Photo by Steve Ryan.

It’s always nice when someone writes an article so you don’t have to. In this case it was New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been doing the thankless job of writing about the health risks of toxic chemicals in our environment, as well as the politicization of the regulatory process that’s supposed to be in place.

From arsenic in chicken feed to cancer-causing chemicals to endocrine disruptors, Kristof has given new visibility to a critical issue: how toxic chemicals affect us, and how reluctant our government has been to protect us.

Kristof’s latest tale involves flame retardants, and is inspired by this knockout multimedia investigative series on the subject from the Chicago Tribune. These chemicals — various flavors of a group known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) — are everywhere and in everything, from carpet padding to furniture to baby toys to consumer electronics to dust (yes, dust).

As a result, PBDEs are in our blood. This is a problem because PBDEs are known endocrine disruptors, with growing evidence of links to the trifecta of cancer, fetal defects, and reproductive problems. A 2005 study found significant levels of PBDEs in all U.S. blood samples it tested, compared to samples from 1973, which had undetectable levels of PBDEs.

What happened between 1973 and now? Kristof’s column reads:

It turns out that our furniture first became full of flame retardants because of the tobacco industry, according to internal cigarette company documents examined by The Tribune. A generation ago, tobacco companies were facing growing pressure to produce fire-safe cigarettes, because so many house fires started with smoldering cigarettes. So tobacco companies mounted a surreptitious campaign for flame retardant furniture, rather than safe cigarettes, as the best way to reduce house fires.

Big Tobacco used every tool in its toolbox — including creating fake interest groups, finding doctors to make up horror stories, and manipulating data. That last bit is important because, as it turns out, there is virtually no evidence that PBDEs in the levels used in furniture and other products actually, you know, retard flame. In other words, all risk, no reward. And our government stood by and let it happen.

These kinds of stories are starting to get depressingly familiar. Meanwhile, the changes we might be wreaking on our bodies from exposure to these chemicals are only now being explored.

Making matters worse, there is now growing evidence that health effects from toxic chemical exposure can last generations. A study published in February on PLoS ONE found that exposure to a set of common endocrine-disrupting chemicals (including bisphenol-A, phthalates, and dioxin) in one generation of rats can cause reproductive problems in those animal’s great-grandchildren. Yikes! And now the same scientists just came back for more.

In a new study [PDF] published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Texas and Washington State University found that exposing rats to the common fungicide vinclozolin (still used by some farmers to control blight) caused changes in physiology, behavior, and metabolic activity in their descendants three generations removed. In other words, it’s affecting the rats’ brains for generations — which leads not just to change in their bodies but in their behaviors, including an increase in anxiety. All from an exposure generations ago. If further research bears this result out, it’s an ominous prospect.

Now, as one of the scientists involved in the study assured me in an email exchange, this work is not a risk assessment (as it happens, vinclozolin is declining in use) — it’s rather an examination of epigenetic changes these chemicals can cause at high enough exposures.

But he also observed to me that “many other environmental compounds promote these types of phenomena.” He also suggested that “future science and policy needs to consider such phenomena and mechanisms.” Um. Yeah.

The point is that we don’t know half of what these chemicals might be doing to our bodies. And now we’re learning that the changes they cause may have consequences beyond ourselves and our children, persisting generations after the chemical exposure occurred. If that’s not enough to scare us into action, including more aggressive regulation of toxic chemicals, I don’t know what is.

Photo by the Chesapeake Bay Program.

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone seems to get all the attention. Yes, the low-oxygen area that forms every year in the waters surrounding the Mississippi Delta is the largest dead zone — currently around the size of Massachusetts — but it’s not the only one in U.S. waters.

The Chesapeake Bay has a dead zone, too. In fact, it covered a third of the Chesapeake last year and continues to grow. And last month, the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science gave the Bay a D+ in its annual “health report card.”

About a year and a half ago, in response to the crisis, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in to put the states that surround the Chesapeake on a “pollution diet,” meaning the state has to keep its “Total Maximum Daily Load” — whether from agricultural, municipal, or private landowners — down to a minimum.

And where the Gulf dead zone is caused by runoff from the oceans of corn grown in the Midwestern states whose waterways drain into the Mississippi, chicken farms dominate the Chesapeake’s watershed. The Delmarva region (i.e. Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) has become one of the most intensive poultry farming regions of the country. Industry behemoths Perdue and Tyson contract with operations in the area that add up to tens of millions of birds housed in enormous facilities that generate a lot of chicken crap.

Of course, as MTV taught us Gen-Xers, too much is never enough. Grist reported a couple of years ago on a plan by Perdue to significantly increase its poultry operations in the already taxed region. As a Waterkeepers study of the issue put it at the time:

“Billions of pounds of chicken litter have flowed into the bay in the decades since international poultry conglomerates such as Perdue and Tyson targeted the Delmarva Peninsula for their multi-million-dollar operations.” The industry has been “treating the Chesapeake Bay like an open toilet.”

As you’d expect, Big Ag has reacted badly to the EPA’s attempt to address the pollution problem. The American Farm Bureau filed a lawsuit to stop it. And House Republicans attempted to defund the plan.

But it turns out Big Ag had nothing to worry about. Maryland’s Democratic governor and rising star Martin O’Malley — someone who has a significant say in any Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan — is on Perdue’s side. And it appears that his relationship far exceeds what’s typical between a governor and a large corporation. Or at least one would hope it does.

The advocacy group Food and Water Watch (FWW) has obtained 70 pages of emails [PDF] between O’Malley and Perdue officials — primarily Perdue general counsel Herb Frerichs, with whom FWW says O’Malley went to law school.

Perhaps the most noteworthy exchange between the two men revolves around a statement O’Malley’s press secretary made in an article called “Farmers want Big Chicken held responsible.” In the article he’s quoted as saying:

Industrial-scale chicken houses are a common site in Maryland. (Photo by the Chesapeake Bay Program.)

I think there’s certainly a need from everybody in the industry and on the regulatory side to work together. It certainly doesn’t do anybody any good for poultry farmers to say we own the chickens, but not the manure they produce.

O’Malley sent a series of messages to Frerichs walking back those comments, and letting he and his colleagues know he had “no intention of revisiting co-permitting” — the latter being the state’s attempt to make poultry processing companies responsible for waste management by farmers.

O’Malley then follows up to make sure all is well. He is so deferential to Frerichs, it’s hard to remember who’s the elected official and who’s the constituent. The emails read:

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 7, 2010 at 7:53 PM

Were you ok with that message I sent to you?

Frerichs -> O’Malley, August 8, 2010 at 6:42 PM

Not sure at this point. I have been witness to some back and forth emails over weekend and need to see how people feel tomorrow and what will work best.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 8, 2010 at 7:53 PM

Hmmm. Let me know

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 9, 2010 at 2:47 PM

How’s my message doing? (It wasn’t that long…)

Frerichs -> O’Malley, August 10, 2010 at 4:24 PM

Sorry for delay. My conclusion is that letter will not be helpful. Jim [Perdue] took this very personally.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, August 10, 2010 at 4:33 PM

So what am I supposed to do? Just leave it alone? Call him, what?

I have to believe this isn’t normal.

But it isn’t just over PR that O’Malley gives Perdue authority. The company apparently also gets to give direction to Maryland’s Department of Agriculture:

O’Malley -> Frerichs, November 5, 2011 at 7:19 PM

What is it about the Secretary of Agriculture’s job performance that you find lacking?

Frerichs -> O’Malley, November 6, 2011 at 7:22 AM

I just feel like I’m trying to push a bunch of stuff and I don’t see him around. He’s not as strong as his counterparts in DE and VA. I work w all three.

O’Malley -> Frerichs, November 6, 2011 at 10:01 AM

I’m guessing you don’t have the personal email of governors of DE or VA, so let me know when Buddy [Earl “Buddy” Hance, Maryland Secretary of Agriculture] can/should be doing more to help you push stuff. I’m serious. I’ll have him call you monday.

It’s not uncommon for state governments to be rife with corruption — both because relationships between representatives and business interests are often very close and because state politics aren’t under the same media microscope that federal politics are.

That said, there’s no indication of financial corruption here — although the Baltimore Sun reports that Perdue did shift its contributions around the time of these emails from the Republican Governor’s Association to the Democratic Governor’s Association, which O’Malley chairs. Still, O’Malley has a good excuse for his frequent interactions with Frerichs: They’re buddies!

But he appears to have lost sight of whose interests he was elected to serve. Because, right now, O’Malley seems to be Governor of the State of Perdue.

So if Maryland becomes a major foot-dragger in implementing the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan, or works to exempt the poultry industry from doing its part, there will be no reason to wonder why. It’s just friends helping friends.

Photo by the University of Missouri Extension.

It seems like everywhere we turn, there’s more evidence of industrial agriculture’s reckless use of antibiotics. The latest example: antibiotics in ethanol production.

As we reported recently here on Grist, this isn’t just a waste of important medicines. It may also contribute to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And that’s because the main by-product of the ethanol production process, the leftover corn mash known as distillers grains, has become a major ingredient in animal feed over the last decade. More than 30 million metric tons of the made-in-the-USA stuff are fed to beef cattle, dairy cows, and pigs here and abroad every year.

While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not track exact figures, meaning there’s no way to know exactly how much is used, the agency’s own research has shown antibiotics like penicillin and erythromycin, which are important for human medicine, at detectable levels in distillers grain. A 2010 study by the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine found enough erythromycin present in samples of the distillers grains it tested to cause resistance to develop in certain bacteria — compelling evidence that the risks of using antibiotics to make ethanol are real.

But the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy (IATP), an organization working to reduce the use of antibiotics in agriculture, just released a report [PDF] that adds another twist to this story. The IATP makes the claim that pharmaceutical companies, who are selling antibiotics to ethanol producers, may be doing so illegally.

The argument they make is simple — by law, the FDA is required to regulate antibiotics for use in ethanol as a “food additive,” which comes with a very specific set of approvals and protocols, including the requirement that pharmaceutical companies apply for permission to sell them. But they haven’t applied for that permission. Instead, the pharmaceutical companies are operating under the presumption that their products are considered GRAS, the acronym for substances the FDA considers “Generally Regarded as Safe” and thus can be used freely in food or feed production.

The FDA maintains a list of GRAS substances, which includes most spices, flavorings, vitamins, and additives like specific preservatives and anti-caking agents. The GRAS protocol is designed as a way to make it easier for companies to process food without having to apply for permission to use common ingredients. However, it’s a bit of a stretch to argue that antibiotics that end up in livestock feed should qualify for treatment like that — and there are strong indications that the FDA doesn’t agree with these companies’ presumptions.

The most compelling evidence the IATP provides comes from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) 2008 annual report, which states:

In 2008, CVM worked with the Environmental Protection Agency to clarify the respective roles of the agencies with regard to regulatory jurisdiction over the use of antibiotics during fuel ethanol production. FDA regulates distiller byproducts from both potable and fuel ethanol production when the byproducts are used as animal feed and/or feed ingredients, regulating antibiotic residues as food additives [emphasis mine].

That seems fairly cut and dried. Yet drug companies continue to treat antibiotics for ethanol as if no FDA approvals are required. What’s unclear, however, is who’s truly at fault. The IATP report presents evidence that the drug companies are aware of FDA’s official position on antibiotics in ethanol. And, according to the IATP, at least two drug manufacturers have indeed submitted “food additive petitions” for their antibiotic products to be sold to ethanol makers.

But at the same time, the FDA appears to be sitting on its regulatory hands. It certainly hasn’t demanded these companies stop selling unapproved antibiotics to ethanol producers. When I contacted the CVM and asked them to shed some light on the confusion, a spokesperson wrote that the CVM has taken steps to determine the impact of the use of antibiotics in ethanol production facilities and said that it “intends to provide further clarification in the near future.”

When I pressed her on the question of whether antibiotics in ethanol production are definitively regulated as food additives or not, the spokesperson wouldn’t directly confirm or deny the position. However, she did reply that:

“FDA makes a determination about whether a substance is a food additive on a case-by-case basis. Food additives can only be legally marketed if they are the subject of an approved food additive petition. If FDA publishes a food additive regulation, anyone can market the food additive if they comply with that regulations.”

When combined with the clear language of the CVM’s own annual report, the above statement strongly indicates that any time a drug company wants to sell antibiotics for use in ethanol production it needs to file a food additive petition. But only three such documents appear to have been filed — and the FDA has approved none of them. So it does appear to be the case that these drug manufacturers are violating the law. But then, I’m no lawyer.

Whatever the case, with the FDA unwilling to take a firm stand, the issue remains in a kind of legal limbo. And like nature with a vacuum, industry loves a limbo. So, while the FDA considers and studies, the flood of antibiotics into ethanol plants — and ultimately into the stomachs of millions of meat and dairy cows all over the country — continues.

A screenshot from the Reuters video report, Food Fight: How the Food Industry outsmarted Washington (click to watch).

The War on Obesity sure was fun while it lasted. There was school lunch reform, Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, the administration’s Task Force on Obesity report, and an attempt by the administration to restrict junk food advertising to kids. But, as Reuters details in this fantastic deep-dive, the food industry came back with shock and awe, K-Street style:

Reuters analyzed spending reported by more than 50 food and beverage groups that lobbied against the federal effort last year to write tougher — but still voluntary — nutritional standards for foods marketed to children.

The groups have spent more than $175 million lobbying since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 — more than double the $83 million spent in the previous three years, during the Bush Administration.

The totals do not include broader lobbying efforts by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and media and advertising interests that also opposed the federal plan.

These companies’ political spending has remained high despite the fact that the immediate threat has passed. Reuters cites the example of PepsiCo, which spent $40 million in 2009 to head off a federal soda tax, a figure that “was more than eight times the $4.8 million they spent the previous year.”

So even though chances of the feds enacting a soda tax any time soon are approximately zero, PepsiCo still spent $10 million lobbying Congress in 2011, which is still more than twice the amount the company was spending before the soda tax fight broke out.

Apparently it was money well spent. At every turn, whether it was those advertising restrictions, soda taxes, pizza-as-vegetable, French fries in school lunches, or getting some of the excess salt and fat out of processed food, the industry has turned back new laws in favor of voluntary guidelines. The only industry “failure” was over the new requirement for calorie labeling in fast food restaurants, but that passed as part of health reform — where food industry lobbying presumably couldn’t stand up to the horse-trading needed to get that behemoth of a bill passed.

But food industry shareholders should fear not — all this lobbying doesn’t take a very big chunk out of the companies’ bottom line. In fact, the food and beverage sector is a $1.5 trillion industry. The figures Reuters cites are rounding errors.

And while public health advocates have, somewhat controversially, cited the tobacco industry as the model for the processed food industry’s strategy, the truth is that it’s simply doing what you can do when you have money to burn.

With pockets this deep, no tactic is off the table. When you can afford to send dozens of lobbyists to camp out in legislators’ and regulators’ offices, hire teams of lawyers to write sample legislation, pack hearings and regulatory meetings, have top executives hobnob at the White House, and fund expansive advertising campaigns, it’s very likely that you’ll end up getting what you want.

It’s asymmetrical warfare and public health advocates don’t stand a chance. No amount of new studies or new research will change that. The problem health advocates face is nicely summed up in this “explanation” by Reuters for the industry’s continued resistance to claims of its culpability in the obesity epidemic:

The Institute of Medicine had found strong evidence that TV watching was associated with child obesity. But researchers have found no proof that obesity is directly caused by ads for sweets or junk food. [emphasis mine]

The industry will ceaselessly exploit the gap that exists between “associating” a cause with an effect and “proving” a causal link. The essence of the scientific method is that very often, especially when you’re researching human health and habits, the best result you can obtain is “strong evidence” “associating” a cause with an effect. Since scientists aren’t allowed to conduct experiments that harm people, there’s never a true control group and thus no “proof” as the industry conceives of it.

This is bad news for us all — though it may be kids who suffer the most. A pair of disturbing articles in The New York Times brings home the hidden tragedy of this part of the crisis. In the first, a doctor documents her experience as a witness to the dreadful consequences of childhood obesity:

How does a 175-pound 10-year-old sound? Or a 200-pound 6-year-old? Or, far worse, a morbidly obese 6-year-old having his gallbladder removed because a high fat diet has caused it to malfunction and become a source of pain?

I’m a pediatric surgeon, and these are the children I see every day … These children need help making drastic changes to their lifestyles and diet to prevent a lifetime of problems.

Instead, I’m taking out their gallbladders.

… While a person can live a normal life without one, some patients do experience side effects, like chronic diarrhea or acid reflux. No one knows for certain the long-term consequences of taking out the gallbladder over the lifespan of a child, but thousands are going to find out in the decades ahead.

The second article suggests that the other shoe regarding childhood obesity may just have dropped. Type 2 diabetes — which used to be known as “adult onset diabetes” — is now at epidemic levels among children. But much to doctors’ surprise, it does not behave the same way it does in adults. The disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat. The article reads:

“It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”

Not only that, but the drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes appear to be less effective in children than they are in adults, “shockingly” so, according to doctors. This news comes from the first study to look at Type 2 diabetes treatment in children, which was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine. After all, as the NYT observes, the disease was virtually unknown in children until the 1990s, so there’s never been much in the way of data. In sum, researchers examined three different treatment regimens involving drugs and diet and found that none of them were particularly effective.

In short, controlling the symptoms of the obesity epidemic is proving just as difficult as controlling the causes. And that’s a real problem for us all. Reuters just published an extended analysis of the economic costs of the health problems associated with obesity — both direct and indirect. And they are staggering. $190 billion in excess medical costs, $6 billion in absenteeism, $30 billion in lost productivity on the job as people are unable to perform tasks at work, and a $76 billion “obesity tax” — the amount of lost wages and opportunities from the fact that the people studied earn less and are less likely to be hired and promoted.

In the face of all this, it’s not unreasonable to demand that the industry commit to more than window-dressing voluntary tweaks. But food companies clearly aren’t ready to face the reality of obesity. And given the ease with which terms like “nanny state,” “food police,” and “snobbery” get thrown around in even the politest company when food restrictions get discussed (not to mention what appears in comments sections on food politics websites!), it doesn’t seem that we’re ready to face it either. Until that changes, I guess we’ll just have to tell all those kids to suck it up.

Correction: The gender of the doctor in the first New York Times article cited has been changed to accurately reflect the story.

A still from a promotional video (see below) for the herbicide 2,4-D, which is being marketed as a solution for "superweeds" (picured), which have grown tolerant to other herbicides.

A new coalition is trying to throw sand in the gears of industrial agriculture’s chemical treadmill. And this one just may have what it takes to slow it down. I’m referring to the fight over USDA approval for Dow AgroScience’s new genetically modified corn seeds (brand name “Enlist”), which are resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D.

This is part of biotech’s “superweed” strategy, by which they hope to address the fact that farmers across the country are facing an onslaught of weeds impervious to the most popular herbicide in use, Monsanto’s glyphosate or RoundUp (and in some cases impervious to machetes as well!). Of course, this is a problem of the industry’s own making. It was overuse of glyphosate caused by the market dominance of Monsanto’s set of glyphosate-resistant genetically engineered seeds that put farmers in this fix in the first place.

One of the older herbicides, 2,4-D is a pretty nasty chemical — it’s been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver problems, reproductive effects, and shows endocrine disrupting potential — which is one of the many reasons farmers prefer the more “benign” glyphosate. In fact, on the basis of the scientific evidence, especially related to human cancers, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) several years ago to withdraw its approval for 2,4-D. Earlier this month, the petition was summarily denied.

So it’s interesting to see this new coalition’s opposition to 2,4-D getting so much traction so quickly. Perhaps it’s because the group — dubbed Save Our Crops — isn’t made up of environmentalists and sustainable agriculture types, but rather Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic conventional farmers and large food processors (and Organic Valley, the organic co-operative organization which is both a producer and a processor).

The basis of their concern isn’t so much the health effects, but the fact that their farms may end up as collateral damage from the increase in the use of 2,4-D that will occur if Dow’s seed is approved. After all, the use of glyphosate went through the roof once Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready seeds took over the marketplace. These farmers expect 2,4-D to follow the same path. (Rodale News estimates a 60 to 80 percent increase.)

The problem has to do with pesticide drift — an issue with many pesticides, but a particular problem with 2,4-D, which unlike glyphosate is highly volatile. While its volatility was in one context considered a strength, at this point even Dow itself acknowledges that it’s a concern. In an article on the battle over the new seed’s approval, The New York Times offers an illustration of what these farmers have to fear:

To Jody Herr, it was a telltale sign that one of his tomato fields had been poisoned by 2,4-D, the powerful herbicide that was an ingredient in Agent Orange, the Vietnam War defoliant.

“The leaves had curled and the plants were kind of twisting rather than growing straight,” Mr. Herr said of the 2009 incident on his vegetable farm in Lowell, Ind. He is convinced the chemical, as well as another herbicide called dicamba, had wafted through the air from farms nearly two miles away.

As explained by Rodale News, 2,4-D-resistant plants will alter the way farmers use the  chemical, encouraging them to apply it later in the season to more kill weeds (you normally wouldn’t apply a herbicide on a field full of mature plants). This fact makes it particularly problematic since, as Rodale News put it:

… not only are humidity and temperatures higher, but also neighboring tomato plants are leafing out, making them most susceptible to the drift. If the chemicals don’t outright kill plants like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and other favorites, they could cause severe twisting and other deformities to occur as the plants in the drift’s path grow, rendering the harvest useless.

Which is just what farmer Herr saw in his field. Indeed, it is tomato farmers who may be the most at risk. Rodale also reports on a study produced by scientists at Ohio State University, which simulated the effects of 2,4-D drift on tomatoes [PDF]:

Experts found that the migrating pesticide vapors sparked late bloom, which diminishes the marketable red part of the tomato and stimulated growth of unmarketable green growth, which can’t be sold. In fact, just tiny amounts—1/300th of what was applied to field crops—caused significant field loss on neighboring tomato farms.

Ohio researchers concluded that realistic drift from corn or soy fields treated with either dicamba or 2,4-D will result in a 17 to 77 percent reduction in marketable fruit for neighboring farms and gardens.

These are, of course, estimates from a simulation. But the farmers and processors behind Save Our Crops would rather not be the guinea pigs in the real-world version of this experiment.

For its part, Dow assures the USDA that its new version of 2,4-D doesn’t have the same volatility — and the company will “urge” farmers to use the new, branded version rather than the far less expensive generic version of 2,4-D that’s been on the market for decades. How reassuring.

Indeed that’s where I get worried. If I had to guess, I suspect that the USDA will approve Dow’s new seed but with restrictions on things like planting acreage and use of recommended formulations and so on (though there’s always the chance the agency will punt the final decision until after the election). In any event, restrictions are only as good as their enforcement, and the USDA doesn’t have an inspiring track record. Farmers have routinely violated planting restrictions on GM seeds in the past — while regulators have a history of acceding to industry’s demands to reduce the restrictions rather than enforce them.

The public comment period on the 2,4-D-resistant seeds ends this Friday. According to the Center for Food Safety 365,000 people have already submitted comments to the USDA. An additional 143 farm, environmental, health, fisheries groups and companies will submit a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack expressing their opposition to the GMO seeds. Save Our Crops has also already submitted two petitions [PDF] while the consumer group Just Label It is sponsoring its own petition to protest USDA approval, so there’s still time for the public’s voice to be heard.

But the real fight appears to be between commodity farms who want a simple answer to the growing problem of superweeds and fruit and vegetable growers who don’t want to see their crops damaged as a consequence. The latter are often treated by the USDA as step-children while growers of the Big Five commodities — corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton — receive the overwhelming majority of federal farm subsidies.

I doubt that USDA approval of Dow’s new seed, if it comes, will be the end of the story. But it should tell us something that even some large conventional farmers are starting to get angry and scared by the direction industrial agriculture has taken.

Below is a video produced by Dow AgroScience advertising Enlist, or 2,4-D. Skip ahead to 2:35 to hear the company’s take on superweeds and to see some compelling images.

Photo by Robert Bradley.

I know what you’re thinking: “Tom, it’s been ages since you wrote about high-fructose corn syrup.” And you’re right! It has. But as I’m feeling petulantly defiant, I think it’s time to take another look at America’s favorite sweetener. You see, while the HFCS industry still claims there’s no difference between how the body handles HFCS and sugar, a new study has come out suggesting just the opposite. And in a very big way.

The blaring headline version of the new study’s conclusion would read: “High-Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Autism.”

And while that may be a bit of an overstatement, it’s not off by much. In a provocative new peer-reviewed study published in Clinical Epigenetics, researchers led by a former FDA toxicologist purport to have found a very real link between HFCS consumption and autism.

The study’s argument is complicated but deeply disturbing. It pieces together what’s known about the genetic and metabolic factors involved with autism, including the growing evidence of a link between autism and mercury and organophosphate pesticide exposure.

Essentially, HFCS can interfere with the body’s uptake of certain dietary minerals — namely zinc. And that, when combined with other mineral deficiencies common among Americans, can cause susceptible individuals to develop autism.

The basic idea is that the protein that’s in charge of eliminating heavy metals from the human body requires zinc to function. But HFCS interferes with the body’s ability to absorb zinc, which causes the protein to be less effective and may also reduce the amount of that protein in the body. An increased heavy metal load in the body — especially when first experienced at the fetal stage — can start a chain of genetic disturbances that affect development. HFCS also interferes with calcium absorption (and not just because soda is displacing milk as the drink of choice for young kids). Calcium is crucial to elimination of organophosphate pesticides, which are also linked to developmental disorders like autism.

Now, this is just one paper. And a full understanding of it requires far more expertise in biology and genetics than I possess. But I certainly think it shifts the HFCS debate in an unexpected and troubling way. Industry wants to us to believe that if no harm is proven, no harm is done. Yet scientists are discovering ways that highly processed foods, foods we did not evolve eating, may have alarming genetic effects.

The fact is there may never be a smoking gun with HFCS — or with the other techno-foods like GMOs, for that matter. Science might only ever be able to suggest second- or even third-order effects from consuming these substances. As the food industry loves to remind us: No one is dropping dead from acute HFCS poisoning.

Yet, as the authors of a recent study on the links between endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and obesity and diabetes observed, it is all but impossible to prove a direct link between chemicals that affect us through chronic, low-level exposure and the health effects they are thought to cause.

Not only is it unethical to construct experiments designed to make humans sick, but the complexity of human metabolism and the tens of thousands of chemicals that we are routinely exposed to complicate the picture beyond science’s ability to deconstruct.

So we’re left with suggestive research that always “requires further study.” And whatever the results, it will likely never be enough to satisfy the food industry — nor the government regulators they lobby. The data will always seem insufficient to justify a ban. An alternative is to move toward a more aggressive use of the “precautionary principle,” as they have in Europe. But that would definitely increase government regulation — and that just isn’t an option in 21st century America.

What the industry is really concerned about, however, is branding. In fact, two years ago the Corn Refiners Association came up with the brilliant idea of dropping high fructose and simply referring to HFCS as “corn sugar.” They filed a name-change petition with the FDA as required by law and figured they were home free. Not so. In fact, the public health community has stepped up in force. USA Today reported just this week that a coalition of 100 consumer groups, including the National Consumers League, Consumers Union, and the Consumer Federation of America, is demanding that the FDA deny the Corn Refiners petition since, as the article puts it, “the new name is just a ploy to confuse consumers who want to avoid it.”

The reporter spent a bit of time explaining that HFCS and table sugar are substantially the same — even quoting nutritionist Marion Nestle, who said: “This isn’t about science, this is about people eating too much sugar.” Nestle went on to say that anything the industry does to hide the sweeteners in processed food is a bad thing. No doubt that’s true.

But maybe, just maybe, the problem with HFCS isn’t just its ubiquity, nor the subsequent role it’s had in the obesity epidemic. Perhaps it’s also an important factor in the worst mental health epidemic of the day. Either way, it doesn’t look like we’ll be taking HFCS off the market — or out of the food kids eat — anytime soon. So if you’ll excuse me, I have some deck chairs to rearrange.

Editor’s Note: The headline originally posted with this story overstated how conclusive the findings of the study described actually are. We’ve changed it. For more of an explanation, see this post. And for another view of the autism-and-HFCS question, see this post.

Photo by Teresia.

A recent New York Times op-ed declared that sustainable meat is a “myth.” Whether pastured, small-scale, large-scale, rotationally grazed, locavore, industrialized, etc., all meat is essentially the same and none of it is sustainable. So says author James McWilliams who points, as many have, to the climate impact of livestock production.

I take issue with some of McWilliams’ figures (for example, here’s the Environmental Working Group’s explanation of pastured meat’s reduced climate footprint), but by and large I agree! Meat production at its current scale — and the scale it’s projected to reach as the developing world increases its consumption — is not sustainable. Period.

New science arises nearly every month that points to the climate impact of meat eating. This week, it’s this study out of Woods Hole that connects the effect of nitrogen fertilizer on the atmosphere (as I mentioned last week, nitrogen turns into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that was recently confirmed to be a significant source of climate change). The study concludes that, in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, we need to either cut global meat consumption or the amount of fertilizer we use in half  (we’ll have more on the study on Grist soon). In other words, save this cow or the whole planet gets it!

So while I’m with McWilliams on his main assertion, I object to some of his lesser ones. He offers an extensive scolding to locavores and advocates of pasture-raised animals for missing this larger point. But he conveniently ignores the fact that his argument has much in common with those of Michael Pollan (with his “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” mantra) and Mark Bittman (who is vegan before 6 p.m.). Both men talk and write extensively about the need to eat less meat while also changing the way we produce the meat we do eat.

Indeed, Bittman himself made that point repeatedly on a recent appearance on MSNBC’s Up with Chris show to debate pink slime — although pink slime has muddied these waters a bit. One of the other panelists on the show, Josh Barro of Forbes magazine, echoed Bittman, while also echoing the industry line that pink slime is part of the solution, rather than the problem. In his view, telling consumers about industrial food products like pink slime encourages them to “focus on the wrong things.”

Barro observed that consumers learn about pink slime and say, “Ew, that’s gross,” when the real problem is that “we’re eating too much meat.” He later said that consumers confront the realities of industrial agriculture and incorrectly ask, “Does this sound gross? And if it sounds gross then that’s a problem.”

Along those lines, host Chris Hayes opined that sausage is gross but “if you’re going to eat meat you should waste not want not, so we should distinguish between visceral revulsion and moral revulsion.” He went on to say that he sees moral revulsion being a better basis for drawing conclusions about the food system. They both make interesting points, but I would argue — since this is food we’re talking about — that it’s nearly impossible to separate the two. Because who wants to be grossed out by what you’re going to eat?

And yes, Americans are notorious for an unwillingness to eat anything but the choice cuts of meat — at least, when they know what they are. Most show little or no reluctance if it’s been ground, highly processed, and/or deep fried. But this tendency to flinch once you’ve seen the raw ingredients should not be confused with what is truly gross about pink slime — and that’s not just that it comes from the parts that would make people squeamish if they ate them straight off the animal.

No, what’s gross about pink slime is the fact that it’s a process that was developed to repurpose meat that was previously considered unfit for human consumption because of its high rate of pathogens. What they do to it is gross, yes — but it’s not the ammonia alone that’s the problem, either. It’s why they have to add ammonia that should make it unappetizing, particularly because they failed to tell us they were putting it in our burgers.

The huge error the industry made was trying to pass it off as true ground beef. In fact, the USDA whistleblower who coined the term pink slime observed that it technically fits the definition of something known as “beef-patty mix” — a meat additive. I think what kicked off the outrage wasn’t just pink slime itself (although the visceral gross-out factor is big), but the clear indication that the industry was trying to pull a fast one. We all know what ground beef is — and pink slime just isn’t ground beef.

But it’s also true that the broad use of pink slime lowered the cost of meat and resulted in fewer cows required to make a hamburger (by exactly how much and how many fewer is difficult to measure). For the record, industrial agriculture is very good at using the whole animal — the pork industry used to say they used “every part of the pig but the oink” — though this is less true in the age of diseases like Mad Cow, which have made cow and pig brains off-limits.

Because after all, if the animal is raised in an inhumane, pathogen-filled manner, eating every last ounce of it won’t solve our problems. Yes, eating meat efficiently is important — but so is eating a whole lot less of it.

In my view, the main positive impact of all of this attention pink slime has gotten is that it has made people think more critically about their meat consumption. Not that it’s enough, mind you, but it’s a start. And if it makes a few people nauseous along the way, well, I’m okay with that, too.

Photo by T.P. Martins.

When I examined the reasons agriculture often gets a pass in climate negotiations recently, I pointed to the fact that precise measurement of the climate impact of many industrial farming practices remains difficult and controversial. This is especially true when it comes to synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

The effect of excess fertilizer on our waterways gets much more attention than it does when it enters the air. And for good reason. It’s toxic to consume nitrates in your drinking water. We’re learning that agricultural overuse of fertilizer has contaminated the drinking water of whole regions of California. Meanwhile, nitrogen that runs into the ocean causes oxygen-depleted “dead zones” around the world. The dead zone in our own Gulf Of Mexico (measured every summer) keeps getting larger — last year’s was the size of New Jersey.

While we know that excess fertilizer escapes farm fields as gas, exactly how much and where it goes has largely been a mystery. But it has been a mystery worth solving, as the amount of nitrous oxide — the third most potent greenhouse gas behind carbon dioxide and methane — in the atmosphere is increasing fast. In fact, it has risen by 20 percent since the Industrial Revolution, with a good part of that increase coming in the last 50 years. For the sake of comparison, atmospheric carbon dioxide rates have increased around 40 percent in the same period. But nitrous oxide is around 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. And it’s also a major ozone-depleting chemical.

Pinpointing the cause of these nitrous emissions has been made especially difficult by the fact that every molecule of nitrous oxide looks alike. And there are so many sources — from microbes in farm fields, oceans, and natural landscapes to oceanic phenomena and human activities like rainforest destruction.

As a result, it has been impossible to know just how much is coming from fertilizer use; and Big Ag has never been made accountable. But that may have all just changed.

Now, a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found a way to “fingerprint” various sources of nitrous oxide — and they’ve determined that the accelerated increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide in the last few decades has indeed been due to synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.

The researchers accomplished this feat through a fascinating technique — using a natural “archive” of air frozen in Antarctic ice combined with an actual archive of air samples taken from a (stunningly beautiful) pollution tracking station in Tasmania, Australia.

In their analysis, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the scientists found that microbes in heavily fertilized farm fields produce nitrous oxide heavy with a particular isotope (nitrogen-14, for those keeping score at home). Their analysis also showed differences in the samples between the two sites that suggest the ability to create a geographical emissions map. As lead scientist Kristie Boering explains:

The fact that the isotopic composition of N2O shows a coherent signal in space and time is exciting, because now you have a way to differentiate agricultural N2O from natural ocean N2O from Amazon forest emissions from N2O returning from the stratosphere.

The result doesn’t just prove that overuse of fertilizer is causing climate change (it does). The Berkeley team also has, in essence, come up with a way to enforce restrictions on nitrous oxide emissions. As Boering observed: “It is a tool that, ultimately, we can use to verify whether N2O emissions by agriculture or biofuel production are in line with what they say they are.”

Until now, Big Ag has been able to pay lip service to limiting fertilizer overuse without committing to, much less accepting, new regulations. And even if producers had agreed to such limitations, it would have been impossible to know whether they’d fulfilled their promises. So while this new science doesn’t take away all the political barriers to engaging agriculture in climate change negotiations, it could make it much more possible to do so.

The Berkeley researchers fully understand that eliminating synthetic nitrogen fertilizer isn’t exactly an option. But they hope that farmers will spend more time figuring out how to use it more efficiently — and the analytical tools the researchers have developed will for the first time allow farmers to measure that efficiency precisely. Just as importantly, these tools will also enable scientists to calculate definitively the true climate impact of biofuels — a subject of great controversy to this point.

One last aspect of this research offers a compelling reason that climate advocates and farmers (along with the rest of us) need to get behind this understandably wonky issue of fertilizer efficiency. The study found that nitrous oxide — independent of its nature as a greenhouse gas — also blocks one of the atmosphere’s natural cooling processes. So, cutting nitrous oxide emissions could also enhance the atmosphere’s ability to shed warmth. Taking advantage of this phenomenon would make any carbon dioxide reductions we manage to accomplish that much more effective. You don’t see too many climate mitigation “win-wins.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we took advantage of this one?

First, the FDA announced its refusal to ban the common endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA). Then, on an unrelated note, The New York Times published a lengthy analysis of the repeated interference by the Obama White House in the FDA’s decision-making process. (The White House meddled in calorie-labeling on movie popcorn, warning labels on low-SPF sunscreen, and an ozone-deplete chemical in certain asthma inhalers.) It’s a distressing pattern of political involvement in science that Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

But it gets worse. Or better if you’re Monsanto. The deadline for the FDA to respond to the Just Label It petition for genetically modified food labeling arrived last week. And, as required by law, the agency responded. Sort of. It supplied a letter to the group behind the petition that said, essentially, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety — one of the groups involved with the Just Label It campaign — told the Chicago Tribune the letter stated that the agency had “not made a decision yet and when they did they would let us know.” The FDA also suggested the group keep an eye out for the first signs of frost in hell. (Okay, I made that last part up.)

The Just Label It campaign had reason to be a bit optimistic. Past surveys have indicated around 90 percent of Americans want GMO labels on food, and Just Label It’s own survey found similar results. The group also collected signatures from 1 million Americans — an undeniable sign that the public broadly supports, even demands, labels.

But it looks like the FDA is refusing to see it that way. In a footnote to its mild response, the FDA observed that a mere 394 comments were submitted by Just Label It, rather than the million the organization claimed. That’s no small disagreement. The difference boils down to way the FDA handles submissions. The main Just Label It petition was submitted as a single document, or docket, and the FDA is choosing to count it as one comment (the other 393 comments come from individuals who contacted the agency separately, i.e. not through the Just Label It site).

As explained by the Chicago Tribune, the FDA doesn’t care “if 35,000 people … sign their name to the same form letter” or 1 million people do. Either way, it counts as a single comment in its system. Personally, I don’t recall the FDA (or any other agency for that matter) understating the number of comments or respondents on a submitted petition like this before. Needless to say, the Just Label It (JLI) folks are not pleased. The Tribune article reads:

“This is the problem with the very un-friendly regulations.gov site,” said Sue McGovern, spokesperson for the Just Label It campaign, in a statement. “It will not allow groups like Just Label It to direct individual comments from our site into theirs.

“It would be great if FDA would update their system to allow for more transparency by making a way for us to send in individual comments from our site so they would be visible to all without a [Freedom of Information Act request],” she said.

FDA spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey said the rules are the same for all citizens petitions to the FDA, also called dockets.

“Because that’s the case for all dockets,” she said, “it’s impossible for me to compare the claim of 1 million comments to other dockets — especially without knowing how JLI is defining a ‘comment.’”

Really, FDA? What’s to compare? One million people told you in no uncertain terms that they want GMO labels and your response is, “Not by our count.”

To add to the confusion, and perhaps raise one’s eyebrows a bit further, Just Label It’s spokespeople have contended on the campaign’s blog that its own million response should count, even by the FDA’s standard process:

[T]he Just Label It Coalition submitted a record-breaking 1,149,967 comments to the FDA’s regulations.gov site by midnight on March 27th, the final date comments were accepted.  It took only 180 days for this record-breaking amount of comments to be generated on the GMO labeling petition, (Docket # FDA 2011-P-0723-001/CP), which had been filed in October 2011 …

Another Center for Food Safety spokesperson involved in the process said, “Submitting gathered signatures and uploading them to regulations.gov together has been common practice as long as the public has been able to submit electronic comments.” It sure looks like the FDA is trying to weasel out of admitting the GM labeling effort was the largest such campaign ever.

I asked NYU nutrition professor and author Marion Nestle if she could shed any light on the situation, and here’s what she had to say: “I’m pretty sure I’ve read FDA Federal Register notices in response to comments in which they note that one petition was filed from x organization with x number of signatures. If they want to label [GMOs], they will use it as evidence. If not, they won’t.”

At the moment, there’s no evidence that the White House was involved in fudging the numbers on the Just Label It petition. But last year they did force the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency charged with regulating the genetically modified foods themselves, to approve unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa against the wishes of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. And that kind of interference sends a clear message — so FDA officials don’t need a phone call from the White House to tell them which way the wind blows on GMO foods.

This is just one more example of FDA foot-dragging on public health issues related to the food system. It pairs nicely with the agency’s recent [in]action on antibiotics in livestock. That’s not to say the FDA never acts decisively. Small family farms selling raw milk and making raw cheese? The FDA is all over that! They will crush those raw milk freaks like bugs to protect the dozens of people who might get sick.

But the hundreds of millions of Americans whose health is threatened by the rise of resistant bacteria in industrial meat? Or the million who would at least like to know when there are genetically modified ingredients in their food? Go file a new docket and they’ll get back to you!

I would suggest people look to their elected representative for help, but our leaders seem far more committed to standing up for oppressed corporations. Or perhaps to the courts, but our judges seem happier parroting Tea Party talking points. Sigh. It’s getting all but impossible to find government officials who seem even remotely interested in serving the people. Where do I submit a docket for that?

UPDATE:

On April 5, Just Label It posted the response it received from the FDA regarding the million signatures. The FDA denies “deleting” any signatures (it was rumored briefly they had) and assured Just Label It that all signatures and comments are retained in their docket system. It’s worth noting, of course, that the original Chicago Tribune article where the FDA spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey claimed the petition only received 394 comments, wasn’t about deletion but rather about whether the FDA was willing to acknowledge the breadth of support for the Just Label It petition. To my mind, the fact that the FDA felt the need to make a further comment is a sign that they realize it was a mistake to mischaracterize the situation they way they did.

At any rate, Just Label It concluded with this observation:

The bigger question of course is do these one million commenters matter? We can without hesitation tell you an enthusiastic “YES.” … We can tell you from our experience in recent months, once we reached half a million people the media and officials in DC started to listen and doors were opened. Senior leaders at the White House, USDA, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, have all been briefed on the campaign to label GE foods and are following the developments and the number of signatures closely.

Will the Tea Party GOP take farm policy back to 1949 by refusing to pass a farm bill before September?

It’s no secret that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party would like nothing more than to send Americans back in time. Given their recent attempts at banning contraception, we might think that digging up a DeLorean or getting Mr. Peabody to dust off his Way Back Machine were perhaps their best shots at it. But it now appears that the House GOP may have discovered an easier way — the 2012 Farm Bill.

Where are we going? Back to the great year of 1949. Ah, 1949. The Yanks beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series (on their way to five straight World Series victories) while Hedy Lamarr ruled the box office in the thrilling epic Samson & Delilah. It was also the year William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature. As for America, its population, at just under 150 million, was less than half of what it is today. The Interstate Highway System didn’t even exist yet.

In 1949, approximately 15 percent of Americans lived on farms and almost 10 percent still worked in agriculture overseen by 5 million farmers (compared to less than a million today).

It was also the year Congress passed the Agricultural Act of 1949, the only piece of “permanent legislation” when it comes to farm subsides. You see, the farm bill gets adjusted and reauthorized every five years, but virtually all the programs and subsidies within it expire at the end of each five-year period. The provisions of the 1949 act never do.

And so, should Congress pass neither a new farm bill nor an extension of the “current” one by the end of September, then all the subsidies and programs that exist, from crop insurance, to direct payments to conservation programs, would disappear. The entire agricultural support system would revert to a version constructed for a very different America — a system that may not even be workable in today’s far more complex economy.

This, by the way, has always been considered an inconceivable event. The last three farm bills — 1996, 2002, 2007 — were delayed for various reasons but Congress always managed to pass one-year extensions of the previous bills with no real debate.

However, the House GOP’s inability to pass a federal transportation bill — the bill that sends billions in dollars to states to build and maintain roads, bridges, and public transit, and is so larded with goodies that it’s usually one of easiest laws to pass — suggests that the legislative rules of engagement may have changed.

The concern with the farm bill, as explained to me by Ferd Hoefner, the policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), is that GOP House members may balk at passing an extension if they’re convinced this year’s version isn’t sufficiently draconian. As Hoefner put it, they could say, “let’s have a showdown.” No big cuts equals no extension.

Making matters much worse, was last week’s release of the House GOP budget plan. Not content with the proposed $23 billion in farm subsidy cuts, GOP members want to cut $34 billion over the next 10 years. In addition, the House budget would cap crop insurance payments — not necessarily a bad idea since there is currently no maximum payout farmers can receive — a total non-starter with farm state representatives.

But the House budget saves its most significant “reform” for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka food stamps). Should the House GOP get its way, food stamps would be converted to a block grant program and have its spending capped — thereby saving $123 billion over the next decade. What that means in practice is that states could run out of money to help the hungry if they go over an annual limit. (Food stamps currently rise to meet the need based on a set of eligibility rules.) Should states spend the money too quickly in a given year due to an increase in food insecurity, food stamp funding would dry up. After that, too bad! Let them eat cake! It’s a perfect companion to the House GOP’s massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

It will also never happen. The budget is more of a political document than a legislative blueprint. However, there are dozens of Tea Party representatives who will treat this proposal as Gospel as they seek to cut whatever aspect of the welfare state they can.

Meanwhile, Hoefner explained recently in a blog post on the NSAC website that the House GOP threw another wrench into the Farm Bill legislative process. It wants to pass a “spending cuts only” version of the farm bill by April 27. Besides being a difficult task based on timing along, it’s also in direct conflict with the “normal” Farm Bill process that’s currently underway. After all, the Senate is hard at work on a full Farm Bill – and has no intention of passing a cuts-only version. The House GOP’s maneuver thus threatens to derail the Farm Bill entirely. Hoefner says:

With two very different processes in the two chambers, it is anyone’s guess as to how this whole thing plays out.  It is like two trains heading down two different parallel, non-intersecting tracks.  Whether a train can jump the tracks and actually get us to a 2012 Farm Bill will take a great deal of legislative ingenuity.

Suddenly, it looks like an extension is the only option. But given the extreme positions the House GOP is taking on farm policy and their willingness to ignore typical congressional procedure, it’s entirely conceivable that they will refuse an extension outright. Why would they extend a Farm Bill they believe to be a deficit-fueling giveaway to the undeserving poor and overcompensated farmers?

And if they do refuse, that would leave us, come October when the Farm Bill officially expires, with 1949’s farm policy.

What would that look like? Well, the 1949 law was built almost entirely around loans to farmers, with loan amounts based on a percentage of past prices for a particular commodity. But the fact is, no one’s quite sure how it would work. According to Hoefner, the USDA has several experts at the agency trying to figure out what a “snapback” to the 1949 law would mean.

And that’s because the farm support system has since replaced loans with subsidies. These days it’s all about government payments and Hoefner’s understanding is that any attempt to reinstate the loan-based system would result in a system that could be as generous to commodity farmers as the current one. However, Hoefner speculates that restoring the old system would be very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish.

It’s not all bad news, though! I noticed a provision in an amendment to the 1949 law that established farmer-owned reserves for wheat. Some advocates, like the National Farmers Union, believe such programs — basically a stockpile of a particular commodity crop that the farmer deposits to or draws down based on market prices — should be the basis for US farm policy going forward.

In theory, it would be a great way to protect farmers from price volatility while reducing the cost to taxpayers since farmers would be increasing or decreasing the market supply of a commodity, thereby affecting the price. Since the farmer would keep the profit from these transactions, there would be less need for government payments. The particular program in the 1949 bill was phased out when market-based reforms began to dominate farm policy starting in the mid-nineties. But it will come roaring back if the House GOP decides to pull the trigger on its farm bill hostage.

Will any of this come to pass? Not in a sane world. But as of right now, I’m not prepared to bet against the crazy when it comes to congressional Republicans.