Meatonomics (39 page)

28
. Ibid., xi.

29
.
Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine v. Vilsack et al.
, No. 1:11-cv-00038-RJL (2011 U.S. Dist. D.C. Cir.).

30
. 7 U.S.C. § 5341(a).

31
. US Department of Agriculture, “Your Personal Path to Health: Steps to a Healthier You!” accessed November 5, 2011,
www.choosemyplate.gov
.

32
. Michael Moss, “While Warning about Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales,”
New York Times
(November 6, 2010).

33
. Ibid.

34
. Becker, “Federal Farm Promotion (‘Check-Off’) Programs.”

35
. Kim Krisberg, “Dietary Guidelines, Food Pyramid Facing Scrutiny: Officials to Update Recommendations,”
The Nation's Health
33, no. 9 (2003).

36
. Phyllis K. Fong, “Food Safety and Inspection Service Sampling and Testing for
E. coli
” USDA, memorandum to Deputy Secretary Charles F. Conner (2008).

37
. Fong, “Food Safety,” 3.

38
. Office of Inspector General, “Audit Report 24601-0007-KC,” USDA (2008), iii.

39
. Office of Inspector General, “Audit Report 24601-08-KC,” USDA (2010).

40
. Kimberly Kindy and Lyndsey Layton, “Purity of Federal ‘Organic’ Label Is Questioned,”
The Washington Post
(July 3, 2009).

41
. Ibid.

42
. US Department of Agriculture, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” accessed May 5, 2011,
http://www.usda.gov
.

43
. Robert Kenner, director,
Food, Inc.
(Participant Media, 2008).

44
. Clarence Thomas (US Supreme Court justice since 1991) was an attorney for Monsanto from 1976 to 1979; Donald Rumsfeld (US secretary of defense from 1975 to 1977 and 2001 to 2006) was CEO from 1977 to 1985 of G. D. Searle & Co., later acquired by Monsanto; Mickey Kantor (US trade representative from 1993 to 1997 and US secretary of commerce from 1996 to 1997) was formerly on the Monsanto board of directors; Margaret Miller (FDA branch chief during the 1990s) was a Monsanto chemical lab supervisor from 1985 to 1989; Michael Taylor (FDA deputy commissioner for policy from 1991 to 1994 and deputy commissioner for foods since 2010) was a lawyer for Monsanto from 1989 to 1991 and Monsanto's vice president for public policy from 1998 to 2000; Linda Fisher (EPA deputy administrator from 2001 to 2003) was Monsanto's vice president for public affairs from 1995 to 2000.

45
. Philip Mattera, “USDA Inc.: How Agribusiness Has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture,”
Food and Agriculture Conference of the Organization for Competitive Markets
(2004), accessed October 25, 2011,
http://www.nffc.net
.

46
. Ibid., 10–11. Specifically, the report found that:

47
. Eric Schlosser, “The Cow Jumped Over the U.S.D.A.,”
New York Times
(January 2, 2004).

48
. Organic Consumers Association, “Six Reasons Why Obama Appointing Monsanto's Buddy, Former Iowa Governor Vilsack, for USDA Head Would Be a Terrible Idea” (2008), accessed September 6, 2012,
http://www.organicconsumers.org
.

49
. Organic Consumers Association, “Six Reasons”; John Robbins,
No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution
(San Francisco: Conari Press, 2012), xi.

50
. Tom Philpott, “In a Stunning Reversal, USDA Chief Vilsack Greenlights Monsanto's Alfalfa,”
Grist
(2011), accessed September 6, 2012,
http://grist.org
.

51
. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin,
Skinny Bitch
(Philadelphia: Running Press, 2005), 92.

1
. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Price Index Average Price Data,” accessed September 1, 2011,
http://www.bls.gov
; Brian W. Gould, “Understanding Dairy Markets,” online database, accessed September 2, 2011,
http://future.aae.wisc.edu
.

2
. David Leonhardt, “What's Wrong with This Chart?”
New York Times
(May 20, 2009).

3
. Erik Marcus,
Meat Market: Animals, Ethics & Money
(Boston: Brio Press, 2005).

4
. Michael Roberts, “U.S. Animal Agriculture: Making the Case for Productivity,”
AgBioForum
3 (2000).

5
. Ibid.

6
. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Sustaining State Programs for Tobacco Control: Data Highlights 2006
(Atlanta: US Department of
Health and Human Services, 2006), accessed October 26, 2011,
http://www.cdc.gov
.

7
. National Research Council of the National Academies,
The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use
(Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2010), accessed May 19, 2012,
http://www.nap.edu
.

8
. This method isn't completely precise because not all consumers incur all costs. However, most consumers do incur most costs, so it provides a reasonable high-level picture, and the alternative methods of calculation are unnecessarily complex.

9
. The annual retail sales figure of $238 billion in 2010 dollars, $251 billion today, is the sum of (a) for food consumed at home, total consumer unit expenditures on animal foods and (b) for food consumed away from home, the ratio of (i) spending (by unit type) on animal foods to (ii) total spending on food consumed at home, multiplied by (iii) total spending on food consumed away from home. This calculation shows that the portion of retail food dollars spent on animal foods is about 32 percent. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Composition of Consumer Unit,”
Consumer Expenditure Survey
(2011), accessed December 3, 2011,
http://www.bls.gov
.

10
. For details,
see
Appendix B
.

11
. The exact figure might be slightly more or less than $665 billion, since producers might absorb some of the cost increase themselves, or they might pass along a greater increase to consumers.

12
. Fruits and vegetables, for example, generate few costs associated with antibiotics, hazardous wastes, global warming, or real estate devaluation.

13
. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict” (2011), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.pcrm.org
.

14
. Bruce Sundquist, “Economics, Politics and History of Irrigation” (2010), accessed October 22, 2011,
http://home.windstream.net
.

15
. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict.”

16
. $28.9 billion of this total is from the USDA's 2013 budget: Farm Service Agency ($12.1 billion); Risk Management Agency ($9.6 billion); Research, Education, and Economics ($2.7 billion); Marketing and Regulatory Programs ($2.4 billion); and Foreign Agricultural Service ($2.1 billion). US Department of Agriculture, “Budget for 2013,” accessed September 28, 2012,
http://www.usda.gov
. The remaining $1.9 billion—adjusted from $1.8 billion in 2009 dollars—of the total is federal irrigation subsidies reported in Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates Limited, “Farming the Mailbox: U.S. Federal and State Subsidies to Agriculture—Study Prepared for Dairy Farmers of Canada” (2010), accessed August 8, 2012,
http://www.greyclark.com
.

17
. Grey et al. report $21.5 billion in state irrigation spending and another $3.2 billion in general state and local subsidies (both in 2009 dollars), for
an inflation-adjusted total of $26.5 billion. Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates Limited, “Farming the Mailbox.”

18
. Unfortunately, this report does not show its math. (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Agriculture and Health Policies in Conflict.”) However, PCRM's figure is consistent, in a general way, with agricultural land-use statistics (assuming such statistics represent a reasonable gauge for how subsidy dollars are spent). Thus, according to the USDA, 1,247 million acres of US land are used for all agricultural purposes, and 82 percent of this total, or 1,028 million acres, is dedicated to raising livestock (i.e., to graze animals or grow feed crops). (Ruben N. Lubowski et al., “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2002,” USDA Economic Research Service (2006), accessed August 19, 2012,
http://www.ers.usda.gov
.)

19
. Annual US fishing subsidies total $1.8 billion in 2003 dollars, or $2.3 billion today. U. Rashid Sumaila et al., “A Bottom-Up Re-Estimation of Global Fisheries Subsidies,”
Journal of Bioeconomics
12 (2010): 201–25.

20
. Environmental Working Group, “Farm Subsidy Database,” accessed October 22, 2011,
http://farm.ewg.org
.

21
. US Department of Agriculture, “Feed Grains Data Delivery System,” accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.ers.usda.gov
.

22
. Ibid.

23
. Timothy Wise, “Identifying the Real Winners from U.S. Agricultural Policies” (working paper, 05-07, Global Development and Environment Institute 2005), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://ase.tufts.edu
.

24
. Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, “Feeding at the Trough: Industrial Livestock Firms Saved $35 Billion from Low Feed Prices” (policy brief, 07-03, Global Development and Environment Institute Tufts University 2007), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.ase.tufts.edu
.

25
. Timothy Egan, “Failing Farmers Learn to Profit from Federal Aid,”
New York Times
(December 24, 2000).

26
. Wise, “Identifying the Real Winners.”

27
. Carol A. Jones, Hisham El-Osta, and Robert Green, “Economic Well-Being of Farm Households,” USDA Economic Research Service (2006), accessed October 22, 2011,
http://www.ers.usda.gov
.

28
. Ibid.

29
. Thomas A. Fogarty, “Freedom to Farm? Not Likely?”
USA Today
(January 2, 2002).

30
. Grunwald, “Why Our Farm Policy Is Failing.”

31
. Jan L. Flora et al., “Social and Community Impacts,” in
Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Air Quality Study
, ed. Iowa State University et al. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Printing Service, 2002), 147.

32
. Grunwald, “Why Our Farm Policy Is Failing.”

33
. Elanor Starmer and Timothy Wise, “Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production”
(working paper, 07-04, Global Development and Environment Institute 2007), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://ase.tufts.edu
.

34
. Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan, “Concentration of Agricultural Markets,” Food Circles Networking Project (2005), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu
.

35
. James Kliebenstein, “Economic and Associated Social and Environmental Issues with Large Scale Livestock Production Systems” (concept paper for
World Bank Workshop on Sustainable Intensification of Agricultural Systems: Linking Policy, Institutions and Technology
, Ames, Iowa: 1998).

36
. Jim Jacobson and Chris Bedford,
The Manure Money Pit: How Environmental Tax Subsidies to Hog Confinements Impact Iowa's Counties
(Des Moines: Human Society of the United States, 2003).

37
. International Labor Rights Forum, “NAFTA, Creating a Sweatfree World: Changing Global Trading Rules,” accessed October 22, 2011,
http://www.laborrights.org
.

38
. Max Borders and H. Sterling Burnett, “Farm Subsidies: Devastating the World's Poor and the Environment,” National Center for Policy Analysis (2006), accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.ncpa.org
.

39
. Ibid., 1.

40
. Charles F. Conner, “Conference Call with Reporters: Announcement of a New Farm Bill from Congress,” USDA Transcript (May 9, 2008).

41
. Rigoberto A. Lopez, “Campaign Contributions and Agricultural Subsidies,”
Economics and Politics
13, no. 3 (2001): 257–78.

42
. Elanor Starmer, Aimee Witteman, and Timothy A. Wise, “Feeding the Factory Farm: Implicit Subsidies in the Broiler Chicken Industry” (working paper, 06-03, Global Development and Environment Institute 2006), 5, accessed October 23, 2011,
http://www.ase.tufts.edu
.