Washington Insider-- Thursday

By DTN's Washington Insider

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

Sen. Cruz Warns Against Cuban Embassy in Washington

Cuba should not be allowed to open an embassy in Washington because it will "further open the door for [Cuba's] espionage activities," Sen. Ted. Cruz, R-Texas, and four House lawmakers told Obama administration officials in a letter warning against threats to the homeland. Obama administration officials have argued that normalizing ties with Cuba will allow the United States to raise issues of concern, including human rights, directly with Cuba's government.

"We are writing to express our strong opposition to allowing the Cuban communist dictatorship to open an embassy in Washington, D.C., or any consular offices elsewhere in the United States,…" they say in a letter to Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of State for western hemisphere affairs, and Ricardo Zuniga, National Security Council senior director for western hemisphere affairs.

At last count, there were just over 175 embassies in Washington, D.C. If the United States were to close the embassies of countries that spy on us, the real estate market in the District likely would crash. It is a given that virtually everyone spies on everyone else. It is also to be hoped that the FBI has a pretty good handle on Cuban spies already conducting operations here, a job that might be made easier if they were all housed in a single embassy building.

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House Bill Would Create GMO-Free Label

Legislation that would provide for government certification of a new "genetically modified-free" label for food products was introduced yesterday by Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, and G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., neither of whom are members of the House Agriculture Committee. The GMO-free label would be modeled on the labeling regime used by USDA for organic products.

Under organic labeling rules, USDA certifies that organic foods have been produced under agreed criteria. Foods that do not carry the "organic" label are presumed not to be organic.

Similarly, under the proposed GMO labeling bill, USDA would certify that foods that carry the "GMO-Free" label were produced without any bioengineered components, and foods that did not carry the label would be presumed not to be GMO-free. The certification and labeling of GMO-free products would be voluntary, not mandatory.

A main reason for federal legislation is to head off mandatory labeling of GMO-containing foods at the state level. (The Pompeo-Butterfield bill would override any state laws that require the labeling.) To date, more than half the states have considered legislation requiring GMO labeling, with three –– Connecticut, Maine and Vermont –– actually passing labeling bills.

The food industry supports the proposal, as does a coalition of farm and commodity groups that include the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Corn Growers Association, American Soybean Association, and National Milk Producers Federation, among others.

The debate over labeling GMO foods is likely to be both contentious and protracted. However, there is general agreement that a federal law governing the subject is preferable to a patchwork of state laws.

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Washington Insider: Probably Carcinogenic — What Does It Mean?

Mark Bittman, a food guy at the New York Times, wrote an almost gleeful Op-Ed column on Wednesday about a pronouncement by a World Health Organization's Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, that the commonly used herbicide glyphosate "probably" has the potential to cause cancer in humans. The finding was not based on an independent study of its own, but on an review of eligible data, the IARC said.

Columnist Bittman was not concerned with interpreting the "probably carcinogenic" designation but was eager to predict numerous new regulations for foods, especially those containing genetically modified organisms. These are policies he has long advocated but has never been able to defend credibly.

There may or may not be credible facts involved this time. For sure, the genetics folks at Monsanto and elsewhere are already pressing hard to review the data the IARC used. Environmental groups have long criticized glyphosate, while the agricultural industry has defended it as safe for humans, and less damaging for the environment than others.

Debates over language like that used by the IARC are not new and have a bitter and cloudy history. Long ago, Congressman James Delaney, R-N.Y., tacked a clause onto the Federal Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act in 1958 that simply said, "the Secretary [of the Food and Drug Administration] shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals." Not any. Zero.

From the beginning this dictum conflicted with another law, the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Fungicide Act passed in 1947 that experts agreed "could not allow the concept of zero." Pesticides must by their nature and purpose be spread around in large quantities. FIFRA assumed that we can administer a dose lethal to pests but harmless to the applicator and to anyone who might encounter pesticide-tainted air, soil, water or food. Delaney assumed that the only safe dose is zero.

Congress papered over that inconsistency by saying that pesticide residues were not food additives, so under FIFRA the Agriculture Department (and later the Environmental Protection Agency) was supposed to set safe levels of pesticide residues in many food products — and, that the Food and Drug Administration shouldn't have to worry about them.

Congress did note that processing could concentrate pesticides above amounts assumed safe in raw food, so it specified that in any processed food, if a pesticide becomes concentrated beyond its permitted level in the raw food, it becomes a food additive. If it is a carcinogen (which many, many pesticides are), it falls under Delaney. A pesticide permitted at one level in apples, for example, that appears at even slightly higher levels in the sauce meant that product could not be sold.

The clause became widely hated, and regulators worked hard to find ways around it. The industry pressed for high permissible pesticide levels in raw foods, so processed foods wouldn't exceed them. And, they got into snarls about how much residue can be detected by laboratory instruments, since lab methods cannot prove a concentration of zero.

Then FDA began arguing about "good enough" levels in cases where only a few cancers might be expected — and the rule moved away from zero. Over the years hard-fought cases moved policy concerning chemicals in foods farther away from zero and the concept of "trivial' levels risk emerged.

What developed from the hard-edged but unmeasurable rule has been characterized as "sloppy policy, based not on zero risk, but on an unclear balance between assumed risk and assumed benefit." John Wargo's book "Our Children's Toxic Legacy" concluded that the 30 year history of the Delaney clause was marked by: "… confusing and contradictory legal standards, a virtual nightmare of inadequate data, … and the absence of any strategic plan for managing or reducing levels of risk…. Clearly, neither the EPA nor the academy knew the extent of carcinogenic risks from pesticides in foods." The clause was terminated by the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.

So, how do we interpret the "probably carcinogenic" finding now? First, we need to question its meaning and dig deeply into objective facts on the matter. We almost certainly do not want to refight the Delaney war that was abandoned in 1996.

In addition, we need better supported and more precise evaluations of the safety of our food and water and how these can be safer, even if they can't be risk free. Finally, we can hope that any designation that cannot be interpreted — such as "probably" this or that — receives the skepticism it deserves. Only careful analysis by responsible agencies presented in understandable terms will do that, Washington Insider believes.

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