“Soda is the cigarettes of the 21st century,” according to the documentary film, "Fed Up," and “big sugar” and the soft drink companies are presented as the cause of the “obesity epidemic” that plagues the U.S. and many other parts of the world. I saw this film in its debut weekend and found it a compelling, if one-sided, discussion of the role that the film’s creators believe that added sugar in processed foods is playing in the fattening of America, particularly among children.

I recently attended the only scheduled North Carolina showing of the documentary film, "Farmland." The U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, who provided the financial backing to make the film, certainly got what they wanted: a 75-minute film that puts a human face on several types of farming operations spread out across all regions of the country.

The Organic Marketing Report recently released by Academics Review contains an analysis of more than 200 published academic, industry and government research reports into why consumers adopt organic product purchasing behaviors. The review concludes that:“Research studies clearly show that food safety and health concerns are the primary drivers of consumer organic purchasing. Further, research reveals that other factors, such as sustainability, environmental claims and even organic certification, do not motivate general consumers to purchase organic products in the absence of health risk claims. Research by USDA, the organic industry and independent academic organizations also confirms that the use of the USDA Organic Seal is critical to conveying confidence in organic labeling claims, which the majority of consumers mistakenly believe to mean healthier and safer food products.”

Every time I think that activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have stooped as low as they possibly could, another one manages to lower the limbo bar another notch and slide beneath it. The latest affront to rational thought was conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest when they asked for help for U.S. poultry and meat packing plant workers from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

On my recent visit to the Midwest Poultry Federation Convention, the supply of eggs for California in 2015 was a hot topic of conversation. There seems to be two schools of thought on what will happen in California after the January 1, 2015 implementation of Proposition 2. One group projects that California authorities will not be able to enforce state laws requiring that shell eggs brought into the state must meet Proposition 2 standards and this will result in a California marketplace with an ample supply of shell eggs and with California producers operating at a competitive disadvantage.

NationalPublic Radio (NPR) ran a story recently on how high organic soybean prices hadled to a shortage of organic eggs in the U.S. Biofuels policies in the U.S. andE.U. may not make sense from an environmental or energy independencestandpoint, but they have worked wonders at driving up incomes for grainfarmers.

Chick-fil-A recently announced its intention to serve only chicken products from birds raised without antibiotics in all of its restaurants within five years. The company currently serves all white meat products processed from chickens that are conventionally raised, which means they may have received antibiotics at some point in their growing cycle.

Thirtyactivist groups sent an open letter to Ron Foster, CEO, Foster Farms Inc.,asking him to release information about antibiotic use in his company’s broileroperations. A recent outbreak of human Salmonellosis has been linked toready-to-cook chicken products produced at three of Foster Farms’ facilities.

When I read the ConsumerReports’ article, "The high cost of cheap chicken,"on the testing organization’s latest sampling results for retail chickenproducts, I was struck by the lack of consistency in how opinions fromdifferent groups were presented. The article is quick to blame antibiotic use asa culprit in the presence of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics on thechicken sampled in the study, yet they do not share the resistance data for thebacteria collected from the chicken that was labeled “organic” or “noantibiotics.”

Since the rate of human Salmonellosis cases aren’t declining, it really does seem to be time to try something different. Unfortunately, in many ways, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Salmonella Action Plan is just a re-emphasis of the same strategies that the agency has already employed. 

Hampton Creek Foods and the famous tech billionaires who back the San Francisco-based company have done a remarkable job getting the mainstream media to listen to them. All this publicity is nice for Hampton Creek’s egg-less products, such as Beyond Eggs, Eat the Dough and Just Mayo, but you really need to look at who is writing the articles.

The recent outbreak of human Salmonellosis cases that have been linked to consuming chicken from three Foster Farms facilities and the actions by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Foster Farms and some of Foster Farms’ customers have been difficult for some legislators, media and consumers to understand. I don’t claim to have any special knowledge of the events before and after the USDA issued a public health alert stating Foster Farms' chicken products were associated with the outbreak, but I hope I can help some people gain a better understanding of why some of the parties have taken the steps that they have.