Nothing Sunny About Sunny-side Up

Concealing price-fixing and animal cruelty with an "animal welfare program"? Just another day of duplicity at the egg factory

PLUS: Governor Schwarzenegger signs landmark California egg bill, affecting nation's egg producers

Land O'Lakes has agreed pay $25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the multi-billion dollar agricultural cooperative conspired with farmers to fix egg prices, according to Reuters, covering a period of egg industry abuse that dates back to at least 2000.

According to United Egg Producers (UEP), the nation's biggest egg trade association, every year about 80 billion eggs are produced in the United States, with the average American consuming 246 of them.

Ninety-seven percent of America's hens spend their entire, miserable lives in 7"x7" wired battery cages. And those that aren't in cages aren't faring much better. Unfortunately, the term "cage-free" has no legal meaning. It's merely a euphemism for "high-density floor confinement."

The term "free-range," on the other hand, is regulated by the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA). But the term is almost meaningless. All farmers have to do to put that label on their eggs is to abide by one simple, open-ended and non-descript USDA rule: "Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside."

The USDA doesn't stipulate anything more. No minimum size for the outside space. No minimum time spent outside. No actual time outside is necessary -- just "access." No specification for the kind of surface that the birds can access in this vague "outside" area.

In 2008, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTP) alleging that the member corporations of the UEP created an animal welfare program to cover up "what strongly appears to be a national price-fixing scheme that drove the price of eggs to historic highs, inflating agribusiness company profits to never-before-seen levels. In the state of Ohio alone, egg prices shot up 77 percent in 2007."

Animal welfare program? Apparently the UEP members are nothing if not ironic.

Following the HSUS filing, egg buyers filed 21 class action lawsuits alleging federal antitrust law violations against UEP and its members, including 13 of America’s largest egg factory farmers: Rose Acre Farms, Cal-Maine, Ohio Fresh Eggs, Michael Foods, Land O’Lakes, NuCal and Moark.

According to an HSUS statement, "egg industry leaders squeeze birds into small cages, and then squeeze American consumers through anti-competitive practices, while falsely and brazenly representing themselves as defenders of American consumers against the modest reform efforts of animal advocates. That’s the very definition of duplicity."

On July 6, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark egg bill (A.B 1437) that affects egg producers across the country. The new law stipulates that all eggs sold in California must come from "hens able to stand up, fully extend their limbs, lie down and fully extend their wings without touching each other or the sides of cages," according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Californians have made it clear that they don't want unsafe eggs from hens crammed into cages, and we applaud the Legislature and governor for heeding this call," Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle said in a statement.

Between the settlements and the new legislation, positive changes in the lives of hens -- albeit modest -- reveal that more and more Americans aren't content to go easy on just how that over-easy got to their plates.

image: industrial chicken coop with battery cages (ITamar K.)

Michael Pollan Should Be the Next Secretary of Agriculture

America's food system is broken. This champion of sustainable agriculture has the best ideas for fixing it

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) deals with a lot more than just safely growing plants and raising animals for food. It rules over the Forest Service (which manages almost 300,000 square miles of national land), the Food Stamp Program (which provides food for low-income citizens) and the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (which gives advice to farmers).

The USDA is run by the United States Secretary of Agriculture -- currently Ed Schafer, who assumed office in January, just days before a scandal broke following an investigation by the Humane Society into downed cows from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company entering the food supply.

And now, President-elect Obama has a powerful decision in his hands: Who should be the new agriculture secretary?

It's a very big job. In addition to establishing farm policies, enforcing agriculture laws and ensuring a safe food supply, this person is responsible for national nutrition standards, food in school lunchrooms, crop subsidies, organic labeling, disaster relief food distribution, cropland conservation and fighting hunger.

The Democratic governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, is on Obama's short list. But he supports ethanol subsidies. As the Economist notes, "America's use of corn to make ethanol biofuel, which can then be blended with petrol to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, has already driven up the price of corn. As more land is used to grow corn rather than other food crops, such as soy, their prices also rise. And since corn is used as animal feed, the price of meat goes up, too. The food supply, in other words, is being diverted to feed America's hungry cars."

The use of corn-based ethanol pleases the oil companies, as it's an additive to gasoline. Ultimately, corn-based ethanol does not help America get off its oil addiction. And it's not actually a green technology: Producing it consumes as much energy as it emits when burned.

Tom Buis, the president of the National Farms Union, is another top contender. But his focus on family farming (he said that Obama has "a rural vision"), while quite admirable, does not translate easily into desperately needed regulations on big agribusiness -- where the majority of country's current food problems lie.

Also being considered is Charles Stenholm, a 13-term House Democrat from Texas, who helped usher in the damaging Farm Bill, which gave huge subsidies to the nation's wealthiest factory farmers, awarding a whopping $2.8 million which helped corn farmers fuel American obesity through the production of corn syrup.

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a Democratic South Dakota congresswoman, is also in the running. But she's an agribusiness insider who, as a member of the House Agriculture Committee, has sent fat federal checks back to her home state and will likely be extremely cautious before championing serious farm policy reform.

Mr Obama should look outside of the political sphere for this critical position and give serious consideration to sustainable-food advocate Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," a book that traces the journey of four separate meals -- each produced through a different food-production system -- from their origins to the dinner table. A central text of the "locavore" movement, it was named by the New York Times as one of the best non-fiction books of 2006.

Mr Pollan has the correct view of America's food system: Too dependent on the burning of fossil fuels, it can't last much longer the way it is.

More importantly, Mr Pollan, who is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is aware that food exists at the nexus of three of the nation's most important issues: health care, energy independence and climate change.

In fact, Mr Pollan was approached by an Obama staffer about his insightful open letter to the President-elect about food policy, "Farmer in Chief," published last month in the New York Times.

In the letter, Mr Pollan cites that four of the top ten killers in America are caused by diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. He also reminds us that "every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact." The production and distribution of food does not necessarily have to spew millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And our food doesn't have to make us fat.

Considering President-elect Obama's mandate of change, Michael Pollan is the right choice for the next United States Secretary of Agriculture.

Warning that "the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close," Mr Pollan advocates a "sun-food agenda" that involves an entire overhaul of the food system and the development of local-based food production.

Now that's change we can believe in.

photo of Michael Pollan by Ragesoss