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.

South Africa Keeps Barriers to U.S. Meat Imports

The U.S. and the Republic of South Africa have not yet reached agreements that would lift barriers to U.S. poultry, pork and beef exports to South Africa, according to a U.S. agricultural attache report.

Negotiations are ongoing to lift trade barriers to U.S. meat exports which have been in place for years, according to the report, released Aug. 21.

South Africa's restrictions led the U.S. meat industry to call to remove that country from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) In June, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) began an out-of-cycle review of South Africa's AGOA eligibility.

The most recent ban imposed on the U.S. industry was on poultry exports following reports of bird flu in the U.S. in 2014, according to the report. South Africa refused to regionalize the ban. Additionally, South Africa has imposed anti-dumping duties on U.S. bone-in-chicken imports since 2000. In June, U.S. and South African poultry industry representatives met and agreed to a framework to remove barriers to U.S. poultry exports and officials from both countries have met three times to negotiate.

South Africa banned U.S. beef products since 2003 after an animal tested positive for BSE, or mad cow disease, in Washington state, according to the report. In 2015, South Africa began the process of lifting market barriers under strict conditions to ensure safety. A health certificate has to be negotiated, but that could take years unless negotiations are prioritized by South Africa's Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the attache report said.

In 2012, South Africa set more stringent health restrictions on pork imports, which stopped U.S. pork products from entering the country. The countries have since negotiated a limited list of pork cuts to enter South Africa, but U.S. pork industries want larger access to the markets, according to the report.

---

Food Safety Group Sues USDA for Failing to Respond to Records Requests on GE Crops

As was reported in DTN's news sections on Wednesday, The Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued USDA for allegedly failing to respond to the group's requests for records on genetically engineered crops. CFS says those crops harm the environment.

CFS said agency has failed to provide timely final responses to at least 29 of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests or appeals. Of these, CFS said the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has failed to provide a final response to 10 requests and two appeals.

Under FOIA, agencies have 20 working days to respond to a request for records, according to the USDA's Secretary for Civil Rights page about FOIA on the agency's website.

"This lawsuit is necessary to stop APHIS from continuing to ignore its duty to provide the public with information that affects farmers, communities, and the environment," said Cristina Stella, a CFS staff attorney.

CFS accuses APHIS of "a track record of irresponsible and inadequate regulation of GE [genetically engineered] crops. In the absence of thorough government oversight, public access to information about these crops becomes all the more critical."

This is the fourth time CFS said it's had to sue the agency to get it to comply with the records law.

***

Washington Insider: Food Labels and Serving Size

The blogosphere is hyperventilating modestly these days over a change FDA is proposing for the Nutrition Facts labels on many packaged foods. The idea is to make the labels more honest by linking the serving size language to reality. The commenters have found some experiments where changes in listed serving sizes supposedly led consumers to change the amounts they ate.

The proposed tweak, which is almost through its comment period and is expected to be in effect next year, would apply to packaged foods for which serving sizes are seen as too low. About 20% of all packaged foods fall under that category, nutritionists say, including popular items like ice cream, potato chips and soda.

The thinking behind the adjustment is fairly simple. People tend to eat more in one sitting than is indicated on current labels -- which therefore need to be brought up to date. This was last done 20 years ago, based on data from a survey conducted from 1977 to 1988. Changing the serving size for ice cream, for example, from the current half cup to a more realistic full cup, means the calories, fat and sugar per serving will double.

Also, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 requires accurate labels.

Bloggers are chattering about research studies that found consumers tend to read labels as "endorsing" the portion sizes they list. So, some conclude that this research is evidence that changing the labels will have the opposite of their "intended effect" and lead consumers to eat more, not less. Apparently, there are quite a few of these studies that show that at least some consumers do take the label information as an indication of what they should consume.

FDA says it is considering changing the labels because consumers already consume more than the labels say is a serving, so the new information doesn't seem like that much of a threat.

In addition, it would seem to be impossible to justify false information on labels -- if the serving reflects only someone's wishful thinking, it should be changed to reflect reality, or the name should be changed to reflect what the number really is.

The concept of "one serving size fits all" seems unrealistic. Perhaps benchmarks of 100, 200, 300 calories and so forth should be presented.

This is not the first flap over labeling that has attracted attention recently. At least a few experts think a major factor in failure of proposals for anti-GMO labels in several recent elections is the lack of agreement about what they should say, which foods should be labeled, and which would avoid such labels. There is little if any agreement on the objective of such labels at all, and may be the case for many other labels, as well.

In the meantime, there are suggestions that simply dropping the word "serving" would help make nutrition labels more informative.

Murky though all this is, the real complexities of FDA's proposals may force the agency to take another look at what labels should say, and whether serving size is such a simple concept after all, Washington Insider believes.

---

Want to keep up with events in Washington and elsewhere throughout the day? See DTN Top Stories, our frequently updated summary of news developments of interest to producers. You can find DTN Top Stories in DTN Ag News, which is on the Main Menu on classic DTN products and on the News and Analysis Menu of DTN's Professional and Producer products. DTN Top Stories is also on the home page and news home page of online.dtn.com. Subscribers of MyDTN.com should check out the U.S. Ag Policy, U.S. Farm Bill and DTN Ag News sections on their News Homepage.

If you have questions for DTN Washington Insider, please email edit@dtn.com

(GH/CZ)

Copyright 2015 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.