Category: Legislation

Exploring the Legal and Policy Implications Behind ‘High on the Hog’: Black Farmers, Land Loss and Its Implications (Part 3 of 4)

Throughout “High on the Hog”, one can see a deep connection between Black American culinary traditions and farming. However, this connection has been threatened by a variety of policies that have limited Black American land ownership and access. For example, certain policies by the USDA, which has earned itself a description as “the last plantation,” such as allowing local (mostly white) farmers to determine Black farmers’ eligibility for USDA funding, have led to Black Americans’ loss of land. In Pigford v. Glickman, the racial discrimination class-action brought against the USDA by Black farmers, the USDA agreed to the largest civil-rights settlement in U.S. history of $1.25 billion. However, many eligible Black farmers have not been compensated. 

The number of Black farmers in America has decreased dramatically over the past 100 years, with less than 2 percent of farms in the United States owned or operated by Black Americans. This figure is a significant decrease from 1920, when 14.3% of American farms were operated by Black farmers. While there was a small increase in the number of Black farmers from 1.3% to 1.4% between 2007 and 2012, both Black rural and urban farmers continue to face challenges including land access, zoning laws, and financing. Public policies in the agricultural sector have historically disproportionately favored large-scale farmers and contributed to the marginalization of Black farmers. 

Continue reading “Exploring the Legal and Policy Implications Behind ‘High on the Hog’: Black Farmers, Land Loss and Its Implications (Part 3 of 4)” →

Food waste management in the US, UK and Japan

by Minako Kageyama Tanaka

This is the second of three blog posts by Minako Kageyama Tanaka* on food waste in the US, the UK, and Japan.

Food recovery hierarchy commonality and difference

How do the three countries tackle the food waste issue? The US, the UK and Japan articulate their food waste reduction strategies in their food recovery hierarchies. These hierarchies showcase available food waste reduction and recycling approaches and nudge people to take action in the order of least environmental impacts. Although the recovery steps in the three countries are not the same, the countries share many approaches. For example, all three countries start their hierarchy with the reduction of food waste sources. Redistribution of surplus to people and animals comes next, and recycling is the countries’ third preferable action.

However, each government’s recovery hierarchy differs slightly in its types of methods and actions. For instance, Japan is the only country among the three that specifically mentions using digestates for mushroom beds in its hierarchy. And the UK is the only country that sets landspreading in its hierarchy. These examples highlight these countries’ intentions to promote such recycling methods. 

Continue reading “Food waste management in the US, UK and Japan” →

Addressing Student Food Insecurity with a SNAP

by Kyle Winterboer*

As students return to in-person school, it is an important time to revisit the issue of food insecurity across America’s educational system. Particularly in Higher Education, recent studies suggest student food insecurity levels had reached as high as 38% in Spring 2020 and 5.8 of every 10 students experienced some form of basic needs insecurity. These rates have dramatically increased throughout the duration of the pandemic because students sent home for lock-down no longer had access to the already limited forms of support available in person on campuses.

A common tool used to fight food insecurity is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Despite its successes in reducing hunger and the economic benefits the program introduces to stimulate local economies, SNAP has many limitations and needs reform to better address food insecurity. One such limitation is that policy makers have long denied students access to SNAP. While the past decade has brought some expansions to grant students access, significant barriers remain. Barriers include restrictive student eligibility criteria and mixed messaging that leaves students misinformed of their eligibility. This policy failure leaves students hungry, many of whom would otherwise be eligible for aid if they were not pursuing higher education.

To show the real human impacts of these policy failings, journalist Alejandra Salgado details student stories in an article that appeared in CalMatters and was shared by Civil Eats: Colleges Rush to Sign Students Up for Food Aid, as Pandemic Rules Make More Eligible | Civil Eats

To provide additional context to the policies described in Salgado’s reporting, the below contains insights from Resnick Center Research Assistant Kyle Winterboer in this policy area. This research comes from his time with the student led research advocacy group “unBox”, the assistance of the UCLA CalFresh Initiative, his own application process amidst the pandemic, and from his time implementing a little known policy solution across UCLA departments to better support students in their SNAP applications.

The Resnick Center thanks the unBox Project and the UCLA CalFresh Initiative for readily sharing information for this report, and their continued dedication to the mission of ensuring equitable access to food for all.

Continue reading “Addressing Student Food Insecurity with a SNAP” →

Community Gardens and Urban Farm: Land Acquisition

by Lucy Weiss*

Community gardens and urban farms are often thought of in conjunction with one another. After all, they share similarities; both are places where people, typically small-scale producers, come together to grow fruits and vegetables, and both provide consumers access to local produce. Both community gardens and urban farms benefit those who grow/purchase fresh produce, and the environment more generally. They recharge groundwater, prevent erosion, and mitigate dust impacts to cities. Community gardens and urban farms also face similar challenges including land acquisition, rising water rates, and climate change. Despite their overlaps, it is worth noting the distinctions between community gardens and urban farms, because these differences can  affect how they function. Urban farms typically have the goal of turning a profit whereas community gardens, which are run by residents and non profit organizations, tend to orient themselves toward education and facilitating relationships between people and nature. These divergent goals result in different models of operation. For instance, urban farms have fewer people doing more of the labor and getting paid for it. In community gardens, however, individuals often have their own plots of land and pay a membership fee to garden. Produce grown at community gardens is also eaten by individuals rather than sold for profit. Land acquisition also functions differently for urban farms and community gardens, which I will discuss in this post. 

Continue reading “Community Gardens and Urban Farm: Land Acquisition” →

Further Solutions to the Honey Fraud Problem

This is the fourth of four posts by students in the UCLA Law Food Law and Policy Clinic on honey adulteration, honey litigation, and potential policy solutions to the problem of honey fraud.

By Terra Duchene, Aris Prince, Victoria Russell, Candace Yamanishi*

This post outlines the actors who can make a significant impact to the honey fraud problem and suggests potential starting points for solutions.

Beekeepers like Chris Hiatt are desperate for a solution. Honey adulteration is a threat to the survival of U.S. bees and beekeepers, which in turn, is a threat to food growing in the U.S., since 1/3 of the food grown in the U.S. depends directly or indirectly on bees. Just as the bee is endangered, so too is the U.S. beekeeper. The livelihood of essential beekeepers, the well-being and survival of honeybees, and, ultimately, the success of crops that are essential to our agricultural system, are being severely endangered by the relatively unknown but extremely large-scale adulteration of honey. Ultimately, putting a stop to honey fraud is vital to our environment and those who dedicate their lives to cultivating it. We must end honey adulteration in all its forms. 

Continue reading “Further Solutions to the Honey Fraud Problem” →

Legal Recourse for Self-Regulation in the Honey Industry

This is the third of four posts by students in the UCLA Law Food Law and Policy Clinic on honey adulteration, honey litigation, and potential policy solutions to the problem of honey fraud.

By Terra Duchene, Aris Prince, Victoria Russell, Candace Yamanishi*

The American honey industry has been aware of the honey fraud problem for a long time. This post outlines fraudulent conduct in the honey certification space and describes a new California lawsuit that tackles honey adulteration.

 In 2010, four North American honey packers and importers set up a certification program called True Source to guarantee the origin, safety, and purity of honey. Since the program’s creation, True Source participation has flourished. True Source representatives told the UCLA Food Law & Policy Clinic (“the Clinic”) that as of January 2021, 40% of honey sold in the USA and Canada is True Source Certified, and there are 820 participating companies: 22 packers, 23 importers, 95 exporters, and 680 beekeepers.

The True Source concept is simple. In theory, honey certified by the organization is regularly tested by third party laboratories for authenticity and is designed to allow honey to be tracked from the consumer, back through the supply chain, to the country of origin and the beekeeper who harvested the honey from the beehive. (True Source Standard; Complaint). The True Source participants are supposedly required to comply with specific standards (the “True Source Certified Standard”) to ensure the traceability and authenticity of honey at each stage in the supply chain.

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What is Adulteration?

This is the second of four posts by students in the UCLA Law Food Law and Policy Clinic on honey adulteration, honey litigation, and potential policy solutions to the problem of honey fraud.

By Terra Duchene, Aris Prince, Victoria Russell, Candace Yamanishi*

Honey is made when the nectar and sweet deposits from flowering plants are gathered, stored, and dehydrated in honeycomb by honeybees. By definition, honey is a pure, single ingredient natural substance free of other substances or sweeteners. Honey adulteration occurs when real honey is added to or altered in such a way that it modifies its natural composition and integrity.

Adulteration occurs in a variety of forms, the most common being dilution with cheap fillers, sugary syrups, or other additives. This dilution increases the sugar content as well as changes the color and texture of the honey. Some honey producers extract the honey from the honeycomb prematurely[R(1] , or even substitute the nectar usually used to feed honeybees with sugar water to increase honey production and enhance their honey’s sweetness. Other common forms of adulteration include super heating and ultrafiltration or “resin stripping,” which remove pollen and naturally occurring enzymes to “improve” taste and smell and prevent the crystallization that retailers and consumers often find unattractive. Pollen removal is also an effective way to obfuscate efforts to track honey by adding local pollen after removing the foreign source pollen so that adulterators can circumvent labeling laws. Honey blending is another non-obvious form of adulteration where different honeys are blended in varying amounts and often misrepresented as a single type of honey. According to Amina Harris, Director of the Honey and Pollination Center at the UC Davis Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, a honey that has been labeled “Orange Blossom Honey” may be composed of only 28% orange blossom so long as that is the highest percentage present. The other 73% can be composed of any random mixture of various types of honey.

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Honey Adulteration and the Precarity of the U.S. Beekeeper

This is the first of four posts by students in the UCLA Law Food Law and Policy Clinic on honey adulteration, honey litigation, and potential policy solutions to the problem of honey fraud.

By Terra Duchene, Aris Prince, Victoria Russell, Candace Yamanishi*

Honey litigation is in the news again. Like previous honey lawsuits such as the Honeygate scandal—in which honey fraudsters were arrested for selling fraudulent honey that passed through U.S. Customs with fraudulent country of origin documents—the honey lawsuit filed March 29, 2021, in United States District Court, Eastern District of California, is targeted at actors responsible for flooding the U.S. market with cheap adulterated honey. Unlike previous lawsuits, this lawsuit focuses on a different set of victims: U.S. beekeepers who have been overwhelmingly harmed by adulterated honey flooding into the North American market.

Numerous commercial beekeepers in the U.S. are sitting on millions of pounds of real honey that they cannot sell. Why? Because the market is flooded with cheap, adulterated honey from out of the country, and producers of real honey in the U.S. are forced to sell at a loss. The Food Law and Policy Clinic at UCLA, an experiential course that partners law students with local and regional non-profit organizations and community groups to advocate for food movements, was paired with lifelong American beekeeper Chris Hiatt. Hiatt is fighting for the survival of his second-generation family business, Hiatt Honey, which has been owned by five Hiatt brothers for over five decades. Hiatt advocates to keep commercial beekeepers in business by preventing the continued proliferation of adulterated honey and honey fraud in the U.S.

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Repast – New Episode! Protecting the Liver, Feeding the Gut, and Changing Society with Dr. Robert Lustig

Listen to the new episode of Repast, a food law and policy podcast from the Resnick Center.

This month, Michael and Diana talk with Dr. Robert Lustig about his new book, Metabolical, The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine.  They talk about the health harms caused by processed foods and the massive increase in sugar consumption over the last several decades; possible societal interventions to address these problems; how the processed food public health battle is like the battle over tobacco; and more, including Dr. Lustig’s personal advice to all of us as to what healthy foods do: “Protect the liver, feed the gut.”

Dr. Robert Lustig is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He specializes in the field of neuroendocrinology, with an emphasis on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system.

 Michael T. Roberts is the Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

 Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

You can order Dr. Lustig’s new book, Metabolical, here.

You can find Dr. Lustig’s previous book, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains, here, and his book, Fat Chance, here.

Repast – New Episode! Reforming Food Systems with Nancy E. Roman

Listen to the new episode of Repast, a food law and policy podcast from the Resnick Center.

In this episode of Repast, Diana Winters and Nancy E. Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), discuss Nancy’s journey to her work with transforming the food landscape, and some of PHA’s most significant campaigns.  These include Pass the Love with Waffles + Mochi, a food equity campaign held in conjunction with Michelle Obama’s Netflix show about good food, and its Healthy Hunger Relief initiative, where it is working to improve the nutritional profile at our nation’s food banks.

Nancy and Diana also discussed some of the most important action items Nancy would like to see both in the Biden administration and globally, and looked forward to the upcoming PHA Summit, and the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit, a potentially transformative moment in food systems reform.

Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Nancy E. Roman is the President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America.

You can read Nancy E. Roman’s latest blog post on reforming the food system here.

You can register for the PHA 2021 Summit, to be held virtually on May 12, 2021, at 10am PT/1pm EST, here.

You can find more information about the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit here.

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