• Press Release
• Food, Energy, and Agriculture Commentary, Press Release
• August 25, 2010

Francis Thicke: Egg recall exposes vulnerabilities in industrial food system

by Press Release

Secretary of Ag Candidate Francis Thicke: Egg recall exposes vulnerabilities in industrial food system

Thicke says incumbent has been ‘noticeably silent’ about massive egg recall that sickened more than 2,000 Americans

FAIRFIELD, Iowa, August 24, 2010 – Iowa Secretary of Agriculture candidate Francis Thicke (pronounced tik-ē) said today last week’s recall of more than a half billion salmonella-contaminated eggs exposed vulnerabilities in today’s industrial food and agriculture system.

“The drastic expansion of industrial livestock production in recent years, coupled with the growing concentration of the food processing industry, have outstripped our nation’s mechanisms for ensuring the safety of our food,” said Thicke, a southeast Iowa dairy farmer, soil scientist and former national program leader for the USDA.

The suspect eggs were produced at two Iowa laying facilities, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the two recalls were related and the same strain of salmonella poisoning was involved in both.

The Democratic nominee for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Thicke said his opponent, one-term Republican Bill Northey, has been “noticeably silent” about the recall of the salmonella-infected eggs that sickened more than 2,000 Americans in at least 10 states. “The current Iowa Secretary of Agriculture consistently conveys a message that we should increase the scale of industrial livestock production in Iowa,“ Thicke said. “But, he avoids addressing the health, environmental and social costs of the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) the animals are housed in.”

In a statement last week, a high-ranking U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said the salmonella outbreak shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated incident in today’s industrialized food system.

“It’s not all that surprising,” said Sherri McGarry, emergency coordinator for the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “We are seeing much more centralized production and distribution nationwide – and that’s not restricted to egg production.”

The USDA currently has more than three dozen open cases related to meat recalls alone.

“With the sheer size of our food-processing and distribution systems and the amount of aggregation and co-mingling of food products occurring today – particularly with meat products – conditions are ideal for an isolated contamination incident to become exponentially multiplied and to cause food-borne illnesses all across the nation,” Thicke said. “When food travels thousands of miles and changes hands multiple times, there are many more opportunities for contamination. By contrast, an isolated food contamination incident in a local or small-scale food processing system will be much smaller scale and will more likely be contained to or near the source of the problem.”

THICKE: FOOD SAFETY BILL A GOOD START, BUT CAUTION URGED

The egg recall sparked a call for quick passage in Congress of food safety legislation after the August recess. The proposed legislation grants the FDA expanded powers to recall tainted food, quarantine geographical areas and access some food processors’ records. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said the egg recall demonstrates why the nation’s 100-year-plus-old food safety structure needs to be modernized.”

Thicke supports stronger food safety legislation as a necessary measure to ensure the safety of food from a global production system, but said “the legislation needs to accommodate small and medium-sized processing plants and local food production systems that do not have the same operating procedures and safety hazards.”

“In other words,” Thicke said, “the food-safety bill can’t be one-size-fits-all, and it should not place unnecessary burdens on small processing plants and local food production.”

THE STATUS QUO IS OBSOLETE

Thicke said Northey, his opponent in the Nov. 2 election, supports maintaining the status quo in industrial livestock production. Northey has touted egg production from hens in battery cages as an economic boom to Iowa and boasts that a single battery-cage facility in Iowa produces all of the eggs for McDonald’s restaurants west of the Mississippi River.

What Northey doesn’t talk about, Thicke pointed out, is that consumers in the United States and Europe are rejecting battery-cage egg production.  Beginning in 2012, battery cages will be outlawed in European Union countries. Three U.S. states are also developing rules to phase out use of battery cages.

Thicke pointed out that though McDonald’s U.S. operations have resisted calls for cage-free egg production, McDonald’s in Europe has committed to going 100 percent cage-free by the end of 2010 for all its European operations. In the United States, a number of McDonald’s competitors are responding to consumer demand, including chain restaurants  like Burger King, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., Subway and Sonic, along with retail giants Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s, who have all made some level of commitment to using cage-free eggs.

“Secretary Northey sees the future by looking in the rearview mirror,” Thicke said.

“That model is obsolete.”

FRANCIS THICKE BACKGROUND

Francis Thicke has been a full-time farmer for 27 years, is a scientist with a Ph.D. in agronomy/soil fertility, and has worked in the past at the USDA in Washington, D.C., where he served as National Program Leader for Soil Science. A frequently consulted national expert on agricultural sustainability, Thicke and his wife, Susan, own and operate an 80-cow organic, grass-based dairy near Fairfield, where they process milk on the farm into bottled milk, yogurt and cheese marketed locally through Fairfield grocery stores and restaurants. For additional information on his campaign for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, go to www.ThickeForAgriculture.com.

Tags: Bill Northey Egg Recall Francis Thicke Iowa Eggs Recalled Eggs secretary of agriculture