The U.S. Senate voted on Monday to confirm President Obama’s nominee for Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Margaret Hamburg.  The FDA is the oversight agency for food production as well as prescription drugs and medical devices.

Dr. Hamburg is a Harvard-trained doctor and former New York City health commissioner known for her work in bioterrorism preparations and other public health issues.

Dr. Hamburg has been critical of recent food contamination responses by Bush adminstration officials, and pledged in her confirmation hearing to restore public confidence in the FDA.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius praised Hamburg, saying, “Her expertise and judgment will serve FDA well.”

A profile of Dr. Hamburg’s carreer appeared in The New York Times on May 6, 2009.  You can read the full profile here.

This article by Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, appears in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American magazine.

In his analysis, Brown argues that causal factors such as the current world order, water shortages, eroding soil, and rising global temperatures are threatening not only the global food supply, but world civilization as a whole because of it.  He warns that a lack of widespread intervention on the latter three environmental factors, global water tables in particular, could push governments in poorer countries to collapse, with the resulting failed states threatening global security.

Brown also argues that the current food crisis is of concern for reasons beyond food shortage issues of the past.  He cites examples of event-driven shortages, such as droughts in the 1970s, and charges that today’s food crisis is trend-driven - following the intertwining of food production and the  energy economy as well as the growing world population and shifts in population affluence.  These trend-driven shortages, he says, pose a larger threat because they demand a shift in far-reaching global trends rather than isolated environmental conditions.

He also finds  acts by states to hoard food exports as a result of shortage concerns, worrisome.  These actions drive food prices up and deprive needy states of food imports.  Should that behavior continue, food access could become a forefront motivation in international conflict.

Lester Brown appeared as a guest on the Great Decisions Television Series 2009 episode entitled, “Running Out: The Global Food Crisis.”  The full episode can be viewed here.

Read Brown’s full article and please feel free to react in the “Comments” section below.

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) chief countered the perception put forward by development experts that the international food trade was key to the recent global food crisis.

Speaking at the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council conference in Austria, Pascal Lamy, the Director General of the World Trade Organization, rebuffed the idea put forward by UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food that unfair trade practices contributed to the recent global food crisis and persistent food insecurity in the developing world.  Lamy stated,

“International trade was not the source of last year’s food crisis…If anything, international trade has reduced the price of food over the years through greater competition, and enhanced consumer purchasing power.”

Some food security and development experts have previously stated that some trade policies for food are responsible for keeping food prices low, which has a negative effect on farmers in the developing world seeking to make a profit on food products.  Reuters reports that Lamy’s response to this position is that “…agriculture accounts for less than 10 percent of world trade, while only 25 percent of world farm output is traded globally…” meaning trade policies alone could not account for price fluctuations that end up hurting farmers.

Instead, Lamy called for changes in local policies on land use, taxes on agricultural goods, infrastructure, credit and new technology for agriculure, etc. will have a greater impact on food security than global trade policy.

Is it possible to make a difference in the fight against global hunger from your computer?  Organizations that are dedicated to fighting hunger work approach this challenge in many ways, and must dedicate a great deal of time and resources to raising funds to support their programs.

The United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) for example, created a web site called Free Rice, which has a win-win approach to fighting global hunger.  Rather than simply asking users to donate money, the site offers a variety of games that test users abilities in English, geography, chemistry, art, foreign languages and math.  When a user answers a question correctly, they earn 10 grains of rice for the World Food Programme to use in fighting hunger.  How does this work?  According to the Free Rice website:

The rice [donated to WFP] is paid for by the sponsors whose names you see on the bottom of your screen when you enter a correct answer. These sponsors support both learning (free education for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).

So visitors to the site raise money for WFP just by playing (win), the sponsoring companies fund the game and gain visibility (win), and WFP acquires more support for their mission (win).

U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of a “Biofuels Interagency Working Group” to be composed of the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA).  The working group will be tasked with supporting the U.S. biofuels industry through funds to support existing refiners, new loans to increase crop production and the building of refineries.

Balancing biofuel production with environmental concerns, the EPA is working on new rules that will take into account potential environmental damage caused by biofuel production and use.  The EPA is specifically looking to regulate the processes that produce corn ethanol while promoting ethanol production from other biomass sources.  The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog points out that the new rules are unduly harsh on the corn ethanol industry and may actually hurt the administration’s goals.

The Influenza A H1N1 virus (also known as “swine flu”) outbreak continues to challenge the globe, despite a pronouncement by the CDC’s acting director of “encouraging signs” concerning the severity of the outbreak.  Still, various countries and international organizations are dealing with the possible spread of the virus and the effects on the world population.

Africa and the Middle East

Several African nations have taken measures ranging from bans on pork products, thermal monitoring of passengers at airports, and increasing stocks of medical supplies.  A government mandated cull of pigs in Egypt led to street protests by its Christian minority.  A Baghdad zoo put three wild boars to sleep, despite testing negative for “swine flu,” to overcome the “barrier of fear” that the virus was causing to zoo visitors.

World Health Organization (WHO)

The WHO is expected to move its warning meter up to phase 6, which indicates a full-blown pandemic of Influenza A H1N1.  The WHO has been tracking a human to pig transmission of the virus in Canada, which could increase the threat of mutation and redistribution to humans.  The WHO food safety experts are also looking to add “swine flu” to the infectious viruses that it normally monitors, rather than leaving it solely in the category of “farming issues.”

World Trade Organization (WTO)

The United States, Canada and Mexico have been engaging in careful public relations to separate the outbreak of “swine flu” with pork products.  As of Monday, pork producers continued to suffer losses and pork futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have lost 10-20% of value based on fears that pork meat is a carrier of the “swine flu” virus. 

Canada is preparing to call on the World Trade Organization to reverse China’s ban on pork products from Canada’s Alberta province.  Mexico has asked the WTO to investigate similar bans placed by China and Russia.  Separately, Mexico is protesting the treatment of Mexican nationals in China since the outbreak began.