Biting the Hands That Feed Us : How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable

Few consumers realize the law's impact on our ability to produce and access certain foods. But food is a heavily regulated field-safety rules control the production and sale of food, labeling laws regulate the information that must, may, and may not appear on a package, and zoning ordinances restrict where food may be grown and where and when it may be sold. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Recently, consumers have begun to recognize the significance of these laws and have started examining the policy decisions surrounding them. For some, this is due to changing eating habits, such as the growing interest in purchasing foods that were produced more sustainably, or products prepared without the use of certain ingredients. Others may have come into contact with this system when their favorite farm or dairy was forced to shutter its doors, not because its products were unsafe but because of the crushing burden of complying with regulations. Biting the Hands that Feed Us provides a groundbreaking account of this flawed system. Baylen Linnekin skillfully examines laws at various levels of government that, despite good intentions, operate in ways that make the food we produce and consume less sustainable, rather than more so. I first met Baylen at a food law conference at Northeastern Law School in January 2011, where he spoke about current and historical food safety laws that, paradoxically, have made our food supply less safe. I could see immediately that Baylen possesses a genuine curiosity about the consequences of our system of food regulation, and that he brings a necessary critical perspective to the discussion. He is a gifted storyteller, weaving together historical facts, personal anecdotes, and legal explications in a way that makes this field compelling to a broad audience. Baylen and I bonded over a shared frustration with the many laws that privilege large, industrial food producers at the expense of small, nonconventional food producers. These laws can stifle opportunity, even as their benefits are dubious or at least unproven. Examples of these contradictions are rife, and many are recounted in this book. They include USDA rules that require the use of nitrates or nitrites in the production of salumi, even though small-scale production does not necessitate such additives for safety. [p. 2] (What is salumi, you may ask? Read on to find out!) Or FDA on-farm requirements that could force small and large farmers alike to spend thousands of dollars to complyrules that, as you'll learn, "won't put a stop to foodborne illness, but . . . threatened to put an end to sustainable farming." [p. 27] There are even laws that make it impossible for people to grow and consume their own food, such as city ordinances that prohibit growing vegetables in a front yard. [p. 148] Another crucial issue that I'm sure will incense readers concerns laws that cause the waste of healthy, wholesome food. Forty percent of the food produced in the United States goes to waste. For each pound of food wasted, we waste all of the energy, water, and other resources that went into producing that food, causing a tremendous environmental impact. Yet many laws either cause us to waste food or make wasting it the easy decision. Biting the Hands that Feed Us includes several maddening examples, such as the fruit and vegetable grading standards sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Grading is based on the visual appearance of produce rather than on its safety, healthfulness, or flavor, yet it dictates the purchasing decisions of most retailers. Stores welfare advocates worry about what exactly will replace partially hydrogenated oils in processed foods. "The biggest beneficiary of the demise of trans fat has been palm oil, which has seen a dramatic increase in demand as a result," says Paul Shapiro, vice president for farm animal protection with the Humane Society of the United States. 1 "Most of the palm oil in the world comes from Indonesia and Malaysia, typically from plantations now sitting on former rainforests." Those rainforests, Shapiro explains, are home to threatened populations of animals such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers, pygmy elephants, Sumatran rhinos, and clouded leopards, to name a few. When the FDA banned partially hydrogenated oils, it didn't consider the ban's impact on Sumatran tigers. Yet the future of the tiger and many of its fellow Indonesian and Malaysian rainforest dwellers is threatened today by the FDA's ban. You'll learn about many, many other unintended consequences throughout this book. Most often, they're more direct than the connection between banning trans fats and harming rainforests and the creatures that live there. As you'll see, however well-meaning a law is, it can have dramatic unintended consequences. You'll also see that many laws appear not to be very well-meaning at all. Regardless of intent, you'll learn that laws that might seem "good" or "bad" often have a similar effect: they handcuff sustainable food producers, create tons of food waste, or even prohibit people like you from engaging in sustainable food practices at home. Thanks to my parents for everything. Thanks to my partner, Roxanne Alvarez, for her love and support. I'm grateful to Emily Broad Leib for being a great collaborator, colleague, and friend, and for agreeing with me and disagreeing with me, depending on the issue, with equal aplomb. Josh Galperin from Yale Law School, Margot J. Pollans from the Elisabeth Haub Law School, and Michael T. Roberts from UCLA Law School graciously contributed their valuable time and their expert opinions in reviewing the manuscript that became this book. The text was improved vastly thanks to their respective willingness to offer comments, suggestions, and edits, and to point me in the right direction in places where they saw I was headed elsewhere. I'm grateful to a handful of law students around the country-busy people who are not known for their wealth of free time-who kindly offered to fact check chapters of the manuscript. Vytas Babusis, Rosemarie Hebner, Caleb Trotter, Aaron Voit, and my own former student, Kathleen Garman, helped make sure my facts checked out. "Food waste, hunger, inhumane livestock conditions, disappearing fish stocks--these are exactly the kind of issues we expect food regulations to combat. Yet, today in the United States, laws exist at all levels of government that actually make these problems worse. Baylen Linnekin argues that, too often, government rules handcuff America's most sustainable farmers, producers, sellers, and consumers, while rewarding those whose practices are anything but sustainable. Bitting the Hands that Feed Us introduces readers to the perverse consequences of many food rules. Some of these rules constrain the sale of 'ugly' fruits and vegetables, relegating bushels of tasty but misshapen carrots and strawberries to food waste. Other rules have threatened to treat manure--the lifeblood of organic fertilization--as a toxin. Still other rules prevent sharing food with the homeless and others in need. There are even rules that prohibit people from growing fruits and vegetables in their own yards. Linnekin also explores what makes for a good food law--often, he explains, these emphasize good outcomes rather than rigid processes. But he urges readers to be wary of efforts to regulate our way to a greener food system, calling instead for empowerment of those working to feed us (and themselves) sustainably"--Amazon.com Front Matter....Pages i-xxi Introduction....Pages 1-13 Unsafe at Any Feed....Pages 15-61 “Big Food” Bigger Thanks to “Big Government”....Pages 63-105 Wasting Your Money Wasting Food....Pages 107-143 I Say “Tomato,” You Say “No”....Pages 145-174 There Are Good Food Rules....Pages 175-187 More Sustainability, Fewer Food Rules....Pages 189-200 Back Matter....Pages 201-257