Campbell Soup leaves GMA Presented by Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health

With help from Catherine Boudreau, Luis Sanchez, Doug Palmer and Helena Bottemiller Evich

CAMPBELL LEAVES GMA: Campbell Soup Co. will leave the Grocery Manufacturers Association by the end of the year over concerns that the trade association no longer represents its views. The move stems from GMA’s hardline stance on GMO labeling. Campbell Chief Executive Denise Morrison told investors earlier this week that the move was not for financial reasons but instead was “driven by purpose and principles.”


Campbell has long been vocal about increasing transparency of its ingredients. The company, which owns the Pepperidge Farm, Prego and V8 brands, split from the rest of the food industry in January 2016 with a commitment to label all of its products containing genetically modified ingredients. It also supported efforts to make such labeling mandatory. GMA at the time was still pushing for a prohibition on GMO disclosures on food products. "We have always believed that consumers have the right to know what’s in their food,” CEO Denise Morrison said in a memo to employees at the time on the company’s decision.

Goodbye, old friend: GMA spokesman Roger Lowe noted in a statement to MA that companies drop their membership from time to time, and highlighted that the group has brought on new members of all sizes from throughout the industry this year. “They tell us they are joining GMA because they want to be part of our work committed to consumer transparency, sustainability, food safety, nutrition and retailer collaboration,” Lowe said, adding: "We will miss Campbell’s participation and wish them well.”

HAPPY FRIDAY, JULY 21! Welcome to Morning Ag, where after a long week of ice cream socials and hot dog cook outs here in D.C., it seems only appropriate to end it with pony rides. You know the deal: Thoughts, news, tips? Send them to [email protected] and @jennyhops. Follow the whole team at @Morning_Ag.

THE FIGHT BEGINS OVER CHIEF SCIENTIST CLOVIS: The White House is getting ready to nominate Trump campaign adviser and economic professor Sam Clovis to serve as USDA’s chief scientist, but some nonprofit groups and lawmakers are already raising alarms. Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Debbie Stabenow questioned if Clovis was qualified to be USDA undersecretary of research, education, and economics. “This nominee seems to lack the necessary agricultural science and research qualifications that are required by the farm bill,” Stabenow said in a statement, adding that she is worried about his “views on climate change and providing public investment in crop insurance and education.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) also slammed the appointment, saying he was “extremely concerned” about the pick. “The person who serves as the USDA’s top scientist is required to actually be a scientist. This is not just my opinion, but also a statutory requirement,” he said in a statement.

Who else? Friends of the Earth and Union of Concerned Scientists also took aim at Clovis’ appointment.

What’s next? While it certainly appears that the selection does not square with the requirements laid out in statute, it's far from clear who would have standing to take legal action.

CHINA LIFTS ONE MORE AG BARRIER: Chinese consumers could soon have a little U.S.-grown rice to go with that American steak. After more than a decade of negotiations, Beijing agreed to terms that would allow the United States to export rice to China for the first time, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Thursday. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of rice. Since 2013, it has also been the largest importer, with imports reaching nearly 5 million tons last year, USDA said in a release. Read more here.

DOURSON TAPPED FOR OCSPP: CropLife America is happy with the Trump administration's pick to head EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, where the pesticide program is housed. The White House has announced it intends to nominate Michael Dourson, a risk science professor at the University of Cincinnati and former EPA official for the post. Jay Vroom, president and CEO of CLA, cheered Dourson’s “extensive experience in risk assessment and science, both in the government and private sector,” arguing they make him qualified for the position.

JUST A MATTER OF TIME NOW: Dave Bernhardt is expected to become the Interior Department's No. 2 on Monday evening after clearing a key procedural hurdle on Thursday afternoon with bipartisan backing, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports. Seven members of the Democratic caucus — Michael Bennet, Joe Donnelly, Martin Heinrich, Heidi Heitkamp, Angus King, Joe Manchin and Brian Schatz — voted with Republicans to invoke cloture on the nomination. Bernhardt has faced criticism over his previous work as an oil and gas lobbyist and his time as Interior's solicitor under the George W. Bush administration.

SENATORS SECURE COTTON, DAIRY DEAL IN APPROPS: After failing to reach an agreement to help both cotton and dairy farmers in the fiscal 2017 omnibus appropriations package earlier this year, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran and ranking member Patrick Leahy gave it another go. The plan they settled on would cost $1 billion over 10 years, funding that is evenly split between the two sectors. The cotton-dairy deal — if it ends up in the final ag approps bill passed by Congress — is certainly a win for agriculture lawmakers who have to write a 2018 farm bill with an ever-shrinking spending baseline.

The fine print: The provision for cotton growers would designation cottonseed as “an other oilseed” so it can qualify for the Title I commodity support programs Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage — a change long demanded by farmers. The 2014 farm bill removed cotton from Title I to address a trade dispute with Brazil over U.S. support for the fiber, and instead created an insurance program that has had lackluster sign-up rates.

Milking it: The dairy fix is aimed at encouraging more farmers to sign up for an insurance program and to select greater levels of coverage under it, Leahy said. It includes requirements for the Margin Protection Program to send out indemnities to dairy farmers on a monthly, rather than bi-monthly, basis. It also reduces premium costs for coverage of the first 5 million pounds of milk, and waives a $100 administrative fee for "underserved producers.”

THE GANG'S ALL HERE: A host of policies made it into the Senate fiscal 2018 agriculture spending bill, which would allocate $20.5 billion in discretionary spending for USDA and FDA programs. Top of mind for Sen. John Hoeven, chairman of the appropriations agriculture subcommittee, is the drought in the Upper Plains. The bill includes funding for farmers dealing with drought and reporting requirements for USDA on how it helps farmers in disaster areas.

USDA OPENS MORE CRP LAND FOR GRAZING, HAYING: The USDA is allowing farmers dealing with drought in the upper Plains to graze livestock and mow grass for hay in environmentally sensitive areas such as wetlands and buffer areas enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. The department had already cleared farmers to graze animals on other CRP lands, and the expanded access follows a request from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and several other lawmakers. More than half of the region is in drought, the worst of which is in the Dakotas and Wyoming, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

THE END OF THE ORIGIN OF LIVESTOCK RULE? It seems the Trump administration has decided to scrap, at least for now, the origin of organic livestock rule that was nearly finished under Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The rule was scheduled for release in June 2017, according to the fall 2016 agenda that was released by the Obama administration, but wasn’t included in the White House’s new regulatory plan.

“The proposed origin of livestock requirements for dairy animals under the USDA organic regulations is particularly important to the organic industry and has been needed for some time,” a spokeswoman for the Organic Trade Association tells MA. “It eliminates much of the uneven playing field that organic dairy producers currently face. All of these rules now on the cutting room floor are critical in maintaining the integrity of the USDA organic seal and reflecting the consumer expectations of that seal.”

Timing is everything: The likely scrapping of the origin of livestock rules comes amid increasing scrutiny of fraud in organic products, and could further hurt consumer perception of the program. The way the NOP regulations are written, dairy cows must receive a certification that they were both raised and also treated organically since the last period of gestation for their milk to be certified. However, some dairy operations have been taking advantage of a provision in the rule that allows for a one-time transition of a cow or herd by treating it by organic standards for a year.

Also getting the ax: New standards for organic aquaculture, beekeeping and pet food that USDA officials had said were close to being released also didn’t make it onto the regulatory plan.

BIOTECH RULE REWRITE DUE NEXT SPRING: The USDA is predicting that it will release its update to the rules governing the approval of genetically engineered plant — known as the part 340 regulations — by April. The proposed changes, which were made available for comment in the final days of the Obama administration, would be the first update to the rules since 1987. They are aimed at ensuring that the department only requires oversight of products that pose human health or environmental risks — not merely because a crop has been genetically engineered.

But Trump administration’s first Unified Agenda points to at least one potential hang up for the rule: trade. If the U.S. takes a different definition of biotech crops than other countries, it could cause issues for U.S. exports and potentially import bans abroad. The USDA is currently going through hundreds of comments filed on the rule in June, likely looking for the answer to just this issue.

More time for comments: Meanwhile, the USDA is allowing more time for input on how it should require the disclosure of GMO ingredients. The department has extended the comment period on its 30-odd questions related to the pending rules from July 17 until Aug. 25. Congress has mandated that the rules be finalized by the end of July 2018.

THE FARM BILL FOREST THROUGH THE TREES: Forestry groups and advocates are pushing lawmakers to include adequate conservation funding, increased harvesting and more resources to combat wildfires as part of the 2018 farm bill. The Forests in the Farm Bill Coalition is calling for Congress to resist cuts to conservation, rural development and biobased energy programs. It argues that the money will help to maintain publicly and privately owned forested lands, encourage new products and develop jobs in rural America. The coalition also wants for increased efforts to prevent the listing of animals and plants on the Endangered Species List, which can drastically curb areas that can be harvested for timber, new policies that discourage the development of forested land and maintaining the current form of checkoff programs.

MA’S INSTANT OATS:

— The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research has awarded $150,000 to researchers at Colorado State University to investigate bacterial leaf streak, a disease with limited treatment or prevention methods, that is causing yield losses for corn growers in the western corn belt, according to a statement from the group.

— Minnesota is investigating about two dozen complaints of crops damaged by dicamba drift, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

— The FTC is said to have made preliminary inquiries into how Amazon handles its pricing, Reuters reports. According to the story, those investigatory moves are in response to a complaint from the Santa Monica-based advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which earlier this month issued a report.

THAT’S ALL FOR MA! See you again soon! In the meantime, drop your host and the rest of the team a line: [email protected] and @ceboudreau; [email protected] and @JennyHops; [email protected] and @hbottemiller; [email protected] and @jmlauinger; and P.J. Joshi, at [email protected] and @pjoshiny. Follow @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Ag on Twitter.

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