5 parts per billion is based on cancer risk, Zoeller said, and while that number is protective for evaluating exposure to a single chemical, “I’m not sure that means a lot, when you consider the 16,000 chemicals that are put in plastic.”

In other words, the FDA’s approach doesn’t account for multiple chemical exposures, even as research shows that chemical mixtures can have significant health impact. A European study, for instance, found that a mixture of nine different chemicals had a greater impact on children’s IQ than what was expected based on individual risk assessments.

“It’s the combination of chemicals that are impacting IQ and basically stealing human potential,” Zoeller said. “We are way behind the curve,” in assessing chemical risks, he added.

Dinges responded that “while it is unlikely that appropriately sourced and controlled feedstock will experience incidental contamination to any appreciable amount, potential incidental contamination is addressed by the FDA’s surrogate testing recommendations.”

Yet the ability to control feedstock is what worries experts. Researchers who found BPA and heavy metals migrating at higher levels from recycled PET compared to virgin PET, stressed that the plastic’s safety depends on transparency and cooperation across the value chain. Moreover, surrogate testing is not required.

Neither does FDA’s approach account for endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which can act at levels in the parts per trillion by disrupting metabolism, Maffini and Zoeller commented. “This concept that there’s a threshold below which there are no effects or no adverse effects is fundamentally incorrect,” said Zoeller.

Dinges countered that the “effects on the endocrine system are just one of many areas of toxicology that the FDA evaluates,” while also repeating industry talking points. “Endocrine activation . . . does not necessarily translate into toxicity,” he wrote. “Consumption of any food (for example, sugar) can activate the endocrine system.”

Such responses have led Zoeller to conclude that FDA has “become a foil for industry,” and that their “precautionary principle is applied to industry, not public health.”

Unless government agencies can do a better job at ensuring manufacturers are keeping chemical hazards out of recycled plastic, experts think it shouldn’t be used for food contact materials.

“I’m not a big fan of recycled plastic and food contact, because it’s really hard to know [if it’s safe], and I think producers have to be more careful than when they produce virgin materials,” Geueke said, adding that she thinks that only recycled PET should be considered because the other types so readily absorb chemical contaminants.

“If you have a very good process and can prove that it gets rid of most of the contaminants . . . but nobody knows whether that really happens or not,” she said.

This article originally appeared in EHN, and is reprinted with permission.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/27/is-recycled-plastic-safe-for-food-use/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/#respond Mon, 26 Aug 2024 09:00:41 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57354 Chang is a longtime journalist focusing on food, justice, health, and environmental stories. She is the former features editor and writer for Hyphen magazine, where she received national Asian American Journalists Association awards for her coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. She is also the former content manager at the Center for Asian […]

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Seasoned journalist Momo Chang joins Civil Eats as a senior editor. She is the former co-director of Oakland Voices, a community journalism training program and outlet of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Chang is a longtime journalist focusing on food, justice, health, and environmental stories. She is the former features editor and writer for Hyphen magazine, where she received national Asian American Journalists Association awards for her coverage of Asian American and Pacific Islander issues. She is also the former content manager at the Center for Asian American Media.

“I cannot be more thrilled to join Civil Eats’ editorial team,” Chang said. “I look forward to helping build on the canon of work that Civil Eats has been publishing for the past 15 years. Food is central to our lives, and Civil Eats maintains a vital role in bringing relevant information, analysis, and storytelling to the public.”

Chang spent her early years in journalism as a staff writer at the Oakland Tribune. Chang’s journalism career has been focused on elevating undertold stories, from the health impacts on refugee Vietnamese American women who work in nail salons to an Asian American farmer saving heritage seeds. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Guardian US, Edible San Francisco, Bon Appétit, PBS, and other outlets.

“Momo Chang is an extremely skilled editor, educator, and award-winning reporter,” said Naomi Starkman, founder, executive director, and former editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. “We very much look forward to working with her as a senior member of our team.”

Chang received a B.A. in Mass Communications and English from U.C. Berkeley, and an M.A. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Fusing her love of education and writing, she jumped into journalism after a short stint teaching at a high school.

In 2019, Chang was a part of a team to receive a James Beard Journalism Award for a San Francisco Chronicle project on Chinese regional restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. More recently, she wrote about commercial crabbers operating small vessels in the Bay Area amidst stricter fishing regulations. Chang also brings her deep community connections in the world of journalism and media to her new role at Civil Eats.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/26/civil-eats-welcomes-momo-chang-as-senior-editor/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/08/20/how-a-community-gardener-grew-food-for-her-family-quit-her-job-at-mcdonalds-and-started-a-farm/ https://civileats.com/2024/08/20/how-a-community-gardener-grew-food-for-her-family-quit-her-job-at-mcdonalds-and-started-a-farm/#respond Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:00:21 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57290 Hernández Reyes grew up subsistence farming with her parents in Oaxaca, and the garden spoke to her. She called a number posted nearby and reached Adam Kohl, the executive director of Outgrowing Hunger, an organization that rents unused land at accessible costs to help immigrants and refugees grow their own food. Hernández Reyes was able […]

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When Maximina Hernández Reyes emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Oregon in 2001, she was still learning English, had no idea where the food pantries were, and knew very few people. She struggled to find a support system in Gresham, the suburb of Portland where she settled, until 2012, when she happened upon a community garden in the city’s Vance Park.

Hernández Reyes grew up subsistence farming with her parents in Oaxaca, and the garden spoke to her. She called a number posted nearby and reached Adam Kohl, the executive director of Outgrowing Hunger, an organization that rents unused land at accessible costs to help immigrants and refugees grow their own food. Hernández Reyes was able to secure a small plot in the community garden and started growing food for her family. This was just the beginning.

Over the next decade, gardening evolved from a hobby to a passion for Hernández Reyes, but it wasn’t how she earned her income. While she worked her way up at McDonald’s, eventually becoming a manager, she gardened on the side as a way to provide her family and neighbors with fresh produce. Eventually, she became a community leader through her work in the garden; her original plot is now an educational site where she teaches gardening to other Latinas.

Maximina Hernández Reyes grows a range of produce, including many types of vegetables and herbs found in her home state of Oaxaca, Mexico. (Photo credit: Elizabeth Doerr)

Two years ago, Hernández Reyes had the opportunity to scale up her own growing operation and turn it into a source of income. She is now in her second season of managing a one-acre farm that Outgrowing Hunger leases in the nearby town of Boring, Oregon. While she named the operation MR. Farms after her initials, she has leaned into people misreading it as “Mister.” The business has been so successful that she was able to quit her job at McDonald’s last year and has transitioned from feeding her family to feeding—and mentoring—her whole community.

Hernández Reyes attributes her success at this food sovereignty endeavor to the support of a network called Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative (RFSC), part of a larger organization called Rockwood Community Development Corporation, which focuses on underserved areas of East Portland and Gresham. RFSC is comprised of nearly 30 organizations, including social services, food justice initiatives, and health and educational institutions.

Traditionally, food security organizations receive food from anywhere they can get it, and because donations are rarely from local growers, the system often results in processed foods and a reliance on the precarious global food system. The collaborative model, rather than providing one-way charity, is focused on mutualism and community care. Partnerships with local growers create a market that supports farmer entrepreneurship; community members receive fresh produce; and the system is more resilient to global food shortages.

“When people see these vegetables in the farmers’ market, they get really excited. They say, ‘I haven’t seen these in many years!’ or ‘I’ve been looking for these.’”

At Rockwood, when someone shows a knack for farming, especially when it benefits their community, someone from the collaborative connects them with various member organizations that can help them access resources and connections to build a successful farm business. When Hernández Reyes got involved, Outgrowing Hunger provided her with land and put her in touch with the Oregon Food Bank, which buys her vegetables for their pantries, and Rockwood People’s Market, a BIPOC-led farmers market in Gresham, where she sells produce every Sunday. She and other growers are also able to sell produce to local community members, who pay with tokens provided by food systems partners, the local low-cost health clinic Wallace Medical Concern, and the youth services organization Play Grow Learn.

The Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative is one of hundreds of similar networks across the U.S. that are serving as a model for a more resilient food and health system. Others include Hawai’i Food Hub Hui, Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, and the Mississippi Farm to School Network. Leveraging social capital between and among institutions, these networks, along with community members themselves, create an alternative local food system. This can be particularly powerful for immigrants and U.S. noncitizens, who are twice as likely to be among the 44 million people in the U.S. facing food insecurity.

Civil Eats recently spoke to Hernández Reyes about her journey toward this collaborative model, the organizations that supported her new business, and how growing food offers freedom to immigrant families.

What do you miss most about your home in Oaxaca?

What I miss are the simple things like traditions, family, and my culture. That was before. But now we’ve built the same community here and brought our traditions here. My vegetables are part of those traditions.

At first, they only grew a little bit because I only had one plant from the seeds I brought with me. But we saved the seeds and acclimatized them and now we have more of our traditional vegetables to share with my community: tomatillos and Roma tomatoes (but not like the ones you get from the grocery store; they’re better), green beans from my state, types of Mexican corn, and pipicha, pápalo, and epazote [herbs used in traditional dishes in central and southern Mexico]. When people see these vegetables in the farmers’ market, they get really excited. They say, “I haven’t seen these in many years!” or “I’ve been looking for these.”

What is your role in the Rockwood Food Systems Collaborative and how have these connections helped you?

I was volunteering during the pandemic with Outgrowing Hunger to distribute food boxes to families. Through that, I met people from Rockwood CDC, Play Grow Learn, Metropolitan Family Service, and a lot of other organizations. Then I got involved with Guerreras Latinas [an empowerment program for Spanish-speaking Latinas] where I taught gardening through a program called Sembradoras, which was supported by funding from the Oregon Food Bank.

The connections benefit my business. When the organizations have grant money, they can purchase some vegetables from me—that way, they help me, and then I help the community. There’s this cycle. I want to keep my vegetables in the community; I don’t want to send my vegetables to the huge stores.

How did you get your business off the ground?

I started my business when I saw that my community needed the kinds of vegetables that I grow. And I was thinking, how could I sell my vegetables? I talked to Lynn [Ketch, executive director] from Rockwood CDC, and she asked why didn’t I make it a business. And I said, ‘Yes! Why not?!’ I was a gardener before, but I wanted to get to the next level of farming. I’m motivated to work hard because I want to serve my community; I want to grow more food.

“When the organizations have grant money, they can purchase some vegetables from me—that way, they help me, and then I help the community. There’s this cycle.”

At first, we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent on the land at Outgrowing Hunger. So, Adam gave me some options where I could pay after three to four months of selling vegetables. He always had somebody to help when we needed it and connected me with other organizations.

Another support was the Oregon Food Bank. Because it was my first year of farming, they gave me support by buying my products to give out in the food pantry. They pay you upfront, so with that money, I started to buy the irrigation and everything. Another organization, the Metropolitan Family Service, bought a small amount of vegetables, which helped, too.

Does growing food and the connections to the Food Collaborative offer freedom to the immigrant families in your community?

Yes, it helps a lot. Here at Outgrowing Hunger, the price for rent is not that high. And Outgrowing Hunger helps us apply for grants. There isn’t a lot of space for people to grow their own food at home, so the land for gardening helps so much. But, we need to educate people about how and where to grow fresh vegetables.

The collaborative has helped bring more information to people. For the people who can’t grow their food, the organizations buy the food, and community members receive tokens for free and can get fresh food from the farmers’ market. There are a lot of benefits—people’s hearts are better, they’re healthier, and they have less stress. There’s a lot of freedom in that.

How has working in this kind of collaborative model been different from what you experienced when you first arrived in the U.S.?

There’s a big difference. At some food pantries, they asked for your address, social security information, and documentation. Immigrants were scared to go there, because they would have to share all their information. It was also hard to find out where those pantries were. Now the food pantries don’t ask for that. But also, because of this group of organizations, there’s a lot more information about where people can get more food.

I experienced challenges before I found the collaborative. Organizations didn’t have enough Spanish speakers, and there wasn’t a lot of information available. It was hard to make connections. I also didn’t know my neighbors very well. But now, with this group of organizations, it has changed. They all have Spanish speakers, and there is a lot more information about resources available.

MR. Farms in Boring, Oregon, with Mt. Hood in the background. (Photo credit: Elizabeth Doerr)

What kinds of community members have you met through your work with farming and the food systems collaborative?

I’ve met a lot of people since I’ve started volunteering here, and I made all these connections around my neighborhood. I talk to people and tell them what I’m doing and how I grow vegetables, and I bring them in that way. I’m building community through food. With Outgrowing Hunger, when I got started, we had two Latinos, and now we have 30 Latinos. I talk to them: “You can apply for this; you can get this resource.” I have WhatsApp, and when I learn of opportunities, I share.

One of those families was telling me they didn’t have enough money to buy food. This one woman said she tried to go to the food pantry, but they asked for all these documents. I told her, “I have some vegetables in my garden,” and she was so happy. I asked her why she didn’t have any money, and she said her husband was sick and it was just [her] working, and their rent was so high, and they have three small children. I connected her to Outgrowing Hunger, and she applied for that space in the garden, and she started growing her own vegetables.

What are your hopes for the future?

Oh, my goodness. So much. My dream is to grow my farm, to implement jobs for immigrants or anyone who wants to work. To produce more. Right now, it’s a family farm: my husband, my kids, my brothers, people in the community. I really want to build a program to give jobs to moms in the summertime. They can bring their kids and come to work. I keep thinking and thinking—and I want to do everything!

This interview was conducted in English and Spanish and has been translated and edited for length and clarity.

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