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Food Safety. The Food Safety Enhancement Act (FSEA) of 2009 broadens the power of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates about 80 percent of the US food supply. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service is responsible for the remaining 20 percent, including cattle, sheep, swine and goats before and after slaughter. Responsibility for eggs is shared between the FDA and USDA.

The FSEA would give FDA authority over on-farm production activities, charge facilities an annual $500 registration fee, require additional record keeping and expand FDA authority to quarantine geographic areas for food safety problems.

Hearings in summer 2009 featured opposition to the FSEA from organic farmers and agribusiness. Taylor Farms, the world's largest salad and fresh-cut vegetable processor, with 10 plants operating in six states and Mexico, criticized final-product testing, which it says does not increase food safety. Taylor favors prevention instead of final-product testing, and argued that quarantines could be too expensive for producers.

An estimated 25 percent of US residents, some 76 million, become sick each year because of contaminated food, 300,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. Reporting food-related sicknesses is the job of state and local health departments. Minnesota is considered a model; its health officials found 548 food-related illness outbreaks between 1990 and 2006.

A lengthy October 4, 2009 article in the New York Times explored the spread of E. coli in ground beef. An outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants in 1994 left four children dead and led to new procedures aimed at enhancing food safety. However, because ground beef is made from different parts of cows, often uses trimmings from a number of slaughterhouses, and is not tested systematically, it is often hard to trace contaminated ground beef to its source. Most ground beef is first made and then tested for contamination, making it hard to determine which slaughterhouse may have been the source.

Food Labeling. USDA in August 2009 ordered an audit of the 100 private certifiers in the National Organic Program, begun in 2002. Media reports suggest that organic standards have been relaxed under pressure from large growers and processors, some of whom reportedly shop around for certifiers until they find one who will label their foods organic.

Americans spent $19 billion on organic food in 2007, up from $4 billion in 1997. Organic produce and milk are the top two categories, commanding price premiums of at least 30 percent for produce and 60 percent for milk. Some consumers confuse organic with locally grown food, which may not be produced organically.

There are several private efforts to develop labels signifying healthy foods. Hannaford Supermarkets in the northeastern states developed a Guiding Stars program that assigned up to three stars to the foods sold, enabling mothers to allow children to select, for instance, any cereal with three stars.

An alternative Smart Choices program is supported by food manufacturers who pay up to $100,000 a year that assigns a check mark to "better" foods. Some nutritionists have questioned some of the foods that were given checks under Smart Choices. The Food and Drug Administration in October 2009 announced an investigation of private food-labeling programs after concerns were raised about Smart Choices, and promised a uniform labeling system for the front of food products by the end of 2010.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced a food labeling bill in May 2009 as an amendment to health care reform legislation that has divided the restaurant industry. Under the bill, chains with 20 or more restaurants operating under the same name must post calories on menus and provide more detailed written information upon request, such as fat and sodium content (California will require chains with at least 20 outlets to post calories by 2011).

The US has about a million restaurants. The 20-restaurant requirement would cover about 250,000 of them. Advocates want restaurants with $1 million or more in sales to post calories on menus, which would cover more US restaurants.

Other. Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the US rivers and streams. However, the Clean Water Act of 1972 mostly regulates chemicals or contaminants that move through pipes or ditches, which means it does not typically apply to waste or manure that is sprayed on a field and seeps into groundwater. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has special rules for the biggest farms, like those with at least 700 cows, but critics say that many large animal feedlots self-certify that they will not pollute and thereby largely escape regulation.

Canada traditionally supplies about seven percent of US-consumed pork, worth about $500 million a year. However, a 2002 law implemented in 2008 that requires food to be labeled by country of origin has reduced US hog imports from Canada, prompting a Canadian complaint to the World Trade Organization over the US food-labeling law.

Americans spend about $11.2 billion on bottled water in 2008, when the average American consumed 28.5 gallons of bottled water.

Europe. The names of those receiving EU farm aid were made public in 2008 http://farmsubsidy.org). It emphasizes that a quarter of the aid goes to nonfarm operations to promote rural development, including an Italian construction firm that received aid to improve roads for tractors. Major food manufacturers receive EU subsidies to make their exports competitive when the EU price exceeds the world price.

EU farm subsidies were E50 ($71) billion in 2008. The justification for continuing to spend almost half of the EU budget on support for agriculture has changed, from compensating farmers who lost national price support when their countries joined the EU to supporting farm producers in an area with high environmental and animal welfare standards.

The EU used price supports, guaranteed minimum prices for the commodities they produced, until the mid-1980s, abandoning that policy in the face of surpluses. Instead, the EU bases payments on how much land was farmed, now how much is produced, and added subsidies for rural development. Paying for land ownership means that wealthy individuals, from the queen of England to the abbeys of the Roman Catholic Church, receive EU farm subsidies. Some reformers want to means-test subsidies, which would likely end payments to the queen of England.

The OECD in July 2009 estimated that its 30-member countries spent $265 billion on farm subsidies in 2008, making subsidies about 20 percent of farm revenue. Farm subsidies were down sharply in 2008 because of high food prices.

Subsidies were 60 percent of farm revenue in Norway, Korea and Switzerland, and less than one percent of farm revenue in New Zealand. The EU paid $150 billion in farm subsidies, followed by $42 billion paid in Japan; $23 billion in the US; $18 billion in Korea; and $16 billion in Turkey.

Michael Moss, "The Burger That Shattered Her Life," New York Times, October 4, 2009. Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle, "European Subsidies Stray From the Farm," New York Times, July 17, 2009.