As the environmental and business landscapes continue to evolve, there’s a common thread: Systems thinking has never been more critical to solving the pressing issues of our time. And few challenges are more urgent than food system transformation.
To explore the intersection of food, finance and women’s leadership, I recently sat down with Robyn O’Brien, co-founder of rePlant Capital and a former financial and food industry analyst. Following is an excerpt from our discussion on courageous leadership, systems thinking and following the North Star in the journey toward the future of food.
Carrie Norton: What have you learned over the last decade that you’re taking with you into this next decade?
Robyn O’Brien: This month, I spent a fair amount of time reflecting on the last decade because It was 10 years ago that my book, “The Unhealthy Truth,” was published. I think one of the most important lessons I have learned is that courage is contagious — and one of the bravest things we can do is to own our own story.
I have this strange combination in my background: attending business school on a full scholarship to Rice University, going into investments on a team that managed $20 billion in assets, being a mother of four, launching a hedge fund. That doesn’t fit into anybody’s “box.” It made a lot of people uncomfortable, and I had to confront that discomfort. Through the process, I realized that discomfort is really just growth.
Our food system has a systemic, structural problem. In every problem, there is an enormous opportunity to create really smart systems that address the challenges we’re seeing. And to me, that’s inspiring. That’s my focus moving into the next decade: innovation and inspiration.
Norton: What you’re describing here is a solutions orientation.
O’Brien: Exactly. We need a lot of people around the table — farmers in particular. Our farm economy is completely upside down; there’s more than $426 billion in farmer debt. When I stand on these farms in Kansas or Nebraska or Ohio, my first thought is, what young family would want to move out here to grow our country’s food?
My second question is, what happens if they don’t? What happens if we really are hitting this shortage of farmers, this crisis in the U.S. farm economy? Additionally, farmers are hit with fires and floods and droughts. No one person or organization can solve this crisis. But if we come together as a country, we can.
Norton: As the CEO of Mars has stated, “The engine of global business — its supply chain — is broken.” I’d love to hear about your mission to finance and build the new food economy.
O’Brien: You can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system. I thought, if we’re really serious about this — and if 80 percent of citizens are trying something organic but only 1 percent of U.S. farmland is organic — why aren’t we tackling supply-chain issues? I realized that if I was the CEO of General Mills, even if I wanted to be putting more organic products on the shelf, the U.S. supply chain makes that incredibly difficult, and that Wall Street is measuring these companies with the same metrics as in 1985.
It’s been two years since I wrote this article, reflecting on the state of the food industry, as seen at our largest trade show, Expo West.
Up until this last weekend, it was the most-viewed article I’ve ever shared on LinkedIn. My post, inviting the industry to collaborate on improving this platform, embracing the values 21st century attendees share around environmental impact, food waste, sustainability, inclusion, diversity and more, blew it out of the water by about three fold.
The challenges still hold, and while some progress has been made, we have a lot of work in front of us, especially when it comes to a more efficient platform, one that leverages 21st century technology to meet the needs of the 21st century consumer. It is a call to action for all of us.
Can we put a cap on materials used per booth? Can we offer carbon offsets to attendees? Can we offer credits to companies with the lowest environmental impact? Can we require that attending companies have boards that include women and people of color? Can we embrace the values of the B Corp community, values going viral across our industry? Can we upcycle the food waste from the trade show floor? Can we listen to the young entrepreneurs and get them on stage, because our future belongs to them?
There is incredible opportunity in front of all of us for radical collaboration to move this platform forward.
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Written March 2018:
In the food industry, we have a trade show called “Expo West.” It’s been happening for over 30 years, and its size is massive, with over 80,000 attendees and over 5,000 companies presenting. This year, many commented that “the show has lost its soul.” Others were totally and completely jazzed, a real bifurcation.
And while I thought about doing another trends piece, it didn’t feel ‘value-add’ to talk about collagen and turmeric, given the enormity of what we are facing as an industry.
So after discussions with many from the industry, from food+tech to finance, here are the top 10 trends that could use some attention and some examples of the companies that are getting it right:
B-Corps: There are a lot of trends to cite from the show: CBD oil and ingredients, collagen, more turmeric, even more fermented foods, but few as important as the rise of companies seeking B-Corp certification. So what is it? “B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today, there is a growing community of more than 2,100 Certified B Corps from 50 countries and over 130 industries working together toward 1 unifying goal: to redefine success in business.” MegaFood is one of the companies leading this transition, and as more and more companies in our industry look to this certification, the B-Corp certifying team should have a prominent place at the show, answering questions, accessible and available, encouraging participation in meaningful change. The show could provide an incentive for companies embracing B Corp in the form of a booth discount, employee discount or more.
Transparent Financing: As we grow the industry, we are only as good as our capital partners. We can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system. Companies should consider the source of their capital as carefully as they consider the source of their ingredients; otherwise, their returns are benefiting the very industries and companies we are trying to replace. New Resource Bank is a shining example of a financing source that is getting it right. An important question to ask: Where does your capital sleep at night? And perhaps even more importantly: Who else is it sleeping with?
Funding the Future: When you look at the non-white CEOs in our industry, they are few and far between. I reached out to a colleague to ask for a list of the ones that came to mind, and of the 5,000+ companies that participated in the show, she came back with less than 10. It’s shocking and also why I am so excited about Carla Vernon taking the lead of Annie’s and General Mill’s natural and organic division. Her own mother was a hidden figure at NASA, similar to the women in the film “Hidden Figures.” Her DNA has “change maker” markers in it. If our industry is truly going to meet the needs of 21st century families, it has to get past the “white savior” look it currently has and embrace diversity in its leadership. The future of our country is beautifully ethnic. Let’s fund that as an industry so that we can successfully grow the movement beyond the 5-6% of the food industry that it is today. So this serves as an open invitation to the investors walking the trade show floor. Otherwise, we run the risk of putting out white people solutions to white people problems.
Zero Waste – Follow the Super Bowl: While the show has taken some steps to tackle its environmental impact, it could follow the lead of the Super Bowl which declared the goal of “zero waste” for 2018. It’s time for Expo West to do the same. We are a trade show that talks about conscious capitalism, sustainability and the climate – non-stop – and we could learn a thing from the NFL. The 2018 Super Bowl launched a huge collaboration called Rush2Recycle that targeted zero waste at the US Bank Stadium in Minnesota. “The program successfully recovered 91% of all the trash. Nearly 63 tons of the 69 tons of game day waste were recovered through recycling or donation for reuse (62%) and composting (29%), according to the NFL.”
In order to reach the 91% recovery rate, the partners took these steps before the Super Bowl:
US Bank Stadium replaced most of its food vessels, service products and utensils inventory for fans with compostable alternatives
US Bank Stadium worked with Recycle Across America to design illustrated signs for new three-bin waste stations to show fans how to sort items at the stadium
Recycling and compost bins were changed to become larger and more accessible to fans
Trash bins were shrunk in size, encouraging fans to consider using alternative containers
A LEED-certification-level waste audit last October identified materials for recovery in the stadium’s waste stream
A zero-waste trial run took place at a December 2017 Minnesota Vikings home game
Steps taken after the Super Bowl included:
The SMG team sorted all fan-generated waste into the right waste compactors
The waste hauling partners collected and provided weight-tickets at each destination, including the recycling facility, the composting facility, and the waste-to-energy facility
The waste data was reviewed by SMG and combined with the reuse and donation data collected by the NFL from their community partners
Supply Chain Focus: Every year we assemble our entire industry and fail to have a unified call to action. There is no greater issue confronting our industry than expanding our supply chain, given that less than 1% of U.S. farmland is organic. As the industry grows, rather than importing the organic ingredients needed, we should be growing them here, benefiting the U.S. farmers and economy. Companies like Kashi are tackling these issues on their own, but the goal of increased organic acreage benefits everyone – from Kellogg’s to General Mills to the tiniest of startups. It directly impacts their bottom line. Make a pledge to grow your organic acreage 30% by 2030. As Richard Branson always encourages, set a goal and write it down.
Diversify: Jennifer Garner, in her keynote with John Foraker on Friday, remarked that everyone at the show is so “clean and shiny”. As I looked around the room at the hundreds of people attending her keynote, it was also almost entirely white. Half of all U.S. kids are going to be non-white in two years time, by the year 2020. Once Upon a Farm wants to be the first company accepted into the WIC program. It’s that kind of creative thinking that is needed. The show does not reflect that, the industry does not reflect that. The running commentary at the dinner the night before was the same, too: “It’s so white.” What multi-cultural initiatives can be introduced? Can the Organic Center’s Dinner embrace diversity in its theme each year? Can it embrace an international menu? Can attendees do the same with their leadership teams? Can the show showcase the beautiful diversity of our country going forward? We do a great job showcasing the incredible foods and ingredients from other countries, let’s do the same with people.
The ‘Give A Shit’ Booth: This goes along with the zero waste issue, but the trash and food waste spinning off of the show was of epic proportions this year. The show could use a booth where people can sign up to be “zero waste.” Something along the lines of a commitment to reduce, reuse and recycle, perhaps with the ability to pick up a bamboo cup and plate to use at the show (I’m sure there is a supplier who would be happy to oblige!). Companies could be compensated for the number of employees who choose to participate. New Hope could offer some sort of kick back or discount to those that do. A compost bin could be available that is then delivered to a local farm at the end of the show. When you participate, your nametag is immediately marked, so that you are identified as someone who “Gives a Shit” beyond the financials. You only have to look to the remarkable success of Patagonia to see what happens when you fearlessly put the planet first.
Giveback: Maybe it was the hometown Super Bowl influence, but General Mills nailed it this year with their natural and organic booth. The entire thing was built incredibly mindful of its impact on the environment and with a focus on the reduction of waste. So much so, that the plants used to decorate their booth were going to a non-profit in the LA area. In fact, a few different companies were supporting the same non-profit. With so many non-profits working in the space and doing incredible advocacy work around clean food, gardening, reducing exposure to risky ingredients, I realized that it would benefit all involved to have a list of non-profits to whom companies could donate their products, materials, supplies after the show. With Will Allen having to shut the doors on his amazing program, it is important for companies to know just how many incredible organizations there are to support. The Salvation Army is even opening a grocery store in Baltimore (heads up: Expo East). Some other non-profits that come to mind are Made Safe and Civil Eats. It is impossible to understand how we as an industry failed Will Allen’s “Growing Power.” It would have been nice to have the NBA as a partner.
Packaging: I spent time with Scandinavian colleagues at the show this year, and they asked: “Why do your companies care so much about what goes in the products and so little about the packaging around them?” They were horrified at the chemicals that sit on top of and around the foods we eat, leaching into them. I told them that Kroger is doing a phenomenal job tackling this, in real time, as are a few others, and reminded them that while they did not have to fight to know what is in their food, we did and are only just now seeing the success of those efforts. First things first, I said, but duly noted. Let’s get on smarter packaging that doesn’t disrupt the health that the products inside are trying to support.
A Kroger Booth: Few other companies have done more to shift the huge, conventional brands than Kroger. It has a market cap big enough to present a real threat, so when they launched their Simple Truth line back in 2012, the big CPG brands noticed. Their Simple Truth line went from $0 to a billion in revenue in two years flat and is still growing. Their CEO, Rodney McMullen calls the division of the company “the bright spot” in its earnings. And with Jill McIntosh at the helm of their natural and organic division, the company rightfully has earned a prominent place in the show. Others are taking notice, so more change is coming.
What is clear this year is that the leadership is changing in the food industry. Both the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Organic Trade Association feel confused in their missions, as the dividing line between conventional and organic blurs. This is creating enormous opportunities for leadership by brands themselves in the marketplace. As companies like Kroger, Annie’s, Dr. Bronner and Patagonia step into that leadership space, one thing is certain:
Courage is contagious, and it is showing up in creative, regenerative new ways from a select number of brands in our industry that are certain to drive meaningful change for years to come.
As the CEO of Mars recently stated in an interview, “Right now, the global supply chain is broken. We’re taking more out of the planet than is sustainable. And we have to fix that.”
It’s an important call to action. The food system is broken, as I wrote about in my book, The Unhealthy Truth, How Our Food is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It (Random House).
A growing number of companies from Danone to General Mills are recognizing that their supply chains do not meet the needs of 21st century families, so they are taking action. Global organic food sales topped $100 billion in 2018 and have grown 483% since 2000. However, only 1% of U.S. farmland is organic.
Farmers alone are unable to transition, given their backbreaking financial situation. In the U.S., there is over $426 billion in farm debt, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the median farm income is negative, a negative $1, 548.
As the food industry begins to replant capital and embrace regenerative, organic agriculture, Wall Street needs to ask better questions and employ relevant metrics.
One way to capture this is to look at the trends in sustainable investing.
A recent article by Joel Makower, the Chairman and Executive Editor of the GreenBiz Group, highlights what is happening:
“The S&P 500 in October had a market capitalization of just over $25 trillion.
There remains a huge gap between interest in sustainable investing and actual investments. A recent white paper (PDF) from Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing reported that a whopping 85 percent of investors it surveyed said they are interested in sustainable investing, an increase from 71 percent who indicated interest in a similar survey in 2015.
For more than two decades, sustainability reporting has been a relative backwater of corporate finance, of interest primarily to a small niche of socially minded investors. Increasingly, it is expected to approach the importance of financial reporting.
According to the US SIF Foundation’s 2018 Report on US Sustainable, Responsible and Impact Investing Trends, as of year-end 2017, just over $1 out of every $4 under professional management in the United States — $12 trillion or so — was invested according to socially responsible investment strategies.
For good reason. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing is no longer merely a vehicle only for so-called socially responsible investors. Increasingly, the process goes to the heart of investing fundamentals.
According to the B of A report, “ESG is the best measure we’ve found for signaling future risk,” superior to leverage or other risk and quality factors. Moreover, “90 percent of bankruptcies in the S&P 500 between 2005 and 2015 were of companies with poor Environmental and Social scores five years prior to the bankruptcies,” the analysts wrote.
They concluded: “Analyzing financial metrics alone simply won’t suffice anymore.”
Let’s repeat that last statement: Analyzing financial metrics alone simply won’t suffice.
How well does Wall Street know the Chief Sustainability Officers at the publicly traded companies? How well does Wall Street understand the B Corporation certification?
Because if the goal is to fix the broken food system, as stated by the CEO of Mars, the truth is you can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system.
“America’s farmers have been bracing for a reckoning–and now it’s here,” begins an article in the Wall Street Journal. The stats are so appalling I found myself reading them out loud and taking notes.
Unfortunately. these headlines continue. If you want to fact check any of it, just head out to Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio or any other farm community to learn for yourself. What were once bustling communities now look more like ghost towns. Towns that once had three high schools are now down to one.
Is it any wonder that the U.S. farm economy is struggling, given the statistics shared below:
“U.S. farm households had a median farm income in 2018 of negative $1,548.
Negative $1,548.
U.S. farm debt—covering operations, land, equipment, livestock and more—last year climbed to more than $409 billion, according to the USDA .
Nationwide, the volume of loans to fund current operating expenses grew 22% in the fourth quarter from year-ago levels, hitting a quarterly record of $58.7 billion.
Last year, bankruptcies in farm counties made up 48% of the U.S. total of chapter 12 bankruptcies.”
On top of that, farmers don’t have health insurance unless they take an off the farm job.
Is it any wonder that our farmers are in crisis, that few from younger generations want to take over the farm? Or that there are more suicides among farmers than any other industry? The suicide rate for farmers is more than double that of veterans, according to the Guardian which ran an article “Why are American Farmers Killing Themselves?”
Farmers have literally mortgaged their lives to feed America.
We have to value their lives and refinance these farms. The business model is not sustainable, the career is not appealing, and without food security, we are a country in crisis.
Our lives, our national security, depend on food security.
It is time to break the operating model put in place in the late 20th century by the agrochemical companies like Monsanto. Operating systems that not only require farmers to purchase genetically engineered seeds rather than save heritage seeds, but that also require farmers to purchase the suite of -cides—pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides—required to grow them.
Farmers are no longer allowed to save seeds under the genetically engineered operating model. They have been forced into debt and bankruptcies to finance the repeat purchases of genetically engineered seeds and the products required to grow them.
The bottom line is that this recurring revenue model of Monsanto’s has bankrupt the American farmer.
The chemically intensive operating system of genetically engineered crops and the suite of -cides—pesticides, herbicides, insecticides—required to grow them have allowed a few corporate giants to generate earnings on the backs of American farmers. It’s no wonder Monsanto was sold to a German chemical company. They knew their time here was up, they leveraged the lives of our farmers.
At this point, I don’t have words for what they’ve done to generate their earnings on the backs of our farmers, except for one: extortion.
Thankfully, a growing number of farmers around the country are realizing that this costly input model cost them more than profitability. And they are turning towards regenerative, organic farming methods to reclaim the health of their soil and the legacy of their farms. It can not happen quickly enough, as resilient soil not only has a stronger capacity to conserve water but also sequester carbon. In other words, our farmers are stewards for some of our most precious natural resources.
For the companies who abused that, there truly are no words.
For the companies who now recognize the critical importance of our farmers in the health of our country and climate, thank you.
The headlines keep hitting, connecting the climate crisis to agriculture. Thank goodness. How we use our land, soil and water plays such a key role in how healthy our planet is.
The United Nations published a report last week that stated that humans will not be able to escape the impact of climate change without making important changes to how we grow food and use land. But what exactly is regenerative agriculture? And why does everyone suddenly seem to be talking about it?
Let’s start with the opposite: Let’s talk about degenerative agriculture.
Degenerative agriculture is an operating system introduced in the mid 1990s that destroyed the economic livelihood of farmers, polluted our soil and exposed the food industry and CPG brands to glyphosate lawsuits, GMO labeling issues and so much more.
This operating system was introduced by Monsanto in the mid 1990s, a recurring revenue model not only for their signature product, Roundup, but also for their Roundup Ready seeds that had been genetically engineered to withstand increasing doses of Roundup. But this operating system had externalized costs that landed on farmers and the food industry. This fundamental change in agriculture required that farmers take on record debt levels to purchase genetically engineered seeds and the suite of chemical products, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, required to grow them. These newly traited and genetically engineered seeds also meant that farmers had to finance the royalty fees, trait fees and licensing fees required to use them.
Almost overnight, our farmers went from polyculture farming and planting many different crops, to planting just a few. We lost our diversity, and our farmers ended up fighting bankruptcies, suicides and opioid epidemics. In other words, this operating system, with all of its chemical inputs, degenerated the land, the soil and our farm economy.
And the food industry was left scrambling as thousands of lawsuits mount, targeting Monsanto’s products, and consumers kept asking for more and more transparency around how their food is made.
So why pay attention to regenerative agriculture?
Right now, our food system is broken. About 1 percent of U.S. farmland is organic, and we’ve designed an operating system heavily dependent on chemical inputs. The nutrient value of food is collapsing, with food today delivering only 50% to 60% of the nutrient levels it had for our grandparents.
Right now, our food system is broken. About 1 percent of U.S. farmland is organic, and we’ve designed an operating system heavily dependent on chemical inputs. The nutrient value of food is collapsing, with food today delivering only 50% to 60% of the nutrient levels it had for our grandparents. When you regenerate the soil, you rebuild the nutrients and microorganisms, the soil’s microbiome, not only making soil more resilient to the climate crises, but you also restore the nutrient value of food.
There is a need for a new operating system when it comes to our food, recognizing that our most valuable inputs are human capital (our farmers and growers), soil and water.
Regenerative agriculture focuses on reinvigorating a food economy that is diverse and polycultural, supporting the regeneration of specialty crops and produce, not only healing the soil, but also serving as a powerful carbon sink that can help tackle our climate crisis. And no one recognizes that more than our farmers who are in crisis – with mounting debt, bankruptcies, suicides and opioid epidemics – as climate disruption, droughts and floods impact their livelihoods. It is fascinating but not suprising that farmers are some of the first into the regenerative movement, embracing the change from a chemically intensive operating system to one that is better for the health of the soil and the health of their farms. It is their family legacies they are fighting to regenerate.
Regenerative organic agriculture utilizes strategies like organic no-till, which uses cover crops to return nutrients to the soil while absorbing carbon dioxide, reducing GHG emissions. Because the soil is not disturbed in organic no-till systems, the carbon dioxide absorbed by the cover crop is sequestered in the soil instead of released into the atmosphere.”
By switching to regenerative, organic operating systems, not only is the food industry addressing the needs of the 21st century consumer, but it also rebuilding the soil’s vitality, allowing it to serve as a more effective tool to capture carbon. To manage this transition successfully will require metrics and definitions around “regenerative” for it to merit the value it serves and deserves.
But it’s not just about valuing this regenerative farming system, it’s also about valuing the billions of lives that benefit from regenerative agriculture and its powerful role in addressing our climate crisis.
There are some huge trends emerging in 2019. And I’m not talking about CBD, plant protein or mushrooms, as that would be a ‘year in review’.
There are trends that are coming hard and fast at the food industry that few are discussing and that need to be addressed, so we are going to lay out all eight of them here:
Racial Advertising: Our food system is not only loaded with artificial ingredients, but also systemic racism. In no way is that more obvious than in the excessive advertising that targets people of color. In 2017, black teens saw more than twice as many ads for unhealthy food products as white teens, researchers found. Statistics show that growth in consumption of organic food by communities of color is outpacing that of the total population, so someone tell the ad agencies and marketing directors: targeting black teens with junk food has to stop.
Whitewashed Venture Capital: Less than 1% of American venture capital-backed founders are black. Less than 1%. So venture capital is failing to invest in diversity of innovation, and it’s costing us: in 2016, the Center for Global Policy Solutions reported that due to discriminatory financing practices and a bias towards companies primarily operated by white males, America is losing out on over 1.1 million minority-owned businesses, and as a result, foregoing over 9 million potential jobs and $300 billion in collective national income, according to Forbes.
B Corp: This certification is exploding. Danone officially became the world’s largest B corp in 2018, defying any and all excuses. A challenge within the certification itself is that due to its costs, it inadvertently burdens minority groups who do not have the same access to capital, as discussed above. There has always been some backlash against the certification and the suggestion that it is yet another “Winner Take All” strategy. However, that can be addressed, and given the intent of the board of B Lab, I am certain that with increased noise and pressure, it will be.
The Bullshit Factor: Consumers are calling out companies that fake authenticity. RXBar is the poster child for this one. For almost 18 months, consumers complained about reactions they were having to these products: from life-threatening allergic reactions, to GI upset, to vomiting to skin rashes. It took 18 months before a recall was issued. So if a company promises “No B.S.” in their products, chances are you want to take another look.
Food Waste: It’s seismic in our food system, from soil to shelf. Imperfect produce is not accepted at the grocery store and antiquated “sell by” dates fill dumpsters with products fit for a kitchen. Almost 40% of the food that we produce is wasted. The bottom line is that we need it to feed the world. Around the country and world, we are now seeing everything from food recovery programs to zero food waste bloggers to ambitious European Union (EU) food waste reduction targets. Food policy in the U.S. needs to get with the 21st century.
Melatonin-infused Products: Anxiety and depression are impacting millions of Americans. Is it any wonder? The steady stream of headlines put us into fight or flight mode, and stories of “climate grief” and the growing emotional toll of climate change are mounting. Climate grief is yet another reason why sleep is elusive to millions. What helps? Melatonin. So look for melatonin-infused supplements, teas and snacks to help pillow our heads and settle our minds.
A New Labeling Debate: With lab grown and cell-based ‘milks’ and ‘meats‘ in production, the FDA and USDA are playing a game of “Who’s on First”? Nobody is quite sure by whom or how these products are going to be regulated. There are no long term testing models. On top of that, the meat industry is suddenly getting defensive about who can label what “milk” and “meat.” Is a tofu sausage really a sausage? Stay tuned.
Climate Calories:Two-thirds of the U.S. military installations are threatened by flooding, drought and wildfires driven by climate change, the Defense Department said in a new report required by Congress. But it’s not just impacting the Department of Defense, climate change is a national security issue, a food security issue and so much more. It’s disrupting agriculture and farming. So put it on the balance sheet, measure the risk and mitigate it. We need to think about it this way: How many climate calories does your product consume? And what plans are you putting in place to mitigate climate risk?
“Unnerved by fundamental economic changes and the failure of government to provide lasting solutions, society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues. These issues range from protecting the environment to retirement to gender and racial inequality, among others. Fueled in part by social media, public pressures on corporations build faster and reach further than ever before.”
Heading into 2019, make sure you are managing your business for purpose-driven profits that align with the values of 21st century consumers.
There is too much at stake, and the risk of obsolescence extends far beyond a company’s bottom line.
With all of the talk about organic, few people realize that organic farming makes up a small share of U.S. farmland overall. There were 5 million certified organic acres of farmland in 2016, representing less than 1% of the 911 million acres of total farmland nationwide.
Less than 1%.
That’s a hard number to reconcile given all of the talk about organic. So what is happening?
It turns out that we import the organic food that we need, since we don’t grow enough of it here.
Imagine if any other booming industry acted this way—outsourced the economic upside to producers in other countries, rather than build out the capacity here.
But that is exactly what we have done.
Since we don’t grow enough organic food here in the U.S. to meet American demand, we import it. This is an expensive proposition, in so many ways, and further guts our farm economy which is already struggling due to low commodity prices, excessive debt, bankruptcies, farmer suicides and opioid addictions.
But what is interesting is where things are starting to change. According to a new report from Pew Research Center:
“Although Southern states do not have as many certified organic farms as other parts of the country, the South saw the most growth in organic farming since 2011. For example, Arkansas had just 10 organic farms in 2011. That number jumped to 64 five years later—an increase of 540%.
Alabama, South Carolina and Missouri all saw increases of more than 200% since 2011. And several other Southern states saw their certified organic farm count more than double in those five years.
Cow’s milk was the top food sold by U.S. certified organic farms in 2016, with a total sales value of $1.4 billion.
About four-in-ten U.S. adults (39%) say that most or some of the food they eat is organic, while 61% say not too much or none of their food is, according to a recent Pew Research Center report.
Americans are closely divided over whether organic fruits and vegetables are better for one’s health than conventionally grown foods. About half of U.S. adults (51%) say organic produce is neither better nor worse than non-organic produce, while 45% say organic is better. Younger Americans and those who report eating at least some organic food are more likely to believe organic produce provides health benefits.”
If Americans have proven anything when it comes to food, it is the fact that we don’t do anything in moderation. And yet here we are: almost invisible when it comes to organic food production.
It’s time for that to change, and that starts with the capital. It is time to offer loans and funding to farmers so that they can transition to organic. It takes three years, so the marketplace also has to offer a solution for these transition crops. We can all participate, from the venture capital firms to the consumers to the food companies.
Companies like Cargill and ADM are clamoring to make a deal, but the money needs to come without the baggage that brands like those bring. Otherwise, we are trying to solve the problem with the same companies that created it.
There are a lot of alternative sources of capital that have not yet been put into play. Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are one example, with $110 Billion available, according to the National Philanthropic Trust, and yet estimates run from only 10-17% of that being put to use.
Food security is national security, and right now, we don’t have either. Our farmers are in crisis, with rising bankruptcies, suicide rates and a growing opioid epidemic on the farm. It’s time to secure our food system and deliver the products that a growing number of American families want, and that requires smart, value-aligned capital.
Otherwise, we will end up with an organic food system that is 1% for the 1%.
On Friday, a stunning and decisive verdict was reached on the world’s most pervasive weedkiller, glyphosate. In a swift and unanimous decision, Monsanto was found guilty on all charges and accused of malice, oppression or fraud, relating to their agrochemical, glyphosate. The jury awarded $289 million. The class action was led by a groundskeeper dying of cancer.
According to the Guardian, “one of the UK’s largest DIY retailers is now reviewing the sale of Roundup weedkiller products amid mounting concerns about their use, after the US jury found that the herbicide had caused a terminally ill man’s cancer.” Home Depot, Lowe’s and others would be wise to consider doing the same, given the liability now associated with this product.
Bayer, the company who recently purchased Monsanto, also has a lot at stake. The share price was hit on Friday, and its open will be in play on Monday morning. The merger has not yet closed, and Friday’s verdict, no doubt, has Bayer attorneys scrambling. Some are calling for an adjustment to the purchase price, others are suggesting that Bayer may set up an escrow account to address the payments required in these ongoing court cases.
However, there are thousands of plaintiffs waiting in the wings, and with an almost $300 million verdict in the first trial against Monsanto, Bayer would have to secure a sizable escrow account, as those numbers start to get significant quickly.
In 2015, the World Health Organization sounded the alarm on glyphosate, an ingredient found in the world’s most-used pesticide, Roundup. It was again a long overdue decision, given what independent scientists have been warning for years.
Dr. Don Huber, a Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, a land grant institution, has been studying plants for 55 years.
He has received various awards for his scientific accomplishments and contributions to government.
His agricultural research the past 50 years has focused on the epidemiology and control of soil borne plant pathogens with emphasis on microbial ecology, cultural and biological controls, and physiology of host parasite relationships.
He is someone I turned to in the early years of my work, when I read, ”Pesticides may be putting young children at risk of cancer.” I thought of him again as the World Health Organization headline hit about glyphosate’s probability as a cancer-causing agent.
A few years ago, the EPA sought to increase the allowable levels of a controversial chemical used on our food crops, and Chinese citizens announced that they are suing Monsanto, the company that makes it, for full disclosure.
It’s hard to hear all of this.
When I worked as a financial analyst, I dismissed concerns like this. They disrupted business models and seemed to come from wild-eyed activists. I didn’t want to hear that the foods I’d been feeding my family might cause harm. I wanted to believe that the studies that had been conducted on these products weren’t influenced by industry. In other words, this was something that I didn’t want to learn then, and something that is still hard to process now.
But as the headline hit about the World Health Organization’s concern, while the EPA was voting to allow increased levels of these chemicals onto our food crops, I thought back to May 2011, when I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Don Huber, a plant biologist who created a stir with a letter that he sent to Secretary Vilsack at the USDA urging a reconsideration of the safety status of a chemical widely used on our food crops. In that conversation, we had spoken about this ingredient called glyphosate and its use in a popular weedkiller that I had been told not to keep under my kitchen sink for fear of what it might do if it was ingested by children.
He’s in his 80s, and he is also a father, a grandfather and has had a 41-year military career and is now a retired Colonel, having evaluated natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks and worked on committees that are part of the USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System under Homeland Security. Quite honestly, his bio reads like that of one of our country’s greatest heroes. He’s dedicated his life to putting food on the table for American families.
So when controversy flared up over the letter he wrote to the USDA, plenty of people chimed in. He was venomously attacked and lavishly praised. It was a firestorm.
And having worked as a financial analyst, I had learned years ago, back on the trading desk, not to rely solely on other people’s reports, to do my own research. So I reached out to him.
And while the controversial focus of Dr. Huber’s letter to Secretary Vilsack was his concern over a new pathogen that appears to be impacting the reproductive health of cows, when I had the opportunity to speak with him, the focus of our conversation quickly turned to glyphosate, a synthetic chemical used in a universal weed killer that is applied to both commercial food crops as well as residential landscapes around the country.
And at the time, it was an ingredient increasingly coming under scrutiny, with everyone from the Presidents Cancer Panel to the American Academy of Pediatrics urging us to reduce our exposure to pesticides due to potential health risks.
But in all candor, as he got talking that morning, it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. It’s controversial and heartachingly poignant in light of the growing number of children with autism, cancer and other conditions. And I hadn’t paid any attention to it during my pregnancies, the toddler years of my children or any other time in my life. I’d been blissfully ignorant. At least that is what I thought.
But as he began to talk, I could not help but listen.
I had first learned about glyphosate when studying soy, one of the top eight allergens in our food supply.
In the mid 1990s, using a new technology, our soy was genetically engineered with new organisms to make it able to withstand increasing doses of weed killer, chemicals and glyphosate. When first learning about this soy and the ability to routinely douse it with these chemicals, to the former financial analyst in me, the business model made perfect sense. It enhances profitability of the chemical companies by enabling the increased sale of their chemical treatments and weed killers.
And as Dr. Huber spoke about glyphosate, which is the ingredient used in a weed killer known as RoundUp, a weed killer that I had applied countless times around our yard and one that is sprayed on our food crops like corn and soy, I listened, not really wanting to hear any of it, reflecting not only on what I had eaten during my pregnancies and fed our children, but also on the scope of the work of Professor Miguel A. Altieri of the University of California, Berkeley who had looked into unforeseen risks that might be associated with genetically engineered crops and these chemicals being sprayed on them:
“Glyphosate is a systemic herbicide (i.e. it is absorbed into and moves through the whole plant), and is carried into the harvested parts of plants. Exactly how much glyphosate is present in the seeds of corn or soybeans (genetically engineered to withstand this chemical) is not known, as grain products are not included in conventional market surveys for pesticide residues. The fact that this and other herbicides are known to accumulate in fruits…raises questions about food safety, especially now that more than 37 million pounds of this herbicide are used annually in the United States alone. Even in the absence of immediate (acute) effects, it might take 40 years for a potential carcinogen to act in enough people for it to be detected as a cause. Moreover, research has shown that glyphosate seems to act in a similar fashion to antibiotics by altering soil biology rendering bean plants more vulnerable to disease”.
And I paused.
The dominance of this weed killer in the marketplace is remarkable. In a recent article about glyphosate, the global news organization, Reuters, highlighted that these chemicals are part of an enormous market, with world annual sales totaling $15 billion, with more than $5 billion of that spent in the US alone.
But that wasn’t all that had been discussed. The Reuter’s article was titled “Cancer Cause or Crop Aid?” and so it was that question that I wanted to discuss with Dr. Huber having learned that in 2007, more than 185,000,000 pounds of Roundup were applied to US crops – the same year that reporting requirements of application rates were halted. In other words, despite the fact that the President’s Cancer Panel and American Cancer Society was reporting that 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women are expected to get cancer in their lifetimes, we had stopped counting how much of this we were spraying on our food.
According to Dr. Huber, glyphosate kills weeds by turning off key enzymes that produce defense mechanisms for plants. It essentially targets and destroys their immune systems by chelating, stripping, micronutrients like magnesium, copper and zinc from the plant. As a result, there are fewer of these key micronutrients in the plants and in our food supply.
And as Dr. Huber shared, as glyphosate immobilizes critical enzymes responsible for life and resistance in plants, it turns off the natural suppressive mechanisms, leaving these plants more vulnerable to diseases (like Sudden Death Syndrome in soy and Goss’ Wilt in corn), as well as increasing levels of toxins and mycotoxins as seen in the Root Rot and Head Scab being seen in our cereal crops. And all I could think about were the farmers in Kansas, Iowa, Colorado and Washington states that I’d met with over the last few years and our ongoing dialogues. I reflected on how this weed killer had been approved for use prior to the introduction of the genetically engineered organism and toxins into our crops, and I wondered about the synergistic toxicity of these chemicals, once again reflecting on the need for further testing.
And as Dr. Huber spoke about the increasing amounts of glyphosate being applied to our food crops, especially crops like corn and soy that have been genetically engineered to withstand increasing doses, he highlighted the unknown implications that this increasing exposure might be having on the health of animals and humans consuming these foods. He expressed concern over the approval of new genetically engineered crops designed to withstand increasing doses of glyphosate, saying that with the approval of every new RoundUp Ready crop, there is a 2-5 times increase in the amount of glyphosate that is applied.
With these increasing doses and applications, I asked him what the “acceptable levels of risk” is here in the US. Given that residual levels of glyphosate are found in human and animal feed, I asked if studies had been conducted to assess the long term impact of this increased exposure and application level and if any studies had been conducted to see what the increasing impact of these synthetic ingredients might be on the developing immune system of a child.
He went very quiet.
And he shared that the Canadian tolerable levels for glyphosate are 58 times lower than those in the US and that European tolerance levels are even lower as a precautionary measure to protect vulnerable subsets of the population, like pregnant women and children. He then shared that the levels of glyphosate now found in the US food supply have been clinically shown to be toxic, citing its effects on human placental, kidney, liver and testicular cells.
And I paused, as a mother of four and as an American, as the weight of this information, Dr. Huber’s insight and fifty-five years of knowledge, experience and wisdom sunk in.
And as I reflected, not wanting to know what he had just shared, I asked him to verify his statements, calling for independent, peer reviewed studies that supported this claim, recognizing that it is enormously controversial, challenging paradigms and belief systems, wanting to somehow be able to dismiss him.
Dr. Huber then spoke about work being done around the world by renowned researchers like Gallagher in New Zealand that addressed the fact that the levels at which we are being exposed to glyphosate are not safe for animal of human consumption. He also pointed out an informal study conducted in Iowa by Howard Vliegher that further highlighted what happened to animals who are fed the crops like genetically modified soy and corn which are bathed in glyphosate, giving details of the inflammation, ulcerations and allergic responses documented.
Then we both paused, reflecting on the potentially compound and synergistic toxicity of our food supply and the implications of this self-directed research. And in that moment, I thought of both the recent Canadian study that found that the metabolites of glyphosate and another pesticide related to genetically modified crops were found in the blood of pregnant women and fetuses in which the researchers concluded: “Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed”.
I couldn’t leave it at that. So I asked Dr. Huber what he would call for or suggest as “next steps”, given his 55 years of experience and extensive research and the potential environmental and human health implications of our chemically intensive agricultural system, he said without hesitating, “The labeling of these genetically modified crops so that people can know what they are eating.”
And he is not alone. The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending a new policy, too, as seen on their website which states:
“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that chemical management policy in the United States be revised to protect children and pregnant women and to better protect other populations.”
The reasons for this concern are not unfounded. The American children have earned the title of “Generation Rx.”Levesing percentage of our total health care costs. The Centers for Disease Control now reports that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15. And oncologists and leading experts in the field of cancer are calling for new treatment models, worried that the increasing costs of cancer is going to put an unprecedented strain on our health care system.
At the same time, the President’s Cancer Panel, a bipartisan group of experts and scientists, has urged all Americans to reduce their exposure to these synthetic ingredients and toxic chemicals in an effort to reduce the burden of disease and its weight on our economy, with another study coming out showing what pesticide exposure can to do to children and how “it may be putting young children at risk of cancer.”
And in all honesty, I didn’t want to know any of it. As we got off of the phone, I looked at the pages of notes I had taken, somehow wanting to unlearn absolutely all of it. But I couldn’t. So when a farmer reached out, asking if I knew Don Huber, I hesitated, knowing I had not been brave enough to share his work. The farmer, who grows genetically engineered crops, crops routinely sprayed with chemicals and ingredients like glyphosate, had been profoundly touched by his work. And with a very quiet conviction, went on to say, “Anything that you can do to support his work is fine by me.”
As the EPA looks to raise allowable levels of this controversial ingredient on our foods, sharing this message and the concern over this controversial ingredient with the EPA just might be one of the most important things that we can do.
Because as controversy grows over these genetically engineered crops and these chemicals being applied to them, other countries are opting out, creating a bit of a sales vacuum, forcing industry to find other lines of distribution in order to meet their revenue estimates. Loading it up on the plates of the American public, in light of the escalating rates of diseases we are seeing in our loved ones, shouldn’t be the option.
In Monsanto’s recent earnings reports. the sale of their herbicide products were up 23.3%. They are a chemical company, and their genetically engineered products have been made to withstand increasing doses of their chemicals. And while Dr. Huber is no longer the only one calling this out, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need all hands on deck. It is why I am enormously grateful for and proud to work with companies like MegaFood who are leading on this. Their entire line is certified by the Detox Project as glyphosate residue free. They are the very first to obtain the status, and I sincerely hope that other companies will follow.
Learn how you can protect the health of your children and family from genetically engineered products and the chemicals upon which they are dependent to grow at justlabelit.org and at www.panna.org.
While food companies have a laser focus on sourcing their ingredients, they fail to do the same when sourcing their capital.
The truth is that a healthy food system starts with healthy financing. You can’t fix a broken food system with a broken financial system.
It turns out that uneducated capital and unbridled greed are some of the most dangerous ingredients in our food system.
And right now, we’ve got both. The financial system is compromising the food industry.
When Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison stepped down earlier this year, she became the fifteenth CEO of a packaged food company to leave their job in the last 18 months. The stock had been hammered, after the company made acquisitions to get itself on track with the 21st century consumers.
As CNBC reported back in May, “It is a challenge for a CEO to gather support from a company to shift its focus from namesake money-makers to bets on growth. That’s even in the face of packaged food company sales slowing last year to 1.2 percent, according to Euromonitor.”
Morrison didn’t have the runway, and her tenure is now over.
Only private food companies like Mars and now Patagonia are allowed the runway to experiment with bets like its recent stake in bar-maker Kind, which valued the brand at at least $3 billion.
Not to mention, “Today’s diners want their food fresh, not with preservatives. They are suspicious, rather than impressed, by century-old brands.” Many of these companies were once members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group that ferociously lobbied against the labeling of GMOs. So much is changing so quickly, that this same group has now called on the country’s government to order the disclosure of refined ingredients from bio-engineered (GMO) crops on food labeling.
The DNA is definitely changing at these companies as the leadership changes, and a lot of these brands are looking into dealmaking to solve their problems. But instead, what they need to be doing is taking a hard look at themselves, an internal assessment, before trying to find a partner that will solve their problems. All too often, only to find that they lack the skill-set, culture and supply chain required to grow them.
Many have now launched a venture capital arm, hoping to catch new trends.
But as a former executive at one of the world’s largest food companies recently shared, “That’s a good PR story, but those deals don’t put a dent in earnings.”
And the valuations on some of these deals are reminiscent of the tech bubble days.
“As companies seek growth and scale, bigger deals have leaped the most in valuation. The multiple for deals valued at more than $1 billion, jumped from 13 times EBITDA in 2016 to 20 times EBITDA in 2017, according to Dealogic. The multiple on deals valued below $500 million edged slightly down from 20 times to 19 times,” CNBC reports.
So what tends to happen?
“Several years into these efforts though, many of today’s biggest successes, like Kind Bar, have originated outside such incubators. The culture of start-ups, where failure is inevitable, differs starkly from a publicly traded company tied to quarterly expectations and the need to show return on investment.”
The Financial Times recently ranked the cultures of the largest food companies. Not surprisingly, Kraft-Heinz landed dead last. When you kill creative disruption, create a culture that silences imaginative innovation and focus on cost cutting not growth, culture suffers. Standard operating procedures become the norm, when disruptive innovation should be.
Which gets to the heart of the problem. You cannot fix a broken food system with a broken financial system. One failing system built another failing system.
Why are we surprised?
In my conversations with leadership teams over the last few years, I will say: “Wall Street has you by the throat. How are you able to invest in regenerative, organic, sustainable farm and food systems on a quarterly earnings schedule?”
“Quarterly earnings expectations are killing us,” is usually the reply.
And they’re killing our supply chain, the very thing that these CEOs and companies need to grow their businesses. Right now, about 1% of U.S. farmland is organic. So it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of Kraft or Patagonia, the supply does not currently exist to meet the demand.
If farmers tend to only lease farmland on a one-year lease, what long-term incentive is in place in the public markets to protect that land, soil and water used on it? There isn’t one. Earnings calls should include questions like:
What percentage of your farmland is organic?
What programs does your company have in place to convert farmland to organic?
What programs does your company have in place to support farm workers?
What do you have in place to restore the soil and regenerate agriculture?
A healthy food system starts with healthy financing.
And right now we don’t have either at a scale large enough to sustain us.
The tsunami of capital that is coming into the natural and organic space isn’t always a good thing either. We saw something similar play out in the markets in the late 90s during the tech bubble. There was too much capital and too few deals with integrity.
There is a lot of passion to make a quick buck. And many of these entrepreneurs can tell a good story, but uneducated capital and unbridled greed are some of the most dangerous ingredients in our food system.
The companies that have the most bandwidth and freedom to engage in long term strategic goals are those that are privately held: Patagonia, Mars and the smaller companies.
The fate of the publicly held food companies right now is squarely in the hands of its investors.
It takes three years to convert a farm from genetically engineered crops to organic, that doesn’t meet the Street’s quarterly earnings appetite.
Which begs the question: should these companies begin to spin off divisions and privatize them? It would give them the bandwidth needed to invest in regenerative, organic growth.
Restorative, regenerative agriculture begins with restorative, regenerative finance. Capital can be part of the problem or part of the solution.
We have flushed away more resources in our food system than is morally responsible. We waste 40% of what we produce; we tax the land, the soil, the water and the air with the inputs that we’ve used.
But what can be called a crisis can also be called an opportunity.
Food security is national security and national security is food security.
We must consider all of the inputs in our food system, from immigrant farm workers to seed capital, if we are truly going to regenerate food and build a secure and sustainable model for those who depend on it every day.
It’s time to table a better food system, and that starts with sourcing educated capital and employing metrics relevant to 21st century families.
In my work in the food industry, many companies, big multinationals and small startups, are asking about food allergies.
It is no longer a closet condition that mothers bow their heads over. It is impacting a growing number of Americans.
The number of people with the peanut allergy in the United States more than quadrupled between 1997 and 2010.
EpiPen, the life-saving device manufactured by Mylan, has grown from a $200 million product in 2007 to a $1 billion brand today. Its monopoly is so strong that even in the face of a manufacturing shortage, many stand helpless on the sidelines and the media remains silent.
A life threatening food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room once every three minutes in the United States.
Twelve years ago, that person was me, as our fourth child suffered her first reaction.
In the twelve years since, I have held the hands of parents that have lost their children to these allergic reactions and shared far too many of their stories.
Food should not kill our children.
And too much of the data that is often shared is old. “Food allergies cause 150-200 deaths per year,” we often read. But the truth is that the Centers for Disease Control actually do not keep track of the number of deaths by food allergic reaction. And in many cases, when the cause of death is listed, it often has to do with what has occurred during those reactions, the loss of oxygen and inability to breath, like Emily’s Story, which we have shared countless times and will continue to because of the number of lives that it has already saved.
Food allergies are not a niche, it is a growing epidemic that is challenging how we think about our food and how it is made. Genetic factors don’t change this quickly, environmental factors do. Are we allergic to food or to what’s been done to it?
Researchers report that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
Researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association states that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
To discount this condition in any way is irresponsible, but it is just one of the conditions that is triggering a food awakening around the country.
In the United States, we are quickly learning that our food supply contains a lot of ingredients that simply did not exist when we were kids, and that our own American corporations don’t use these ingredients in the products they sell overseas.
As a result of this growing awareness of what has been done to our food, 21st century consumers are looking for “free from” food: food that is free from ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, GMOs and artificial ingredients. Why? Because we are dealing with conditions and diseases in our families like never before. It is driving a food awakening. We are not saying that correlation is causation, we simply want food companies to dump the junk and the artificial ingredients from their products.
In the last few years, Target, Chipotle, Panera, Kroger, even General Mills and Cheerios have responded to this growing demand in the marketplace. In the last few months, Pepsi, Tyson and others have responded, too.
In the United States, we have allowed our cows to be fed genetically engineered corn, removed the ability to label beef as “grass-fed” and allowed an artificial growth hormone to be inserted into our dairy cows that no other developed country in the world allowed? So if a child has a milk allergy, it is difficult to know if they are allergic to organic milk, conventional milk, milk full of the antibiotics and pus that turned other countries off of the artificial growth hormone in the first place? It’s hard to know. That level of allergy testing does not exist.
But consumers are on the front lines.
They see the escalating rates of diseases, they feel the financial impact with their own health care costs, and they hear consumers that are saying they want to eat fewer fake, artificial and genetically engineered ingredients. While the chemical companies selling these new ingredients say there is no evidence of harm, consumers are saying: there is no evidence since these ingredients were never labeled in the United States. There are also no long term studies to show us that they are safe.
The potential of genetically engineered foods to cause allergic reactions is a big reason for opposition to these crops. It is also one of the concerns that led 64 countries around the world to label these foods for their citizens while over 30 countries banned them entirely.
Introduced into the US food supply in the mid 1990s without labels, there were protocols put in place to ask questions about the allergy-causing possibilities, but there has been no test that offers definitive answers.
In other words, if you walked into an allergist’s office and asked if you were allergic to corn that has been in the food supply for thousands of years or if you are allergic to a new corn product, genetically engineered to produce its own insecticide and introduced into our food and now regulated by the EPA as a pesticide, there would be no test to give you that answer.
With no labels on GMO ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm.
With no labels on these ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
But with the widespread introduction of genetically engineered ingredients into the US food supply, a frequently asked question is: Are rates of allergies higher in the United States than they are in other countries?
Previously, it was anyone’s guess.
But a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says yes, living in the United States increases your risk of allergic diseases……“significantly.”
“Living in the US raises risk of allergies,” say recent headlines. Life-threatening allergic reactions to foods have increased by five times over the last decade in the U.S., according to a new analysis of private insurance claims by FAIR Health, an independent nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on privately billed health insurance claims.
According to the research, living in the United States for a decade or more may raise the risk of some allergies, reports the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
In other words, the longer you live here, the more likely you are to develop some kind of allergy, asthma, eczema or other related condition.
Food allergies have been skyrocketing in the United States in the last fifteen years. Not only has the CDC reported a 265% increase in the rates of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions in a ten year period, but the sales of EpiPens, a life-saving medical device for those with food allergies, has also seen record sales growth according to the New York Times.
So what’s going on?
The study aimed to find out. Allergies reported in the survey included asthma, eczema, hay fever, and food allergies.
“Children born outside the United States had significantly lower prevalence of any allergic diseases (20.3%) than those born in the United States (34.5%),” said the study led by Jonathan Silverberg of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
Let’s restate that:
Children born in the US have more than a 1 in 3 chance of having allergic diseases like food allergies, asthma or eczema, while kids born in other countries around the world had a “significantly lower prevalence” of 1 in 5.
On top of that, “foreign-born Americans develop increased risk for allergic disease with prolonged residence in the United States,” it said.
In other words, if you move here, your chances of developing any one or more of these allergic diseases increase.
The study went so far as to say that children born outside of the US who moved here showed “significantly” higher odds of developing these diseases.
What’s driving this? Is it really Purel and intense handwashing? And the hygiene hypothesis?
And are we allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Because genetics don’t change that quickly, and the environment does.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
This presents a risk not only to these children, but also to our economy, as the financial burden of these conditions and their associated health care costs impact not only families but also our country, our military and our productivity.
So what is triggering this escalating, US allergy epidemic?
According to Reuters report on the study and Dr. Ruchi Gupta, who studies allergies at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago but wasn’t involved in the new research, “This is definitely something we see clinically and we’re trying to better understand, what is it in our environment that’s increasing the risk of allergic disease?” said
“Food allergies have increased tremendously,” she told Reuters Health. “We do see people who come from other countries don’t tend to have it.”
As discussed in a previous column, allergic reactions occur you’re your body perceives something to be a threat. They can also be a symptom of a hypersensitive immune system – our bodies armed and ready to launch an attack againstany perceived threat.
A growing number of doctors are also suggesting that food allergies might be a symptom that something is wrong with our food system. In other words, in light of the sudden explosion in food allergies: are we suddenly allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Someone with food allergies has an immune system that perceives a food protein to be “foreign”, unidentifiable. And it launches an inflammatory response to drive out that foreign invader.
Today, we have new, foreign proteins that have never existed in our food supply that have been genetically engineered into our food. These proteins are so new that they have been patented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and never before existed up until their introduction in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Now correlation is not causation, but the concern over the unknown health impacts of these new proteins in the food supply is in part what led 64 countries around the world to label genetically engineered foods when they were first introduced fifteen years ago and 27 countries to flat out ban them.
Genetically engineered crops are created by inserting a protein from a different organism into the original crop’s genome. This is usually done to create a plant that is more resistant to insects or diseases.
The Food and Agriculture Organization within the World Health Organization has a structured approach to determining whether genetically engineered foods cause allergies, according to Venu Gangur, MSU assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, who also is a faculty member in the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center. “But it has a major flaw. A critical question in that process asks, ‘Does the protein cause an allergic reaction in animals?’ The problem is that there has been no good animal model available to test this.”
It’s food for thought.
We don’t have labels on these genetically engineered foods in the US, at least not yet. Bipartisan legislation was recently introduced, and efforts have been made to urge the FDA to take action so that American consumers can enjoy the same freedoms enjoyed by consumers in over 60 countries around the world (including all of the member states of the European Union, Australia, Japan, the UK, Russia, China and India) and have access to whether or not their food and the foods they are feeding their families contain these genetically engineered ingredients.
Do we really want out slogan to be: Come to America, but don’t forget your asthma enhalers and EpiPens? We could quickly earn the title of the United States of Allergic Disease.
We are so much more than that.
Since genetically engineered ingredients are not yet labeled here in the United States. look for “Non-GMO” or “USDA Organic” foods which by law are not allowed to be produced with these new proteins. Chipotle took a bold move and announced that they are dropping these ingredients altogether.
With conflicting positions in the science, these ingredients need to be labeled. A food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room in the United States once every three minutes. European law dictates that any food containing more than 0.9% genetically engineered ingredients be labeled as containing GMOs. It’s a freedom to choose. Clean food is a right that should be afforded to all Americans, not just those who can afford to opt out and purchase foods labeled “non-GMO” or “USDA Organic”.
Mounting scientific evidence points to the role that our increasingly re-engineered food supply, hopped up on additives, artificial dyes, artificial growth hormones, record amounts of pesticides now recognized by the World Health Organization as a probable carcinogen and genetically engineered ingredients hardwired to be sprayed with them is having on the health of our families. The growing number of American dealing with food allergies and food sensitivities is an alarm bell that our bodies can no longer tolerate what has been done to our food.
The cost of food allergies is burdening more than just the families dealing with them, it’s burdening our schools, our health care system and our economy.
Food allergies are not a “niche,” just as cancer is not a fad.
It’s time to clean up our food, to get the junk out. Chipotle recognizes this and is responding to the needs of 21st century families. Given that the company formerly known as Kraft recognizes this same demographic with its recent acquisition, it’s time that others do, too.
21st century consumers are looking for food that is free from artificial ingredients and allergens. The companies that recognize this are seeing their market share and earnings grow.
I