Washington Insider -- Thursday

Raw Milk Again

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

Northern Plains Farmers in Competition for Rail Transportation

Farmers and grain shippers in the Upper Midwest have asked President Obama to issue an executive order to railroads that would require them to devote more equipment to moving crops to market. Currently, some county elevators are reporting a significant backlog in shipping grain out of the Dakotas and, just as importantly, in shipping fertilizer into the region ahead of spring corn planting.

According to press reports, the problem is not that there is an inadequate supply of covered hopper cars but rather a shortage of locomotives to move those cars. Farmers believe that the movement of oil by rail from the Bakken oil patch is the main reason for the shortage. However, a spokeswoman for the BNSF denied that the railroad is playing favorites.

Officials in North Dakota are in a tough spot. They of course want the state's farmers to have rail access to traditional markets, but they also want to take care of the state's growing energy industry. The state's treasury is taking in billions of dollars in oil extraction and processing taxes, its unemployment is down to 2.6%, the population is now increasing and median incomes are rising in many of the state's counties. It's an enviable problem to have but one that will need to be addressed quickly if the state's 2013 corn crop is to be marketed and the 2014 crop planted on time and efficiently.

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More Transparent Commodity Trading Needed in Developing Nations

Corrupt and opaque financial practices deprive resource-rich developing countries of "staggering" amounts of money, according to Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

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Speaking at UNCTAD's Global Commodities Forum in Geneva earlier this week, Kituyi noted that the Africa Progress Panel, chaired by former U.N. Secretary-General and Nobel laureate Kofi Annan, estimates that trade mispricing has deprived countries in sub-Saharan Africa of "approximately $38 billion per year, and that other illicit outflows deprived them of an additional $25 billion." And, he added, "These illicit outflows are greater than the total inflows of aid and foreign direct investment that these same countries receive on an annual basis."

Kituyi did not delve too far into the details of the charges, but policymakers in nations that already are skeptical about the effects that traders have on commodity prices may want to take a closer look. If the Annan report is accurate, the possible infusion of $63 billion annually into sub-Saharan Africa simply by cleaning up current trading practices is likely a number too large for them to ignore.

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Washington Insider: Raw Milk Again

There probably never was a debate with the opponents further apart than they are on sale of raw milk. Milk, of course, is uniformly regarded as healthful, even essential for very young children. Yet, it can be a very dangerous carrier of bacteria and other toxins, a risk that is largely removed by pasteurization.

For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says raw milk is 150 times more likely to cause food-borne illness than pasteurized milk and that many of these illnesses are quite dangerous. Despite the demonstrated risk, 28 states permit the sale of raw milk and advocates are continuing in their the drive to legalize it on the grounds that it tastes better and prevents a variety of illnesses. This has led to a number of "guerilla efforts" in state legislatures to legalize raw milk or loosen current state regulations.

Similar federal legislation by Ron Paul, who was at the time a Republican congressman from Texas, failed to get a hearing in several previous sessions of Congress. Observers note that prospects for several current bills are slightly better than those of previous bills but the likelihood of final approval remains virtually nonexistent because of consistent industry and scientific opposition.

Now, some 20 House members are backing legislation that would ease restrictions on interstate sales of unpasteurized milk. The group of three Democrats and 17 Republicans, many with Tea Party support, would revoke the Food and Drug Administration's authority to restrict or regulate interstate sales of unpasteurized milk or milk products from states where such products are legal. It would also revoke the agency's power to prosecute producers or dealers for sales of raw milk or its products.

Statements by the lead sponsors, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, frame the issue as one of increasing consumer freedom of choice and relieving farmers of some federal interference. But while they often invoke undocumented claims that raw milk creates immunity to diseases and even cures maladies like asthma and acne, they tend to ignore rather than confront repeated warnings by government and scientists about raw milk's dangers.

"The federal government should not punish farmers for providing customers the foods they want, and states should be free to set their own laws regulating food safety," Massie told the press and Pingree added, "Given how many food scares there have been involving large-scale producers, it just doesn't make sense to spend money cracking down on small, local farmers who are producing natural, raw milk and cheese."

In response, the principal dairy trade groups, the International Dairy Foods Association and National Milk Producers Federation frequently draw attention to the fact that risks inherent in raw dairy products are not worth any imagined benefits to either consumers or producers of unpasteurized milk products.

"The benefits of consuming raw milk are illusory but the painful costs of illness and death are very real," said NMPF CEO Jim Mulhern. "Our dairy industry benefits from a very high degree of consumer confidence, confidence built in large part due to the excellent food safety record of milk and dairy products," said IDFA CEO Connie Tipton. Choice "should not preempt consumers' well-being," she added.

The dairy groups cite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that less than 2% of all food-borne illness outbreaks are attributed to dairy products but more than 70% of those have been linked to raw milk and inappropriately aged raw milk cheeses. "Seldom has the science behind public health policy been so clearly one-sided. Pathogenic bacteria can be found on any dairy farm, regardless of its cleanliness or the good intentions of its owner. This legislation is a threat to public health and should not be approved," the organizations said.

If anything, the emergence of this "raw milk initiative" shows the durability of anti-science efforts and their perverse appeal in many quarters. Futile as they appear to be in the face of strong health regulations in most states and the federal government, it is useful to remind that there still are numerous anti-regulatory groups who threaten the credibility of the food safety system — efforts that should be monitored carefully as they continue to emerge, Washington Insider believes.


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