Watchdog Blog

Pollan for Secretary of Ag?

by Kendra Pierre-Louis

There’s a rumor circulating around the foodie and agricultural corners of the internet that President-Elect Obama might choose best selling author and New York Times contributing writer Michael Pollan as his new Secretary of Agriculture.

At first blush this seems to be a ludicrous idea.

After all, Michael Pollan’s own biography lists him first as a writer and secondly as a professor (he is the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley). His educational background, he received a B.A. from Bennington College, where he focused on literature, and an M.A. in English from Columbia University, only seems to add to the ridiculousness of the idea. Where is his agriculture experience? In fact, words such as “farmer”, “agriculturalist” or “agronomist” appear nowhere on his CV.

Mr. Pollan seems a foolhardy choice, until one examines the substance of his writing. From The Botany of Desire, to his most recent, In Defense of Food, Pollan shows a nuanced understanding of how our food systems should behave, namely to feed people in a manner that sustains life. Instead, our current food system lines the pockets of agribusiness while wreaking havoc on the environment and compounding our health and energy problems.

To even a casual observer our current system of agriculture does not make sense.

The CPSC and Voluntary Safety Standards

In a Washington Post article yesterday noting a 46 percent drop in the number of toy recalls, Consumer Product Safety Commission Acting Chair Nancy Nord partially attributed the significant decrease of dangerous toys on the shelves to stronger voluntary safety standards. Ironically though, at a conference last month, Nord told her audience that the agency’s voluntary standards work will be scaled back, and data reports and important “safety work” would be delayed. She blamed the cut back on the agency’s implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was enacted this summer. According to Nord, the CPSC is unable to implement the new law and conduct other important safety activities at the same time. 

D.C. residents can die in combat but have no say in Congress

originally posted by Joe Newman on Citizen Vox

Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left.

You can march off to battle,

But steer clear of the polls.

Fight for us, die for us

but don’t forget your role.

– from “The New Cadence” by Estilito Diaz

Unlike previous rallies in support of D.C. voting rights, the one today in front of the U.S. Capitol was different. There was a sense that the fight to give the District of Columbia a seat in Congress might be gaining momentum. As people all over the country are saying, it’s a new day.

It doesn’t hurt that the D.C. Voting Rights Act has supporters in high places. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated he’ll support the act, D.C.’s Delegate to the House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, told the supporters gathered for the Veteran’s Day rally.

“He told me he will sign the bill,” Norton said. “It’s up to us to get him a bill to sign.”

FDA Puts BPA Under Further Review

A couple of weeks ago, we decried the FDA's cozy relationship with industry in its announcement that the safety of products containing BPA was "adequate." It looks like we weren't the only ones who noticed. Friday, an advisory panel agreed that the FDA's report created "a false sense of security" regarding the safety of BPA. According to the Washington Post, the toxicologists on the panel "said the FDA had relied too heavily on studies funded by the chemical industry to make its decision." The FDA deserves credit for taking a second look at the science behind its decision, but this whole episode only further demonstrates that the danger of our federal agencies outsourcing their work to the industries they regulate – a trend the Obama administration should look to reverse.