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| Upcoming Dates |
October 26, 2016:
CGFA and NGFA Joint Grain Safety Seminar
DoubleTree, Fresno, CA
2017
January 11-12, 2017
Grain & Feed Industry Conference
Embassy Suites, Monterey Bay, CA
April 26-29, 2017
CGFA Annual Convention
Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa & Casino
May 10 - 11, 2017:
California Animal Nutrition Conference (CANC)
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Benefits of Belonging to CGFA
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- State & Federal Legislative Advocacy
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AFBF, NMPF Ask Congress for Money to Aid Dairy Farmers Hit by World Milk Surplus, Low Exports
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Congress should pony up as much as $100-150 million to buy surplus cheese clogging the market as a means to assist dairy farmers negatively impacted by a global glut of milk, says the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), echoing an earlier sentiment from the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).
The first cheese purchase option -- $50 million to buy 28 million pounds of cheese - was floated by AFBF in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack last week, and NMPF followed up with its own letter to Vilsack this week and the $100-150-mllion recommendation. That amount of spending could take up to 90 million pounds of surplus cheese off the market, pushing domestic farm prices for milk as much as 16 cents per hundredweight higher over the next 12 months.
NMPF said it was urging Vilsack "to examine all available avenues to provide assistance," including "the direct purchase and distribution of cheese to the needy, as well as other assistance that could be provided through the Farm Service Agency (FSA), the Food & Nutrition Service (FNS), the Commodity Credit Corp. (CCC) and other program authorities."
AFBF's letter said the U.S. all-milk price fell to $14.50 a hundredweight in May, the lowest price since 2009. For 2016, USDA says the price should average $15.70 a hundredweight, 35% less than 2014 and the second lowest price point in 10 years.
At the same time, on-farm dairy cash receipts crashed $16 billion from their record level set in 2014. Falling milk prices are attributed to world overproduction, which slashed U.S. milk exports, but domestic dairy herd expansion based on 2014 market signals is also to blame. AFBF says without extraordinary action soon, dairies will start going out of business, reminding Vilsack that 1,225 dairies - most with fewer than 200 cows - shut down in 2015.
And while prices are dropping and markets are drying up, U.S. producers aren't on board the new Margin Protection Program (MPP) at levels USDA had hoped for. Last year, AFBF said, only about 25,000 of the 45,000 U.S. dairy producers bought MPP, which pays on the difference between milk prices and feed costs based on coverage options bought by farmers, and only 23,000 enrolled this year, and most of those were for catastrophic coverage only.
USDA heard in July from 61 bipartisan members of Congress that dairy producers need emergency help because they're not getting the income protection they hoped from the new MPP program, born in the 2014 Farm Bill to replace a number of long-time dairy income support programs. Vilsack says he's "evaluating all options," and those options include the AFBF notion of surplus product purchases, as well as manipulating the MPP program a bit to forestall a call for a wholesale rewrite.
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FDA GRAS Clarification Has Critics Up in Arms
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FDA last week released its final rule detailing how a much-misunderstood food and feed ingredient approval process is supposed to work, and the so-called "clarification" has consumer groups and others up in arms over the agency's "missed opportunity."
At issue is a process whereby an ingredient used in human or animal food is deemed to be "generally recognized as safe (GRAS)." If an ingredient is GRAS, a food additive petition is unnecessary for its use, and FDA doesn't have to formally approve the ingredient before it's used. Companies gain GRAS status for an ingredient by conducting a GRAS assessment using a panel of experts and a global literature search, which then results in either the immediate use of the ingredient ("self-affirmation") or submission of a GRAS "affirmation" petition to FDA before use. FDA doesn't approve the GRAS petition, but rather sends the company a letter of "no further questions."
The rulemaking, which comes at the end of lengthy federal legal battles over the process, lays out what a company needs to do to make a GRAS determination of an ingredient's safety. The new rule changes what had been a voluntary "affirmation" process into a voluntary "notification" process." What's required in the notification process is detailed in the rule, but clarifies how a company is to conduct the required safety determination and prepare the notification paperwork for FDA. The rulemaking can be found at www.fda.gov
Most critics of the FDA action say it effectively changes nothing, rather it locks in an unworkable system. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says the agency's rulemaking is "a lost opportunity to close a widely abused loophole that allows chemicals to be approved for use in food with no notification or review by FDA." Consumer Reports says the agency "missed a major opportunity to clean up the food system," adding the rulemaking "fails consumers."
Sen. Ed Markey (D, MA) said he's not convinced FDA has done a good thing. He's going to study whether legislation to strengthen the GRAS process is needed, particularly when it comes to human food additives.
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California Legislative Report
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By Dennis Albiani, Legislative Advocate
Critical Legislation Nears Final Votes
There are several high profile pieces of legislation that will be coming before both houses of the Legislature over the next two weeks before they adjourn on August 31st. Below is a discussion of some of the priority bills.
Labor
AB 1066 (Lorena Gonzalez) would change the current 10 hours per day overtime threshold for agricultural workers replacing it with overtime pay after 8 hours in a work day or 40 hours in a work week after a four-year phase-in period beginning January 1, 2017. The legislation was amended this week providing additional time for ag employers with less than 25 employees to have an additional 3 years to comply. This amendment was clearly aimed at specific Senators that have concerns with the legislation. The bill is likely to come up on the Senate floor on Monday, August 22 and the Assembly floor late next week.
SB 654 (Jackson) this legislation amends the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) making it an unfair employment practice for an employer of ten or more employees who would not otherwise be covered by either the federal Family and Medical Leave Act or the California Family Rights Act to fail to provide at least 12 weeks of job-protected leave for child birth, adoption, or foster care placement. A prior bill failed passage in committee but this measure has been resurrected through a gut-and-amend procedure.
SB 1167 (Connie Leyva) would direct Cal/OSHA to propose a regulation on heat illness for indoor work environments to the Cal/OSHA Standards Board. It requires that the proposed standard should meet or exceed the protections included in the existing Heat Illness Prevention standard which applies to outdoor employers, like agriculture, construction and landscaping.
Climate Legislation
For the entire two year legislative session, legislation mandating the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions has been debated. The administration has identified an additional 40% reductions target below 1990 emissions level and have also indicated that they do not need legislative authority to go beyond the current AB 32 mandates.
The lead bill, SB 32 (Fran Pavley) would extend the state's current greenhouse gas (GHG) program to 2030. SB 32 would establish a new target of 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 with no oversight by the Legislature and unfettered authority by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to achieve the new GHG reduction goal. It also adds short-lived climate pollutants which would mandate draconian GHG reductions targeted at livestock operations under the auspices of regulating "short lived climate pollutants" which includes methane.
AB 197 (Eduardo Garcia) is intended to create the semblance of regulatory accountability and legislative oversight regarding the state's current and potential post-2020 climate change program. AB 197 was double-joined with SB 32 (Fran Pavley) that seeks to extend the state's current program from 2020 to 2030. Both bills must be signed by the Governor to become enacted. AB 197 creates a six-member Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies that has no authority except to make recommendations to the legislature regarding climate change policy. The regulatory authority would remain with the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The measure also adds two legislators as non-voting ex officio members to CARB which provides no further oversight as any interested legislator can now attend a CARB meeting or workshop and make comments but cannot vote.
SB 1383 (Ricardo Lara) would allow the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to regulate methane emissions from livestock operations based on a draft plan developed by CARB that sets goals for methane emission reductions that will greatly impact livestock operations and dairies. At the request of the Senator and administration, the livestock industry is engaging in productive discussions attempted to balance funding for regulatory compliance and actions such as methane digesters and other control technologies.
Call Before You Dig Bill Moving Forward
A two year effort to clarify rules governing subsurface excavations is coming to a head in SB 661 (Jerry Hill). The bill will be undergoing additional amendments but agreement on principle between utilities, contractors and agriculture is nearing. If an excavator complied with all pre-excavation notification requirements and procedures, they would not be liable for replacement costs or other expenses arising from damage to a subsurface installation due to an inaccurate field mark by an operator.
The bill creates a new state Board within the Office of the State Fire Marshall. The new California Underground Facilities Safe Excavation Board would have authority over private landowners, like agriculture, to enforce all provisions related to the rules, including the authority to impose financial penalties for violations. Several other agricultural organizations have identified concerns including the creation of the board and its potential reach over agricultural activities, the source of funding, lack of any recognition of the lands which have no infrastructure on them and absence of any increased responsibilities by the infrastructure owners. Below is a discussion of the issues pending agreement.
- Establishes an "area of continual excavation" ticket of one year in length for areas such in which excavation is the business of the property, including agriculture and flood control facilities. Directs the California Underground Facilities Safe Excavation Board to determine through regulation how to address an "area of continual excavation" ticket renewal in areas in which no subsurface installations are present.
- Prohibits the regional notification centers from charging an excavator to provide a ticket.
- States the Contractor's State License Board is the enforcement entity for a telephone corporation, when the telephone corporation is acting as a contractor.
- Provides that one appointee by the Governor to the California Underground Facilities Safe Excavation Board shall have an agricultural background.
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Obama Readies Final Clean Air Rulemaking
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With less than six months left in his administration, President Obama is moving to finalize the last rules aimed at cleaning the air and mitigating climate change when a final rule locking in new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fuel efficiency standards on large trucks goes into effect next week.
Proposed a year ago, the rule is part two of an EPA-Department of Transportation (DOT) effort to cut emissions and increase fuel efficiency for heavy-duty trucks built after 2018. The White House says semi-trailer trucks are responsible for as much as 20% of all GHG emissions and oil consumption, while representing less than 5% of the vehicles on the road.
The administration said the rulemaking will allow it to join with Mexico and Canada in meeting a 50% clean energy goal for North America by 2025. While Mexico has yet to publish its own rules, the U.S. is moving to harmonize its new rule with those already on the books in Canada.
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AFIA Opens Registration for Webinar Series on FSMA
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Do you need to get your employees up to speed on the requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act? Do you know manufacturers, suppliers or customers that could benefit from free FSMA education? The American Feed Industry Association invites you to participate in these webinars and share the information with your colleagues.
The American Feed Industry Association will conduct four webinars in conjunction with Feedstuffs, covering the details of FSMA. Each webinar is two-and-a-half hours long, which allows plenty of time for questions and answers. The first three webinars will build upon each other and the forth webinar focuses on topics related to pet food and pet food ingredients. Webinar speakers include experts from AFIA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
FSMA was signed into law on Jan. 4, 2011, and provides FDA with sweeping new authorities and requirements. The law was a bipartisan supported bill backed by the food and feed industries. It allows FDA to promulgate new rules for preventive controls, develop performance standards, create new administrative detention rules, provides authority for mandatory recall of adulterated products and provides authority for hiring more than 4,000 new field staff among other provisions.
These webinars are free for the entire industry. Please encourage your customers and suppliers to attend! Registration is now open here.
Webinar No. 1 is Tuesday, Aug. 30, from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET: The topics covered during this webinar are an overview of FMSA, a history of how this rule came about and who is covered. In addition, key definitions and dates of implementation are in the discussion. An in-depth review of current good manufacturing practices: building the basics and how to develop a recall plan are also on the agenda. This webinar is co-sponsored by Feed Energy and Perdue Agribusiness.
Webinar No. 2 is Tuesday, Sept. 6, from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET: The topics covered during this webinar are a review of how to complete an animal food safety plan including the development of a hazard analysis, implementation of preventive controls and the role CGMPs can play to mitigate risks. Additional topics include how to develop an effective supply-chain program. This webinar is sponsored by Cargill Animal Nutrition.
Webinar No. 3 is Tuesday, Sept. 20, from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET: The topics covered during this webinar are records, records and more records! What types of records are required for FSMA compliance and specifically for CGMPs, the animal food safety plan and a company's supply-chain plan. Animal food facilities also need to prepare for three other FSMA rules--Foreign Supplier Verification Program, Third-party Certification and Sanitary Safe Food Transportation Rule. This webinar covers the highlights of these additional rules. This webinar is co-sponsored by Feed Energy, Land O'Lakes and Purina Animal Nutrition.
Webinar No. 4 is Tuesday, Sept. 27, from 2:00 - 4:30 p.m. ET: This webinar specifically looks at FSMA from the perspective of pet food and pet food ingredient manufacturing and focuses on hazards requiring preventive controls. This webinar is co-sponsored by Perdue Agribusiness and Trouw Nutrition USA.
Thank you to sponsors:
Cargill Animal Nutrition, Perdue AgriBusiness, Feed Energy Company, Trouw Nutrition USA,
Land O'Lakes and Purina Animal Nutrition
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White House Tells Congress: Get Ready for TPP
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The Obama administration took the next procedural step this week in placing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade accord in front of Congress. The U.S. Special Trade Representative (USTR) posted to its website "a draft statement of administrative action," a move required by the trade promotion authority law enacted in 2015. While the political winds of both parties continue to swirl around and against TPP, the USTR action in making public a 36-page plan details TPP compliance and what the White House will pack into the formal TPP implementing legislation, putting Congress on notice of what other federal law changes may be necessary if TPP is approved. The earliest the formal implementing bill can be sent to Capitol Hill is 30 days after the August 11 publication of the administrative plan. The White House has not said when it will send the TPP implementing package to Congress.
On the Hill, leaders of both parties and both chambers say TPP will not get floor time during this Congress, including the post-election lame duck session. Both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump oppose congressional action on TPP this year.
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Trump Names Ag Advisory Committee, Marcus Rust Onboard
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GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump late last week finally named a 65-member Agriculture Advisory Committee, featuring current members of Congress, current and former governors, state ag department heads, state legislators, farmers and ranchers, names familiar from previous Republican administrations and the "official cowboy poet of Texas." However, the promised "major policy announcement" didn't materialize.
The panel is chaired by Nebraska Angus breeder and businessman Charles Herbster, and a major advisory committee player will be Sam Clovis, national chief policy advisor to the Trump campaign. The committee will feature an as-yet-unnamed eight-member executive board. That board will "convene on a regular basis," but no schedule was given.
Members of Congress on the panel are Sen. Pat Roberts (KS), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee - the only member of the Senate - and Rep. Mike Conaway (TX), chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Rep. Bob Aderholt (AL), chair of House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on USDA/FDA, is a member, along with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA), a member and former chair of the ag committee and the current chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Rodney Davis (IL), chair of the ag committee's subcommittee on biotechnology, horticulture and research, is also on the advisory panel.
Sitting governors on the committee are Terry Branstad (IA), Sam Brownback (KS), Jack Dalrymple (ND), Dennis Daugaard (SD), Mary Fallin (OK) and Pete Ricketts (NE). Former governors are Jim Gilmore (VA), Dave Heineman (NE), Sonny Perdue (GA) and former presidential nominee candidate Rick Perry (TX).
Also named to the panel are the sitting commissioners/secretaries of agriculture in Georgia, Mississippi, Arizona, Texas, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Maine, along with a former department of food and agriculture secretary of California. Former and current state legislators - many of them chairs of agriculture and related committees - include individuals from Oklahoma, Michigan, Wyoming, North Carolina, Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota and Georgia.
Former Republican administration appointees include former Agriculture Secretary John Block (Reagan); former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner (Bush), now president of the National Association of Farmer Cooperatives, and Jim Moseley (Bush), former deputy secretary of agriculture and ag liaison to EPA, now co-chair of AGree, an ag policy think tank in Washington, DC, and an Indiana family swine and crop producer.
Other farmers and ranchers joining the committee are Illinois rancher Steve Foglesong, former president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (NCBA); Helen Groves, Texas rancher and daughter of Robert Kleberg of the King Ranch; Ron Heck, Iowa farmer and former president of the American Soybean Assn. (ASA); John Kautz, California wine producer; Charlotte Kelly, Tennessee cotton grower and processor; dairy producer Mike McCloskey, chief executive officer of Indiana's Fair Oaks Farms; Illinois farmer Garry Neimeyer, former president of the National Corn Growers Assn. (NCGA); Marcus Rust, chief executive of Indiana egg producer Rose Acre Farms; Kip Tom, chief executive of Tom Farms LLC, billed by the campaign as "the largest agri-business farm operator in Indiana;" Johnny Trotter, chief executive of Texas feedlot BarG, Steve Wellman, a Nebraska soybean farmer and former president of ASA, and Leslie Rutledge, the current Arkansas attorney general who is married to a soybean producer.
Industry representatives on the advisory panel are Rebeckah Adcock, CropLife America; Bob Goodale, former chief executive of Harris Teeter supermarkets; Tsosie Lewis, former chief executive of the Navaho Nation's Agricultural Products Industries; Forrest Lucas, Lucas Oil and main funder for Protect the Harvest, a Missouri anti-animal rights group; Brian Klippenstein, executive of Protect the Harvest and formerly a senior staffer to retired Sen. Kit Bond (MO); Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers; Ted McKinney, formerly of Elanco Animal Health, and Bruce Rastetter, Summit Ag Group, who hosted the first presidential debate in Iowa, and who some in the party believe is Trump's current first choice to be secretary of agriculture if Trump wins.Rural radio and TV host Red Steagall is the official cowboy poet of Texas.
The Trump campaign's official announcement and the full membership roster can be found here.
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HSLF Calls Trump Advisory Committee "Rogues Gallery"
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A "veritable rogues' gallery of anti-animal crusaders" is how the Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF), the lobbying arm of the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), described the Trump campaign's Agriculture Advisory Committee.
"The group boasts a wealthy funder of an anti-animal Super PAC, politicians who sponsored state 'ag gag' measures and opposed the most modest animal welfare bills, and leaders of the factory farming industry," said HSLF head David Markarian in a blog post this week. "It's an unmistakable signal from the Trump campaign that he will be an opponent of animal welfare - a show of overt hostility toward the cause of animal protection..." The August 17 blog can be found here: http://blog.hslf.org/ Markarian singled out Forrest Lucas, head of Lucas Oil, for HSLF vitriol. "A peevish advocate of trophy hunting, puppy mills and big agribusiness, Lucas has never met a case of animal exploitation he couldn't defend." Lucas is a major contributor to a Missouri group called Protect the Harvest, which campaigns against animal rights groups. The organization's executive director, Brian Klippenstein, a former senior staffer to retired Sen. Kit Bond (R, MO), is also part of the Trump advisory group.
Also on the list of people HSUS/HSLF doesn't like is former Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, described as "one of the nation's most ardent anti-animal welfare governors." Markarian went so far as to say, "He's also been a horrid demagogue in defending factory farming, saying that he was going to 'kick HSUS's ass'out of the state and unapologetically defending battery cages and gestation crates."
After taking shots at a few more governors, many of the state legislators on the Trump advisory group, and most of the farmers and ranchers named, Markarian says, "Just imagine a concentration of anti-animal hardliners in the next administration unwinding so much of that progress (on key HSUS issues), repealing dozens of Obama administration rulemaking actions for animals, and giving the keys of the USDA to the most vitriolic, extreme voices in animal welfare. It's a frightening thought..."
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House Homeland Security Hearing Hears Atrazine, Fertilizer Storage New Poster Kids for Overreach
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EPA's mishandling of its risk assessment on the herbicide atrazine and the Labor Department's move to get rid of an agriculture exemption for fertilizer storage rules are the new, best examples of administrative regulatory overreach, a House Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee field hearing in Dubuque, Iowa, revealed this week.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R, IA) told the hearing, entitled "From Crops to Craft Beer: Federal Regulation's Impact on America's Food & Agriculture," that when it comes to the atrazine risk assessment, EPA's own Science Advisory Panel (SAP) said the studies the agency were relying upon as the basis for alleged ecological risk were flawed. "It appears the administration may again be cherry-picking the data they find most convenient to support their overreach," Ernst said.
Ernst, said "this kind of thing can only happen in the DC bubble," then went after OSHA's administrative decision to end a long-time exemption for fertilizer retailers from the Process Safety Management (PSM) anhydrous ammonia storage rules. She said the agency shift without public input will cost small businesses more than they can afford and force some out of business. OSHA's recent decision to scrap its administrative decision in favor of a formal rulemaking - after lawmakers complained - is too little too late, Ernst said, particularly given the agency's announcement it will continue to enforce the original decision until the rulemaking is complete.
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EPA IG Says Agency Must Study Biofuel Enviromental Impact as Law Requires
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Saying the agency did not meet its legal responsibilities, EPA's Inspector General (IG) this week said EPA must study the environmental impacts of various biofuels as Congress directed, and the agency said it will begin those studies soon.
The "legal responsibilities" unmet by EPA are required under the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007, which requires the agency to complete a set of studies on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and its impact on the environment and deliver those studies to Congress and others in the administration. Ethanol has not been studied by EPA since 2010, the report said, and a report to Congress on the environmental and conservation impact of the RFS, due in 2013, was never delivered even though the law requires the report to be updated every three years.
EPA said it will provide a new report to Congress by the end of 2017, and will "develop or identify" how to evaluate whether updates on the GHG threshold are needed by September, 2018. A so-called "anti-backsliding" report - studying whether biofuels emissions worsen other environmental challenges - and how to address biofuels' emissions will not happen until 2024, with the agency explaining it will take that long to plan, carry out, and pay for the study. The congressional deadline is 2022.
"Not having required reporting and studies impedes EPA's ability to identify, consider, mitigate and make policy makers aware of any adverse effect of renewable fuels," the IG said in its report. The agency, the IG reported, failed to create a process to review lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for various biofuels, particularly corn ethanol.
EPA blamed budget considerations and "competing research priorities," telling the IG that the science of lifecycle GHG emissions for ethanol "has not changed enough...to warrant revisiting its prior determinations for the 2010 fuel sources." The agency also said the law allows most ethanol producers to avoid an issue update.
Opponents of corn ethanol, including environmental groups, the petroleum industry and a big part of animal agriculture, contend the reduction in GHG emissions attributed to ethanol is much lower than producers claim once land and water use, among other factors, are considered.
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