Citing congressional discretionary spending cuts of 12% or roughly $3 billion since FY2010, and anticipating deeper cuts in FY2013, along with a White House order to consolidate and streamline services, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack this week announced USDA will close 259 offices in the U.S. and globally to save an estimated $150 million a year in administrative costs, including rent, travel and supply purchase reductions. Vilsack, after notifying congressional leaders, made the announcement during a speech Monday at the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) annual meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, while various USDA subcabinet officers in Washington, DC, held briefings to assure stakeholders no program or service cuts will result from the facility closings since the cuts affect only USDA’s administrative budget, not program budgets. The facilities slated for closing are as follows:
When it comes to closing FSA offices, Vilsack faces legal restrictions in the 2008 Farm Bill, inserted shortly after then-Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced he wanted to close 600 FSA offices. USDA must now hold public hearings within 30 days if it intends to close or consolidate offices with two or fewer employees. Vilsack said those hearings are being scheduled and he’ll take another 90 days to review the comments. Dubbing the effort a “Blueprint for Stronger Service,” Vilsack anticipates few employee layoffs as 7,000 USDA workers have taken early retirement or separation packages over the last 15 months, and as many as 2,000 more are expected to accept the same offers by the end of 2012. “Our workload is at a record high, we have less money and fewer people, and work to do and we tried to address how do you do that without interrupting service,” Vilsack said to reporters. “Not all of these (vacated) positions will be filled, and employees will be given options to move to other offices within 20 miles of closed facilities,” he said. In addition, Vilsack said the department is consolidating more than 700 cell phone plans into 10; standardizing civil rights training and purchases of cybersecurity products, and streamlining and centralizing USDA employee services.
A class action lawsuit was filed this week against former head of MF Global (MFG) John Corzine by Montana farmers, suing on behalf of all 38,000 MFG farmer, rancher and other clients who had accounts with the now-bankrupt trading company. ABC News reports the suit was filed against Corzine because of his “single-minded obsession” with making MFG a major player on Wall Street. The suit alleges MFG made a bad investments, including investing in European debt, and that the firm “began siphoning off funds withdrawn from segregated accounts” to pay off its debts. An attorney for the suit said MFG became what some contend was the nation’s largest trading company “through Corzine’s political lobbying and the commingling and looting of customer segregated accounts.” Federal bankruptcy law precludes suing MFG while it’s under bankruptcy protection, but does not protect the company’s former executives. The suit names Corzine, other MFG executives, PricewaterhouseCoopers and JP Morgan Chase, the bank that held the MFG monies. Other suits filed on behalf of MFG customers have named Corzine and other MFG management team members, ABC reported.
More of the U.S. corn crop is now going to ethanol production than to livestock and poultry feed use and this trend will continue to at least 2014, according to North American Risk Management Services Inc. The market analysis company says corn for ethanol use increased 400% from 1.3 billion bushels in 2005 to 5 billion bushels last year, exceeding 40% of the crop. Feed use fell 22% during the same period as producers shifted to alternative feeds, including dried distillers solubles, an ethanol byproduct. The company says ethanol could take as much as 5.1 billion bushels in the year that began September 1, or roughly 41% of the crop. Feed demand is forecast to drop to 4.6 billion bushels, down from about 4.8 billion last year.
The Food Industry Dioxin Working Group (FIDWG), a Washington, DC, coalition of 18 farm, feed, grain, processing and retail food groups, having received no response to a December, 2010, letter to the White House, EPA, USDA, FDA and USTR, has now formally requested EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson suspend all interagency review of its draft non-cancer dioxin risk reassessment until the agency meets with affected stakeholders and fulfills other legal requirements. The non-cancer risk reassessment carries a reference dose (RfD) of 0.7 picograms per kilogram per day for the average consumer, a level, the coalition says that is arbitrarily low, can be exceeded by a consumer after an average meal or heavy snack, is out of sync with the rest of the world’s regulatory bodies, and ignores the fact that current dioxin exposure is less than background level, emissions having been cut by over 92% over the last 15 years. Further, the FY2012 appropriations bill instructs EPA to fix its broken Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a database through which suspected harmful chemicals are run, and to provide documentation on any FY2012 draft chemical actions it intends to take. The coalition, coordinated by the American Feed Industry Assn. (AFIA), represents the National Grain & Feed Assn. (NGFA), National Oilseed Processors (NOPA), American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and others, in an ongoing battle over what it sees as EPA’s intent to create an avoidable and unnecessary food safety scare, forcing USDA and FDA to try and calm consumer concerns.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) this week gave the U.S., along with Canada and Mexico, an additional 60 days to decide whether or not to appeal a November, 2010, WTO ruling holding the U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law violates WTO trade rules. March 23 is the new deadline for comments. Canada and Mexico filed the complaint in December, 2008, alleging the U.S. law unfairly imposes costs on their exports, reduces their markets and their competitiveness. The WTO found the U.S. law requiring the country of origin to be listed on labels for fish, fresh meats and some fresh produce in violation of global trade rules and “unfairly hurts agricultural commerce”
April 30, 2012, is the deadline for new workplace union election procedures under a final rule issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB rulemaking, strongly opposed by business and industry, received 66,000 comments after it was published in June, 2011, and the final rule focuses on procedures in cases where employers and unions cannot agree, including whether employees covered by a union election petition are an “appropriate voting group.” If a dispute arises, the matter will go to a regional NLRB office where a director will make a decision on if and when an election will be held. The hearings that ensue from such disputes will be limited to questions of whether the election should be held, with pre-election eligibility and appeals postponed until after the election as a mechanism for speeding up the election process. The NLRB hearing officer will have very broad authority, including NLRB discretion whether to even allow appeals.
A House Energy & Commerce Committee investigation of a cantaloupe-related Listeria monocytogenes outbreak says relying on third party private food safety auditors is no guarantee of enhanced food safety. In an eight-page digest of staff interviews and investigations in the case of Jensen Farms, a Colorado cantaloupe grower, linked to what the committee calls the deadliest outbreak of foodborne illness in 25 years, one that killed 30 and put another 146 in the hospital, the farm owners said they thought they were enhancing food safety when they switched from a chlorinated rinse system to a non-chlorine system after discussing the move with a private food safety auditing company and an equipment broker. However, FDA now says the system switch was the likely source of the contamination. The farm had received superior ratings from Bio Food Safety, a subcontractor of the auditing company, Primus Lab. Federal officials, cantaloupe industry representatives and academics met this week at the University of California-Davis to discuss the report.
USDA’s Agricultural Air Quality Task Force (AAQTF) will hold a public meeting Feb. 7-8 in Tempe, Arizona, “to continue discussions on critical air quality issues related to agriculture,” with specific emphasis on obtaining “a greater understanding of the relationship between agricultural production and air quality.” The committee will reserve time for public comment, the department said. The meeting announcement can be found at www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-01-12/htm/2012-469.htm.