A lawsuit filed in the Washington, D.C. federal district court late last year, which would throw out the USDA’s raw almond pasteurization mandate, is moving ahead. Enacted in the name of food safety, the USDA rule requires treatment with a toxic gas (propylene oxide) or steam heat for all raw almonds produced by American growers and sold commercially to domestic consumers. Eighteen California almond farmers and wholesale nut handlers are the formal legal parties suing the USDA to overturn the rule. Their businesses and farming practices have been ruined by the rule, they charge. The Cornucopia Institute, a family farmer watchdog group, is helping coordinate the legal strategy. It’s an expensive process and Cornucopia is working to help raise money for legal costs associated with repealing the almond treatment mandate.
In late December, the USDA moved to dismiss the court challenge on procedural grounds. It’s a move that Cornucopia lawyers anticipated and they expect will be rejected.
The case is growing in importance as federal regulators weigh a number of other onerous food safety treatment plans for the nation’s fresh vegetables, fruit and nuts. If allowed to stand as a precedent, the USDA and the FDA will be further encouraged to apply similar treatment schemes to many fresh foods.
...Cornucopia is asking those interested in protecting access to truly raw and fresh foods to support the almond farmers and handlers with their lawsuit. Online donations can be made at www.cornucopia.org (please note that the donation is in support of the almond lawsuit). Updates and news on the almond issue can also be found under The Authentic Almond Project on Cornucopia’s web page.
- Mark Kastel, The Cornucopia Institute
2 Comments:
Out of curiosity, could almonds just be irradiated to kill harmful bacteria? That's how human tissue grafts are sterilized and it works very well from what I understand. I don't think it's significantly more expensive--it's preferred over the ethylene trioxide (ETO) method, and I remember a while back that some companies were experimenting with irradiating strawberries.
I can't imagine that irradiated food would taste any different or have any noticeable nutritive changes. There was some concern that there may be more free radicals in irradiated food, but I think this wasn't held up by any actual findings.
I would bet that it is possible. There are several different types of irradiation, I think, which penetrate to different layers. There are all sorts of reasons that I wouldn't want this, as a consumer -- though I think the market should be free and producers should be able to do whatever they want.
The thing is that a few larger producers have gone to the USDA to get this pasteurization law enacted. It serves their interests by protecting them from lawsuits and squeezing out smaller producers who can't afford the equipment. To make matters worse, they've further requested the USDA to allow them to be labeled as "raw" even though they're cooked -- on just that basis, that there are no nutritive differences. That's completely deceptive. Cooked milk isn't raw milk, and cooked almonds aren't raw almonds.
As for nutritional differences, I'm not convinced. As far as basic minerals and macronutrients I'm sure that's basically true. However, even the FDA admits that irradiation renders enzymes nonfunctional. That's why it would be such an effective technique for extending shelf life of many items, including meat at room temp. Those are the enzymes that people who want to soak their nuts want to remain functional. I think irradiated enzymes could honestly be labeled raw (since they're not cooked), but they'd also be dead nuts, and I think that's what raw food eaters want to know. I haven't researched this area extensively but I'm already skeptical of FDA research due to their ignorance about the importance of functional proteins and enzymes for nutrition. I think companies should be free to irradiated whatever they want, but there shouldn't be laws about it. We've seen where that's led with pasteurization, with huge unintended consequences.
Ideally, there would be a huge market diversity, appropriately labeled, with everything from pasteurized, chem treated, irradiated, or raw almonds -- if the government would just get out of the way.
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