After a week-long pause, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allowed imports of Mexican avocados to resume on Saturday, replenishing US guacamole reserves exhausted by Super Bowl parties. Imports ceased after a Mexico-based avocado inspector from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was threatened by crime cartels anxious to pass off Jalisco ‘cados as Michoacán-grown, the only ones currently allowed into the States.
With $3 billion in annual avocado exports, Mexican crime cartels have targeted another US drug of choice, guacamole. Mexico’s avocado growers face cartel extortion and hijackings. The boom crop is also responsible for drought, deforestation, and violence.
While the US has agreed to begin importing avocados from additional Mexican states as their crops are declared pest-free, those harvests will never be crime free.
More:
“United States lifts Mexican avocado ban — averting what could have been a costly crisis,” By María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post
“How the Avocado Became Key to Mexican Drug Cartel Turf War,” Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek
“People talk about food assistance programs as if they were created to help poor people out. Yes that’s true, but almost all of the major food assistance programs were ideas that came from agriculture because we had too much of something.”
Surprisingly, this CNBC video misses two songs named “Government Cheese,” one by Keb’ Mo’ and the first, a less sympathetic take by The Rainmakers:
Based on these lofty principles, we’ve developed “Guidelines on How Americans Really Eat Now” (above). Add an RC Cola or a PBR and you have a complete family meal.
And food processing creates millions of jobs too, amiright? Pass the Doritos, bro.
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13 percent of Americans eat pizza each day (no, not the same 13 percent …). That’s a lot of people and lots of calories, saturated fat, and sodium, too.
And Uncle Sam helps. The USDA runs a “dairy checkoff program” though small assessments on milk sales to processors, raising hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The funds are turned over to Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI) to encourage public demand for dairy products. U.S. fluid milk consumption is down, but cheese eating is way up, and 25 percent of that cheese is melted on pizza. DMI has a partnership with Domino’s Pizza, America’s 2nd largest retailer of pizza-like objects, and paid Domino’s $35 million over the past 3 years to develop and market cheesier pies.
Read about it here:
“How the U.S. government spends millions to get people to eat more pizza,” Brad Plumer, Washington Post blog
“USDA reports on pizza consumption and on dairy checkoff program initiatives to increase pizza demand,” Park Wilde, US Food Policy blog
The USDA is poised to allow a New Mexico slaughterhouse to butcher horses. The Administration doesn’t want to, but the horsemeat ban has expired, and an extension requires action by our do-nothing Congress. Goodbye, Old Paint.
More:
“Six-Year Ban on Horse Slaughter to End as U.S. Approves Plant,” Amanda J. Crawford and Alan Bjerga, Bloomberg News
“How to cook your horse: Equine recipes from around Europe,” Paul Ames, GlobalPost
It took special efforts to get the U.S. government to fund food safety measures to prevent fatal food poisoning, but another food inspection program just galloped through Congress. Legislators passed a bill allowing federal government inspection of horsemeat for human consumption. Hi Yo Silver! Pony slaughterhouses ride again.
Tuesday, by act of Congress, pizza was declared a vegetable. The Spending Bill before our elected officials contained an Agriculture Department provision recognizing that school kids are dangerously obese, and that subsidizing school lunches of frozen pizza and french fries is unwise and unhealthy. The Congressional response: a slice of pizza = a serving of vegetables.
The American Frozen Food Institute spent over $5 million convincing Congress to protect their juicy $11 billion annual school lunch harvest from the pestilence of nutritional common sense, and they prevailed. Result: kids will still eat government-subsidized carbs, fat, and salt, and Big Food will get fatter, too.
In other farm news, Monsanto announced that Roundup-Ready Pizza Seeds will be available in time for spring planting, and February pizza crop futures rose at the Chicago Board of Trade after predictions of increased Super Bowl party demand.
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