This Is Not News

Bit of a grab bag of topics this time out, but it’s a thematically connected grab bag. Inspired by President Bush’s call in his State of the Union Address for over a billion dollars in funding for research on hydrogen-powered cars, I’ve spent some time trolling the web looking for insights and information on fuel efficiency and other energy-saving endeavors. I don’t think I found any solid answers, but I do think there are several interesting launching points for further discussion.

First, I was disappointed but not terribly surprised to find that Bush’s billion dollar proposal isn’t as impressive as the sound bite might suggest. It actually represents a cut in the absolute funding for fuel-efficient automobiles. During the Clinton Administration, the government funded the Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV) to the tune of about $170 million dollars a year. This ten-year program was a partnership between the government and the Big Three American automakers, whose goal was to have 80 mpg family sedans in car showrooms by 2004, at a price comparable to more traditional cars. In order to make that deadline, PNGV focused on hybrid cars which use both a gas-powered and electric motor, much like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid that are available today. By shifting the focus to hydrogen-powered fuel cells, the Bush Administration has pushed forward the point at which the government/industry collaboration is expected to produce a more efficient car decades into the future. Setting a more ambitious goal and then cutting the funding earmarked to achieve it does not strike me as sound policy.

It’s also worth noting that, as I said, Japanese automakers already have hybrid cars out on the market. Granted, they serve a very small niche market right now, and they don’t get 80 mpg – more like 40 to 60, which is still nothing to sneeze at. But Toyota and Honda got their cars on the market despite being rebuffed in their attempts to join up with PNGV. There is a certain irony here – a program designed to increase the competitiveness of the American auto industry inspired America’s competitors to do a better job. Sam Roe of the Chicago Tribune argues that there wasn’t nearly enough coordination between the participants, which suggests that there are significant cultural roadblocks to public/private partnership that need to be overcome. Autoweek columnist Kevin Nelson says part of the problem might be the scale of the effort – the government wasn’t kicking in enough money under PNGV to overcome the additional bureaucracy, competition and inertia it created. And if the Clinton program didn’t do much to advance the cause of science, it’s likely that Bush would do even less. As Nelson says, “Federal funding at this level would appear to have no effect on hastening technological progress.â€? Read the remainder of this entry »

The Bush Administration recently filed a brief with the Supreme Court stating its opposition to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action admissions policy. One of the rhetorical points quickly made by the administration’s critics is that Bush himself benefited from affirmative action in his academic applications, using his geographical location and status as a ‘legacy’ student to help him get into Andover and Yale. It’s a pretty effective debating technique, highlighting the fact that – especially when it comes to education – strict ‘merit’ rarely completely wins the day. What I’ve wondered more and more since the stories started hitting the press is, is that such a bad thing?

The idea of a meritocracy appeals to everyone’s innate sense of fairness, I think. We like to see other people get what they deserve, and we like to think that whatever we have, we have because we’ve earned it. In its idealized form, it’s a terrific guiding principle. But when you put it into practice, it becomes pretty mushy. Sticking with education, how do you determine academic merit? Grades? But different schools have different grading systems, not to mention different curricula and standards. Just an example – my high school worked on a 4.0-scale, and didn’t give extra weight to As from honors classes. The guy with the highest GPA in my graduating class didn’t take many – if any – honors math or English classes, while the guy right behind him did. (I am neither of the people in this example, for anyone who might think I’m bitter or anything.) Standardized test might help smooth out the comparisons – but studies have shown that they don’t nearly as good a job predicting future academic performance as our current reliance on them would suggest. Read the remainder of this entry »

For those of you who haven’t read Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal, forgive me for giving away some of the mystery – fast food is bad for you. It contains lots of fat, salt, calories, cholesterol, and other things that can, over time, be hard on your health. Good, with that out of the way, we can get down to what this book is really about – and it ain’t just French fries.

Much to the dismay of the meat and poultry industries, since its publication in early 2001, Schlosser’s book has put their business under the national microscope as much as it has the actual purveyors of fatty fare, if not more so. Why? Well, Schlosser takes the reader beyond the fast food outlets back to the source of the food – back to the potato fields and processing plants, the cattle feedlots and slaughterhouses, back to the poultry farms.

Whether you agree or disagree with Schlosser’s politics (and they are pretty obvious from the onset), you can’t help but be intrigued or even alarmed by the allegations he makes about the safety of the America’s food supply. He alleges that the meat industry – urged by its largest buyers, the fast food chains – have compromised public health safety in their quest to get meat from “farmâ€? (a loose term since animals rarely graze anymore) to slaughterhouse to market quickly and cheaply.

In the aftermath of the “mad cow� scare, several high profile meat recalls, and with some now worrying that our food supply is vulnerable to terrorist attacks, food safety is high on the national radar. But are we doing anything about it? Frankly, it doesn’t seem like it. Though Schlosser’s allegations created a media stir last year, fast food sales have not plummeted. Beef and poultry sales remain steady. Consumers seem content to remain willfully ignorant about the possibility that the meat they serve may not be entirely safe. The consumer’s mantra: “I try not to think about it.�

I thought about quoting some of the more colorful excerpts from FFN and a series about meat safety that PBS’ Frontline produced earlier this year but, in the interest of space and for those who can’t stomach it, I’ll simply link to them.

I will, however, highlight some of the major concerns that have been raised about the American meat supply. These include compelling arguments that modern methods of feeding, slaughtering and packaging meat actually increase the likelihood that the resulting product will contaminated by E. coli, salmonella, and other foodborne bacteria. In addition, there are huge gaps in the authority the federal government wields over the meat-packing and poultry industries. For example:

• Incidents of E. coli contamination have increased in the past fifty years because this bacteria does not live in the intestinal tract of cattle fed grass. It is only since cattle began eating largely corn diets that deadly strains of E. coli were able to thrive in their bodies and end up in the meat. Why do cattle eat corn instead of grass? It fattens them up faster, and an animal fed corn can go from birth to the slaughterhouse in 12 to 14 months instead of 3 to 5 years. In 1993, several people died of E. coli after eating hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box food chain on the West Coat. Since then, fast food chains have required that the meatpacking firms test their meat before take possession of it. However, most meat sent to supermarkets is not tested.
• As meat operations merge and consolidate, the number of animals raised and processed under one roof reaches the hundreds of thousands. According to the CDC, this increases the likelihood that pathogens will pass from “one animal to anotherâ€? and on the processing line “from one carcass to another.â€?
• The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) cannot order a mandatory recall of meat once they know it is contaminated. They must notify the firm in question, which then issues a voluntary recall. While no firm has refused to comply, this system causes delays. Carol Tucker Foreman, Director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America, writes, “I sat in rooms and negotiated voluntary recalls with companies. And their lawyers would quarrel and quibble and hold out for day after day, and by the time you finally got them to recall the meat, guess what? A lot of it had been eaten.â€? Statistics show that the amount of meat returned in recent high-profile national recalls averages around 20%.
• The USDA is designed with an inherent conflict of interest – it is charged with both the regulation and promotion of meat and poultry products.

The major stumbling block to resolving these and many other issues about the safety of the food industry is the industry itself. The beef and poultry producers in this country comprise a powerful lobbying force. The have successfully lobbied to delay new USDA food testing systems and at least two times have blocked bills that would have given the USDA greater authority.

More recently, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, then-chair of the Senate Agriculture committee, proposed the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act of 2002 (S. 2013). Despite being co-sponsored by several key senators including Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Paul Wellstone (D-MN), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), the bill never made it out of committee.

There have been instances in recent years where public outcry did help stop some of the delays in legislation and move food safety bills forward to become law. But for that to happen now means that American consumers, not just the media, have to want to really think about what exactly is on their plates.

In the meantime – or perhaps as a starting point to get more involved on your own – there are places on the Net to go where you can learn more about safe meat handling and cooking, general food safety procedures, and alternatives to supermarket meat, including the USDA’s Food Safety site. One such place is the web site for the Whole Food Markets chain of stores. They update their site with the latest news about food safety regulation, heath advisories, recalls, and other information. And, Whole Foods Markets’ site also gets high points for its “Take Actionâ€? page, which allows you to search for your own elected officials, find out which elected officials are on which legislative committees, and more. Well done, Whole Foods. And here I thought you just made great bread.